Jamie_B Posted December 1, 2024 Report Posted December 1, 2024 I am creating this thread because alot of good quality Econ talks seem to get lost in various threads, so I thought this might be a good central repository for things. The idea for this thread is about sharing quality info, for folks to learn from various viewpoints, not anything else, let's try to keep in the spirit of that. I saw this tweet https://x.com/nickgerli1/status/1633536085308366866 So I went to find out about this. Yahoo Finance had an article. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-money-supply-fallen-does-190209835.html That article was in July and they have been calling for a recession since the end of the Pandemic, so who knows, but the stat in the tweet was a bit concerning. Quote
Jamie_B Posted December 1, 2024 Author Report Posted December 1, 2024 Khan Acadamy on Money Supply Quote
Homer_Rice Posted December 12, 2024 Report Posted December 12, 2024 Why Bidenomics Was Such a Bust Quote
Jamie_B Posted December 12, 2024 Author Report Posted December 12, 2024 6 hours ago, Homer_Rice said: Why Bidenomics Was Such a Bust I know I want to keep this thread mostly educational but let me say this in the most educational way possible Larry Summers can go fuck himself. Quote
Jamie_B Posted December 12, 2024 Author Report Posted December 12, 2024 10 hours ago, Homer_Rice said: Why Bidenomics Was Such a Bust He echos some of this article here Quote
T-Dub Posted January 24 Report Posted January 24 Biden was so stupid. Why didn't he just sign an Executive Order to make saying "bird flu" illegal? If no one talks about it, it will go away. Eggs are gonna be SO cheap. Let's get drunk on unpasteurized milk! 🤮 Quote
Homer_Rice Posted January 29 Report Posted January 29 From Stephanie Kelton, MMTer: The Impact of 25% Tariffs on Canadian GDP The Bank of Canada vs Deepseek Quote
|Montana Bengal| Posted January 29 Report Posted January 29 The use of AI is super interesting to me. I was working through a training for work (API related). About half way through the course, they recommend using ChatGPT to simplify the coding we had been working on. I realize this isn't ECON related... Quote
Jamie_B Posted January 30 Author Report Posted January 30 17 hours ago, Homer_Rice said: From Stephanie Kelton, MMTer: The Impact of 25% Tariffs on Canadian GDP The Bank of Canada vs Deepseek This is where AI shines if you know how to give it the proper prompts. Quote
|Montana Bengal| Posted January 30 Report Posted January 30 26 minutes ago, Jamie_B said: This is where AI shines if you know how to give it the proper prompts. My question is this: Is this 'paid' AI access or 'open? Quote
Jamie_B Posted January 30 Author Report Posted January 30 5 minutes ago, Montana Bengal said: My question is this: Is this 'paid' AI access or 'open? Deepseek is open source you can get it on Github. I don't have the first clue how to use it though. I know how to do prompt engineering, no idea how to set this up to do that. https://github.com/deepseek-ai Quote
|Montana Bengal| Posted February 1 Report Posted February 1 @Homer_Rice and @Jamie_B Have either of you come across a good explanation why Trump wants to impose? I know what he says and what the misunderstanding his supporters repeat, but I'm trying to understand what they real drive is. My guess is that this is more of a Project 2025 push and less about Trump deeply understanding the how/why. Quote
Jamie_B Posted February 1 Author Report Posted February 1 1 hour ago, Montana Bengal said: @Homer_Rice and @Jamie_B Have either of you come across a good explanation why Trump wants to impose? I know what he says and what the misunderstanding his supporters repeat, but I'm trying to understand what they real drive is. My guess is that this is more of a Project 2025 push and less about Trump deeply understanding the how/why. I'm sure Homer has deeper thought on it than I do, I would suggest Trump himself doesn't have an ideology other than glorifying himself and using the office to make as much money as he can. But he is stupid as hell and he doesn't read. That makes him easily manipulated especially by flattery. I would suggest the people behind him doing all this stuff are the ones who are far more dangerous than he is. Yes, it's Project 2025. The bigger question is why they want to implement these policies, some of the ideas that the Republican party has had for decades, especially around the idea of privatization. Personally, I think some of it is your standard run-of-the-mill use the government to fleece people then blame the poor and immigrants to get people upset at the wrong people so they can continue to fleece people. But some of it is the genuine ideology that is kind of bat shit insane. Like Ayn Rand Galt's Gulch insane. Quote
