An economics, investment, trading and policy blog with a focus on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We seek the truth, avoid the mainstream and are virulently anti-neoliberalism.
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Monday, September 13, 2010
NJ Gov Chris Christie is a fascist!
NJ Gov Chris Christie is not only a big, fat, lying, hypocrite, but a fascist as well. He's determined to destroy any last vestige of working peoples' income and dignity so that the wealthy and big business can gain.
Here he is berating a poor teacher and treating her like a piece of garbage while at the same time flaunting his hypocrisy when he says that the reason he had to cut the state's education budget was because the Federal Government did not provide enough money. (He will NOT increase taxes on the wealthy as another option.)
While a candidate for NJ Governor and since he has been sworn in, Christie ARGUED VEHEMENTLY AGAINST FEDERAL STIMULUS AND INCREASED SPENDING!!
His comments reflect monumental hypocrisy and an authoritarian arrogance. He's a fascist, but his approval ratings are very, very, high, suggesting that fascism is becoming popular in America.
Fascism...coming to your home state soon!
The US public is falling for this garbage. First, it is "spending is driving us into the poorhouse; just look at the deficit and national debt. We have to get our finances in order." Next, it will tax cuts for everyone stimulate the economy and will pull us out of this.
ReplyDeleteReagan redux. I have been saying for some time that politics runs in cycles, and we still have not exhausted Reaganomics. That likely won't happen until the country hits the wall, and the public is screaming to God for mercy, just as it was at the time of the last great depression.
What a bunch of morans.
So Christie is a "fascist" for keeping the state budget in balance. Since when was the state of NJ the monopoly issuer of it's own currency? Since when did municipal debt share the same characteristics of federal debt? And why should state governments be seduced by accepting fed dollars when those dollars come with all kinds of purse-strings and caveats which cede state and local authority to Washington?
ReplyDeleteWhy should bloated, corrupt unions be paid for by already over-taxed, over-burdened tax-payers? Tax the rich? How about closing the loopholes which allow the "rich" to avoid taxes, notwithstanding the deleterious effects of capital formation and job growth by further taxing those with capital.
Youre way off base on this one, Mike.
Joe,
ReplyDeleteJoe, he has to balance the budget? Fine. So why not raise taxes on the wealthy, or corporations? No, he won't even consider that. He's a fascist, sorry.
You love Christie because of your personal ideology. I can't change that; I would like to, but I'm realistic enough to know I can't.
Yes, Christie must balance the budget because state constitutions require it, but there are other ways to do that as I jsut mentioned.
His vociferous anti-Federal-spending position is part of the reason his state is in the bind it's in. It's also the reason the whole country's economy is in the mess it's in. To use that as the reason why he cut education spending is just bullshit, sorry.
He's also a dangerous authoritarian, who has shown no hesitation in pushing the boundaries of executive and judicial authority.
And besides, he's just a little bit too fat to be arguing a position that takes food out of the mouths of teachers and working folks. Maybe if he lost 200 lbs on some "austerity" diet would I have some sympathy for his cause.
Similar to Krystal Nacht : a big insurance scam - hurt the poor, the street shops and teachers and then revoke their right to the national stimulus !
ReplyDeleterage on Mike !
We are not Japan, but are Japanese ...
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan)
The lost decade in Mexico was due to the fall of oil prices which we are experiencing now.
The lost decade in Japan was due to a balance sheet recession caused by what Krugman says is a liquidity trap of overvalued savings not investments from capital markets.
The distinction between USA and Japan is needed.
The lost decade in America will not be like Japan because we do not have savings to loan out like Japan did.
We are in a different sort of liquidity trap - The Chinese ownership of US treasuries means that we allowed the Chinese to open up an account in USD to be paid in USD. They get the money to do this from their exports which are sold in USD and never is one single Renmibi Yuan ever exchanged to U$D.
The Chinese simply have not returned the favor and bought anything American.
They balanced the global budget to their favor and we know that balanced budgets and surpluses cause crashes like when Clinton did so in 1999/2000 which pulled money out of the real economy.
It's the war, the Chinese, and all the Republican't Nixonites who want to coddle with the Chinese goldfish.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteYour political biases despite your "economics without special pleadings" has revealed itself. An MMT advocate such as Wayne Mosler or Roder Malcolm Mitchell is not ideologically bent towards taxing the rich. They simply want to increase the amount of money in the whole system.
Also, the attack on Raeganomics is ideoligically driven. Reagan lowered taxes and ran big deficits, an MMT dream.
You cannot print money on the state level as another poster stated, so Christie is doing what needs to be done on the state level (not Federal) even though he may not understand it.
