Five Appalling Lies You Should Swallow, about Cutting Social Security? You Decide.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson.)

Please get involved in this issue. This cannot stand.

Five Appalling Lies You Should Swallow, about Cutting Social Security?

Five Outright Lies Are Being Spread About Social Security - to promote significant cutbacks in eldercare and unemployment benefits.

These people are not just wrong, they're misguided to the point of being deranged, and are half way to destroying their country. This is no longer just Innocent Fraud due to ignorance, it's bordering on willful treason and sedition.

They must be stopped. Please consider forwarding the following links, and posting them at the website linked to above.

ps: Maya MacGuiness, director of CRFB reportedly receives a salary of $360,000 per year to work on reducing YOUR Social Security benefits. She's funded by billionaire Peter G. Peterson, who's been obsessed for decades with disenfranchising the Middle Class.

*** 

[I posted this comment at the CRFB website. Let's see if it survives their "moderator."]

Ed Lorenzen and the CRFB are starting from a false premise. They flat out miss a simple but critical point.

"Data is irrelevant without [full] context." Walter Shewhart

First: FICA taxes for elder & unemployment benefits aren't necessary for any other policy, or for Corporate Welfare. So they aren't for SocSec either. Just another regressive policy, reflecting 80 years of cruel, class warfare.

“I guess you’re right on the economics. They are politics all the way through. We put those pay roll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program. Those taxes aren't a matter of economics, THEY'RE STRAIGHT POLITICS.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

Second: No fiat currency issuer ever has to balance "fiat." If the population (and/or economy) is growing, we have to rightsize non-zero inflation, just to maintain adequate liquidity for growing numbers of people & more transactions/year.
We Need a Bigger Budget "Deficit" - William Vickrey, Nobel Prize

&

“Fifteen Fatal Fallacies of Financial Fundamentalism” (see fallacy #6)

Third: Taxes are Irrelevant for ANY amount of fiat, no matter the policy.

Fourth:

 "Almost everybody talks about budget deficits. Almost everybody seems in principle to be against them. And almost no one, literally, knows what [they are] talking about." Robert Eisner, The Misunderstood Economy, p.90;

Fifth: Lorenzen and CRFB are completely out of paradigm when it comes to the very operations they are trying to discuss.
"Save Social Security From Its Saviors" - Robert Eisner

***

Sadly, Lorenzen, MacGuiness & Peterson think we're still on the gold standard. That paradigm hasn't existed since 1933. We've come a long way since then. We can't go back, without destroying the USA.

Shipping Coal to Newcastle = Sending Fiat to Issuer

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

"Record High, 72%, of Citizens Have Zero Situational Awareness"

Wow! They may as well get into the business of sending coal to Newcastle, and hope for a miracle! [That actually happened, you know. Dumb luck.]

That's as dumb as sending fiat to the issuer?

"Hey buddy, can you spare a paradigm?"
Sparadigm? "Hey, electorate, can you sparadigm?"

(Nope. We've run out of those too. They followed the fiat ... which followed the Dodo bird.)

Maybe a future generation can bring fiat back to culture, in a pair'a Digmassic Pork episodes?

Could an infected mosquito carry a dynamic intelligence gene & innoculate a Luddite, maybe even a Control Fraud Bankster? Even one's carrying shotguns and with advanced weaponry able to defend themselves and their financial slaves from any and all adaptive evolution?

Or could the same thing be accomplished with a frenetically-engineered, crypto-semantic memovirus? We gotta fight corrupto-semantic memoviruses with their own weaponry. There must be 1001 ways to lead a Luddite to progress, but you have to let them waterboard themselves?

And A Market-Culture Is A Projection Of All The Operations That Generate Economic Paradigms?

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

[Simplified] Simulations back up theory that Universe is a hologram

The emerging paradigm they're talking about here is not just a fusion of not just the wave & particle duality of physical information. Rather, the authors are discussing fusing the Relativistic and Quantum-mechanic nature of our physics paradigms into one perceptual lens, and thereby modeling all data gathering whatsoever as effectively looking at a hologram constructed from all incident information.

Abstract stuff, but conceptually simple once you wade through the layers. Just reflects a large number of inter-dependencies, rather like a market or human culture.

So, by analogy, what's that make a human culture? A group-feedback-o-gram? Always one step short of a growing whole-o-gram?*

Makes you wonder where we keep the backup copy? :) (A hologram image, if erased, is re-created from the incident data that feeds it. In our case, our emerging behaviors and cultures are constantly rebuilt, from our ongoing operations, REGARDLESS of how we interpret them.)

