You Cannot Win An Election With Strong Disapprovals Like This

[Wonkish1]

Why pay $50k in government expenditure to create a new job when you could create a job for only $5k in expenditure? You wouldn't.

A hypothetical statement laden with assumptions.

Please enlighten us!

And the person that agrees to that simple stream of thought would have just agreed by default that tax cuts are a much more efficient way to create jobs than government expenditure is. You get more bang for your buck.

Rubbish.  This conclusion doesn't magically follow from the hypothetical given previously.

It doesn't magically follow anything, but it does logically follow it.

[Wonkish1]

Examples:
Assumption -- "you could create a job for only $5k"
Assumption -- job B ("create a job for only $5k") is at least equivalent to job A  (created by government expenditure).

If true, this sounds like a wonderful proposition.  But one has to buy into the assumptions to go along with this argument.

So your argument is that a $50k job created by the government and a $50k job created by a private individual, I'm making an assumption that one created by a private individual may not be as personally fulfilling to the person as the one created by government, is that what your saying? Or what are you saying?

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How are you not following it? Its pretty clear cut. If someone agrees that with the idea of a job only 10% funded by the government and 90% by an investor all you have to do is just flip the person who is the one deciding on the need for the job(the private individual instead of the Gov.) and the by product is a tax credit for hiring and the rest is payed for by the private individual. $45k funded by investor and $5k funded by government = approximately the same thing as entrepreneur hires $50k worker and receives $5k tax credit. There is 0 difference in those two things. I just phrased it in a language that pro-government stimulus people would understand.

[Wonkish1]

You wrote "by themselves stock market losses don't destroy wealth and stock market gains don't create wealth".   In economic terms, wealth is a measure of net worth or the difference between assets minus liabilities.  The value of assets and liabilities are typically measured using a money price.  Stocks are an asset.   If the price of stocks goes down, the value of that assets owned goes down, and unless there is an equal or greater decrease in liabilities, then wealth goes down.

But stock market prices don't go up and down in a vacuum. In the absence of the creation or destruction of money or goods an overall stock market decline must result in another asset increasing in value. So my answer was in combined wealth for an economy not in the way you phrased it which is also correct, but an answer to a different question.

If I go out and invest in the stock market and it goes up I have earned more wealth. That is correct and you correctly stated that in your piece.

But if I own stock and Joe Blow owns bonds. And we exist in an economy of only those 2 instruments and no other currencies. Assuming no money or goods get created or destroyed any fall in stock will result in an increase in value of bonds or cash or both. So taken as a whole no wealth gets destroyed or created when a particular market moves in absence of the creation or destruction of money or goods because some other market has pick up the slack.

Do you understand the difference between what I said and you said is? They are both correct answers they just address different things. Your answer is a micro answer pertaining to one market my answer is a macro answer pertaining to ALL markets.

[Wonkish1]

I didnt write anything about a job being "personally fulfilling to the person".  
My argument is that you are presenting an either our -- either "50K" or "5K"  expended to create a job -- with an assumption that the two scenarios have equivalent outcomes.

Okay, now I see. You just misunderstood. In the example, $50k gets spent in both cases. The only difference is what the government has to actually fork out. In option A, you have $50k provided by the government. In option B you don't have only a $5k job. That is just the amount the government is subjected to. The salary is still $50k, not $5k. Who would work for $5k in salary? The difference is that you don't have to bore so much cost on government allowing you to positively impact 10 jobs for the same cost to the federal tax payer as 1. All the while the salary paid out is still the same.

]

The originally phrase was "tax cuts are a much more efficient way to create jobs than government expenditure" with no qualifier that the tax cut was linked to hiring.  

If your point is giving a company a tax credit is essentially the same as giving that same company an equal direct expenditure, then sure.   But so?

No its not. Its that some folks would line up and agree to a stimulus package where the government paid for the full cost of work performed. By flipping it over to the tax side you can allow the private business to decide on the project instead of the government and get the job created for a fraction of the cost of outlaying the entire cost of the job like they do in a stimulus package.

