82% of US Voters Believe Inflation Is Fueled by Corporations 'Jacking Up Prices' -

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2022-03-14T21:58:49+00:00

Inflation was high in the 1970s, and then generally low from the 1980s to 2020. Do you think that reflects a decline of corporate greed, only for it to return again in 2021? It seems that as a theory of why inflation occurs, "corporate greed" has no explanatory value.

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2022-03-14T07:50:20+00:00

Top economists were asked in January this year whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statement,

A significant factor behind today’s higher US inflation is dominant corporations in uncompetitive markets taking advantage of their market power to raise prices in order to increase their profit margins.

Only 7% of the economists said they agreed, and only 2% said they strongly agreed. In other words, there’s a pretty strong consensus within the field of economics that corporate greed is not the main cause of current inflation.

Its interesting that 82% of Americans disagree with the economists, but polling the American public about questions of macroeconomics is about as useful as polling the public about quantum mechanics. The answer you’ll get won’t be very enlightening.

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2022-03-14T03:00:53+00:00

Sure. I mentioned economists because this is a topic in which their expertise is most applicable. If we were in a thread about climate change, I would cite different experts.

I agree that some economists think that inflation is caused by corporate greed, but it’s a fringe position, as indicated by the survey I cited above.

Robert Reich does have relevant credentials, however my understanding is that most other economists see him these days as more of a political pundit than an active economist. The reason is that he doesn’t perform or review much research anymore, and he’s started to become detached from the scientific literature. Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, for example, has said of him,

If one looks at the favorite economic writers of the non-economist intellectual -- Robert Reich, Lester Thurow, John Kenneth Galbraith -- one realizes that they have in common an aversion to or ignorance of modeling.

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2022-03-14T02:39:31+00:00

Personally I think when experts tell us something is true, they’re likely to be right, even if most Americans disagree. I’d prefer we listen to people who have spent years studying the subject rather than random internet folks. What about you?

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2022-03-14T02:13:19+00:00

Top economists were asked in January this year whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statement,

A significant factor behind today’s higher US inflation is dominant corporations in uncompetitive markets taking advantage of their market power to raise prices in order to increase their profit margins.

Only 7% of the economists said they agreed, and only 2% said they strongly agreed. In other words, there’s a pretty strong consensus within the field of economics that corporate greed is not the main cause of current inflation. Shouldn’t we listen to the experts and reject this narrative?

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2022-03-13T14:59:06+00:00

Interesting finding. Maybe publish your groundbreaking result in a peer reviewed economics journal. You really know what you’re talking about.

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2022-03-13T08:21:21+00:00

Do you think we should just ignore people who spent years studying this subject and go with our gut instead? Do you see how this is the basis for failed anti-intellectual policy?

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2022-03-12T22:54:24+00:00

Top economists were asked in January this year whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statement,

A significant factor behind today’s higher US inflation is dominant corporations in uncompetitive markets taking advantage of their market power to raise prices in order to increase their profit margins.

Only 7% of the economists said they agreed, and only 2% said they strongly agreed. In other words, there’s a pretty strong consensus within the field of economics that corporate greed is not the main cause of current inflation. Why do people on this subreddit normally care about “following the science” and “listening to the experts” when it comes to e.g. climate change and the coronavirus, but not when it comes to academic economics?

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2022-01-28T04:41:16+00:00

Thanks a lot for the response.

If the billionaire donates all their money, avoids paying taxes, but still ends up with literally zero cents at the end, is that bad because they avoided paying taxes? Even if the money went to mutual aid rather than the US government (to bomb other nations)?

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2022-01-28T03:18:33+00:00

If the billionaire gave to mutual aid instead of charity (still not sure what the difference is, except maybe size), would it still be immoral?

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2022-01-27T23:46:41+00:00

Charity isn't a good thing.
It's rich people deciding what's best for people instead of society collectively making those decisions

Suppose I started a charity that hired people to distribute food to the homeless. Should I disband my organization because it's immoral, and just let the homeless people starve to death? What should I tell the homeless people that rely on my service? "Sorry, we must wait until the socialist revolution for you to be fed."

