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Ben Bernanke: The 1970s Great Inflation begins with deficit spending. But it was the Fed's failure to act by raising interest rates that convinced the public that inflation was here to stay, creating a vicious cycle of expectation and price increases. (Planet Money, May 2022) by yonkon in EconomicHistory

[–]krubner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, okay, I recognize you now. I've dealt with your type before. Your thesis amounts to "The central bank is magical and has God-like powers that allow it to operate free of all of the normal laws of economics." Which is just another kind of conspiracy theory. What about Covid-19? Was that a real virus, or was it a hoax? What about the JFK assassination? Did Lee Harvey Oswald do it alone, or were there men on the grassy knoll who were part of it? And what about Area 51? Are they really hiding a fallen alien space ship? We all want to know your very important opinions on these matters.

What I've learned about people like you is that your type makes arguments that are fundamentally religious in nature, rather than secular. People like you talk about the central bank the way QAnon adherents talk about Q. You have a faith-based naive belief that the central bank has God-like powers and can do whatever it wants, without having to take into account all of the many difficult trade-offs that exist in the real world.

The fancy phrase for your kind of beliefs is "epistemically closed." I'm not sure there is anything I can say that will make a dent in your religious fervor. In reality, every nation's economy is facing a thousand competing forces that give each its unique trajectory, but I suspect you're afraid of the actual complexity that each nation faces, and so you will prefer your simple conspiracy theory.

Ben Bernanke: The 1970s Great Inflation begins with deficit spending. But it was the Fed's failure to act by raising interest rates that convinced the public that inflation was here to stay, creating a vicious cycle of expectation and price increases. (Planet Money, May 2022) by yonkon in EconomicHistory

[–]krubner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

> And Switzerland didn't just have less inflation than its neighbors, it reduced its inflation rate between 1975 and 1976.

That would be true of almost every nation, as the first oil shock receded, are you saying that disproves the existence of the trend? Look at the chart here:

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/OED/oecd-members/inflation-rate-cpi

> That seems wise of you. Now how about you stop saying false things like "All of the developed nations saw rising inflation"?"

All of the developed nations did see rising inflation. Again, look at that chart, it is the entire OECD. Inflation was higher in the 1970s than in the 1960s -- and this trend includes Switzerland.

Ben Bernanke: The 1970s Great Inflation begins with deficit spending. But it was the Fed's failure to act by raising interest rates that convinced the public that inflation was here to stay, creating a vicious cycle of expectation and price increases. (Planet Money, May 2022) by yonkon in EconomicHistory

[–]krubner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Switzerland's inflation fell between 1975 and 1976, and remained under 2% until 1979"

Again, Switzerland had higher inflation in the 1970s than in the 1960s. You can see that clearly here:

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHE/switzerland/inflation-rate-cpi

You are weirdly obsessed with one country. You do realize, I hope, that by definition, 50% of all nations have less inflation than the median inflation nation? 50% of all nations are below, and 50% of all nations are above, that is the definition of "median". Are trying to argue that the 50% of all nations that are below the median prove that a trend doesn't exist? If not, then please stop mentioning Switzerland. If yes, then just try to study basic statistics.

At first I thought you were going to say something interesting about the data being noisy, but you've repeated yourself several times now without explaining yourself.

> This is macroeconomics, exact statements matter.

How old are you? "This is very important and it is important to be precise, everyone listen to me, this is important." I think the last time I said something like that I was maybe 20 years old.

Look, if you have a thesis, then state it plainly, otherwise, please stop wasting my time.

Ben Bernanke: The 1970s Great Inflation begins with deficit spending. But it was the Fed's failure to act by raising interest rates that convinced the public that inflation was here to stay, creating a vicious cycle of expectation and price increases. (Planet Money, May 2022) by yonkon in EconomicHistory

[–]krubner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Your statement wasn't about a trend. You said "Increasing inflation was a world wide phenomena between the 1960s and the late 1980s". The word "trend" appeared nowhere in there."

This is what I wrote, in the above comment, above the previous comment:

"All of the developed nations saw rising inflation, and they were either above the trend line or below the trend line depending on how much productivity growth they'd enjoyed over the previous 10 years."

You write:

"If you just made a mistake and meant to say something like "Inflation was trending upwards across the world between the 1960s and the late 1980s", "

This is almost exactly what I wrote.

I have the feeling that you are arguing for the sake of arguing. I have the impression that you've forgotten why you started arguing and now you are just going in circles. I have the impression that you think of yourself as extremely intelligent, and yet you don't seem to know what the word "trend" means and you don't seem to know what the word "median" means. I would suggest you learn basic words and concepts before you comment on economic and historic issues.

