Friday, December 18, 2015

Are Human Politics Still So Absolutely Crude That Aggregates Can't Juggle 3 Policy Tools At Once, To Achieve National Agility?

Fiscal vs Monetary vs Tax policies?

Appropriators, bankers and taxers, Oh My!



Whose policies best manage a nation and it's economy? That's an astoundingly wrong question, and wrong perspective! Sane people would say that the whole train of thought was "out of paradigm."

Fiscal & monetary & tax policy are always tools of national policy. End of discussion.

Even asking that question above is as dumb as asking whether feet, hands or mouth best manage personal coordination. Or other, equally trivial system questions.

For example, which "policy" is more important for driving your car around town ... the brake, the gas pedal, the steering wheel ... or the ability to fill up at the gas station? With just these 4 variables, we've already exceeded the number of management demands that most politicians (and economists) seem capable of handling! The answer is a resounding "ALL OF THEM, WHEN & AS NEEDED, IN FLUID, FULLY INTERLEAVED COMBINATIONS!"

Normally, those who can't master interleaved use of brakes, steering, accelerator, refueling ... in infinite combinations ... can't get or keep an automobile drivers license. So why on earth are we letting those same, clueless bozos attempt to "drive" our national policy around our current and emerging contexts?

Can you imagine the head of a National Transportation Commission solemnly pontificating that, in extreme circumstances, filling the gas tank may have more impact than using the brakes? Such a simpleton wouldn't even be admitted to an engineering school.

The various engineering teams currently creating self-driving cars wouldn't even laugh. They would grit their teeth in exasperation, and QUICKLY usher such idiots into early retirement. As in ... "please, just get out of the way, before you seriously harm your nation."
If our engineers can design self-driving cars, 
why can't our electorate design self-adapting policies?
So what on earth is holding back politics?
Are human politics still so absolutely crude that aggregates can't juggle 3 policy tools at once, to achieve national agility?

Don't answer that question ... unless you're honestly willing to be ashamed of your own nation, and finally determined enough to start making a healthy difference. 

Otherwise, just turn your stereo up high enough to hide reality, walk like an Egyptian, and remain in denial.

What an astoundingly simple question for politicians, whole electorates and their vaunted education systems to outright fail on. We have nations with hundreds of millions of people, watching their so-called economic leaders discuss whether a national "fuel, price or brake" policy is the best one at various times? BMHOTK! Please get these clowns off the stage, before they drag the level of discussion down to even slower, dumber levels.

It doesn't do an aggregate too much good to have tools in a toolkit, if they don't know how & when to best use ALL of them, on demand, with increasing agility.
"fiscal policy tends to be a more powerful tool than monetary policy in such extreme circumstances" 
... Oh, My, Taboos! The very question reveals the depth of our political clumsiness. How'd these people ever get a license to drive policy? No wonder they keep running whole nations and entire economies off the road.

How about

"don't stop juggling policies 1-3, not just during extreme circumstances .. but during ALL circumstances?" 

Ya think?


hat tip to Bill Mitchell
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=32609