[Wonkish1]

In the absence of the creation or destruction of money or goods an overall stock market decline must result in another asset increasing in value.

One could argue, as you seemed to be, that a decline in stock market prices indicates that value of cash has gone up as measured in shares since #ofshares/$ is the reciprocal of $/#ofshares.  But we measure the economy in $ not in  # of shares of stock.

I have to go to work now.  Will check in later in the day.

Getting much closer.

Look the situation that created this topic was the S&P downgrade of US Treasuries. Bryan made the argument that it had done damage to the economy because the stock market fell causing a cascading effect throughout the rest of the economy reminiscent of a deflationary spiral. Now you and I both know that isn't true because if that was the case every time a really bad day happened in the stock market things would just increasingly deteriorate until the economy went into free fall.

Instead what happened on that day was that people sold stock for cash and used their cash to buy treasuries. Now the stock market value dropped. But the treasury market(as well as several other markets including cash) increased in value. All that actually happened was a temporary fluctuation. Investors determined that day that Treasuries were cheap and equities were overvalued. So they sold one and bought the other. 5 days later they reversed that and bought equities and sold treasuries. No net wealth was destroyed in that fluctuation just the same as no net wealth would be destroyed if investors sold ABC stock and bought XYZ stock and 5 days later sold XYZ and bought ABC. So what we are talking about here is market fluctuations not wealth destruction.

Now what happens between equities and cash is like in physics. I exert on force on the world and the world exerts force back upon me. But since I'm so tiny in comparison to the world you could never calculate the amount I actually move the world because its so negligible. Now the currency market is huge. The amount of dollars out there makes even engaging in a $100k transaction almost undetectable on the value of the dollar.

But that doesn't change the fact that when I buy something at slightly more than it was previously listed the dollar very, very, very slightly decreases in value. In much the same way I negligibly push on the world I negligibly reduced the purchasing power of the US dollar. If you think about it, it makes sense given how inflation works. Now if I buy at slightly more than it was previously listed at the dollar very, very very slightly increases in value. I negligibly increased the purchasing power of the dollar.

This is true of stocks, bonds, cars, homes, gasoline, gold, etc. every good known to man. If it goes up in price and I am willing to buy there, purchasing power of the US dollar ever so slightly decreases and if price drops and I am willing to buy there, purchasing power of the US dollar slightly increases. In effect I'm confirming as a participant in the market that the good or asset is that much more or less valuable than the dollar than before.

I realize I probably reiterated the same concept 3 times in different ways, but hopefully you get the point now.

[Wonkish1]

One point to consider... for someone to consider anyway....

The BIG difference between direct stimulus and tax cuts is usually when such payments are needed.

Tax cuts, as a general rule, cannot be effective immediately and whereas where I support direct stimulus is that the state is the ONLY body that can put liquidity in the economy when the private sector is either too skittish to (which is the BIGGEST problem IMHO) or unable to.

Do they activate a long-term growth trajectory? No... but that's not the point. It's designed to stem the bleeding to allow the economy to recover.

Fiscal policy cannot put liquidity into the economy. The moment they spend the money a bond gets issued. Money goes from investor to treasury via a treasury auction and then eventually back to some other individual. No liquidity gets created.

Only the fed can create liquidity.

And actually, one of the primary complaints towards stimulus is that it takes to long. It has to go through a appropriations process, pass, and then a bureaucrat has to plan the project out and hire the necessary companies to initiate the project. That takes months. Where as the moment a change in tax policy occurs market participants immediately adjust their numbers. The same way that a person would adjust what they can and can't afford by in increase in salary. 

[Wonkish1]

So your entire argument is based on the presumption that an investor actually has the money to move forward with hiring someone!  

