The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Trump Starts His March Leftwards By Saying He’ll Tax Rich People

Donald TrumpAs I predicted.

Trump is not an idiot. He will go hard for the left-wing populists and he will get some of them.

Meanwhile Clinton is running after right wing money and endorsements. Max Boot endorsed her. The Koch brothers are considering her.

The standard rule in an election is you run to the primary voters during the primary, then you run to the rest of the people you want voting for you and funding you. Clinton is now running to oligarchs, neoconservatives and Republicans who despise Trump; while Trump is running left to get economic populists.

It’s next to impossible to vote Trump because of his racism. It is next to impossible to vote for Clinton because she is a war mongering oligarch whose economic policies guarantee stagnation and decline.

But Trump will be well to Clinton’s left on economic issues long before election day. And for all that people say Trump isn’t believable, Clinton is even less believable on those occasions where she tries to say left-wing things.

(Update: And, now he says he won’t.)


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33 Comments

  1. Tom W Harris

    OTOH, Trump calls for end to federal minimum wage as views shift .

    So just wait a couple minutes (or a couple days) and he’ll reverse himself. Giving any weight to anything he says is a mug’s game.

  2. I don’t want to defend HRC, but I don’t see how what she says could be less believable than what he says. I don’t think negative numbers are possible here. Trump has been primarily a con artist his whole life. Nothing he says is at all believable. HRC is a normal politician. If she didn’t prefer to avoid lying she wouldn’t spend so much effort on lawerly parsing of everything that comes out of her mouth.

  3. just_kate

    Frank – Hillary’s actions over the last few decades are what make her less believable. She has been in ‘public service’ practically my entire adult life.

  4. Chiron

    The Neoocons are returning for the Dem Party, Robert Kagan falls himself “Liberal Interbentionist”, will the Zionist masters lose their power?

  5. S Brennan

    Trump has been in public life since the late eighties, his views on most subjects are fairly liberal known, old and steady. His views during the primary, as noted by Ian, are transient.

    As people may note, I have long advocated attacking right wingers by running as a Trojan Horse; to the extreme right in Republican primaries and back towards the TRUE middle. For the most part, Trump did this without laying down many cards. Good for him.

    Hillary has been a lying f**k all her life, she doesn’t need an effing primary to trigger her fraudulent pathology, just a social opportunity. Running under fire? [what bull$#!t]. Tried to join the Marines in 1975? [what bull$#!t]. And it just on and on, all matters great and small.

    * since Bill Clinton & his gang showed up to sell the Democrats to the highest bidder

  6. reslez

    Asked “should the federal government set a floor” – a national minimum wage – Trump replied: “No, I’d rather have the states go out and do what they have to do.

    “And the states compete with each other, not only other countries, but they compete with each other.”

    Advocating a race to the bottom. Nothing new to see here, move along.

  7. I’m forfeiting this year’s election. And all others from here on in.
    No ifs ands or buts.
    I ‘ve always been pretty much disconnected from society-in-general anyway, but anymore I’m in a permanent state of “total disconnect”.
    From EVERYTHING in this stupid country in this dingshit asinine world.

  8. Hugh

    Clinton is a studied liar. Trump is an off-the-cuff, first thing that comes into his gut kind of liar. Clinton lies are the lies of the grifter. Trump’s lies are the lies of the guy at the end of the bar who has had a few.

    We know what we will get from Clinton. We don’t know what exactly we will get from Trump, but it is pretty obvious that it mostly won’t be good.

    We come back to this. They are both shit sandwiches. There is no point in comparing them. There is no such thing as a better or a worse shit sandwich. We are screwed either way. So we should reject them both.

  9. different clue

    Part of who we’ll have to end up going by is who the candidates tell us are their advisers and who will be their cabinet picks. We’ll have to read Byzantine tea leaves such as that. We’ll have to see who opposes Trump the hardest and who opposes Clinton the hardest. And who supports Trump the hardest and who supports Clinton the hardest.

