We are surrounded by Keynesian economists which means we are surrounded by economists who do not have the first clue about how an economy works. Keynesian – that is, modern – theory is entirely a demand-side idiocy with any notion of how an economy knits together utterly left out. Which is why I found this so inane: Joe Biden Appears to Sneer at Americans’ Intelligence: Questions Collective Ability to ‘Understand’ Supply Chain Issues.
Biden promised to try and “explain to the American people” what supply chain issues America faces, telling the attending press representatives who “write for a living” he is yet to witness a reporter “explain supply chain very well.”
“This is a confusing time,” Biden stated.
Economists once upon a time did focus on the structure of supply, as Austrian economist still do. Now, not one in a thousand ever goes into the role of the supply-side in understanding the way economies work.
Meanwhile, back in Victoria, let me return to that story run in the middle of the weekend: Andrews government accused of blurring budget figures. Let me put up a second tranche from the article:
“Crucially, four-year forecasts in the budget are not sufficient to show when the government expects net debt to peak or stabilise,” the report found.
“This has increased in importance given the layering of the long-term economic and debt impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic with larger transport infrastructure projects.
“Recent Victorian budgets have not presented a transparent and cohesive fiscal framework.
“Components are spread throughout the budget papers, and are vague, making objective assessment of performance difficult.”
The report is set to spark major concerns over the openness of the Andrews government and its financial management with budget forecasts expecting net debt to climb to a record high $156bn by 2024-25, or 20.3 per cent of the state’s economy, significantly higher than the government’s 12 per cent target. The report’s release follows concerns by a number of MPs about the government’s budget process and is set to lead to calls for an overhaul of the way the government reports its financial position. One political source told the Sunday Herald Sun the budget figures were simply not transparent.
“The spin is in overdrive,” one source said. “The budget papers aren’t doing the best to tell Victorians what’s going on.
It’s not as if the financial disasters overtaking Victoria are invisible. They are just ignored, and with Keynesians the only brand of economists anywhere to be seen, we will continue forward as we are until we hit the wall. But at some stage they are going to have to come for your money since they are no longer able to get if from the Chinese Belt and Road bankruptcy provisions.
Same thing everywhere in the US with its $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill. Biden laughing at economic ignorance is just one of the many ironies of the moment, as endless workers are being shunted from their jobs because they are unwilling to take the vax.
The perfect intro, Steve.
Everything being done by state and federal politicians to bend and break the market economy should be understood in that context. Every one of them has a Keynesian economic adviser who hasn’t a clue about how supply and demand work.
If you don’t understand Say’s Law (supply creates demand), you are clueless on economics.
Not only that, Biden has now opened the gates for overseas manufacturing to resume and further devastate jobs and the economy. And not to forget the pleading to OPEC to increase oil production. Little wonder fuel prices have skyrocketed in the last month.
Lefties stuff up everything they touch. Everything.
Meanwhile, in the US, more than 100 ships are queued up outside the massive LA port because:
1. Until recently, the port was not even open for business 24 hours a day;
2. The stevedoring unions have successfully resisted further mechanisation of container handling;
3. The State government has banned a large proportion of the trucks currently on the road in the US from collecting freight because da environment;
4. The State government has also banned owner/operator trucks from the port.
There are other factors at play as well, but the combination of unions and State regulations are overwhelmingly responsible for strangling the port’s operations.
MSM identifies villains responsible on both sides of the Atlantic:
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/business/joseph-vazquez/2021/11/05/biden-cover-time-magazine-blames-american-shoppers
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=396307
Demand side economics means hordes on welfare are contributors to the economy by dint merely of buying stuff.
This includes the government whose presence as a big spender far dwarfs the role they play in helping getting things done – useless spending programs, a cornucopia of welfare with the small end attached to a Washington-sized compressor, and a bewildering whorl of new legislation designed to force people to scurry through mazes where they must pay fees, taxes and imposts at every turn. These have long eclipsed the light touch of policing and courts that work by their scarcely being there.
The productive people, the ones who work making things or getting these things to where people can buy them. But they are taught that that is not how an economy works. They are told they work, selfishly, for their own benefit, and for their selfishness they owe those who do not work.
There was a time when people working saw that they were making their country better and stronger. But there has been a generational change, and the non-productive have been given diplomas and megaphones, and are elevated even though they offer nothing anyone wants to pay for. All those poli-sci college graduates who despise the guys in the factories as obstacles to their grand plans.
Ordinary people are just bursting to get on with their lives. To that end they will work long and hard (so they can play hard) and produce mountains of wealth which the political elite is legally entitled to skim. The government need do nothing. Just stay out of the way and watch rivers of gold flow. But, nope. They interfere, choke the economy, and then declare that they must take more of each dollar from the very people they feed from like vampires. American ingenuity knows almost bounds. But even that is beggared by the greed and ignorance of the elites.
You will own nothing.
“Biden laughing at economic ignorance is just one of the many ironies of the moment,…”
This article lays out the case that these supply chain disruptions and vaccine mandates are a deliberate effort to “transform America”:
https://www.creators.com/read/wayne-allyn-root/11/21/vaccine-mandate-is-cloward-piven-plan-to-destroy-usa-and-end-capitalism