If they didn't have a decent amount of money to hire someone nobody would have the money to buy the treasuries to fund the US government. If there wasn't any actual money there, everybody would be screwed including the US government

It also presumes that a private investment costs the residents (tax payers) less because the government isn't taxing them as much, however the residents have been putting their money into that business.
Your comment doesn't make any sense. Of course private investment doesn't cost the public as much because its only bore on the one making the investment. The rest of the public doesn't put capital into that business the owners do.

It also presumes that all government spending is wasteful by default.  You are saying the taxpayers dollars are "wasted" in the scenario where the public investment is greater.  The person gets hired and the project gets done, the private company then saves the additional unspent money that he can put forward to future investments.  
If the goal is to create jobs and your doing for 10 times the public cost of another method then yes you're wasting money.


lol

So what about in 2011 when private investors either don't have the money to fix the crumbling infrastructure or don't want to?
Well private investors are exactly who ended up paying for the crumbling infrastructure because they are the ones that bought the treasuries that paid for it. What do you think the government just pays for everything from money created out of thin air(even though some of it is). What makes infrastructure more important than other investments? Ones that private investors were and are willing to put money towards because **there is demand there***.

This played out exactly how I thought it would. lol


This is no different than me "walking you" through how a green house gas functions and coming to the ultimate conclusion that global warming is real while ignoring every other external factor.  See why I don't play these games?  I could easily rig one up for you which "teaches you" that global warming is 100% unquestionably, undeniably real.

Knock yourself out! I'm not one of those that hides from stuff whenever I can.

You try to rig a game using biased information and ignoring external factors.  The main factor here you are ignoring is; Are businesses hiring and investing?  The answer in 2011 is generally not.

No biased information here and I'm not ignoring external factors. Because those external factors are in play in my example as well as in any other action that would be taken.

[Wonkish1]

Okay, now I see. You just misunderstood. In the example, $50k gets spent in both cases.

I understood the construct of your scenario.  But it seems to me that there have to be a lot of assumptions or agreements or even regulations to ensure that the 5K from the public sector is actually matched by 45k from the private sector and actually leads to creation of an equivalent or better job.    If such a scenario exists, then sure, it would be an effective way for the public sector to leverage its resources.     But this hypothetical scenario doesnt prove that "tax cuts are a much more efficient way to create jobs than government expenditure" since it is based on criteria (such as the 45K match from the private sector that leads to creating a job) that are not universally inherent in tax cuts.

In the case of both infrastructure spending and private sector hiring the government isn't going to be able to set wages. The company the government hires to perform the services will end up determining wage. That means that income should average out between a tax cut incentivized hire and government contracted hiring.

But even if we were operating on the assumption that the public sector was overpaying the market rate for work that wouldn't be a good thing. That would be just more waste that would be better spent on more jobs not unnecessarily higher paying jobs, and here's why:

I think most Libs actually believe the principal value to an economy of work is the quantity of income to the worker. That is in fact incorrect. The principal value to an economy of work is the production it creates to "expand the pie" by increasing supply, reducing prices, and thereby increasing the availability of work for others. And one of the reasons why you hope for that cycle to happen is because as production increases the amount of skilled enough workers to each available job decreases and that increasing shortage of labor drives up incomes over the population. Nothing could be accomplished for the public just because 1 employer decided to way overpay a few people for their services(even though that works out great for those particular individuals).


By the way you could easily put a string on a tax credit to produce higher income jobs it wouldn't make sense to do so, but you could. All you would have to do is make the tax credit equal to $1k per $10k of salary up to $50k lets say. But then the government would have revenues fall the exact same amount as before for jobs created that were $50k or more. But the number of $0-$50k jobs would be less. Why would you want less jobs to be created? Just because they are lower paying doesn't mean they shouldn't be created period, should they?

[Wonkish1]

I saw Bryan make an argument about the "debt ceiling fiasco".  In your responses you seemed to  twist his argument to make it about the S&P downgrade.
Doesn't matter neither of them created or destroyed aggregate wealth. They just transferred wealth from one side of the markets to the other. A change that eventually went back after the situation passed.

