I typically write about 20 letters of recommendations a year. Writing all of those isn’t easy, in part because most are due at the same time of year. To make matters worse, every student wants a strong recommendation, but few students deserve one. Sometimes I get a request for a strong recommendation and have to say no.
It seems mean on my part. My letter can get a student into their preferred school, putting them on a good path that will affect them for the rest of their life. And it doesn’t cost me anything to write a strong recommendation: I just have to add the phrase “I strongly recommend…” to the letter.
Of course, it’s not so simple. If I gave more strong recommendations than I have strong students, my recommendations, strong or not, would mean nothing. Even if it doesn’t physically cost me anything, I’m reputationally bound by the constraints of reality.
Modern Monetary Theorists (MMTers) should take note because this is an area they have a lot of trouble with.
✔@StephanieKelton
The carpenter can’t run out of inches
The stadium can’t run out of pointsThe airline can’t run out of FF milesAnd the USA can’t run out of dollars
Kelton conveniently does not mention that carpenters can run out of wood, the stadium can run out of seats, and the airline can run out of fuel. The ability of a country’s economy to grow restrains the government’s ability to print money without causing inflation. Money is spent to buy resources; if money far exceeds resources, inflation follows.
Kelton’s analogies are particularly instructive because each of those items has to match what’s going on in the real world. They lose their usefulness if they’re not restrained by reality. If a carpenter used more inches than wood she owned, her measurements would mean nothing. If a stadium assigned more points than a team could justify with its actions, the score would mean nothing. If an airline offered more frequent flyer miles than it could possibly redeem with the planes and crews it has available, its frequent flyer miles would mean nothing.
And if a country created more money than its economy could possibly justify, its money would mean nothing (something too many countrieshave learned the hard way).
No, not really. It just hasn’t been done the right way, yet. When we do it, it’ll work. Trust me.
Old joke, Why doesn’t a shyster say ‘Fuck you’?
He says ‘Trust me’.
Well, technically they can’t run out of dollars as long as the federal reserve can make computer entries (most dollars are not actually printed). It’s just that the dollars will be worth LESS because there are more. Do you want to know why a lot of the world hates the U.S.? it’s because the Federal Reserve is the only institution in the world that has the ability to create money from nothing then charge interest for it. This enables the globalist bankers (along with the corrupt U.S. government) to finance wars and make huge profits from it. What would we think if the Arabs or Chinese were doing this?
Neither are most ordinary, apolitical economists. They’re like cosmologists: they all have their own theory and hardly ever agree with each other.
He says ‘Trust me’.
@Burner, so much truth in that!
Some things age very well,,
Bernie college days,,,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOT1jmqQE2E
As a carpenter I can point you to former girlfriend’s who could argue the inch thing.😀
“Inches” and “points” are measurements – not things. An abstract inch really means nothing; it must be used in the context of whatever one is measuring. You can have an inch of metal, but an inch of nothing is nothing.
Frequent flier miles are supposedly intangibles, but yes, you can run out of them or grant so many they become relatively useless. Travelers sometimes having trouble using their frequent flier miles to upgrade to first class because so many other people are using their frequent flier miles to upgrade to first class, and if airlines gave out free flights to everyone due to giving out excessive frequent flier miles, they would go broke.
Douglas Adams invented a race called Golgafinchians, who periodically send the more useless third of their race off in space ships to crash land on another planet. After crashing on ancient earth, the surviving Golgafinchians developed a monetary system where leaves were used as money. Since leaves actually grew on trees, every one was technically rich although the “money” was basically valueless (it took two forests of leaves to buy a bag of peanuts) and practically everyone was poor. Because the Golgafinchians had no useful skills, most of them died off despite their immense “wealth,” leaving the few survivors to be the forebears of the human race. Which, despite being a vignette in Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy,” is probably the best explanation for the liberal dunderheads in Congress I have heard.
“Leftwing economists are not bound by the constraints of reality”
That’s because “leftwing economists” don’t exist!
Those who parade as such are similar to “globaloney warming experts” which actually means “political panderers” or “stooges.”
Babbling bullshit about things one doesn’t understand while tossing in a few bits of jargon doesn’t make one an “economist” although in this age of rampant ignorance and mal-education, they’re probably closer to what they claim to be than the “journalists” who promote them.
izlamo delenda est …
I’ll bet Bernie has one colossally fucked up check book registry.
“Mr. Sanders I’m afraid you’re overdrawn again”
“That don’t make any sense, I still have checks”!
It takes a “special” kind of idiot to prove how en-titled he is, by claiming that one of these non-existent(?), conceptual(?) — let’s not call them imaginary — “things”, is not like the others. Because… well, because… “muh titles!” (might be worth-less, were they put in the same tranche as astrology.)
As a half-assed carpenter, Bernie’s famous lament was:
I cut the effing thing twice, and it was still too short.
Nobody is that stupid. These are the tactics of stalinist gangsters to gain power, control (and starve, if necessary) the populace soas to retain power, then loot the country for the ruling class and live large. Like any leftist dictatorship.
Obama was well on his way. Hillary clinton was too incompetent to finish the job, and Donald Trump was too great of an adversary against obama and clinton’s treason.
MMT is not modern. Germany, Zimbabwe and many other countries have used this method of economics. Just print money and buy things.
It’s ludicrous.
I’ll tell you the two things that will happen and you’ll never read them anywhere else, but you know they’re true.
1. When inflation starts perking up after they start printing money, the gov’t will begin lying about the inflation rate. Look at venezuela or any other country run by leftist economists and the first thing they do when inflation picks up is not to raise taxes, like they claim. The first thing is to put their man in charge of calculation inflation.
2. Money represents what has been paid to us for what we have produced. That is why money was invented when before that there was only barter.
If we implement MMT, there will then be two ways to get money.
One was is to work. the other way is to have the gov’t print some up and give it to you.
How long before anyone decides it’s better to get it given to you than to work?
There is an idiot who writes a blog called Credit Writedowns. He is fairly well known in the econ blog space. He is a black economist. He’s been writing on MMT and says that he wants to evaluate it on the merits alone and whether it will work or not, and finds it dusgusting to have to deal with idealogues on the subject.
My question to Mr Harrison is, “Can we talk about the institution of slavery and decide whether to use it or not? And lets just talk about whether it will be good for the economy. We don’t want to get into all the ideological stuff about whether its moral or not. Ok, Ed?”
I would have written the question on that turd’s blog comment section except you have to be a paid subscriber to comment. He probably thinks AG Barr is a chicken, too.
MMT is immoral. People work for their money and MMT’er want to print money up and give it out free to their cronies. That’s bad enough but it also makes the money that people work for worth less.
F every azzwipe that wants to get this country started down the path of MMT.