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Voxiversity 5.2: Inflation and Keynesian Economics

This should be an interesting discussion. The conclusion will initially strike some as a priori insane, but I encourage everyone to consider the empirical evidence before issuing a diagnosis. I may need to revisit this one after the critics have shared their presumably constructive input, so I look forward to hearing everyone’s take on it.

In case you’re wondering why these esoteric and pedantic debates over definitions are of interest to me or why they are important, consider this recent interview with Ben Bernanke. The relevant statement is highlighted in bold.

Pelley: Some people think the $600 billion is a terrible idea.

Bernanke: Well, I know some people think that but what they are doing is they’re looking at some of the risks and uncertainties with doing this policy action but what I think they’re not doing is looking at the risk of not acting.

Pelley: Many people believe that could be highly inflationary. That it’s a dangerous thing to try.

Bernanke: Well, this fear of inflation, I think is way overstated. We’ve looked at it very, very carefully. We’ve analyzed it every which way. One myth that’s out there is that what we’re doing is printing money. We’re not printing money. The amount of currency in circulation is not changing. The money supply is not changing in any significant way. What we’re doing is lowing interest rates by buying Treasury securities. And by lowering interest rates, we hope to stimulate the economy to grow faster. So, the trick is to find the appropriate moment when to begin to unwind this policy. And that’s what we’re gonna do.”

It should be clear that the Fed Chairman does not define inflation in any of the Keynesian manners described in this video. But is his definition correct? That is the $600 billion question.

WND column

Wikileaks is Freedom in Action

I write not to condemn Julian Assange, but to praise him. More than that, I write to accuse those so-called conservatives who have waxed hysterical in their contemptible fulminations against Assange and his organization, Wikileaks, of being ideological frauds, enemies of democracy and false friends of human liberty.

One of the favorite accusations made by the totalitarian bootlickers who condemn Assange’s free speech is that by making information available to the public about the actions of certain individuals that were recorded by other individuals, he has blood on his hands due to some mysterious transitive property that no one has yet managed to rationally explain. And the idea that an Australian citizen can be a traitor to the United States of America is simply absurd. These are abuses of logic so severe that it is a wonder the corpses of Aristotle, Descartes and Gödel do not spin right out of their graves and tear those making these ridiculous arguments limb-from-limb in righteous zombie-philosopher retribution.

ADDENDUM: For an example of incoherent conservative insanity on the subject, read my WND colleague Barbara Simpson’s call to execute the Australian for committing “treason, with a capital ‘T'” against the United States.

VPFL Week 12

95 Bane Sidhe (8-4-0)
36 Winston Reverends (4-8-0)

89 Moundsview Meerkats (3-8-1)
32 Valders Quixotes (8-4-0)

75 Greenfield Grizzlies (6-5-1)
72 Judean Rhyneauxs (6-6-0)

49 RR Redbeards (5-6-1)
46 Blackmouth Banksters (7-5-0)

68 MS Swamp Spartans (6-5-1)
43 Meigs Marauders (5-7-0)

The Meerkats may be out of it for the season, but that doesn’t mean they can’t skeletonize a frontrunner. The league-leading Quixotes were shredded like a cow in the Amazon by the Piranha of the Serengeti last week, but the Meerkats remained six points shy of the scoring the rarely seen First in Points, Last in the League award, just behind the suddenly fearsome Grizzlies who have ridden the Sanchize to win four straight and move into playoff position.

Looks like a bang-up finish with six teams battling for four spots.

Let the women work

Calculated Risk presents a chart showing that the percentage of men aged 25-54 participating in the labor force declined to a record low of 88.8% in November.  And that was BEFORE the release of the new World of Warcraft expansion.  The chart goes back to 1948 and shows that the idea women first entered the workforce en masse after WWII or in the 1970s simply isn’t true; about one-third of women have always had to work.  The increase in the percentage of women participating in the workforce is predominantly the result of young women who previously got married and had children while being supported by a husband now working instead of or in addition to having a family.  The chart is also a little misleading in that it only measures to age 54.  One of the chief impacts of more women entering the workforce is that men over the age of 60, who had previously been much more inclined to work, exited the workforce en masse thanks to the establishment of Social Security and Medicare.

