Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

not much

Oh wait, it looks like there might be some federal gun control coming.

if the debt rises at a rate that is less than wealth creation that is financed with such debt, why couldn't debt be monetized forever?

― Philip Nunez, Monday, April 1, 2013 3:17 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not really sure what you are asking. Monetizing debt = increasing money supply to pay for debt. If "wealth" is rising faster than debt, you wouldn't really be monetizing debt, you'd be paying it off with the new "wealth" in your scenario, as I understand it. So far, what you're describing is not happening though.

x-post to dandy don
Nah, Republicans are blocking background checks now

i don't mean necessarily wealth in govt coffers, but wealth creation as a whole.

So Tracer, you're pretty convinced that we can grow our way out of any sovereign debt levels that were to become problematic?

i'm not an expert obv but I find Dean Baker convincing on the debt. Here's what he wrote a couple of weeks ago in response to a Steve Rattner column about the demographic "threat" to the federal balance sheet. He beats the same drum pretty regularly so apologies if you've read similar before:

We have seen an enormous upward redistribution of income over the last three decades. As a result most workers have seen little of the benefits of economic growth. If this upward redistribution continues, then our children are unlikely to see much of the gains of growth in the future.

Rather than have people focus on the policies that have led to this upward redistribution (trade policy, too big to fail banks, patent policy etc.), wealthy people like Rattner use their money and power to try to divert attention to the cost of Social Security and Medicare. They have thrown enormous resources into trying to scare people with the prospective burdens posed by these programs. For example, Rattner today tells us that with Social Security:

"The present value of the unfunded liability is 'only' $9 trillion."

Are you scared yet? After all, it's "only" $9 trillion. Didn't you love that sarcasm? Yes, $9 trillion is a lot of money, none of us will ever see that much money, even Bill Gates or Warren Buffet. But if we are having a serious discussion, we would talk about this as a share of future income. It's about 0.7 percent of future GDP. Does that scare you?

That's a bit less than half of the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last decade, that's hardly trivial, but that expense would not impoverish our kids. Medicare and Medicaid are projected to cost more but that has nothing to do with the old stealing from the young, their higher costs are the result of doctors, drug companies, medical supply companies and other providers in the industry charging us two to three times as much as their counterparts in other wealthy countries. If we paid the same amount per person for our health care as people in other wealthy countries then we would be looking at long-term budget surpluses rather than deficits.

The reality is that the hit to future living standards from demographics is relatively modest. It is easily dwarfed by the gains from projected productivity growth even under very pessimistic assumptions. Even if productivity just grows at the same rate as it did in the slowdown era from 1973-1995 the gains from productivity growth through 2035 would be more than three times the potential hit that our children would face from supporting a larger population of retirees. And after 2035 productivity continues to grow, even as the demographics barely change.

But this story depends on our children being able to capture the gains of productivity growth rather than seeing them all go to the top. That requires a reversal of the policies of the last three decades. But rather than having people talk about the policies that are causing this massive upward redistribution, Rattner is trying to set children against their parents and grandparents. And the NYT is apparently happy to give him the space to do so.

good book

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/books/the-end-of-loser-liberalism

The debt is mostly owed TO OURSELVES. China owns 8 percent of the debt total. It's mostly owned by rich Americans that have been fucking the country over from the beginning and will continue fucking it over until the end.

But yeah, poor people want money and it's an ENTITLEMENT. This poor person feels ENTITLED to money. They don't really deserve it but they think they do.

If the poor deserved money, they would be rich. They are not rich, therefore they do not deserve money.

The debt is mostly owed TO OURSELVES. China owns 8 percent of the debt total. It's mostly owned by rich Americans that have been fucking the country over from the beginning and will continue fucking it over until the end.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, April 2, 2013 12:15 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the second sentence of this is not correct, the largest holders are (1) the Social Security Trust Fund, (2) the Fed, (3) China, and the rest of the list includes pensions, federal, governmental institutions, banks, insurance companies, and various other foreign governments besides China. But the fact that a lot of it is "owed to ourselves" doesn't really matter. The question is at what point the debt becomes unsustainable, i.e. people begin to doubt it will be repaid, demand higher interest rates, the government has trouble financing its activities, etc. Or alternatively, if we go the monetization route, at what point that requires so much expansion of the money supply that it creates dangerous inflation. Either of these things can happen, the debate is more about when, and when is the appropriate time to deal with it. Krugman et al say better to focus on getting the economy on track, and that greater economic activity will ultimately help reduce the debt.

