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Are people this stupid really employed as academics?

This is ideological. It’s not that there isn’t enough money to fund proper healthcare or pensions. There is. Remember the vast bank bailouts? Quantitative easing? It’s just that the cash is being directed elsewhere. Most notably to the private sector in the form of massive corporate subsidies, while public utilities are slowly being starved to the point of decrepitude and collapse.

Managing to combine both the stupidity of the magic money tree with the incredible ignorance of the idea that depreciation allowanecs are coporate subsidies.

And yes, he is employed as an academic. Guess where?

68 thoughts on “Are people this stupid really employed as academics?”

  1. “allowanecs”: must be the Czech influence.

    I liked his use of “neoliberal” as a swear word. In the US the neoliberals are in cahoots with the neoconservatives and the rioting neofascists in a slow motion coup to bring down Trump.

    Trump’s enemies therefore include three sorts of neos, and still the Guardianistas and the likes hate him. It’s all very puzzling.

    Three of his books have a colon in the title so he’s cool, man.

  2. You know what really makes my teeth itch? His forth sentence in the article, where he talks about “being released from the office email and the long commute”. Another one living in the Big City Bubble, immunised from what’s going on in the rest of the world.

  3. His books are published by Zero Books.

    Now I own a number of books produced by that publishing house. But its either political polemic or very bullshitty cultural studies takes on things. The title of his books suggest he just writes ‘persuasive’ narratives about the meaning of work (which means you cant really test whether he is right or wrong), so it is highly likely he doesnt actually understand anything technical about economics, business or even political science.

  4. @TW
    You have definitively made a fool of yourself over the money tree and money creation in a way which would give any sensible person pause for thought.
    TW 14 July 2012 on here “No Banks don’t create money”
    TW 19 Mar 2014 on here “The short explanation is that banks do indeed create money out of thin air”
    Or as B of E explained at the time” the majority of money in the modern economy is created by commercial banks making loans”
    That you should embark on a non-stop bullying campaign on the basis of zero understanding of the economy is unbelievably coarse but you cannot bully the facts or the Bank of England .

  5. DBC Reed – welcome back. How was your time in the land of the Morning Calm with Carol Wilcox? The LVT and Magic money tree all working well?

  6. “there’ll be no government help in your dotage.”

    The triple-lock is still there.

    The whole article is a fact-free rant. When did leftards start to infiltrate business schools?

  7. @DBC
    There’s no discrepancy between the 14/7/12 statement & the 19/3/14 statement. Or the BoE guidance. If read in context
    Individual banks don’t create money. But the banking system does. Subject’s been dealt with umpteen times here, alone.

    And whilst we’re on the subject of stupidity, never sure about awarding stupidity to the Prof under discussion or the Prof of Spudology, for that matter. There’s a market for this bilge – proved by the fact they’re being paid for emitting it. In my world, copping easy dosh is never a mark of stupidity. Would only be if their talents could be better rewarded otherwise employed. (I expect comparative rates for burger flipping are available on this wunderful interweb of ours)

  8. being released from the office email

    Most emails can be deleted immediately without consequences. Others can be read but not acted upon. Very few require immediate attention and action.

    Email accounts for about 1/50th of my working day, i.e. it’s negligible.

  9. @VP Great a chance for Johnny one joke to be rude to Carol Wilcox and people better than himself.
    Why don’t you put your superior intelligence to the money tree problem; you seem to have limitless time?
    Also since the housing and land market is, by the Tory Tossers’, admission completely fucked (“bwoken” they say as if they were playing with their toy box and rough boys trod on it) you might explain why LVT, effective as it is, is laughably stupid in your conceited world of austerity and people spending half of joint household incomes on rents.

  10. BIS Please explain, since TW appears to be hiding, how the existence of the money tree is disproved by it being the banking system that creates money out of thin air.

  11. It’s not that there isn’t enough money to fund proper healthcare or pensions. There is.

    Agreed. Eliminate waste, be efficient, tax – if you must – in a low-deadweight manner to cause less harm to growth, stop handing out freebies to the non-productive.

    Remember the vast bank bailouts?

    One-off cost. You do know the difference between a one-off cost and ongoing costs, right?

    Quantitative easing?

    Electronic money to buy government debt. Doesn’t that kinda mean the money actually went to the State?

    It’s just that the cash is being directed elsewhere.

