patrick.net

Homeboy says

Debates about who caused the Great Depression are about as interesting as watching paint dry.

Yea I hear people say the same about baseball

The Putin man-crush ain't homo; it's incest.

"Take me, Daddy! You're oh-so firm and authoritarian - hard and unforgiving, just how I like it!"

Modern libertarianism is interesting: I'll give you that.

Vicente says

Who is the biggest cash buyer of homes right now? It's not Joe & Jane Public, who are just barely scraping by, it's big hedge funds.

LOL. That's because of the crony capitalist REO-to-rental program. Everything subsidized is always very "popular". Now you are starting to complain about consequences from government programs you so much love. That can only mean that it's time to rediscover your Libertarian roots!

mell says

LOL. That's because of the crony capitalist REO-to-rental program.

Richie Rich always has cash to buy assets. Programs are irrelevant.

Vicente says

mell says

LOL. That's because of the crony capitalist REO-to-rental program.

Richie Rich always has cash to buy assets. Programs are irrelevant.

Oh, there's always a crony program. How do you think he became "Richie Rich" in the first place?

turtledove says

Oh, there's always a crony program. How do you think he became "Richie Rich" in the first place?

They are irrelevant.

Richie Rich subsists on assets, not income.

In any downturn, they hold properties. If the fraction of their wealth in liquid form like stocks etc. goes down they don't care. And they can liquidate some of that along with lesser properties, to grab up distressed discount properties of greater value.

John & Jane Public on the other hand, have very little wealth to run around chasing these opportunities. Even if they do, when their jobs are endangered, they don't spend because they are worried about making payments next year. So they hoard what very little cash they might have.

Thus on every cycle, irrespective of government programs, the wealthy get wealthier and the rest slide down a little.

It is a FANTASY that oh yeah, if only there weren't government intervention I could have picked up the assets of JP Morgan for pennies.

turtledove says

Oh, there's always a crony program. How do you think he became "Richie Rich" in the first place?

I thought it was all his smarts, hard work, and sacrifice. You mean to tell me the Rich didn't work harder than everyone else??

tatupu70 says

turtledove says

Oh, there's always a crony program. How do you think he became "Richie Rich" in the first place?

I thought it was all his smarts, hard work, and sacrifice. You mean to tell me the Rich didn't work harder than everyone else??

Well, you show me where I ever said that the crony rich achieve their wealth through "smarts, hard work, and sacrifice," (or anything even resembling that) and I will be more than happy to answer your question.

Vicente says

They are irrelevant.

Richie Rich subsists on assets, not income.

In any downturn, they hold properties. If the fraction of their wealth in liquid form like stocks etc. goes down they don't care. And they can liquidate some of that along with lesser properties, to grab up distressed discount properties of greater value.

John & Jane Public on the other hand, have very little wealth to run around chasing these opportunities. Even if they do, when their jobs are endangered, they don't spend because they are worried about making payments next year. So they hoard what very little cash they might have.

Thus on every cycle, irrespective of government programs, the wealthy get wealthier and the rest slide down a little.

It is a FANTASY that oh yeah, if only there weren't government intervention I could have picked up the assets of JP Morgan for pennies.

And from the beginning of time, crony Richie Rich attained his assets at the pleasure of his King.

tatupu70 says

I thought it was all his smarts, hard work, and sacrifice. You mean to tell me the Rich didn't work harder than everyone else??

They do, anyone who has been in business realizes this. Which was unique to the US at one time.

Of course the cronys are a different story but that is not the free market.

This is something that the lefties do not understand they are 2 different things.

This is where Jojo or AF would rather just complain because it is easier to just complain.

indigenous says

tatupu70 says

I thought it was all his smarts, hard work, and sacrifice. You mean to tell me the Rich didn't work harder than everyone else??

They do, anyone who has been in business realizes this. Which was unique to the US at one time.

Of course the cronys are a different story but that is not the free market.

This is something that the lefties do not understand they are 2 different things.

This is where Jojo or AF would rather just complain because it is easier to just complain.

The generalizations are pretty silly.

turtledove says

The generalizations are pretty silly.

How so?

indigenous says

turtledove says

The generalizations are pretty silly.

How so?

I didn't mean you. I meant those who were talking in terms of "all rich people do this" and "all rich people are like that." It's just so ridiculous. They refuse to distinguish between cronies and people who work hard and earn well.

When "Richie Rich" first came up in this thread, to me was a crony, based on the fact that it was coined in response to a statement about crony capitalists. But as the thread wore on, it became a generalization about any person who has money.

It's just silly that people are so determined to categorize everyone. Not all that different than the post that suggested that I'm a Fox News disciple because I said I don't like Obama. How ridiculous and completely inaccurate. But there's a group here that isn't happy until they've put every single person into a nice neat category.

turtledove says

It's just silly that people are so determined to categorize everyone.

