It's not clear that replacing one simplistic fad with another is the right approach.
This journalist blithely replaces the "Money-Multiplier" with a "Fiscal-Multiplier." If only things were that simplistic. Then we wouldn't have to think at all.
Austerity has been an even bigger disaster than we thought
Yes it has, at least for the royal "we," yet only because the bulk of us weren't "thinking" critically enough in the first place.
Look, countless people grasp how countless complex processes work.
Can't we just agree to treat Public Purpose and Public Policy as a complex process too, instead of just something to throw simplistic slogans at?
If we're gonna rely on one, mythical multiplier, how about we select a Thinking Multiplier?
If we're gonna rely on one, mythical multiplier, how about we select a Thinking Multiplier?
After all, the root of all disasters is the lack of thinking, not the following steps in the causality flow.
28 comments:
"That's right: cutting spending in a slump might actually make debt problems worse."
Says it all...
Here's another good one:
"That's why the IMF thinks infrastructure spending would almost pay for itself right now..."
???????
LOL!
Roger this lifted from a source on the thing I am working on:
"A combined resistive/reactive circuit dissipates more power than it returns to the source. The reactance dissipates no power; though, the resistor does.
As with any reactive circuit, the power alternates between positive and negative instantaneous values over time. In a purely reactive circuit that alternation between positive and negative power is equally divided, resulting in a net power dissipation of zero. However, in circuits with mixed resistance and reactance like this one, the power waveform will still alternate between positive and negative, but the amount of positive power will exceed the amount of negative power. In other words, the combined inductive/resistive load will consume more power than it returns back to the source."
So this is a good example you post here from this moron at the WaPo... where he is thinking the "ideal world" is one where we "can get more than we put in"...
??????
What he seems to be doing is akin to assuming there can be no resistive load and the "perfect world" for him is one of pure inductance where there would be no power loss... but rather all would be returned to the source... (and perhaps more????)
So for these people, their idea of reality is (FD: metaphor) like a motor circuit where their is no resistive load (doesnt exist!) and is purely inductive AND the motor is not even connected to a physical load, its just sitting there with the shaft just spinning doing nothing.... not pumping water, not running a mill, etc... just sitting there free wheeling...
So these are the kind of people we are dealing with....
The concept of a fiscal multiplier is not a fad, but was developed by Keynes, among others.
Ignacio,
WE are screwed ONLY because we're lazy enough to listen to economists - (without laughing, or quickly turning to more interesting topics).
How many entropy-displaying entities understand entropy? We don't really have to understand anything ... EXCEPT ... that those that listen (and coordinate with) ALL that they interact with .... are the ones that survive.
That's a habit embedded into the very roots of 13Trillion years of our current Universe (not just the 4.5 billion years of biology here on planet earth).
It's a sobering lesson to realize that every successive layer of evolution can generate stupidity and ignorance on a par with it's own pinnacle of creation.
Our recombinant forms spawn the spectrum of suicidally ignorant to irrelevant to adaptive.
It's up to us to SELECT what preserves or increases adaptive rate ... and how soon.
If we don't teach that to a threshold proportion of our children ... it won't matter HOW MUCH too few of us know, or understand.
How do we carry this crusade to ~15 million emerging Americans, before it's too late?
"The concept of a fiscal multiplier is not a fad, but was developed by Keynes, among others."
?? So?
No one said anything plus or minus about the concept of various multipliers, Dan K.
Rather, the topic was entirely the over-reliance on simplistic buzzwords, rather than practicing agile responses to unpredictable contexts ... so that our descendants can get back to a higher rate of improvising on demand.
Quote from the bible, or the Bhagavad Gita, or Gil-Gamesh ... if you think it will help things.
Just saying that none of that quotation worship replaces adequate practice at thinking.
Excessive quotation worship is how we got into this complacency mess in the 1st place.
right this is one difference I notice between science/engineering and econ....
In science you might ask something like: "How much power is lost due to the resistive load component?"
and the answer wouldnt start by quoting James Watt from the 1700s... but the answer would contain Watt's name in the units...
Like there is no unit named "the Keynes"... abbreviated "K"... but there is the unit named "the Watt" abbreviated "W"...
So maybe Piketty is right econ is not a science and we can see this because there are no units named after old economists...
I think we may eventually have to calibrate the dollar with a certain minimum standard of living for an individual or household....
"calibrate the dollar with a certain minimum standard of living"
That may just be a brilliant suggestion, Matt!
Rename it too.
the "denominator" ?
the "score" ?
the "intermediary" ?
the "enabler" ?
