nowadays, the trotskyists are all in the republican party. the authoritarians are all on the right.
and, the democratic party is full of conservatives.
but, whatever a "centrist" is must have sat there and watched that reversal happen.
there was a wonkish debate between krugman and sanders in 2016, and the sanders campaign sees the world through an us vs them filter and remembers enemies and holds grudges. so, this is really an old debate.
and, the democratic party is full of conservatives.
but, whatever a "centrist" is must have sat there and watched that reversal happen.
there was a wonkish debate between krugman and sanders in 2016, and the sanders campaign sees the world through an us vs them filter and remembers enemies and holds grudges. so, this is really an old debate.
this is what i said then, on april 9, 2016.
===============
j reacts to krugman's critique of sanders (he's right, but nobody should care)
krugman is right, but who cares?
what's the differences in health care plans? in foreign policy? on climate change?
if you break the banks up, they get captured. regulation doesn't work. we tried this. it failed. so, personally? you give me a referendum on a bank, i stay home. it's boring. and it has no effect on my life. i do not think this is what is driving the popularity of his campaign. and i think he needs to fight the perception that it is.
let's get less teddy roosevelt, and more franklin roosevelt.
the banks are important because that is where he gets the money to do the things he wants to do.
that is all.
the way to fix the financial system is to educate people about where they're putting their money. it doesn't matter if it's big or small, or private or public or anything else - so long as people remain clueless, they will be taken advantage of. you can't protect the ignorant. what we need is financial literacy.
==============
i rant a little more here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBUxjVr4GLQ
(https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/04/j-reacts-to-krugmans-critique-of.html)
==============
but, if you want to put this on a political spectrum? krugman is actually the leftist, here. it's a keynesian liberal left, but it's a left. sanders & warren are pushing chicago school style neo-liberal pro-market reforms.
==============
may 28, 2016
some of my video comments over the next few days may seem confusing if you're following the Official Alternative Media Narrative, so i think i should be explicitly clear about this.
regarding the issues of financial regulation and the narratives around the bank bailouts, i may actually be closer to clinton than sanders. i wouldn't really agree with either, entirely.
see, i would take what is called an academic left perspective, which neither of the candidates are taking. clinton is taking more of an academic right position. what that means is that there are certain broad academic points that clinton has been making that i agree with (and are not really contested), but that i'm not ideologically aligned with her so i disagree with her on a lot of details. sanders is taking a populist position that is broadly (and correctly) seen as just flatly wrong by most academics. the people that are parroting him either don't know what they're talking about (cenk uygur) or are acting from questionable ideological positions (elizabeth warren).
i would prioritize careful, academic analysis (clinton/obama/krugman) over populist and misleading agitprop (sanders/pseudo-warren/wolff). pseudo-warren because i think she's misunderstood - she's a market fundamentalist, not a leftist. she's good at the agit-prop, but leftists will be sorely disappointed if she gets any kind of position of power. so, i haven't been shy about this: clinton is, indeed, broadly less wrong about the banks.
so, why am i supporting sanders? because i don't care about the bank bailouts. at all. i see the politicking for what it is: populism, agit-prop, maybe a little demagoguery. frankly, i'm pragmatic enough to see the value in it. what i actually care about is foreign policy, health care, social issues and more data-driven analyses of growing inequality.
and, this is not just why i'm supporting sanders over clinton. it's also why i couldn't possibly support clinton at all.
so, i hope that clarifies the point.
what the upcoming video comments are going to focus on is the question of whether some of this agitprop and politicking, as pragmatic as it may be, may have some unintended consequences - blowback - in it's use.
it's one thing to get people angry at the banks in order to get a tobin tax in. that's politics. it's good politics. it's another thing to wake up in eight years and realize we not only don't have a tobin tax, but now have also lost the lender of last resort because the masses got confused about what they were supposed to be angry about. that would be a tremendous fuck-up.