|Montana Bengal| Posted February 1 Report Posted February 1 4 minutes ago, Jamie_B said: I'm sure Homer has deeper thought on it than I do, I would suggest Trump himself doesn't have an ideology other than glorifying himself and using the office to make as much money as he can. But he is stupid as hell and he doesn't read. That makes him easily manipulated especially by flattery. I would suggest the people behind him doing all this stuff are the ones who are far more dangerous than he is. Yes, it's Project 2025. The bigger question is why they want to implement these policies, some of the ideas that the Republican party has had for decades, especially around the idea of privatization. Personally, I think some of it is your standard run-of-the-mill use the government to fleece people then blame the poor and immigrants to get people upset at the wrong people so they can continue to fleece people. But some of it is the genuine ideology that is kind of bat shit insane. Like Ayn Rand Galt's Gulch insane. It seems like tariffs, but the desire to change to basically two tax rates is going to crush many lower and middle income families. Am I wrong in thinking there is not really any benefit for 'most' of the US population? Quote
Jamie_B Posted February 1 Author Report Posted February 1 1 minute ago, Montana Bengal said: It seems like tariffs, but the desire to change to basically two tax rates is going to crush many lower and middle income families. Am I wrong in thinking there is not really any benefit for 'most' of the US population? The idea behind tariffs is the repatriation of the manufacturing sector. The thought is that raising the prices of foreign goods coming into the country will encourage people to buy American product which will in turn create American manufacturing jobs. I'm not convinced that the tariffs are necessary to do that. I think Covid showed us that the supply chain and Just in Time ideas are fragile and that we need to have American manufacturing to prevent things like inflation spikes in sectors where we are too dependent on foreign goods when something might happen. I'm thinking specifically about the cost of computer chips that our cars use that caused cars to be so damned expensive during the pandemic when other countries took their health more seriously than we did, but I'm also not convinced that automation and AI wont just do these jobs anyway and wont create actual jobs for actual humans. Quote
T-Dub Posted February 1 Report Posted February 1 All the tariffs in the world won't encourage people to buy American bananas. I doubt there are very many companies in the US manufacturing anything without some kind of foreign product in the supply chain. Our infrastructure is pathetic and Trump's reaponse to something like avian flu is to order scientists to stop talking about it. It would be great if we didn't import everything but we don't have the capability right now and hopefully we don't want to go back to sweatshops operated by children. (Not so sure about that last part, I mean, these won't be white children will they?) Expecting a guy to fix it whose idea of good business is selling unfinished penthouses to Russian mobsters for, yknow, reasons... Probably not gonna happen. Quote
Homer_Rice Posted February 3 Report Posted February 3 On 2/1/2025 at 11:29 AM, Montana Bengal said: @Homer_Rice and @Jamie_B Have either of you come across a good explanation why Trump wants to impose? I know what he says and what the misunderstanding his supporters repeat, but I'm trying to understand what they real drive is. My guess is that this is more of a Project 2025 push and less about Trump deeply understanding the how/why. Here is the view of someone I respect. (Also, click through and read the pdf if you have time.) I don't agree with all of Welsh's conclusions, but he's makes some good points. End Of Empire: Effects & Theory Of Trump’s Tariffs BTW, I'm a protectionist at heart but this is going about it in all the wrong ways. 1 Quote
