AbductionAbsolutist

@JohnStossel One of the most basic principles in economics is there’s no such thing as a free lunch. You can’t simply give people money and get absolutely nothing in return. When dollars in circulation increase without any change in underlying productivity, the inevitable result is inflation.

@JohnStossel One of the most basic principles in economics is there’s no such thing as a free lunch. You can’t simply give people money and get absolutely nothing in return. When dollars in circulation increase without any change in underlying productivity, the inevitable result is inflation.

When I was young, if I didn’t need to work, I’d probably have just stayed in bed all day. Work pushed me to overcome my fears. I'm a better person because of it. Now, some want Universal Basic Income - “free money.” The problem? It gives people a reason NOT to work:

@theobjectivist @PeterSchiff These takes of how technology destroys jobs ignores the fact that technological improvement means each person can be more productive and therefore more valuable. While it’s true some jobs go away, on balance the overall economy is better off due to higher productivity.

Normally I agree with you, @PeterSchiff, but this is nonsense, and it's the same lump of labor fallacy the Luddites fell for 200 years ago. "AI will destroy more jobs than it creates." That's like saying Microsoft Office destroyed office work, or the tractor destroyed farming, or the spreadsheet destroyed accountants. Every one of those tools was supposed to end work. Every one of them exploded the amount of work by making human effort more productive, not less. Consider the computer itself. In 1980, you could have said it would wipe out millions of jobs, the typists, the filing clerks, the bookkeepers, the switchboard operators. And it did. Yet the computer went on to create entire industries that employ hundreds of millions: software, IT, e-commerce, digital media, cybersecurity, jobs no one in 1980 could have named. It destroyed narrow tasks and created vast new worlds of work. Here's the reality on the ground. Since AI emerged, I didn't go from one job to none. I went from one job to three. Because when your output per hour rises, you don't sit idle. You take on what was previously impossible. AI is a productivity multiplier, and productivity has never destroyed work in the aggregate. It creates wealth, which creates demand, which creates more work than it ever displaces. You've conceded the collectivist premise without noticing: that there's a fixed lump of labor to be divided. There isn't. Human wants are unlimited. As long as that's true, there is no end to the work worth doing. Machines don't shrink the pie of work. They enlarge the pie of wealth.

@mtaibbi It’s a wildly oversimplified view of human psychology. All humans have subjectivity and biases, including everyone working for the NYT. He also ignores the often unconscious drive to conform to social surroundings. These explain poor journalistic practices at the NYT.

This is wrong - the Times since about 2017 has become an industry leader in the field of not acknowledging major factual mistakes.

@bonchieredstate It’s really hard to conclude anything other than DSA are not the sharpest tools in the shed. They don’t ever address the underlying idea why the US government is structure the way it is. They either don’t understand the reason or don’t have a coherent response.

Getting kind of tired of people who immigrated from third-world, mob rule countries coming here and thinking they can tell us to do things like abolish the Senate, one of the most important facets of our system.

@ProfSteveKeen You’re going with the tired multiplier argument? By its very nature government spending is low to negative ROI and doesn’t take into account associated risk. Glibly saying the money is circulating in the economy ingnore this. What money is spent on matters significantly.

Between the 1950s and 2000, the share of GDP going to American workers held steady at around 64%. Then in barely a decade, it fell to 58%. That's a massive redistribution and almost nobody noticed it happening in real time. But here's the part that should have billionaires paying attention too. When the federal government spends on healthcare or welfare, where does that money actually go? The working class receives it, sure. But they spend it. At shops, on rent, on services. And who owns those businesses? The wealthy do. Government spending on the poor doesn't stay with the poor. It circulates. It ends up in the hands of the people who own the economy. Which means billionaires fighting against federal spending is one of the most self-defeating positions in modern economics. I walked through this in Ravel©. When the federal government increases its transfers, both billionaire and working class bank accounts rise at the same time. It's not a zero sum game. It only looks like one if you're using the wrong model. That's what bad economics textbooks have done to us. Turned natural allies into opponents. For a more comprehensive understanding, refer to the full video presentation given in the comments. #SteveKeen #WealthInequality #FederalSpending #GDP #EconomicPolicy

@simonmaechling You want to wish away human nature. You have this category, scientists, and you mythologize them into being something other than human, which are biased, fallible, conformist and corruptible. It’s incredibly foolish to automatically presume an absence of these qualities.

