These Keynesians and academic types always come off as if they have some sort if mental illness.. I guess you have to have a warped intellectually bankrupt thought process to believe in that gibberish anyhow.
This video was a joke. They call this Real News? This is not the first time Peter has been marginalized and I am sure it will not be the last. If anybody is confused about economics, there is still help. Why has Mr. Schiff accurately predicted the dot com and real estate bubble? He understands the FREE MARKET and SOUND MONEY! An economy which government does not pick the winner or loser, but individuals that purchase the products decide the fate of companies.
i just realised peter is the only credible economist. most of these other bozo economists just analyse data behind a desk, don't even have their own businesses.
eliminate the minimum wage NOW. it only makes it unprofitable for businesses to hire someone that produces an amount lower than the minimum wage amount. give people the option to work for less and build up the skills, discipline, experience & many other things that you gain from a job so they become more productive and can then earn higher wages. 96% of the workforce is NOT on minimum wage, if the business tries to take advantage of their workers the worker can go somewhere else. RON PAUL 2012
This guy Henwood is so far to the left it is unbearable for me to even listen to him. Im for reducing military spending overseas but he wants to cut defense spending nearly 70% to fund his welfare state.
@Willredd94 You know what's funny is that it's the military that funded computer research. The very same computer research Henwood credits the government for developing. Of course, he purposefully left out that piece of information.
What I always find hilarious in debates like this is that Peter Schiff is the only person who produces a damn thing. You have three people in the room. One working to produce something and 2 others standing around bitching about how he should produce it and how the fruit of the labor will be divided once its made.
@mmojica87 Anyone who advocates spending as a way out of recession should be shot in the left and right parts of their brain for precisely the reason that Japan's economy has never been able to fully recover because of all the massive debt their government thought it would perfectly fine to accumulate during the late '90s.
Are people seriously claiming that this turd beat schiff??? It's insane! When we people realize the market isn't a faceless group of fat cats in a room somewhere, it's ALL OF US, and when the government steps in and regulates, those regulations ARE written by the rich elite who lobby congress. We can't control the banks and brokers in that environment, but we CAN control congress and if we limit the size and scope of government we force everyone in the market to answer to us, the consumer.
I swear that the only reason some people think Peter Schiff is cool is because he is not mainstream. That is called the "Galileo Fallacy" if anyone's interested.
I love how Keynsians always try to frame the debate as a refutation of phony free market reaganomics. When they bump into an Austrian they don't know their ass from their elbows, and they look like fools.
@K20ej88 That's because most mainstream economists are neoclassicals, not Keynesians. Peter Schiff would be totally raped inside and out like a two dollar tranny hooker if he decided to argue with someone like Steve Keen....an actual Keynesian who understands economics. Actually, they did have a kind of semi-debate. And even then, Schiff got PWNED on more than 1 occasion.
@mojorhythm we have been following the Keynesian model for a long time now, and it is not working. one of Schill's major arguments (one that people just can't seem to comprehend), is that you can't say that capitalism isn't working, and the free market isn't working, because we don't have a free market. when the gov't is stroking off big banks, giving them low (or no) interest money for years on end, that ain't capitalism; it's Keynesian thinking. and that isn't working.
@jasonmclose If you think that today's economists are Keynesians, you would be very wrong. Most of them believe in Walras' Law, Homo Economicus, Rational Expectations, the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, Representative Agent macro modelling, and so on. They don't emphasize the fundamental role of uncertainty or liquidity preference in shaping interest rates and demand for money. They also think markets are stable and at or near equilibrium. Keynes thought none of this.
I like Peter Schiff alot, but Henwood is right on the point that productivity has gone up and wages have not. Schiff's argument is that if productivity was strong we would not be running such a massive trade deficit. In a rational world this would be true, but the problem is America consumes so much that even though we produce quite a bit, the production is overshadowed by such viscous consumption.
Wages had gone up. When they say income was stagnant they talk about household income. Yes household income increased by only 4% during last 30 years or so, but per capita income gone up by 50%. Household vary in size, composition etc. To invoke household income is simply propaganda.
@serialkiller1990 I was actually talking more about the productivity side of the statement, but your point is a good one. Do you have a source for that 50% number?
@mu5icaddict2 wages have not gone up because taxes and health care are eating them up. my health care costs have gone up around 10% a year for the past 10 years, and the gov't tries to take more of my money if i work harder. if you notice, the more the gov't injects itself into the health care industry, it causes prices to rise more. this is true for just about every industry. gov't subsidies raise prices, not lower them.
wages are going up, but health care costs are eating them up.
@jasonmclose also a good point. As I told serialkiller1990 I'm not talking about the wage side of the equation. In my opinion (and yours apparently) they have remained basically stagnant. I don't agree that government SUBSIDIES raise prices. As I understand subsidies are designed to provide incentives to produce XYZ. I don't understand how that would cause prices to rise. Are you talking about regulations?
@mu5icaddict2 subsidies raise prices because they create an industry unto themselves (similar to a union), full of lobbyists and lawyers whose existence is purely to keep the subsidies coming. plus, the subsidy machine gets so big that new, small businesses can't break through, because the investment capital required to get on par with existing big businesses is vast. the free market can't compete, so prices go up, just because they can.
@mu5icaddict2 subsidies DO raise prices - here's why - subsidies create incentives for a particular type of behavior on the part of favored individuals or groups. This means an artificial stimulus to demand because you have lowered the costs for those select individuals, but in the long term, prices will increase due to the higher demand. Look at college tuition - heavily subsidized by the government and a college education has increased 400-500% in the last couple of decades.
@mu5icaddict2 i think what peter is saying is we are not producing enough of the things that we use clothing,building supplies, electronics,etc. The production we are good at is not the basic stuff that regular people need unless u count aircrafts ,pharmacueticals,etc.
@mu5icaddict2 Of people who actually produce a tangible good or service, productivity has certainly increased, but as a share of the total population, the ratio of productive jobs to non-productive jobs has been steadily shrinking. Think of all the pencil-pushers and bureaucrats whose only function is to supervise and manage, but who produce nothing of tangible value to anyone. Schiff is correct, the proof is in the pudding - if we were so productive, we wouldn't be in debt up to our eyeballs.
@gergenheimer If someone makes 300,000 dollars a year, but spends 500,000 he/she is both productive (presumably) and in debt. And people who push pencils around all day are actually creating value, believe it or not. Nobody would ever pay anyone who wasn't doing something seen as productive..
@mu5icaddict2 incorrect - you are basing your statement on the fallacy that the mere act of spending money causes an economy to "go". Doing something that is "seen" as productive isn't the same thing as actually being productive - the beginning and end of economic activity is the creation of goods and services that consumers want, not any arbitrary busy work that earns someone a paycheck. Debt is a promise to produce something of value at a later date, not just a meaningless ledger book entry.
@gergenheimer A.)No I'm not. The person was productive because he made 300,000, not because he spent 500,000. B.) I don't believe there is such thing as arbitrary busy work. Nobody is going to pay somebody to do something which doesn't produce anything of value. C.) I agree with you on your definition of debt.
@mu5icaddict2 I work at a major university - my department was restructured a couple of years ago and multiple six-figure salary middle-managers were added. Where projects formerly had 2-3 people assigned to them who were responsible for their completion, we now have 5-7 people involved. Now, every project takes longer and has more errors - the output and quality of our work has suffered. The admins that were brought in have no value-add to our work - none.
Per capita production has not gone up, it has shrunk. Also, production does not mean a thing when it goes towards consumer goods that are bought with borrowed money.
The clown Henwood got put on his place. Do you employ anybody? Heu heu... a part time person! Fool maybe that's exactly your problem. You do not have any real understanding of what business owners and employers have to g through to hire and retain their workforce. Shut the hell up for good?
I think that Schiff is right about the government being largely responsible for the economic mess we're in. On the other hand I think that Henwood is right that we need some fiscal stimulus and investment in infrastructure.
It's annoying that the second you say we need a stimulus you're expected to defend every thing the government spends money on. If we had used the money we borrowed from China to invest in infrastructure instead of housing we wouldn't be in a recession.
I wonder if Mr. Henwood still thinks there is no inflation several months after this interview/debate? I don't get why liberals are so concerned with deflation?
@regelemihai The Great Depression became Great and lasted for 16 years precisely because the government tried to fight delfation. Maybe that should be the lesson to learn and the cautionary tale, don't you think?
I agree wholeheartedly. I'm just trying to make sense of difference economic standpoints. On the one hand I read from Peter Schiff that deflation is just a proverbial boogyman that shouldn't be feared, and on the other, when I venture into different outposts of economic forums, people tell me that deflation causes bigger problems because it discourages purchasing, and that the Great Depression was deflationary.
@regelemihai I know the feeling. It is worth remembering though that no one at any time in history has been able to present a plausible case for why deflation by default is bad. Consider the period 1776 - 1913. On average, the US experienced a fairly stable decrease in prices. Deflation, properly understood, is the liqudation the of loans generated from credit expansion which caused the bubble. Deflation is an unavoidable and necessary market correction following an unsustainable boom.
Yeah, that's what Peter stresses all the time too.
One thing, though. How can deflation be a liquidation of assets if no one is buying them because of the fact that prices are falling? That's what liquidation is, isn't it? The ability to convert assets into cash. Am I missing something?
@regelemihai Liquidation means writing down debt. The term for onvertibility to money is "liquid".
The money created through credit expansion is circulated through loans, e.g. mortgages. These loans were then listed as "assets" on the banks' balance sheet, but they were in fact just created out of nothing. When people lost their ability to repay their loans, these "assets" started to evaporate, thus canceling out the money created through the loans, resulting in huge losses for the banks.
@regelemihai True, but not the cause of the Great Depression (the Fed was the cause). What turned the economic downturn into a disaster was Hoover's intervention in the economy--he raised taxes, expanded gov't, and did everything to fight the free market. Then FDR came in and "saved" us (sarcasm) with his New Deal and socialism and the economy finally recovered--15 years later.
Look at the market correction of 1920. Gov't shrank and cut taxes and the economy bounced back within a year.
