Gumby wrote:
Kshartle wrote:I've wasted too much of my life explaining these concepts over and over in increasingly simple terms here. When the cumulative weight of propping up ridiculous non-counter points crushes some people the subject is either changed or the electronic equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and say "na na na na na" goes on.
We aren't sticking our fingers in our ears. You are telling us the definition of Metallism — which we are well aware of — and we are telling you that Metallism might make a little sense
if we had commodity money, but our society is based on
Credit Money. That's all there is to it.
Come on Kshartle/Mdraf... even
the Austrians don't agree with your denial of
Credit Money.
This is what I'm talking about.
Clearly I'm defining Metalism even though I've never heard of it and denying the credit theory of money even though I've never heard of it. Ohhh yeah, and I really don't care what Austrians think. Or Germans, or Lebanese, or Hutus or Tootsies.
What I'm stunned by is the inability of MR/MMT devotees and Cullen Roche acolytes to answer simple economic questions:
For Example I asked the following:
If I print one trillion dollars (perfect counterfeits) do I have more purchasing power?
Several MR/MMT students responded:
1. Are you the Fed?
2. Depends on what you do with that $1 trillion. If the Fed were to buy a bag of dirt with that $1 trillion, that would be the equivalent of a helicopter drop (since the bag of dirt has no value) and it would be highly inflationary.
3. What if you built a bonfire with it and burned it all up?
4. I don't understand the question.. YOU don't have the power to print $1 trillion.
5. No. Your purchasing power doesn't change if you lost a financial asset of equal value — which is what would happen if a Primary Dealer got that money from the Fed.
6. You don't have more purchasing power after a POMO transaction
7. Then you are probably going to jail.
8. A counterfeiter is creating a fake financial asset that defrauds people into believing he has purchasing power. It's known as fraud. What's your point?
9. If private sector credit is contracting on your island, people might not even notice the extra money you are printing.
Now this is a question even a child can easily answer. Cleary I have more purchasing power. And since it can't be created by printing it had to be stolen from it's rightful owners.
There are other examples. Such as
If A has zero money and B has $100, if B loans the $100 to A and gets an IOU in return, has their respective purchasing power changed?
If you explain to a child that purchasing power is the ability to buy stuff they will answer this easily.
The MR/MMT students really struggled with this one. Yes, no, I don't get it, I don't understand, A has more but B has the same, A doesn't have more etc.
No one got it right. A now has the purchasing power that B had. He has borrowed it. They cannot by loaning create purchasing power.
My question is, how does studying MR/MMT turn very simple economic questions into such mind-benders that getting the right answer would seemingly have to happen by accident?