NJ already has some of the highest tax rates in the country. The "rich" are fleeing NYC and the state because of outrageous tax rates. Corporations are too, and theyre taking the jobs with them.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with reckless state spending is that you are essentially paying people to not work and be productive. cops, teachers, firefighters, construction workers, regulatory workers, etc can all help lay the groundwork for economic prosperity. The problem with NJ and many other states is that they're paying too many state workers too much to do nothing. Raping the private sector to pay for a bloated class of state government workers is what's fascist.
This is when the left wing bias of many (most?) MMT advocates reveals itself. They know full well the states cannot print money and in that sense they are like an individual. They hopefully wouldn't advocate an individual going into deeper debt or ignoring their budget, but they have no qualms about taxing the "rich". Worse, they know this won't solve the problem as taxing the rich will not raise much if any additional money it either forces them to move out of state or go to tax avoidance strategies instead of productive behavior. Yet still they shout "tax the rich"
ReplyDeleteTrader:
ReplyDeleteYou don't get it. He's strongly opposed to Federal stimulus spending, but has no problem blaming the Federal government for cutting his education funds. Liar, manipulator.
Furthermore, you can't keep destroying peoples' incomes like this and justifying it by saying other people's incomes have been cut, too! That's not a reason to take income away from the people who can least afford it.
Why isn't he taking income away from the wealthy, or corporations to balance the budget? Are you saying it's alright to take it away from one group and not the other?
He's doing it this way because he's an apparatus of the corporatist elements. He's also an authoritarian who operates on the edge of constitutional legality. He operates like a bully, a thug.
Look at how he berates this woman and how his supporters in the room applaud him like a bunch of automatons who have been programmed into believing it's right to destroy her income because perhaps, they too, have been stripped of theirs! It's both bizarre and scary. Fascist!
I'm showing my personal bias now; you're damn right! This whole thing has gotten personal. I'm figthing for more equality and not some wholesale giveaway to the rich and connected. That's not America.
I agree, Trader.
ReplyDelete"Productive behavior???" Are you kidding!!!!
ReplyDeleteA few years back, right before the market collapse, 40% of all corporate profits went to financial firms that did nothing productive for the economy. In fact, they nearly destroyed the entire global economy in case you didn't notice.
Guess where many of the top earners at these firms live? That's right, New Jersey.
Yet in spite of this, you have the nerve to tell people, ordinary folks...teachers, bus drivers, cops, firemen, that they should have their incomes reduced and their public services dismantled so that this group of blood sucking leeches who do absolutley nothing productive for the economy do not have to pay more tax?
I find that simply amazing, along with the statement that these people are "productive." What a joke!!
I say, tax them out of business altogether. Confiscate their money and give it to the teachers. Make it so painful for them to continue doing what they are doing, which is, robbing everyone else and turning the economy into a casino that eventually brings down the whole country.
Youre lumping all the "rich" together, as if they all made their money by ripping people off.
ReplyDeleteI'm all for putting the financial capitalists out of business, but not through the tyranny of govt.
Tyranny? Government is tyrannical?? They gave these guys the keys and let them loot the entire place. THEIR tyranny is being imposed on regular, ordinary, working people.
ReplyDeleteNow, under the guise of "fiscal responsibility," they are going to dismantle the last social supports we have--SS, Medicare, Medicaid--so that the money can be handed over to them so that they can play their casino games.
In the meantime and with the help of their hired guns like Christie, they demonize workers and apply pressure through various means to crush people down into misery so deep that in the end they will be begging just to work for slave wages. It's all part of their plan.
They have propagandized most of the citizenry into believing that any worker who makes a decent wage is killing America and is nothing more than a leech. They have orchestrated the most briliant uprising of the people against the people. It's truly impressive to behold. They sit back and collect the spoils as we all cannibalize ourselves.
And it's not just the finance capitalists. It's most of the corporatists. Ask any rich person if he or she would like to see more government spending and investment and they will say, "NO!" They are part of the problem because it doesn't hurt them to be ignorant and to stick with the status quo. It works for them and they have all the pat lines, like how they pay most of the taxes and how 50% of the populace pay nothing and they're just living off of the backs of "productive" people.
In the end they know they'll get a tax break and they can keep on screaming about bloated government.
I remember vividly a discussion several years ago with my cousin, his father and one of his father's friends (a bank VP). It got pretty heated and my cousin said to him, "Well, what about your kids?"
ReplyDeleteAnd the guy answered, "Fuck my kids. They can take care of themselves."
That sort of ended the conversation.