@regelemihai Blaming the Great Depression on deflation is like blaming a plane crash on gravity. In our most recent economic downturn we had deflation pushing prices down (liquidation, going out of business sales, etc) while at the same time inflation (the expansion of the money supply to bail out banks, lend to the gov't, bail out auto companies, etc) pushing prices up. Eventually, the deflationary forces will wither away leaving us 'unshielded' from the inflationary forces.
@regelemihai Also, deflation is a good thing. Especially in an economic downturn. We hear all of the time about the unemployed and struggling families trying to make their dollars 'go farther' in a tough economy. That is exactly what deflation of prices does -- it lowers prices. In essence, when someone loses their job they are living off of their savings and deflation makes their savings more valuable.
This is still weird to me. If deflation is good because everything becomes cheaper, why are people still considering it a bad thing? I mean, if home prices are falling, why does that hurt people? Would falling prices encourage more purchases of homes? Some people say that since prices are falling people feel less inclined to reach into their wallets. That makes no sense.
@regelemihai Falling home prices are great for anyone looking to buy. They are horrible for banks that count mortgages as 'assets' --especially when a bank lent $500k to buy a house that is now worth $250k--hopefully you can see why banks (and the gov't who loves to help out the banks) would want to do everything to keep prices high.
As for falling prices preventing spending I think that is untrue. Everyone knows that next year TVs are going to be bigger and cheaper yet ppl still buy them.
I know it is untrue! But people still keep using it. They say that if prices keep falling at a fast rate, as it usually happens in a deflationary recession, then they just hold on to their money because they keep waiitng for the prices to keep falling.
As for the home prices, yes it's true that falling prices are great for consumers, but then why was there a boom in home purchases if prices kept rising during the 2003-2006 years?
@regelemihai That was the housing bubble being inflated. The Fed set interest rates at record lows (essentially making a more expensive home more affordable) and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed home ownership and allowed the bankers to run wild doling out mortgages to everyone and anyone. If you have time YouTube "Peter Schiff Mortgage Bankers Speech" -- in this speech from 2006, Schiff predicts and explains the coming housing bust with amazing detail.
@regelemihai Probably a better explanation of the housing bubble (and the stock bubble of the late 90's - 2000 era) is a speech he gave to the Mises institute in 2009. YouTube "Peter Schiff, Why the Meltdown Should Have Surprised No One" and you will have it. The speech in 2006 is amazing b/c he predicted the housing bubble so clearly -- and to a hostile audience nonetheless. I think the one in 2009 that I mentioned in this post is perhaps a more thorough description.
Oh, and another thing I was hoping you could clarify for me. At 23:32 Peter says, with relation to our trade deficit, "if we're producing, why do we need imports?" Coming from a free market economist this is a bit baffling to me. A central tenet of the free market is free trade. He even writes in his book "How and Economy Grows and Why it Crashes" that trade is essential. Yet here and in other videos he keeps implying that we don't need imports if we can produce goods.
@regelemihai In this case Peter has a problem with the imbalance of trade. In other words, if our economy is so productive, why are we buying everything from China and they aren't buying anything from us? He is calling into question the notion that Henwood was making that production in our economy is up (relatively). Free trade (not managed trade like NAFTA) is a great thing for an economy as a whole.
That's because its mainstream economics, it never makes any sense.
Real economics, by which I mean Austrian economics, do make sense. It is supposed to make sense. Economics is not some magical, mystical pseudo-science in which everything is paradoxical and at odds with reality. Quite the opposite. It is very much based on common sense and most if it is perfectly obvious when you think about it. Sadly, its been high jacked by shills and liars for the regime
I agree. I'm reading more and more economic theory from the Austrian school. I'm doing my best to try and understand Freidman's Freedom and Capitalism.
@regelemihai You guys should check out the radio show that Peter Schiff does--he puts out a podcast if you can't get it live-- Google "Peter Schiff Radio". Tomorrow (Wednesday) Tom Woods is guest-hosting and Ron Paul and Gerald Celente are going to be on. I haven't read anything from Celente but I've read "Rollback" and "Meltdown" by Woods and "End The Fed" by Ron Paul -- if you are getting into Austrian econ these are great books -- both are smart and outstanding authors too.
Right on!Yeah,I do follow his podcasts.He has a channel here on YT were he posts them regularly(although recently he's been flakey.Probably for personal reasons).Thanks again for the references.I appreciate any help I can get on these matters.
A few points though.
1. why isn't NAFTA an example of free trade?
2. How can he concede that GDP has risen but that it's not an indication of an increase in production.Isn't GDP the value of everything produced within a country?
@regelemihai The NAFTA document and subsequent regulatory documents are thousands of pages long. It's controlled trade, not free trade.A true free trade agreement should be only a one or two sentences: "Our countries shall have free trade. There shall not be any restrictions, tariffs or any other sort of barrier or impediment of the free movement of goods, people, and capital between our countries".
GDP, as caluculated, has virtually nothing to do with actual production taking place in the US.
@regelemihai The loans of the banks started to evaporate because the value of the collateral (the houses) started to go down. That increased the risk profile of the loans. Also, the ablity to service the loans went down from the very low level it began at, and since people had virtually no reason to even try servicing their loans, they started to walk away from their houses and let the banks deal with it. Of course the banks knew this, they bet on the Fed bailing them out, which it did.
"The loans of the banks started to evaporate because the value of the collateral (the houses) started to go down. "
That's my question; why did it so suddenly start to go down? I had initially thought because the banks weren't receiving the payments on the mortgages. But that can't be it since a typical mortgage loan is taken for a 30 years.
@regelemihai When money is injected into a given sector, like housing, prices start to rise. As more money is channeled into that sector the price rise well over the free market value. In other words, the credit expansion creates a boom which results in an artificial demand. At some point, people are unable and unwilling to bind so much capital on such long term basis, their preferences change. This lessens the demand for houses which in turn leads to a downward correction of housing prices
@regelemihai Quite a few made that mistake and are now paying for it. Nothing is self-perpetuating. The housing marked topped off in 2007, which means that the rally only lasted 5-6 years. There always comes a point when the price level douses out demand, and that is when the correction starts to take place. Same thing happened in 1929. The stock market topped off, prices were stable for a while, leading Irwing Fisher to believe that US stocks had reached a permanent high platau. He was wrong.
@regelemihai ...must come down. It's as simple as that, at least when the rise is attributable to aritifically low interest rates and credit expansion.
GDP is very misleading. According to the GDP, our economy improved b/c of the bedbug crisis--thousands of people had to throw away perfectly good furniture and buy new stuff. If a store imports from China a couch (at $225 cost) & sells it for $250 (profiting $25) -- the $250 gets added to our GDP. But who got the most benefit here? We lost good furniture (a form of wealth). China made $225. Our retailer profited $25. But (according to GDP) our economy grew by $250.
@regelemihai Google "managed vs free trade" and you'll find a good article from the thefreemanonline website --can't post a link in comment section.
Problem w/ things like NAFTA is that they aren't pure free trade--special interest groups get their say--so we might be able to import windmills tariff-free but importing baby food w/out the hurdles??? No way...
The US grew early on b/c the constitution (which in the early 1800's was still respected) stipulated true free-trade among the states.
@vindician Good explanation. I tell people that Austrians apply the same theory to the Macro as the Micro. So what goes for an individual stays true on the national scale. The example of an individual who buys a lot of things on a credit card and "looks" wealthy compared to the US economy today w/ all the debt we have. Does it make sense for that individual to turn their finances around by borrowing even more? Or should they bite the bullet and cut back severely to pay down their debts.
@Bellantoni --- YOU are correct 100% , CROATIA NATO-OTAN member was part of Yugoslavia but in believing that they will live better if they leave Yugoslavian UNION NOW they see they DID terrible TERRIBLE mistake, Anti government demonstrations are in full swing there people have been on the streets since 2-22-2011 till now Unemployment is raising exponentially WHOLE economy is based on borrowing money MMF and buying goods from EU. They are DONE.
The one thing Schiff is right about: American businesses are "productive" because they count outsourced labor as internal production. So what's the solution? Not increased "productivity." Say it with me: T-A-R-I-F-F-S. If GE wants coolie labor, tax them the wage difference between what they import vs. American standards.
@deadeyedick1933 So if you don't want to be taxed and regulated to death, you're a traitor? Well, that really sums up the USA IS GREAT crowd, doesn't it? Just bow down before your leaders, wave incense before Bernanke and pray to the president. Disgusting!
As for the money supply. Look at the Fed's balance sheet you ridiclous moron. And where do you think all that money came from that bid up the housing prices? And tariffs!? Are you fucking insane? Want to raise prices of everything?
@vindician Schiff is a traitor because he's a hedge fund manager who destroys and offshores businesses. I've run a business for a long time and have seen how a lot of businesses run. While there are indeed some regulations designed to crush small business (esp. in the agricultural sector), the bigger problem is under-regulation. By pre-1993 standards, Peter Schiff would not exist. Hedge funds should be banned, and he's complaining about how he has to sign some paperwork to get tax loopholes.
@deadeyedick1933 Schiff is a stock broker and commentator who makes money for other people and employs more than 100 workers. Please dispense with the innane conspiracy theories. It would also appear you know exactly nothing about the FS sector. It is by far the most overregulated sector of the economy, with over 100 different regulatory and supervisory agencies, over 12,000 full time regulators on the federal level alone and thousand upon thousands of pages of special regulations.
@deadeyedick1933 First you are wrong and you should read his books. He calls bullsh!t on the fact that hedge fund managers only pay a 15% income tax even though they rake in billions.
@DavidRTarrant That's great – so why doesn't he talk about that or a securities transfer tax instead of advocating a deflationary crash and dollar default? Why has Ron Paul never once suggested anyone (including wall street) should pay more taxes? Sounds like Peter's conscience slipped out for a sentence or two, then got gobbled back up by the "Austrian" parasite inhabiting his brain.
@deadeyedick1933 If you knew anything about the Fed and the other central planning the gov't does you'd understand why so many Austrians believe gov't should be as small as possible--and thus take from it's citizens as little as possible. REMINDER: Austrians are the ones that predicted the housing bubble, stock bubble, 1970's stagflation, 1980's S&L debacle, stock market crash & the Great Depression...AND have been the most non-partisan economic line of thinking...need I go on? Truth hurts.