    Do tell.

    Most notably to the private sector in the form of massive corporate subsidies

    Ummm, no. The State extracts money from the private sector in the form of tax. That tax bill is in the several hundreds of billions.

    while public utilities are slowly being starved to the point of decrepitude and collapse.

    UK public sector expenditure is at, or near, the highest level it has ever been. Do you ever try Googling this stuff before fist-typing?

  12. DBCR – that there is no magic money tree is another way of saying that (in a fully-employed economy, like the UK today) there is no such thing as a free lunch: resources devoted to one purpose can’t also be used for something else. You may prefer the latter formulation.

  13. @DBC
    Because the money’s not created out of “thin air”, in the longer term. The credit is secured against assets.

    And sorry, the logic of a system where banks create credit at one end, which is hoovered up by taxes at the other,(LVT) escapes me. Unless you’ve some sort of fetish about tax.

    My solution would be to get the banks out of property lending, altogether. Fund lending from the savings of those saving to buy property. Essentially a return to the original building society system.
    That puts a natural cap on property prices. The availability of money intended to finance property purchase. Which pretty well describes how property was financed, up until fairly recently

  14. DBC Reed

    Has it occured to you that you are the joke in question? And as for your ridiculous adulation of someone as self-evidently deranged as Wilcox – that really puts paid to your credibility to pronounce on any topic. Still, unlike TRUK there is no comments policy, so your trolling will continue to be published for the widespread amusement of most of the sensible commentators on here….

  15. “If you can’t save enough to fund it on that zero-hours pub job or Uber “gig”, then hard luck.”

    Could people ever fund a nice pension on a bar job?

  16. From the excerpt: “public utilities are slowly being starved to the point of decrepitude and collapse”

    They are shockingly run with shedloads of waste and we are borrowing money hand over fist to pay for it. They are not being starved. They have a tapeworm.

  17. The government can obviously create as much money as it wants. What it cannot do is create value. Hence in normal circumstances printing money creates inflation. The present situation is slightly different as much of the money created is effectively being used to prop up banks that would otherwise be insolvent.

  18. @jgh

    Hoping for consistency from lefties is like hoping your dog will win a Nobel*, a sure source of disappointment.

    * other than for Literature, that appears possible, these days.

  19. In 2015 Google paid €47m tax in Ireland on €22bn sales revenue. That’s a 0.21% tax rate.

    From a “Professor of Business” with a PhD.

    Are people this stupid really employed as academics?

    🙂

  20. DBC

    @TW.. That you should embark on a non-stop bullying campaign on the basis of zero understanding of the economy

    EUMainia – I think I’ll rescind my comment of a couple of days ago.

    Why don’t you put your superior intelligence to the money tree problem

    And what exactly is your “problem”? Are you saying that “loans” (or credit or IOUs, as others have expanded in much detail on here before), for which there is both a lender and a borrower, are a problem?

  21. BiS

    My solution would be to get the banks out of property lending, altogether. Fund lending from the savings of those saving to buy property. Essentially a return to the original building society system.

    That may be tricky, unless you are going to ban building societies from borrowing from anyone except “someone who says they are saving to buy a property”? Might have worked before, but the world is changing?

    And are we really going to prevent banks taking out security against a property if they lend to someone. Because I personally know SME shareholders who have taken loans out and have put their property up as security. Because the security of the business itself was nothing like sufficient?

    Chris Miller

    Or “for Peace” it would appear….

  22. The first thing to note is that Peter Fleming appears to be a sociologist. If that is true, then it is unsurprising that he wouldn’t understand the concept of depreciation, let alone a depreciation allowance.

    The second thing to note is that if he really is a sociologist then, well, he really isn’t an academic. Just because it is taught at your local university doesn’t make it an intellectual discipline.

  23. BIS Please explain, since TW appears to be hiding, how the existence of the money tree is disproved by it being the banking system that creates money out of thin air.

    DBC Reed –

    If, at this point, you are in need of an explanation the odds favor you wouldn’t understand it. Come to think of it, that you’d ask the question, itching for a big debate about it, the odds are at 100% you wouldn’t get it.

    I do enjoy the sight of Labour types lecturing others about economics and finance though. A good laugh is always the best way to start the day.

  24. @jgh

    Hoping for consistency from lefties is like hoping your dog will win a Nobel*, a sure source of disappointment.