Agreed, one of the more common ilogics is the conflating of distinctly different concepts.

Vicente says

Richie Rich always has cash to buy assets. Programs are irrelevant.

People like you spend too much time talking about the rich
while others peruse interests and passionate ideas which will lead
to great prosperity...

thomaswong.1986 says

People like you spend too much time talking about the rich

while others peruse interests and passionate ideas which will lead

to great prosperity...

Yes clearly everybody in the 1% is there because they work 1,000+ times harder & smarter than I do. Get real.

Pooty-poot!

thomaswong.1986 says

Vicente says

Richie Rich always has cash to buy assets. Programs are irrelevant.

People like you spend too much time talking about the rich

while others peruse interests and passionate ideas which will lead

to great prosperity...

Agreed.

Now go "peruse those interests", create great prosperity, and get out of here forever.

Iosef V HydroCabron says

Agreed.

Now go "peruse those interests", create great prosperity, and get out of here forever.

I am already there.. after all these years...a little no body like me .. make it big in SV.

Vicente says

Yes clearly everybody in the 1% is there because they work 1,000+ times harder & smarter than I do. Get real.

keep it up... your never going to get anywhere!

Vicente says

However now that I've seen fighting in the trenches, I am no longer willing to play with people's lives like they are toys on a board.

So you think keeping artificially low interest rates over long time, inflating one bubble after another, bailing out well connected banks etc., do not constitute playing with people's lives? My goodness, you need your head examined!

turtledove says

Well, you show me where I ever said that the crony rich achieve their wealth through "smarts, hard work, and sacrifice," (or anything even resembling that) and I will be more than happy to answer your question

Sorry-didn't know you were only referring to the "cronies". By the way--how can you tell a "crony" from a rich person that achieved their wealth through hard work? Or a "job creator"? Is there a special handshake? Or do they wear a special pin?

Seriously--show me one very wealthy individual that didn't donate to political campaigns. Or use their influence in Washington to their advantage.

turtledove says

They refuse to distinguish between cronies and people who work hard and earn well.

Like I said--please educate me. How can I properly distinguish between the two different types?

one smells like summers eve, the other, spaghettiOs...

tatupu70 says

Like I said--please educate me. How can I properly distinguish between the two different types?

turtledove says

(the very shocks believed to be responsible for the crash) had turned positive in 1933. This should have resulted in a faster recovery (output and employment returning to trend), but it didn't

it was a global crash and the world went into protectionism.

everybody got slaughtered and the nascent flimflam credit-driven economy of the 1920s was but a dream in the 1930s.

Prosperity was still present, but it was much more unevenly distributed. Looking at the 1940 census I see my grandfather was still screwed up in Oregon (that census has rather personal employment information on it for perusal), while when I was looking at the West LA census (the tony neighborhood I lived in in the 1980s) I see many people were doing OK.

But people LITERALLY LOST THEIR LIFE SAVINGS in the crash of 1930-33. You don't just 'bounce back' from that like a 1970s Fed-created recession.

tatupu70 says

How can I properly distinguish between the two different types?

you need the Praxeology. God Austrianism has the stink of Scientology about it. Wouldn't surprise me if there's volcanoes involved somewhere.

Bellingham Bill says

God Austrianism has the stink of Scientology about it.

Yeah, but Scientologists talk about it less.

Bellingham Bill says

you need the Praxeology. God Austrianism has the stink of Scientology about it. Wouldn't surprise me if there's volcanoes involved somewhere.

The Austrians have something to say, most of yous don't it is just chatter. You think the graphs indicate what ever you are saying, ceptin they don't.

It does not appear that T Dove is an Austrian.

Tat cannot be taught as he likes to use that faux Socratic method instead of listening.

indigenous says

Tat cannot be taught as he likes to use that faux Socratic method instead of listening.

Let me translate for you--I believe in looking at history with an open mind and letting data do the talking. I believe in things like science too.

You cannot look at history because it always disagrees with your religion. Therefore you pretend that it's specious and that all data is incorrect.

You are very much like an ostrich with his head in the sand...

tatupu70 says

-I believe in looking at history with an open mind

When ever I hear this I know that this is the last thing you are doing.

tatupu70 says

You cannot look at history because it always disagrees with your religion. Therefore you pretend that it's specious and that all data is incorrect.

The complete opposite as you who think you are Looking when you look at graphs and arithmetic. This is where the bulk of your assertions come from, but they do not parallel reality.

tatupu70 says

You are very much like an ostrich with his head in the sand...

Projecting

indigenous says

The complete opposite as you who think you are Looking when you look at graphs and arithmetic. This is where the bulk of your assertions come from, but they do not parallel reality

Gibberish. Try again and write slowly so I can at least understand what you are attempting to say.

turtledove says

"New Deal labor and industrial policies did not lift the economy out of the Depression as President Roosevelt had hoped. Instead, the joint policies of increasing labor’s bargaining power and linking collusion with paying high wages prevented a normal recovery by creating rents and an inefficient insider‐outsider friction that raised wages significantly and restricted employment(Cole, et al)."

