This won't work politically because Americans have been taught to think of the nation's economy as like a family's. That an increase in cost of any kind is a negative. They have not learnt (and have not been taught) that one man's cost is anothers income. This is the most fundamental insight of macro-economics and is why there is strong element in the economics community that wants to pretend that micro-economics is sufficient and dominant.

I realise the US has a disfunctional political system. But isn't it about time that Americans started to think that they can walk and chew gum at the same time?

Kill two birds with one stone. Energy taxes + national dividend (simply divide the revenue among all citizen's). Win (for the poor) and win (for the environment).

Quoting comment 16 from http://crookedtimber.org/2013/05/14/nietszche-and-the-marginalists/#comments A little more Hayek from chapter 8 of The Constitution of Liberty, on selecting a class of people “who can back their beliefs financially” to provide leadership “in the propagation of new ideas in politics, morals, and religion”: The selection through inheritance from parents, which in our society, in fact, produces such a situation, has at least the the advantage (even if we do not take into account the probability of inherited ability) that those who have been given the special opportunity will usually have been educated for it and will have grown up in an environment in which the material benefits of wealth have become familiar and, because they are taken for granted, have ceased to be the main source of satisfaction. The grosser pleasures in which the newly rich often indulge have usually no attraction for those who have inherited wealth. If there is any validity in the contention that the process of social ascent should sometimes extend through several generations, and if we admit that some people should not have to devote most of their energies to earning a living but should have the time and means to devote themselves to whatever purpose they choose, then we cannot deny that inheritance is probably the best means of selection known to us. On the next page, we see the attitude to be expected of the masses toward such people: The successful performance of such a task by the wealthy is possible, however, only when the community as a whole does not regard it as the sole task of men possessing wealth to employ it profitably and to increase it, and when the wealthy class consists not exclusively of men for whom the materially productive employment of their resources is their dominant interest. There must be, in other words, a tolerance for the existence of a group of idle rich—idle not in the sense that they do nothing useful but in the sense that their aims are not governed by considerations of material gain. Two pages later: It is undeniable that such a leisured group will produce a much larger proportion of bons vivant than of scholars ad public servants and that the former will shock the public conscience by their conspicuous waste. But such waste is everywhere the price of freedom; and it would be difficult to maintain that the standard by which the consumption of the idlest of the idle rich is judged wasteful and objectionable is really different than that by which the consumption of the American masses will be judged wasteful by the Egyptian fellaheen or the Chinese coolie. Yeah, pretty much sounds elitist to me.

For me personally (in Europe at the time), the Y2K was small fry. The big event was the introduction of the Euro (at about the same time). Massive modifications to existing systems.

Isn't a corollary though, that the dips must also be earlier and slower, because there are no excess inventories. Is there evidence of this?

"In any case, not sure I buy that people "just think the rich are better than they are" argument." As others have pointed out The problem here is (as it often is), in the collective noun "people". PLEASE, put a SOME in front of it. And while you are are at it, make sure your DSGE models include heterogeneity.

Surely Wonkblog doesn't belong (not economist web blogging) even though it sometimes talks about economics. Agree with the others about angry bear and dean baker. Also interfluidity (although also not an economist).

Why did More Economic Possibilities for our grandchildren precede Economic Possibilities for our grandchildren? Are the prospects getting worse?

And isn't what Nick is saying and Matt is saying and what Karl is saying all essentially the same? And doensn't that mean we shouldn't change the conversation (already) from whether to redistribute to how much to redistribute?

I think Nick Rowe for once is right. But let me get this straight - does Ashok Rao think we will become spiritual beings - that we don't need food and clothes and houses?

I'm not sure that that is political since both major parties support the war.

I'm a bit puzzled about all this. Why are they liable for tax anyway? Aren't these organisations non-profit? Do you in fact mean that donations to them are tax deductable for the donors (in which case it is not the organisations that are tax exempt).

Relative to what?

"There is a kind of paradox with markets as means of price discovery." This is not the only paradox in price discovery. Two (somewhat related) others come to mind. 1. Index investment produces the best average returns, so long as not everybody invests that way. 2. (One I think should have my name as nobody else has pointed this out to my knowledge) - the price of close substitutes can only diverge in the medium term, if nobody believes they can diverge. (Because if people believe they will stay different they will switch from one to the other. In this case natural gas and oil prompted this thought.)

I will say that I find the moral aspects of economic transactions very difficult. They wouldn't be so difficult if the world was less unequal. For instance, it has often been pointed out that it is only due to unsustainable and often inhumane farming practices, that the world can support such a high population. If we (the west) were all to move to "Bio" products (more sustainably and humanely produced) immediately, the net effect might be starvation amongst the poorest. Similarly, I have heard of other paradoxes, where unilateral idividually ethical behaviour results in perverse consequences. If I unilaterally reduce my energy footprint, then it will just reduce the price and encourage less ethical people to waste more energy. If intelligent and ecologically morally concerned people have unilaterally fewer children, then the next generation will be less intelligent and ecologically morally concerned. etc, etc.

"Moreover, if the club members subtract more value than they add, reasoning from the part to the whole, the firm would be better off with out a board. How can this be?" Well no, because legally the board has to exist for the company to exist. But otherwise, if the cap fits, wear it.

With regard to corporate takeovers, you are missing something important. Increasing debt for tax purposes has the very real side effect of diluting equity by passing it on to banks. Banks (without doing much) own more and more of the economy - and WORSE - they decide the management agenda. In effect, we are destroying management diversity and creating a monoculture. And this very much ties in with what Graydon called (in my mind rather confusingly parasitism) which he identified with a fall in resiliancy. I think a fall in resiliency is a very real problem - but I think that is generally inbuilt in capitalism - I guess perfectly competitive markets are even less resiliant (since every firm is under maximum cost pressure).

While not totally in disagreement with what you say, I think you are generalising too far. 1. It is not true that all libertarians (not sure about Libertarians) are fine with Intellectual Property rights. Certainly, Friedman (who is admitedly on many points better than his followers) expressed ambiguity about them. 2. I don't think it is fair to label "economics" as the "blatantly the handmaid of the powerful", no matter how much that label can be attached to some of its practitioners. J.K. Galbraith and indeed Marx are as much children of economics as Greg Mankiw is.

Besides which, has it occured to you that the jobs are probably not staying open because the odd (lazy or fussy) person decides not to take them. So what exactly is the issue here?

To paraphrase kharris - useful for WHOM?

Donna, this may sound cruel, but it is meant to help, really. I had somebody say something similar to me about another language. You are probably better off making your comments in Spanish (my guess - sorry if I'm wrong). Nobody understands what you are saying, and it is a shame for you to be excluded from the conversation. If you make your comments at least in parallel in Spanish, then at least some people will understand your point (and others can use google to translate).

??? 1. Straw man alert - nobody wants to make the dollar WORTHLESS (unless you really mean WORTH LESS - 2 words). 2. If it is worth less, then net exports should (eventually) expand, which is the only sustainable solution to US problems. In the mean time increased liquidity should mean increased local demand which will mean increased investment (in order to meet that increased demand).

Thanks, yes this is unprecented. But what is interesting is that this is EXACTLY the opposite to the 1980s. So what conservatives saw as the problem in the 1980s has been solved - but now we have a worse problem. Maybe the original diagnosis wasn't correct?

Notice, that one of the sectors mentioned is the external sector.