MMT without specifically mentioning MMT. Seems to be the new tactic?
Why Trump Is So Clumsy About Fighting 'Free Trade'
There are better ways than simply slapping tariffs on imported goods.
Marshall Auerback / AlterNet
See also at AlterNet
Blowing Up Some of the Biggest Myths About the Economy and the Deficit
Paul Sliker, Michael Palmieri and Dante Dallavalle / Democracy at Work
also
Beat the Press
Washington Post Says Stronger Patent and Copyright Protections Are "Free-Trade"
Dean Baker | Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C
Also
Counterpunch
Trump’s Travesty of Protectionism
Michael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University
Funny, back in 2010, Krugman thought 25% tariffs on Chinese goods were the perfect tool for the job. Smart policy and all that. Now with Drumf, tariffs are dumb tool. And the way he uses the tool, it's just so irritating!
ReplyDeleteThis is the phase where MMT gets bastardized to not be MMT. Soon, maybe 5 years, everyone will jump on board to take their favorite parts.
ReplyDeleteWhen it all goes terribly wrong, suddenly everyone will jog their memory and recall the MMT name they forgot to assign blame for their not-really-MMT experiment.
A bit cynical because the plans to use MMT are big on the spending but have short on counter cyclical taxation, job guarantees and various other details that ensure inflation, scarcity of resources, and other issues don't cause social strife. The government as a price setter of any good holds enormous power to influence where investment goes, and where it doesn't. Precious little talk about creating problems like we have right now Medicare Prescription Drugs for example where government price setting is causing Chinese style mal-investment and entire segments of the health care industry and creating in-house pharmacies to subsidize all the health care for people using drug revenues. Really perverse stuff will happen unless MMT pushes back against some of these zany, hair brained schemes people imagine are possible in our currency system.
As tariffs reduced non tariff barriers via regulation went up. NTBs typical add about 20% to costs.
ReplyDeleteTariffs are really here nor there in the 21st century ... very 1930s.
Positive yields on the inherently risk-free debt of the US mean we are subsidizing exports to the US - a kind of reverse tariff.
ReplyDeleteSo how about eliminating that reverse tariff before deciding we need regular tariffs?
For every one guy trying to figure out how to fix the economic morass there are 1m looking for ways to abuse and profit from it.
ReplyDeleteEconomic conditions influence strategy of how businesses or financiers make money, not whether they make money. Economic policy more important to sucess of employees, politicians and government.
ReplyDelete