In a fiat currency system, government expenditure, the scale of a government deficit, taxation, and the control of inflation (see separate entries) are as a consequence all intimately related issues. This makes the artificial disaggregation of macroeconomic policy into fiscal policy and monetary policy deeply harmful to the overall control of the economy of a jurisdiction by its government.
A proper understanding of fiat money also puts it at the heart of macroeconomics, when at present it is treated as peripheral to that subject by neoclassical economics, or is even ignored by it.
So there’s this entire and whole portion of neoclassical economics – monetary policy – which discusses just how goddam important money and policy about it is to the economy. Milton Friedman being one of the great thinkers here. This is then proof that neoclassical economics ignores monetary policy?
I have to admit I’ve read through the entire entry several times and I’m stumped. Do you think he has had ChatGPT come out with something to maintain his prodigious output of verbiage?
The value of the currency is instead determined nationally by the ability of the country that declares it to be legal tender to impose taxes on its population and to then collect them.
Hmmm – nothing about FX markets, inflation, BoP or interest rates. This is an exciting project. a self – styled ‘economics professor’ whose glossary is less advanced than either:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Positive-Economics-Richard-Lipsey/dp/0297768999
or:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/10x-Economics-Peter-Donaldson/dp/B001KRR6BS
Originally from 1975 and 1985 and which were my economics texbooks at ‘A’ Level and GCSE respectively. To be honest, it’s barely even worth fisking the remainder of the glossary. Tim I remember when you said to me that the sheer idiocy of ‘The Curajus state’ meant you’d need thousands of pounds to do a full deconstruction of it. For me these entries are too stupid to give any credence to by deconstructing them. To say he’s out of his depth is like saying the Mariana Trench is ‘under the sea’ – gives no indication of how lacking in basic knowledge his analysis is.
@VP – I doubt it’s ChatGPT as i believe it’s an artificial intelligence. The potato’s posts aren’t driven by intelligence but rather spite,envy, ego and a crushing sense of failure (if he’s the smartest person he’s ever known -why isn’t he in charge?) and of course honest to goodness grift. He serves red meat to his deluded followers who reward him with money and more importantly having large amount of hits on his blog, makes funding organisations believe he has something important to say. The hardest part of his grift must be making sure that no intelligence creeps into his witterings.
I’ve advanced this theory before. The man’s a gig. He writes this stuff because there’s a market for it. It’s got him his 3 faux professorships & his occasional outings on the BBC. He rakes in grant money, sufficient to keep his head above water. He’s doing what so many others do. Do you really think Polly Twatbee GAF about the poor downtrodden in her Italian villa or whatever second or third home she’s running? Or George Monbiot the environment? Or the rest of them? It’s what writers do. Write stuff that sells. People will buy all sorts of shit.
If he’s got a failing, it’s that he hasn’t leveraged himself up to the big time. He hasn’t got the personality to chum up with the others in the field & benefit from the self help networking they all do. Maybe because he lost reality & has become the character he writes. Too abrasive & self centred to be worth knowing. The people who succeed at this shit, succeed because they get get validated by the others who succeed. Like the Mad Catwoman’s journalism award.
Van_Patten: I see he’s still pushing the “legal tender” baloney. Even if I knew nothing else about him, that alone would lead me to conclude that I was dealing with Ely’s version of Cliff Claven the postman from Cheers.