The Achilles heel of the global market, infrastructure and distribution networks in countries no longer making much at all themselves.
Roads of all kinds, consumer delivery trucks of all kinds, limos to and from airports and train stations, and to and from major cities, undergrounds and trolleys, all these things become parasitic, secondary, third worldly, once major and minor industrial production has gone. Agricultural production can maybe make do, limp along.
Grant objected to zero interest rates, not to discourage good cheap domestic infrastructure investment per se, but rather for other very good reasons, like how can you tell whether a private (or public) sector investment (domestic and or foreign, infrastructure or not) is worthwhile or not, with zero interest rates.
Bottom line: Krugman has long known that his profession is bottomed on pure sophistry, and he cynically plays it that way, having also learned that the average government Joe has no idea whether what he is talking about is true, and has no way of finding out one way or the other for sure from anyone else.
I should acknowledge that I am not a special fan of Grant, either, except that I like his style of exposition and argument, but let us save that story for another post.
Monday, April 16, 2018
RE KRUGMAN GRANT SIMON SAYS ECONOMICS THE CASE FOR OFFSHORING ECONOMISTS
RE: No Time For Credibility
Krugman has advocated infrastructure investment...
Krugman has advocated infrastructure investment...
That seems to make sense, until you look at the structure of blind globalization, which he has also, flatly wrongly, also long advocated......
Then, it, domestic infrastructure investment, makes no sense, anymore: then your best investment in infrastructure is where you get the most bang for the buck, but that's not here anymore.
Another little problem Krugman has had is that his zero interest rate advocacy has generated almost zero federally funded infrastructure, except a very small amount of the wrong kind.
On the other hand, it has, once again, generated all kinds of large scale, private sector, bubble like, investments, everywhere in the world.
Another little problem Krugman has had is that his zero interest rate advocacy has generated almost zero federally funded infrastructure, except a very small amount of the wrong kind.
On the other hand, it has, once again, generated all kinds of large scale, private sector, bubble like, investments, everywhere in the world.
Grant objected to zero interest rates, not to discourage good cheap domestic infrastructure investment per se, but rather for other very good reasons, like how can you tell whether a private (or public) sector investment (domestic and or foreign, infrastructure or not) is worthwhile or not, with zero interest rates.
Bottom line: Krugman has long known that his profession is bottomed on pure sophistry, and he cynically plays it that way, having also learned that the average government Joe has no idea whether what he is talking about is true, and has no way of finding out one way or the other for sure from anyone else.
I should acknowledge that I am not a special fan of Grant, either, except that I like his style of exposition and argument, but let us save that story for another post.
Monday, November 28, 2016
RE INFRASTRUCTURE BUILD OR PRIVATIZATION SCAM PIKETTY NIGHTMARE
This is much more complicated an issue than Krugman paints.
You may recall that Trump had painted himself as a champion of condemnors and of condemnation for public purposes, as against the ultra right's, his own party's constituents', antagonism for the government being allowed to ever take any private property for any purpose whatsoever.
Does anyone besides me recall that?
What would that, his position, have meant to someone in that narrow and recherche field of human endeavor, condemnation, eminent domain?
It would have meant that he was on the side of government in its role as public infrastructure development champion, using government to do the job that the right wing private sector abhorred and had shunned. Trump was viewed as an apostate.
Now Trump wants to give that field entirely to the private sector directly, without the controlling involvement of government at all. Why, do you think, is he now advocating infrastructure projects in this format? Take a guess.
There are, to be sure, many constitutional issues with trying to give away government infrastucture work entirely to private developers wholesale, but Trump has not thought of those, and the average American neither knows nor cares about the fine points of law involved.
You may recall that Trump had painted himself as a champion of condemnors and of condemnation for public purposes, as against the ultra right's, his own party's constituents', antagonism for the government being allowed to ever take any private property for any purpose whatsoever.
Does anyone besides me recall that?