THe question isn't only whether FDRs policies got us out of the depression the fastest way possible.

What we eventually got was a booming middle class with a rapidly increasing standard of living.

I don't believe it to be the case, but lets say that there are polices that would have led to slave labor conditions, that is workers having far less leverage, that would have gotten us out of the depression faster. That is if the high wages your quote alludes to did not occur. (THese high wages were the problem with FDRs policies - according to your quote.)

It seems likely that this in turn would have made 1948 through 1980 and beyond look much different than it did.

In other words, even if FDRs policies were slower than some alternate policies that were better for business in the short run, people and even business and the economy in general were better off in the long run for FDR's policies, that made for a more affluent middle class.

turtledove says

If you feel that the mere suggestion that the New Deal prolonged the Depression must be coming from people who want government removed from the economy then a conversation is impossible.

This is not logical. He can still back it up with facts, even if he is biased. And bias is sometimes based on facts as well.

Who would deny that there is a huge segment of AMericans and a lot of propaganda out there that is anti socialist. Many fear and hate FDRs policies, because they think they resemble or would lead to the socialist or communist policies that our religion says is evil.

A sample of what I would call the kind of bias that gets in the way of understandng. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R6uC_ZCTLw

(Note: I'm not a socialist - but I have enough balance in my perception to know that many in this country have a strong bias against social spending and an irrational fear that social spending, and all government spending, even on infrastructure, or schools, is "socialism")

It's a fact that there is a lot of bias out there, and that a lot of analysis of FDRs policies starts with a prejudice and preconceived desire to prove his policies were bad. Because otherwise, it might mean admitting that for example those who say that the "Stimulus" should have been much bigger in 2009, were right.

God forbid, it might even mean that taxes should be higher (at least on upper increments of income). Gee, I wonder if there are any wealthy people, or very high income people that have a bias about progressive taxation ?

WE can't even properly fund infrastructure spending these days while we're conducting multiple wars and middle class earnings are dropping. Meanwhile those at the top are getting richer.

For fuck's sake: Hoover did all the sensible austere things, as well as some sideways attempts to loosen credit, but the economy gagged even more.

Roosevelt took office when the U.S. was still a low-infrastructure country (sort of third-world), and there were many things the government could do that private industry lacked the means or the nerve to do, such as water projects and electrification.

Roosevelt saw the opportunity, and did something which worked at that te and under those conditions. This does not mean that government spending is always a good idea during economic contractions, but it worked that one time.

For some reason, however, the hard right theologians need to believe n simple nostrums, in particular that government is always bad. So Roosevelt's record, which until the 1980s was totally uncontroversial - Reagan was a prominent admirer of FDR - must now be demolished, at a cost to logic and truth.

Thanks to the absolutism of the libertarian oversimplifiers and their binary Manichean world, we can't say that massive pump-priming might be a good or bad idea, depending on the nature of the recession and the economy: we have to listen to endless refutations of every possible case where it did good. And, ironically, we get to argue about this on the Internet, which still might not exist had it not been for government research and infrastructure.

Libertarian simpletons: the reason why we can't have nice things.

tatupu70 says

Like I said--please educate me. How can I properly distinguish between the two different types?

Hey Tat. That's easy. I just use my crime-o-meter to detect all criminals infesting our population, at large. It's available on Amazon. I recommend trying to find version 7, as version 8 is reported to be pretty buggy. The app is supposed to be out soon, too. ;)

tatupu70 says

Seriously--show me one very wealthy individual that didn't donate to political campaigns. Or use their influence in Washington to their advantage.

Donating to political campaigns, in and of itself, isn't evil. Plenty of people, both rich and poor, do it.

Where it went wrong is when we started treating corporations as people. And clearly, people who are funneling enormous donations through other channels as a way to provide more financial support than is allowed by law are part of the "cronies" and should be held accountable for the fraud they are committing.

marcus says

(THese high wages were the problem with FDRs policies - according to your quote.)

Here's what the idea is based on (from journal article linked above):

"There is a large gap in this condition during the New Deal. Compared to 1929 values, the 1939 real wage is 120 percent higher than the 1939 marginal rate of substitution."

NIRA was the first piece of legislation passed:

"The cornerstone of the NIRA was a “code of fair competition” for each industry. These codes were the operating rules for all firms in an industry. Firms and workers negotiated these codes under the guidance of the National Recovery Administration (NRA). The codes required presidential approval, which was given only if the industry raised wages and accepted collective bargaining with an independent union. In return, the act suspended antitrust law, and each industry was encouraged to adopt trade practices that limited competition and raised prices. By 1934, NRA codes covered over 500 industries, which accounted for nearly 80 percent of private, nonagricultural employment."