@DavidRTarrant You refuse to recognize the existence of anything other than total free trade and this mythical "central planning" tyranny. Plenty of people predicted those same events. The difference is that some of them formulated sane solutions. Your "Austrians" are nothing more than modern East India Company propagandists; predated by, and a British-sponsored reaction to, American and German nationalist economists like Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List and Henry C. Carey.
@deadeyedick1933 Seriously? Thats the comeback? I'm sorry I don't believe in socialism...but everywhere you look where our gov't is broke or corrupt socialism is clearly involved. Whether it is Medicare (broke) or Social Security (broke); or the corporate welfare programs like in banking, military industrial, or education (all broke and/or totally dependent on gov't) it seems that gov't deployment of wealth is the problem.
Humanity is comprised of humans -- not ants or bees. Keep dreaming.
@regelemihai First, never believe anything Weiner says about anything. Second, the SS paid out more than it took in 2010. Considering the increasing real unemployment and aging population, that trend is not likely to reverse. Third, the only "assets" in the SS trust fund are US government bonds. Fourth, a trustee of the SS admitted to Peter Schiff on record that SS is a ponzi scheme.
@regelemihai That "surplus" is in the form of IOU's from the US gov't and the way to repay those IOUs is to tax the hell out of everyone or inflate the dollar further (print the money to repay the IOUs). Should SS have that ~$4T surplus in the bank? Yes but gov't has always spent that money on other things as it came in. One important thing: in order for SS to be constitutional they had to separate the paying in (taxing) and paying out (benefits). So to say SS has a surplus is a lie.
Aha. So technically if the Social Security Administration hadn't bought all of those government bonds (I.O.Us), the 4 T dollars would be actual benefits. So why aren't they holding on to the surplus and rather lending it to the government that in turn has to pay it back?
@deadeyedick1933 Damn man your ignorance is epic. The East India Company and Hamilton had NOTHING to do with free trade. Hamilton advocated high protectionist tariffs and corporate welfare, he was a mercantilist. Ever heard of Tom DiLorenzo? He is one of the most prolific Austrians today. He wrote a book called "Hamilton's Curse". What does that tell you? And who are all these "other people" who predicted so much? Why didn't they speak out? Where are they now?
@vindician You're mixing up my comments and world history at the same time. I said the EIC was a REACTION TO Hamilton. Hamilton very good. Free trade very bad. The "other people" are the numerous New Deal economists who are now totally marginalized (or exist in Russia and Germany) because they're "Hamiltonians". See Webster Tarpley's "Surviving the Cataclysm," (1999), which predicted the events of 2007-present earlier and with far greater accuracy and specificity than these hedge fund bastards.
@deadeyedick1933 EIC and Hamilton were EXACTLY the same you ignorant buffoon! Hamilton advocated the exact same mercantilist policies of the British Empire. What the hell is bad about free trade you moron? If it is Hamiltonian economic policy you think is good, then why don't you move into the wilderness and become a hermit, not trading anything with anyone, and see how well you do. And Tarpley didn't predict any of the events of the Meltdown.
@vindician Furthermore, predicting market events does not explain them. Economics is not a hard science (despite what the Austrians say), but if it is, you should admit the difference between correlation and causation, and demand more than a prediction of numbers going up and down before you swallow the explanation and the whole sociopathic program of killing off the nation-state.
@deadeyedick1933 What Austrians have done since the end of the 19th century is to explain why certain events take place. Mises explained why Socialism can't work in the 1920s, at the same time he and Hayek explained why the 1929 crash was coming. in 1944, Hazlitt explained why the Bretton Woods system would collapse. In the 1960s Hayek explained why price and wage controls would come. Paul, Schiff and many Austrians explained why the housing bubble would come. Educate yourself for god's sake!
@vindician Yeah – I guess I just need to "educate myself". The endless Austrian propaganda I've read hasn't sunk in. I must be one of those "sheeple" who is blinded by antiquated notions like morality, common sense and pattern recognition, and just can't envision the glorious world that total anarchy would create.
@deadeyedick1933 I think we established long ago that you've never read a single sentence written by an Austrian. As for morality and common sense. You're the one who's advocating violence and trampling of human rights by the state. As for pattern recognition, how about recognizing the pattern that Austrians have predicted and explained every major economic calamity for the past 100 years? Austrians advocate liberty and the right to trade and interact with anyone you choose. How is that immoral?
@vindician "Liberty": the right to gamble with other peoples' savings, offshore their jobs to slave colonies, buy and sell their public property, prevent them from organizing, and make them pay for your recklessness with "austerity" and deflation. Austrianism is an inversion of Communism – an attempt to restore feudal relations by inducing people to believe in social and historical fantasies about the freedom of anarchy.
@deadeyedick1933 You really are an orwellian slave of the state, aren't you? If I want to trade with a foreigner, who the hell are you to stop me? If I want to set up a business off shore, who the hell are you to stop me? Liberty means freedom, the right to your property and privacy, the right to interact with whomever you want. For heaven's sake man, get your head out of Obama's ass already.
@vindician Orwell was a British propagandist, like you, Peter Schiff and Obama. I'm not so naive as to see the world as a struggle between the sovereign individual and the tyrannical "collectivist" state.
"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty..."
@deadeyedick1933 Haha! Hilarious! First you say you're not so naive as to see the world as a struggle between the individual and the state, then you cite Abraham Lincoln, the very president who destroyed the voluntary union and created the centralized state the US is today. You really are priceless! :D
Orwell may have been a socialist, but his books Animal Farm and 1984 are among the most important criticism of totalitarianism ever written. That you denounce him as propagandist speaks volumes.
@vindician The "voluntary union" ended in 1787. So-called centralization was the only thing that kept the union from being re-absorbed into the British empire, both after the revolution and during the civil war. 1984 is British anti-New Deal propaganda, just like your precious "Austrian" books. Look for an article called "The Aquarian Conspiracy." I am now done. If I wanted to argue with 16 year-olds, I'd become a high school philosophy teacher.
@deadeyedick1933 The voluntary union persisted until 1861, even though it was under constant attack. Lincoln was the president who definitely ended. Your claim about being absorbed in the UK is, as all your claims thus far, completely wrong and unsubstantiated. 1984 was a critique of totalitarianism. Because of New Deal policies, the depression lasted 16 years. It deserves criticism. But its good you give up, you never had a single argument to begin with. Trolls like you never do.
@deadeyedick1933 Why the hell would more taxes solve anything? What Schiff and Paul have advocated is to remove all the privileges enjoyed by the banks, abolishing the Fed and sound money. That is the only way you can put an end to these constant booms and busts. More taxes just means more money to the government to dish out on their favored interest groups. More taxes is the LAST thing the US needs.
@vindician More taxes would solve the Republicans' fake-ass budget crisis – more from Wall Street, less from me. Maybe you heard that GE paid zero federal income taxes last year because of its offshore tax havens. People like Schiff pay a lower rate than schmucks like you and me because of all the reshuffling, offshoring and loopholes available to wall street. We pay taxes to buy gas, milk and diapers, and Peter Schiff pays zero to buy derivatives.
@deadeyedick1933 Oh, so more taxes would bridge the 1,5 TRILLION budget deficit and cover the 114 TRILLION of unfunded liabilities the Feds have accumulated? The US doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a SPENDING and DEBT problem. You wouldn't come close even if the tax rate for those who make over 250,000/year would be 100 percent. And what do you think productive Americans will do when the tax rates shoot up from their already high levels? What will the businesses do? The US needs to cut.
"More taxes would solve the Republicans' fake-ass budget crisis"
AT the curent spending rate of the adminstration, even if we confiscated ALL of the rich's wealth we wouldn't quite get through a year of Obama's crazy-ass(eh?) and irrisponsible speing spree. Brain-dead socialists think that by taxing wealth you solve anything. Alas, nonsensical social warfare propaganda from the left wins over a sound economic theory.
By the by, GM is in bed with Obama. They receive subsidies which...
@regelemihai Fine. Claw back the TARP payments, nationalize the Fed and TARP banks, bankrupt derivatives, reinstate Glass-Steagall, then restore normal commercial banking. Then your debt is normalized to the point that you can handle it with a New Deal-style tax, economic and infrastructure policy.
– Or we can go with Plan B. Reduce the middle class to the level of medieval peasants so Peter Schiff can keep his ill-gotten cash.
Yeah, why not nationalize evcerything, we know how well that works. Why stop with derivatives? Lets repeat the same mistakes made with the New Deal, and then we'll solve everything.
The outcomes of plan B will work splendidly with the socilalized heaven envisioned by backwarded socialists. Both the Middle class and the rick will be poor, but hey--no more "income gap." Yay for us!
@vindician As for money supply, "inflation" is relative to the amount of production, consumption, wages, etc. Bread, building materials and gas are historically cheap compared to "the money supply". The Fed and the derivatives bubble are black holes that haven't yet interacted much with the real economy. The problem will start when people like Schiff start turning their derivatives into futures contracts, land, t-bills, etc.
@deadeyedick1933 The VALUE of money is determined by the supply of money vs. the supply of goods and services. The inflation created by the Fed after the dot.com bubble went largely into housing, then into various securities connected to the housing bubble, most of which were created by Fannie and Freddie. However, the monetary base has increased enormously. At some point, that will go into circulation and the inflationary potential is uncalcuable.
@vindician I've read enough Adam Smith, von Mises and Milton Friedman for one lifetime, and don't need more British imperial propaganda from Bertrand Russell's protege. I'll give Austrians credit for one thing – they won't let facts or logic get in the way of their fantasies.
@deadeyedick1933 First of all, having read Smith doesn't mean anything as he was plagiarist. Nor do I believe you've read him, Friedman or Mises to any extent, not least as they represent different schools and you seem to think they're one and the same. To claim that is common for people like you and thus far they've always been proven be lies. And so you stoop to ridiculous and demonstrably false ad hominem attacks. Thank you for yet again showing the intellectual level of mainstreamers.
@vindician They're all different flavors of anti-nationalism. Why was a guy like Hazlitt so interested in Bertrand Russell, who advocated nuclear war, world government through the UN and eugenics? The hidden subtext of all "free trade" doctrines, which Mises describes openly in "Omnipotent Government," is that it requires the tearing down of national barriers and equalizing (pulling down) of cultures, which all leads inexorably to global feudalism.
