Paul Krugman: "[Ron] Paul has maintained his consistency by ignoring reality"

Which is why all work is not equal, nor is simply aspiring to 'work' the primary goal.

That's not true. Economics also studies and attempts to explain how wealth expands. Wealth does not simply "move around".

These are two different statements. The first is incorrect; the second is correct.

Wealth is not a limited resource, but the amount of wealth at any given time can be roughly measured. You could say that at any given time, there is only a certain amount of bacteria in an environment, but that would ignore what cultures and expands it, or what suppresses/kills it.

Ridiculous. If there were only a static amount of wealth at all times, our GDP would have always remained flat, and it obviously hasn't.

Your addled POV would require that productivity increases demand a reduction in productivity elsewhere in order to be possible. Your standard would require that the advent of Facebook actually did equal harm elsewhere as it created positive impact.

Your position, quite frankly, is fantasy.

 

Uh ... Where were you when Krugman was 180 degrees off on any and
all Economic predictions.This is the nut in any room.Not Newt.

 

Name one off prediction.

 

It does however, apply to alien invasions.



Liberl Economics: Now Officially Bankrupt

I guess I can now officially consider you totally ignorant on economic matters?

 

Ha. Krugman is comedy gold: both the jokester and the joke.

 

A Martian calling a Mexican an illegal alien in the USA. Has the mathematically illiterate Krugman's Nobel Prize been revoked yet? If not, why not? I challenge Krugman to any math contest for a charitable $100,000 (US dollars, if they mean anything in the near future). Perhaps Krugman can pull the dollars out of his but like most of his logic to pay his debt if takes the bet?

 

Yer confusing " wealth " with Wages ... Bubba.

 

Wealth can be created. Econ 101...PPF.

 

Lol, there is nothing more productive than war time. You mean building all those innovative technologies, factories, weapons, software, etc, etc is like "breaking a window"?

You guys are crazy!

 

You have yet to establish that the "productivity" of war is anything more than lost future potential.

 

Why would building factories, creating technology, employing individuals, building weapons, ammo, clothing, infrastructure, etc, etc cause a loss of future potential? You guys make ZERO logical sense.

The military has developed and lead to some of the most major innovations in the history of America. Whether it's the computer, radio, internet, etc. I bet you would be one of the people that complained about the Govt spending a million dollars on a computer the size of a garage that could do basic calculations, lol.

 

Paul Krugman? You mean the same Paul Krugman who said Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble? That Paul Krugman?

 

This is just your opinion. There is no proof or consensus that government spending in and of itself lessens the severity or duration of economic contractions.

 

Because you have yet to establish how these things wouldn't have happened in the normal course of human evolution, but directed towards true constructivism, rather than destructivism/defense.

That said, I believe war is completely necessary at times.

All true. Also: all moot. These things took place because wealth was co-opted from the private sector, which has proven to be perfectly capable of major innovation itself. Government literally turned itself into the biggest, baddest boy on the block, with the deepest pockets, and hired for itself - out of the private sector - those very people which created all of those innovations you're turgid about.

My point is that those people would have been the same sort of innovators in the private sector, and I note that you're using the same sort of logic to support the notion that "this all happened because of the military" as you are to support the notion that "our economy grew strictly because Central Planners caused it".

Both co-opted the private sector, and took control from it. Neither can establish that their gains wouldn't have taken place regardless, and at a far lower cost to the taxpayer.

Why do you think the private sector wasn't capable of such things?

 

This is one of the most absurd things I've ever read. Keynesian economics has dominated government policy for decades. The Keynesians own the economy.

 

Uh-oh! You've committed the cardinal leftist sin! Suggesting that we need to cut spending as opposed to raising it will get your "liberal" card revoked...

 

They may "stimulate" the economy, but there is no reason to believe they're more economically beneficial than periods of peace. To suggest otherwise is pure lunacy.

No, it's a simple logical truism. There is an opportunity cost every time resources are allocated towards something. In paying to repair a broken window, you are foregoing other goods, services, and investments that would have otherwise benefited you. That's just an economic fact.

 

It sounds really weird because it is demonstrably false and utterly nonsensical. The entire EU is teetering on the brink of economic collapse because of excessive debt levels.

 

Not even Paul Krugman would agree with these ridiculous assertions.

 

Paul Krugman: "We can print our way to prosperity."

I'm paraphrasing of course.

 

You live in the make believe world where things just happen magically. In a perfect world no one would need a military. But in our world, we needed a military and we needed a big one. It was a necessity that lead to unprecedented innovation and economic growth.

Well of course, the Govt isn't a person... it has to hire "private sector" individuals to build things. What private sector individual would invest millions of dollars on massive computers that no one would buy?

Not "would have" been. They "could have" been. Innovation doesn't happen until a person has the funds to do so and there our funds for the initial non-commercial uses. Sure the computer might have been invented if the military didn't use it. Sure the internet might have been invented if the military didn't need it.

