Keynesian Job Program / Stimulus Plan

[Taco John]

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by wazu

Yeah. Zero income tax. I can only imagine the lack of consumer spending and overall poverty. Not sure how we would get by without government spending all of our money for us.

He prefers a Zimbabwe stimulus plan.

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by Brainiac

I've said in the past on this site that Keynes is undoubtedly spinning in his grave in horror at how his economic philosophy has been twisted and distorted by the current gang in Washington. Keynes proposed intentionally running surpluses in good times and deficits during economic downturns. He didn't propose running trillion dollar deficits every freaking year and having the government provide everything from the cradle to the grave.

Referring to Obamanomics as Keynesian is akin to saying that Scott ***** is running the Chiefs just like the New England Patriots.




.

Well, this here shows just how stoopid Keynes was. He failed by putting his faith in politicians. That's why his theory looks good on paper but fails in the real world. Human nature and human action by politicians is where it falls down.

Yes, Obamanomics is Keynesianism but in the extreme.

[Chiefshrink]

Originally Posted by banyon

Ron Paul stimulus/infrastructure plan:

This is where OMarxist wants to take America not RP !!!

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by Calcountry

No, that would be Marx. [/color]

Keynes was socialist too.

"The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens." ~ Keynes

"The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.”~ Vladimir Lenin

[Chiefshrink]

Originally Posted by BucEyedPea

Well, this here shows just how stoopid Keynes was. He failed by putting his faith in politicians. That's why his theory looks good on paper but fails in the real world. Human nature and human action by politicians is where it falls down.

Yes, Obamanomics is Keynesianism but in the extreme.

BINGO!!

Precisely, and why our Founding Fathers knew how the human being was wired. Wired for self-independent freedom in order to thrive socially,culturally and monetarily yet also wired for SELF ONLY(a la SIN -power hungry greed) which required a delicate construction of "checks and balances"(a la The Constitution) to be able to provide true independence within a framework of just law thus providing true liberty and freedom of the individual person.

[banyon]

Originally Posted by BucEyedPea

Keynes was socialist too.

"The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens." ~ Keynes

"The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.”~ Vladimir Lenin

How dishonest whatever sketchy website you pulled that from out of context. He was explaining the dangers of inflation, not endorsing it as a maniacal conspiratorial policy. He was actually quoting Lenin to show how wrong it was. Good God.

Is this selective, inaccurate snipping of quotes what they teach over there in the Austrian school of kookery? I guess that's why Ron Paul did it too with the Reagan quote.



ACTUAL QUOTE

Excerpts from The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes, 1919. pp. 235-248

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.

Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become "profiteers," who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.

Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

In the latter stages of the war all the belligerent governments practiced, from necessity or incompetence, what a Bolshevist might have done from design. Even now, when the war is over, most of them continue out of weakness the same malpractices. But further, the governments of Europe, being many of them at this moment reckless in their methods as well as weak, seek to direct on to a class known as "profiteers" the popular indignation against the more obvious consequences of their vicious methods.

These "profiteers" are, broadly speaking, the entrepreneur class of capitalists, that is to say, the active and constructive element in the whole capitalist society, who in a period of rapidly rising prices cannot but get rich quick whether they wish it or desire it or not. If prices are continually rising, every trader who has purchased for stock or owns property and plant inevitably makes profits. By directing hatred against this class, therefore, the European governments are carrying a step further the fatal process which the subtle mind of Lenin had consciously conceived. The profiteers are a consequence and not a cause of rising prices. By combining a popular hatred of the class of entrepreneurs with the blow already given to social security by the violent and arbitrary disturbance of contract and of the established equilibrium of wealth which is the inevitable result of inflation, these governments are fast rendering impossible a continuance of the social and economic order of the 19th century. But they have no plan for replacing it....

The inflationism of the currency systems of Europe has proceeded to extraordinary lengths. The various belligerent governments, unable or too timid or too short-sighted to secure from loans or taxes the resources they required, have printed notes for the balance. In Russia and Austria-Hungary this process has reached a point where for the purposes of foreign trade the
currency is practically valueless. The Polish mark can be bought for about [three cents] and the Austrian crown for less than [two cents], but they cannot be sold at all. The German mark is worth less than [four cents] on the exchanges....