@deadeyedick1933 Hazlitt was interested in economics and dispelling economic myth. It is quite symptomatic for people without any actual arguments to start attacking someone's character. And what is so good about national barriers? If people want to engage in global trade, who are you or anyone else to stop them? Free trade brings prosperity because it allows for division of labour and specialization. By your logic, every village, every individual, should refrain from voluntary exchange.
@vindician And the cat is out of the bag!! I wonder what the average Ron Paul dupe would choose if he truly understood the terms: representative government and national standards to foster industry and raise living standards (the American System); or a nationless global race to the bottom, where financial speculators make the rules (the British Empire)?
@vindician And I see by your channel that you're from Finland (your English is excellent, btw). I'm an American. I have a lot of ancestors that fought in American wars and helped build American industry, only for their hard work to be destroyed by the kind of stupid ideology you're espousing. Finland can do whatever it wants. My country has fallen for this crap long enough, and still has enough cultural anti-fascism to turn the tide.
@deadeyedick1933 What cat? Are you implying that myself, Ron Paul, Schiff or any other Austrian have tried to hide the fact that they favor global free trade, where no government hinders the voluntary exchange of individuals? Protectionism favours few and empoverishes everybode else. Read Hazlitt's book and you'll understand. The US hasn't had free trade at any time in its history. To the contrary, it has with very brief exceptions employed heavy handed protectionsim. Thanks for your kind words.
@vindician Every developed country has employed at least some form of protectionism. From 1818 to the 1920's the USA was the most protectionist country in the world (average rate 45-55%). FDIs was either banned or very highly regulated from the Jackson administration till the late Nixon years. Huge gov investments (i.e Louisiana purchase, transcontinental railroad, telegraph, R&D, NASA, NIH, NSF, computers, internet, mass production, automation, containerization etc)
@Bellantoni Every country has employed some sort of oppression of its people, does that mean our civilization wouldn't have advanced without oppression of the people? In the US, protectionism was one, if not the leading cause of war when the North invaded the South. The US economy thrived despite of protectionism, not because of it or any other government intervention mentioned. And you might want to look up the history of the transcontinental railroads, among others.
@vindician The Transcontinental railroad was decided by the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, payed for in gov bonds and on gov land. I've heard it asserted before that we developed despite protectionism but never demonstrated. The majority of people have supported domestic and infant-industry promotion and scorned reliance on others everywhere opinion polls have been taken, so I don't see the oppression.
P.S It was the South that invaded the North when it attacked Fort Sumter and Liberty Arsenal.
@Bellantoni The TC Railroads was one of the most corrupt subsidy bonanzas in US history and led to several states prohibiting corporate welfare in their Constitutions. Every subsidized RR company went bankrupt the years after the subsidies ended. The only functioning TC railroad was private and built by JJ Hill.
And firing shots at a hostile military installation is NOT invasion, for heaven's sake, not to mention that Lincoln's inaugural address was an open threat of war on the South.
@vindician Seceding from the union, attacking a fort because it happened to be in your state and storming/ robbing an arsenal in Missouri (a Union state) is unconstitutional and aggressive action to say the least and it was the first of the Civil War.
Those railways are still functioning to this day and the companies went bankrupt because of over speculation in rail bonds and lax banking regulation that led to the panic of 1893, upon which they were nearly nationalized to keep them operative.
@Bellantoni Wrong again. The South objected to half a century of plain plunder for the benefit of Northern manufacturing. Lincoln said that any objection to that plunder would be met with invasion. He made good on that promise. It was Lincoln who raised an army and invaded the South in addition to all atrocities he committed in the North.
The RR companies went bankrupt because their railroads were so inefficient due to how they were built. Hill on the other hand made a fortune.
@vindician The RRs helped build nearly all western state capitals. It allowed people and capital/goods to migrate or travel throughout the nation and was for decades the only means of doing so. This technology enhanced the dexterity of the nation enormously- I don't see the inefficiency.
It was the South that waged a murderous war on Mexico, enforced slavery, made nonsense of northern acts of compromise, seceded, and then attacked. How did this turn into a debate about the Civil War?
@Bellantoni The RRs were build incredibly ineffectively. Had they all been build like Hill's they would have saved millions for the taxpayers and served the public much better. Case in point the track what was built on a glacier. Guess what happened when spring came.
Slavery was common in the North as well. What compromise? You call an open threat of invasion compromise after having plundered the South for 50 years? Lincoln invaded the South because they refused to pay his protective tariffs.
@vindician The Transcontinental and Southern pacific RR, which were the most used, were not built on glaciers. I don't know where you got that from. Hill's was the least used because of it's location, in the most dimly populated part of america, and it needed federal stimulus after an avalanche fell on it. You obviously know nothing about Henry Clay and the great compromise of 1850 nor the Missouri compromise or the one after the nullification crisis, so there's no point.
@Bellantoni Henry Clay was a desciple of Alexander Hamilton, a proponent of high tariffs, national debt and corporate welfare. The tariffs were held high through most of the 19th century, at times reaching over 50%. The tariffs were paid by the South and went to corporate welfare in the North. Your data on the RR is utterly false. Had Hill's RR not been used, he wouldn't have become so wealthy. Also, instead of having the US Army exterminating the indians, he negotiated with them.
@vindician Hill was one of the poorest of the Robber Barons. You assert but don't demonstrate. The RRs built half of america, made transcontinental commerce and travel possible, strengthened the capital cities of the west turning them into modern metropolises, they had innumerable benefits to the welfare and economy of the nation and every other nation that had them.
@Bellantoni I see you've fallen prey to the myth of the Robber Barons. Hill was immensly successful and became extremely rich, much like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller and others. In stark contrast to the crony corporatist you seem to favor, these "Robber Barons" served the American public by providing high quality goods and services at low prices. You want references? Read Thomas DiLorenzo and Tom Woods to start with. Google "Robber Barons Mises", that'll give you a good start.
@vindician You've spent the over a day bitching about corporations and manufacturing, to come out in favor of the robber barons? Those who produced nothing that was heavily or wholly subsidized and protected by the state, as again you've admitted.
The only thing they ever created were several recessions and the dumbest concept ever created: corporate personhood. How do you rage against corporate welfare but favor corporate personhood; the greatest corporate welfare scheme in history?
@Bellantoni JDRockefeller, Vanderbilt, Hill and Dow were not subsidized by the govt. They increased the standard of living of all Americans by providing them with cheap and high quality goods and services. R made kerosene available to the public, and developed over 300 products from the rest product. Hill made a profit in 1893 when the subsidized RR companies went bust. Dow slashed the price of bromine. Private entrepreneurs become successful because they serve the public. These men were heroes.
The Henwood dude has some good ideas but they are in the wrong system. I like Schiff.
bigtex1453 3 days ago
These Keynesians and academic types always come off as if they have some sort if mental illness.. I guess you have to have a warped intellectually bankrupt thought process to believe in that gibberish anyhow.
Drummond1783 1 week ago
"Oh the government has the money." Well in that case why don't we start paying off our national debt.... Wait a second.
TheScyy 1 week ago
This video was a joke. They call this Real News? This is not the first time Peter has been marginalized and I am sure it will not be the last. If anybody is confused about economics, there is still help. Why has Mr. Schiff accurately predicted the dot com and real estate bubble? He understands the FREE MARKET and SOUND MONEY! An economy which government does not pick the winner or loser, but individuals that purchase the products decide the fate of companies.
ToddInAccounting 2 weeks ago
i just realised peter is the only credible economist. most of these other bozo economists just analyse data behind a desk, don't even have their own businesses.
halflifeproductionz 3 weeks ago
Henwood talks too damn fast, it makes him sound like he's got a mental problem.
ImhoffInstruments 3 weeks ago
is that dude the moderator or the retard on the lefts sidekick?
atomicdogg34 3 weeks ago
eliminate the minimum wage NOW. it only makes it unprofitable for businesses to hire someone that produces an amount lower than the minimum wage amount. give people the option to work for less and build up the skills, discipline, experience & many other things that you gain from a job so they become more productive and can then earn higher wages. 96% of the workforce is NOT on minimum wage, if the business tries to take advantage of their workers the worker can go somewhere else. RON PAUL 2012
86austinc86 4 weeks ago
tardboy on the left should not have been included in this conversation
86austinc86 4 weeks ago
He debated his own straw man haha
frank1es83 1 month ago
I'm not in the top 2%, not even close,but I agree with Peter Schiff.
freakfiend32 1 month ago
Im looking at a chart of industrial production from 1920-2012 and it is clearly down. Clear bias against Peter in this video.
Willredd94 1 month ago
This guy Henwood is so far to the left it is unbearable for me to even listen to him. Im for reducing military spending overseas but he wants to cut defense spending nearly 70% to fund his welfare state.
Willredd94 1 month ago
@Willredd94 You know what's funny is that it's the military that funded computer research. The very same computer research Henwood credits the government for developing. Of course, he purposefully left out that piece of information.
chapaev36 3 weeks ago
What I always find hilarious in debates like this is that Peter Schiff is the only person who produces a damn thing. You have three people in the room. One working to produce something and 2 others standing around bitching about how he should produce it and how the fruit of the labor will be divided once its made.
KurtP00 2 months ago
I think the dude on the left has downs...
Andersll11 2 months ago 3
@Andersll11 lol
Willredd94 1 month ago
In China, are there mass unemployment and government entitlement benefits?
"No wurk, no eet."
AwesomeDudeGreat 2 months ago
yea and look at what happened to japan not that long ago you fool Doug Henwood. Deflation my ass...
mmojica87 2 months ago
@mmojica87 Anyone who advocates spending as a way out of recession should be shot in the left and right parts of their brain for precisely the reason that Japan's economy has never been able to fully recover because of all the massive debt their government thought it would perfectly fine to accumulate during the late '90s.
AwesomeDudeGreat 2 months ago
Schiff ripped this guy to pieces.
sellsjeeps 2 months ago
Are people seriously claiming that this turd beat schiff??? It's insane! When we people realize the market isn't a faceless group of fat cats in a room somewhere, it's ALL OF US, and when the government steps in and regulates, those regulations ARE written by the rich elite who lobby congress. We can't control the banks and brokers in that environment, but we CAN control congress and if we limit the size and scope of government we force everyone in the market to answer to us, the consumer.
mbutler920 3 months ago
I swear that the only reason some people think Peter Schiff is cool is because he is not mainstream. That is called the "Galileo Fallacy" if anyone's interested.
mojorhythm 4 months ago
Schiff was completely defeated by this guy.