Those are all network oriented. I'm having trouble thinking of one-word names for std of living. Guess it's a neglected topic.
I'll bet you $ that various surviving tribal languages have more words for "welfare of the people" than our market, pidgin-language English has.
Just remembered one.
The Ubuntu?
"I am what I am because of who we all are."
from Khoi-San, oldest cro-magnon human lineage known on the planet
https://ourendlessriver.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/ubuntu.jpeg?w=722
https://ourendlessriver.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/ubuntu-21/
Economics as a science similar to natural science is a neoclassical assumption and neoliberal mainstay.
Neoclassically oriented economists want to differentiate economics from social science in this regard.
No heterodox economist thinks this is correct, and it is a basis of the disagreement between orthodoxy and heterodoxy over methodology.
The orthodox have declared that the methodological debate is over and they won. That's dogmatism, not science.
Matt, isn't that the intention of the MMT JG floor as a price anchor, tying the value of the currency to the real world in terms of the hourly compensation (wage and benefits) of unskilled labor?
"...std. of living" Breath!! First thing to arrive, last thing to leave. With it you can laugh, cry, think, fight, enjoy, be sad, be compassionate, be cruel. Without you are nothing. People substitute everything else and never realise its importance until every one becomes precious.
What is missing from human consciousness is the understanding, the realisation, I would say 'enlightenment' of how incredible it is to be alive.
After 4.6B years, dust gets up and talks and walks, philosophises about std. of living, all courtsey of a living Breath! Coming and going, from out of nowhere - according to its own nature. How high a standard do we want?
"practicing agile responses to unpredictable contexts ... so that our descendants can get back to a higher rate of improvising on demand"
I'm not sure what you are really saying here. People already come up with responses to unpredictable contexts, and improvise on demand. This happens in business, politics, etc.
Are you just saying that people should somehow be more agile, more open minded, etc?
As usual I don't really know what your point is, it's so vague.
Y,
Our recent trend of Neo-Liberal policies have NOT been agile. They're the epitome of dogma.
Tom said: "isn't that the intention of the MMT JG floor as a price anchor, tying the value of the currency to the real world in terms of the hourly compensation (wage and benefits) of unskilled labor?"
Yes, but it doesn't make that tie explicit in the name itself.
That's part of why it takes so long to explain the concept to Jane & Joe Sixpack, from scratch.
If Joe & Jane Sixpack can't get past some profound cognitive bias it's going to be impossible to redefine words to rational meaning.
Joe Sixpack only see that he has to compete his whole life for some artificial scarce (he doesn't know even this) thing called "money", so his mind will melt down if you tell him to use fiat as a tool to scale aggregate coordination.
The whole language has to be redefined, and moron politicians are not up to the task. It's a conundrum, and I doubt self-enlightenment is a solution for 95% of the personality types out there. Maybe after things get worse, but then the "resolution" may be other (military keynesianism, tyranny and jingoism, like the first half of the XX century).
Tom yes I guess in a way but if we had a annual amount in mind in dollars (dunno 50k family of 4? something...)
and then if the price of something in that model went up, the authorities could investigate WHY it went up (rent increase?) and perhaps nullify the increase or else increase the amount in the model (like a COLA...)
This would be similar to the JG wage but perhaps a more broad measure of the value of a dollar....
ie instead of saying $10 is the value of 1 hour of labor.... we would be saying "50,000/yr robustly provisions a family of 4" as the value...
then make sure everyone gets at least that amount, etc... JG/UI, etc...
rsp,
Re "... self-enlightenment for 95% of the personality types" [Ignacio]
There is intelligence of the mind (always highly debatable); intelligence of the emotions (often highly colouful) - then there is intelligence of the heart (not well understood). It is from the heart comes the longing for peace. This longing has been with humanity since day one. Ignoring this longing is 'ignorance'. 'Enlightment' begins with recognition of the heart, no matter what the persona.
Every five year old knows how to feel. Adults get lost in their minds or emotions. Everything becomes a concept. If we cannot recognise ourselves, how can we evolve .....? We are like a plant, uprooted.
"There is intelligence of the mind"
Yes, and that's just the prelude to the intelligence of the group mind.
We're stuck in social kindergarten, while trying to meet the demands after graduating from tribal college. :(
y: "Are you just saying that people should somehow be more agile, more open minded, etc? "
I'm saying that we'll retain more Policy Agility when we maintain enough PRACTICE at generating and maintaining Policy Agility, ... in everything we do at all levels of aggregate organization, from small teams to net aggregate.