inequality is the ultimate source of the debt. this extreme it's unsustainable in a market economy where we are our number one customers. it would be one thing if the oligarchs were competent and the *job creators* created a reasonable sufficiency of decent paying jobs. but they don't, and here we are. everyone should refuse to pay their bills at once and see how the kochs and coors and mellon-scaifes and waltons etc and their trust managers like it

The game’s been heavily stacked in favor of the wealthy ideologues, who seek to extract the most resources from this country while paying the least back. Only by challenging supply-side assumptions at their core can we hope to have politicians who will enact meaningful, strong reforms that might serve to prevent — or at least mitigate — another economic disaster like the last.

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/02/do_americans_still_not_get_reaganomics/

on that npr piece: https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/unfit-to-report/1fccea431e8d291b31731f8c86cf32a80b06c78c/

that looks like its a share from a paywall that'll go away soon, so here are some links from inside:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lennard-davis/npr-reporter-chana-joffew_b_2971443.html
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/planet-money-misses-the-boat-on-social-security-disability
http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/03/22/this-american-life-features-error-riddled-story/193215

http://observer.com/2012/08/adam-davidson-planet-money-media-ethics-08092012/
http://www.fair.org/blog/2012/08/17/at-npr-you-can-take-money-from-banks-just-dont-protest-them/
http://mediamatters.org/authors/hannah-groch-begley/188

piece had problems but the idea that it was due to NPR being paid off by banks is lol

the present is full of doom if the elites have turned your life to shit

yeah I've been following the kerfuffle over that piece. I had missed some of the more problematic statements in the planet money version that I think were absent from the TAL version (stuff along the lines of "SSI Disability is not achieving its mission and is failing" or whatever. That's bullshit. But I also think the reaction is missing a lot of the insights of the piece and reading stuff in that's not there (e.g. I didn't actually hear anything that suggested "moral turpitude" of the beneficiaries). I thought the point of the piece was largely that the economy has fucked these people and left them with little option other than to seek SSI disability, which seems to be exactly the point that people taking issue with the piece are also making. So IDGI.

i think the open question the piece left (tho it had a heavy bias) is if most ppl going on SSI were in fact disabled. It left itself open to the 'freeloaders off the guvment' interpretation, although there was obviously more interesting stuff going on.

https://www.nsfwcorp.com

?

well the bigger picture is 'in fact disabled' is not really a y/n thing

a constantly evolving interpretation of the word disabled is a very good thing in a country w/ no other long-term safety net for people under 62. it seems like it could evolve into a min guaranteed income over time. that's what I got out of the piece but you can very easily read the gd-freeloaders stuff in there. it was kinda all over the place, but def not a conspiracy by npr-funding banks.

i think heard all of the pm version, my thought at the time was that it did a not terrible job of pointing to a big structural problem, with a predictable, misleading side portion of disablility fraud. i wished it pointed out more explicitly that if all people had reliable healthcare coverage, much of the conflict between employment and disability qualification would be resolved.

the nsfw thing is interesting to know. i'm so used to finance's capture of journamalism everything, i just kind of -_- right by that shit.

I don't think the piece necessarily suggested it was fraud when people w/ no other options ended up on disability but if somebody wanted to read that into it, it wouldn't be hard

again tho the idea that finance 'captured journalism' here is just so lol, oh yeah ally bank has it out for people collecting disability

My first alert to the disabilities piece was the few right-wingers on my FB feed posting it, so I had an idea what to expect going in. But I thought the reporting was more fair and nuanced than the left-wing critics are making it out to be. I mean, it's the kind of piece where everybody's going to hear what they want to hear, but it did point out that for a lot of people, non-physical labor is not really an option. I'm including most service sector jobs in physical labor: standing on your feet, stocking shelves, running cash registers are all things that are hard to do with any kind of chronic physical condition. And it might not make anyone comfortable to note out that for a lot of families, getting a kid on disability is a way to get much-needed money, but it being uncomfortable doesn't make it untrue. (I am personally fine with people in need receiving assistance to help with their disabled kids, even if the disabilities are learning disabilities or whatever. But in any case, you can't have an honest discussion about it without acknowledging the incentives the system creates.)

