(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)
There seems to be widespread consensus that, in recent years, the US gov cut back from a deficit of ~7% to ~3% of GDP.
Yet wait just a doggone minute! What the heck does a deficit in fiat even mean?
A deficit in Public Initiative, that's what! Can we run out of Public Initiative? For Pete's sake! Are we borrowing initiative? Where does Public Initiative come from, anyway?
Our biggest problem seems to be the continued use of broken semantics and the self-defeating attempts to force universal application of economics-specific jargon on a diverse, confused electorate - where words mean completely different things to people steeped in different disciplines.
There is obviously a better way.
Why not abandon such broken semantics, and instead CONSISTENTLY, nay universally say something more relevant? "The US electorate cut self-investment from ~7% to ~3% of GDP." Gee, once said that way, where are all the "Cultural-Investment" Hawks?
(Can someone re-draw even this cartoon, to show "deficit" cutters cutting an already mal-distributed, net private liquidity in half?)
Why not abandon such broken semantics, and instead CONSISTENTLY, nay universally say something more relevant? "The US electorate cut self-investment from ~7% to ~3% of GDP." Gee, once said that way, where are all the "Cultural-Investment" Hawks?
(Can someone re-draw even this cartoon, to show "deficit" cutters cutting an already mal-distributed, net private liquidity in half?)
How about this as a simple approach? Cease, forever, the practice for checking for context-relevant meaning AFTER THE FACT ... if at all.
Instead, focus on the process of transferring meaning, on knowing your policy audience, and on investing in the process of building aggregate understanding and consensus.
Repetitively pressuring people to use your language or jargon in their affairs triggers resentment faster than it builds understanding.
The sordid history of dysfunctional policy is that, left unchecked, frictions and resentment always rise to exceed consensus organization.
Instead, focus on the process of transferring meaning, on knowing your policy audience, and on investing in the process of building aggregate understanding and consensus.
Repetitively pressuring people to use your language or jargon in their affairs triggers resentment faster than it builds understanding.
The sordid history of dysfunctional policy is that, left unchecked, frictions and resentment always rise to exceed consensus organization.
The alternative? Pay consistent attention to how variable semantics (word meanings) are always simultaneously used in multiple ways by a diverse electorate. If not, things soon get out of hand, and the confusion is inevitably leveraged by naively narrow & self-centered special interest lobbies. Then our electorate ends up chasing it's own tail ... for nonproductive purposes.
1 comment:
“the present pre‐occupation of the financial system is to hide the enormous capacity for output which modern methods have placed at our disposal” (CH Douglas 1922)."
http://spontaneousgenerations.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/SpontaneousGenerations/article/viewFile/978/1106
That should help put maintenance of our constant Output Gap into perspective, as an outright act of sabotage against our nation, by financial institutions.
In other words, treason.
Or, as Warren Mosler says, "the financial sector is more trouble than it's worth."
http://moslereconomics.com/
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