MMT Has No Clothes[W:26]

[Gimmesometruth]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

Just for everyone's fun and consideration, the top 400 earners in the country are "the 1%".

400 out of 350 million could very easily be called, "virtually nobody".

Figuratively speaking, we are standing around arguing about which piece of fly **** to pick out of the pile of pepper.

Um, the top 1% capture nearly 17% of 2014 US total income, so no, it isn't fly specs.

 

[Critter7r]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

Um, the top 1% capture nearly 17% of 2014 US total income, so no, it isn't fly specs.

The point was the response to the statement about how, in the past, "virtually nobody" paid the top rates, when the top .1% is merely 40 people in a country of 350 million, and could very easily be considered, "virtually nobody".

 

[jaeger19]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

As MMI already explained using easy to understand facts that you either cannot comprehend or ignore, progressiveness is measured as a change in PERSONAL burden. With the massive increase in upper bracket incomes, their personal burden in FIT has massively declined. It is shown in the huge levels of inequality.

You keep defining "progressiveness" as a measure of revenue per gdp in relation to bracket rates. This is again, are you are always prone to, using non-standard definitions.....or complete fabrications.

honestly.. that's just crap. That's just an attempt to portray your premise as correct when its not.

As a personal burden.. the poor and middle class shoulder less of the burden of federal taxes than historically.

that's it. no "using non standard definitions and your usual crap"..

It not my fault your ideology gets in the way of reality.

 

[Gimmesometruth]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

The point was the response to the statement about how, in the past, "virtually nobody" paid the top rates, when the top .1% is merely 40 people in a country of 350 million, and could very easily be considered, "virtually nobody".

I would really like it if you could make up your mind on consistently sticking to a CORRECT percent (is it 1%, 0.1% or 0.01%?) or a number (is it 40, 375 or 400?).

 

[Critter7r]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

I would really like it if you could make up your mind on consistently sticking to a CORRECT percent (is it 1%, 0.1% or 0.01%?) or a number (is it 40, 375 or 400?).

Does it matter if I say that the top .1% is 40 people or the top 1% is 400? Either of those could be considered "virtually nobody" in a pool of 300 million.

 

[Gimmesometruth]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

honestly.. that's just crap. That's just an attempt to portray your premise as correct when its not.

As a personal burden.. the poor and middle class shoulder less of the burden of federal taxes than historically.

that's it. no "using non standard definitions and your usual crap"..

It not my fault your ideology gets in the way of reality.

You are so frigging blind, personal burden....and share of federal taxes....are 2 different things. One is a percent of personal INCOME, the other is a share of FIT revenue, yer conflating, yer math is all over the place, it is bag of hammers apples and oranges.

 

[Gimmesometruth]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

Does it matter if I say that the top .1% is 40 people or the top 1% is 400? Either of those could be considered "virtually nobody" in a pool of 300 million.

It matters if you want to be clear and accurate, it doesn't if you want to be nonsensical.

 

[jaeger19]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

Wow....just...wow....it is like 2 different people, completely opposite ends of the political spectrum.

No its not... its right where it should be... common sense.

 

[jaeger19]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

You are so frigging blind, personal burden....and share of federal taxes....are 2 different things. One is a percent of personal INCOME, the other is a share of FIT revenue, yer conflating, yer math is all over the place, it is bag of hammers apples and oranges.

No its not. You're having a field day arguing things you make up in your head.

 

[Gimmesometruth]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

No its not... its right where it should be... common sense.

"Common sense"=contradictory concepts. Only in Jaegarland.

 

[Gimmesometruth]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

No its not. You're having a field day arguing things you make up in your head.

I'm using common, understood econ concepts/definitions....and all you have as per usual is denial without explanation.

 

[jaeger19]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

I'm using common, understood econ concepts/definitions....and all you have as per usual is denial without explanation.

no.. you are making up arguments in your head.

I cannot refute arguments that I am not making.. nor have made.

I have already explained about why your rates are meaningless. you don;t want to accept it.. that's fine.. but it is reality.