    “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” will be too simple and misleading here. But perhaps the friend of my enemy is my enemy too. So we will have to see who our domestic enemies support.

  10. sumiDreamer

    I agree with different clue.

    I keep a dossier on them as they show up.

    In the Clintons’ case, though, you really need a mega-rolodex. They started with a little shoebox full of plutocrats to call on; now the courtiers’ names take up an entire floor of a Brooklyn building. (Aren’t you just dieing to see Debbie as Chief of Staff?? Maybe Sid will get to be Press Secretary.)

    So many outstretched hands for favors in their endless influence peddling.

    Trump’s got many “guys” with violence records.

    Meanwhile, as I crunch popcorn, I await the VP pics they come up with.

    As for Bernie, Bill Black was a great choice, but he dumped Larry Wilkerson without even a note in the mail ..

  11. Daize

    A few months back on this blog I stated that I thought if Hillary won the Dem nomination, Trump would win the presidency. I am even more convinced of this now. Hillary will have no chance against him.

  12. different clue

    I remember Larry Wilkerson saying precisely nothing at the time of Powell’s lying bullshit speech to the U N. I remember Larry Wilkerson doing precisely nothing to dissuade Powell from making it ( though I wouldn’t know if he had done so in private).

    I do remember Wilkerson being referred to favorably by a commenter on Sic Semper Tyrannis one time. I remember Colonel (Ret) Lang responding with: ” I do not care what Larry Wilkerson thinks. He came late to the battle.”

  13. Hugh

    I think Trump’s doublespeak on taxing the rich was that he would increase their effective tax rate while decreasing their nominal tax rate. What most people only vaguely realize is that the rich already pay most of the taxes. This is not because they are overtaxed but because they have stolen so much beyond what anyone can imagine that even with low nominal tax rates and even lower effective ones fueled by tax havens and other tax dodges and evasions, they still, still end up paying most of what the government gets in income taxes.

    Trump also spoke out of both sides of his mouth on the national debt. Restructing the current debt terms is one thing. Creating debt-free money to cover future deficits or pay off old debt is another. I saw a hilarious explanation of the effects of “printing money” by two idiots on CNN this morning. It was all very HYPERINFLATION and run for the hills. What makes this so stupid is that the Fed has increased its balance sheet by more than $3.5 trillion since the meltdown (the QEs), ran emergency programs after the meltdown that had something over $27 trillion in activity in them, has been doing ZIRP and near ZIRP for years (a not an emergency program), meanwhile the Treasury was running the smaller $700 billion TARP and giving unlimited backing to money markets at a cost which was never disclosed. A report requested by Sanders put the costs of the immediate bailouts at around $16 trillion. And despite all these unimaginably large sums of money flying around, the primary concern has been deflation, not inflation and certainly not hyperinflation. So where did all this money go? Into the hands of the rich to offset their recent losses, into bubbles in commodities and stocks, and into tax havens.

    MMTers will tell you that the government demanding taxes be paid in its currency is what gives money its value. But like so many other things about MMT, this is untrue. Weimar hyperinflation did not occur because government wasn’t taxing but because the people lost faith in their banking system and in the value of their currency. MMT like most classical economics has a Hobbesian view of the human condition: that we are only virtuous if we are forced to be, or as here, that money only has value if some one or some entity forces us to give it value. Hannah Arendt in On Violence opposed this view citing the power of the popular will. Money has value because we collectively say it does, not because we are forced to say so but because we find the concept of money useful.

    Uncontrolled money growth without reference to underlying resources, as I said above, can lead either to inflation or to bubbles (which are ultimately deflationary). It is, however, the loss of the popular will in money which causes it to lose all its value.

  14. Ken Hoop

    different clue

    Lang is good but he is not perfect. He supported the overthrow of Khadaffi. Confessed he was wrong much afterward. That was pretty late in the game as far as the anarchial conditions in Libya are concerned. But at least he apologized, which is more than Juan Cole did.