If your main reason for distrusting scientists is that they’re paid, you should probably ask who’s paying the people telling you not to trust them.

@RichardHanania @coldxman What an absurd statement. No one has to make such simple minded binary choice. Also, on what planet are experts not biased like everyone else. You might want to look at P-hacking studies which show a very odd occurrence when values cluster around the magical .05 threshold.

Ideally, you'd trust the experts when they're right about things and not when they're wrong. But if you have to choose between always trusting experts or always doubting them, choose always trusting them. You'll be right more often than you're wrong, as I tell @coldxman

@harley_lund Pog is making the same mistake dopers made in the past. He’s making it too easy to believe he’s doping. Either he’s so much better than every other pro in the peloton and never seems to have a bad day even or he’s cheating. Having a DS with a checkered history is not helping.

Vingegaard improved by 20 seconds on that climb over two years. That's not a bad day. Pogacar improved by 1:08 min. That's cheating and deception.

@QuoteJung Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche.

Name the best piece of literature you have ever read

@mtaibbi Stop insulting the sheep. A lamb chosen at random is at least as economically literate as the “smartest” DSA person. Their solutions, eg rent control in NYC, make things worse for the working class and poor and invariably widen the wealth gap.

The “terror” comes from imagining people of the DSA ilk trying to manage the economy.. It’s like stepping in a 757 and seeing sheep in the pilot seats.

@Roadman_Podcast No. They add too large an element of luck. Wet, slippery gravel or cobbles can cause a serious race ending accident. GT winners should be the result of ability with as little luck as possible.

Should gravel/cobbles be included in Grand Tours?

@scottsantens A land value tax reduces the value of owning a rental property. Why should anyone believe reducing the value of something will result in more of it being built? You don’t need a Harvard PhD to understand if you reduce the value of something, less of it will be created.

I think the best possible new tax to implement alongside universal basic income is a land value tax because it would also solve the landlord problem and make housing more affordable. In the US, this UBI layer should be implemented locally and exist in addition to other layers alongside other taxes. open.substack.com/pub/scottsante…

@thebitcoyne @Handre Got into spirited debate with a Keynesian the other day. My claim was the so called multiplier encourages money creation, government manipulation of capital markets and excess government spending all of which increase income inequality through the Cantillon effect.

@Handre Keynesian economics are the road to perdition.

Quantitative easing is counterfeiting with a graduate degree. Strip away the acronym and you find something a Roman emperor would recognize instantly. The Federal Reserve creates dollars out of nothing, buys government bonds and mortgage-backed securities from the primary dealers, and credits their reserve accounts with money that did not exist a keystroke earlier. That is the whole trick. Ben Bernanke launched the first round in November 2008, buying $600 billion in assets. By 2014 the Fed's balance sheet had swollen past $4.5 trillion. During the 2020 panic it blew past $8.9 trillion. Nobody mined anything. Nobody saved anything. They printed. Call it what it is: monetary debasement. The Fed prefers "asset purchase programs" because "printing money to fund the state" tests poorly with focus groups. You were told this was emergency medicine. Temporary. Bernanke sat before Congress and promised the balance sheet would normalize. It never did. Every attempt to shrink it, the 2018 "quantitative tightening" experiment, ended the moment markets threw a tantrum. The addict does not taper. The addict finds a new dealer. Here is what the debasement actually does. New money enters through Wall Street first. The banks, the bondholders, the asset owners get the fresh dollars while prices remain at yesterday's level. They buy stocks, real estate, whatever they please, at old prices. By the time those dollars reach the nurse in Toledo or the electrician in Phoenix, prices have already climbed. Richard Cantillon described this effect around 1730. The people closest to the money spigot win. The people furthest away pay. This is the mechanism. QE inflated the everything bubble: the S&P 500 tripling from its 2009 low, home prices doubling, zombie corporations rolling over debt they could never service at honest interest rates. Now they need a fresh label. When the next crisis hits and the Fed cranks the machine again, expect "balance sheet expansion," or "liquidity support facilities," or some antiseptic phrase engineered so you never picture a printing press. Perhaps they will bundle it with a central bank digital dollar and call it modernization. The name changes. The theft does not. You hold the currency. They control the supply. Learn what money actually is before they redefine that too, and while you are at it, buy some Bitcoin or gold.