But while these currencies enjoy a precarious value abroad, they have never entirely lost, not even in Russia, their purchasing power at home. A sentiment of trust in the legal money of the state is so deeply implanted in the citizens of all countries that they cannot but believe that some day this money must recover a part at least of its former value.... They do not apprehend that the real wealth, which this money might have stood for has been dissipated once and for all. This sentiment is supported by the various legal regulations with which the governments endeavor to control internal prices, and so to preserve some purchasing power for their legal tender....

The preservation of a spurious value for the currency, by the force of law expressed in the regulation of prices, contains in itself, however, the seeds of final economic decay, and soon dries up the sources of ultimate supply. If a man is compelled to exchange the fruits of his labors for paper which, as experience soon teaches him, he cannot use to purchase what he requires at a price comparable to that which he has received for his own products, he will keep his produce for himself, dispose of it to his friends and neighbors as a favor, or relax his efforts in producing it.

A system of compelling the exchange of commodities at what is not their real relative value not only relaxes production, but [also] leads finally to the waste and inefficiency of barter. If, however, a government refrains from regulation and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer.

The effect on foreign trade of price-regulation and profiteer-hunting as cures for inflation is even worse. Whatever may be the case at home, the currency must soon reach its real level abroad, with the result that prices inside and outside the country lose their normal adjustment. The price of imported commodities, when converted at the current rate of exchange, is far in excess of the local price, so that many essential goods will not be imported at all by private agency, and must be provided by the government, which, in re-selling the goods below cost price, plunges thereby a little further into insolvency....

The note circulation of Germany is about 10 times what it was before the war. The value of the mark in terms of gold is about one-eighth of its former value....

It is a hazardous enterprise for a merchant or a manufacturer to purchase with a foreign credit material for which, when he has imported it or manufactured it, he will receive mark currency of a quite uncertain and possibly unrealizable value....

It may be the case, therefore, that a German merchant, careful of his future credit and reputation, who is actually offered a short-period credit in terms of sterling or dollars, may be reluctant and doubtful whether to accept it. He will owe sterling or dollars, but he will sell his product for marks, and his power, when the time comes, to turn these marks into the currency in which he has to repay his debt is entirely problematic. Business loses its genuine character and becomes no better than a speculation in the exchanges, the fluctuations in which entirely obliterate the normal profits of commerce....

Thus the menace of inflationism described above is not merely a product of the war, of which peace begins the cure. It is a continuing phenomenon of which the end is not yet in sight....

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandinghe...inflation.html

Keynes was a capitalist, through and through. His only goal was to ameliorate the wild fluctuations of money and the business cycle which were endemic in the 1920s and 30s. He just wasn't one of these binary-thinking far right Austrian "Libertee!" ideologues who think macroeconomic trends and history can be summed up in a couple of cartoons or bumper stickers and have no consideration for the practical consequences of bluntly-applied, blinders-on, extreme policies.

[Chiefshrink]

Originally Posted by banyon

How dishonest whatever sketchy website you pulled that from out of context. He was explaining the dangers of inflation, not endorsing it as a maniacal conspiratorial policy. He was actually quoting Lenin to show how wrong it was. Good God.

Is this selective, inaccurate snipping of quotes what they teach over there in the Austrian school of kookery? I guess that's why Ron Paul did it too with the Reagan quote.



ACTUAL QUOTE

Excerpts from The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes, 1919. pp. 235-248

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.

Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become "profiteers," who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.

Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

In the latter stages of the war all the belligerent governments practiced, from necessity or incompetence, what a Bolshevist might have done from design. Even now, when the war is over, most of them continue out of weakness the same malpractices. But further, the governments of Europe, being many of them at this moment reckless in their methods as well as weak, seek to direct on to a class known as "profiteers" the popular indignation against the more obvious consequences of their vicious methods.