ProtestantsRUs 4 months ago
I love how Keynsians always try to frame the debate as a refutation of phony free market reaganomics. When they bump into an Austrian they don't know their ass from their elbows, and they look like fools.
K20ej88 4 months ago
@K20ej88 That's because most mainstream economists are neoclassicals, not Keynesians. Peter Schiff would be totally raped inside and out like a two dollar tranny hooker if he decided to argue with someone like Steve Keen....an actual Keynesian who understands economics. Actually, they did have a kind of semi-debate. And even then, Schiff got PWNED on more than 1 occasion.
mojorhythm 4 months ago
@mojorhythm we have been following the Keynesian model for a long time now, and it is not working. one of Schill's major arguments (one that people just can't seem to comprehend), is that you can't say that capitalism isn't working, and the free market isn't working, because we don't have a free market. when the gov't is stroking off big banks, giving them low (or no) interest money for years on end, that ain't capitalism; it's Keynesian thinking. and that isn't working.
jasonmclose 3 months ago
@jasonmclose If you think that today's economists are Keynesians, you would be very wrong. Most of them believe in Walras' Law, Homo Economicus, Rational Expectations, the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, Representative Agent macro modelling, and so on. They don't emphasize the fundamental role of uncertainty or liquidity preference in shaping interest rates and demand for money. They also think markets are stable and at or near equilibrium. Keynes thought none of this.
mojorhythm 3 months ago
I like Peter Schiff alot, but Henwood is right on the point that productivity has gone up and wages have not. Schiff's argument is that if productivity was strong we would not be running such a massive trade deficit. In a rational world this would be true, but the problem is America consumes so much that even though we produce quite a bit, the production is overshadowed by such viscous consumption.
mu5icaddict2 4 months ago
@mu5icaddict2
Wages had gone up. When they say income was stagnant they talk about household income. Yes household income increased by only 4% during last 30 years or so, but per capita income gone up by 50%. Household vary in size, composition etc. To invoke household income is simply propaganda.
serialkiller1990 4 months ago
@serialkiller1990 I was actually talking more about the productivity side of the statement, but your point is a good one. Do you have a source for that 50% number?
mu5icaddict2 3 months ago
@mu5icaddict2 wages have not gone up because taxes and health care are eating them up. my health care costs have gone up around 10% a year for the past 10 years, and the gov't tries to take more of my money if i work harder. if you notice, the more the gov't injects itself into the health care industry, it causes prices to rise more. this is true for just about every industry. gov't subsidies raise prices, not lower them.
wages are going up, but health care costs are eating them up.
jasonmclose 3 months ago
@jasonmclose also a good point. As I told serialkiller1990 I'm not talking about the wage side of the equation. In my opinion (and yours apparently) they have remained basically stagnant. I don't agree that government SUBSIDIES raise prices. As I understand subsidies are designed to provide incentives to produce XYZ. I don't understand how that would cause prices to rise. Are you talking about regulations?
mu5icaddict2 3 months ago
@mu5icaddict2 subsidies raise prices because they create an industry unto themselves (similar to a union), full of lobbyists and lawyers whose existence is purely to keep the subsidies coming. plus, the subsidy machine gets so big that new, small businesses can't break through, because the investment capital required to get on par with existing big businesses is vast. the free market can't compete, so prices go up, just because they can.
jasonmclose 3 months ago
@jasonmclose I see...isn't that called fascism?
mu5icaddict2 3 months ago
@mu5icaddict2 subsidies DO raise prices - here's why - subsidies create incentives for a particular type of behavior on the part of favored individuals or groups. This means an artificial stimulus to demand because you have lowered the costs for those select individuals, but in the long term, prices will increase due to the higher demand. Look at college tuition - heavily subsidized by the government and a college education has increased 400-500% in the last couple of decades.
gergenheimer 3 months ago
@mu5icaddict2 i think what peter is saying is we are not producing enough of the things that we use clothing,building supplies, electronics,etc. The production we are good at is not the basic stuff that regular people need unless u count aircrafts ,pharmacueticals,etc.
barlover636 3 months ago
@mu5icaddict2 Of people who actually produce a tangible good or service, productivity has certainly increased, but as a share of the total population, the ratio of productive jobs to non-productive jobs has been steadily shrinking. Think of all the pencil-pushers and bureaucrats whose only function is to supervise and manage, but who produce nothing of tangible value to anyone. Schiff is correct, the proof is in the pudding - if we were so productive, we wouldn't be in debt up to our eyeballs.
gergenheimer 3 months ago
@gergenheimer If someone makes 300,000 dollars a year, but spends 500,000 he/she is both productive (presumably) and in debt. And people who push pencils around all day are actually creating value, believe it or not. Nobody would ever pay anyone who wasn't doing something seen as productive..
mu5icaddict2 3 months ago
@mu5icaddict2 incorrect - you are basing your statement on the fallacy that the mere act of spending money causes an economy to "go". Doing something that is "seen" as productive isn't the same thing as actually being productive - the beginning and end of economic activity is the creation of goods and services that consumers want, not any arbitrary busy work that earns someone a paycheck. Debt is a promise to produce something of value at a later date, not just a meaningless ledger book entry.
gergenheimer 3 months ago
@gergenheimer A.)No I'm not. The person was productive because he made 300,000, not because he spent 500,000. B.) I don't believe there is such thing as arbitrary busy work. Nobody is going to pay somebody to do something which doesn't produce anything of value. C.) I agree with you on your definition of debt.
mu5icaddict2 3 months ago
@mu5icaddict2 I work at a major university - my department was restructured a couple of years ago and multiple six-figure salary middle-managers were added. Where projects formerly had 2-3 people assigned to them who were responsible for their completion, we now have 5-7 people involved. Now, every project takes longer and has more errors - the output and quality of our work has suffered. The admins that were brought in have no value-add to our work - none.
gergenheimer 3 months ago
@gergenheimer Interesting...Why are they allowed to keep working there if they don't contribute anything?
mu5icaddict2 3 months ago
@mu5icaddict2
Per capita production has not gone up, it has shrunk. Also, production does not mean a thing when it goes towards consumer goods that are bought with borrowed money.
PazGuerro 2 weeks ago
Host and guy on the left have weak arguments. Guy on the left is some political muppet. Pathetic.
whatisphreeon 4 months ago
The clown Henwood got put on his place. Do you employ anybody? Heu heu... a part time person! Fool maybe that's exactly your problem. You do not have any real understanding of what business owners and employers have to g through to hire and retain their workforce. Shut the hell up for good?
AFRIKTODAY 5 months ago
This is the most irritating thing I've ever seen, idk why this angers me so much but I am so livid
JJaouli1 5 months ago
Schiff dominated this fool.
scottvska 6 months ago 7
The title of this video should be called, "Peter Schiff pwns retarded statist."
'Nuff said.
TheManiacalSatanist6 6 months ago
I think that Schiff is right about the government being largely responsible for the economic mess we're in. On the other hand I think that Henwood is right that we need some fiscal stimulus and investment in infrastructure.
It's annoying that the second you say we need a stimulus you're expected to defend every thing the government spends money on. If we had used the money we borrowed from China to invest in infrastructure instead of housing we wouldn't be in a recession.
Setzer 6 months ago
Schiff the shiv's cult members are out in full force in this video, it seems.
- Misuse of capital letters.
- Straw man arguements.
- False dichotomies.
- Ad hominem pseudo aphorisms.
- Accusations of being 'over educated'.
- And an endless use of 'LOLs'
It's a sad & endless abuse of the ability to anonymously leave HTML graffiti on YouTube.
justnotcricket 6 months ago
Henwood needs to read mises. or hayek
BigDaddyDJD 6 months ago
Do you employ anybody?...... NO.
loren1283 6 months ago
Doug Henwood is right.
vicentedecordova 6 months ago
Doug Henwood is such a mumbler.
TheCapitalistdog 6 months ago
ill give yall 5 dollars if theres a redebate and possibly acouple boxing rounds ,THANX
kaprah01 6 months ago
That guy on the left is pissing me off !
BarrySlisk 6 months ago
DOug Henwood is CLUELESS.
xMaXiMuSx 7 months ago
i would re-name this vid, peter schiff talks with over educated central banking cheerleaders about why hes right but for the wrong reasons.
implicico 7 months ago
Doug's view in economic is as crooked as his eyes
trexx32 10 months ago
henwood has no real examples for anything haha I love how Peter had a real fucking job and doesnt hyperventalate when he speaks
lol Schiff = Boss
cZiebenhaus 10 months ago
I wonder if Mr. Henwood still thinks there is no inflation several months after this interview/debate? I don't get why liberals are so concerned with deflation?
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
@DavidRTarrant
The Great Depression was deflationary. Maybe that's why. It serves as cautionary tale.
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai The Great Depression became Great and lasted for 16 years precisely because the government tried to fight delfation. Maybe that should be the lesson to learn and the cautionary tale, don't you think?
vindician 10 months ago
@vindician
I agree wholeheartedly. I'm just trying to make sense of difference economic standpoints. On the one hand I read from Peter Schiff that deflation is just a proverbial boogyman that shouldn't be feared, and on the other, when I venture into different outposts of economic forums, people tell me that deflation causes bigger problems because it discourages purchasing, and that the Great Depression was deflationary.
It's just hard to make sense of it all.
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai I know the feeling. It is worth remembering though that no one at any time in history has been able to present a plausible case for why deflation by default is bad. Consider the period 1776 - 1913. On average, the US experienced a fairly stable decrease in prices. Deflation, properly understood, is the liqudation the of loans generated from credit expansion which caused the bubble. Deflation is an unavoidable and necessary market correction following an unsustainable boom.
vindician 10 months ago
@vindician
Yeah, that's what Peter stresses all the time too.
One thing, though. How can deflation be a liquidation of assets if no one is buying them because of the fact that prices are falling? That's what liquidation is, isn't it? The ability to convert assets into cash. Am I missing something?
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai Liquidation means writing down debt. The term for onvertibility to money is "liquid".
