Daily Topics - Monday March 11th, 2013
By shawnt56
Catch The Thom Hartmann Program LIVE 3-6pm ET M-F!
Hour One: Former President of Iran says "Argo is wrong"
Hour Two: Hartmann vs. Ferrara...Keynesian economics - Peter Ferrara, The Carleson Center for Public Policy
Hour Three: Saving our social safety net from Wall Street hustlers - Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR, 4th District)
Comments
#2
Supply Siders
I continue to be amused by supply-side thinkers like Mr. Ferrara on Monday's show. If his version of economic theory is true, then when we had the housing collapse, why didn't the mega-buck construction companies come in and build our way out of the mess? Oh, that's right, there wasn't any "demand" for more homes.
The struggling bakery down on the corner, why didn't they just start cranking out an extra 5,000 donuts a day to work themselves out of their troubles? Got me again, no "demand" for those extra donuts.
Putting extra anything into a market that has no "demand" for it simply depresses the market more for that/those items. And there goes any profit incentive.
Maybe this could work if the mega-buck construction companies hired tradesmen that didn't own homes - lived in apartments and such - and employed them for $60K + per year. These workers might then be able to buy what they are building. But that flies in the face of profits by the construction companies that want to pay the lowest dollars possible to build new homes so they can maximize their profit potential.
This is all something Henry Ford figured out, how many years ago? When he knew he had to pay his workers a high enough wage so they could buy the cars they were building and create a "demand" for them.
Simply expecting to dump more widgets into the economy to spur growth is wishfull thinking at best. They might eventually depress the widget market to the point where more people may buy widgets, but the profit potential is gone - each widget is being sold at a loss.
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
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At Mondragon - both the mountain and the cooperative city - in Spain (written about in "Threshold" book)
Thom & Louise at a "private audience" with His Holiness Pope John Paul II at his summer palace, Castle Gandolfo, Italy
From Unequal Protection, 2nd Edition:
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From Cracking the Code:
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I'd like to add a bit of information about the Iran/Contra cover up. The congressional committee that covered up the deal to hold Americans hostage was chaired by an Indiana Democrat, Lee Hamilton. He later became the vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission that told a 757 disappeared into a 16 foot hole in the Pentagon.