These "profiteers" are, broadly speaking, the entrepreneur class of capitalists, that is to say, the active and constructive element in the whole capitalist society, who in a period of rapidly rising prices cannot but get rich quick whether they wish it or desire it or not. If prices are continually rising, every trader who has purchased for stock or owns property and plant inevitably makes profits. By directing hatred against this class, therefore, the European governments are carrying a step further the fatal process which the subtle mind of Lenin had consciously conceived. The profiteers are a consequence and not a cause of rising prices. By combining a popular hatred of the class of entrepreneurs with the blow already given to social security by the violent and arbitrary disturbance of contract and of the established equilibrium of wealth which is the inevitable result of inflation, these governments are fast rendering impossible a continuance of the social and economic order of the 19th century. But they have no plan for replacing it....

The inflationism of the currency systems of Europe has proceeded to extraordinary lengths. The various belligerent governments, unable or too timid or too short-sighted to secure from loans or taxes the resources they required, have printed notes for the balance. In Russia and Austria-Hungary this process has reached a point where for the purposes of foreign trade the
currency is practically valueless. The Polish mark can be bought for about [three cents] and the Austrian crown for less than [two cents], but they cannot be sold at all. The German mark is worth less than [four cents] on the exchanges....

But while these currencies enjoy a precarious value abroad, they have never entirely lost, not even in Russia, their purchasing power at home. A sentiment of trust in the legal money of the state is so deeply implanted in the citizens of all countries that they cannot but believe that some day this money must recover a part at least of its former value.... They do not apprehend that the real wealth, which this money might have stood for has been dissipated once and for all. This sentiment is supported by the various legal regulations with which the governments endeavor to control internal prices, and so to preserve some purchasing power for their legal tender....

The preservation of a spurious value for the currency, by the force of law expressed in the regulation of prices, contains in itself, however, the seeds of final economic decay, and soon dries up the sources of ultimate supply. If a man is compelled to exchange the fruits of his labors for paper which, as experience soon teaches him, he cannot use to purchase what he requires at a price comparable to that which he has received for his own products, he will keep his produce for himself, dispose of it to his friends and neighbors as a favor, or relax his efforts in producing it.

A system of compelling the exchange of commodities at what is not their real relative value not only relaxes production, but [also] leads finally to the waste and inefficiency of barter. If, however, a government refrains from regulation and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer.

The effect on foreign trade of price-regulation and profiteer-hunting as cures for inflation is even worse. Whatever may be the case at home, the currency must soon reach its real level abroad, with the result that prices inside and outside the country lose their normal adjustment. The price of imported commodities, when converted at the current rate of exchange, is far in excess of the local price, so that many essential goods will not be imported at all by private agency, and must be provided by the government, which, in re-selling the goods below cost price, plunges thereby a little further into insolvency....

The note circulation of Germany is about 10 times what it was before the war. The value of the mark in terms of gold is about one-eighth of its former value....

It is a hazardous enterprise for a merchant or a manufacturer to purchase with a foreign credit material for which, when he has imported it or manufactured it, he will receive mark currency of a quite uncertain and possibly unrealizable value....

It may be the case, therefore, that a German merchant, careful of his future credit and reputation, who is actually offered a short-period credit in terms of sterling or dollars, may be reluctant and doubtful whether to accept it. He will owe sterling or dollars, but he will sell his product for marks, and his power, when the time comes, to turn these marks into the currency in which he has to repay his debt is entirely problematic. Business loses its genuine character and becomes no better than a speculation in the exchanges, the fluctuations in which entirely obliterate the normal profits of commerce....

Thus the menace of inflationism described above is not merely a product of the war, of which peace begins the cure. It is a continuing phenomenon of which the end is not yet in sight....

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandinghe...inflation.html

So govt. is the answer for most everything in your world?

[banyon]

Originally Posted by sportsshrink

So govt. is the answer for most everything in your world?

Yeah! HRRRRRRRRRR! It can only be one extreme or the other, right?



Your nuanced thinking continues to impress, Sportsshrink.

[BucEyedPea]

Lol could see the quote. That was just on Brainy Quote.

Quotes are always distilled. Keynes still did that, still underestimated politicians and that is still the end result of his ideas.
Kinda like how you on the left have used that quote on those who desire security but don't deserve it, which was actually about gun control in its full context.

[banyon]

Originally Posted by BucEyedPea

Lol could see the quote. That was just on Brainy Quote.