I didnt see Bryan make that specific argument.

Well essentially he did I just summarized it. Saying that minor stock price decreases and bond price increases caused consumer confidence to deteriorate leading to less buying and the less hiring is essentially the same thing as the statement I provided above except the one above is a summary position.


If during those 5 days, the price of XYZ dropped relative to ABC, then wealth would have been destroyed as at the end of the two transactions, the investors would hold less ABC than they had originally.

Well assuming no other asset increased in value as a consequence(which is a huge assumption) then yes you would be right aggregate wealth would have fallen. But its not because of something at XYZ. Its because money or production was destroyed somewhere in the economy and it reflected itself in a decrease within all markets and that can reflect itself in either across the board decreases in asset prices or a fall in certain asset prices without a corresponding increase somewhere else.
 
Clipped the discussion of purchasing power dynamics since its beside the point to the question of whether changes in asset values result in changes in wealth.

Well you can't. Its an important piece of overall markets. The purchasing power of a dollar is the fluctuating price of the currency stock known as the US dollar. To forget that means you miss a very important piece of domestic and global markets. I mean look the best performing stock market over the last decade in the world according to your argument would be the Zimbabwe stock market in nominal terms. It wouldn't even be close. But today those few trillion Zimbabwean dollars you've "made" buys you a couple eggs. I can't stress this enough to you, certain markets don't exist in a vacuum. Just because a particular market is up or down doesn't mean that wealth has been created or destroyed. Its all markets that determine whether or not aggregate wealth is created or destroyed.

Look I hope you realize your getting pretty crushed here. I mean your not really giving me much of a challenge. A tip: Generally speaking if your trying to trip a knowledgeable person up the best course of action isn't statements and instead really really good questions. Can't say it will work on me on this particular topic, but it probably stands a better chance then what your doing.

[Wonkish1]

In the case of both infrastructure spending and private sector hiring the government isn't going to be able to set wages.

The wage rate is irrelevant to what I am saying.   My point of contention is the assumption that the mechanism will produce the result -- that the tax cut will lead to hiring, that the hypothetical X% public contribution will be met by a (100-X)% outlay by the private sector.  

Well in the case of a tax credit for hiring it has to. If a hire doesn't occur the tax credit doesn't go out. With the credit set at a certain rate you get x hiring. You increase the credit you get more hiring. In each case its better than the government paying the entire cost of the new hiring.

[Wonkish1]

You do not seem to have grasped Bryan's argument, since you restatement of it is off.  

Actually I have. Please point out where I "haven't grasped Bryan's argument".

I can.  Clipping text from a dialogue box is something I can do.   Your diatribe on purchasing power is all well and good, but its is an attempt to shift the discussion away from what it was about since you have already essentially had to walk back your initial statement.  

I haven't walked back $hit. You challenged my point by making a completely different one and assuming that was the one I made. I'm talking in aggregate wealth and you're talking about particular parties' wealth. They are not the same thing. Talk of the dollar is not shifting discussion away. You want to ignore the largest market in the world, currency. If Cash goes up in value by the same amount that a particular asset goes down in value(or vise versa) than no net wealth has been destroyed(nor created). Go ahead and find the hole in that.

This kind of remark suggests you are feeling insecure about your arguments.  
I dont need to trip you up; your falling on your own.

No its just truth. And I'm pointing it out because your boring me since you aren't actually giving me a real challenge. But feel free to continue as long as you want. I'll continue to make you look foolish.

[Wonkish1]

I'm happy to see more balance to these forums with Wonkish1 on here...

Well thank you!

[Wonkish1]

Well essentially he did I just summarized it. Saying that minor stock price decreases and bond price increases caused consumer confidence to deteriorate leading to less buying and the less hiring is essentially the same thing as the statement I provided above except the one above is a summary position.

That is actually a poor summary of my argument. I did say that bad stock market news could further undermine economic confidence by feeding back in to a pre-existing panic/misery loop, and I said that the debt debate undermined confidence that our political system's ability to function.