i think the argt is more subtle, or at least there's a more subtle argt to be had w/r/t capture, which isn't about conspiracy theories or the like, but more about ongoing questionable deals w/r/t conflict-of-interest/disclosure/journos-too-close-to-topic stuff, and if there's an element where the consistently most ideologically libertarian segment on npr (which i guess this is, dunno?) happens to be the one solely funded by a single big bank, then it at least should be pointed out and make you go 'hmmm'.

financial reporting is one of the few forms of journalism left that actually make money (for proprietors, for journalists themselves) i.e. reuters' "normal" reporting is a loss-leader for their energy, bond, equity etc reporting; not too weird to think that shifts the agenda a little bit

it's Thompson Reuters now so it's probably all a loss leader for expensive legal compliance products like the one my dad edits.

you could also levy a variant of the journalistic capture stuff at sorkin at the times, for example, and certainly at nocera.

the article was written by this woman:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/05/who_am_i_and_where_did_i_come.html

I started in radio volunteering as a host and news writer at a outside Seattle. After that I spent several years of late nights learning from the generous people at , and NPR. I covered education, business and technology for Seattle's local stations and for and NPR. I also did a brief, really fascinating stint covering rural issues in central Washington state for the Northwest News Network

is it possible that she has been captured by banking interests? that her editors put stuff in because the piece wasn't right-wing enough? sure. I guess. I think it's more likely that she's a nice person who was just a little too ambitious w/ this, didn't even understand the extent that she was making a piece w/ any ideological bent and ended up w/ an article on a good subject but with an incoherent thesis.

I mean banks have more to gain from a huge underclass receiving disability checks than a huge underclass starving to death so it doesn't even make sense as a conspiracy

finance is a lot more than banks. ally is an interesting example in that it would seem gmac would have a different market bias. as i recall, they also suspended lobbying efforts for a while due to the federal bailout.

also, shit happening in the open while youre not really inclined or able to pay attention is not a conspiracy, really.

ending or reducing disability payments is certainly in line with right wing interests generally, which I think where the suspicion comes from. Anyone anti-tax might hate them. Anyone with interest in having a larger labor force (and hence one with less bargaining power) might them. That doesn't necessarily mean it makes sense to make the leap from "right wing interests" to ally bank here.

the args made aren't about this piece per-se, but the general bent of these segments, and the more damning stuff i think is about the warren interview (which npr actually apologized for), etc.

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3388/3549254829_f873f0e515.jpg

^ captured by global banking interests or just not good at writing articles, which seems more likely

it's much commented on, but I did groan a lot at the "she literally didn't know about any jobs where you can sit down!" part. I think it's more likely that the woman didn't know about any jobs SHE COULD DO where you can sit down, it's not like she never saw an office on TV or something. Possibly symptomatic of a larger naivete in the reporter, although exaggerated faux-naivete seems to be an NPR style thing so it's hard to tell.

ffs 'capture' doesn't mean you sit in a smoke filled room or take secret payola or etc. it means yr. writing stories in an editorial and intellectual climate where certain sorts of ideas are taken for granted and certain sorts of angles are considered 'provocative' or 'balanced' when they're not.

its basically a variant of the sort of fake-non-middle-consensus that al3x p. writes about in his hack list coverage.

yes, capture can result from a failure of judgment, rather than probity alone.

There has been a lot of reporting about precarity and benefits lately. I didn't entirely get a 'right wing' vibe from her piece, though it was occasionally cringe-worthy, but more of a 'the economy sucks and people at the bottom are getting royally screwed' vibe.

from what I can tell the people running planet money have much of a background in this kinda stuff and are basically just learning this on the fly. their 'intellectual climate' is bad public radio.

don't have much*

iater otm repeatedly

iateE

There has been a lot of reporting about precarity and benefits lately. I didn't entirely get a 'right wing' vibe from her piece, though it was occasionally cringe-worthy, but more of a 'the economy sucks and people at the bottom are getting royally screwed' vibe.

― But I'm having so much foehn! (Michael White), Thursday, April 4, 2013 1:44 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this. my big takeaway was "this is a symptom of there not being jobs for people without college-level skills and educations" not "disability is fucked up"

it is so incredibly unbelievably hard to get on disability anyway I have a hard time believing it's being widely abused. when my wife had cancer she was denied twice.

!!!

