Hillary Clinton - Economicus Ignorissimus

[arkirk]

The old H C may not be any kind of ignoramus. but if she is not, then she is a shameful person who should be convinced once and for all she MUST GET OUT OF POLITICS. Her and hubby are sweatshop owners, cheaters on relief efforts in times of disaster, fossil fuel consumers and promoters, and, it appears, takers of the course of greatest personal profit. Clinton is a war monger. That ought to be reason enough to sack her.

 

[dismal]

I'm not sure what "create a job" even means. But generally a job seems to be created when an employer and an employee agree on terms. So if I must decide I'm going with the people who create jobs are employers and employees who agree on terms.

Why would an employer "create" a job if there was no demand to fill?

He needs someone to cut costs?

Revenge for a prank in high school?

What does this have to do with the topic? At best you seem to want to argue that demand is necessary for someone to want to create a job oriented to meeting that demand. But it is clearly not sufficient.

No jobs were created by my demand for a swimming pool full of new coke were they?

 

[boneyard bill]

I have to say that it is one of the most ignorant claims I have ever heard from a politician, and politicians can be horribly ignorant. But Hillary Clinton is now claiming that businesses do not create jobs.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-25/hillary-business-does-not-create-jobs-washington-does



What is far more obvious is that government cannot create jobs.

Yes, because road maintenance is done by elves powered by children's dreams of sweet capitalism.

Government does not produce anything.

That's correct, they don't produce order, and an educated populous, nor drinking water, or civil resolution of disputes.. you know stuff that ain't stuff.

Without production, there is nothing with which to pay workers.

Yes, the 18 million revenue (after expenses) our department brings in for the services we do not produce does not allow us to pay our workers.

The power of the government is the power to commandeer resources. A modern government usually does that through taxation. But the power to commandeer existing resources and the ability to use resources to produce things are not at all the same. Of course, government can attempt to produce things as happened in Soviet Russia and Maoist China. How'd that work out for them? Not well at all.

Yes, we pray to our posters of Stalin every morning.

Hillary's contempt for the private sector and totally unwarranted confidence in government is virtual infantile in it's naivety. Please Hillary, please don't run. The country is in bad enough shape as it is.

Brilliant, well thought out, rational arguments are always wanted, but never disappoint.

Thank you. I do agree that my points are well thought out, if I say so myself. Of course, governments can tax the citizenry and hire people with the money. The jobs "created" in this way are done so at the expense of jobs that would have been created in the private sector if the people hadn't had to pay taxes. So on balance there is no reason to assume that government increased the net jobs in the economy by hiring people and that is what Hillary is claiming in this context. I'll even agree that some of the jobs that government creates may be more valuable than the private sector jobs that are lost. But that would apply largely to the most essential government jobs and that isn't likely to be the case where government hires merely to create jobs.

 

[boneyard bill]

If she really claimed that, she made a dumb blunder. What happens next will then be an important test of her character. Will she say "I goofed"? Or will she make excuses and whine about how misunderstood and picked-on she is?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-25/hillary-business-does-not-create-jobs-washington-does

Hillary believes in government at the expense of the people.

Right-wing anarchists -- I love it. These are the guys who gloat over government jackboots on anyone they dislike.

“Don’t let anybody tell you it’s corporations and businesses create jobs,” Clinton said.

“You know that old theory, ‘trickle-down economics,’” she continued. “That has been tried, that has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly.”

She may be saying that they haven't been doing what they've advertised themselves as doing.

What is far more obvious is that government cannot create jobs.

boneyard bill, do you realize how stupid that makes you look? As bad as what you'd claimed about Hillary Clinton. Seriously. When you make that statement, you seem like someone who has gone to the Moon's distance from the Earth while saying "See? The Earth is as flat as a dinner plate."

Government does not produce anything.

That's like being in outer space for several days, watching the Earth turn and get shaded like a ball, while saying "It's as flat as a dinner plate".