 

[Gimmesometruth]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

I cannot refute arguments that I am not making.. nor have made.

You already did, that is the point.

 

[mmi]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

You call me simple minded, while you are the one who believes the government can print and spend unlimited amounts of money without consequence.

I call you simple-minded because you think anyone "believes the government can print and spend unlimited amounts of money without consequence." Perhaps "simple-minded" is understated — how about "complete and utter moron"?

>>Have you ever considered simply working for a living?

I started working full-time when I was fifteen. I worked full-time through high school, college, and four years of graduate school. I needed the money. I went to part-time and started a small business in 2001 so I could look after my elderly, disabled mom and not have her die prematurely of a broken spirit and ill health in a nursing home. My small business is now pretty much dead. Have you ever considered being something other than the kind of slimy jerk that would ask people if they ever considered working for a living?

shifts the topic with an ad-hom about personal employment.

That's what I mean about being generally disappointed by posts from those on the Right in this community. If I were a conservative, I sure wouldn't want to be associated with that kind of pathetic crap.

Whining and whimpering about how little he makes "working" part time.

Where did I "whine and whimper"?

>>You'll forgive me if I am sick and tired of working my ass off my entire life

Why should I forgive you for whining and whimpering about having the opportunity to be gainfully employed? Are you a layabout wannabe?

>>while lay-abouts whine and complain about the world owing them a living.

When did I suggest that the world owes me a living? (Btw, no longer a hyphen in "layabout.")

Tbh, I think I understand. Yer simply incapable of reasoned thought.

the top 1% capture nearly 17% of 2014 US total income

Depends on what's included. This source reports the 2014 figure at 21.2%. It was more than 23% when the GOP SSE Great Recession hit. Not quite as high as it got on the eve of the GOP SSE Great Depression.



The wealthy have been grabbing huge slices of the GDP pie and jamming them down their fat cat throats since Mr. Reagan got duped by an economic theory illustrated on the back of a cocktail napkin.

(source)

As a personal burden.. the poor and middle class shoulder less of the burden of federal taxes than historically.

How do you contend with the argument presented earlier that "the best definition is arguably the percentage effect on after-tax income"?

>>It not my fault your ideology gets in the way of reality.

Otoh, it is yer fault that yer ideology gets in the way of a careful examination of the concept of progressivity in the tax system.

 

[countryboy]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

Just for everyone's fun and consideration, the top 400 earners in the country are "the 1%".

400 out of 350 million could very easily be called, "virtually nobody".

Figuratively speaking, we are standing around arguing about which piece of fly **** to pick out of the pile of pepper.

Do you have a source for this claim?

 

[Absentglare]

Yet another expert who critques MMT:





http://www.thomaspalley.com/docs/articles/macro_theory/mmt_response_to_wray.pdf

I got through three pages before the non sequiturs, strawmen, rhetoric, and infantile writing style overcame my desire to understand your link.

Can you provide any explanation for what you think this article says about MMT ?

 

[ludin]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

It's been answered many, many times. Some here just don't like the answer.
They are. Any nation that has a sovereign currency is subject to the reality it outlines. Just as all beings on planets are affected by gravity.

Name one country that does this. Please I will be waiting because none of them do.

Not very enlightening. But if you could learn to build on that sort of thinking, you might get somewhere understanding things.

yes you could.

How would a gubmint "implement MMT"? If you can't answer that question, then how do you know none are? If you say it's "printing lots of money," then you should argue that the US is "implementing MMT," because you incorrectly view QE as "printing lots of money."

The basis of MMT is that the government that can issue it's own currency can do so without ramification.
that the country in theory can never go broke because it can just print money to pay for everything.

If this were the case then government would do this now. they wouldn't worry about borrowing money and issuing
debt. they would just print off the budget that was needed and pay for it. so why don't they actually do that?
please inform us. the US should have a neutral budget every year according to MMT'ers as we can just print the 4 or 5 trillion
dollar budget and not worry about it. so why don't we?

You have failed to answer my last question as well. why don't countries implement this now?