And where does the universe keep it's backup! In it's fundamental operations too?

And how out-of-date is each whole-o-gram projection, at any one paradigm?

Believe it or not there is a simple, relevant message buried in this, for Jane & Joe Sixpack. To understand a human culture, we must understand the multi--component nature of group intelligence (the spectrum from dumb-to-genius nature of paradigms)?

Data is useless without context. 

Further, even context is useless without paradigm. (Ever look at an image and not see anything ... until you finally look at it the right way? Whole groups do that too. ESPECIALLY economists, it seems. They almost define those who refuse to look at the basic operations at all, let alone from diverse perspectives.)

What we see & do is a reflection of what we expect. 

Yet we have zero predictive power. Ergo, the only thing worth expecting ... is the value of resetting our individual and group expectations, without bias or prejudice. 

Emerging success and survival is a simple matter of accurately reflecting ALL emerging feedback?**

Comically, that is exactly the last thing most of us expect! And we're still actively training our offspring to BE that way.

Gag me with a restricted-paradigm. We're all Luddite's tomorrow.

* (for those who don't know, TJ called that a "more perfect union"-o-gram). It's an ongoing thing.

** (And re-projecting that whole-o-gram through our net actions? The whole-o-gram is in front of our faces all the time. We just have to keep dabbling our projections in it, and see which ones don & don't get burned. Those that do that fast enough, come square back to tripping over Darwin's paradigm of Adaptive Rate.)

Naming, Discussing and Solving Specific Innocent Frauds, and the Specific Social Catalysts That Will Undo Them

commentary by Roger Erickson

To proceed, we need to specifically name some key hurdles, so they can be more widely discussed. Only then is it clear what catalysts prompt faster adoption of methods driving better results.

Consider: The USAID Virus, or "The International Campaign to Destabilize Bolivia," and then let's jump to MMT & fiscal policy.

Reasoning by Analogy.

An analogy is used, comparing a US Gov agency to a virus, given that both trigger "systemic toxicities" in the afflicted host. At some point, it doesn't matter how true the specific allegations are. There is a better way, for both virus & host.

Anyone observing the intersection of policy & monetary operations knows that the hurdles are very distributed. Therefore, lets consider some distributed background. If we're going to mention hosts & viruses, note that every known species & it's viruses exhibits diverse, competing cultures or variants. For example, each of our nation states, as a variant, has also developed a cloud of significant institutions or practices that define that culture. Also note that each institution itself develops a cloud of "species-specific" protest groups.

Ultimately, however, all institutions & their protest cults develop considerable institutional momentum, and all lack adequate situational awareness of how to adapt to an unpredictable future.  Progress occurs largely through unpredictable, indirect recombinations across or outside existing institutions.

How do we know that past methods always fail? Simply because we've been unable to extract any predictive power by extrapolating from past trends. The result is an accepted rule in all system sciences: "For every intractable problem, there is a solution, and that solution always involves yet another layer of indirection." It is that novel class of new & indirect solutions which cannot be predicted - and hence cannot be supplied by existing institutions or their protest clouds.

Learning not to fear viruses. 

Even initially threatening viruses can eventually be beneficially utilized by a clever recipient, by repurposing either the content or the viral methods. Viruses open up indirect pathways which cannot be accessed by existing hosts or source-institutions sharing existing "paradigm momentum" - nor by the "species-specific" protest groups sharing the same paradigm-momentum, even if in opposition!

Simultaneously, the machinery used by one host to generate & redistribute viruses can also be tuned to benefit both source & recipient. Indirection and indirect options are all around us. Re-purposing them in novel ways is where all the opportunity is - decidedly NOT in joining any aspect of any of them, as is.

There is always an even better way. Finding that better way fast enough to matter, requires situational awareness. Recklessly acting anyway, without at least minimal situational awareness, defines Innocent Fraud.

At their deepest levels, the premise of the USAID-virus articles is that institutional momentum will generate collateral influence, incidentally. We know that, and have options.  Exploring those options is what counts.

Using Viral Methods to Explore Options Faster

Since no subset of actors can wield enough knowledge to adequately predict the consequences of it's own actions, they must fall back on adjustments as reported results rolls in. In that case, the ratio of success vs failure depends entirely upon feedback sampling, and the latency between feedback, adequate analysis and further action.