So, as I have often said, the primary benefit to society from employing young women is to pay for old men collecting retirement.  In return for which the societal costs include declining marriage rates, skyrocketing illegitimacy rates, lower average wages for both men and women, reduced productivity, and demographic decline.  This would not appear to be either a rational or sustainable policy for any nation, especially considering that the first attempted solution, importing third-world workers to replace the missing children, has not worked out well for any nation that has adopted it.  The choice is as stark as it is simple.  Either abandon the notion of sexual equality and return to the traditional model where 70% of women are occupied with raising families or experience complete societal collapse.

On a tangential note, I saw this in the comment’s at CR’s place.  I don’t see it as a positive indicator: A friend picked up a hitch-hiker in the National Park last week and gave him a ride, and it turned out he was a marine that had done 3 tours in the sandbox, but apparently our military is getting picky about who they allow to re-up, and he told my friend, “I hope something happens in Korea, so I can go back to work.”  It is a time-honored fact of history that when men cannot find jobs, the rulers of society attempt to keep them occupied killing people somewhere else.

I chuckled, I did

The Washington Post issues another call for an opponent to run against Obama in the Democratic primary. To, you know, “save the Obama presidency”. Right.

But there is a real way to save the Obama presidency: by challenging him in the 2012 presidential primaries with a candidate who would unambiguously commit to a well-defined progressive agenda and contrast it with the Obama administration’s policies. Such a candidacy would be pooh-poohed by the media, but if it gathered enough popular support – as is likely given the level of alienation among many who were the backbone of Obama’s 2008 success – this campaign would pressure Obama toward much more progressive positions and make him a more viable 2012 candidate. Far from weakening his chances for reelection, this kind of progressive primary challenge could save Obama if he moves in the desired direction. And if he holds firm to his current track, he’s a goner anyway.

Seriously, I don’t see how you can look at what has quite clearly in the process of happening over the last six months and not realize that Obama is going to either drop out or get kicked out by the Democrats. No one, least of all the Democratic elders, are in fear of the reaction of the 11% of black voters which has nowhere else to turn and also has one of the lowest turnout rates in the electorate.

Low hurdles

I was bemused when I checked Channel Vox this morning preparatory to uploading the next video in the inflation series and saw that it had won a YouTube award. It appears Voxiversity was #3 Most Subscribed Channel in Italia this week. Of course, I would have needed 360x more to have reached the same ranking in the USA. Clearly the next video should be entitled Victoria’s Secret Economics: Alessandra Ambrosio Explains Inflation.

But since I’m on the subject, I should mention there is a slight change of plans with regards to the 5.2 video. I am extremely loathe to make a case that depends upon anyone accepting my assertions undemonstrated, so the second video will not concern the credit-money definition of inflation as I’d originally planned, but will instead demonstrate the inutility of the four – yes, four – primary Keynesian definitions of inflation. The third video will examine the Monetarist definition, and only then, once the case against the various mainstream definitions is concluded, will I explain and defend my contention that the correct definition of inflation is an increase in the money supply plus outstanding debt.

Anyhow, I’m planning to do the recording tonight and upload it sometime this weekend, in case you’re interested.

Projection Anonymous

Charles Blow initiates a futile embargo:

This is it. This is the last time I’m going to write the name Sarah Palin until she does something truly newsworthy, like declare herself a candidate for the presidency. Until then, I will no longer take part in the left’s obsessive-compulsive fascination with her, which is both unhealthy and counterproductive…. People on the left seem to need her, to bash her, because she is, in three words, the way the left likes to see the right: hollow, dim and mean. But since she’s feeding on the negativity, I suggest three other words: get over it.

I never cease to find it amusing watching one clueless, shallow, and ignorant individual castigate others for their clueless and shallow ignorance. While Blow is correct and the attacks from the Left and the elite moderates of the Republican party only add to Palin’s already formidable popular appeal, it’s far too late to declare a moratorium on discussing her. No one cares if she’s hollow, (she’s a POLITICIAN, after all, and is therefore hollow by definition), no one of any political sophistication believes she’s any more dim than the average politician, and she’s demonstrably far less mean than her critics.