  15. Jeff Wegerson

    @Hugh I understand the Weimar hyperinflation as an effect of lack of sovereignty as the winners of WWI demanded payment in gold. Weimar printed money in effect to buy gold to give the winners. Any of us would lose trust in that situation. Hardly a useful example of much of anything economic.

    It is further my understanding that Ian thinks the MMTers would be wiser to skip the middle-agents rather then empowering them by allowing them to be a collection points of printed money. In effect, why bother printing money when you can confiscate debt/credit at will as needed from the rich and funnel prosperity directly through the real economies of ordinary people.

    Or something like that.

  16. DMC

    Discussed a bit of this last year it seems. We didn’t get hyper-inflation from the bank bailouts(and all the rest of the bailouts) because the money never got out and chased any goods, save a very few that rich people like. The modern art market is case in point. Prices keep escalating as more noveau-riche seek an investment that classes up their flat. I expect makers of other luxury goods have also done well out of the “recovery”. But really most of the money only ever chases other money in the purely financial economy and so has minimal impact on the real economy.

  17. markfromireland

    @dmc

    But really most of the money only ever chases other money in the purely financial economy and so has minimal impact on the real economy.

    Minimal impact on the real economy? Tell that to the Londoners priced out of their own city I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to learn from you that the impact on their lives and livelihoods is of “minimal” significance.

  18. DMC

    Posh real estate comes under the general heading of luxury goods. And I believe there was mention earlier of bubbles that wind up being deflationary in the long run, which quite adequetely explains London (and number of other large cities)housing prices. I should have been clearer that what I intended to show was that the absence of hyper-inflation was not remarkable, not that NONE of the various bailout monies got out and chased ANY goods.

  19. markfromireland

    @ DMC

    You are quite spectacularly and deliberately missing the point. So let me explain it to you in terms so simple that even you can’t dodge the issue.

    The economic and social damage being done in London and other metropolises by huge swathes of the population being priced out of their own homes can under no circumstances whatsoever be described as “minimal”.

    It is NOT as you are falsely trying to pretend a matter being confined to “posh real estate” it is a matter of working class people being priced out of their city with no possibility whatsoever of being able to live in their own city and with no possibility whatsoever of ever being able to afford decent accomodation. It is a matter of middle class people being priced out of their being priced out of their city with no possibility whatsoever of being able to live in their own city and with no possibility whatsoever of ever being able to afford decent accomodation.

    It is a matter of cities being devastated because only the very wealthy and the top tier of their very well paid enablers can afford to live in them.

  20. Hugh says: “MMTers will tell you that the government demanding taxes be paid in its currency is what gives money its value. ”

    That’s not what I remember MMTers saying when I used to follow this stuff some years back. I recall their saying the opposite, that taxation is not necessary to instill the “value” of money in the minds of the people, that this religious faith in money can be instilled in other ways, and that taxation is preferred because it’s really about control.

    Of course you’re right that either way it’s all still within the framework of a centralized, top-down imposition of a system based on a state religion of money.

  21. Mallam

    Lol, the idea Trump would ever raise taxes on the rich is, well, rich. He has Larry Kudlow and Stephen Moore drafting his “update”. I feel like I’m going insane with the HRC supporters trying to put a shine on shit, but “leftists for Trump” might be worse.

  22. markfromireland

    @ Mallam May 11, 2016

    One of the commenters here coined the expression “fauxgressives” which pretty much covers it all don’t you think?

  23. Mallam

    MFI: I suppose that works. It’s just astounding. It’s one thing to argue that it might be helpful for the left if Trump’s rhetoric puts to lie Movement Conservatism. I think it’s possible he’s done that, but it would have exposed itself necessarily at some point anyway; Trump sped up the process. But to make believe a guy who hires Kudlow and Moore will release any plan that raises taxes on the rich and keeps entitlements from being cut? Some might want to be fed falsehoods to help them cope with the neoliberalism that Clinton promises to give us, but not me.