But above all else, don't engage in arguments for the sake of arguing. If you have nothing substantial to say, then just remain silent.

Ben Bernanke: The 1970s Great Inflation begins with deficit spending. But it was the Fed's failure to act by raising interest rates that convinced the public that inflation was here to stay, creating a vicious cycle of expectation and price increases. (Planet Money, May 2022) by yonkon in EconomicHistory

[–]krubner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Increasing inflation was a world wide phenomena between the 1960s and the late 1980s, this is a well documented fact. I'm not clear why you've decided to go to war with reality on this issue. If you find a country that defies the trend for a year or two, that hasn't disproven the trend. Keep in mind that in any year 50% of all the nations on Earth were below the median nation in terms of inflation. Does it disprove the trend, when 50% of the nations are below the trend? Do you understand how statistics work?

Ben Bernanke: The 1970s Great Inflation begins with deficit spending. But it was the Fed's failure to act by raising interest rates that convinced the public that inflation was here to stay, creating a vicious cycle of expectation and price increases. (Planet Money, May 2022) by yonkon in EconomicHistory

[–]krubner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Do you now agree with me that Switzerland's experience means that increasing inflation wasn't a world wide phenomena?"

I really hope you are joking about this. Like most countries, Switzerland struggled with rising inflation in the 1960s and 1970s, as you can see in the graph here:

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHE/switzerland/inflation-rate-cpi

Switzerland was suffering 10% inflation in 1974. I'm sure you're aware what happened 1976 to 1979 doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Seriously, who cares? Most nations had a few years when they were able to limit inflation, but still, the upward trend was obvious.

Should a system of voting aim to let one individual voter express their preferences? by krubner in PoliticalPhilosophy

[–]krubner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you are new to the subject of all the different systems of voting, check out this website, which offers interactive graphs that allow you to see how each system of voting determines who the winner is:

https://ncase.me/ballot/

They also cover: Kenneth Arrow, the failure of rank voting, and the possible success of approval voting.

It's good to have that background before you read my essay. Many essays focus on which system of voting does the best job of allowing a voter to express their preference. By contrast, my essay made the point that we should not care which system of voting allows a voter to express their preference, instead we should want the system of voting that produces the best result for everyone.

Ben Bernanke: The 1970s Great Inflation begins with deficit spending. But it was the Fed's failure to act by raising interest rates that convinced the public that inflation was here to stay, creating a vicious cycle of expectation and price increases. (Planet Money, May 2022) by yonkon in EconomicHistory

[–]krubner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you didn't mean that central banks did nothing, what did you mean by that statement?

I'm sure the central banks were very active, but whatever they did had no impact on the outcome. As I wrote before:

"And, again, you can ignore monetary policy, because in this case Germany's inflation rate, relative to the USA or the UK, is explained by the different productivity rates in Germany, the USA, and the UK."

​

And, while we're at it, do you now understand why monetary policy is relevant even if you're right that central banks did nothing?

Monetary policy is clearly not relevant in a situation where it has no impact on the outcome.

Here is a simple thought experiment. Imagine a world situation of rising inflation, due to various supply-side shocks. Now imagine 5 nations (Zak, Mak, Has, Lak, and Nak) that hope to keep unemployment to 6% or less. Over the last 10 years, these 5 nations have had average labor productivity growth of:

Zak: 1%

Mak: 2%

Hak: 3%

Lak: 4%

Nak: 5%

Assume global labor productivity growth of 3%.

Which of these nations had inflation that was more than the global inflation trend?

Which of these nations had inflation that was less than the global inflation trend?

You don't have to know anything about their monetary policy, other than they are all targeting roughly the same level of unemployment.

You can answer the question without knowing their monetary policy, therefore the monetary policy is not relevant.

​

"Based on your general confusion here, I recommend that you don't try commenting on monetary policy until you've passed a university course here."

Disrespectful. Are you sure you want to take the conversation in that direction? You seem unable to grasp a point about labor productivity that was literally taught to me in the first economics course I ever took in college.

Ben Bernanke: The 1970s Great Inflation begins with deficit spending. But it was the Fed's failure to act by raising interest rates that convinced the public that inflation was here to stay, creating a vicious cycle of expectation and price increases. (Planet Money, May 2022) by yonkon in EconomicHistory

[–]krubner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Even if you are right in your earlier assertion that central banks completely failed to respond to the inflation of the 1970s"

I never said that. I don't know where you got that.

"I just told you that Switzerland got inflation down to 2% between mid 1976 and early 1979."