Without production, there is nothing with which to pay workers.

All that's necessary is to have income. There are lots of ways to get income without working to build or make something. Let's see...

• Selling what one owns
• Renting out what one owns
• Dividends, interest, and the like
• Scams
• Extortion

Hillary has kinda sorta tried to walk back that statement. She hasn't actually said she blundered.

Government doesn't produce net job creation as I explained in my previous post. Theoretically, the government could produce things but that hasn't worked very well in the past as I have already pointed out. Jobs get created when people produce things because it is from their surplus produce that other people can get paid to produce things. The real point is that people create jobs for other people. When government seizes some of that productivity and hires people, it is not creating net new jobs. It is merely re-allocating those resources in another way.

 

[boneyard bill]

If anyone actually said what is quoted

The problem is that the right-wing sites (Breitbart, Drudge, et al) are wetting their pants over a severely clipped video of Hillary Clinton saying only the two sentences without any context. Clinton was at an event promoting Elizabeth Warren, and was reported elsewhere as trying to sound as populist/left leaning as Warren. It sounds like she was speaking along the same lines as Warren's "you didn't build that" statement (which was also taken far out of context by the right-wing). Clinton was quoted by Politico that she was partly referring to the tax breaks and other government perks that businesses receive in order to grow. As Elizabeth Warren rightly pointed out when she made the "You didn't build that" comment, businesses rely heavily on government for the infrastructure businesses need to even exist - roads, ports, education, police, fire, etc.

Moreover, my own point, corporations would not even exist at all (thus enjoying all of the perks/privileges they do) without government because it is only by way of a legal fiction recognized and enforced by government that allows a corporation as an entity to exist.

Bottom line, Hillary was doing her Elizabeth Warren imitation, and as with Warren and Obama before her, the right-wing has taken a single sentence out of context and is running with it.

Frankly, googling the sentence and looking at the specific media outlets running the *story* says everything I needed to know right now.

Wrong. The context does not change the meaning of what Hillary said. She's even half-way admitted that she misspoke. The statement makes no sense even within the context in which you claim it was intended.

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...provide services it deems more important than the services that the private sector might demand. This may be good or it may be bad, that is a subjective opinion.

Is air traffic control objective? I'll check back after work.

Is it necessary for the federal government to run airports?

 

[boneyard bill]

She might not know economics.

Ya think?

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Businesses don't create jobs. Demand (by those pesky workers) creates jobs.

Exactly.

 

[boneyard bill]

Businesses don't create jobs. Demand (by those pesky workers) creates jobs.

WTF does that even mean.

How does "demand" "create a job"?

Demand is always there. Jobs are not.

Demand is created by workers making things. Demand is a product or service. Printing money does not create demand, but the Fed doesn't seem to have figured that out.

 

[dismal]

WTF does that even mean.

How does "demand" "create a job"?

Demand is always there. Jobs are not.

Demand is created by workers making things. Demand is a product or service. Printing money does not create demand, but the Fed doesn't seem to have figured that out.

Not where I learned economics.

Demand is someone wanting something.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I admit I am missing your redefinition of the term drought for ideological reasons. I think everyone else is as well.

Unfortunately, "normal" in this part of the country is wishful thinking. If our water allocations were based on real numbers instead of fantasy the reservoirs would be going down but we wouldn't be having a big problem.

Apparently you are missing the reason your part of the country does have significantly less water than normal because of the lack of rainfall. Hence the term "drought".

It is inane to claim that the lack of rainfall is due to government water policy.

We have less than average. We have a lot less than the "normal" that isn't anything like normal. It's the latter factor that's causing the big problem--there is several years worth of water storage, normal variations aren't a problem.

There appears to a persistent ignorance here. There is a distinct difference between a water shortage and a drought. A drought may cause a shortage. Shortages can be the result of a number of factors, including water policy. But a drought cannot be caused water policy.

"Drought" as in less rain than average is of course natural.

"Drought" as in the political/economic issue is far more the result of water policy than rainfall.