You call $400k/year teachers union boss salary middle-class? What about eight thousand transit workers earning >$100k/year, meanwhile they hike transit fares and cut service which disproportionately hits the working poor...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.businessinsider.com/head-of-nj-teachers-union-got-paid-over-twice-as-much-as-the-governor-2010-9
Or Bell County, CA police chief earning $800k a year, along with other officials making >$200k/year to do jack shit?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-20/california-official-s-800-000-salary-in-city-of-38-000-triggers-protests.html
Because THAT is where the money is going. And rather than more equitably distribute THEIR bloated income, local governments increase property taxes, alcohol and cigarette taxes (which disproportionately hits the poor) and use the local police and red light cameras as tax collectors.
Your calls for class warfare will do nothing to imprison the criminals in our corporatist and financial class.
Here we go again.... Mike who makes his living managing the funds of the rich, a totally unproductive parasitic profession that contributes zilch to the economy, seems to think he's somehow holier than the "rich" no matter how they made their money. Gotta love it...
ReplyDeleteEven Cuba has been forced to figure this out (as front page articles in today's Wall Street Journal and New York Times made clear), where 500,000 government workers have been laid off in hopes that they will move over to the private side. As the Cuban Workers Federation said in a statement, "Our state can't keep maintaining. . .bloated payrolls." Neither can the United States. So if they can admit it and make changes, why can't we?
ReplyDeleteEven Cuba has been forced to figure this out (as front page articles in today's Wall Street Journal and New York Times made clear), where 500,000 government workers have been laid off in hopes that they will move over to the private side. As the Cuban Workers Federation said in a statement, "Our state can't keep maintaining. . .bloated payrolls." Neither can the United States. So if they can admit it and make changes, why can't we?
ReplyDeletejoe and trader
ReplyDeleteyou got to read the past 3 years of this, at least skim it.
it ain't reagan, but mike has already addressed reagan without reagan's huge mistakes.
mike already pointed out reagan's mistakes while embracing essential parts at least since I started reading this blog and listening to the tail end of mike's show since 2006 and 2007.
Googleheim,
ReplyDeleteAs far as I can tell Mike only likes the deficit side of Reagan but was probably against the tax cuts. He's from the left side of the MMT spectrum and is proud of it. Huge bloated public sector salaries and pensions are admirable, but let's destroy money by taxing the rich. Meantime he'll gladly manage their money for a living putting him squarely inside the financial parasite camp while giving them the finger when their back is turned. How screwed up is that?
BTW, for a much better take on the subject of curing stagflation see http://rodgermmitchell.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/the-impossible-cure-for-stagflation/
ReplyDeleteIf you are going to criticize MMT, please understand it and not misrepresent it with your own imaginings. MMT is a comprehensive macro theory that employs an operational description of the modern monetary system and stock-flow consistent macro models.
ReplyDeleteOne aspect, functional finance derived from Ababa Lerner, is about using fiscal policy, which can be tightly targeted, to accomplish public purpose, rather than monetary policy. Monetary policy is a blunt instrument that is worthless in a liquidity trap and uses unemployment as a tool to fight inflation, which is again the Fed's mandate. Taxation and expenditure can be used in a targeted fashion to accomplish specific policy purposes. MMT suggests policy options. Deciding among options involves political decision-making.
As far as targeted tax policy goes, MMT recommends taxing away that which is unproductive, like economic rent, rather than taxing what is productive, like capital investment. MMT holds that productive investment should be incentivized.
Let's get one thing straight: I'm pro tax cuts.
ReplyDeleteTom,
ReplyDeleteStock/Flow: Here's one Ive been contemplating on recently: Is being "poor" best described as a 'stock' or a 'flow'?
Further, from your Philosophy background, do you have any insight on the definition of the ancient Greek word "ptochos"? (Ive seen it translated to mean 'poor') Specifically, I am trying to figure out if that word is a noun or an adjective...is that word describing a person? or defining a person?
just references would be helpful.
Resp,
Matt, being "poor" involves both stock (wealth) and flow (income).
ReplyDeleteThe ancient Greek meaning of ptochos is "poor" in the sense of 1) destitute and 2) lacking. In spiritual literature it is used metaphorically. For example, being "poor, in spirit" (MT 5:3) means lacking worldly (selfish) desires and aversions.
This teaching is based on Deuteronomy 6:5, "Love the Lord your God with your whole hear, your whole soul, and your whole strength." The way to transcend desire and aversion (attachment) is through divine love. In universal love, one finds freedom. One need not be "religious" to do this. Buddhism prescinds from God-talk, since God is unknowable if if one is "poor" in spiritual experience.
Jesus says something similar in the The Gospel of Thomas, 3: Jesus said: If your leaders say to you, ‘See, the kingdom is above,’ then the birds will precede you into it. If they say to you, ‘It is below,’ the fish will precede you. But the kingdom is inside you, and it is outside you too. You will discover this if you come to know yourselves, and (then) you will realize that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know who you are, you live in poverty, and you are that poverty. So being "poor" spiritually has this meaning also. It's a matter of opposite perspectives.
