Economics in a Nutshell

Posted: March 3, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Economy, voodoo economics | Tags: , , , , , | 4 Comments

Joseph Stiglitz is one of my favorite economists.  He has that rare ability to put the results of theory, models, and empirical research into pithy common sense statements.  He has shown–with tons of peer-reviewed research–how frictions that exist in all markets distort results.  There is no real world example of a perfect market. In fact, he has a Nobel Prize for it.  Markets are not these efficient, well-oiled, rational deal makers that many Republicans, Libertarians, and Rich People would like you to believe simply because they really really want to believe in it.  They can click their red ruby Hayek slippers as much as they want but decades of study over the results of market have left us with lots of succinct lessons that a lot of  21st century policy makers appear to have unlearned.  In a recent speech and interview, Stiglitz manages to hit all the main ones in short order.  Here’s what the evidence has taught us.  First, it’s really not good for any economy to have income inequality.

Inequality is bad for growth, stability and efficiency. … Inequality peaked both before the Great Depression and before the Great Recession, and it’s not an accident. So basically, when we have a lot of inequality, demand goes down. … All this inequality was offset by creating a bubble. The bubble allowed people to consume more. Now we have the inequality but we don’t have a bubble, and that means that we will have persistent, weak demand, and therefore unless we create another bubble it’s going to be very difficult for us to get back to full employment.

A lot of the inequality that we have in the United States is created by distortions – excessive financial sector, monopolies like Microsoft … giving the oil companies, mining companies resources at a discount. … These things distort the economy, while they create wealth at the top. So it’s not wealth creation – it’s wealth redistribution, which makes the size of the pie smaller.

Second, a lot of government policy and just things inherent to some markets can create distortions that make markets very inefficient. Government actually creates a lot of distortions by trying to put businesses on steroids. Our recent tax policies that give special treatment to capital gains over income earned from labor are an example.  They have created horrible distortions that have drained resources away from useful things and into parasite markets and gambling activities.

And the loopholes, the distortions, the giveaways. … When you tax capital gains at half the rate of others, you encourage speculation. And so you divert resources to speculative activity, including the best brains at Columbia, into speculation rather than into creative activities.

Stiglitz also has his three top Economic Memes and Tropes that are absolutely killing this country’s economy because they have absolutely no basis in any evidence or reality.  He’s actually been tweeting them all morning as the top three Myths.  The first myth is the one about the confidence fairy.  The second and third are part and parcel of trickle down economics.  This is the horrible Republican kneejerk response that we have to appease “job creators” at all costs even when we have evidence they are more job destroyers than creators. Economists have been hypothesizing these things for decades and every bit of evidence from policies meant to achieve these results from Reagan to Bush have shown them to be seriously untrue.  However, they persist in the minds of many policy makers and they are killing our future.

The first is that reducing the budget deficit would stimulate the economy by restoring confidence, which you hear over and over again. No evidence that has ever worked. You might call it the austerity myth – that’s the most serious one.

The second one is that raising taxes on upper-income individuals will lead them to save less, invest less, will have adverse supply-side effects. Again, no evidence of that.

The third is that lowering [the] corporate income tax rate across the board will stimulate investment in the United States. No evidence of that. … If you want to encourage investment, what you do is lower taxes on firms that invest and you raise taxes on firms that don’t invest. You can restructure the taxes to provide incentives to invest.

I’m not certain what it will take to end the impact of these harmful myths.  However, given that harmful myths–notably the ones that come from any religion not based on evidence and reality–have kept us in Dark Ages before and are likely to continue to do so.  For many people, science fiction still holds a broader appeal than science fact.

Memes and Damned Lies

Posted: October 11, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Economy, We are so F'd | Tags: , | 28 Comments

I posted a group of statistics in the Monday Morning Reads to offset one of the most specious memes  floating around the right wing these days.  I think it first gained some traction when Michelle Bachmann introduced it in one of the debates right after Obama introduced the idea that millionaires need to pay their fair share of taxes. It’s basically billionaire blowback for some one suggesting they pay for the roads they drive on, the schools they attend, the police and fire fighters they call when they are in trouble, and the soldiers–yes even the gay ones–that protect their assets here and abroad.  The little whiny boys think they pay more than their fair share and it’s the damned poor that are getting off easy!  Poor little babies!

There’s this incredibly misleading statistic being bandied about that over half of the taxpayers don’t pay federal taxes. I also talked about the fuzzy math and logic in this post about 10 days ago.  It keeps popping up in response to the so-called Buffett rule that would ensure that billionaires don’t pay lower effective tax rates than their secretaries.  Well, it’s now turned into an Astroturf movement called “We are the 53%” that turns the class war back to one between the poor and working class that includes the Dread Pirate Eric Ericson among others.  All this is based on an anomaly for the 2009 tax year and ignoring all taxes but the income tax. There are memes and then there are out and out lies.  My Monday post linked to this analysis at the CBPP.  Here’s a highlight if you don’t want to follow this link.

