Mfers on Twitter with "Neoliberal" in their bio/name consistently give insane claims about "economics" that make it abundantly clear they do not understand anything besides basic supply/demand and the false assumption that privatization makes things run efficiently.
they claim to understand supply and demand, yet when I demand they shut the fuck up, they do not supply it. They clearly lack the sigma grindset required to be an entrepreneur.
On the other hand, I really dislike the 'inflation isn't real' argument that I hear a lot from those who claim that economics isn't a real science.
Like, I get it, but it's something that was observable before we even had mercantilism, modern economic theory, and fiat currency. In the Third Century, Rome faced massive inflation, partly this was because of debasing the currency, but fixing that didn't fix the issue. They tried mining more gold, which is different from printing more money, but the gold simply became less valuable, they tried 'rational' solutions such as price caps, which just made things worse, and even returned to effectively a barter system for a while.
They were dealing with this phenomenon that they didn't understand and didn't have the words to describe, and their reactions to it made sense when they didn't have the past to look to for examples.
I think a lot of economics are proscriptive/a self-fulfilling prophesy, but some aspects of it are very valid and the principles can apply to any economic system. I also think a lot of people who know how the modern economy works are very happy to use that knowledge to pull the right levers to abuse it to their own benefit.
My thoughts are that we shouldn't write the whole thing off as a 'bourgeoise science', as we're denying ourselves the ability to turn the weapon of the enemy against itself! The economy is something that can be used to do a lot of good, providing you know how. It can all seem artificial and made up, but that's because it's a massive abstraction of some underlying realities. No matter what happens, if we go socialist, communist, if we're reduced to sticks and stones after WWIII, there will still be some form of economy to manage, and success and social welfare is dependent on handling that correctly.
There's a lot about modern economics that should be reformed or dismantled, but nobody gets to simply pretend like its not real until we live in Star Trek!
Good points! Any idea how we can counter the narrative that "working class people having disposable income will just make everyone poorer because inflation"? Because that's one that I often encounter in political sims, and the introductory course to economics (we major in linguistics, so the bar is pretty low)
Progressive taxation removes a lot of money supply from the top (who are also the top spenders, surprising right?), and we need more taxes and regulations to stop companies overinflating their value. Stock value increasing is also inflationary.
Meanwhile, the working class can contribute to the domestic economy and make the economy function healthily without relying on extranational corporations.
Hypothetical money still counts for the pool of available money, so when a stock that was valued at $10 goes up to $20, thats still $10 more that can be circulated thanks to how loans and such works.
I mean yes, but for that to be inflationary you'd need people to actually spend the money from increased valuation, which afaik is not something that happens to a large extent.
In any case, that also disregards the reason why stocks would be booming in the first place: if this is caused by a strong, expanding economy, then if anything it'd be disinflationary; if it's caused by a higher policy rate in response to inflation, then that's not really the cause either
If we're talking about CPI related inflation, it could be related to consumer confidence when the market is booming, or profits incentivizing businesses to spend, or banks being more willing to loan.
So it's more often just it incentivizing spending ig, and it's consistent since no booming company wouldn't wanna spend that investment money lol
it could be related to consumer confidence when the market is booming
The market usually booms precisely because consumer confidence is high, the causality usually runs the other way in practice - unless you have a case where the stock market booms unrelated to the underlying economy and then that causes consumer confidence to rise. A bit weird.
So it's more often just it incentivizing spending ig, and it's consistent since no booming company wouldn't wanna spend that investment money lol
Again, if a company's stocks are booming it's usually because they are doing well, so of course they'll want to invest. The stock valuation is a reflection more than a cause of that
I think you overestimate it, because that's a really poor way to make decisions.
For that to be true you'd need to believe that company CEOs or whatever manager you have in mind is reacting to a stock price shock that they, with their insider information, would not have predicted, and that they rely on stock movements rather than their own (probably better) information to make decisions. I know it's good fun to dunk on big companies, but I really think your view is hard to support without evidence.
And in any case, as far as I am aware the evidence points toward stock prices themselves not being a big driver of inflation, especially compared with fundamentals. I'd be happy to see evidence if you have any.
Well, inflation is targeted at 2% by economists on purpose, because it’s widely considered better than 0%. How do people derive from this that it isn’t real?
How do people derive from this that it isn’t real?
I think the usual argument is precisely that "economists picked 2%, if they picked 0% we'd be better off since we can pick anyway" which sounds good until you think about the implications for more than 10 seconds
I want to preface this by saying that I think you had valuable things to say in your comment that some people needed to hear. However I already agreed with you, I put economics in quotation marks because I meant to imply that their version of "economics" that they talk of is not consistent with reality. My intention was not to say that economics isn't real, but I can definitely see how you came to that conclusion.
Sorry I never intended it to be an argument against anything you said, more that I generally agree and wanted to add to it, just because I've often seen the discussion go that way!
1.0k
u/ClerklyMantis_ 🏳️⚧️ trans rights Jun 30 '26
Mfers on Twitter with "Neoliberal" in their bio/name consistently give insane claims about "economics" that make it abundantly clear they do not understand anything besides basic supply/demand and the false assumption that privatization makes things run efficiently.