 

[RavenSky]

Wrong. The context does not change the meaning of what Hillary said. She's even half-way admitted that she misspoke. The statement makes no sense even within the context in which you claim it was intended.

wrong.

The context was everything, and she has not "half-way admitted that she misspoke.". That is simply right-wong spin, as was the original right-wing faux freak-out.

She has half-way explained the context, which the right-wing as ignored.

As I said, she was trying to have her Elizabeth Warren moment. I will fully acknowledge that she is no Elizabeth Warren. But the right-wing faux-freak-out is classic Fox/Brietbart/Drudge/et.al.

 

[RavenSky]

Demand is created by workers making things. Demand is a product or service.

Wrong.

You are describing "supply"

SUPPLY is created by workers making things. SUPPLY is the product or service.

I'm going to assume that you've had at least as much champagne as I have this evening, and that is why you made such a silly mistake

 

[RVonse]

In economics, jobs are a cost.

What we want to create is goods and services.

As far as Hillary goes if you listen to that speech it's worse. She seems a bit addled and confused as she delivers it. And also a bit shrill. Very unappealing from a political standpoint. I can't imagine anyone liking her better after that.

In economics what we want to create is goods and services which consumers can purchase. Society is completely failing on the bold part. To make my point, just for a moment lets imagine that all goods and services become provided by automation and robots. Digital technology has made such a future not so far off. In such a future who will be able to buy goods and services? The answer to that question is that only the owners of the robots will be able to purchase anything because only the owners of the robots will have an income to purchase anything at all. Labor (and practically all demand) would be completely left out of the economy because although these people would desire material goods they will still have no means to buy those goods.

In such a future, you will have only a tiny number of haves and a majority of have nots. Kind of sounds familiar to where society is heading now. But I would not call it a successful economy.

 

[SimpleDon]

I have to say that it is one of the most ignorant claims I have ever heard from a politician, and politicians can be horribly ignorant. But Hillary Clinton is now claiming that businesses do not create jobs.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-25/hillary-business-does-not-create-jobs-washington-does

Hillary believes in government at the expense of the people. I do not say this lightly, because here she goes again. She just appeared at a Boston rally for Democrat gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley on Friday. She was off the hook and amazingly told the crowd gathered at the Park Plaza Hotel not to listen to anybody who says that “businesses create jobs.”

“Don’t let anybody tell you it’s corporations and businesses create jobs,” Clinton said.

“You know that old theory, ‘trickle-down economics,’” she continued. “That has been tried, that has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly.”

What is far more obvious is that government cannot create jobs. Government does not produce anything. Without production, there is nothing with which to pay workers. The power of the government is the power to commandeer resources. A modern government usually does that through taxation. But the power to commandeer existing resources and the ability to use resources to produce things are not at all the same. Of course, government can attempt to produce things as happened in Soviet Russia and Maoist China. How'd that work out for them? Not well at all.

Hillary's contempt for the private sector and totally unwarranted confidence in government is virtual infantile in it's naivety. Please Hillary, please don't run. The country is in bad enough shape as it is.

This is a boneheaded remark, one that she is already having to march back. It is ridiculous to say that businesses don't create jobs.

It is as ridiculous as saying that government can't create jobs. But it strikes me that Hillary misspoke. What she has said in the past is don't listen to people who tell you that only businesses can create jobs. People like you Bill.

Government can and does create jobs. Government spends money, creates demand and creates jobs. Ask my fellow Alantaians who work or use to work at Lockheed if the government is capable of creating jobs. Or a highway contractor. And I seriously doubt that Clinton or anyone else who agrees to the pretty obvious fact that seems to have escaped you, that the government is capable of creating jobs, that that person is showing contempt for the private sector.

And yes, you are right that without production there are no jobs. This is why off shoring is so destructive to our economy.

But something else has to exist before there is production. That is demand for the products. And this is what we are lacking right now, demand. Businesses only add jobs when there is demand for the additional production. And the primary component of demand, about 85% of it, is wages.