But I didn't say the stock market "decreases" (I would call the DJI dropping more than 450 pointsin a single day more than a "decrease", but I digress) were what caused hiring to freeze. What I argued caused hiring to freeze was employers fearing that a financial crisis would be triggered by a failure to raise the debt ceiling. People were so scared that all hell was about to break loose, and it created a dark and unnecessary cloud over economic activity that month.

Now, as this thread has shown, you are free to disagree with all of that, but you aren't free to misrepresent it via a bad summary. You're entitled to your own set of opinions, but not your own set of facts.

Well then sorry, but that was what appeared to be your argument.
"Market turmoil started getting noticeably bad after the debt ceiling debate, and so did all the talk about another recession."

"Markets move on feelings, and especially on confidence. When you have a confidence gap, you run into trouble."

"Not to mention the fact that it is vastly understating what the stock market did immediately following the debt debate."

and the big one!!!
"When stock prices plummet, and they did for several days following the debt cieling debacle (and before the downgrade even happened), that scares people and ruins confidence in the economy. It hurts retirement funds too, and that makes people not want to spend money, which hurts the economy too."

I have no problem arguing your second paragraph, but it wasn't what your argument at least appeared to be before(examples above). So I'm sorry if I missed that being a cornerstone point, but I think you can see from these examples that I probably was pretty fair in my summary of your argument.

[Wonkish1]

How is there any real argument here - there's a whole lot of 'duh' in there.

What are you referring to?

[Wonkish1]

The issues around confidence, the market (ie the people behind it)

Again as I've pointed out before confidence really isn't the factor that people think it is. Unless destruction occurs to the fundamentals, confidence indicators don't have much affect. And actually they are very contrarian. The further they fall the more it is a sign to buy because confidence itself can't overcome the fundamentals of an economy. The consensus in the minds of the public always way overplays its hand.

[Wonkish1]

I agree with BOTH of you, try to deal .... I think the fact that the economy still manages to survive despite the doom-sayers is testament to that...

Well of course it does. The vast majority of consumer spending can't be delayed that much. People have to eat. People have to put gas in their car if they are going to be able to make it to work. People can't delay fixing a problem in their car for very long. People can't put off fixing the roof indefinitely. This is a point that Buffett has spent quite a bit of time on over the last few years. So all those people that pull back, save more, and have a balance sheet that is improving because of that, eventually have to go out and engage in some consumption. That is why the "never ending deflationary spiral" theory is a myth.

Oh and by the way contrary to what some Keynesians like Krugman would say, savings is not a problem. When you save money in lets say in a savings account that money goes to A) bolster the reserves of banks bettering their financial position and B) issue more credit to other businesses and people that do need to make a capital investment. All the while your personal balance sheet is improving so that when you do have to make a larger purchase down the road you're in a much better position to do so. Eventually as the economy improves you delay the purchases less and less.

[Wonkish1]

I'm not an economic ideologue - I want to know what works, not what a bunch of navel gazers think it should work.

If there's a Monetarist-backed idea that has a proven record of delivering what is required.... fine, if there's a Keynesian idea that delivers what is required... equally fine. 

Sometimes you need to spend money, sometimes you can get others to spend theirs... which is why economic theory sent me around the wall during my Undergrad and my Masters... and why my PhD will avoid theory like the plague.

I definitely wouldn't consider myself an economic ideologue either. Ideology is not what sent me off to learn about economics. I went to go learn about economics and then when I came back some would accuse me of ideology and others wouldn't(particularly those that are also well versed in econ and see me as a pretty fair guy).

You may be surprised by how much even Austrians and Keynesians agree over economics let alone Monetarists and Keynesians. A lot of econ is settled. Just like how everybody in the study of climate can tell you where rain comes from, but they are still an extremely long way away from being able to predict weather with a high degree of accuracy.

But just realize that the amount of econ that is settled is much, much more than what many politicians and bureaucrats would like to admit.