JJ Husker
Donor
Malth, I am intrigued by some of your posts on the economy. I was going to let this one go but decided to come back to it after reading another one of your posts that said something to the effect of "tax dollars don't support anything". Originally I thought you were some kind of crackpot (probably still do to be honest) but it does appear that you are serious about these claims you are making. To be honest I really don't see you swaying me on these issues but I do promise to keep an open mind and consider what you say. I have a couple questions/explanations that may help you enlighten me or me you.Please point out where I am factually incorrect. Or if I need to clarify something. I see a lot of LOL THATS STUPID replies with absolutely no substance behind them.Can it truly be considered a 'view' when the ramblings do not even hint at a modicum of understanding in Macro or Micro economics?If there are more people with the same economic views as Malth, we are screwed.
Obama is moderate if you turn off fox news for a day. Seriously, get some freaking perspective.I guess I will apologize for hijacking this thread. That wasn't my intent. I saw some comments I wanted to respond to and it went out of control. I cannot continue a debate when the concepts introduced make absolutely no sense to me. If that means I lose, fine. I guess I am dumbfounded as to how to counter statements like; Obama is a moderate or proposing that we don't have to live within our means because we have the ability to keep printing money. For me that is like saying the Huskers wear red and then somebody claims otherwise and asks me to prove it. Really, I give up. Sorry this got off track.
You are not making much of an effort to understand what I'm saying. I understand where you're coming from on many of the points you make, because I used to believe they were true as well. When I first read that "federal taxes don't fund anything", I thought "that's stupid" and it must have been nonsense. But I kept reading anyway, and when it finally clicked, I couldn't believe how f'ing simple it is.
The reason I said that you need to prove that deficit spending causes inflation, is that I understand it's intuitive and it makes sense. Each additional dollar that is created dilutes the value of the rest of the dollars. It's a claim that should be easy to quantify, by finding correlations between higher deficit spending and higher than average inflation, right? Well, good luck finding that data, because it doesn't exist. It is not factually correct. As I mentioned earlier, if you did something ridiculous like writing a everyone a check for a million dollars, then you may be able to make a case, but at our current spending levels, inflation is NOT an issue at all.
I would like to make it clear that I am not advocating that we start creating several trillion dollars or anything ridiculous. It's just that terms like "living within our means" doesn't really apply to an entity that can create money at will and doesn't need to be paid back. The deficit is merely a reflection of the money supply.
1- If tax dollars don't pay for or support anything, what happens to the thousands of dollars I send the government every quarter of every year? I make my checks out to the US Treasury and they sure as heck get cashed and the money comes out of my bank account. If my funds don't get used to pay for anything by the government, where do those funds go?
2- You have stated that dumping money into the economy (ie stimulus etc) does not / will not cause inflation. You posted some neat little graphs that showed no relationship between the 2. I would posit that recent stimulus to the economy has not necessarily caused inflation but rather has been eaten up by offsetting deeper recession, I would also state that, in an economy that is not on the ropes, dumping this money into the economy would cause inflation. If a billion dollars is added to the economy, that will cause a billion dollars (less the amount people/companies put into long term savings) growth in demand. Can we agree that higher demand will result in lower supply and thus increasing prices? BTW, increasing prices is also known as inflation. I may not be up on new economic "theories" but has the relationship of supply and demand changed? I claim additional money (not a result of natural growth) in the economy does cause inflation and/or offset the opposite and is not a natural market force and it should be avoided at virtually all costs. And, I don't mean to be picky but, more graphs of questionable motives and sources are not what I'm looking for. Just explain it.