Could Warren gain acceptance for her Medicare-for-all program by tying funding to “monetary reform” i.e. negative interest rates? Other countries are using negative interest rates to pay for infrastructure, maybe she could do something similar.

Is it a good idea? Probably not, but who’s to gain-say a big-brain like Professor Has-a-plan-for-everything when she says “Free Stuff for peepulz!”

Remember Bernanke’s “savings glut”? Since there was supposedly more savings… world-wide… than there were legitimate investment opportunities in established equity markets, rates belonged at or near zero. Warren could claim nothing has changed except Trump’s lousy pick to replace Yellen.

I could never swallow the whole savings glut rationale for keeping savings rates so low. The whole thing reeks of motivates reasoning.

But if Warren is going to play Santa Clause, she’s going to need a story people *want* to believe.

“We’re going to pay for Medicare-for-all via monetary reform! We’re going to get *paid* to borrow the money!”

Maybe? No?

Geoffrey Britain on December 6, 2019 at 8:42 pm said:
JimNorCal,

Dems are acting crazy because… once you reject key aspects of reality, that destination becomes inescapable. Trump has simply accelerated that mental decline but the increasing radicalization of the democrats did not start with Trump, arguably, its been progressing since at least Woodrow Wilson.

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” — Woodrow Wilson “The Meaning of a Liberal Education” An Address to the New York City High School Teachers Association – January 9, 1909

However, there is no doubt that Wilson meant the first class of persons to include his circle (ancestors of our current elites?) and the second class to be all of the Deplorables.
My opinion is that many, if not most, of the people (all races and all genders) now enrolled in what we continue to laughably call “liberal arts colleges” should be in vocational and apprentice programs that formerly lourished.
Those that can benefit from a true college degree should have access to it, no matter what “class” they were born into — no one with the intellect (not just intelligence) and interest should be forced to forego that priviliege for the greater good.
I don’t think Wilson was really on board with that idea.

This is another good way to get more Americans working for a living.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/12/07/ocasio-cortez-called-out-after-claiming-trump-food-stamp-revisions-might-have-starved-her-family/

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., received pushback Thursday after claiming her family “might’ve just starved” had the Trump administration‘s tightened requirements for food stamp recipients been in place when her father died in 2008.

Critics claimed the freshman congresswoman misrepresented the new rule, pointing out that it applies only to childless, able-bodied adults under 50.

The Agriculture Department (USDA) finalized the first of three proposed rules targeting the Supplemental Nutrition Program, known as SNAP. The plan announced Wednesday will limit states from exempting work-eligible adults from having to maintain steady employment in order to receive benefits.

What matters is this: The people who think they should run America told us THEIR economic policies weren’t just the best, they were literally the ONLY policies we could pursue. They claimed they weren’t making choices, just responding to economic realities in the only way possible. They said Trump deviating from those policies would be a disaster. AND THEY WERE WRONG.

Not just slightly wrong. Not just partially wrong. Not even just mostly wrong. THEY WERE ENTIRELY WRONG.
* * *
Ed Morrissey agrees with you, and apparently so does the New York Times.

https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2019/12/06/nyt-yeah-everything-knew-jobs-market-wrong/

This admission is long overdue, but it’s less about the New York Times than on the media in general. For several years, media outlets claimed that we had reached peak employment in the latter half of Barack Obama’s presidency despite ample evidence of a massive overhang of discouraged workers weighing down the job markets. When Donald Trump ran on an agenda of deregulation and tax incentives to spark new hiring and drive wages upward, only a handful of media outlets managed to avoid outright scoffing at the very idea that we had any room to expand.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Still, stu is correct that talent development of workers is already, and will continue, to constrain the US economic growth rate.

Far too many elite-wannabees graduate from college with x-Studies degrees, and lots of tax-guaranteed school debt, but without work skills or habits.

On housing prices and interest rates, there are many influences:
1) at any given time, most folk buying a new house buy as much house as their monthly payments they can afford. If a couple make $150k /yr, getting 96k in the bank meaning $8k/month, they can pay some $4k/month.
That monthly payment is principal plus interest. At low interest rates, it’s mostly principal, little interest. Very high sticker price for the house.
At a higher rate, the same $4k/month buys much less house “price”. If the economy had higher rates, which would be economically healthier (based on history), the house prices would be lower. But not actually more affordable.
2) Only building more houses makes houses really affordable. But most of the cities where the better jobs are growing have anti-growth policies that severely restrict house construction, especially zoning. So house prices go up to balance that supply & demand, just like Century should raise its furniture prices.

Trump’s policies have been surprisingly great. If no recession, he gets reelected.