The money created through credit expansion is circulated through loans, e.g. mortgages. These loans were then listed as "assets" on the banks' balance sheet, but they were in fact just created out of nothing. When people lost their ability to repay their loans, these "assets" started to evaporate, thus canceling out the money created through the loans, resulting in huge losses for the banks.
vindician 10 months ago
"When people lost their ability to repay their loans, these "assets" started to evaporate."
I'm sorry for being a nag, but I'm still trying to understand the mechanics behind this.
Why did the bust occur so suddenly? I mean, the banks knew these people couldn't pay the loans back so why the sharp decline?
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai True, but not the cause of the Great Depression (the Fed was the cause). What turned the economic downturn into a disaster was Hoover's intervention in the economy--he raised taxes, expanded gov't, and did everything to fight the free market. Then FDR came in and "saved" us (sarcasm) with his New Deal and socialism and the economy finally recovered--15 years later.
Look at the market correction of 1920. Gov't shrank and cut taxes and the economy bounced back within a year.
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
"True, but not the cause of the Great Depression."
What's the difference? :-\
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai Blaming the Great Depression on deflation is like blaming a plane crash on gravity. In our most recent economic downturn we had deflation pushing prices down (liquidation, going out of business sales, etc) while at the same time inflation (the expansion of the money supply to bail out banks, lend to the gov't, bail out auto companies, etc) pushing prices up. Eventually, the deflationary forces will wither away leaving us 'unshielded' from the inflationary forces.
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
@regelemihai Also, deflation is a good thing. Especially in an economic downturn. We hear all of the time about the unemployed and struggling families trying to make their dollars 'go farther' in a tough economy. That is exactly what deflation of prices does -- it lowers prices. In essence, when someone loses their job they are living off of their savings and deflation makes their savings more valuable.
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
@DavidRTarrant
This is still weird to me. If deflation is good because everything becomes cheaper, why are people still considering it a bad thing? I mean, if home prices are falling, why does that hurt people? Would falling prices encourage more purchases of homes? Some people say that since prices are falling people feel less inclined to reach into their wallets. That makes no sense.
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai Falling home prices are great for anyone looking to buy. They are horrible for banks that count mortgages as 'assets' --especially when a bank lent $500k to buy a house that is now worth $250k--hopefully you can see why banks (and the gov't who loves to help out the banks) would want to do everything to keep prices high.
As for falling prices preventing spending I think that is untrue. Everyone knows that next year TVs are going to be bigger and cheaper yet ppl still buy them.
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
@DavidRTarrant
I know it is untrue! But people still keep using it. They say that if prices keep falling at a fast rate, as it usually happens in a deflationary recession, then they just hold on to their money because they keep waiitng for the prices to keep falling.
As for the home prices, yes it's true that falling prices are great for consumers, but then why was there a boom in home purchases if prices kept rising during the 2003-2006 years?
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai That was the housing bubble being inflated. The Fed set interest rates at record lows (essentially making a more expensive home more affordable) and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed home ownership and allowed the bankers to run wild doling out mortgages to everyone and anyone. If you have time YouTube "Peter Schiff Mortgage Bankers Speech" -- in this speech from 2006, Schiff predicts and explains the coming housing bust with amazing detail.
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
@DavidRTarrant
I'm on it sir!
I hope he will shed some light on this.
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai Probably a better explanation of the housing bubble (and the stock bubble of the late 90's - 2000 era) is a speech he gave to the Mises institute in 2009. YouTube "Peter Schiff, Why the Meltdown Should Have Surprised No One" and you will have it. The speech in 2006 is amazing b/c he predicted the housing bubble so clearly -- and to a hostile audience nonetheless. I think the one in 2009 that I mentioned in this post is perhaps a more thorough description.
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
@DavidRTarrant
Oh, and another thing I was hoping you could clarify for me. At 23:32 Peter says, with relation to our trade deficit, "if we're producing, why do we need imports?" Coming from a free market economist this is a bit baffling to me. A central tenet of the free market is free trade. He even writes in his book "How and Economy Grows and Why it Crashes" that trade is essential. Yet here and in other videos he keeps implying that we don't need imports if we can produce goods.
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai In this case Peter has a problem with the imbalance of trade. In other words, if our economy is so productive, why are we buying everything from China and they aren't buying anything from us? He is calling into question the notion that Henwood was making that production in our economy is up (relatively). Free trade (not managed trade like NAFTA) is a great thing for an economy as a whole.
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
@regelemihai "That makes no sense."
That's because its mainstream economics, it never makes any sense.
Real economics, by which I mean Austrian economics, do make sense. It is supposed to make sense. Economics is not some magical, mystical pseudo-science in which everything is paradoxical and at odds with reality. Quite the opposite. It is very much based on common sense and most if it is perfectly obvious when you think about it. Sadly, its been high jacked by shills and liars for the regime
vindician 10 months ago
@vindician
I agree. I'm reading more and more economic theory from the Austrian school. I'm doing my best to try and understand Freidman's Freedom and Capitalism.
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai You guys should check out the radio show that Peter Schiff does--he puts out a podcast if you can't get it live-- Google "Peter Schiff Radio". Tomorrow (Wednesday) Tom Woods is guest-hosting and Ron Paul and Gerald Celente are going to be on. I haven't read anything from Celente but I've read "Rollback" and "Meltdown" by Woods and "End The Fed" by Ron Paul -- if you are getting into Austrian econ these are great books -- both are smart and outstanding authors too.
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
@DavidRTarrant
Right on!Yeah,I do follow his podcasts.He has a channel here on YT were he posts them regularly(although recently he's been flakey.Probably for personal reasons).Thanks again for the references.I appreciate any help I can get on these matters.
A few points though.
1. why isn't NAFTA an example of free trade?
2. How can he concede that GDP has risen but that it's not an indication of an increase in production.Isn't GDP the value of everything produced within a country?
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai The NAFTA document and subsequent regulatory documents are thousands of pages long. It's controlled trade, not free trade.A true free trade agreement should be only a one or two sentences: "Our countries shall have free trade. There shall not be any restrictions, tariffs or any other sort of barrier or impediment of the free movement of goods, people, and capital between our countries".
GDP, as caluculated, has virtually nothing to do with actual production taking place in the US.
vindician 10 months ago
@regelemihai The loans of the banks started to evaporate because the value of the collateral (the houses) started to go down. That increased the risk profile of the loans. Also, the ablity to service the loans went down from the very low level it began at, and since people had virtually no reason to even try servicing their loans, they started to walk away from their houses and let the banks deal with it. Of course the banks knew this, they bet on the Fed bailing them out, which it did.
vindician 10 months ago
@vindician
"The loans of the banks started to evaporate because the value of the collateral (the houses) started to go down. "
That's my question; why did it so suddenly start to go down? I had initially thought because the banks weren't receiving the payments on the mortgages. But that can't be it since a typical mortgage loan is taken for a 30 years.
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai When money is injected into a given sector, like housing, prices start to rise. As more money is channeled into that sector the price rise well over the free market value. In other words, the credit expansion creates a boom which results in an artificial demand. At some point, people are unable and unwilling to bind so much capital on such long term basis, their preferences change. This lessens the demand for houses which in turn leads to a downward correction of housing prices
vindician 10 months ago
@vindician
I didn't know demand declined. I thought the demand was self-perpetuating in view of the rising prices.
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai Quite a few made that mistake and are now paying for it. Nothing is self-perpetuating. The housing marked topped off in 2007, which means that the rally only lasted 5-6 years. There always comes a point when the price level douses out demand, and that is when the correction starts to take place. Same thing happened in 1929. The stock market topped off, prices were stable for a while, leading Irwing Fisher to believe that US stocks had reached a permanent high platau. He was wrong.
vindician 10 months ago
@vindician
Everything that rises...
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai ...must come down. It's as simple as that, at least when the rise is attributable to aritifically low interest rates and credit expansion.
vindician 10 months ago
@regelemihai
GDP is very misleading. According to the GDP, our economy improved b/c of the bedbug crisis--thousands of people had to throw away perfectly good furniture and buy new stuff. If a store imports from China a couch (at $225 cost) & sells it for $250 (profiting $25) -- the $250 gets added to our GDP. But who got the most benefit here? We lost good furniture (a form of wealth). China made $225. Our retailer profited $25. But (according to GDP) our economy grew by $250.
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
@regelemihai Google "managed vs free trade" and you'll find a good article from the thefreemanonline website --can't post a link in comment section.
Problem w/ things like NAFTA is that they aren't pure free trade--special interest groups get their say--so we might be able to import windmills tariff-free but importing baby food w/out the hurdles??? No way...
The US grew early on b/c the constitution (which in the early 1800's was still respected) stipulated true free-trade among the states.
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
@DavidRTarrant
Gotcha'. Thanks again for your time David.
regelemihai 10 months ago
@vindician Good explanation. I tell people that Austrians apply the same theory to the Macro as the Micro. So what goes for an individual stays true on the national scale. The example of an individual who buys a lot of things on a credit card and "looks" wealthy compared to the US economy today w/ all the debt we have. Does it make sense for that individual to turn their finances around by borrowing even more? Or should they bite the bullet and cut back severely to pay down their debts.
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
Peter Schiff is 100% correct
irwing69 11 months ago
@Bellantoni --- YOU are correct 100% , CROATIA NATO-OTAN member was part of Yugoslavia but in believing that they will live better if they leave Yugoslavian UNION NOW they see they DID terrible TERRIBLE mistake, Anti government demonstrations are in full swing there people have been on the streets since 2-22-2011 till now Unemployment is raising exponentially WHOLE economy is based on borrowing money MMF and buying goods from EU. They are DONE.
aviomaster 11 months ago
socialists are insane. man, we screwed when dolts like this are running the world.
cgreenw9 11 months ago
The one thing Schiff is right about: American businesses are "productive" because they count outsourced labor as internal production. So what's the solution? Not increased "productivity." Say it with me: T-A-R-I-F-F-S. If GE wants coolie labor, tax them the wage difference between what they import vs. American standards.
deadeyedick1933 11 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 Yep, that is perfect solution.