    * other than for Literature, that appears possible, these days.

    I believe several dogs have already been awarded Nobel Peace Prizes.

  25. The government can obviously create as much money as it wants. What it cannot do is create value.

    That sort of obvious truth is lost on people who look at Cuba and Venezuela as models to be emulated.

  26. The government can obviously create as much money as it wants. What it cannot do is create value.

    And around we go again.

    1) DBC quotes TW’s MASSIVE INCONSISTENCY! and proves that banks create money!!!!!!

    2) Someone point out the difference between money and value.

    3) DBC disappears

    4) Then reappears sometime after with the same freaking expose of TW’s MASSIVE INCONSISTENCY etc

    5) See 2)

    6) See 3)

    What an absolute cunt.

  27. The second thing to note is that if he really is a sociologist then, well, he really isn’t an academic. Just because it is taught at your local university doesn’t make it an intellectual discipline.

    I would have all Sociologists put to death, and forbid anyone to even mention the word again. This may sound as if it is slightly extreme, but I draw your attention to the obvious benefits.

  28. Why don’t you put your superior intelligence to the money tree problem

    There isn’t a problem because there’s no such thing as a [magic] money tree.

    Carol Wilcox

    lol

  29. In 2015 Google paid €47m tax in Ireland on €22bn sales revenue. That’s a 0.21% tax rate.

    You can see Murphy has had an impact there.

  30. @pf
    I can´t see an objection to banks lending against a property. It´s an asset, like any other. What I think´s madness is lending to buy a property when the only asset securing the loan´s the property being bought.
    The opinion´s based on good investment practice. You don´t put a large portion of your dosh in something that´s all the same class of investment when the other holders of same & the likely buyers, should you need to liquidate, are also the same class.When you need to unload, every other bugger will be wanting to unload. Into a market with few buyers. Recipe for disaster.
    Why the building society or similar is safer is because a property crash doesn´t make any difference. Should the value of savers´ investments fall´so does the price of the properties they´re saving for.
    But lending against assets where the value of the assets has to be maintained by continual credit creation can´t be viable for ever. Unless you continually destroy the value of money with inflation.

  31. “…all Sociologists put to death, and forbid anyone to even mention the word again. This may sound as if it is slightly extreme, but I draw your attention to the obvious benefits.”

    I applaud your moderation.

  32. @Pete C
    Why don’t you flopsy bunnies read your own press? > Peter Spence “There is a ‘ magic money tree” Telegraph 30 Sept 2015.
    There is a problem of inflation ,naturally, but when prices generally start to inflate, you just stop creating as much money.When it the inflation is centred on the land and property market as now , you apply LVT as formulated hundreds of years ago by Adam Smith and the Founding fathers of Economics. Nowadays you get a great guru called Big Knickers who stunned the easily stunnable with the discovery that, if you kept on encouraging house price inflation, the notional profiteers would vote for your (Tory) party for ever even if wages declined and you opted out of the Single market to pursue the UKIP anti immigrant vote.

    Not surprisingly, that fearless controversialist Mr Worstall is nowhere to be seen.

  33. DBC –

    Tim, like many of us, only have so much time for engaging morons, and must allocate what time we have for that purpuse judiciously.

    Face it, you’re just too far down the food chain to bother with.

  34. Who’s this guru Big Knickers?

    House prices actually increased more under Labour, 97-10 than under the Conservatives, 79-97.

    This has been pointed out to Reed before.

  35. BiS

    I understand where you are coming from.

    It almost appears that you are aiming (separately) at the banks’ investment / lending strategy, rather than at the regulatory environment.

    But mulling further, perhaps actually it’s both (ie the same), given that it’s hard to regard banks as free agents in this context if we are then not going to allow them to fail (by bailing them out).

  36. DBC

    You are very good – an expert even – at providing links and references in support of your repeated assertions for “naughty bank creates money out of thin air / magic money tree”.

    The problem is (and forgive me if I missed it) that I rarely see you engage in any debate on this subject where I am even half persuaded that you genuinely understand what you were talking about (or referencing).

    Whenever any quite detailed discussion starts on this, and there have been quite a few in the past, and which have talked about loans, credit creation, IOUs (IOUs / labour / value – NiV in particular I am thinking of and on quite a few occasions) you either seem to veer wildly off course, or more usually you just disappear. Only to reappear at a later date (as Jack C so accurately notes above) with a “rinse and repeat”.