Quotes are always distilled. Keynes still said that, still underestimated politicians and that is still the end result of his ideas.
Kinda like how you on the left have used that quote on those who desire security but don't deserve it, which was actually about gun control in its full context.

No, Keynes didn't say that. He was quoting someone else to talk about how they were wrong. It wasn't "distilled", it was disingenuously shortened. That's the opposite. If you admitted when you were mistaken at least a few times, you might have a bit more credibility.

Frankly, if you actually understood Keynes remotely, you would have known the quote was suspect to begin with.

[Chiefshrink]

Originally Posted by banyon

Yeah! HRRRRRRRRRR! It can only be one extreme or the other, right?



Your nuanced thinking continues to impress, Sportsshrink.

Better look in the mirror when defining extreme

You Libs approach to governing thinking "utopia" will occur by forcing the individual to piss,shit and how much at what time of the day never ceases to amaze me!

Now that is truly EXTREME, banyon!

[BucEyedPea]

The EVIDENCE

http://keynesatharvard.org/book/Keyn...vard-ch04.html

As an undergraduate at Cambridge, John Maynard Keynes banded together with a group of radicals who were destined to become the outstanding Socialist leaders of Great Britain. At the age of 19 his associates included such Fabian Socialists as Bertrand Russell, Leonard Woolf and Ruppert Brooke. At the age of 20 (1903) Keynes became a member of a Fabian group at Cambridge which was headed by G.L. Dickinson, a prominent Fabian Socialist. Dickinson taught history and political subjects at the University. As an undergraduate, Keynes, imitating his father, expressed strong opposition to the principle of private enterprise (Laissez-Faire)...(5)

Professor A.C. Pigou privately coached Keynes on economics. Pigou, although posturing as a classic economist, has also been identified as a Fabian Socialist.(10)...

By 1913 Keynes was installed as Secretary of the Royal Economic Society itself. There he joined hands with the Fabian chief, Sidney Webb, along with Pigou and Marshall to exploit the prestige and respectability of the Royal Economic Society for the benefit of socialism...

Keynes did not keep his Socialist convictions to himself in those days. His opposition to the private enterprise system was well known to London society. Clarence W. Barron, then publisher of the Wall Street Journal, while in London in 1918, made the following observation: “Saw Professor Keynes of the British Treasury . . . Lady Cunard says Keynes is a kind of Socialist and my judgment is that he is a Socialist of the type that does not believe in the family.”(17)...

The Fabian Society made private arrangements with Keynes to publish a special edition of his book for exclusive distribution among radicals throughout the British Empire.(20)

During this same period Keynes’ old Fabian Socialist teacher at Cambridge, G.L. Dickinson, supported Keynes with a radical “front” called the Union of Democratic Control “which opposed retaliatory measures against Germany and reparations.”(21)

In the United States, Fabian Socialists Felix Frankfurter and Walter Lippmann arranged to have The Economic Consequences of the Peace published in a special American edition. Frankfurter brought the manuscript over from England after consultation with Keynes. Graham Wallas, one of the pioneers of the Fabian Socialist movement, consulted with Frankfurter and pronounced the Keynes manuscript a “great work.”(22) Both Wallas and Frankfurter had been instructors at Harvard. Walter Lippmann, who had joined the Fabian Society in 1909, had been one of Wallas’ students at Harvard.(23)

The Economic Consequences became a main prop in the arsenal of Socialist propaganda in the United States. The League for Industrial Democracy and the Rand School for Social Science both urged the Keynes book on their extremist following along with Bolshevik literature such as Lenin’s State and Revolution and Trotsky’s In Defense of Terrorism. As has been noted before, the L.I.D. and the Rand School were American Fabian entities.

As a corollary to the Bolshevik phase of Socialist movement Keynes went through an interesting development. On February 22nd, 1918, Keynes wrote to his mother:

Oh! you’ll be amused to hear that I was offered a Russian Decoration yesterday, a belated one just arrived from the Provisional Government. Being a Bolshevik, however, I thought it more proper to refuse.(24)

It was a common condition during that period for left-wingers to seize on the Bolshevik example as a harbinger of the “new order.” Keynes emotionally fell into the same pattern. At that time he was a high official of the British Treasury and advisor to David Lloyd George on economic policies. Curiously, those of the Provisional Russian Government (Kerensky) were themselves Socialists, but of the non-Bolshevik variety. Like many other socialistic-minded young men, Keynes considered the Kerensky Socialists “reactionaries” and the Bolsheviks “progressives.”...