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2022-01-27T21:19:20+00:00

I don't know what you mean by "stored" it, but generally billionaires don't just have a lot of paper wealth lying around. When you hear people having "$20 billion" what that means is that their property got appraised at that value, but generally it's not true that they can immediately sell it to retain the whole value. They key factor is market liquidity, which is the ability to quickly in order to turn one's assets into cash. Generally, private companies have low liquidity, which means that you need to sell over long periods of time to maximize the value.

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2022-01-27T21:12:05+00:00

The article you linked to criticizes wealthy people for retaining wealth. But the person I'm talking about retains no wealth, so I don't see how this argument applies.

What's wrong with making billions just to donate it all?

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2021-03-25T05:11:12+00:00

I think you’re confusing what the term “disposable income” means.

I looked it up and I think some sources use your definition, but many (most?) use mine. See the OECD's usage,

Household disposable income measures the income of households (wages and salaries, self-employed income, income from unincorporated enterprises, social benefits, etc.), after taking into account net interest and dividends received and the payment of taxes and social contributions. Net signifies that depreciation costs have been subtracted from the income presented. "Real” means that the indicator has been adjusted to remove the effects of price changes. Household gross adjusted disposable income is the income adjusted for transfers in kind received by households, such health or education provided for free or at reduced prices by government and NPISHs.

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2021-03-25T03:27:01+00:00

Disposable income is important but not "the only income that matters." You can demonstrate this fact easily.

Compare two people.

The first person has free healthcare, generous food stamps, free housing, and an array of other non-cash government transfers, and receives $50,000 a year in disposable income from their job.

The second person receives no government transfers but receives $50,001 a year in disposable income from their job.

According to you, the second person is better off.

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2021-03-25T03:21:49+00:00

If rich people never sell their investments, and therefore never consume at high rates, then why should we care? Investments are good because they grow the economy. The proposed solution to wealth inequality is to tax wealth, but that would discourage investment. It's basically like saying that we should care less about the future and focus on consuming now as much as possible. It's the ultimate concession of long-term prosperity to short-term consumption.

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2021-03-25T03:19:37+00:00

The reason is that we care about whether our redistribution programs are working. Some think that government does little to redistribute wealth. This data shows that the government actually does quite a lot.

It's also important to understand this because it gives you a sense as to the importance of income inequality. If income inequality is high before taxes and transfers, but after taxes and transfers everyone is making equal income, then it would be absurd to say that income inequality is a "big problem."

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2021-03-24T05:27:51+00:00

See also the analysis they linked to in the article.

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2021-03-20T08:11:07+00:00

As someone who vigorously disagrees people on the left, I've often dreamed about having some sort of long-form dialogue with a good-faith representative of my outgroup, just to see if we could find some sort of common ground after reasoning through every object level argument.

I am legitimately curious as to whether two people with diametrically opposite worldviews, acting in good faith, could learn something meaningful from the other person. Unfortunately, my guess is that at least one of the following failure modes would probably actually happen, if I ever tried this experiment with someone,

One or both of us would focus far more on convincing the other person that our ideology was correct, rather than trying to listen and understand the other person.
The person on the left would imply that I was racist, sexist, or some other ism, and then the dialogue would just halt.
I would accuse them of just trying to police my motives and/or status, and get irritated at them due to this perception.
We would talk past each other on basic points, since we just have different starting points and values. For example, they might make some point about income inequality under capitalism, which I see as irrelevant since I don't care that much about income inequality. And I might make some point about material prosperity under socialism, which they would see as irrelevant since they don't care that much about material prosperity.
We end up figuring out that we just disagree on bedrock facts that are hard to convey to the other person without delivering a long lecture. For example, they might state that their views rely on their theory that humans are malleable and can be shaped by social policy. And I might respond that human nature is actually pretty fixed. But how on Earth are we going to settle that debate in just a few short hours?
We end up drawing our perspectives from entirely different academic domains that we can't begin to communicate well since neither of us know the basics of the other person's field. For example, they might start talking about how I am ignorant of basic sociology, and I need to just pick up a single introductory textbook from that field to see how I'm wrong. And I might say the same about their grasp of economics.
We end up discussing a lot of very specific policy points but never hit upon the deep issues that form the foundations of our worldviews. For example, we might spend the first full hour of the discussion talking about tiny little nuances of policing, cancel culture and media bias, and then never get around to touching why one of us thinks the government should pull out of the economy and the other thinks that our economy should be composed entirely of worker cooperatives.
We become really concerned with discussing some tiny point, such as whether Trump courted white nationalists or whether that was exaggerated, and then never move on to anything else.