@michaelshermer @SwipeWright The principle of parsimony still also applies. In the absence of countervailing evidence, the simplest explanation is Graham died due to natural causes. The chances of foul play are very low pending at least some marginally credible evidence to the contrary.

Exactly right @SwipeWright My brand of skepticism is that of any scientist starting with the null hypothesis, willing to overturn it with sufficient evidence (equivalent of a p = 0.05 or better). Doesn't necessarily make it true (note the replication crisis) but > confidence,

@cleans_letsrun Anyone who produces almost 7 watts / kilogram on multiple difficult climbs would be under suspicion irrespective of the nationality. A team which basically completely controls the race from the very start should be too. Add a manager with a checkered history and its even higher.

Former world champion Luc Leblanc believes Pogacar would not face the same suspicion if he were French. "The French football team, would we ask what they had taken if they won the World Cup? No. It has to stop." cyclinguptodate.com/cycling/would-…

@BskiMike22802 It seems like AI is becoming the next bogeyman. Too many people seem to have developed an irrational fear of it, perhaps because they watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, Terminator or Ex Machina one too many times.

I’m a physics teacher. I’ve watched politicians and pundits weaponize numbers they clearly don’t understand. “AI will use 276 billion liters of water!” Sounds terrifying… until you learn the U.S. uses 443 trillion liters a year. Context is the enemy of the narrative.

@Handre The truth is govts have only three levers to pull when there are fiscal deficits: raise taxes, cut spending or create more currency out of thin air. Of the three options, the last one is politically easiest because when inflation goes up they deflect blame the way you describe.

When the price of bread doubles in Buenos Aires, the Argentine on the street blames the greedy baker, the hoarding supermarket, the last three presidents. The baker blames the wholesaler. The government blames "global conditions." Everyone points somewhere except at the printing press, which sits humming in two capitals at once: Buenos Aires and Washington. Here is the arithmetic no central bank wants you to do. The dollar is the reserve currency of the planet. Oil, copper, wheat, and semiconductors clear in it. So when the Federal Reserve expanded its balance sheet from roughly $900 billion in 2008 to nearly $9 trillion by 2022, it did not just inflate American prices. It exported inflation to every country that pegs, holds, or trades in dollars. Egypt imports wheat priced in dollars. Nigeria imports fuel priced in dollars. When those dollars lose purchasing power, Cairo and Lagos feel it before Kansas does. That is the floor. Every other currency inflates at least as fast as the dollar, because the dollar is the yardstick. Then comes the surcharge. Country risk. This is where the local political class earns its reputation. Argentina printed pesos to fund deficits it refused to cut, and the peso lost over 90 percent of its dollar value across the last decade. Turkey's Erdogan ordered interest rates down while inflation ran past 80 percent in 2022, because he decided, against three centuries of monetary evidence, that high rates cause inflation. Venezuela simply ran the presses until the bolivar became wallpaper. Your local inflation equals dollar inflation plus your government's own additional sins. Chile and Switzerland keep the surcharge low. Argentina and Zimbabwe stack it to the sky. You can test this yourself. Price your groceries in dollars, then in gold. The dollar number climbs steadily. The gold number barely moves across decades, because gold has no central bank and no election to win. The lesson for the free market thinker is old and unglamorous. Fiat money is a political instrument, and every politician who touches it takes his cut. The dollar sets the baseline theft. Your finance minister decides how much to add. Blame the baker if it comforts you.

@simonmaechling The experts once believed the earth was the center of the universe. Nobel winning physicist Richard Feynman said it best, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts.” Appeal to authority is the name of the fallacy where experts are presumed to be right.

Instead of trying to become an expert overnight on: Pesticides Vaccines Nuclear GMOs Perhaps listen to experts and regulators whose full-time job is to evaluate the evidence and perform the risk assessment.

@AndrewYang @bungarsargon People who deny this as the root cause either think the intersection of supply and demand doesn’t really affect value or somehow it doesn’t apply to fiat currency.

If you’re at the top of this graph it’s really hard to understand what’s going on at the bottom, where the vast majority of Americans are.

@AndrewYang @bungarsargon No it isn’t. But you do have to understand the economic consequences of government action. Specifically, you need to know the money printing which occurred during Covid led more or less directly to the inflation experienced since. This really screwed over the poor.