But the point is that it was invented and it brought tremendous amounts of productivity to the country. I'm not saying the Govt creates things because they don't, the private sector does. I'm saying the Govt has the funds to pay for these things when their is no cost benefit to do so.

All humans are "private sector" until they get hired by the Govt. There isn't such a thing as a public human. The military doesn't bring us a profit, they defend our country. No private sector human would spend billions of dollars on a military that produced $0 in profits. And no one would build thousands of tanks if no one had enough money to purchase it.

The Govt creates a massive demand which makes private sector individuals (who you seem to be enamored with) have to build and produce things. This causes a mass amount of labor, technology, and innovation. I can't grasp how you don't understand this.

Because who would the private sector build this stuff for? Is the private sector going to hire millions of individuals and equip them with weaponry, technology, and income?

Sort of like pooling our money together (aka taxing ourselves) to pay for a good that does not produce a financial return. Think logically!!

 

Nothing I've said contradicts this, so you can jam your insults up your sphincter. Thanks.

You do seem to have a problem with correctly understanding what I write. What I wrote didn't contradict that either, but I also said that the technological advances created by military buildup would have also taken place in the private sector, without the military.

And you consider that general trait a good thing? It isn't. I will also tell you that there is a clear cost-benefit to the things you have mentioned, and that the private sector recognizes such benefits.

Yes; thank you, Captain Obvious.

Which is why this is an enumerated Constitutional responsibility of Government. I object to Government spending that goes beyond its enumerated responsibilities.

My comments wrt the military extend only so far as to refute the broken window fallacy: the amount of money extracted from the private sector to fund the military robs the private sector of tremendous fuel for innovation itself, so while you can laud the technological advances that have taken place due to our military, you cannot put together a cost-benefit analysis of all military expenditures with regard to this topic, because you can never know what effect those funds retained in the private sector would have created.

What you cannot grasp is that I do understand that, and have repeatedly attempted to point out to you that any demand the Government creates with our own money is partly wasted by Government itself before it satisfies any demand at all.

It is the quintessential thick middle man, and often finds itself in the middle of stupid wasteful transactions.

The private sector innovates with its own wealth. When Government absconds with it, that innovation never takes place in the private sector. Instead, we have to depend upon innovation from the public sector, and doubtless, there has been some. Philosophically, however, the Government is not a producer, it is a consumer, so naturally it stands to reason to conclude that whatever innovation the Government itself is responsible for represents only a fraction of the sum total innovative potential that existed prior to the Government's consumption of a portion of the fuel - money - needed to innovate.

I have. You're not. You've all in favor of collectivism, but have no regard for the wastefulness of Government which is inherent in its structure, nor have you any answer for the stumper I posed to you in the other thread, which pointed out definitively that while Government spending as increased, the return on its investment - GDP growth - has not grown as fast as the cost.

 

You are just making this up, you have no clue what would have been created had it not been created through the funding of the govt. You are literally just making crap up.

There is no cost benefit for someone to build a military that returns no profit. The only way they can profit is if they charged people in the country to pay for the military. But since that can't be enforced, people wouldn't pay and the person wouldn't build. You are literally just making stuff up again. There is absolutely no one in the private sector that could afford or would create a non-profitable military.

Well you keep talking as if there's a difference

Those funds are going TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR. The people building the tanks, computers, software, clothes, etc, etc, etc... are private sector individuals. The amount of technology that is innovative for military use is absolutely a productive use of spending.

Which is the same with any organization

We are the most technologically advanced country in the history of mankind. You are just saying... "we still could do this without the Govt". But we didn't do it with out the Govt. Like most of your points, you are just making stuff up that has no factual backing. I understand you hate the Govt, but you don't have to lie about how the Govt does in fact benefit the private sector.

I'm a capitalist my friend. What you simply can't grasp is how the Govt interacts with the private sector in our country. It is a pivotal entity that creates 20 million jobs a year and consists over 44% of our GDP. They are the biggest consumer in the entire world.

 

Although there's a limited amount of resources, wealth can be defined as though goods and services that satisfy human desires and they can increase and decrease based on how resources are allocated.

The resources invested in replacing the window would otherwise have gone to produce goods and services elsewhere. That's opportunity cost. If this were not the case, we should simply destroy everything we own. Then we would all have "jobs," jobs growing food to survive in a post-apocalyptic Dark Age. But our standard of living would not be higher.

 

You are ignoring opportunity cost. Any resources invested in those weapons would otherwise have been invested elsewhere to raise peoples' standard of living. And in particular in the case of war, most of the stuff that's produced are machines of death used to destroy lives and cities, obviously making everyone worse off.

Insofar as war research produces innovations that are later put to peaceful, civilian use, it's entirely accidental. Whereas had the resources been left in the peaceful marketplace, they would have been deliberately and directly put to use improving the well-being of consumers.