Mike Lofgren — The ‘Anti-Knowledge’ of the Elites

In a previous piece, I described how the Republican Party and its ideological allies in the fundamentalist churches have confected a comprehensive media-entertainment complex to attract low-information Americans and turn them into partisans.…

Not just the GOP, but also the Deep State.

Think of Robert Gates, Ashton Carter, Timothy Geithner or Eric Holder. On the surface, they seem the very antithesis of the Tea Party fanatic, gibbering about ISIS training camps in America. The preferred pose of these establishment personages is that of the politically neutral technocrat offering well-considered advice based on their profound expertise.

That pose is nonsense. They are deeply dyed in the hue of the official ideology of the governing class, an ideology that is neither specifically Democrat nor Republican. Domestically, whatever they might privately believe about essentially diversionary social issues (“rube bait”) like abortion or gay marriage, they almost invariably believe in the “Washington Consensus”: financialization, outsourcing, privatization, deregulation and the commodification of labor.

Internationally, they espouse Twenty-first Century American Exceptionalism: the right and duty of the United States to meddle in every region of the world, coercive diplomacy, boots on the ground, and the right to ignore painfully-won international norms of civilized behavior. To paraphrase what Sir John Harrington said over 400 years ago about treason, now that the ideology of the Deep State has prospered, none dare call it ideology.

Let us consider some of the tenets of their faith

I would add that conventional economics based on the principles of economic liberalism is also an ideology based on assumptions derived from and supporting a POV. Conventional economists are agreed that Marxist are ideological economics are ideological, in addition to it being wrong, but they are also agreed that all "heterodox" economics is also either wrong or unworthy of consideration because "the debate over method is settled" — by them. Even though Marxists, Marxians, and Post Keynesians, for example, warned about the approach of the global financial crisis that conventional economists largely missed and haven't been able to address satisfactorily. Their response is denial.

Consortium NewsThe ‘Anti-Knowledge’ of the Elites

Mike Lofgren

Hillary Clinton Says Deficit [In Fiat] Sends Message Of Weakness

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Hillary Clinton says deficit [in fiat] sends message of weakness

That was a year ago, and she is still confused. What weakness was she actually referring to?

Semantic weakness, perhaps? Plus a weakness in her mind, & her will to use it?

That's pretty embarrassing.

Ben Franklin must be turning over in his grave, and weeping in shame for his country. Almost 300 years, and we are STILL largely ignorant about something as simple as a currency system.

And seemingly getting even more ignorant.

Is This How The NeoLib "Memirus" Swamps Our Democracy's Adaptive Responses?

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



Ignorance is our Greatest Public Health threat, social as well as physiological.

Just as HIV hides out in the immune cells concentrating in the gut, a reservoir of the NeoLib "memirus"* hides out among all the IGNORANCE CONCENTRATED IN POLITICS.




* A virus is a stripped down packet of nucleic acid packaged in a protective protein capsule.

  A memirus is a stripped down package of toxic sophism, hidden within a confusing, semantic capsule.

Very Useful Historical Analysis of Blunders On Europe's Path To A Shared, Fiat Currency System - By Bill Mitchell

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



Options for Europe – Part 2

Great history review here by Bill. Much of the historical thinking he reviews held equally well for economic policy deliberations in the USA as well, and still does.

That history drives home the point that we should never let theoretical economists anywhere near national policy?

And we should also never let any single lobby, in this case banking, dominate policy?

Policy agility requires consensus? Otherwise, you end up with a constrained policy space. If populations could keep that simple idea in mind when approaching group policy, theoretical economists would be kept in check.

Coordinate narrow factions - ignorant by definition - through appropriate checks and balances? James Madison's anthropomorphic, 1776 summary of system science still awaits application of appropriately adjusted methods, for constantly changing situations.

To explore group options, we need far less discussion of theory, and far faster evaluation of new, more indirect methods?

For every intractable cultural task, there is a solution, and that solution will always involve invention of methods allowing yet another level of indirect, cultural adaptations?

Members of diverse system-science fields have been saying that for decades. Centuries, in some cases. Call it statistical process control, or ecology, or autocatalysis, or evolution. Call it what you want - even political economics - ... just DO something to adapt group methods at the same pace that change occurs? For Desired Outcomes to stay the same, EVERYTHING has to change? Constantly? To adapt to changing situations, we need citizens with situational awareness and the audacity to change anything that needs to change.

Can we please start retaining that simple fact throughout K-12 education? That's how we can damp the frequency of Ayn Rand acolytes (and sanity-lite's) like Paul Ryan, or 99% of our Congresspeople. They reflect our electorate, after all, which reflects the mal-adaptive operation of our K-12 school curriculum.

We as a people are what we let our Congress practice. And our Congress is what our citizens practice during training and education.