Cap-and-trade is a conservative approach to pollution abatement, based on market controls. How would you seek to limit the level of pollutants that contaminate air quality? I mean after you dismantle the EPA.

CAP and tax does nothing for pollution. it is another trading scam implemented to make people feel good about themselves when it is nothing more than another
government tax on industry that a few insiders make a ton of money on. it does nothing to actually lower or stop pollution.

it is easy implement better technology.

So you oppose mandated automobile insurance. Yeah I know, "driving is a privilege." Well then so is being admitted to an emergency room.

they are not the same. car insurance is a requirement to drive a car. car insurance is not there for you but to protect other people from you.
this fallacy has been debunked more than once but still get repeated.

States that don't maintain adequate infrastructure quality interfere with interstate commerce. They also fail to sufficiently protect the lives of Americans. So they can deal with Uncle Sam.

Nope not how it works. need to read the constitution more.

Sure, why not? There's more to it than a simple-minded "lock up criminals" attitude.

yep because we all know that letting criminals run the streets is safer than locking them up.
ol yea it isn't.

The Constitution both limits and empowers the federal gubmint. Yer perception is very seriously distorted and historically incorrect. The anti-Federalists lost at the Convention.

empowers the government for certain things. the government was supposed to have limited power
not the power that it does. nope there is no distortion at all. the anti-federalist fears came true.
we no longer have a limited powered federal government.

 

[Absentglare]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

Name one country that does this. Please I will be waiting because none of them do.

The USA does, just like most countries outside of the Euro.

 

[ludin]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

The USA does, just like most countries outside of the Euro.

nope I do believe that we borrow our money. thanks for playing. we just do not print money
for the sake of printing money. we borrow any deficits from other countries.

please read up on how we control our money supply.

we do not print 4 trillion dollar budgets.
The federal reserve will ask for dollars and hold in reserve to ensure that the market has money
to go around but then at the end of the year returns all the profit it made
back to the treasury.

so no we don't implement mmt.

 

[Critter7r]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

Do you have a source for this claim?

Yes, it's called math.

EDIT : Whoops ... I'm missing a couple of zeros, so forget I mentioned it. Mah bad.

 

[jaeger19]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

How do you contend with the argument presented earlier that "the best definition is arguably the percentage effect on after-tax income"?

>>It not my fault your ideology gets in the way of reality.

Otoh, it is yer fault that yer ideology gets in the way of a careful examination of the concept of progressivity in the tax system.

Because it has no meaning relative to the discussion for a variety of reasons.

First if the tax code is kept exactly the same.. no changes.... as the economic conditions change so the progressivity would change. Therefore its not a good measure of the progressivity of the tax code.

Second. As its a percentage of "effect" on tax burden any percentage of effect will be reduced greatly as the tax burden approaches zero. And that's where we are pretty close to already as in fact we are at a negative burden in some cases where people are getting money without putting into the tax system.

Sorry sir.. but I have a good understanding of how statistics work.

 

[mmi]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

Name one country that does this. Please I will be waiting because none of them do.

Does what?

>>The basis of MMT is that the government that can issue it's own currency can do so without ramification.

BS.

>>that the country in theory can never go broke because it can just print money to pay for everything.

Likely true. Avoiding default is not the same as "without ramification."

>>If this were the case then government would do this now. they wouldn't worry about borrowing money and issuing debt.

And what if you don't have the first clue of what yer talking about?

>>they would just print off the budget that was needed and pay for it. so why don't they actually do that?

Because they operate in a political environment.

>>please inform us.

Done.

>>You have failed to answer my last question as well. why don't countries implement this now?

Yer either unwilling or incapable of accepting/understanding the answer.

>>CAP and tax does nothing for pollution.

It's a market-based solution. I thought you liked those.

>>it is another trading scam implemented to make people feel good about themselves when it is nothing more than another government tax on industry that a few insiders make a ton of money on.

Yeah, most people do feel good about maintaining a reasonable level of air quality. I suppose some are too stupid to reach that conclusion.

>>it does nothing to actually lower or stop pollution.