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/some-of-my-video-comments-over-next-few.html
=========
august 8, 2016
j tries to react to trump's tax/spend ideas but gets stuck in the ultraparadoxical phase
see, what i'd like is for the democratic candidate to spin this around on him and claim she's going to increase taxes on the wealthy - and also on corporations. i know better. i wouldn't believe it, anyways. but the last thing the country needs right now is lower taxes at the top rate. it needs to be taking in higher income tax levels to spend on crumbling infrastructure and convert the economy away from fossil fuels. the problem with the stimulus plan was that it was too small. they need more of this, on a deeper level - and they need to generate the revenue to do it.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/08/restrained-trump-goes-at-clinton-for-tax-plan.html
a strong candidate would annihilate him on his tax policy, which is clearly disastrous and flat out stupid. it's 2016, and dipshit donald still thinks tax cuts create jobs? of course he doesn't. he just wants a tax cut for himself. if i was the nominee, i wouldn't talk about anything else.
i don't always agree with krugman, but he's kind of an expert on keynesian policies. and, if we're going to implement keynesian policies, he's not just a good explainer but arguably the best currently alive. we're lucky that he spends as much time writing in newspapers as he does.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/how-did-we-know-the-stimulus-was-too-small/?_r=0
ok. fine. so, do it right, this time. i mean, the other option is recession. look at europe. you have to find a way to win this debate on the facts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/opinion/krugman-the-stimulus-tragedy.html
see, this is just like the tpp. they both want infrastructure spending. they're both technically right. but, i don't believe either of them - i rather think that they'll both push tax cuts and austerity.
i don't know how i'm going to get through this mess with my sanity. i need to just disengage. i keep saying that...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/us/politics/trump-clinton-infrastructure.html
what a fucking disaster. wow. really.
i ought to be pointing out that it's good that they're both taking the right approach to stimulus. instead, i'm convinced they're both lying, and they'll both do the wrong thing.
and, the evidence is really, truly on my side.
i'm in the fucking ultraparadoxical phase, again. great.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmarginal_inhibition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG_iD8epJag
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOLC9gELguQ
he's basically right.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/opinion/time-to-borrow.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpowqpwNOnE
==================
nov 20, 2016
j reacts to krugman's take on the supposed infrastructure plan
i think krugman is actually giving him too much credit.
my bet is that the infrastructure plan reduces to a tweet to ask investors to invest more in infrastructure, maybe followed by another tweet calling paul ryan some mean names for supposedly blocking it.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/infrastructure-build-or-privatization-scam/
there's actually precedence for this: whenever obama was faced with doing anything complicated, he wrote a speech explaining that congress should do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH7hvdqPP9U
===============
j reacts to krugman's critique of sanders (he's right, but nobody should care)
krugman is right, but who cares?
what's the differences in health care plans? in foreign policy? on climate change?
if you break the banks up, they get captured. regulation doesn't work. we tried this. it failed. so, personally? you give me a referendum on a bank, i stay home. it's boring. and it has no effect on my life. i do not think this is what is driving the popularity of his campaign. and i think he needs to fight the perception that it is.
let's get less teddy roosevelt, and more franklin roosevelt.
the banks are important because that is where he gets the money to do the things he wants to do.
that is all.
the way to fix the financial system is to educate people about where they're putting their money. it doesn't matter if it's big or small, or private or public or anything else - so long as people remain clueless, they will be taken advantage of. you can't protect the ignorant. what we need is financial literacy.
==============
i rant a little more here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBUxjVr4GLQ
(https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/04/j-reacts-to-krugmans-critique-of.html)
==============
but, if you want to put this on a political spectrum? krugman is actually the leftist, here. it's a keynesian liberal left, but it's a left. sanders & warren are pushing chicago school style neo-liberal pro-market reforms.
==============
may 28, 2016
some of my video comments over the next few days may seem confusing if you're following the Official Alternative Media Narrative, so i think i should be explicitly clear about this.
regarding the issues of financial regulation and the narratives around the bank bailouts, i may actually be closer to clinton than sanders. i wouldn't really agree with either, entirely.
see, i would take what is called an academic left perspective, which neither of the candidates are taking. clinton is taking more of an academic right position. what that means is that there are certain broad academic points that clinton has been making that i agree with (and are not really contested), but that i'm not ideologically aligned with her so i disagree with her on a lot of details. sanders is taking a populist position that is broadly (and correctly) seen as just flatly wrong by most academics. the people that are parroting him either don't know what they're talking about (cenk uygur) or are acting from questionable ideological positions (elizabeth warren).
