tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post2112201757763564111..comments2024-03-06T06:34:42.881-05:00Comments on EconoSpeak: Sandwichman's KEYNESIAN Stimulus PlanUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-10406630305159462002008-12-12T20:19:00.000-05:002008-12-12T20:19:00.000-05:00i think that a valuable little booklet to pick fr...i think that a valuable little booklet to pick from the shelves could be Piero Sraffa production of commodities by means of commodities. or if you are all intrigue by erudition and modernism why not pick up Joan Robinson accumulation of capital as a leisure reading over the weekend ,just for completeness. <BR/> <BR/>have a good weekend.<BR/>P.S.: maybe if all students' loans were to be waived the evolutionary effect produced by a free from debt education could provoke unexpected explosions of creative cooperative thoughts, even within the obsolete and senile field of economics .Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-19432235456437471762008-12-10T13:41:00.000-05:002008-12-10T13:41:00.000-05:00Yes, indeed, Kevin, labor hiring capital at zero (...Yes, indeed, Kevin, labor hiring capital at zero (or <I>virtually</I> zero) cost is an important element of the 1821 pamphlet, "The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties," which I will serialize on EconoSpeak. The argument, at its simplest, is that without the constant intervention of the state, the cost of capital would inevitably, through accumulation, be deprived of its "scarcity" rent.Sandwichmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-32264194116209644202008-12-10T03:23:00.000-05:002008-12-10T03:23:00.000-05:00BTW, this last line of speculation struck me as re...BTW, this last line of speculation struck me as resembling Mill on the steady-state economy and Keynes on the gift economy: overaccumulation lowering the rate of profit until labor can hire capital at zero cost. Kind of like vol. 3 of Capital without all the muss and fuss.Kevin Carsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07525803609000364993noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-89233863454134941802008-12-10T03:18:00.000-05:002008-12-10T03:18:00.000-05:00Thanks for clarifying, Sandwichman. I appreciate ...Thanks for clarifying, Sandwichman. I appreciate the radical Keynesian spin on Keynes a lot more than the plain vanilla version.<BR/><BR/>But wouldn't reducing the work week still leave the problem of all that excess industrial capacity, and the economic effects of liquidating it? There's an awful lot of waste production that doesn't contribute to the standard of living, and I don't think it can all be retooled to produce stuff that's actually useful without creating the Midas Plague or Brave New World.<BR/><BR/>I suppose there's some way to do it so that the rentier classes absorb all the paper losses when the value of capital collapses, and union pension funds or worker buyout committees snatch up all the devalued plant and equipment at fire sale prices and take over production under workers' control (heh heh). And your soc-cred/guaranteed income thing would help prevent a liquidity freeze-up and grease the wheels for financing the transfer of assets.Kevin Carsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07525803609000364993noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-52812035713934133722008-12-08T12:54:00.000-05:002008-12-08T12:54:00.000-05:00"a basic income guarantee of $145.68..."I am tryin..."a basic income guarantee of $145.68..."<BR/><BR/>I am trying to avoid letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, here, since I really think shorter hours will be forced on society despite its recalcitrance. However, I think it would be easier to just combine the reduced working hours with a reduction in tax rates approximately equal to your income guarantee, Sandwichman.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-13520348671301390342008-12-07T23:33:00.000-05:002008-12-07T23:33:00.000-05:00Eleanor,The $148 a week is for freeing people from...Eleanor,<BR/><BR/>The $148 a week is for freeing people from work once they have worked 32 hours in week (averaged over a year). Because you already work 32 hours a week, you would get your $148 without reducing your hours of work. So yes, it gets money fast to people who need it and are likely to spend it.<BR/><BR/>As for employers requiring you to work more than 32 hours a week, they could only do so within the 1,600 year total and there need be no change to the overtime regulations for more than 40 hours a week of work. I am not in favor of extending the FLSA overtime regulation to the 32 hour week. So if an employer chose to operate on a 40-hour week, there would have to be vacation time off, preferably funded by accruing the extra eight hours weekly pay into an interest-bearing vacation account.