My wife was approved on the 1st try and I still am not entirely sure what I did right. I know there's a whole industry of disability lawyers and advisors who do disability applications as their main (only?) gig.

It can be harder or easier to get on disability depending on the circumstances. Many, many people with cancer are not on disability -- it depends on the diagnosis (including prognosis) and treatment.

The problem with disability from a doctor's perspective (mine) is that it's not a black/white yes/no thing. There are obvious cases of paralysis, organ failure, cognitive impairment etc, but there are also (and in my experience as a neurologist, many more) subjective cases of various sorts of chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and/or chronic psychiatric symptoms.

It is not true that everyone with subjective symptoms can function without disability under ideal circumstances, but some of them can and will continue to work if the circumstances permit or require. You might say, "but should they have to?", and you would have a point, but at the very least it's true that someone who continues working *can* work, and isn't disabled in the sense that they *literally can't* continue. From my experience, a significant recent increase in disability claims at a time of limited economic opportunities probably represents the change in circumstances more than any more specific change in medical realities (except inasmuch as medical diagnoses are made in part by description of subjective factors, etc).

As doctors we are trained to diagnose and treat diseases and symptoms but we do not have any specific training (beyond human experience) in deciding if someone is able to put up with a given situation, or for how long. If someone tells me their headaches are so severe that they can't work (I hear this often as a neurologist, and usually from patients not doing manual labour), there is no specific way in which I can judge that self-assessment as true or false. I can point out that many people continue to work (with occasional sick days, which are better provided in Canada than in the US I believe) with chronic headaches, and that there is evidence that staying off disability is a good prognostic factor for long term reduction of symptoms and maintenance of function at work and at home (but which is cause and which is effect here?), and of course I will try to treat the headaches and improve the pattern of symptoms -- but in the meantime, even as a specialist, who am I to say if the patient is in fact disabled?

One would have to be the most woolly-headed bleeding heart to believe that patients would never under any circumstances (even when sincerely mistaken about their own capacities) tell their physician that they are not capable of continuing to work even when they are in fact capable (as judged by them continuing to work if disability is denied -- as many claims are, after which many/most patients IME do in fact continue working). Even if we take away the idea of deliberate fraud, the disability from subjective symptoms (including many forms of chronic pain, even when attributed to an underlying illness or injury) is by definition a state of mind (which is not to say the problem is imaginary, "not real", not a big deal, or something that should be easily fixable). And subjective states are impossible to adjudicate objectively, by anyone.

The best uses of disability in my experience are for short term, resolving problems (injuries, monophasic illnesses), or for chronic static (like mental retardation, cerebral palsy, spinal cord injury, post-stroke paralysis, etc) or chronic progressive (like dementia, ALS, advanced MS, metastatic cancer, COPD, heart failure, etc) diseases. When the condition is subjective (pain of various types, psychiatric symptoms), and/or when the natural history of the condition involves considerable variability over the years (IBS for example), long-term disability is a poor match for the medical situation.

Disability claims typically require the doctor to describe the state of disability and the prognosis for recovery. With most of the subjective / variable conditions, the best description of the disability is the patient's own report and the prognosis is uncertain, but carries the possibility of considerable improvement (patients with hundreds of migraines a year in their 20s sometimes have no headaches at all in their 40s for instance). At the same time, many people with chronic pain or chronic psychiatric conditions never improve and are in fact disabled indefinitely. And there is no clear way to tell ahead of time which is which, and there is good reason to worry (as a doctor responsible for trying to help people get better, not as a sociologist or political type) that having them plan to never go back to work again can be detrimental to the very syndrome that brought them to the point of not working in the first place.

And then there's the problem with a social / political / economic dysfunction being managed primarily through the prism of medical diagnosis and treatment, but that's another rant...

Bottom line: it's definitely a good thing that disability insurance exists. It's an important social good that people suffering from chronic diseases or injuries have a safety net. But long-term disability for chronic subjective syndromes, including pain, is a complicated situation, with real downsides. That those downsides can be exploited for political gain by right wingers does not mean they do not exist.

excellent post, ty

different subject but:
http://www.deptofnumbers.com/affordability/us/

this lends support to one of my pet issues/theories about the economy, i.e. that we are still overinflating housing with QE and low rates, and that we should be allowing home prices to fall back to affordability

http://tinyurl.com/c6ogwsy