LevelheadedFitness 11 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 So if you don't want to be taxed and regulated to death, you're a traitor? Well, that really sums up the USA IS GREAT crowd, doesn't it? Just bow down before your leaders, wave incense before Bernanke and pray to the president. Disgusting!
As for the money supply. Look at the Fed's balance sheet you ridiclous moron. And where do you think all that money came from that bid up the housing prices? And tariffs!? Are you fucking insane? Want to raise prices of everything?
vindician 11 months ago
@vindician Schiff is a traitor because he's a hedge fund manager who destroys and offshores businesses. I've run a business for a long time and have seen how a lot of businesses run. While there are indeed some regulations designed to crush small business (esp. in the agricultural sector), the bigger problem is under-regulation. By pre-1993 standards, Peter Schiff would not exist. Hedge funds should be banned, and he's complaining about how he has to sign some paperwork to get tax loopholes.
deadeyedick1933 11 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 Schiff is a stock broker and commentator who makes money for other people and employs more than 100 workers. Please dispense with the innane conspiracy theories. It would also appear you know exactly nothing about the FS sector. It is by far the most overregulated sector of the economy, with over 100 different regulatory and supervisory agencies, over 12,000 full time regulators on the federal level alone and thousand upon thousands of pages of special regulations.
vindician 11 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 First you are wrong and you should read his books. He calls bullsh!t on the fact that hedge fund managers only pay a 15% income tax even though they rake in billions.
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
@DavidRTarrant That's great – so why doesn't he talk about that or a securities transfer tax instead of advocating a deflationary crash and dollar default? Why has Ron Paul never once suggested anyone (including wall street) should pay more taxes? Sounds like Peter's conscience slipped out for a sentence or two, then got gobbled back up by the "Austrian" parasite inhabiting his brain.
deadeyedick1933 10 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 If you knew anything about the Fed and the other central planning the gov't does you'd understand why so many Austrians believe gov't should be as small as possible--and thus take from it's citizens as little as possible. REMINDER: Austrians are the ones that predicted the housing bubble, stock bubble, 1970's stagflation, 1980's S&L debacle, stock market crash & the Great Depression...AND have been the most non-partisan economic line of thinking...need I go on? Truth hurts.
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
@DavidRTarrant You refuse to recognize the existence of anything other than total free trade and this mythical "central planning" tyranny. Plenty of people predicted those same events. The difference is that some of them formulated sane solutions. Your "Austrians" are nothing more than modern East India Company propagandists; predated by, and a British-sponsored reaction to, American and German nationalist economists like Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List and Henry C. Carey.
deadeyedick1933 10 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 Seriously? Thats the comeback? I'm sorry I don't believe in socialism...but everywhere you look where our gov't is broke or corrupt socialism is clearly involved. Whether it is Medicare (broke) or Social Security (broke); or the corporate welfare programs like in banking, military industrial, or education (all broke and/or totally dependent on gov't) it seems that gov't deployment of wealth is the problem.
Humanity is comprised of humans -- not ants or bees. Keep dreaming.
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
" Social Security (broke); "
I recently heard Anthony Weiner saying that Social Security has a major surplus, not that it's broke.
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai First, never believe anything Weiner says about anything. Second, the SS paid out more than it took in 2010. Considering the increasing real unemployment and aging population, that trend is not likely to reverse. Third, the only "assets" in the SS trust fund are US government bonds. Fourth, a trustee of the SS admitted to Peter Schiff on record that SS is a ponzi scheme.
vindician 10 months ago
@vindician
People will scream and shout at the mention of privatization.
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai That "surplus" is in the form of IOU's from the US gov't and the way to repay those IOUs is to tax the hell out of everyone or inflate the dollar further (print the money to repay the IOUs). Should SS have that ~$4T surplus in the bank? Yes but gov't has always spent that money on other things as it came in. One important thing: in order for SS to be constitutional they had to separate the paying in (taxing) and paying out (benefits). So to say SS has a surplus is a lie.
DavidRTarrant 10 months ago
@DavidRTarrant
Aha. So technically if the Social Security Administration hadn't bought all of those government bonds (I.O.Us), the 4 T dollars would be actual benefits. So why aren't they holding on to the surplus and rather lending it to the government that in turn has to pay it back?
regelemihai 10 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 Damn man your ignorance is epic. The East India Company and Hamilton had NOTHING to do with free trade. Hamilton advocated high protectionist tariffs and corporate welfare, he was a mercantilist. Ever heard of Tom DiLorenzo? He is one of the most prolific Austrians today. He wrote a book called "Hamilton's Curse". What does that tell you? And who are all these "other people" who predicted so much? Why didn't they speak out? Where are they now?
vindician 10 months ago
@vindician You're mixing up my comments and world history at the same time. I said the EIC was a REACTION TO Hamilton. Hamilton very good. Free trade very bad. The "other people" are the numerous New Deal economists who are now totally marginalized (or exist in Russia and Germany) because they're "Hamiltonians". See Webster Tarpley's "Surviving the Cataclysm," (1999), which predicted the events of 2007-present earlier and with far greater accuracy and specificity than these hedge fund bastards.
deadeyedick1933 10 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 EIC and Hamilton were EXACTLY the same you ignorant buffoon! Hamilton advocated the exact same mercantilist policies of the British Empire. What the hell is bad about free trade you moron? If it is Hamiltonian economic policy you think is good, then why don't you move into the wilderness and become a hermit, not trading anything with anyone, and see how well you do. And Tarpley didn't predict any of the events of the Meltdown.
vindician 10 months ago
@vindician Furthermore, predicting market events does not explain them. Economics is not a hard science (despite what the Austrians say), but if it is, you should admit the difference between correlation and causation, and demand more than a prediction of numbers going up and down before you swallow the explanation and the whole sociopathic program of killing off the nation-state.
deadeyedick1933 10 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 What Austrians have done since the end of the 19th century is to explain why certain events take place. Mises explained why Socialism can't work in the 1920s, at the same time he and Hayek explained why the 1929 crash was coming. in 1944, Hazlitt explained why the Bretton Woods system would collapse. In the 1960s Hayek explained why price and wage controls would come. Paul, Schiff and many Austrians explained why the housing bubble would come. Educate yourself for god's sake!
vindician 10 months ago
@vindician Yeah – I guess I just need to "educate myself". The endless Austrian propaganda I've read hasn't sunk in. I must be one of those "sheeple" who is blinded by antiquated notions like morality, common sense and pattern recognition, and just can't envision the glorious world that total anarchy would create.
deadeyedick1933 10 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 I think we established long ago that you've never read a single sentence written by an Austrian. As for morality and common sense. You're the one who's advocating violence and trampling of human rights by the state. As for pattern recognition, how about recognizing the pattern that Austrians have predicted and explained every major economic calamity for the past 100 years? Austrians advocate liberty and the right to trade and interact with anyone you choose. How is that immoral?
vindician 10 months ago
@vindician "Liberty": the right to gamble with other peoples' savings, offshore their jobs to slave colonies, buy and sell their public property, prevent them from organizing, and make them pay for your recklessness with "austerity" and deflation. Austrianism is an inversion of Communism – an attempt to restore feudal relations by inducing people to believe in social and historical fantasies about the freedom of anarchy.
deadeyedick1933 10 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 You really are an orwellian slave of the state, aren't you? If I want to trade with a foreigner, who the hell are you to stop me? If I want to set up a business off shore, who the hell are you to stop me? Liberty means freedom, the right to your property and privacy, the right to interact with whomever you want. For heaven's sake man, get your head out of Obama's ass already.
vindician 10 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@vindician Orwell was a British propagandist, like you, Peter Schiff and Obama. I'm not so naive as to see the world as a struggle between the sovereign individual and the tyrannical "collectivist" state.
"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty..."
- Abraham Lincoln
deadeyedick1933 10 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 Haha! Hilarious! First you say you're not so naive as to see the world as a struggle between the individual and the state, then you cite Abraham Lincoln, the very president who destroyed the voluntary union and created the centralized state the US is today. You really are priceless! :D
Orwell may have been a socialist, but his books Animal Farm and 1984 are among the most important criticism of totalitarianism ever written. That you denounce him as propagandist speaks volumes.
vindician 10 months ago
@vindician The "voluntary union" ended in 1787. So-called centralization was the only thing that kept the union from being re-absorbed into the British empire, both after the revolution and during the civil war. 1984 is British anti-New Deal propaganda, just like your precious "Austrian" books. Look for an article called "The Aquarian Conspiracy." I am now done. If I wanted to argue with 16 year-olds, I'd become a high school philosophy teacher.
deadeyedick1933 10 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 The voluntary union persisted until 1861, even though it was under constant attack. Lincoln was the president who definitely ended. Your claim about being absorbed in the UK is, as all your claims thus far, completely wrong and unsubstantiated. 1984 was a critique of totalitarianism. Because of New Deal policies, the depression lasted 16 years. It deserves criticism. But its good you give up, you never had a single argument to begin with. Trolls like you never do.
vindician 10 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 Why the hell would more taxes solve anything? What Schiff and Paul have advocated is to remove all the privileges enjoyed by the banks, abolishing the Fed and sound money. That is the only way you can put an end to these constant booms and busts. More taxes just means more money to the government to dish out on their favored interest groups. More taxes is the LAST thing the US needs.
vindician 10 months ago
@vindician More taxes would solve the Republicans' fake-ass budget crisis – more from Wall Street, less from me. Maybe you heard that GE paid zero federal income taxes last year because of its offshore tax havens. People like Schiff pay a lower rate than schmucks like you and me because of all the reshuffling, offshoring and loopholes available to wall street. We pay taxes to buy gas, milk and diapers, and Peter Schiff pays zero to buy derivatives.
deadeyedick1933 10 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 Oh, so more taxes would bridge the 1,5 TRILLION budget deficit and cover the 114 TRILLION of unfunded liabilities the Feds have accumulated? The US doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a SPENDING and DEBT problem. You wouldn't come close even if the tax rate for those who make over 250,000/year would be 100 percent. And what do you think productive Americans will do when the tax rates shoot up from their already high levels? What will the businesses do? The US needs to cut.
vindician 10 months ago
"More taxes would solve the Republicans' fake-ass budget crisis"
AT the curent spending rate of the adminstration, even if we confiscated ALL of the rich's wealth we wouldn't quite get through a year of Obama's crazy-ass(eh?) and irrisponsible speing spree. Brain-dead socialists think that by taxing wealth you solve anything. Alas, nonsensical social warfare propaganda from the left wins over a sound economic theory.