    And then you say of Tim (in this thread) that he acts “on the basis of zero understanding of the economy”…

    Yes, coming from you, that was indeed the sound of people pissing themselves laughing. And then you complain of a lack of engagement or even of people “hiding”.

    I’m now convinced that deep down you’re secretly a massive fan of the Donald – and have been taking lessons from the master in the art of trolling.

  37. If you look at the deficits of the pension schemes of former nationalised utilities such as BT and British Airways, then it becomes easier to form the phrase “ignorant tosser”. When you are projecting having to pay pensions to 2090 then surely there is an element of risk involved

  38. In other words, the pension fund owns more assets than the company it exists to support. So BT is about 5% the size of the pension fund… Which makes sense once you work through the maths

  39. And DBCR is too stupid to see the real problem…. Obsessed as he is with house prices, like the Daily Mail reader he would aspire to be. He probably gets his guide dog to read it to him

  40. Another question arises regarding “creating money”, which has also been put to DBC on several occasions: why is this automatically a bad thing?

    Seems rather a neat trick to me.

  41. DBC Reed

    As a master of the ‘one joke’ – I take personal umbrage. I was hoping you and Carol Wilcox had a great time on your trip to Pyongyang where you could see an LVT and the magic money tree in action first hand and all I got from you was bike and the assertion that because Carol Wilcox believes in an LVT she is auto,atocally ‘better than you’- she’s only marginally better than Irma Grese and based on her output on the blog of your scion Richard Murphy and her meanderings on the Facebook feed of a mutual friend of hers and Murphy’s she was so aggresssiveky pro Stalinist I had to block her. I’ve worked with people convicted of manslaughter who come across significantly better than Wilcox so if you’d go easy on the eulogy you might improve your shattered credibility.

    As for your absurd eulogy of ‘The magic money tree’ I think you’ve been disproof enough about 500 times since that BOE paper – Tim doesn’t like to rehash old ground unless it’s stopping the pure evil that is embodied by one of your idols Dick Murphy so that’s the explanation – hope this proves salutary and you join Arnald in the nether world …

  42. You get it straight from the Telegraph and the BoE that there is a magic money tree. You reply that we’ve gone through this before and you’ve convinced yourselves that all the authorities are wrong and that you can continue to live in dream land plus ad hominem rudeness ad lib.
    How about I wheel out a proper Economic journalist , Martin Wolf, on an authoritative paper : he writes “Strip banks of their power to create money”FT 24.iv.14 and later opened a conference on the Money Tree (18.xi.14) with “Why have we given our greatest social creation – money -over to private profit-seeking companies?” Very much to the point :so its time for you to hop on your tricycles and pedal furiously away then hole up in your bedrooms till the difficult ideas fade away and you can return to thoughtlessness.
    I admire and like Carol Wilcox personally because she has good-humouredly shepherded the cantankerous souls of the Labour Land Campaign over forty years for the sole reward of seeing the Conservative Party finally admit that their policy over landed property has bwoken the housing market and, by making renters pay half their incomes in rent, has screwed up the economy .She is a good person who has been proved right in her central belief while fighting impossible odds.
    No sign of the Hidden One. Presumably he realises he is not on safe ground with this issue: a pity as he outdoes Carol Wilcox in his expertise on LVT.Not that his mastery of the subject is often shared with the groundlings whom he has allowed to take over his blog and whom he must entertain with sex stories; sex, being another unfathomable mystery to them, probably just a rumour.

  43. You get it straight from the Telegraph and the BoE that there is a magic money tree. You reply that we’ve gone through this before and you’ve convinced yourselves that all the authorities are wrong

    Nope, that’s nonsense. Sure, people have discussed it lots on here (and which you know is true), and understand it.

    As I said, I’ve never seen any more detailed response from you (and my apologies again if I missed it?), other than just “links to sources” (as if that’s an argument) and that’s it.

    As again below:

    How about I wheel out a proper Economic journalist , Martin Wolf, on an authoritative paper : he writes “Strip banks of their power to create money”FT 24.iv.14 and later opened a conference on the Money Tree (18.xi.14) with “Why have we given our greatest social creation – money -over to private profit-seeking companies?” Very much to the point

    And I would be happy to read it but it’s behind a pay-wall.