Been trying to thing this through, & it keeps coming back to the simple practice of just running ADEQUATE feedback iterations through autocatalytic networks.
http://openmonetaryopsforum.blogspot.com/2014/10/macroeconomics-simple-practice-of-re.html
It's our [lack of ] aggregate Policy Agility, and YOUR problem to contribute to a solution, by at least TRYING to see through the fog of context. Instead of just complaining.
… prelude to group mind [RogerE]
If you have time Roger – what is meant by ‘group mind’? Maybe there is something I can read?
There can be two or more minds with similar content – a ‘group mind’ is not a new singleentity is it (I have this impression from somewhere)? Is this posited? Two consciousnesses cannot occupy the same space nor compose into something new? And so far we have not worked out a way to bypass the reproductive process!
To be clear consciousness for me is an entity – it is existence, Being: mind is simply an attribute, a thought bubble attached to the entity – usually programmed by the world. So what entity is behind a ‘group mind’? I can understand a group being of one mind (individual thought bubbles sharing the same content) but cannot understand group mind because of the absent entity?
Conversely, there are many instances where entities work together but mind is diverse.
The Tibetan’s say that each thought bubble is part of the one ocean of the universal mind, a little part of it being utilised by each human consciousness, but I cannot say anything about that! I can concur that “we were given the gift of thinking, and what we think about is our gift to ourselves”.
Maybe there is more to this group mind business?
A "mind" or intelligence is held in the body or pattern of electrical messaging exhanged between neurons.
[If you sleep, or otherwise sedate neurons, you're temporarily brainless.]
Similarly, a group mind or intelligence is held in the body of discourse of a society. If you inhibit citizens from participating, your culture soon becomes brainless, co-opted by some subset acting as a Central Planning parasite.
google any & all of these terms
"group mind"
"group intelligence"
"crowd computing"
"hive mind"
"parallel processing"
"cultural reasoning"
"social reasoning"
"social mood" [if a group can have a mood, it can have a median cognitive outcome too]
"artificial intelligence"
"network intelligence"
mob psychology
herd mentality
group think
cultural conditioning
Warren Mosler:
"Re: Scotland- I'd sustain full employment with a new currency called the 'kilt' as a tease on those wondering what's [beneath] it... ;) "
:) :)
OK - thanks Roger & Tom.
For me, the physical brain is a transponder (an instrument of the mind, as mind is an instrument of consciousness, as consciousness is an aspect or instrument of Being).
So the seat of consciousness is mirrored in the atoms. But not at a football match!
Think of it on this analogy.
Mind is a field and minds are field effects in that field. Subtle energy is a grosser manifestation of that field and transformations are effects in the field. Space/time/mass/(physical) energy is a yet grosser expression of the field.
Consciousness is the vacuum state of the unified field, from which all manifestation arises as excitation within the unified field increases. Consciousness is the "emptiness" from which effects arise and in terms of which they are connected systemically. As Buddhists say, "Emptiness is not empty."
Consciousness is the "ocean" and field effects are its "waves."
Then social effects can be analogized in terms of resonance and coherence, for example.
Some scientists working in consciousness studies have proposed this sort of analogy and are exploring ways to express it more rigorously, e.g. in terms of "quantum consciousness."
This relates to the competing theories of subjective experience as produced by the brain or received by the brain. In the former, consciousness is an emergent property of matter, in the latter, consciousness is primary.
If this is too abstract, just go with the old hippie concept of "vibes." :)
Have read about theories in quantum consciousness over at http://quantum-mind.co.uk/
I still find the Tibetan's 'Treatise on Cosmic Fire' one of the most likely explanations.
Would have to sit down with you and chat Tom, to make sure I understood exactly what you had in mind, but energy and consciousness are synonymous words for me. Consciousness as I perceive it, can exist incarnate, or without the human persona (which is a vehicle). Consciousness is a living husk for the Divine spark that is the ultimate being of man; that dances in the Divine Flame - just as the human persona is a living husk for the Divine soul, that is consciousness without form. But this is just poetry, and words; and not really in the minds of the good folk that just want to live peaceably, and enjoy their seventy laps around the Sun, on planet earth ....
Feel human! Enjoy being human! For that we need to get in touch with our hearts. Mind gets way too much attention. Getting in touch with the heart expands consciousness far more rapidly than forever dabbling in the mind (which just generates even more questions)! The energy is direct. The answer is singular. What we are looking for during every moment of those seventy laps, is already within ...
That's not poetry, that's practical.
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