By the by, GM is in bed with Obama. They receive subsidies which...
regelemihai 10 months ago
...go against what Austrian school economy believes in.
regelemihai 10 months ago
*Irresponsible spending spree.
regelemihai 10 months ago
*current spending rate.
regelemihai 10 months ago
@regelemihai Fine. Claw back the TARP payments, nationalize the Fed and TARP banks, bankrupt derivatives, reinstate Glass-Steagall, then restore normal commercial banking. Then your debt is normalized to the point that you can handle it with a New Deal-style tax, economic and infrastructure policy.
– Or we can go with Plan B. Reduce the middle class to the level of medieval peasants so Peter Schiff can keep his ill-gotten cash.
deadeyedick1933 10 months ago
@deadeyedick1933
Yeah, why not nationalize evcerything, we know how well that works. Why stop with derivatives? Lets repeat the same mistakes made with the New Deal, and then we'll solve everything.
The outcomes of plan B will work splendidly with the socilalized heaven envisioned by backwarded socialists. Both the Middle class and the rick will be poor, but hey--no more "income gap." Yay for us!
Talk about medievalism.
regelemihai 10 months ago
*rich
regelemihai 10 months ago
@vindician As for money supply, "inflation" is relative to the amount of production, consumption, wages, etc. Bread, building materials and gas are historically cheap compared to "the money supply". The Fed and the derivatives bubble are black holes that haven't yet interacted much with the real economy. The problem will start when people like Schiff start turning their derivatives into futures contracts, land, t-bills, etc.
deadeyedick1933 11 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 The VALUE of money is determined by the supply of money vs. the supply of goods and services. The inflation created by the Fed after the dot.com bubble went largely into housing, then into various securities connected to the housing bubble, most of which were created by Fannie and Freddie. However, the monetary base has increased enormously. At some point, that will go into circulation and the inflationary potential is uncalcuable.
vindician 11 months ago
@vindician I've read enough Adam Smith, von Mises and Milton Friedman for one lifetime, and don't need more British imperial propaganda from Bertrand Russell's protege. I'll give Austrians credit for one thing – they won't let facts or logic get in the way of their fantasies.
deadeyedick1933 11 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 First of all, having read Smith doesn't mean anything as he was plagiarist. Nor do I believe you've read him, Friedman or Mises to any extent, not least as they represent different schools and you seem to think they're one and the same. To claim that is common for people like you and thus far they've always been proven be lies. And so you stoop to ridiculous and demonstrably false ad hominem attacks. Thank you for yet again showing the intellectual level of mainstreamers.
vindician 11 months ago
@vindician They're all different flavors of anti-nationalism. Why was a guy like Hazlitt so interested in Bertrand Russell, who advocated nuclear war, world government through the UN and eugenics? The hidden subtext of all "free trade" doctrines, which Mises describes openly in "Omnipotent Government," is that it requires the tearing down of national barriers and equalizing (pulling down) of cultures, which all leads inexorably to global feudalism.
deadeyedick1933 11 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 Hazlitt was interested in economics and dispelling economic myth. It is quite symptomatic for people without any actual arguments to start attacking someone's character. And what is so good about national barriers? If people want to engage in global trade, who are you or anyone else to stop them? Free trade brings prosperity because it allows for division of labour and specialization. By your logic, every village, every individual, should refrain from voluntary exchange.
vindician 11 months ago
@vindician And the cat is out of the bag!! I wonder what the average Ron Paul dupe would choose if he truly understood the terms: representative government and national standards to foster industry and raise living standards (the American System); or a nationless global race to the bottom, where financial speculators make the rules (the British Empire)?
deadeyedick1933 11 months ago
@vindician And I see by your channel that you're from Finland (your English is excellent, btw). I'm an American. I have a lot of ancestors that fought in American wars and helped build American industry, only for their hard work to be destroyed by the kind of stupid ideology you're espousing. Finland can do whatever it wants. My country has fallen for this crap long enough, and still has enough cultural anti-fascism to turn the tide.
deadeyedick1933 11 months ago
@deadeyedick1933 What cat? Are you implying that myself, Ron Paul, Schiff or any other Austrian have tried to hide the fact that they favor global free trade, where no government hinders the voluntary exchange of individuals? Protectionism favours few and empoverishes everybode else. Read Hazlitt's book and you'll understand. The US hasn't had free trade at any time in its history. To the contrary, it has with very brief exceptions employed heavy handed protectionsim. Thanks for your kind words.
vindician 11 months ago
@vindician Every developed country has employed at least some form of protectionism. From 1818 to the 1920's the USA was the most protectionist country in the world (average rate 45-55%). FDIs was either banned or very highly regulated from the Jackson administration till the late Nixon years. Huge gov investments (i.e Louisiana purchase, transcontinental railroad, telegraph, R&D, NASA, NIH, NSF, computers, internet, mass production, automation, containerization etc)
History>Philosophy
Bellantoni 11 months ago
@Bellantoni Every country has employed some sort of oppression of its people, does that mean our civilization wouldn't have advanced without oppression of the people? In the US, protectionism was one, if not the leading cause of war when the North invaded the South. The US economy thrived despite of protectionism, not because of it or any other government intervention mentioned. And you might want to look up the history of the transcontinental railroads, among others.
vindician 11 months ago
@vindician The Transcontinental railroad was decided by the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, payed for in gov bonds and on gov land. I've heard it asserted before that we developed despite protectionism but never demonstrated. The majority of people have supported domestic and infant-industry promotion and scorned reliance on others everywhere opinion polls have been taken, so I don't see the oppression.
P.S It was the South that invaded the North when it attacked Fort Sumter and Liberty Arsenal.
Bellantoni 11 months ago
@Bellantoni The TC Railroads was one of the most corrupt subsidy bonanzas in US history and led to several states prohibiting corporate welfare in their Constitutions. Every subsidized RR company went bankrupt the years after the subsidies ended. The only functioning TC railroad was private and built by JJ Hill.
And firing shots at a hostile military installation is NOT invasion, for heaven's sake, not to mention that Lincoln's inaugural address was an open threat of war on the South.
vindician 11 months ago
@vindician Seceding from the union, attacking a fort because it happened to be in your state and storming/ robbing an arsenal in Missouri (a Union state) is unconstitutional and aggressive action to say the least and it was the first of the Civil War.
Those railways are still functioning to this day and the companies went bankrupt because of over speculation in rail bonds and lax banking regulation that led to the panic of 1893, upon which they were nearly nationalized to keep them operative.
Bellantoni 11 months ago
@Bellantoni Wrong again. The South objected to half a century of plain plunder for the benefit of Northern manufacturing. Lincoln said that any objection to that plunder would be met with invasion. He made good on that promise. It was Lincoln who raised an army and invaded the South in addition to all atrocities he committed in the North.
The RR companies went bankrupt because their railroads were so inefficient due to how they were built. Hill on the other hand made a fortune.
vindician 11 months ago
@vindician The RRs helped build nearly all western state capitals. It allowed people and capital/goods to migrate or travel throughout the nation and was for decades the only means of doing so. This technology enhanced the dexterity of the nation enormously- I don't see the inefficiency.
It was the South that waged a murderous war on Mexico, enforced slavery, made nonsense of northern acts of compromise, seceded, and then attacked. How did this turn into a debate about the Civil War?
Bellantoni 11 months ago
@Bellantoni The RRs were build incredibly ineffectively. Had they all been build like Hill's they would have saved millions for the taxpayers and served the public much better. Case in point the track what was built on a glacier. Guess what happened when spring came.
Slavery was common in the North as well. What compromise? You call an open threat of invasion compromise after having plundered the South for 50 years? Lincoln invaded the South because they refused to pay his protective tariffs.
vindician 11 months ago
@vindician The Transcontinental and Southern pacific RR, which were the most used, were not built on glaciers. I don't know where you got that from. Hill's was the least used because of it's location, in the most dimly populated part of america, and it needed federal stimulus after an avalanche fell on it. You obviously know nothing about Henry Clay and the great compromise of 1850 nor the Missouri compromise or the one after the nullification crisis, so there's no point.
Bellantoni 11 months ago
@Bellantoni Henry Clay was a desciple of Alexander Hamilton, a proponent of high tariffs, national debt and corporate welfare. The tariffs were held high through most of the 19th century, at times reaching over 50%. The tariffs were paid by the South and went to corporate welfare in the North. Your data on the RR is utterly false. Had Hill's RR not been used, he wouldn't have become so wealthy. Also, instead of having the US Army exterminating the indians, he negotiated with them.
vindician 11 months ago
@vindician Hill was one of the poorest of the Robber Barons. You assert but don't demonstrate. The RRs built half of america, made transcontinental commerce and travel possible, strengthened the capital cities of the west turning them into modern metropolises, they had innumerable benefits to the welfare and economy of the nation and every other nation that had them.
Bellantoni 11 months ago
@Bellantoni I see you've fallen prey to the myth of the Robber Barons. Hill was immensly successful and became extremely rich, much like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller and others. In stark contrast to the crony corporatist you seem to favor, these "Robber Barons" served the American public by providing high quality goods and services at low prices. You want references? Read Thomas DiLorenzo and Tom Woods to start with. Google "Robber Barons Mises", that'll give you a good start.
vindician 11 months ago
@vindician You've spent the over a day bitching about corporations and manufacturing, to come out in favor of the robber barons? Those who produced nothing that was heavily or wholly subsidized and protected by the state, as again you've admitted.
The only thing they ever created were several recessions and the dumbest concept ever created: corporate personhood. How do you rage against corporate welfare but favor corporate personhood; the greatest corporate welfare scheme in history?
Bellantoni 11 months ago
@Bellantoni JDRockefeller, Vanderbilt, Hill and Dow were not subsidized by the govt. They increased the standard of living of all Americans by providing them with cheap and high quality goods and services. R made kerosene available to the public, and developed over 300 products from the rest product. Hill made a profit in 1893 when the subsidized RR companies went bust. Dow slashed the price of bromine. Private entrepreneurs become successful because they serve the public. These men were heroes.
vindician 11 months ago