Re:America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
by dnautics on Friday February 12, 2021 @10:02AM
(#26114340)
You don't have to be an austrian to acknowledge that some of what they say is sensible. Discarding a theory in toto because it's adherents are odious is exactly the sort of hubristic political bullshit that results in you fucking everyone over.
Re:America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
by notahacker on Friday February 12, 2021 @10:25AM
(#26114633)
Sure, but you don't have to take any notice whatsoever of Austrian economics to critique the biases encoded in an economic model (indeed not being overtly hostile to the concept of economic modelling per se leads to much more parsimonious critiques of models and explicit identification of second order effects). I'm not really sure that Austrian economics has much to say that is sensible beyond illustrating basic microeconomic concepts and noting that inflation can [sometimes] be bad, business cycles are a thing and the predictive power of equilibrium models is limited, and you get all that in a mainstream undergrad textbook.
Not being an Austrian helps you conclude that their arguments that economics isn't quantitative, positivism isn't useful and reducing income inequality is actually a goal a government might wish to consider wrong though. :)
Re:America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
by dnautics on Friday February 12, 2021 @02:16PM
(#26117395)
I'm not austrian (for example, I believe that the velocity theory of monetary value is partially true). You're the one that boxed me into that category. Only about 20% of what they say is any good, but those parts are definitely not being said by anyone else.
Re:America's 1% Has Taken $50T From the Bottom 90%
by notahacker on Friday February 12, 2021 @02:57PM
(#26117869)
I didn't say you were an Austrian, though I must admit I'm intrigued by what you think they are saying that is useful and nobody else says (even arguments favouring gold standards are not unique to Austrians; a priori praxeology, perhaps, but I would have difficulty concluding their a priori praxeology was "any good"). At a stretch, maybe Hayek's free banking, but then others have described natural experiments with free banking but just reached somewhat different conclusions...
The people who lose absolutely everything they've ever worked for in the event of a sustained recession. They tend not to be rich, nor comfortable with the rival Austrian solution of waiting it out because if wages drop low enough the rich might eventually deign to act by unburying their gold and investing in capital formation and job creation again.
> it's incredibly infuriating that they can't fucking put two and two together and understand that the gap is the social cost of their stability measures
It's incredibly frustrating when the school of economics most founded by a man who stormed out of a meeting of the right wing Mont Pelerin society screaming "you're all a bunch of socialists" for discussing possible solutions to income equality masquerades as egalitarian. Other economists can and do discuss causes of and solutions to inequality, including establishing the fact "the rich get richer" was a truism when gold standards were everywhere. Austrian economics doesn't even acknowledge the possibility of "social cost", rejects the possibility of making meaningful claims about some people needing a dollar more than others and wants to set a floor on how much of the future economy the 1% control by ensuring their 'sound money' is still good for that share of future economic growth even if they impede that growth by withdrawing it from circulation.
But yes, it's very good at scapegoating the Fed as the root of all evil as its oil baron funded adherents join often successful lobbying efforts against every single policy that might make working class people's lives less uncomfortable.