Throwing caution to the winds and stubbornly proceeding based on ideology alone produces, at best, Innocent Fraud.

Being overly cautious and waiting for certainty before action only cedes discovery and momentum to those generating the range of actions defining success & failure, and is therefore also a failure - by definition - in an adaptive race.

The well known path to success, the very thing that drives evolution, is better/faster/leaner "parsing" of the information cloud incidentally generated by any group in any situation. Simply put, when HP quickly listens to all of HP, it's always clear what to do next. The trick is to find better/faster/cheaper methods allowing HP to listen to all of HP, and then to also parse that information cloud so that all parts of HP can align to accomplish whatever HP needs to do next.

Experience has proven that better/faster/cheaper tuning of input/analysis/response cycles depend largely on "what & how you ask" and "what & how you answer." Asking the precisely right question goes a long way towards getting the shortest, most valuable answer, soonest. Our decision cycle shrinks as all discussants learn how to keep useless information from cluttering & slowing the group decision process.

Making the jump to better/faster/leaner monetary operations - and then going farther.

Viruses, Options and Continuous Development.

If we apply the same cross-discipline analogy to monetary operations, then MMT exposes multiple, well known systemic toxicities affecting policy development. 

We already know where we'd like to be, and we know what constraints are holding us back. That means all attention should be focused on methods for overcoming the constraints, not just publicizing them. 

Methods drive results. If better methods are known but not widely used, then we fall back to catalysts for driving faster adoption of better methods. The best ways to learn are by trial & error, or by example if possible.

Our general problem? We have populations growing faster than their group awareness is growing? You don't say!

That defines a "teratology," i.e., a disorganized system. Teratology was coined to describe mal-development of a recognized system, specifically abnormalities of physiological development. There is even a long standing Teratology Society., dedicated to study of "terata," or abnormalities [Terata-ology, from Greek, = "monster-study"]. A newer term developmental toxicity includes all manifestations of abnormal development, not only obvious terata.

What does this - and similar examples from other fields - imply for all aspects of policy? Quite obviously, that we already have tremendous experience in studying and managing complex development processes, and are simply not applying that knowledge base to the complexity and tempo of group policy development.

New Ideas for Tuning a Continuously Developing System.

A culture is a constantly developing system. It's up to us to notice when our development is proceeding abnormally vs satisfactorily. We know the stakes, for ourselves and our children. How can we best manage our own, incessant cultural development? Hint, we won't get there without discussing key, emerging concepts accurately, widely & frequently enough.

Yet we have not even coined analogous terms for abnormal development of other known developing systems. Why? Obviously because distributed appreciation for those systems is lagging. Study & understanding of scalable, sustainable development methods lags when we do not appreciate a given development process enough to name and adequately discuss it.

What shall we call abnormalities of cultural development? Cultology? (suggestions?)

What shall we call abnormalities of market development? eConology? (suggestions?)

What shall we call abnormalities of ecological development? Stupidology? (suggestions?)

What shall we call abnormalities of political development? Political Parties? (suggestions?)

Once we name more specific examples of abnormal development, we can expand the discussion of identifying better social catalysts (education?) that will accelerate adoption of better methods which exist but are unused (MMT?).

Simon Wren-Lewis — The Return of Schools of Thought Macro

Read it at mainly macro
The Return of Schools of Thought Macro

by Simon Wren-Lewis

I left the following comment there:

Jamie Galbraith wrote a paper some time ago in response to Krugman's admission that some heterodox economists got the developing crisis right (prediction and explanation) while the mainstream economists missed it, cannot explain it, and have not produced policy that will fix the damage. A number or heterodox economists predicted it, explained it, and offered policy prescriptions based on the macro theory. 

The title of Galbraith paper was "Who Are These Economists, Anyway?" He mentions five: 1. Marxians as habitual Cassandras, 2. Dean Baker (Post Keynesian), 3. Wynne Godley (Post Keynesian), 4. Minskyians (who are also Post Keynesians), and 5. Galbraithians-Instititutionalists (JKG cites William K. Black of UMKC, Post Keynesian-MMT). He could also have mentioned Steve Keen as a Post Keynesian that emphases Minsky, as well as L. Randall Wray and Warren Mosler of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which is an outgrowth of Post Keynesianism, especially Lerner, Minksy, and Godley. 

Other than the Marxists, these economists are quite close to each other on most matters and significantly in agree over their areas of disagreement with New Classicalism and New Keynesianism. There is quite a large body of literature on this that goes back decades and has exploded recently.