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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Here's a fun opinion piece
on Pelosi and AOC. Some choice bits:
"No one can win the war individually. It takes the wisdom of the elders and young people's energy"
I get that Nancy Pelosi gets a lot of bullshit criticism from the right because she's a woman, socially progressive, her age, and by just being a democrat. And she definitely deserves all the credit she's due when she blow-torched Trump during the Shutdown.
On the other hand, when it comes to economic issues, I have serious doubts she'll do the right thing. She championed Pay-go
, an austerity measure that would force Congress to cut programs or raise taxes to the amount that any new program introduced would obviously raise the deficit. Well, how come the Republicans didn't have to show how they were going to pay for the 2017 tax cuts? Which, by the way, is going to push the deficit to $1 trillion
. Pay-go preemptively kneecaps a lot of what's on the progressive agenda.
On the other hand, when it comes to economic issues, I have serious doubts she'll do the right thing. She championed Pay-go, an austerity measure that would force Congress to cut programs or raise taxes to the amount that any new program introduced would obviously raise the deficit. Well, how come the Republicans didn't have to show how they were going to pay for the 2017 tax cuts? Which, by the way, is going to push the deficit to $1 trillion. Pay-go preemptively kneecaps a lot of what's on the progressive agenda.
And yet most of the progressive caucus supported it, obviously, PAYGO is shitty and encouraging Austerity sentiment is bad but the fact they could tolerate it is telling.
I think when it comes to Pelosi the good strongly outweighs the bad.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jan 27th 2019 at 3:54:16 PM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangTrue. At the same time, though, AOC and Ro Khanna voted against it
. How anyone chooses to interpret this (AOC and Khanna vs the progressive caucus) is up to them.
In general, disagreeing with each other is totally fine. But Pay-go isn't a small matter. It affects everything that progressives want to implement. But like @Septimus Heap said, as long as Pay-go rules are overridden when it comes time to put forward our ideas, great. But, I still don't see the political advantage of even having Pay-go in the first place.
Also its not like taxes cant be raised under the rules, the previous rule said you HAD to make cuts.....
Raising taxes on the upper brackets would proably be able to cover most of the things to be done.
AND, pay-go gives just the excuse to do that.
"Well here is that healthcare reform, sadly the rules say we have to raise the taxes on multi-millionares to cover it, so what else can we do."
Edited by Imca on Jan 27th 2019 at 1:47:51 AM
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Pretty much my thoughts, although given that here in Britain we've had considerably more austerity than the USA I think it's an insane idea to even think about writing rules like this. Sadly the Labour Party still is for some reason, don't ask me why because it's not like the media isn't going to slate them as "fiscally irresponsible idiots who will bankrupt the country" anyway.
I am somewhat suspicious since rules like that have in the past been used as reinforcement for the centre and right wings of nominally left parties to block leftist initiatives - a good example is France's 3% deficit limit
that became the Eurozone's 3% deficit limit later, it was literally made up on the spot so Mitterand could have something authoritative to say to "the ministers that walk into his office asking for money". No economic sense behind it whatsoever.
Probably just paranoia on my part given Pelosi seems reasonable, but I would vote against this if I was a lefty Democrat.
That reinforces the somewhat undesirable framework that says we need the rich people around as money pumps for government programs and thus they should be mollycoddled and called "wealth creators" and such. Complete bollocks, but I'd rather not give the right free ammunition by sticking unnecessary taxes into programs to make the arbitrary numbers line up. Obviously taxes are necessary and you can't run infinite deficits forever, but it doesn't have to be 1:1 with spending and pretending it does just furthers the household budget fallacy.
Edited by DeathorCake on Jan 27th 2019 at 9:50:29 AM
"True. At the same time, though, AOC and Ro Khanna voted against it. How anyone chooses to interpret this (AOC and Khanna vs the progressive caucus) is up to them."
The general consensus of this thread was that they voted against it knowing it would overwhelmingly pass, so they could afford to take a principled stand on Pay-Go. Had the measure actually been in threat of not passing, they would have voted for it since the good drastically outweighed the bad and, as noted, there is a way around Pay-Go should it actually come up.
Thing is the correct target to have when you have your own currency isn't "a deficit of X" or even "X%" it's "fully employing as many available resources as possible with no demand-pull inflation". That's basically impossible to get exactly right, especially when you add in private sector debt in foreign currencies and various other financial market shenanigans, but targeting some arbitrary number in the national accounts means you aren't even aiming in vaguely the right direction, especially when that number is zero.