The reality is that there is a high probability that Palin will win the next presidential election if she a) elects to run and b) continues to strongly align herself with the opinion of the majority of Americans. This isn’t because she is a secret genius, but because intelligence is vastly overrated when it comes to the public appeal of politicians. Consider: the two most intelligent presidents of the modern era were Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon. And the last two presidents whose intelligence was methodically denigrated by the media both won second terms.

The main reason Palin enjoys such strong support is very simple and obvious. People do not see her as a Wall Street whore, unlike nearly every other national politician. Yes, she publicly supported the 2008 bailouts as John McCain’s running mate, but charges of hypocrisy are not going to stick because everyone knows that a vice-presidential candidate is supposed to echo the presidential candidate’s opinion, not express his own. Obama, Clinton, Biden, Romney, and every other national political figure who is taken seriously as a presidential candidate are all seen as Wall Street whores, with the sole exception of the New Jersey governor, Christie. Palin may be one as well, but she is not perceived that way now.

To win in 2012, whether Obama drops out or is defeated in the Democratic primaries or not, all Palin has to do is stay on the right side of the masses on immigration and the banks. She’d do better if she’d come out against the ongoing military occupations, but she can’t be harmed on the issue since every other potential rival supports them as well. She’ll come in for tremendous criticism, of course, if she refuses to give way on the two central issues but as Blow is among the first to finally notice, that won’t hurt her in the slightest.

Inherit the Science

Smarmy evolutionists and socially handicapped atheists almost invariably bring up the Scopes trial when confronting religious individuals or anyone skeptical about the theory of evolution by (probably) natural selection. Of course, as is reliably the case, they know next to nothing about it, it is merely a social marker upon which they’ve learned to place importance in the course of their cultural indoctrination. Jonah Goldberg brings to our attention a few of the more interesting aspects of the science that the defenders of the secular faith still deem so vital to teach in public schools:

“The Races of Man. – At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. These are the Ethiopian or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest race type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America….

Improvement of Man. – If the stock of domesticated animals can be improved, it is not unfair to ask if the health and vigor of the future generations of men and women on the earth might be improved by applying to them the laws of selection. This improvement of the future race has a number of factors in which as individuals may play a part. These are personal hygiene, selection of healthy mates, and the betterment of the environment.

Eugenics. – When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand. The most important of these is freedom from germ diseases which might be handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, syphilis, that dread disease which cripples and kills hundreds of thousands of innocent children, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity. The science of being well born is called eugenics.”

The Remedy. – If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.
– George William Hunter, A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems (New York, 1914): pp. 193-196, 253-254, 261-263.

So, the next time someone smirks and brings up Scopes, the monkey trial, or Inherit the Wind in an attempt to assume a posture of scientific superiority, don’t forget to ask them which aspect of elementary biology they deem the most important to teach to American schoolchildren, the mechanism of natural selection, the moral imperative of artificial selection, the criminalization of unfit breeding, the forcible placement of the inferior in asylums, or the supremacy of the white race.

The climate scam is dead

Tokyo says no to Kyoto:

The brief statement, made by Jun Arima, an official in the government’s economics trade and industry department, in an open session, was the strongest yet made against the protocol by one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases.

He said: “Japan will not inscribe its target under the Kyoto protocol on any conditions or under any circumstances.”

The so-called science was always fictional and fraudulent and the economic implications were clearly insane, so it’s about time that the politics began to reflect those realities. As Europe enters what has started off as its coldest winter in 100 years and the global economy collapses into depression, it doesn’t matter how much or how frantically the true believers in global warming wave their hands and agree to concoct new scientific consensuses. The Chicago air exchange has been vaporized and the science-scammers’ gravy train is about to be buried under snow.

Remember this the next time the science fetishists tell you that a scientific consensus is something upon which you not only can, but must, rely.

2018 and 2022

Russia? That makes a degree of sense given the way in which Russian commodity wealth is making itself felt throughout the sports world. And Vladimir Putin is nothing if not a sports enthusiast. But Qatar? It’s not as if I was planning on attending the World Cup no matter where it is, but an Arab country seems like a rather unusual choice of venue given the present difficulties from Afghanistan to Iran.