After Nira was found to be unconstitutional, the NLRA followed:

"The NLRA allowed labor to form independent unions with significant bargaining power (see Millis and Brown 1950; Taft 1964; Kennedy 1999, pp. 290–91). Union membership and strike activity rose considerably under the NLRA, particularly after the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality in 1937. Union membership rose from about 13 percent of employment in 1935 to about 29 percent of employment in 1939, and strike activity doubled from 14 million strike days in 1936 to about 28 million in 1937...."

"The uniform wage feature of NIRA labor policies continued in post‐NIRA union contracts.6 The strengthening of NIRA labor provisions was accompanied by an NIRA‐type industrial policy that promoted collusion. Even though the government could not suspend antitrust law after the NIRA, the government permitted collusion, particularly in industries that paid high wages. Hawley (1966, p. 166) cites Federal Trade Commission (FTC) studies from the 1930s that report price fixing and production limits in a number of industries following the court’s NIRA decision.

Some of the post‐NIRA collusion was facilitated by trade practices formed under the NIRA. Hawley reports that basing point pricing, which was adopted under the NIRA, allowed steel producers to collude after the act was ruled unconstitutional. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes complained to Roosevelt that he received identical bids from steel firms on 257 different occasions (Hawley 1966, pp. 360–64) between June 1935 and May 1936. The Interior Department received bids that were not only identical but 50 percent higher than foreign steel prices (Ickes 1953–54, 2:466). This price difference was large enough under government rules to permit Ickes to order the steel from German suppliers. Roosevelt canceled the German contract, however, after coming under pressure from both the steel trade association and the steel labor union."

jojo says

Bill Clinton’s $80 Million Payday, or Why Politicians Don’t Care That Much About Reelection

Why would the pay him that much after he left office? The derivatives thing was superfluous as Glass Steagal didn't regulate derivatives anyway.

turtledove says

Where it went wrong is when we started treating corporations as people. And clearly, people who are funneling enormous donations through other channels as a way to provide more financial support than is allowed by law are part of the "cronies" and should be held accountable for the fraud they are committing

So criminals are "cronies"? The other rich folks are the smart ones?

I'm being serious here. I hear lots of people on pat.net throwing around the word crony but nobody can really tell me who they are or why they are categorized as such.

marcus says

God forbid, it might even mean that taxes should be higher (at least on upper increments of income). Gee, I wonder if there are any wealthy people, or very high income people that have a bias about progressive taxation ?

But the problem is that such things are proposed without any effort made to audit the particular budget. We've all heard the jokes about $300 wrenches and $1200 toilet seats. No credible effort is made to identify waste. The answer is always to just throw more money at it.

Now this is an anecdotal example, but it illustrates precisely what I'm talking about. For about a year, we worked in a high-needs area in North Carolina providing medical care. By high needs, I mean that 80% of the patients were on Medicaid. I couldn't believe how many people were on Medicaid who, under no circumstances, should be been. There were working professionals presenting NC Medicaid cards! It was crazy and, unfortunately, too prevalent.

Using this example, is it really so unreasonable to ask that NC Medicaid fix their gaping loopholes? Do they have no responsibility to the tax payers to make sure that the tax money is well spent. I'm not against Medicaid. I'm against unchecked abuse. I see that as waste, and as a stakeholder of the system, I have every right to demand that they fix problems instead of just asking for more money -- and pretending that the waste doesn't exist.

The sad thing I learned from that experience is that the very people who need the program are the ones least likely to know how to take advantage of it. I spent a lot of time helping patients fill out their Medicaid paperwork and gather the appropriate documents. I was happy to do it... To make someone less worried about how she was going to pay for her own medical care. But when I see a PhD biologist or an OBGyn present a Medicaid card, I get a little pissed that I'm paying into a system that has so little accountability.

Bellingham Bill says

where dozens of Japanese manufacturers became household words in the US due to their rather awesome products that we couldn't get enough of.

product dumping... selling products below the cost to manufacture to
drive out competition and capture market share ! it wasnt only the US, but Europe, South Ameria and other parts of Asia... THEY went after the whole Enchilada with the Works...

tatupu70 says

So criminals are "cronies"? The other rich folks are the smart ones?

I'm being serious here. I hear lots of people on pat.net throwing around the word crony but nobody can really tell me who they are or why they are categorized as such.

Here's how I see it. Crony means friend. Crony capitalists use their relationships (or friends) with other businesses and government officials to advance their agenda, even when that agenda is harmful to everyone else living in that economy. Crony capitalists use their influence with their friends to enrich themselves at the expense of almost everyone else. The cronies (friends) are all those who participate in this process of using regulation/legislation/unfair business practices (b2b) as a means for private profit.