what a tempest in granny's tea pot

the gray ghosts will work regular work careful
and work cheap

gary becker might have been wrong on race
but he'd be right on age

prejudice agin the old
can't beat

the profit motive

…
btw

i sugggest the above with these assumptions in mind

the socialization of benefits
and

busticating of seniority wage premiums

granting that

any profiteer
gazing at potential jobblers

will exclaim:

“old be beautiful baby ”

…
rusty

“Americans do not save enough”

we no need no
stinking personal savings man

we got an operational
tax and transfer system

and it ain't crumbling
like our inter state road system

jult52

you are full of navy beans bub

show us a study that demonstrates your observation
ie shows

a co relationship between

aging on the job

and “sloughing off “

…
ddt

as an early boomer
i can confirm your points

st hill shows how we can be wrong aweful
and still grab

whatever unholy tire iron

we can beat u xers with

and remember

we'll never die !!!!!!

so we need to be euthanized
not just retired

…
“That is NOT staying on the job. That is wroking at Walmart. IBM sent my job to India when I was 53.”

don't change the frame here

this is about retiring
not job tenure

or high pay tenure

yes u will be recycled

you'll get offed as a crystal goblet

and can come back

a beer bottle

but hey

your still in use

——-

“And so where are the kids supposed to work?”

donna look up
lump of labor fallacy

Posted by js paine at 12:13 AM

concertation
and / or growing import comp

allegedly

leads to domestic wage demand moderation

and thus to a smaller

necessary reserve army of the jobless

germany has had intra euro market
serious de facto devaluation

since monetary unification

once that stops once the rest of the euro zoners

stop raising relative prices

watch the poor proud deutch buggars

scream in job loss pain

Posted by js paine at 06:29 PM

forget all supply side contrivances

what is the rate of net job formation ??

the demand for jobs

wonder
about bitter blue collar white males ???

note this

The jobless rate
for men —-ages 25-54 —-

in 1948 5.6 percent.

today 13.4 percent,

The women’s jobless rate
in 1948 67 percent

today 27 percent

qed

guys down 8

gals up 40

neither by choice

sez it all
so far as i'm concerned

Posted by js paine at 06:08 PM

some geeks try to model technical developments
and call it

the soul of economics missed

my comment:

blue sky banality mated to gibberish

nothing like general systems think
to produce “important” deep brake thru …figmentation

mark has the key point firmly in hand

this is an un exchange value weighted
structure

merely a n complexed
inter related web of use values

behold the complexity !!!!!

but economics ??

ya ya ya sure sure sure

“…forget about it”

its a web of artefacts

not economics

the whole system could be generated
by a sci fi household like market less

production system

an n th generation

utilitarian swiss family robinson

my notion of economics involves market exchange

not household sharing and innovation systems

no matter how abstruse and complexly inter related

————
economics use the word as you will ??

reason
good point

but i suspect most folks
make a similar distinction

even if

only by implication

what is economics ???
to me

it requires commodity exchange

not just transactions

not just share outs and gifts and tributes etc

in elementary micro texts
u find a “universal “

theory of production

that supposedly

transcends market exchange

hey
to me ally ooop wasn't part of an economy

more stridently even vexingly perhaps

i'd like to claim

nor were the inca

the state before the commodity system ????

reason's daffy-nition:

“economics is human ecology”

ecology is animal economics
“Curiously “

reason

or sinisterly

commodity production may not be required

but commodity exchange ..yes

robbins like most reactionary “theorists”

would like to abstract away the real set of necessary social relations

as his far brighter student abba lerner suggested

markets were a human invention

a vast interval of “self ” development
a long torturous history of social innovation

seperates the wild man of borneo

from citizen reason

modern society
is not simply more and more damn new things

its a very different set of social relationships

undreamable

in borneo man's meme scape

that being barked

feel free to call it all economics reason

but by my lights
mark has the handle here

hey guys its economics yer modelin'

then

where's the prices ???

reason counters

what about shadow prices ??

for shadow prices to exist
there must be real prices

shining back casting value shadows

from somewhere up the line

and at least by necessity

real prices in final marketsnotice i say

commodity products

to be clear

exchange theory
is a logical structure

like euclidian geometry

add production
and you need to introduce

date and location

state of nature …etc

tricks to turn it all back

into exchange theory

what my mentor vickrey called

metastatics

most growth plus innovation models
get their “closure” by such means too

then again markets lurk everywhere

never mind the outside market for your output
hire your producers on a market too

and the wooden horse

full of nasty greeks

is inside the walls of troy

Posted by js paine at 05:41 PM

recognizing this is mark's metier
i proceed with all do humility

and yet
i still find this chat “unconvincing “

to talk about A rule
like the taylor rule

as if its more then a one dimensional proxy

from the full array of fed policies

responsibilities etc

de jure and de facto

by activity or passivity….

