Outside The Asylum

Found a great local solution, at one time, to the problem of a major deflationary depression: Freigeld . It was tried in Wörgl Austria during the Great Depression to huge success- until of course their version of the FED jumped on them for actually doing something that worked. As the American Monetary Institute argues, money isn't supposed to be a commodity or a store of value, but rather an object of law to regulate trade. If so, then there is good argument for removing the banks from the system and replacing it with the US Treasury Department- thus allowing the government to engineer against both inflation and deflation with public infrastructure projects, paid for by printing money.

It suddenly struck me, when replying to other people in the last couple of days, what America's real problem is- we have a Culture of Debt. It's so strong that economists are no longer bothered by such problems as trade deficits, the government deficit, or consumer debt; it's just assumed that we'll be able to grow our economy enough to take care of such trivialities. Even after September 2008, I had somebody tell me that a trade deficit was a good thing because we're essentially keeping a high standard of living by printing paper. Do economists not read newspapers? Do they never talk to people who are on unemployment? What's wrong with this picture?

Paul Krugman's blog on the NBER yeild curve brought out a libertarian response that claimed that in the postwar period, a postive yeild curve *always* meant a recovery was coming. I think the good Professor did a great job explaining why this isn't so- New Deal Democrat also pointed out at economic populist that the NBER yeild curve  reports different data under deflationary periods than under inflationary periods. Po stwar predictions are therefore not valid- this is the first *deflationary* recession in the postwar period, so you need to look at PREWAR conditions, not postwar conditions, for any of this to make sense. Thus, at least on the matter of stimulus vs doing nothing, I’m with the good professor. I simply disagree that stimulus *alone* will be enough. A global “free trade” economy is literally an economy without scarcity- anybody can have anything for far cheaper than they could yesterday or last week, and the prices keep falling.  Demand simply cannot keep up with wo...

The American Revolution can be summed up in the argument of Patrick Henry on why Virginia should send troops to aid George Washington: Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me,  give me liberty or give me death! A great slogan for a war of revolution- but not so great an axiom to build a culture on.  And yet, that's what we in America tried to do; we tried to build a culture off of this campaign slogan.  Oh, changes got made over the years- give me liberty became give me profit (for only the independently wealthy can truly have liberty- all else are slaves to the owners of their debt) and give me death became let no human life stand in my way (from abortion of babies so that their teen mothers will stay in school, to the incredible rape of Iraq for profit, to the terminally ill commiting suicide in Oregon so that the next generation won't be burdened ...

The single most physical part of autism for me- migraines.  I wonder how much less my paycheck will be with 60 hours instead of 64?  

Want to really make a difference now that it has become obvious that the Republican Party is anti-life?   Feed the poor.    The #1 cause of abortion in this country isn't teen pregnancy, it's teens that aren't allowed to raise their children due to economic injustice.

The last 50 years have seen a total reversal of popular values in the United States of America.   We went from long term commitments to free love. We went from long range investment to the three month business cycle. We went from valuing the next generation, to valuing our own "quality of life". We went from honoring the previous generation, to killing them off to save health care costs. We went from marriage being about preservation of human life and continuation of the family, to marriage being about the merging of two economic households between people who "love" each other (and sometimes, not even people). What links this all together?   The seven mortal sins , of course.  Somebody in the 1950s finally noticed that freedom includes the freedom to sin.    Actually, the Founding Fathers knew this danger well- they in fact designed a government specifically to encourage it!  That is why they were afraid of the " tyranny of the majority ", because they kne...