 

[ksen]

I'm not sure what "create a job" even means.

given your industry I'm not at all surprised

 

[dismal]

I'm not sure what "create a job" even means.

given your industry I'm not at all surprised

wat

 

[ksen]

hahaha, I like being best forum buddies with dismal! :hug:

 

[boneyard bill]

Demand is created by workers making things. Demand is a product or service. Printing money does not create demand, but the Fed doesn't seem to have figured that out.

Not where I learned economics.

Demand is someone wanting something.

If that's the case, then there is no shortage of demand right now and therefore no need to try to stimulate it. Demand is someone wanting something [and having the ability to pay for it. [/B] In other words, demand derives from production. When people aren't producing, they don't have wages and therefore do not have the ability to acquire what they want. Hence demand is low.



CIf

 

[boneyard bill]

Demand is created by workers making things. Demand is a product or service.

Wrong.

You are describing "supply"

SUPPLY is created by workers making things. SUPPLY is the product or service.

I'm going to assume that you've had at least as much champagne as I have this evening, and that is why you made such a silly mistake

Sorry, I don't drink champagne. Supply and demand are both products or services. If I trade a few of my chickens to you for one of your goats, which is the supply and which is the demand? It depends on the point of view of the person in the transaction. That's the only difference between the two. Unfortunately the way they teach economics these days that insight is lost and so you come away thinking that supply is a product or service and demand is money. But that's not true. Money is just a medium of exchange. It facilitates the exchange but an exchange can take place without money and you still have supply and demand. So money cannot be demand.

 

[laughing dog]

When someone says demand and supply are both products or services, it is time to ignore the rest of the analysis.

 

[boneyard bill]

I have to say that it is one of the most ignorant claims I have ever heard from a politician, and politicians can be horribly ignorant. But Hillary Clinton is now claiming that businesses do not create jobs.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-25/hillary-business-does-not-create-jobs-washington-does



What is far more obvious is that government cannot create jobs. Government does not produce anything. Without production, there is nothing with which to pay workers. The power of the government is the power to commandeer resources. A modern government usually does that through taxation. But the power to commandeer existing resources and the ability to use resources to produce things are not at all the same. Of course, government can attempt to produce things as happened in Soviet Russia and Maoist China. How'd that work out for them? Not well at all.

Hillary's contempt for the private sector and totally unwarranted confidence in government is virtual infantile in it's naivety. Please Hillary, please don't run. The country is in bad enough shape as it is.

This is a boneheaded remark, one that she is already having to march back. It is ridiculous to say that businesses don't create jobs.

It is as ridiculous as saying that government can't create jobs. But it strikes me that Hillary misspoke. What she has said in the past is don't listen to people who tell you that only businesses can create jobs. People like you Bill.

Government can and does create jobs. Government spends money, creates demand and creates jobs. Ask my fellow Alantaians who work or use to work at Lockheed if the government is capable of creating jobs. Or a highway contractor. And I seriously doubt that Clinton or anyone else who agrees to the pretty obvious fact that seems to have escaped you, that the government is capable of creating jobs, that that person is showing contempt for the private sector.

And yes, you are right that without production there are no jobs. This is why off shoring is so destructive to our economy.

But something else has to exist before there is production. That is demand for the products. And this is what we are lacking right now, demand. Businesses only add jobs when there is demand for the additional production. And the primary component of demand, about 85% of it, is wages.

Government can create specific jobs. They can hire people to dig holes and fill them up again. They can hire police, firemen, etc. And those people have jobs. But the resources needed to pay those people come from the private sector. If the government did not take the money from the private sector the money would remain in the private sector and still create jobs. So that government cannot produce a net increase in jobs. See "the broken window fallacy" for further information.

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When someone says demand and supply are both products or services, it is time to ignore the rest of the analysis.

It's the only strategy you have left since you lost that argument a long time ago.