Bill Mitchell — Chained-CPI COLAs – another conservative smokescreen

The conservatives are always dreaming up new attacks on the most disadvantaged people in our societies. in the US, the front line of the war on the poor is the on-going attacks on the Social Security system. As I’ve noted in the past this entire debate is based upon the around the’s claim that the system can go broke. I dealt with that issue in these blogs –Social security insolvency 101 and The time has come to tell the American people the truth – among others, and I won’t repeat the points. They are clear – the US Social Security Trust Funds are just elaborate accounting smokescreens that ultimately mean nothing if one comprehends the financial capacity of the US government. They represent a case of a government creating a farcical structure to administer some program and then elevating the structure to a false level of importance that actually leads them to introduce policies which undermine the initial purpose of the program – and all without any basis. The determinants of future standards of living will be the availability of sufficient real goods and services of an acceptable quality. If they are available the US government will be able to purchase them with the stroke of a computer key. But because the conservatives have everyone thinking the funds will go broke, they can then force ridiculous time-wasting concepts into the public debate. One such attack is the proposal to use Chained-CPI measures as the Cost-of-Living-Adjustment (COLA) index in social security pensions....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Chained-CPI COLAs – another conservative smokescreen
William F. (Bill) Mitchell |Professor of Economics at Charles Darwin University, Professor of Economics at the University of Newcastle, and inaugural director of CofFEE

 Instead of "conservatives," I would say the fiscal conservatives, due to ignorance, and the neoliberals, due to perversity. The objective of neoliberalism as a political stance in order to undermine the welfare state and subvert it into the "market state," really the corporate state. 

It is not always clear who is in which camp, moronic or perverse. But ignorance is no excuse when it is culpable ignorance, and no economists can claim that they don't have the capacity to understand how the monetary and fiscal systems work. The bias is toward perversity due to normative ideology masquerading as positive science.

Chris Dillow — Ignorance

Economics, it is said, is the study of scarcity. There is, however, one thing that certainly isn't scarce, but which deserves the attention of economists - ignorance. A recent paper by Richard Zeckhauser and Devjani Roy - which introduces a new method of economic research - shows that this is unjustly neglected in economics.

Stumbling and Mumbling

Ignorance

Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle (UK)

Proud To Be An American

Commentary by Roger Erickson

Really?

Even though, in our relentless pursuit of more static assets to hoard, we're Leaving People With Nothing? And, Washington DC is not the only city where such institutional atrocities occur. Forget No Child Left Behind. What about all the rest of our citizens?

And it's not just individuals which we're mistreating. We're killing whole cities, by pursuing hedge fund & investor-driven "bankruptcy strategies" in order to increase purely fiat "returns to shareholders." Like the case ongoing in Detroit, where derivative contracts have been granted super-priority over human pensions. Aren't functioning citizens considered a "return" to all the other citizenship shareholders?

And not just the here and now which we're screwing up. Please simply read the story about the discrepancy between Corporate Welfare NOT being pre-paid by a tax on initiative, while minimum care for retirees IS yoked to a completely unnecessary, pecuniary FICA tax on aggregate demand. That's been going on for 3 generations running now! When you read Luther Gulick & FDR admitting that the FICA taxes were never necessary, and are pure politics .... well, your blood ought to boil and your bitter tears of shame should flow (in any order). 

Do you realize that you, your parents AND your grandparents were over-taxed, like sharecroppers or peasants abused and held down by royalty? Do you wonder why? Please tell me if you come up with any valid reason.  

At a bare minimum, our Middle Class should be in the streets with pitchforks, putting an immediate end to FICA taxes altogether, and even levying reparations for 80 years of suicidal financial repression. Financial repression does as much good for the USA as depriving 99% of Army soldiers of adequate weapons and ammo during a war. WHAT is the point?

Sequestering more community assets than others in your community is NOT what capitalism was EVER all about. What, exactly, is the purpose of trying to hoard high-value dynamic assets (e.g., human initiative, aka fiat, aka fiat currency) and treat it as a low-value static asset? As any yokel could tell you, "That don't make no sense!"

Can we get back to doing the things that used to make us proud to be American? And capitalist too? An American capitalist doesn't have to be synonymous with the venal stupidity and ignorance which we now see being practiced. The old combination used to imply generous, dynamic, far-seeing ingenuity. Do you see any valid reason NOT to return to the old description of American capitalism?

This Should Help You Sleep Better at Night

U.S. government less reliant on the Chinese for money to meet obligations

"While China remains a major lender, new data show taxpayers owe 10 percent less than year ago."

No verification of whether the journalist typed this with a straight face. It's considered orthodox to retain a poker faced demeanor, regardless of who you're taking payoffs from.

Utter ignorance is accepted as plausible deniability.  As are both dumb & dumber.

Chris Dillow — Reactionary Postmodernism

There's one thing not happening today which should be. People are not ridiculing Nick Clegg, at least no more so than usual. But they should be, because one part at least of hisspeech yesterday was downright stupid:

Who suffers most when governments go bust? When they can no longer pay salaries, benefits and pensions? Not the bankers and the hedge fund managers, that’s for sure. No, it would be the poor....

Of course, this is plain wrong. In countries with their own central banks, governments cannot go bust because the central bank can simply print money to buy government debt: this is what QE is. Of course, this might or might not be a bad idea. But Clegg didn't argue this. He just made a prat of himself.

 However, my point is not to condemn Clegg; I'll not flog that dead horse. Instead, it's to note that the MSM seem to have ignored this. His speech was reported with the usual post-conference bromides rather than along the lines of "Deputy Prime Minister shows himself to be crass idiot."

This is the part of the post that will likely be most interesting to readers of MNE, but the rest of the post is where Dillow makes his point. Worth reading in full.

Stumbling and Mumbling
Reactionary Postmodernism
by Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle (UK)