13 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2023
  2. Feb 2023
    1. The descriptions of all three unidentified objects shot down Feb. 10-12 match the shapes, altitudes and payloads of the small pico balloons, which can usually be purchased for $12-180 each, depending on the type.

      It's funny how much the US is wasting on missiles to down $12 balloons. 🤣

      Too bad they just print more money and inflate the currency to pay for such ham-handed knuckle-dragging at the behest of their senile Commander in Chief.

  3. Aug 2021
    1. we know the point of taxes is not actually to raise revenue, the point is to reduce consumption to decrease demand in the economy.

      This is a good general statement, but it ignores the fact that taxes on the "rich" also serve the function of recapturing wealth that has been acquired through rent-seeking behaviors. The bulk of income to those with the highest "earning" is actually unearned income resulting from rents.

  4. Jan 2021
    1. an infinite amount of cash

      Modern Monetary Theory has gone mainstream?

      MMT addresses traditional inflation in the context of full employment, whereas the asset inflation described here is left out of the equation.

  5. Oct 2020
    1. looking to implement massive, costly programs including a national daycare system, pharmacare, affordable housing and green initiatives.

      Government spending is not a bad thing. In fact it is crucial to the economy. People's fear about deficits are overblow. Under the MMT framework, not all deficits are bad, it all depends on context. In fact in modern history, deficits and debt have always been part of the game. Government surpluses have been a rarity in Canada.

      Based on sector account balances, the government deficits are the private sectors surplus. Furthermore all new money created is through banks and government spending. If you balance budgets (decrease spending and increase revenues via taxation), you are essentially destroying money and slowing down the economy.

      The main driver of concern is inflation across the board. If government spending gets out of control, it starts buying up the resources from the rest of the private sector, therefore increasing prices. When this happens, spendingn needs to be ramped back. The chances of this happening in a recession/depression/world wide pandemic is very unlikely.

    2. Even Trudeau’s former top adviser, Gerald Butts, appears to have his doubts about MMT, recently posted the following on twitter: “I read The Deficit Myth this week. I dunno guys. I see why you want to believe in MMT, but it feels like snake oil to me. Things that sound too good to be true almost always are.”

      To each their own. A lot of the info from MMT is jarring, because it show the inner plumbing of government finance. It is nothing what we have been told. Many economists, central bankers and private investors have taken to MMT and agree with its description. They may disagree with some of the policies suggested by the MMT academics, but no one had identified that what they describe as false. This is not a strong argument against what MMT is saying. It is simply opinion.

    3. The National Post’s Jesse Snyder wrote an excellent piece recently about how the Canadian economy has been transformed in the past decade moving from a healthy three to five per cent trade surplus to an annual average deficit of negative two to three per cent. Over the same period, Canadian investments in assets abroad surpassed foreign direct investments by $804 billion.

      Once again trade deficits or surpluses are not the same as good of bad. Context is very much neccessary. Have a trade deficit can actually be a good thing. We actually get more "stuff" and other country's resources in exchange for what....wait for it...money (which is pretty much worthless). People get caught up in the accounting of money rather than the actual accounting of real resources. We get a ton of stuff on the cheap by having a trade deficit.

    4. It is expected that the Bank of Canada will end up controlling more than 56 per cent of our total government bond market by end of 2021, up from 29 per cent today, according to estimates from Ian Pollick, head of fixed income, currency and commodity research at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, as cited by Bloomberg. If you think about that, it sounds an awful lot like Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is now being tested in this country.

      This is the problem with most people who finally take the time to know how our government spend and their relationship with the central bank. Canada, the US, UK and Australis have been "doing" MMT for a very very long time. MMT only describes the process. MMT is not a prescription of how the world should be. It is very much describing how things are right now. A big chunk of the academic writings is providing insight on how government spending, accounting and financing actually work.

    5. While the NDP has been lobbying for a wealth tax, so far there have been few indications of tax hikes from the Liberal government.

      The problem with the lefts approach is that they assume you need taxes in order for the government to spend. Based on soverign currency issues with central banks, the operation is spend first, then tax, then "borrow". This also assumes that federal governments with soverign currencies have a limited quantity of dollars. This is not true. There is no need to tax the wealthy or anyone unless there is a larger purpose of creating greater equality (i.e. the wealthy get to powerful or start to buy up essential resources) or to slow down an overheated economy. In the main purpose of taxes is to remove money from the system when there is too much, which will cause inflation).

  6. Jun 2020
    1. Alfred Mitchell-Innes, writing in 1914, argued that money exists not as a medium of exchange but as a standard of deferred payment, with government money being debt the government may reclaim through taxation.

      Modern Monetary Theory

  7. May 2020
    1. これは財務省も認めていることで、2002年に外国の格付け会社が日本国債の格付けを下げたときに、財務省は「日・米など先進国の自国建て国債のデフォルトは考えられない。デフォルトとして如何なる事態を想定しているのか。」という反論の意見書を出しました。
    2. たしかに、「GDPに占める債務残高」は深刻な財政危機に陥っているギリシャやイタリアよりずっと悪くて、日本はダントツの最下位です。  だけど、それっておかしな話だと思いませんか? むしろ、このグラフを見たら、こう考えるべきなんです。なぜ、ダントツで最下位の日本ではなく、ギリシャやイタリアが財政危機に陥ってるのか、と。日本とギリシャが同じならば、日本の財政は2006年くらいの時点でとっくに破綻してなければおかしいじゃないですか?

      ちなみに、中国は 2018 年の時点で債務残高が GDP の 343 % に達している。 https://www.epochtimes.jp/p/2018/01/30485.html

    3. 誤解を恐れずに、MMTを最も手短に説明するとこうなります。日英米のように自国通貨を発行できる政府(中央政府+中央銀行)の自国通貨建ての国債はデフォルトしないので、変動相場制のもとでは、政府はいくらでも好きなだけ財政支出をすることができる。財源の心配をする必要はない、と。