    One or two responses / references on-line to that article aren’t implying anything new to that that’s been discussed / thrashed out on here before on a number of different occasions (but difficult to know if can’t access it)?

    everything after that

    is your favourite subject..:)

  44. @PF
    The Responsible Adults in your life may be telling you that the Wolf articles are out of bounds but a clever chap like you can avoid the walls by Google.
    I try to avoid originality on such tricky subjects( or bellowing ” you are wrong” over and over or adducing personal experience as evidence) as on here,so construct an argument from known facts from independent authorities. This is what Arts graduates are trained to do: don’t put a thing unless you have three quotes, instances, or sets of figures to back you up.

  45. PF

    I have often theorised that DBC Reed is not a person but a renegade PC from the 1990s whose software has malfunctioned, As you say, what you get in terms of an argument beyond ad hominems and personal insults (which is of course stock in trade here so not an issue) is usually a ‘source’ which is presented as beyond challenge – so in this case, ‘it’s in the FT, therefore it must be correct’ despite it being a notion that is not conventionally taught in economic theory.

    Which makes his position on the LVT and citing of Adam Smith as an authority all the more hilarious in my opinion. Apparently Carol Wilcox ‘has been proved’ right – no mention of unlimited immigration and its impact on housing demand.No mention of demographic changes, or a taxation system geared towards owner occupiers, or the favourable taxation treatment of property vis a vis other assets. The LVT will be ‘the magic bullet’ which will solve all the issues….

    Whether he is a renegade computer from a previous decade (and his praise of Wilcox would suggest a return to the 1950s) or a real ‘arts graduate’ what is certain is that he is, with the demise of Arnald and the disappearance of the various Europhiles post Brexit, without a doubt the most idiotic commentator extant in these pages….

  46. I have often theorised that DBC Reed is not a person but a renegade PC from the 1990s whose software has malfunctioned.

    I’m still betting that Arnald has emerged, after hibernation, from the municipal drainpipes of Guernsey.

  47. DBC

    The Responsible Adults in your life may be telling you that the Wolf articles are out of bounds.

    That must be it – well spotted.

    I try to avoid originality on such tricky subjects (or bellowing ” you are wrong” over and over or adducing personal experience as evidence) as on here, so construct an argument from known facts from independent authorities.

    This is what Arts graduates are trained to do: don’t put a thing unless you have three quotes, instances, or sets of figures to back you up.

    Fair enough, I understand why you choose not to engage in the detail.

    What I don’t understand is why someone in that perfectly reasonable position would then accuse others – who clearly do know what they are talking about, and hence can debate, discuss and, more importantly, “interpret” the context of both authoritative sources and opinion pieces – of not knowing what they are talking about. As you have done, even in this thread above. Hey ho.

  48. You get it straight from the Telegraph and the BoE that there is a magic money tree.

    Do you have a BofE link where they state that? I would be very interested to read it.

  49. Rob

    That’s the basis of his entire shtick – don’t fall for the bait! He has been peddling this line for the better part of three years I think despite being comprehensively debunked on numerous occasions on here…

  50. VP

    Looked like a perfectly sensible question from Rob?

    DBC has just re-asserted above (and quite rightly in my view) that he is keen to reference “facts” from “authoritative sources”.

    I’m not sure what the problem is?

  51. I’m still betting that Arnald has emerged, after hibernation, from the municipal drainpipes of Guernsey.

    Too old I think.

    I recall that some time ago that DBC mentioned penning articles for the Vole, a short lived magazine from the late 70s, edited by Richard Boston. I used to read that and remember it with affection even though it was a bit hippy dippy ( my excuse is that I was quite young at the time ). I don’t remember anything by him but It would be interesting to read them now I think. I can’t find anything on the web but others with more clevers than me may be able to. Perhaps the man himself could help us out.

  52. @Diogenes

    Good grief. And Herts are by no means the bottom of the barrel – their astrophysics department (for example) is well regarded. My local outfit – Bucks New Uni, formerly a far-flung wing of Brunel (who are respectable, if not exactly Russell Group) – used to offer an MSc in “International Football Management”.

  53. So Robby did a gig at Westminster at Christmas and was interviewed by an alumnus of Hertfordshire uni., who had an even less meaningful qualification. I tried to find it on the uni site and failed. It was like a BA in colouring

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