  24. different clue

    @Ken Hoop,

    You are correct. Colonel Lang’s initial call to intervene was very stirring. It made me feel stirred. It turned out badly. Some of his commenters raised in the most gentle possible way that perhaps it was the wrong call to have made. Colonel Lang acknowledged this to have been so. He explained that part of his reason for wanting to intervene was the unique nastiness of Qaddafi as a person and political figure, and the belief that enough Libyans in and out of country were highly educated enough that they could take command and sort out the country, and also a matter of “unfinished bussiness” with Qaddafi . . . which I can only guess to be unavenged terrorist and other attacks against Americans including American service people.

    It turns out that Libya is/was like most of the other Arab societies in that the people need a strong zookeeper in charge to keep the animals in their cages. Libya’s only hope is for a strong indigenous zookeeper to emerge and drive the animals back into their cages after they have been running joyously amok for several years now. ( When other commenters at SST broach the desirability of seeing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia regime perish from the penninsula, I offer the comment that anything which follows on from the burning wreckage of an overthrown KSA would only be worse for everyone around it. In other words, hands off KSA).

    Oh, and . . . for those who don’t like my choice of words, I am NOT on the Left. And don’t call me Progressive.

  25. Hugh

    Jeff, you say, “Weimar printed money in effect to buy gold to give the winners. Any of us would lose trust in that situation. Hardly a useful example of much of anything economic.”

    I do not know what this means. The primary measures of an economy are not themselves economic. Who cares how much an economy produces if it is not the stuff we want and need? What we are interested in is how much an economy produces that we can make use of for non-economic ends: to live in a stable, equitable, and decent society and lead full and meaningful lives.

    What happened in Weimar was a combination of an impossible situation and even worse policies. The idea to print more marks to buy foreign currencies to pay reparations back in gold (or gold backed currencies) was insane. Its effects on the domestic economy were catastrophic. Money is the medium by which we direct and distribute many of our society’s resources. It gives access to those resources, but the unrestricted printing of marks created a situation where that access was measured in hours, not years. This printing destroyed the usefulness of money and with it people’s belief in its value. It was only when stable access to resources was restored with the issuance of the Rentenmarks that people’s confidence in the currency was restored.

    It is hard to see how the economic effects of Weimar hyperinflation can be dismissed or the non-economic foundations which underlie them dissociated from them.

    Other points: Governmental demand of payment of taxes in its currency to establish the value of that currency is a cardinal principle of MMT. One of the prime criticisms by critics of MMT like me is that MMT is a moving target. Even when we look at one of its core principles taken as such by its own theorists in article after article, we are told that no, that’s not one of its principles, that it means something else, or that we need to read, and accept at face value, everything everywhere ever written on MMT because somewhere someone may have addressed our and so we should just shut up (even if they didn’t.)

    DMC writes ” But really most of the money only ever chases other money in the purely financial economy and so has minimal impact on the real economy.”

    Pumping trillions into a financialized economy completely distorts and ultimately wrecks the real economy. All that money doesn’t sit there. It seeks higher and higher gains. Private equity buys up real companies, fires lots of workers, cuts up viable concerns, loads the pieces up with debt, and then sells them off. Hedge funds put pressure on companies to increase their returns and they respond in part like the PE crowd but also by shipping off jobs to China, making cheaper quality products that they then sell at higher prices. The financial industry loads us up with all kinds of charges and fees. All of them disinvest in our country even as they invest in “emerging markets” where returns (and instability) are higher. Oligarchs buying up London, Vancouver, and San Francisco and pricing residents out of their homes is just one of many aspects of how the financial economy beats the real economy over the head with a hammer. Why do you think that the populist messages of Trump and Sanders in this country and Corbyn in the UK are resonating? Why do you think people are so angry if they aren’t feeling real effects in their own lives from all this?

