Mar

30

One sees that everything is topsy turvy with the service reform that repubs are now pointing to. Apparently the agrarian reformers have put a framework in place where a new plan must be revenue neutral or else it has to subject to whatever non-reconciliation is. To the layman that means it's a lot easier to get a revenue neutral plan in. Washington loves that because gov spending won't be decreased. But the fly in the ointment is that any proposal to reduce service rates will generate enormous increased revenues through growth and compliance and proper business activities rather than those designed to reduce payments to the service. Supposedly the "non partisan" budget office made the congress agree that there can't be dynamic scoring. So the Lafferian correlation between reductions in service rates and growth can't be taken into consideration. Thus, the whole thing has an improper foundation, a twisted acorn that must grow into a twisted oak. I've found that all things built on improper foundations eventually crumble.

Rocky Humbert writes: 

Since taking office, I count that to-date, Trump has eliminated over 90 government regulations; some of which are very significant and positive from an economic growth perspective (if one is inclined to view the cost/benefit ratio of such regulations as high).

Rocky wonders whether Vic has any hot water in his Connecticut manse. Why? Because he always seems to have a bucket of cold water at the ready.

Ralph Vince adds: 

And further to Rocky's point comma it is estimated that these regulations costing economy about to trillion dollars a year. That's one eighth of our economy. Cut that in half reduce half of these regulations and you see an immediate 6% bump in GDP. In my case I have spent over 150 hours in the last month simply wrestling with the regulations caused by Dodd-Frank. Those who oppose the president on the political scale to sew an ideological grounds but in the nuts and bolts world of trying to get anything done and America the regulations are stultifying.

That 6% bump in GDP is before any kind of multiplier is put on it. Can again go back and look at any of the great social programs have been started and worked successfully in America from Social Security to Medicare to Medicaid they all coincide with double-digit GDP growth, something I personally and looking for between now and January of 2019. Taking a machete to the Jungle of regulations anyone trying to start or run a business or even so much as take out a mortgage has to contend with, as the numbers illustrate goes a long way towards getting his towards that double-digit growth, and possibly then some type of healthcare plan in America. People have been flying to this putting the cart before the horse.

Kim Zussman shares the article: 

"How to Engineer a Trump Boom"

Cut taxes, deregulate, build roads, bridges and airports—and don't start a 1930-style trade war.

By ROBERT J. BARRO

Stefan Jovanovich writes: 

Mr. Barro is looking through the large end of the historical telescope. Trade wars only occur when countries are already having shooting wars; they begin and end when one country loses all its money. The 20th century's "trade war" began in 1914 and only ended in 1945.

What "explains" the 1920s is that the one country in the world that had any money - the United States - decided that it could afford to accept other countries' central banks' valuations of their domestic currencies. What explains the 1930s is that Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt both agreed that the way to solve the collapse of the Wall Street credit bubble was for the U.S. to join the rest of the civilized world and undertake its own default on its domestic currency.

When economists now say that countries can inflate their way out of their debts, they are referring to the magic of the defaults of nearly all the international loans issued after the Great War. No one got paid back because the valuations accepted for the initial loans (mostly from the U.S.) were as fictional as the current Venezuelan exchange rate; and the Americans decided that having the U.S. Treasury own all its citizens' money was the ideal way to revive American credit exchanges.

Academically trained economists insist on treating political economy as a science, yet they believe, without evidence, that international trade was "free" after World War I. They see a world without quotas, currency controls and imperial preferences after 1918 as a kind of mystic vision that is true regardless of any actual facts. They believe this version of history with even more fervor than LDS believe in the story of Joseph Smith and the golden plates. The Mormons, God Bless Them, consider their gospel a matter of faith; Professor Barro and his colleagues must pretend that it is all somehow Reed Smoot's fault.


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2 Comments so far

  1. linh tu on March 30, 2017 9:05 pm

    This is what Trump is doing :if you are trying to figure out what regulations impose costs without also providing any benefits, and you hire people from regulated industries who know about the costs (”at least see where the friction is”) but who don’t see the benefits, then they will tell you to get rid of the regulations. Ideally you would also talk to people who know where the benefits are. It’s also a nice illustration of my theory that there are two kinds of regulation: Custom regulations, which are created to serve some specific goal; and bulk regulations, which add “friction to the system without accompanying it with significant benefits,” are the subject of all discussions of “regulation,” and do not exist.

  2. Robert McAdams on March 31, 2017 12:41 pm

    Stefan,

    Can you suggest some good reading to expound on this point?

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