This is the teaching of Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and Buddha, as well as Taoism, Sikhism, etc. The teaching is not to be materially poor but spiritually "poor," in the sense of non-attachment to the material aspect of life. This is not anti-material; it is getting the priorities right.
According to perennial wisdom, in order to attain spiritual realization ("enter the Kingdom"), one must have transcended desire and aversion. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God (Mt 5:8) means essentially the same thing. Being "pure in heart" is having transcended desire and aversion. In Sufism, for example, the spiritually realized person is called "poor" (Arabic fakir).
Hope this is not too far off topic, but you asked.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteIt is right ON topic...thanks, Ill get back to you later this evening..
Resp,
Tom,
ReplyDeleteI use a concordant lexicon here
, and they have the definition of 'poor' ('ptochos' Matt 5:3) as from the Greek root 'ptoch' as meaning: "lacking the means of subsistence". The key word being 'means'. Back then in Biblical times it may have meant their lacking access to the enjoyment of the allotment of the land under the Mosaic Law, perhaps in todays modern economy, that would mean a job; today your job is most often your 'means of subsistence', and to me a job is a Flow measure (salary measured per unit time). They do not translate it as 'lacking money', or 'lacking wealth', not lacking a 'Stock' measure (measured at a point in time). Im not sure if a just Israelite could even have had such wealth (be 'non-poor') as a Stock measure.
So I would like to know more about this word 'ptochos', and test any translation for Stock/Flow consistency, I would suspect that any translators would not know about this important economic concept (not many do, even economists).
If it represents solely a Flow, or otherwise if Christ was talking solely about a Flow measure in Matt 5:3, it would completely change many of the mainstream teachings on Matt 5:3 (throw away the hair shirts!) imo anyway.
Perhaps also help Christians focus on full employment policies and remove a lot of these beliefs/dogmas that imo lead to a lack of successful economic outcomes.
I have other scriptural references in the Christian Bible that support this concept of focusing on Flow measures. Im going to continue to study this.
Resp,
Matt, in ancient times "rich" and "poor' were generally associated with land wealth (stock) and land rent (flow), since societies were agricultural and pastoral for the most part. Tenants, of course, did not own land and had no real wealth, only net income from what that produced after rent and taxes, which was not much, as you can imagine.
ReplyDeleteCrafts and trades people were generally subsistent on income rather than owing land, although if one did very well, then one would purchase land and rise to the landowner class, so there was some social mobility. In ancient times, a person could not really be considered rich without owning land, as I understand it, although wealth was also measured on the basis of livestock in pastoral societies. In ancient societies most people lived off the fruits of the land, gleaned from their labor. The surplus that laborers produced beyond subsistence when to the temples, the rulers (warriors), and the land owners that had been granted feudal lands.
A great deal of both wealth and income also went to the temples, but technically it belonged to the temple and not the people associated with it. These societies were also feudal, since land had to be protected by the warrior class, which constituted the political elite, who shared power with the religious leaders, since ancient societies were at least partially theocratic and the priests had a lot power in that they could delegitimize rulers by revoking their divine mandate. Vestiges of this still exist in some places more than others.
The Mosaic Law was quite specific about land ownership and transfer in Leviticus 25. While land could be sold, it seem to be presumed that one would only do so out of pecuniary necessity, and the Law provided for land redemption as well as for a Jubilee in fifty years, when lands that had been sold were to be returned to their original owners.
What does comes across strongly in the Law is that people are to be treated justly and honorably, and that the land itself is to be treated reverently as really belong to the One that created it.
Most biblical scholars think that Jesus followed the Law, but emphasized following the spirit rather than being excessively scrupulous about the letter as an overt demonstration of piety, for which he criticized the teachers of his day. He taught instead that God is concerned chiefly with the heart.
Those that followed Jesus formally as disciples called themselves "the poor" (Evionim) since they shared all things in common and had a common purse. That is, in effect they observed external renunciation. So there was an early precedent for the monastic tradition. Subsequently, the requirement came to be viewed as internal renunciation rather than the necessarily external, although external renunciation has been continually practiced in the East and West.
Wow Mike you really are a lefty. I bt you'll be working for MSNBC soon.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I am turning into a lefty, who knows? Anyway, I hate labels; they are the non-thinking person's way of compartmentalizing ideas. I go with what seems rational, factual and just. Capitalism, at least the way it is being practiced here in the U.S. has started failing on so many levels. I think it's even beginning to threaten our democracy. To me, that's not a good thing. I believe more public sector involvement is needed. That's my opinion; nobody has to subscribe to it and I know many of you don't. If my view of things makes me a "lefty" by your definition, then so be it.
ReplyDelete