Ridiculous, empty-headed, rhetorical BS.

>>it is easy implement better technology.

Cap-and-trade places a cost on the negative externality of carbon emissions, and thereby an incentive to develop and invest in "better technology." A carbon tax is an alternative, but that's not as market-oriented.

>>car insurance is a requirement to drive a car.

And the individual mandate in the ACA is designed to make health insurance a requirement for a lot more people to have access to very expensive healthcare. Do you support freeloading?

>>car insurance is not there for you but to protect other people from you.

Is that right? I figure my car insurance protects me from losing my house if I do a lot of damage while driving.

>>this fallacy has been debunked more than once but still get repeated.

Nah, yer just blind to the reality involved.

>>Nope not how it works. need to read the constitution more.

Perhaps you could point out for me the section that supports yer view. I'm going with the enumerated powers in Article I, Section 8 — "lay and collect taxes" and "regulate commerce … among the several states."

>>we all know that letting criminals run the streets is safer than locking them up.

I'm of course not advocating that. Yer perception of the criminal justice system is characteristically childish.

>>the government was supposed to have limited power not the power that it does.

Too bad for you that you don't like it.

>>the anti-federalist fears came true.

Well, there are always the options of amendments, another convention, or overthrowing the gubmint you find so oppressive.

 

[Critter7r]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

The basis of MMT is that the government that can issue it's own currency can do so without ramification.
that the country in theory can never go broke because it can just print money to pay for everything.

That is your twisted version of the reality of MMT.

The basis of MMT is that the gov't can issue its own currency - check.

That it can do so without ramifications - no.

Just because we have the ability to print currency in unlimited amounts doesn't mean that there aren't political and economic reasons not to do so.

This has been explained 100 times.

 

[ludin]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

That is your twisted version of the reality of MMT.
The basis of MMT is that the gov't can issue its own currency - check.

That it can do so without ramifications - no.
Just because we have the ability to print currency in unlimited amounts doesn't mean that there aren't political and economic reasons not to do so.

This has been explained 100 times.

did you not read the original article?
I guess not.

do you not pay attention to what people argue here?
I guess not.

their arguments.

1. the US can't go broke we can just print money.
2. we can always pay the debt we can just print money.

along with several other arguments on the same line of thought.

The fact is no government does this. no government in the word just prints money.
even though it can. why? because there are real world consequences for those actions.

According to modern monetary theory, "monetarily sovereign government is the monopoly supplier of its currency and can issue currency of any denomination in physical or non-physical forms. As such the government has an unlimited capacity to pay for the things it wishes to purchase and to fulfill promised future payments, and has an unlimited ability to provide funds to the other sectors. Thus, insolvency and bankruptcy of this government is not possible. It can always pay".

the base definition of MMT.

which is simply not true. which is why no country does this now.

 

[JohnfrmClevelan]

Re: MMT Has No Clothes

nope I do believe that we borrow our money. thanks for playing. we just do not print money
for the sake of printing money. we borrow any deficits from other countries.

please read up on how we control our money supply.

we do not print 4 trillion dollar budgets.
The federal reserve will ask for dollars and hold in reserve to ensure that the market has money
to go around but then at the end of the year returns all the profit it made
back to the treasury.

so no we don't implement mmt.

The problem with your argument is that you don't understand MMT well enough to say whether or not it is "implemented."

There is nothing about bond issuance that is incompatible with MMT. Bonds are simply a different form of government liability than dollars. Also, we do issue dollars without borrowing, every time the Fed buys bonds.

The size of government spending, or even whether or not the government runs a deficit, does not determine if MMT is "implemented." Those are policy decisions; MMT is a description of how fiat currencies work, not a catchall policy platform.

All monetarily sovereign countries with fiat currencies operate in similar fashion. Some peg their currencies, which complicates matters, but any monetarily sovereign government is perfectly capable of issuing their own currency according to their own laws. That does not mean that their economies are great, or that the governments can spend without consequence. Those have always been strawman arguments anyway, just like your $4 trillion worth of money creation is a strawman argument.