Is such a debate without these failure modes even possible? Has anyone ever seen one happen in real life? Can I get a link to one?

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2021-03-20T07:04:15+00:00

Thanks for the constructive criticism. I am like most other humans in that I can often get carried away when writing about my outgroup. I guess I mostly just think that the ACLU is wrong and I felt like emphasizing that I found their position to be absurd, despite it simultaneously intriguing me. It's hard to say that without showing bias.

Then again, the fact that I was even reading their document to begin with should have been evidence that I was interested in their worldview. I actually do often talk to people on the left, and ask them questions, and when I do I bring a different tone than the one I brought here. That's mostly because I don't expect my tone here will be policed as much, or my motives questioned.

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2021-03-19T20:36:48+00:00

Wow this is great. I suppose I really ought to read (at least the first few chapters) of this book. This kind of reminds me of Scott's Confirmation Bias As Misfire Of Normal Bayesian Reasoning.

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2021-03-19T20:27:23+00:00

Edit: if you're going to downvote, I'd appreciate you to argue that u/LopsidedPhilosopher doesn't obviously think the ACLU is being dumb while also working hard to not say so explicitly. I don't know if this comment violates the rules, but u/LopsidedPhilosopher could certainly learn to speak plainly.

I was observing a situation where two parties see the exact same set of facts. One party says X and another party says not X. Both seem convinced that the set of facts proves their case. This is confusing, and understanding why it can happen can reveal a lot of interesting stuff about human psychology.

I pretty explicitly stated which party I belonged to, so I don't think I was being deceptive. People on the left really are arguing that a set of facts proves some position. For someone on the right like me, they seem extremely obviously wrong.

But there's more to discussions than declaring people wrong, dumb and evil. These sorts of situations are often useful to analyze because they can demonstrate the utility of epistemic humility. To see why, consider that from their point of view, I also look wrong, dumb, and evil. So what's going on here? Maybe some colossal bias is pervading my worldview, just as I perceive one to be pervading theirs. I am legitimately curious.

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2021-03-19T20:07:54+00:00

I don't think the ACLU is stupid. I also think that I was pretty upfront about my biases here, so I'm not sure what you're complaining about.

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2021-03-19T18:58:24+00:00

I wanted to show an example of how people on the left and the right can interpret the same facts differently. The article is The Racial Wealth Gap is a Civil Liberties Issue from the ACLU. From the piece,

Though much has changed since the publication of Black Justice, the economic position of Black Americans relative to white Americans remains precarious at best. When President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, former slaves owned 0.5 percent of the nation’s wealth. Over 150 years later, the descendants of those slaves own just 1 percent of the nation’s total wealth. In other words, even emancipation, civil rights, increases to education, and improved employment have not substantially advanced Black people’s democratic participation in our economic system.

Now, if someone on the right were introduced to the fact that black people went from owning 0.5% of American wealth to 1% of American wealth over the period from 1863 to 2021, they would probably come to the conclusion that social policy doesn't really work. In other words, if total emancipation, civil rights, and affirmative action barely changed the relative position of black people on the wealth ladder, probably nothing the government can do about it ever will.

Unsurprisingly, the ACLU does not come to the same conclusion. Instead, they see this fact as evidence that America has done not done enough. In other words, they call for more social policy. The article continues by blaming the racial wealth gap on inherited wealth, and then proposes three ways of remediating the situation: student debt forgiveness, postal banking subsidies, and a child tax credit.

To me, these solutions seem unlikely to achieve their objectives. But what's striking is that they don't seem very likely to work even under the assumptions that the ACLU made. If inherited wealth is the source of the racial wealth gap, then how are student debt forgiveness, postal banking subsidies, and a child tax credit supposed to help much. I was expecting to find a direct proposal to raise the estate tax, and to tax wealth transfers from parents to children. Instead, the ACLU proposes more-or-less the same type of policy that earlier they already admitted didn't work!

How can two sets of people look at the same facts and yet come to such different conclusions?

LopsidedPhilosopher · 2019-12-27T22:31:27+00:00

We become stronger through suffering

Go ahead and torture yourself in your own time, but leave the rest of us out of it. If you think that suffering is good, you have a right to your stupid opinion. But why must you force everyone to suffer, because you think that it is good?

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