i would prioritize careful, academic analysis (clinton/obama/krugman) over populist and misleading agitprop (sanders/pseudo-warren/wolff). pseudo-warren because i think she's misunderstood - she's a market fundamentalist, not a leftist. she's good at the agit-prop, but leftists will be sorely disappointed if she gets any kind of position of power. so, i haven't been shy about this: clinton is, indeed, broadly less wrong about the banks.
so, why am i supporting sanders? because i don't care about the bank bailouts. at all. i see the politicking for what it is: populism, agit-prop, maybe a little demagoguery. frankly, i'm pragmatic enough to see the value in it. what i actually care about is foreign policy, health care, social issues and more data-driven analyses of growing inequality.
and, this is not just why i'm supporting sanders over clinton. it's also why i couldn't possibly support clinton at all.
so, i hope that clarifies the point.
what the upcoming video comments are going to focus on is the question of whether some of this agitprop and politicking, as pragmatic as it may be, may have some unintended consequences - blowback - in it's use.
it's one thing to get people angry at the banks in order to get a tobin tax in. that's politics. it's good politics. it's another thing to wake up in eight years and realize we not only don't have a tobin tax, but now have also lost the lender of last resort because the masses got confused about what they were supposed to be angry about. that would be a tremendous fuck-up.
https://dsdfghghfsdflgkfgkja.blogspot.com/2016/05/some-of-my-video-comments-over-next-few.html
=========
august 8, 2016
j tries to react to trump's tax/spend ideas but gets stuck in the ultraparadoxical phase
see, what i'd like is for the democratic candidate to spin this around on him and claim she's going to increase taxes on the wealthy - and also on corporations. i know better. i wouldn't believe it, anyways. but the last thing the country needs right now is lower taxes at the top rate. it needs to be taking in higher income tax levels to spend on crumbling infrastructure and convert the economy away from fossil fuels. the problem with the stimulus plan was that it was too small. they need more of this, on a deeper level - and they need to generate the revenue to do it.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/08/restrained-trump-goes-at-clinton-for-tax-plan.html
a strong candidate would annihilate him on his tax policy, which is clearly disastrous and flat out stupid. it's 2016, and dipshit donald still thinks tax cuts create jobs? of course he doesn't. he just wants a tax cut for himself. if i was the nominee, i wouldn't talk about anything else.
i don't always agree with krugman, but he's kind of an expert on keynesian policies. and, if we're going to implement keynesian policies, he's not just a good explainer but arguably the best currently alive. we're lucky that he spends as much time writing in newspapers as he does.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/how-did-we-know-the-stimulus-was-too-small/?_r=0
ok. fine. so, do it right, this time. i mean, the other option is recession. look at europe. you have to find a way to win this debate on the facts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/opinion/krugman-the-stimulus-tragedy.html
see, this is just like the tpp. they both want infrastructure spending. they're both technically right. but, i don't believe either of them - i rather think that they'll both push tax cuts and austerity.
i don't know how i'm going to get through this mess with my sanity. i need to just disengage. i keep saying that...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/us/politics/trump-clinton-infrastructure.html
what a fucking disaster. wow. really.
i ought to be pointing out that it's good that they're both taking the right approach to stimulus. instead, i'm convinced they're both lying, and they'll both do the wrong thing.
and, the evidence is really, truly on my side.
i'm in the fucking ultraparadoxical phase, again. great.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmarginal_inhibition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG_iD8epJag
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOLC9gELguQ
he's basically right.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/opinion/time-to-borrow.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpowqpwNOnE
==================
nov 20, 2016
j reacts to krugman's take on the supposed infrastructure plan
i think krugman is actually giving him too much credit.
my bet is that the infrastructure plan reduces to a tweet to ask investors to invest more in infrastructure, maybe followed by another tweet calling paul ryan some mean names for supposedly blocking it.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/infrastructure-build-or-privatization-scam/
there's actually precedence for this: whenever obama was faced with doing anything complicated, he wrote a speech explaining that congress should do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH7hvdqPP9U