What would that, his position, have meant to someone in that narrow and recherche field of human endeavor, condemnation, eminent domain?
It would have meant that he was on the side of government in its role as public infrastructure development champion, using government to do the job that the right wing private sector abhorred and had shunned. Trump was viewed as an apostate.
There are, to be sure, many constitutional issues with trying to give away government infrastucture work entirely to private developers wholesale, but Trump has not thought of those, and the average American neither knows nor cares about the fine points of law involved.
One of the underlying problems, to which Krugman fails to advert, one very near to the hearts of all investors, great or small, but always uppermost on the minds of the better ones, is the perennial problem of uncertainty. Cf. Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild
The other underlying problem, related to the problem of uncertainty itself, is one which economists like Krugman, and also more conservative ones than him, have created for us all, in concert: the problem of even having or wanting a bigger, or god forbid a better, central government, capable of larger, longer term, infrastructure projects at all, not determined or called for by market forces in the first instance.
Our political system itself, with its potential for radical change every four years or so, tells against long term commitments, of any kind really, by any particular 4 year regime, however either effective or incompetent.
The fact that Trump had talked of dismantling ACA, among others, only adds to the inherent institutional uncertainty of such a system of governance, in the minds of greedy, or careful, or cautious, or timid investors.
You may have noted that he talks about a toll road, in either scenario, meaning that it it kind of double taxation, and frankly a bad weak idea in itself, if government funded; and guaranteed, high private profit, if privately funded.
Either alternative shows the kind of Morton's Fork Americans are now in with their political and financial system.
You will note that he doesn't drag out either the hidebound Republican bogey of picking winners, gov cannot do anything right; or the alternative Democratic bogey that the private sector cannot do anything that is not corrupt, things like that.
Contrary to what he says, it is about taxpayer rip, off either way, either by the government directly through double taxation, tax and tolls; or by government in cahoots with the private sector with guaranteed tax breaks and toll profits.
For sewers, restoration projects, etc., to which he refers, as a supposedly better alternative to Trump's plan, double and ongoing taxation would be built into rent in perpetuity as he says, meaning user fees and charges, on a monthly basis, just like a toll, public or private....
You pay the tax that funds road construction, then you continue to pay through tolls.
I fail to see any real difference in either infrastructure alternative, Trump's or Krugman's, either way.
You do the math.
In answer to his question how much thus financed wouldn't have taken place anyway, my answer, in this political environment, long bequethed by both parties, is, frankly, not much, if any.
Re additionality, with so called public projects, but often really PPPs, you normally have foreign private contractors, not American firms, winning the lion's share of public infrastructure projects now anyway, for a variety of reasons.
This is a whole complex area, because of our political system such as it is, in which Krugman's discussion, of merely federal versus versus provate, scratches not the surface, and I that doubt Trump's does either.
Why? Because it is too complicated corrupt and backward to face the light of day, to face, call it, the hot breath of ' close scrutiny '.
So you get someone like Krugman, letting you eagerly lick his partisan surface icing off the very outmost surface of the real issues he claims to address.
Florida's first such PPP road project, for example, I believe it was federally funded, and went to a German company, as I recall.
Either way, we are in an evil, dark, economists' world, largely left out of Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
You may have noted that he talks about a toll road, in either scenario, meaning that it it kind of double taxation, and frankly a bad weak idea in itself, if government funded; and guaranteed, high private profit, if privately funded.
Either alternative shows the kind of Morton's Fork Americans are now in with their political and financial system.
You will note that he doesn't drag out either the hidebound Republican bogey of picking winners, gov cannot do anything right; or the alternative Democratic bogey that the private sector cannot do anything that is not corrupt, things like that.
Contrary to what he says, it is about taxpayer rip, off either way, either by the government directly through double taxation, tax and tolls; or by government in cahoots with the private sector with guaranteed tax breaks and toll profits.
For sewers, restoration projects, etc., to which he refers, as a supposedly better alternative to Trump's plan, double and ongoing taxation would be built into rent in perpetuity as he says, meaning user fees and charges, on a monthly basis, just like a toll, public or private....