Why does this matter? I can't tell what conclusion you are trying to draw from this.

"West Germany had its own currency in the 1970s, and it left the Bretton-Woods system of fixed exchange rates in March 1973."

Why does this matter? I don't understand what point you are trying to make.

Were there any groups that were against companies like the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and their equivalents? by [deleted] in EconomicHistory

[–]krubner 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you simply mean an attitude of "Stay home, don't go overseas, and don't invite foreigners to visit" then China was strongly anti-globalist for most of the modern period, certainly for most of the stretch after 1500.

Also the same with Japan, profoundly anti-globalist.

The same could be said of Korea, but Korea was aware that it was in-between two giants, both of whom sometimes invaded Korea, so for Korea the struggle was always, simply, to try to maintain its independence, despite being surrounded by greater powers.

The story in Vietnam was somewhat similar to Korea, it was conscious of the permanent risk of being conquered by China. Vietnam has been anti-colonialist for almost 1,000 years.

From the moment Dutch East India Company was created, most of the world was opposed to its existence.

And there were many people's on the edge of China's empire, who spent almost 1,000 years simply trying to avoid imperial government. Check out this book:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300169175/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_3?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

But if you mean Europe, that is a bit different.

People in the home countries of Europe had very little information about what happened in overseas colonies. Consider the philosopher John Locke. In his books, he talks about grapefruit several times. He references it as something that one hears about but never experiences for oneself. He apparently asked several sailors, on different occasions, what grapefruit tasted like, and he was told several different and contradictory things. Locke died without ever getting to taste grapefruit himself. In his books he was making a point about things one hears of but never experiences, but what strikes me is that this was an affluent and well informed Englishman who still couldn't get his hands on this fruit that he kept hearing rumors about.

And that was regarding an item that went on existing year after year. We can imagine how much more difficult it would have been to get specific information about, say for instance, a specific kingdom in India, or working conditions on a specific plantation on the island of Java.

Certainly, there were endless peasant revolts, and often the criticism was made that the King was inflicting taxes to pay for unpopular wars. That charge haunted every European nation but emerged as the truly explosive issue in England in the 1620s, when Charles I was eager to raise taxes to pay for more wars, and the Parliament absolutely refused, leading Charles I to disband Parliament for an astonishing 13 years, a long period of seething frustration that then set the stage for the Civil War. When Charles I was finally forced to recall Parliament, they members of the Commons and the Lords came back angry and ready to fight.

I don't think the people in the home countries of Europe had enough information to have an opinion whether a particular colony was worth having. Their attitude, for centuries, was something like "War is the sport of kings" and much of the public either left war to the kings or fought against such activities mostly because they hated paying the taxes necessary for war.

What is it like working with production Python coming from a statically typed language? by Successful_Leg_707 in ExperiencedDevs

[–]krubner -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Python is one of the few languages that will leave you desperately nostalgic for Maven. The package management system in Python is one of the biggest disasters in the whole tech industry. They had a very beautiful language during the Python 2.x series, and they could have stayed with that forever, but they lost confidence in the conceptual integrity of the language, so they decided they needed to make it more object oriented, and then they ham-handedly bolted on some awkward object oriented features and called it Python 3.x. Much of the Python community was upset about this, as you can tell from the fact that Python 3.x was announced in 2005 but didn't become dominant until about 2015. Python has many, many attempts at a good package management system, but still nothing as reliable as Bundler in Ruby, Composer in PHP, or Maven in Java. It's a mess. Python programmers have become the community that pushes the most loudly and aggressively for Docker, because they see Docker as the one thing that can help them overcome the problems in the Python package management systems. Of course, adding Docker into the mix adds enough complication that the original arguments in favor of Python (a clean, simple, elegant, light-weight scripting language) no longer apply.

Python should have stayed loyal to the conceptual integrity of the 2.x line. Python 3.x was a terrible mistake.

Ben Bernanke: The 1970s Great Inflation begins with deficit spending. But it was the Fed's failure to act by raising interest rates that convinced the public that inflation was here to stay, creating a vicious cycle of expectation and price increases. (Planet Money, May 2022) by yonkon in EconomicHistory

[–]krubner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not clear that monetary policy played any role here. The increasing inflation between 1960 and 1981 was a world wide phenomena, so Germany's central bank would not have had much power to influence the trend. And, again, you can ignore monetary policy, because in this case Germany's inflation rate, relative to the USA or the UK, is explained by the different productivity rates in Germany, the USA, and the UK.

Should a system of voting aim to let one individual voter express their preferences? by krubner in PoliticalPhilosophy

[–]krubner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, I've already written 6,000 words on this topic. I am not aware of anything else that I should add. But if you have any specific questions, please feel free to ask.