Homer_Rice Posted February 4 Report Posted February 4 Okay, this morning I watched the tariff YouTube that Jamie posted. I gotta say, it's not very good unless you are tied to classical-neoclassical-libertarian economics. It's kind of like both Keynes and von Mises got together and gave an old-timey 19th century American patriot a beat-down. Not many people really have an in-depth understanding of the history of the economic development of the United States, so I'm going to drop a few hints. As I said previously, I've been biased towards protectionism in general, ever since I had the opportunity to study under Ronald Shaw at Miami U. He's the author of a definitive book on the Erie Canal, "Erie Water West: A History of the Erie Canal, 1792-1854." He was my thesis advisor for a bit, but shit happened and I left Miami before getting it done. One of my big regrets in life. That exposure gave me and enduring interest in the American System of Manufactures and Clay's "American System." Two branches from the same tree. BTW, Shaw was a gentle man and a fine scholar. Rest his soul. ...tbc... 1 Quote
Homer_Rice Posted February 4 Report Posted February 4 I've got some links lined up so we're ready to go! I'm writing for regular folks like you and me, not for the specialists If you read the articles I previously posted, note that Welsh a little, and the pdf link within, in particular, talk about tariffs in the "language" of modern, classroom-acceptable economic terms. It's as if what we know as political economy is a settled matter. And to be frank, that's pretty much the way it is taught. It's all within the framework I mentioned above. You can talk and dispute between those lines, but don't go out of them. So, virtually all modern economic thought is derived from the classical tradition, which is to say the liberal tradition. I don't want to go down that rabbit-hole here, but suffice it to say that I am asserting that the Adam Smith-Malthus-Ricardo-Bentham-Marx-et al, are all talking within those lines. It would be amusing to observe all the heated disputes between doctrines within the parameters of the classical liberal economic tradition if it were not for the fact this these squabbles gave us an entire century of war, death, and destruction. What was WWI about? WWII? The Bolshevik Revolution?" Short answer: Empire and geopolitics--oligarchical elites fighting each other for as much control of the planet as they can muster. Really dig into the causes of WWI if you want see this plainly for what it is. ...tbc... 1 Quote
Homer_Rice Posted February 4 Report Posted February 4 God Dammit. Why the fuck does this site log people out so quickly? I hit the submit button and get a screen that is a white cow in a blizzard. I'll reconstruct later as I now have to go do some shit. Quote
T-Dub Posted February 4 Report Posted February 4 5 hours ago, Homer_Rice said: God Dammit. Why the fuck does this site log people out so quickly? I hit the submit button and get a screen that is a white cow in a blizzard. I'll reconstruct later as I now have to go do some shit. It usually autosaves so if you click in the reply window again whatever you were writing should reappear. Does for me at least Quote
Homer_Rice Posted February 4 Report Posted February 4 5 minutes ago, T-Dub said: It usually autosaves so if you click in the reply window again whatever you were writing should reappear. Does for me at least Maybe I'm going about it all wrong. I try to be aware that this might happen because it has happened to me on a number of occasions. I should remember to copy/paste into notepad when I am writing something long-ish. But I'm dumb enough that most of the time I forget until it's too late. Anyhow this morning I forget to copy/paste and when I submitted--nothing. I refreshed the page so I could log back in and my stuff had disappeared. Maybe I should open another tab and re-login there, then try what you suggest. Quote
Homer_Rice Posted February 4 Report Posted February 4 Okay, some links, then I'll write in notepad and come back to paste. On High-Wage Doctrine: Unions, the High-Wage Doctrine, and Employment - Lowell E. Gallaway (pdf) By our bootstraps: Origins and effects of the high-wage doctrine and the minimum wage - Taylor and Selgin (download the pdf) HAWB 1800s - The Doctrine of High Wages - How America Was Built - NBBooks (I have read this guy for decades, trusted source) Buy This Book: America's Protectionist Takeoff 1815-1914: The Neglected American School of Political Economy - Michael Hudson Hudson, on this topic, condensed by AI (Perplexity--which I occasionally use because it lists the sources): Search query: "high wage doctrine" + "michael hudson" 1 1 Quote
Homer_Rice Posted February 4 Report Posted February 4 Also, another link to a long Hudson interview. Wide-ranging and worth listening to, even in bits and pieces over some time: Global Economic History in 2.5 Hours (This link has a transcript for readers.) 1 Quote
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