You pay the tax that funds road construction, then you continue to pay through tolls.
I fail to see any real difference in either infrastructure alternative, Trump's or Krugman's, either way.
You do the math.
In answer to his question how much thus financed wouldn't have taken place anyway, my answer, in this political environment, long bequethed by both parties, is, frankly, not much, if any.
Re additionality, with so called public projects, but often really PPPs, you normally have foreign private contractors, not American firms, winning the lion's share of public infrastructure projects now anyway, for a variety of reasons.
This is a whole complex area, because of our political system such as it is, in which Krugman's discussion, of merely federal versus versus provate, scratches not the surface, and I that doubt Trump's does either.
Why? Because it is too complicated corrupt and backward to face the light of day, to face, call it, the hot breath of ' close scrutiny '.
So you get someone like Krugman, letting you eagerly lick his partisan surface icing off the very outmost surface of the real issues he claims to address.
Florida's first such PPP road project, for example, I believe it was federally funded, and went to a German company, as I recall.
Either way, we are in an evil, dark, economists' world, largely left out of Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
THE BIGGEST DAMAGE IN FLORIDA WAS TO THE HOBBLED POWER INDUSTRY
The second biggest damage was to local stormwater systems, hundreds of them, pathetically already overstretched in normal non storm conditions.
Florida bridges, the next shoe now to drop. I know all about it, the average person here has never had any idea. Both state and local level deferred maintenance....
If you are booming infrastructure, in the developmental attacker state world, directly or indirectly, to keep their sweated labor (slave labor, by, say, Lincoln's and American liberals' standards) on line for consumer products here, then why also boom infrastructure here, to protect against a hurricane or anything else, where few can find a decent relatively expensive job anyway?
Why?
I am going to tell you a dirty little globalization secret while we are on this tangential subject:
You can't have abundant really really cheap products here, or even decent well maintained infrastructure here, and also have Samantha Power style human rights, or even a halfway decent standard of living by Western standards, there.
There is no free lunch, no Wimpy Bar, no McDonalds, no Walmart, Target, Amazon, you name it, anything, without a price, call it, for now, the China Price.
If you thought you were going to end up, one day, in a multicultural world, of wealthy multi color democratic liberals, you have long been in the Age of the Democratic Revolution dream land.
I am going to tell you a dirty little globalization secret while we are on this tangential subject:
You can't have abundant really really cheap products here, or even decent well maintained infrastructure here, and also have Samantha Power style human rights, or even a halfway decent standard of living by Western standards, there.
There is no free lunch, no Wimpy Bar, no McDonalds, no Walmart, Target, Amazon, you name it, anything, without a price, call it, for now, the China Price.
If you thought you were going to end up, one day, in a multicultural world, of wealthy multi color democratic liberals, you have long been in the Age of the Democratic Revolution dream land.
Monday, February 27, 2017
RE TRILLION DOLLAR INFRASTRUCTURE PLAN NOT INDUSTRIAL POLICY
Such a plan, even though he seems not to be going to do even it, big blind government infrastructure spending, helter skelter as it always has been, as distributed to and through each individual state, is not a federal industrial policy, and that point needs to be stressed when reading things I say about redevelopment, Marshall Plan, etc.
Lawton Chiles had a state loop road built around the quiet city of Lakeland Florida with federal money, which wasn't needed, and which almost no one used for decades.
Pork barrel politics, the only kind the American system is structured to do, is not national industrial policy.
Moreover, it would be very difficult to reform the one to try to get to the other eventually.
Lawton Chiles had a state loop road built around the quiet city of Lakeland Florida with federal money, which wasn't needed, and which almost no one used for decades.
Pork barrel politics, the only kind the American system is structured to do, is not national industrial policy.
Moreover, it would be very difficult to reform the one to try to get to the other eventually.
No comments:
Post a Comment