A recent finding by Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation that 51 percent of households owed no federal income tax in 2009 [1] is being used to advance the argument that low- and moderate-income families do not pay sufficient taxes. Apart from the fact that most of those who make this argument also call for maintaining or increasing all of the tax cuts of recent years for people at the top of the income scale, the 51 percent figure, its significance, and its policy implications are widely misunderstood.

  • The 51 percent figure is an anomaly that reflects the unique circumstances of 2009, when the recession greatly swelled the number of Americans with low incomes and when temporary tax cuts created by the 2009 Recovery Act — including the “Making Work Pay” tax credit and an exclusion from tax of the first $2,400 in unemployment benefits — were in effect. Together, these developments removed millions of Americans from the federal income tax rolls. Both of these temporary tax measures have since expired.In a more typical year, 35 percent to 40 percent of households owe no federal income tax. In 2007, the figure was 37.9 percent. [2]
  • The 51 percent figure covers only the federal income tax and ignores the substantial amounts of other federal taxes — especially the payroll tax — that many of these households pay . As a result, it greatly overstates the share of households that do not pay any federal taxes. Data from the Urban Institute-Brookings Tax Policy Center show only about 14 percent of households paid neither federal income tax nor payroll tax in 2009, despite the high unemployment and temporary tax cuts that marked that year.[3]
  • This percentage would be even lower if federal excise taxes on gasoline and other items were taken into account.

The bottom line is that it’s an outlier created by the recession, the “Making Work Pay” tax credit, and ignoring all the other taxes people get socked with including the highly regressive FICA taxes.  Cannonfire has a great post up today that summarizes exactly how a group of extreme narcissists with antisocial personality disorder (e.g. Libertarians) are using this misleading statistic to draw attention away from Occupy.  Of course, there are the other usual right wing memes floating about the Occupy protestors as you’ve read here and many other places.  They are “paid union thugs”. They are spoiled kids who don’t want to pay their credit cards. They are poor because they are lazy.  They are Marxists. They are Leninists.  They are anti-American. It’s an Obama plot!  It’s a DNCC plot!   It’s just been one canard after another.  I’m sure well be buried chin deep in the lies by the end of the next Republican Debate Debacle tonight.  I’m just wondering what hard working American they’re going to boo or send the die sucker love to tonight.

I could spend all day ranting about this and I guess I have given that it’s my third post of disgust in about 10 days but I wanted mostly to frame that current meme in terms of a MoJo post on 6 Big Economic Myths.  It’s got so many nifty graphs that my legs actually tingled!  It also outlines some of the worst economic lies that we’ve been fed since the Reagan years and the ones that have been specifically invented now to keep congress rigging the economic system to benefit the most wealthy and powerful.    If you can stomach watching that debate tonight, keep these myths in mind.  Also, go read the article for the full effect.  There’s no need for me to reproduce it here for you.

Myth #1:  The Stimulus Failed

Short explanation: It wasn’t Max’s Miracle Pill but the economy would’ve been worse without out.

Myth : The deficit is our biggest problem right now

Short explanation:  The unresolved leftovers from the financial crisis are the problem and are creating deficits, joblessness, and all kinds of problems. That’s the overarching problem!  Undoing everything the Dubya administration did is the solution!

Myth#3: Lower taxes are the best way to grow an economy

Short explanation:  No way no how.  No empirical data supports this at all.

Myth#4: Regulatory uncertainty is clogging the economy

Short explanation:  Deregulation did this to us.  Good Regulation of financial markets leads to reduce information asymmetry and leads to better outcomes.  Also, the number one concern of businesses is lack of customers if you believe them when you ask them.

Myth : Obama is debasing the dollar

Short explanation: Devaluation of the dollar is a good way to beef up exports and stop the outflow of jobs to other countries.

Myth : If you unshackle the rich, they’ll rev up the economy

Short explanation:  No way.  No how.  If anything they take their money and create speculative bubbles in markets.  They also use their money to invest in other countries and vacation there.  Evidence is contrary to that.

The one thing that Republicans and their libertarian buddies never run out of are out and out lies.  I am a pragmatist.  I follow the scientific method and the data.  An ideologue creates a narrative around what they want to believe and then wraps it up in whatever it takes to make it sound appealing and plausible.  You can call it a meme or a canard.  You can call them opinions or ideologies.  I just call them damned lies.