Hitting that target means money steadily draining out of the country from America's trade deficit and not being replaced by government spending, leading to an even bigger private debt bubble than America already has as households or firms borrow money into existence from banks to maintain living standards or production.
Precisely. Although in the Eurozone the countries don't have their own currencies or central banks worthy of the name anymore, so they actually do have to watch their spending. Not anywhere near as harshly as they have been, but it is theoretically possible for them to go bankrupt if the ECB refuses to break it's treaties again to create money. Still, not the case in America and even if it was the rule's still pointless. It's fractal economic illiteracy, it spectacularly fails on any of the three or four different levels you might try to analyse it on.
Edited by DeathorCake on Jan 27th 2019 at 10:15:55 AM
It is muddled thinking, and a choke chain around the neck of the economy is what it is.
Taxes exist to draw money out of circulation, not to fund expenses, and the economy can really easily need there to be added a lot more than "3 % of gdp" worth of money to the economy in a given year, so making a rule against it is bloody silly. It would help alleviate the confusion if governments funded more of their deficits with direct money creation instead of bonds - The only real point to governments taking out loans is that it is a form of money creation which is easy to roll back if you overdo it, but that is, frankly, so far from being a concern these days as to be a joke.
Edited by Izeinsummer on Jan 27th 2019 at 2:14:37 AM
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Both have debt in foreign currencies, the Euro for Greece and US Dollar for Venezuela. Venezuela also had their only real export crushed by a combination of oil price drops, sanctions and corruption. America is in no danger of being overwhelmed by a tide of debt denominated in Pound Sterling or Yen or anything else anytime soon, neither is any country with a stable productive base and their own currency like the UK or Japan (200%+ debt/GDP, deflation problem, negative interest rates, completely the opposite of what austerian theory predicts) and especially not the USA, they're the global reserve asset.
Edited by DeathorCake on Jan 27th 2019 at 10:32:18 AM
Certainly, and I totally understand why they would vote against it. I simply view it as a protest vote, the Progressive caucus mostly voted for it because they most likely received assurances that it wouldn't be used to sabotage progressive economic legislation.
I'd still prefer it not exist at all but I think it's tolerable instead of disastrously awful.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangIf Britain had adopted the euro, this would be a different story. Since it retains a sovereign currency, however, it is immune to hyperinflation crises, at least from the point of view of fiscal policy. It is still possible for it to happen, but it requires that:
- The country be unable to supply its own domestic consumption and/or production needs, forcing it to import foreign goods and services.
- The country's own currency cease to be accepted in international trade.
- The country run up large debts denominated in currencies that it does not control.
The only way the UK could suffer a currency crisis right now is if the terms of Brexit become so onerous that it is literally unable to trade in pounds with the EU.
Now, there are certainly plenty of ways to fuck up your own domestic economy regardless of the value of your own currency. That's not what I'm talking about here. The crisis in Greece (and to a lesser extent in Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain) was (is) a debt deflation death spiral caused when cash inflows that drove up domestic wages ceased and the country suffered a loss of consumer demand. Its Euro-denominated debt did not increase, but its GDP fell, and this undercut the denominator in the debt-to-GDP ratio, triggering automatic sanctions. Since it could not borrow to sustain its domestic consumption, it was forced to cut spending (austerity), further reducing its GDP and increasing its debt ratio.
The rest of the EU, driven by Germany and its obsession with inflation, refused to take the correct steps to resolve the crisis: increase the money supply and provide fiscal stimulus to the debtor countries to help their economies recover. Instead, it demanded punishment, much the way a parent might beat their errant child to set an example for the others. This exacerbated the crisis and made Greece increasingly unable to pay its own debts. Now, it's certainly true (and greatly publicized by the European media) that there were serious problems in the Greek economy and government that contributed to the crisis, but it's a blatant case of scapegoating. You don't fix an ailing patient by shooting them in the head.
Anyway, the point is that the U.S., Britain, and Japan are in positions where their national debt is issued in their own currency, and thus it is literally impossible for them to suffer a crisis like those of Greece, post-WWI Germany, or Zimbabwe unless their own governments do something catastrophically stupid like refuse to issue more public debt (as nearly happened a few times in the U.S. during Obama's terms) or intentionally default on that debt... or, alternatively, they suffer a massive loss of domestic production capacity.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 27th 2019 at 7:44:43 AM
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