Keynes 1923:

[trapdoor]

I find it humourous to have you lecture Wooley and myself on "classroom economics" when in fact both of us have actually started companies and been involved in both successful and failed startups - whereas you have only ever been an employee.

You don't have to start a business to run one. You don't have to run one to have a decent ground in economics. I started with one of the most famous economics instructors in the United States (at the time), Dr. Walter Johnson of the University of Missouri, and have built on that education with my own study. (And I'm not certain how a record of failed start-ups is better than a successful, non-failure career as an employee/manager).

The "reality on the ground" is that Keynesian policies work and Supply Side policies do not.

And you can find that looking at how Reagan's Tax cuts affected reinvestment in the economy , how GWB's affected the economy vs. how Obama's stimulus worked (and it actually worked even according to the GOP controlled CBO).

The reality "on the ground" is that uncontrolled government spending will lead to financial instability. We're seeing this in Italy and Spain today -- there simply aren't enough revenues to fulfill the programs.

And your model about how the carwash guy can make more profit by advertising as "green" ignores the PRACTICAL REALITY that absent EPA standards on what IS and IS NOT "green" ANY Carwash owner can do that.

The government can set such standards -- it has a constitutional mandate for weights and measures, etcetera. It need not be an "EPA standard" set and enforced via an improper use of the commerce clause.

Except that the owner that externalizes costs undercuts the one who actually is green.

Not in the presence of standards.

This sort of anti-competitive behaviour is today REGULATED. It is part of that mean and nasty regulatory process you object to that is covered by Interstate Commerce.

Your analysis is flawed because you ignore the fact that whether it is Carnegie, or a car wash owner, both are engaged in trade. In Carnegie's case, he was engaged in interstate trade. Commerce clause-based regulations ON INTERSTATE TRADE find no argument from me. Commerce-clause based regulations and laws that cover non-commercial activities that are not interstate in nature are simply distortions of the Constitution.

But under your line of reasoing, Carnegie's successors could avoid that by simply transacting all their rail sales WITHIN THE STATE, and requiring all their customers to set up subsidiary corporations within the state of Manufacture.

And this process would be too bulky to be workable. It's probably regulable, as well, through one or another constitutional method that doesn't involve defining interstate trade as any trade that occurs as you seem to desire.

Now as to college education - at your age the college degree might help a bit, but not that much - your resume path is already the limiting factor.

My resume path is no limiting factor. I have a very sound resume in my career field, and it is likely that I'll increase my income another $12K per year at some point over the next year. I'm financially ahead of where I would have been if I'd had a degree and stayed in my original career field, unless I'd left the field to pursue advanced degrees in that field and become an instructor.

What you miss is that not only would your starting salary have been 50% higher - you would have had FASTER PROMOTION opportunities, because without a degree, you were filtered out for those roles.

I don't miss this, because it IS NOT TRUE. I know what print journalist pay was when I started into the career field. I know what entry-level reporters received, and it was in no case 50 percent higher than what I received when I started. If I had against all odds, gotten a job at a big-city daily as my first out-of-college job, I'd have made about $19K instead of the $13K I actually started at -- but I don't know a single college graduate who could have found an entry-level job at a major daily in 1991. The jobs weren't there. The industry was already beginning its big draw-down, something that spiraled through the 1990s (you saw it yourself when the print edition of the Seattle Intelligencer ceased to exist). So at best, I could have made 25 percent more -- but no one actually could have achieved that "at best" outcome.

Same applies in Media Relations. My partner came out of univ with a law degree and a masters in poli-sci. She stepped into the role of PR Secty to the minister of science in FR. That in turn launched the rest of her career at a much higher level. THAT is what the degrees do. They get you in the door at levels you cannot get into initially without the degree.

Yes, I've spent part of my career training such educated morons in how the media actually works after they've made some sort of mess -- fortunately they were in other agencies, carried the same rank/pay as me, and in some cases they were actually educable.

And since Reagan cut higher ed budgets by 40% and since "Affirmative Action" only accounted for 10% of that disbursment, the likelihood that your failure to get financial aid was because of Affirmative Action is 4:1 against. In Voting for Reagan, YOU VOTED AGAINST YOUR OWN SELF INTERST.

Affirmative Action was 10 percent of admissions, not 10 percent of financial aid disbursements. Even if you were correct, however, my self-interest included issues other than financial aid. If I took a short-term personal hit out of the situation, it was a sacrifice I was willing to make for the recovered economy, military build-up and taxation changes made during the Reagan administration.

And Smith's version of "self-interest" was not that of the greater society, but of INDIVIDUAL self-interest. As you point out, societal self-interest is borne by GOVERNMENT not by the marketplace.

Although Smith laid the foundation for all modern economics, the first guy through the door on a situation is seldom 100 percent right. Smith is not. Nonetheless, most of the time -- in day-to-day business transactions, most people look out adequately for their own self interest in the way they buy and sell things. Government can aid societal interests -- it is no panacea, and it owes its constituents no living. That's on them.

 

[Woolleybugger]

Question: Where do you think the economic justification for lower tax rates and higher spending came from? You will argue that this is a Keynsian strategy but he only recommended it when all else failed and you were trying to avoid a deep recession or depression. He never said to do it as a matter of course.

Answer: Ronald Reagan sold the nation on the idea that lower tax rates would generate higher revenues and that you could spend your way out of the cold war. This idea then became part of the conservative platform, lower taxes, more spending, constant deficits.

Nothing to do with Keynes at all. Everything to do with warped right wing policies.