Which is the correct answer.
When you spend money, it doesn't disappear. It's just moved.
When you spend money, it doesn't disappear. It's just moved.
An obtuse mischaracterization of the poor; a more typical "sin" would be failure to hop over the ever-rising bar that denotes the ability to secure money by threatening to withhold labor.
Circulation goes both ways and it isn't the ability of producers to secure profits that seems to be most endangered at the moment.
Why do you think it's a characterization of the poor at all?
Circulation goes both ways and it isn't the ability of producers to secure profits that seems to be most endangered at the moment.
The working poor are themselves producers.
Because they're the ones who the type of policy we are discussing would actually be intended to benefit. Voicing that side of the argument through a "spendthrift vagabond" is disingenuous at best.
> The working poor are themselves producers.
I was using the term with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, I thought it would be clear enough from context that I was referring to capital-holders.
No. To be a spendthrift is a symptom of many problems. One of which means lack of respect for money or the effort required to earn it. Other wise one wouldn't be throwing it away.
Increasing inequality does in fact encourage deflation. Redistribution in forms of common services and education (for um.. jobs) is very necessary.
I know it's still a gross oversimplification, but I think the general truth encoded in the parable should be appreciated for its own sake in general terms.
Except that it does - up to a certain point.
That's one of the few repeatable, tested, and validated economical principle from the XX century. Counter intuitive as it is, there's just no point denying it.
It's been revised and remodeled several hundreds of times, if you want to search Google Schoolar or something like that, look for "demand side" theories, or crisis of "aggregated demand". Also, if you search for NGDP, the biggest share of the papers will be about this.
There are many other terms that will lead to less results. It's a really widespread concept.
I think that they aren't really socialist countries, I would point to places like Sweden and France as closer to actual socialism than North Korea, which is really a Fascist dictatorship explicitly modelled on pre-second world war Japan.
Vietnam is an odd one out here because having suffered a total catastrophe in the years running up to 1975 (as in the complete physical destruction of the state, mechanisms of production and the labour force via being killed in large numbers) the Vietnamese state has made huge progress to become relatively prosperous. There is a lot to be admired in terms of economic gain, although not much to be admired about freedom and safety for those with contrary views.
The only difference between theft and charity is your personal moral inflection.
I am an advocate for charity. But redistribution through taxation feels like stealing to me.
If there's a good reason to think that redistributing wealth will improve people's ability to mitigate risk and make good decisions, then your feeling would really be irrational and should be ignored.
Redistribution increases the total wealth, and it is not a small effect at all.
But only up to a certain point. Complete communism still completely sucks.
The idea that producers are only incentivized monetarily is false.
"It is part of the age-old habit of using new means for old purposes instead of discovering what are the new goals contained in the new means."