in the present case
price level trend stability

becomes

very much a side line

when and if the credit system itself

is threatening to slip into crisis mode

and from there into a protracted period

of crippled dynamics

if not total brakedown

by staying in the taylor clouds

one obviously can avoid

discussion of the inevitable de facto

rationing of specific credit sectors

thru the impact or non impact

of reservation policy

and other regulating criteria

prime fad and fancy example of the moment :
future house lot bubble prevention

obviously any asset market bubble watch
by fed agents

even one that leads to an aggressive pre emptive clamp down

thru reg tightening

to avoid the formation of a price bubble

is not inconsistent with any

taylorized

product market rule

that weighs price level against output level rule

in as much as
the price dynamics

of any particular

asset market standing alone by itself

seem to have

no direct and signifigant

causal feed thru

to general product market prices

…
bakkho

you need to calc the general inflation impact

of the four fold increases in crude prices

i suspect you'll find
the total impact won't drive a stagflation

very far

all by itself

but it makes a perfect judas goat
bw

u plunge at the poor scandoids juggular

for this cw banality

“American monetary policy was far too easy…”

monetary policy
includes reg setting and enforcement

not just rates setting …no ??

easy may mean reg relaxing
and blind eyeing

as well as setting low real rates of interest

no ???

hey this ice bound clown
sends shivers up my timbers

but ….

mark
you are a panther

god bless you missed the stig post

i obviously need to read your blog even more closely
then i do

however

i notice

in your compaction of stig back when

the line that caught my eye is excised

thus we have in your cut down

apropos
“inflation targeting”

) “.. crude recipe

.. based on

little economic theory

or empirical evidence…”

which you gainsay in your commentary

but this is cut

”..there is no reason to expect
that regardless of the source of inflation

the best response is to increase interest rates ..”

now i think core vs headline targeting
may attack this problem somewhat

and targeting core

which is de rigour

seems to me able to duck

most of tail gunner joe's specific fire here since its about imported inflation thru trade

but still and all ….
his point is about

“best response “

which might imply nothing more

then a taylor dual target inclusion

of expected output gap effects …

and yet something makes me think joe is really
gesturing toward more then he's saying

my fog horn sounded:

single policy rate moves
are but an ambiguous signal

of no causal impact stand alone

ambiguous because since the conundrum

that was really a con job

just raising or lowering the rate

no longer implies

“stand by for some real rationing measures “

that is if our rate signal

don't trigger the proper reduction in market generated

net credit expansion errrr… “spontaneously”

———

of course my other one note chant

who's jreally targeting the movement
in the product price level anyway

its the guestimated effect

of and on

present wage increases that matter

wage trends vs productivity trends

or even nothing price like at all

but merely

changes in the net job formation rate

leaving the rest ie actual inflation of all sorts

to the various iron laws of job security causation

…

file under
painting with an exceedingly broad brush :

“Economists are the poster-boys for the corrupt elite today. Apologists for pigs, all of them”

amp
you got it backwards maybe…

“You, Joe-6-pack, might,

if you have any assets,

gain a few hundred thousand,

and will see inflation eat away all of it

…..For Joe6pack - toil , so that the pigs feed “.

a few hundred k ???

wow

your composite Joe-6-pack here

owns what assets

a house lot ??

and or a pension portfolio ??

isn't “Joe-6-pack” if he's still “toiling”
in the job kennel these days

likely to lose more

if the fed plays target politics

and tightens the screws ????

“using a broken monetary control system “

ecce …the alan greenspan legacy …

where the fed acts against

its own stated intentions

and

often as not

by failing to act at all …

as it didn't act

while mortgage rates and policy rates diverged

during bubble time in house lot city

…
jas

this passage

“Using regulatory policies is regarded with more interest inside the Fed than using interest rates, as rates affect the economy and asset markets as a whole instead of acting directly on the specific bubble
Treasury plan for regulatory reform which recommends giving the Fed wide authority to ask financial institutions to change behavior that poses a threat to financial stability.”

makes perfect good sense

you mis direct your scrutiny
changing or adding rules and powers

not lowering the rate boom

is precisely whats need doing come

any asset market's ur-bubble time

real problem
this is all pro forma chatter

actions will matter when taken if taken

Posted by js paine at 05:34 PM

examine an election
to discover the why ??

by sub group polling ???

much gibber here …

clarification…of sorts

polling for facts and causes
vs for feedback and fun

are two different sets of motives

horse race touts and just plain sepectators
like to follow the movement and or none movement

of preferences

sub groups are prolly defined by activists however

those wanting not just to know

but to change preferences

locating groups that are targets for conversion

or resistence to conversion

in building a plurality
the job is to produce and deliver

message that move folks

starting with the easy movers first… eh ??

and of course counter messages

that scotch the other outfits move making messages

finite resources with alternative uses

smart campaigning
tries narrow targeting

aiming specific move messages

at certain moveable groups

its like market differentiation

why does the press use the campaigns groups ???

because the mass media quite spontaneously
having no “independent “brain

must go with

what the ultimately partisan if

mutually neutralizing pollsters suggest

ie

these are polls for action and spectacle
not science

—————————

jay
the logical negativist ???

types :



“Maximize your utility, don't waste your time voting”

utility analysis gets you no where jay

u know that

the joy of participation
is no more irrational

then the joy of non participation

adding in ones preference
to the tally in a forgone outcome

is not a waste of time

its an assertion of solidarity

time at the polls casting a non decisive vote
is not necessarily

“better ” spent …

tapping out smart alec

comments on the internet

…
v bloc one has the nub

“statements about … decisiveness
(or lack thereof) are

” comparative”

“but for” type stuff

based on preference movement and non movement
of ID-ed sub groups

on a more sophisticated level of analysis
trend movement and thus expected preference ratios

vs

actual movement and actual preference ratios

Posted by js paine at 05:14 PM