Do you really think big government and capitalism are opposed to each other? That's a special kind of stupid.

Capitalism is the marriage of government and business. How is the government in any way opposing business? The past four years the government has been writing laws to strengthen management and weaken workers, hundreds and hundreds of them.

It's definitely at pendulum that goes back-and-forth between labor and management. Their interests necessarily balance each other but labor hasn't been able to swing back since the death of unionism.

Trump is a symptom of capitalism. He is a big red canker sore on America's penis. I just think this is funny.




Aided the individuals who are caring for these individuals by supplying necessary PPE wear masks etc. He still won't wear a mask. He will be walking and be the only the person without a mask. The exemplar of our behavior won't follow his own medical expert's medical advice.

Remember when his personal doctor said that a geriatric obese man would be the healthiest individual to become president? That's what he believes lol.

Now people close to him are popping up with it. It would honestly be a disaster if he got it, but he is trying to for some reason.

There is a lot he could have done. There are entire disciplines devoted to what to do in this situation. For one he didn't have to undermine the governorers or pretend to be their boss which nobody talked about how weird that was, because narcissistic acting out has become so normalized in our ruler.

This post was edited by Skinned on May 12 2020 09:56am

Modern Monetary Theory
Economy is good: raise taxes, slow growth a bit and build your coffers
Econmy is bad: Use money raised during good times to increase spending to keep money moving so the economy stays on its feet

Modern Republican Theory
Economy is Good: Lower taxes, increase spending, so it goes even higher
Economy is Bad: Get voted out of office, blame Democrat for spending money so the economy stays bad until we get in office

Like clockwork.

You forget get indignant because said Democrat didn't fix it fast enough and to their liking.

Open up an economics book. Government spending crowds out private investment, this is fact. It's literally the difference between communism and capitalism. Public ownership vs private. If government starts to take bigger pieces of the pie because it has an infinite supply of fiat currency then businesses can't compete, eventually some of these private companies start to die out. The longer we keep everything closed the more the private side suffers and shrivels away.

this simplistic view ignores govt contracting tho. the govt doesnt make masks, or roads, or really anything. the govt facilitates these products through privately owned businesses.

its true that in a general sense the govt can restrict the amount of products made if the deem them unnecessary, and in contrast the general public could demand more and directly pay the corporations to create them. but the opposite can also be true, the govt can prop up industries that the public would never come out of pocket to support. not many people wanted to pay street sweepers in the time of the new deal, but the govt paid them to lower unemployment. in an era of the most highly complex analytics we've ever had its plausible a reasonable balance can be struck.

the modern critique of govt controlled demand should be that it creates unnecessary costs from red tape, rather than that it inherently chokes out business. the biggest part of the classic view that's now outdated is that govt couldnt react in real time nor gauge demand of the population well, but in an internet era both are changing rapidly.

What you described is classical Keynesianism. "Modern Monetary Theory" (note the capitalization) is the name of a recent theoretical framework supported by progressives like Bernie and AOC and essentially amounts to voodoo economics.
No biggie, just wanted to point it out because the difference between the two is important.

Generally speaking, one can be sceptical of Keynesianism and, at the same time, reject the irresponsible Republican economic policy.


Btw:

I thought the Obama economy was already super-duper great when Trump took office, so that Obama (and not Trump) deserves all the credit for solid growth and great unemployment numbers?!

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on May 12 2020 10:31am

You have the sequence mixed up. What's currently happening is government essentially shut down most of the economy, the longer this goes on the more strain this puts on businesses that have slim margin/debt obligations they can't meet. We have daily large businesses filing for bankruptcy. You have 20 million people that were reliant on private entities for a paycheck which produce an economic output now relying on government which doesn't produce an economic output and is financing this with printing money not some value adding function. The longer we keep everything shut down the longer private entities will falter, pretty sure that's not something we disagree on. So what happens is government has to step in to fill that void which continuously shifts the economy from one largely capitalistic-private owned to one that's socialistic and increasingly reliant on government. Like the GDP equation this year will shift very heavily to government contribution meanwhile all it's other parts (consumption, investment, net exports) is going down the drain.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on May 12 2020 11:01am

C+I+G+NX

gauging what happened in many industries like meat packing if the govt never shut down the businesses generally many more companies would have been forced to close due to outbreaks. just imagine the larger infected number with current hysteria if bars, restaurants, large retailers, etc were still open. and if places like Macys were open now they'd be operating at a loss daily, with no govt bonds to offset the losses. if they're allowed to be open and not making money its their fault with less (or possible no) taxpayer bailouts.

we're seeing far lower mortality rates than we thought, but the hysteria is still disproportionately high. outbreaks in private firms would still require closures due to this hysteria.

This post was edited by thesnipa on May 12 2020 11:30am

Communism = PE+NI+SE+S