Keynes proceeded to expound, in clear-cut terms, that private enterprise, as a general rule, was historically finished and that socialized forms were a natural and progressive development of society....

Keynes’ attitude toward the free enterprise system was in all essentials the same as that of the Fabian Socialists. The Fabian Socialist project of allowing private enterprise to operate while gradually chipping away at its foundation until the government takes over all functions was identical with the Keynesian concept. In End of Laissez-Faire Keynes advances the following preliminary softening-up stage as a basis for a future socialism...

Keynes’ disagreement with what he calls “doctrinaire State Socialism” is not one of principle but one of tactics. What he means by doctrinaire Socialism is the Socialism of Marxist groups.(29) These expressions have been used to try to give Keynes an anti-socialist coloring, in order to sell Keynes to non-leftists....

In this same work Keynes showed an early bias (1924) against savings and investments as economic virtues. [Austrian School virtues] From virtues he transformed them into evils:...

My second example relates to Savings and Investment. I believe that some co-ordinated act of intelligent judgment is required as to the scale on which it is desirable that the community as a whole should save, the scale on which these savings should go abroad in the form of foreign investments, and whether the present organization of the investment market distributes savings along the most nationally productive channels. I do not think that these matters should be left entirely to the chances of private judgment and private profits, as they are at present.(31)

Fabian Socialists have long considered those who saved and invested as a stumbling block against the march of Socialism.

Keynes’ concept of controlling society extends beyond political and economic matters. He even advocates social control of the number of children per family:...

Somewhat appalled by the mass terror and the extermination of millions of people, he nevertheless refused to drop his belief in the Socialist goal. ...

American Socialist elements began to see in the economic crisis an opportunity to put across some of their planning devices. The fact that the Republicans were in power under Herbert Hoover was no deterrent to the left-wing. Under the pretense of “economic emergency,” pressure was being brought to bear by leftists, in respectable guise, for building of strong executive powers and creation of special agencies which could act as nuclei for future Socialist operations....

When Roosevelt went off the gold standard Keynes wrote an article in the London Daily Mail (June 1933). The headline declared, “President Roosevelt is Magnificently Right.” Keynes was exultant in his belief that the Roosevelt policies “lead to the managed currency of the future.”(44)...

For years it had been a point of Socialist strategy that complete government control of currency and all money and currency values is a chief lever in moving society toward redistribution of wealth and complete Socialism....

FACT: Keynes was a SOCIALIST and Keynesian Economics is SOCIALIST!

[Chiefshrink]

Originally Posted by banyon

No, Keynes didn't say that. He was quoting someone else to talk about how they were wrong. It wasn't "distilled", it was disingenuously shortened. That's the opposite. If you admitted when you were mistaken at least a few times, you might have a bit more credibility.

Frankly, if you actually understood Keynes remotely, you would have known the quote was suspect to begin with.

Admitting your are in denial is the first step to reality banyon

But then again "truth and reality" are a 'no-no' in the Libs world.

[banyon]

Originally Posted by sportsshrink

Better look in the mirror when defining extreme

You Libs approach to governing thinking "utopia" will occur by forcing the individual to piss,shit and how much at what time of the day never ceases to amaze me!

Now that is truly EXTREME, banyon!

Yeah, I remember where I said that.

But keep imagining anyone who disagrees with you as some cartoonish strawman that is easy for you to knock down if it makes you feel better.

The rest of the adults will continue to discuss matters that aren't all in black-or-white thinking that fits neatly into two sentence angry shouts. You can remain at the kids' table shouting whatever bumper sticker or talk radio sound byte you want to yell.

[BucEyedPea]

I am NOT mistaken. Keynes was a SOCIALIST

I will admit I am wrong when I think I am wrong. I have done so in the past.
I am not wrong on this! Your allegation and accusations are FALSE!