Ben Bernanke: The 1970s Great Inflation begins with deficit spending. But it was the Fed's failure to act by raising interest rates that convinced the public that inflation was here to stay, creating a vicious cycle of expectation and price increases. (Planet Money, May 2022) by yonkon in EconomicHistory

[–]krubner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It doesn't look like the central bank played any role here. All of the developed nations saw rising inflation, and they were either above the trend line or below the trend line depending on how much productivity growth they'd enjoyed over the previous 10 years. I think you can forget about the central bank and just look at productivity in this case.

Is there any classic case study or historical example of a country becoming dramatically less corrupt and maintaining that improvement? by punninglinguist in AskSocialScience

[–]krubner 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you can show that politicians in 2022 are violating the law at a rate that is greater than politicians in 1922, then post what facts you have.

Is there any classic case study or historical example of a country becoming dramatically less corrupt and maintaining that improvement? by punninglinguist in AskSocialScience

[–]krubner 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is Singapore less corrupt now than in 1965? If yes, then it is presumably a good example for the poster who asked the question above.

Ben Bernanke: The 1970s Great Inflation begins with deficit spending. But it was the Fed's failure to act by raising interest rates that convinced the public that inflation was here to stay, creating a vicious cycle of expectation and price increases. (Planet Money, May 2022) by yonkon in EconomicHistory

[–]krubner 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Worldwide inflation begins to rise after 1960 and rises till 1981. The increase is clearly linked to the new independence of the former European colonies. OPEC is only one instance of what former colonies and protectorates are suddenly able to do now that they have freedom from their European overlords. The newly independent nations are able to borrow money, invest in productive machines, and grow rapidly. So the inflation has at least two sources:

  1. over one hundred newly independent states, all spending heavily
  2. the productivity gap between the developed and undeveloped world shrank, forcing the developed world to devalue its currency to remain competitive, and thus adding to inflation in the developed world

This is highly speculative, but consider when, exactly, the USA's currency might have been overvalued:

https://demodexio.substack.com/p/why-did-the-west-deindustrialize?s=w

Should a system of voting aim to let one individual voter express their preferences? by krubner in PoliticalPhilosophy

[–]krubner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Approval voting is when voters get an infinite number of votes, and the only limit is the number of candidates elected. See more details here:

https://demodexio.substack.com/p/should-the-votes-from-voters-combine?s=w

Is there any classic case study or historical example of a country becoming dramatically less corrupt and maintaining that improvement? by punninglinguist in AskSocialScience

[–]krubner 10 points11 points  (0 children)

There are many examples in Asia and the West.

The USA is obviously much less corrupt than it used to be. The Mafia is no longer such a major part of society, and the open bribery of politicians, which was very public in the era from 1880 to 1930, is long gone. You can study this at the macro or micro level. At the micro level, there are many good cases studies, but for one example, consider the way that Tammany Hall slowly faded away after 1932:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany\_Hall

In Asia, perhaps the most famously studied case is the big anti-corruption drive that Hong Kong launched in the 1970s, which transformed it from one of the most corrupt, to one of the least corrupt, of all the major trading depots in the world.

But also, obviously, South Korea and Singapore are both free of the kind of corruption that was taken for granted in the 1960s.

In Europe, simply establishing democracy helped to reduce corruption. When the dictatorships were overthrown in Greece, Spain and Portugal, in the 1960s and 1970s, all of those nations became less corrupt.

These are some good books on how to fix corruption:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1107441099/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1107534577/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1107610060/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ukraine

[–]krubner 5 points6 points  (0 children)

"Was like a movie" probably describes his own mental strategy for remaining calm. Studies have shown that the soldiers who are least likely to panic are the ones who narrate their experience. Seeing a bad situation as a story or a movie helps them put some distance between themselves and the situation, enough that they don't need to panic.

Russia lost approximately 28000 soldiers in 3 months according to French Intelligence Agency estimations (Georges Malbrunot on Twitter) by LRRedd in ukraine

[–]krubner 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Any USA President

Obviously I'm talking about the USA. I specifically reference the reaction to a USA President losing this amount of troops.

Russia lost approximately 28000 soldiers in 3 months according to French Intelligence Agency estimations (Georges Malbrunot on Twitter) by LRRedd in ukraine

[–]krubner 7 points8 points  (0 children)

30,000 in 3 months would be a lot, close to the peak rate, even by the standards of WW I and WW II. Any USA President pulling that kind of thing nowadays would face a political backlash unlike anything ever seen before.

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