There’s too much US federal debt – so I’ve long believed. But Japan has some 220% of its annual GDP in its national debt, and it’s not dying. So I don’t trust what I’ve been taught to believe about national debt for a mostly strong, market economy. Housing could crater; there could be a trade war and international trade could dry up; inflation could come back and be above 5%, or even 10%. It’s thousands of % in Venezuela, formerly the richest Latin America country. Socialism can kill any economy, with enough time and continued bad incentives.

But these problems seem unlikely to crash now, or in the next 12 months.

http://www.arnoldkling.com/blog/ << my favorite heterodox blog for most econ issues plus non-mainstream econ/ libertarian ideas.
https://marginalrevolution.com/ << more mainline / lib econ, tons of links, great MR university, free on-line, to learn econ.

People respond to incentives. In my entire life there has been no incentive at all for Americans to acquire the skills for an job they believe likely to be out-sourced, off-shored, or filled by an illegal alien or a holder of any one of the alphabet soup of special work visas that exist.

Hence, no one is especial interested in becoming an apprentice in a furniture factory that is likely to be packed up and sent to China any day now. Or an American in the building trades, which is heavily filled by Hispanics, legal and otherwise.

All this is a problem, I think, if you want to maintain a workforce capable of doing anything more than unloading their bridge card or collecting disability payments.

How long is an apprenticeship to acquire the skills they’re looking for?

I’m afraid labor is people, even if you find the thought ‘cheap’ and ‘gratuitous’. There is no such thing as a ‘laborer’ without outside interests and an affect on his social environment outside the workplace.

You have three choices in these matters. One is to accept that your industrial mix is a function of your available factors of production, whatever they are. Another is to progressively dilute the stake in society of your extant population by importing wave after wave of foreigners to maintain certain industries via cheap labor. A third is to have a population of metics performing work your governing class fancy is beneath their own people. It is socially corrupting to do that and in occidental countries has tended to generate downstream policy dilemmas. Importing settlers is legitimate within limits. Importing servants is not.

2) Wages: Are you prepared to pay five dollars for a head of lettuce? I don’t know the actual numbers, but I do know that without migrant agricultural labor a lot of our produce would become so expensive that it would be cheaper to import it than produce it here.

I’m not terribly concerned about the price of lettuce, per se. It’s a tiny part of my household budget. If it’s imported from abroad, it isn’t much skin off my nose. I haven’t a clue where the vegetables I purchase were produced. People who grow lettuce for commercial markets will be injured. The question is would their interests be so consequential that I’m willing to adopt unsalutary social polices? (Answer: No).

While we’re at it, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the wage bill for general farm labor in this country is about $11.4 bn a year, give or take. Farm revenues are currently $389 bn. per year, give or take. So, these workers account as we speak for 3% of your costs.

3. You don’t understand the rhythms of agriculture in America. And, so far as I can tell, city people can’t leave their jobs to pick fruit either. A long time ago, all the children and teenagers were employed in the summer… but times changed. No one wants their children to be agricultural workers any more.

I’ve never met Mr. and Mrs. No One. It did occur to me somewhere along the line that agriculture has seasonal rhythms, but thanks for your instruction; it’s the thought that counts.

There are 400,000 positions to fill, give or take, and 113 million people over the age of 14 who are not currently employed in some other capacity. There are, at any one time, about 25 million registered students over the age of 14. What do you have to pay them to make it attractive to them to do the work? What alternatives do you have in the world of mechanical harvesting? What do you grow if your hand-picked produce can no longer be produced with adequate economy?

1) “Labor” is not the same as “People”, and you know that. That was a cheap and gratuitous argument.

2) Wages: Are you prepared to pay five dollars for a head of lettuce? I don’t know the actual numbers, but I do know that without migrant agricultural labor a lot of our produce would become so expensive that it would be cheaper to import it than produce it here.

3) For many miles around us, summer is when we “make hay”. You don’t understand the rhythms of agriculture in America. And, so far as I can tell, city people can’t leave their jobs to pick fruit either. A long time ago, all the children and teenagers were employed in the summer… but times changed. No one wants their children to be agricultural workers any more.

4) Every place is peculiar… in it’s own way.

This is my last word on this. I won’t be responding again on this subject. Good day.

You mean merchandise and people are now interchangeable in your mind? You said that, not me.

Let’s face it… very few American citizens want to pick lettuce. Legal guest workers makes perfect sense.

Only if you insist that (1) you not pay wages which will attract domestic farm labor, (2) you will not automate processes, and (3) you will not substitute one crop for another which can be cultivated with domestic labor and equipment.

I live in a place that produces cherries. For the four months leading up to, during, and after the harvest, the farmers need far more labor than our town could possibly provide.

Evidently, no one around your town commutes and no one in your town can rent or drive a bus to transport workers.

Extremist and reactionary policies such as Art Deco’s would destroy the economies of two towns… one here, and one in Mexico.

Agricultural laborers account for 0.3% of the working population in this country. Your town is a very peculiar place.