  26. different clue

    @Hugh,

    Did you write here once that you were banned from Naked Capitalism for making fun of MMT?
    Or did I miunderstand something I might have read?

  27. Hugh

    different clue, I used to comment at Naked Capitalism and my analyses of the monthly labor reports were posted there and at lambert strether’s corrente wire. Yes, after being critical and making fun of some ludicrously bad posts by Wray posted at Naked Capitalism, Yves threatened to put all my comments into moderation, and lambert subsequently banned me from corrente.

    It is a fatal blindspot of progressives (and one they share with their opponents) that they think that critical analysis is only to be directed at the other side’s positions and not their own. MMT is a really badly structured theory put together by people with no understanding of theory. Almost all of its major assertions are false, or need to be heavily caveated, or are true but not that interesting. It is sad to see so many progressives drink the koolaid on it. But it is truly outrageous the mental gymnastics and flim-flammery they engage in defending it. As I said, it doesn’t seem to register with them how damaging it is to their credibility to so blindly and uncritically accept it and embrace such dubious tactics to defend it.

  28. S Brennan

    While not a fan of Hugh’s comments;

    I’d offer this in support; Lambert brought all his old grudges over to NC. Lambert has banned me and many others he’s had disagreements with. Lambert’s from the fascist wing of today’s “liberals”.

    One of the striking things I remember about living in the south is; although my views sometimes clashed with those of my fellow conversationalists when the subject turned to neo-liberalism or eternal-war, they were discussed and I was not shunned if I was perceived as genuine…that was not my experience in “liberal” Seattle when I questioned Obama’s neo-liberalism or eternal-war policies. Indeed, I found my Southern brethren to be more open minded than my “liberal” Northern kinfolk. This plays against media stereotypes.

    So when it come to “my-way-or-the-highway liberals” like Lambert, I’ve had my share. Being banned by Lambert is a strong indication of intellectual honesty and an open mind, both of which Lambert lacks.

  29. Ian Welsh

    Lambert was a big fan of mine till I said some negative things about MMT. It’s an orthodoxy. I still get occasional links from Naked Capitalism, but nowhere near the number I used to, though Yves is still a fan, I believe.

    Stirling and Lambert had a falling out over MMT as well, and this is well before Stirling’s stroke. There is no question that Stirling knew (and knows) far more economics than anyone else I’ve ever met and had a genius level of intelligence.

    That doesn’t mean MMT is “wrong”, though I believe it is flawed. But there is a very thin skin in certain circles about criticizing it.

    (This said, I like Yves and have had no problems with Yves.)

    I’m glad to have Hugh here making the anti-MMT case. It’s something I’ve put off and off, because it’s a hard slog. MMT gets some stuff right, what it gets wrong is a messy case to make, but important, I think.

  30. different clue

    I have referred to MMT as Magical Monetary Thinking from time to time. I once asked rhetorically whether MMT dollars could bring back the passenger pigeon if the government just issued enough of them.

  31. tony

    MMT is in my view at its heart a simple recognition that money is a creation and a tool of the state. Under current Orthodoxy, money is seen as a sacred object that just appeared out of nowhere, like the “free market”. So the powerful, who do understand the actual state of affairs, use markets and the monetary system for their benefits and then place the blame on NAIRU and the inscrutable workings of the Holy Market Gods.

    Of course, no one pretends this is true when the banks need a few trillions out of thin air.

  32. EmilianoZ

    I know nothing about MMT but I can say that Hugh is a great addition to the commentariat here.

  33. Jeff W

    I’ll second EmilianoZ’s comment.

    Realizing that it’s a hard slog and that it’s way easier said than done, I’d welcome some sort of systematic critique of MMT. I get some of the real basic argument but a lot of the policy prescriptions, at least, seem wrong to me also.

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