<BR/><BR/>Salaried workers would have to be converted to hourly equivalents. The whole idea of the "salary" is a bit of a sham these days anyway. These anomalies already occur with the FLSA overtime regs. It would be helpful simply to have some enforcement of existing regs and closing of loopholes.Sandwichmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-90477415500355652062008-12-07T09:57:00.000-05:002008-12-07T09:57:00.000-05:00If I understand you, the $148 a week would be pay ...If I understand you, the $148 a week would be pay people for working 8 hours less. Since I already work a 32 hour week, I am all for this. <BR/><BR/>Yves Smith is worried that a public works program won't get money to the masses fast enough to stop the depression. (Let's call it a depression.) Your plan would, as would increased unemployment and SS payments and money to local government for human services.<BR/><BR/>What if your employer requires more than 32 hours a week? And what do you do about salaried workers? My partner just asked these questions.Eleanorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07014586558046317266noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-16308843062714566142008-12-06T16:27:00.000-05:002008-12-06T16:27:00.000-05:00Keynesianism is overrated.Kevin,My use of Keynesia...<I>Keynesianism is overrated.</I><BR/><BR/>Kevin,<BR/><BR/>My use of Keynesian is ironic. American textbook Keynesianism is to Keynes as Stalinist Soviet Marxism was to Marx. The Sandwichman plan is a LEISURE stimulus plan, not one designed to stimulate even more wasteful and environmentally destructive consumption or "investment".<BR/><BR/>Media,<BR/><BR/>With open tuning you can play irrational numbers on some of the more sophisticated financial instruments. The .68 is what you get for your two cents worth after adjusting for inflation.Sandwichmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11159060882083015637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-14800645958782194052008-12-06T13:33:00.000-05:002008-12-06T13:33:00.000-05:00is the .68 a misprint? my own calculations sugge...is the .68 a misprint? my own calculations suggest the appropriate guaranteed income is actually an irrational number, which means it can't be computed, and hence no general equilibrium will arrive. so this plan will fail (unless you apprximate it by a rational, or assume constructivist math).<BR/><BR/>but the real reason this won't work is beccause 'what about the wall street bonuses'. i hear these are around 35$ billion/month, or .5 T a year. the bailout covers these for 5 years or so. without them, there would be no incentive for anyone to do anything. giving money to people who dont produce anything of value like bonuses is immoral, also. (wasnt there a bonus army in history?)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4900303239154048192.post-73268455872357812422008-12-06T03:12:00.000-05:002008-12-06T03:12:00.000-05:00Keynesianism is overrated. We've got an entire ec...Keynesianism is overrated. We've got an entire economy of overbuilt plant and equipment that could barely run at full capacity when everybody in the country was running up credit card bills and tapping into home equity to replace all the shit they owned every five years. There is no program of demand management conceivable, IMO, that could restore that level of demand again.<BR/><BR/>The main thing that solved the American crisis of overproduction and overaccumulation in the last Depression was that most of the productive capital in the world outside the U.S. got blown up, and half the American GDP was nationalized by a government with an extremely high propensity to consume. That solution worked fairly well (at least for the U.S.), but its lifetime was limited to the generation or so it took for Europe and Japan to rebuild their industrial economies.<BR/><BR/>I don't think we're going to avoid a Depression. And when we come out on the other side of it, the economy's going to look a lot different. Most of the plant and equipment in the old industrial dinosaurs is going to be rust, and a major part of the economy is going to consist of what people produce in the informal and household sectors using spare capacity on capital equipment they own anyway. This article by <A HREF="http://www.partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=2955&RSS=1" REL="nofollow">James Wilson</A> is a good picture of what might happen if things go well.<BR/><BR/>The main thing the government can do to ease the transition is to stop subsidizing waste, avoid any ass-brained "infrastructure" projects that will prolong false economies of scale and (perhaps fatally) postpone the necessary radical decentralization, and eliminate the licensing and "intellectual property" barriers to production in the informal sector and open-source community.Kevin Carsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07525803609000364993noreply@blogger.com