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A Duct Tape Economy? (Demo)

Posted by Guy c. Stevenson

A duct tape economy.

Since the development of ‘Duct tape’ man has always tried to solve most every broken thing with it.

Why would the modern day fix-it man use anything else. Duct tape has virtually been written into the DNA for the idiots tool box of ideas. Short term it may be; but for the everyday handyman this is the ‘Holy Grail’. What’s disturbing to this Red Green fan, is both politicians and policy makers have been ordering this product by the truck load, for banking and currency all the way to housing. The Federal Reserve has used and endorsed this product for so long, that they bought the company. Their new brand is called QE Duct Tape. Ya! get yourself some of that stuff. It’s a fact, policymakers have even found it good for covering up unemployment and inflation numbers. Works great for social ailments, but sadly it can’t be used to fix principles or the Constitution. It’s also good for wrapping Christmas presents and sealing envelops.

Remember; “If the women don’t find you handsome, they will at least call you handy – with duct tape.” (For management of the homestead)

“A Duct Tape Economy needs a Duck tape Congress”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4IWbYLs0ao

Kicking the can or duck taping the economy. 

News from “It’s a Duct tape World!

Kudos to Guy Stevenson, a Center For Economic And Social Justice CESJ National Field Secretary in Iowa, who gave us a great catch phrase for this week’s blogitorial . . . that we’re not going to use. It was good, though: “It’s a duct tape world.” This brought in all the jury-rigging political and, especially, economic fixes that have been slapped on to try and remedy bad situations by covering them up and adding more complexities. We even had some notes, and that great opening sentence, courtesy of Mr. Stevenson. We were bringing in Garrison Keillor and the American Duct Tape Council . . . all kinds of clever stuff.Yes, we were all set to run with Guy’s suggestion . . . until we read this morning’s Wall Street Journal, and the op-ed by Alan S. Blinder, an economics professor at Princeton, “Our Dickensian Economy.” (Wall Street Journal, 12/17/10, A19.) Pitting alleged Republican greed against Democratic envy, Dr. Blinder-Than-Thou tried to juxtapose the Murdstones of the GOP with the Democratic David Copperfields. He was clearly attempting to take the high road of concern for the working poor by urging more monetary expansion by the Federal Reserve and “hinting” that employers need to pay workers more. After all, Dr. Blinder points out, productivity in nonfarm business is up 86% since 1978, while real compensation per hour is up just 37% . . . “Is that fair?” he complains.A Binary Economist would respond with an “Absolutely not!” Where is the fairness in compensation to labor going up 37% when the increases in productivity are due almost exclusively to advancing technology, i.e., capital? How is it “fair” that labor gets what capital has earned, and which goes by natural right to the owner of capital?

Abraham Lincoln had something to say on that score. In the debate with Stephen Douglas on October 15, 1858, Lincoln declared that taking for one’s self what another earns is nothing less than slavery: “It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says ‘you toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”

Two wrongs don’t make a right. It’s no more fair for “capital” to rob “labor” by withholding a just wage, than it is for workers to demand increases in pay for work done by capital owned by others. Would a black slaveholder who kept his former white master in involuntary servitude somehow be less despicable for doing what he, better than anyone, knew to be wrong?

The solution in Binary Economics, of course, would be to open up democratic access to money and credit so that owners of labor could also become owners of capital, thereby sharing in productivity growth by right rather than as the result of coercion. Dr. Blindly-Stumbling doesn’t stop with hinting that what belongs to owners of capital should be redistributed to owners of labor, however. After declaring, “Our biggest problem today is the shortage of jobs” (and how, exactly, does raising the price of labor encourage job creation?), Dr. Blinder asserts,

The Federal Reserve is trying to do something about it. But having fired so much ammunition already, it is down to pretty weak weaponry. Yet the Fed’s announcement that it would purchase $600 billion worth of Treasury bonds was greeted by thunderous protest from the right, which frets over inflation even as we teeter on the brink of deflation.

Uh, yeah, Kingfish . . .Dr. Blinder does not explain how or why pumping trillions of dollars worth of fiat money into the economy, backed only by toxic, overvalued “assets” and government debt, constitutes “teetering on the brink of deflation.” Huh? A few weeks ago Reuters reported that American companies have cir. $1 trillion with which they plan to buy back shares, driving up prices on the secondary market. The financial services industry has reported record profits at a time when the Obama administration has been moaning that banks are stuffed with cash that they refuse to lend. Prices of items carefully omitted from the Consumer Price Index — food and energy — continue to rise. The claim that “we teeter on the brink of deflation” could only come from the mind of an economist who accepts Keynes’s re-editing of the dictionary with regard to “inflation.” As the Great Defunct Economist explained,

When full employment is reached, any attempt to increase investment still further will set up a tendency in money-prices to rise without limit, irrespective of the marginal propensity to consume; i.e. we shall have reached a state of true inflation. Up to this point, however, rising prices will be associated with an increasing aggregate real income. (General Theory, III.10.ii)

In plain English, according to Keynes, “inflation” is not a rise in the price level due to more money “chasing” the same or fewer marketable goods and services. Rather, “true inflation” is a rise in the price level after full employment has been attained. By twisted Keynesian logic, then, since we clearly do not have “full employment,” even by the distorted figures coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we cannot possibly be suffering from inflation. Since we’re not suffering from inflation, egad! We’re teetering on the brink of deflation!(!!)[!!!]{! x 10!!!} The solution is obvious, at least to a Keynesian: CREATE MORE MONEY! SPEND, SPEND, SPEND!Really? Dickens understood quite well what happens when you spend without producing. As he had Mr. Micawber instruct Master Copperfield,

“My other piece of advice, Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, “you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and — and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!”

Whatever Keynes’s and Blinder’s delusions, inflation hurts the wage earner. Even Keynes admitted that his “forced savings” theory puts the wage earner into the position of never being able to catch up, and robs the poor for the benefit of the rich. (General Theory, II.7.iv) Labor earns more in aggregate, but Keynes (as von Hayek rather astutely pointed out) neglected to take into account the individuals who make up those aggregates . . . individuals who are worse off by being forced to reduce consumption to put greater profits into the pockets of producers who presumably reinvest the “forced savings,” or which are taxed away to fund redistribution.The poor are effectively taxed to support the poor. Dr. Blinder was right. This is truly a Dickensian economy. The problem is that Dr. Blinder is not a Deus ex Machinaauthor, setting everything right in the end by chance and coincidence. Rather, he bears a startling resemblance to Uriah Heep, who honestly thought he was being a friend to David Copperfield, while engaged in doing the worst possible things to everyone for his own benefit. Frankly, rather than spending our collective heads off and end up being sent to the international equivalent of the Marshalsea debtors’ prison — effective loss of national sovereignty — we’d be much better off doing what some conservative fatcats propose: shut down the Federal Reserve, stop spending, balance the budget, allow the rich to accumulate sufficient savings to finance new capital investment and create jobs, and so on.. . . . or we could do something that actually makes sense: Empower we the people by implementing Capital Homesteading.

Which comes first, the chicken or breaking the eggs and then duct taping?

“Own [the Chicken] or be Owned”

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