Up with Chris Hayes 2/16/2013 : The President's Agenda

On today's Up with Chris Hayes the several panels discussed the President's SOTU proposals for minimum wage, gun control and pre-school education. I will focus on the minimum wage as an example of Progressive debate on statist proposals. There was one token Righty, and they all attacked her every time she tried to answer a question. One guest I'd never heard of was condescending, and he looked at Chris each time he, with disdain on his face, condescendingly corrected the lone Righty, as if he assumed Hayes had his back. I kept waiting for Hayes to search for the truth rather than sit by and even join in on the condescension and disdain. This is one aspect of Progressive argumentation -- an air of superiority with no real evidence to suggest superiority. It's funny, or at least the guy this morning was funny -- not exactly an intellectual heavyweight. I can't remember his name, but he has some show about too beautiful to live, or something like that.

Secondly, when the subject of minimum wage was discussed, the lone Righty brought up that inflation results from government enforced wage hikes. The panel shot this down immediately, and some economist type that Hayes found stated that not enough people are making minimum wage for the rise in wages at the bottom to have an effect on inflation -- he had no evidence of this of course. But, then later, when Hayes was asking about the effect of workers not wanting to be at the bottom of the scale, so what happens when the bottom is brought up to the next rung, a Small Business Person said that when minimum wage is hiked all wages begin to go up. Well, if this is the case, then it negates the argument from the economist type dude who said not enough people make minimum to have an effect on inflation. I could bring up several such inconsistencies where the arguments failed, but the point is that they were silent about the contradictions. This is the problem with Progressives -- there is emotion, but the facts are obscured, and emotion wins out over facts.

Update on Saturday, February 16, 2013 at 11:35AM by M. Farmer

Answer to Pre-School advocates.

Update on Saturday, February 16, 2013 at 11:41AM by M. Farmer

From economists not picked by Chris Hayes.

Update on Saturday, February 16, 2013 at 11:42AM by M. Farmer

Minimum wage was increased in 2007. Current unemployment among black teenagers has hovered around 40% for several years. For teenagers in general, the unemployment rate has been around 25%. Hispanics in general, all ages, have suffered a 10% unemployment rate.

Of course there are other reasons for unemployment, but Progressives would grab hold of data like this and make a direct correlation to get something passed.

The lack of widespread price inflation

http://mises.org/daily/6340/Where-Is-the-Inflation

I wrote about this subject a week or so ago. I'm not an economist, so I was a tad unsure of my conclusions, but I felt I was on track. It feels good to be vindicated.

Statist spending

Those in the political class who believe that talk about debt and deficit is misguided, and that government should use this opportunity of low inflation and low interest rates to spend more on infrastructure and such, are missing something very important. I don't know if they are all missing it, because many of them are educated enough to know better.

There are statists in both parties who think government should not worry right now about spending. Obama doesn't think we have a spending problem, and many other statists have made this claim, while moderates are willing to compromise on infrastructure spending. Statists think we have a problem with demand that government can remedy by spending more money. The Fed obviously believes this because they're pumping around 40 billion a month into the system.

The statists are fond of pointing to inflation and saying, see, there is no inflation. Then they point us toward historically low interest rates and tell us there has never been a better time to spend and boost the economy. The ignorance of the statists, and their policies so far, have caused high, long-term unemployment and high underemployment. Fed policy of keeping interest rates artifically low are  hurting the savings plans of seniors. The statists don't mention this.

Statists also don't mention that the reason we don't see widespread inflated prices, although gas and food prices are up, is that economic players are not taking the statist bait. Investors are waiting until they know what the costs of doing business will be -- they are not counting government spending as sustainable economic growth, and neither are consumers, home-buyers -- no one is fooled by government spending, so the money is not circulating in the economy. Corporations are sitting on cash. Banks are not even fooled by government spending -- they're tighening up on loans, not loosening up.

If all these economic players took the statist bait and acted as if government spending equals sustainable economic growth, we'd see run-away inflation and interest rates so high that our economy would likely collapse. Statists are playing with fire, sacrificing the unemployed and the underemployed as they play their power games, telling us that nothing's wrong with government spending and that we should do much more. This is insanity, and the unemployed and underemployed had better wake up and act -- statist policies are not going to improve anything -- they will only make things worse.

I'm not sure why Obama or Romney want to win

Surely Romney thinks he can turn around the economy, but, when he does, inflation will be rampant. The Fed is pushing 30 billion into the economy monthly. I don't see how the Fed can keep its promise of low interest rates for a couple more years when inflation causes widespread price hikes. Inflation itself is just expansion of the money supply, which usually causes high prices, but not necessarily, not if the economy is stagnant and there's stagflation. We are seeing high prices now, just not in the areas that count toward the inflation rate. Gas and food prices have gone significantly higher, and this hurts the poor, the middle class and seniors on fixed incomes. Seniors will get a measley hike in SS that amounts to nothing -- it will be eaten quickly by energy and food costs.

If the Fed's stimulus can fool companies into hiring and expanding again, there will be a flood of money  spent in the economy on goods and services, pushing all prices higher, and the Fed will be forced to raise interest rates to cool down the economy. This back and forth manipulation is a systemic problem caused by the existence of the Fed itself. The fact that we have a quasi-government entity in control of the money supply hasn't gotten through to most Americans, but hopefully the Information Age will educate enough people so that the movement to end the Fed will gain muscle.

Obama wants to win, because when we teeter on collapse, he can intervene in the economy in Big Ways like FDR before and progressives now want so badly. We can't let this happen -- we'll have to take our medicine and allow the economy to adjust to reality. Does anyone remember reality? As I've written many times -- reality always wins.

QE3 -- how to purchase an election

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2012/09/13/fed-to-markets-take-some-qe3-theres-a-lot-more-where-that-came-from/

Luckily for President Obama he has a central bank to buy his re-election. The question is are business people dumb enough to take the bait? I suspect that business owners are not going to hire just because the Fed pours money into the economy. This is a sugar high fix, and it won't last -- it could lead to higher prices in a short period time. We haven't even recovered from the last bubble and Obama and the Fed are trying to create another one so that Obama can serve four more years. If anyone had any doubts about the Fed as a biased arm of the State, especiallly a Left-leaning State, they can rest assured that Bernanke is a patsy. The promise to inject 40 billion a month for as long as it takes, and the promise to keep interest rates low for three years, reveals a desperate madness within the political realm. Bernanke and Obama are saying that they will force recovery, by God, no matter what it takes. The MSM, mostly, merely reports it's happening, and the stock markets reacts like automatons. Surely cooler heads will prevail.

If inflating the money supply by whatever amount is necessary can fix our economic problems, then the question is why didn't they do it in 2008?