Stephanie Kelton: How Deficit Hawk Mindset Is LIMITING Dem COVID Relief ...2021/02/19

Stephanie Kelton: How Deficit Hawk Mindset Is LIMITING Dem COVID Relief ...2021/02/19

https://love-and-theft-2014.blogspot.com/2021/02/stephanie-kelton-how-deficit-hawk.html@

https://youtu.be/chWfHkhq9kc 

M：
some democrats have been weighing the option of sending direct payments only to americans making under 50 000 annually in this next relief bill that's going through reconciliation now the practice of distributing government aid only to those who make under 50k also known as means testing of course significantly narrows who the government decides deserves a check so the 50 000 threshold would be down 25 000 from former president trump's 75 000 cutoff so here to explain the downsides of mean testing this is economics and public policy professor sona wreck university author of the deficit myth stephanie kelton herself professor thank you so much for joining us we really appreciate it well thank you for having me absolutely could you just outline what the problem is with means testing these stimulus checks and in general stimulatory effects to the economy like this program？

Kelton：

yeah so a couple of things right i mean first of all there i don't really view these as stimulus checks and i don't think we ought to be talking about them as stimulus checks because that's what's gotten us into trouble so you get these um reports coming out of places like harvard where economists are looking at this and saying well actually it's not going to stimulate all that much because if the checks go to people with higher incomes they'll mostly save so it's using stimulus actually helps undermine support because people will go out there and say well it doesn't really do all that much to stimulate but also the other thing is that even the democrats under their original proposal and trump's proposal it is already means tested right we are drawing a line it's just the debate is over where to draw that line so it isn't a debate between means testing versus not means testing it's more like you know where to draw the line and where to stop sending the checks so in fact what they're talking about doing is just further means testing so that you leave out more and more people so if we were to do for example what you just described some people are pushing to reduce that threshold to 50 000 you leave out about 40 million people in this country who got checks under trump who would not get checks this time.

W：

where do you think this instinct comes from because you know they ran in georgia really clear promise two thousand dollar checks and of course all of those millions of people who got checks under trump had to assume they were being included in that promise why was this even a debate of like how can we possibly claw back some of the very straightforward and clear promise that we made where does that instinct come from.

kelton：

well it comes from caving to pressures like you know reports that economists put out um and this desire to keep things under some spending threshold so once you commit yourself to the 1.9 trillion dollars you have to try to make everything fit in that number and that i think is part of the problem it's a combination of people you know um throwing sand in the gears of progress and saying wait a minute you know that number's too big that's going to help out a lot of people who aren't really struggling democrats start to cave to that they waiver they lose their um commitment on that.

and then they look for ways to you know keep the price tag down and fit everything in that they're looking looking to do.

M：

yeah and you know professor this is something your work in particular has illuminated i think many on which is that all of this is you know kind of within a framework of around the deficit spending itself is bad that you know we're going to have to pay this back eventually and more can you just talk about that ideological framework and the damage it does in a time of crisis like this?

kelton：

 uh yeah i mean that's exactly the point right that we allow these numbers to scare us and politicians allow the numbers to scare them too that's what happened in december when finally congress moved a piece of legislation and we got that 900 billion dollar deal why 900 billion because the name trillion was too scary for some folks and so we continue to you know limit our aspirations by this idea of you know a price tag that's going to scare voters or that lawmakers are afraid to go too big um and and it has a lot to do with you know the politics associated with it adding a trillion dollars another trillion dollars to the deficit and so forth so you know most of what i think is happening is really political it's not about the economics it's too bad it isn't because if we were really crafting policy designed to address the crisis that we're facing we wouldn't let the price tag dictate the scope of our ambition we would deal with the problem with the appropriate magnitude and we'd be prepared to come back and commit more resources as needed to support the economy to support families and so forth but we don't do that we try to pick the right number the first time and then we just sit back and cower and hope that it will be enough.

W：

yeah and so if we were operating from that framework of doing what's required rather than trying to put some arbitrary price tag on it to keep from scaring politicians what do you think is required right now？

W：

crystal you know i feel like we're what we have is a train that's moving down the tracks you know we have a recovery underway but we can see that we didn't lay enough track that each time we have to come back and what they're doing is trying to do as little as possible each time lay a bit more tracks so that the train can keep going with forward motion and we don't fall back into a recession instead what i think we should do is just take a much more ambitious approach and say we're going to continue to lay track for as long as needed not only that we're going to direct the track so that we're not just on a straight course this is part of biden's you know build back better is that we can actually take this crisis and use it as an opportunity to do things differently to to take us in a different and better direction next time so i don't think there is a right number is the answer to your question i think that i agree that the risks of doing too little far outweigh the risks of doing too much but we don't know what that number is because we don't know how quickly the labor market is going to rebound and i would just keep my focus entirely you know laser focused on the labor market on restoring jobs on raising incomes and you do what's necessary to accomplish the mission so you set ambitious goals and you commit the funding and you deliver on those goals.

W：

and worth noting um new unemployment claims actually ticked up this week which is of course an a worrying sign professor calton it's so great to have you thank you so much thank you.

kelton：

Thank you.

W：

coming up pedro gonzalez is going to talk about why conservatives should back a 15 minimum wage when rising returns.

M：

一部の民主党員は、この次の救済法案の中で、年間５万ドル以下で稼いでいるアメリカ人だけに直接支払いを送るという選択肢を検討していますが、この法案では、５万ドル以下で稼いでいる人だけに政府の援助を分配するという慣行があります。ここでは、平均テストの欠点を説明します。経済学と公共政策の教授であるソナ・レック大学の赤字神話の著者であるステファニー・ケルトン自身の教授です。

ケルトン

まず第一に、私はこれを景気刺激策として捉えていませんし、景気刺激策として話すべきではないと思っています。実際にはそれほど大きな刺激にはならないでしょう 小切手が高所得者に渡るならば ほとんどの人は貯蓄をするでしょうから 景気刺激策を使うことは 実際には支持を弱めるのに役立ちます 人々は外に出て行って 景気刺激にはならないと言うでしょうが もう一つのことは 民主党でさえも 彼らの元の提案とトランプの提案では すでに手段テストが行われています 我々は線を引いているだけです その線をどこで引くかという議論なので手段テストか手段テストでないかの 議論ではありません どこで線を引いて どこで小切手を送るのをやめるかを 知っているようなものなのです 彼らが話しているのは、より多くの人を排除するために、より多くの人を排除するためのテストを行うことです。例えば、あなたが今説明したようなことを行う場合、一部の人たちはその閾値を5万まで下げることを推し進めています。

W：

この本能はどこから来ていると思いますか？ 彼らはジョージア州で走っていたので、本当に明確な約束である２０００ドルの小切手、もちろんトランプの下で小切手を受け取った何百万人もの人々は、彼らがその約束に含まれていると仮定しなければならなかったのですが、なぜこれが議論になったのかというと、どうすれば我々が行った非常に単純で明確な約束の一部を取り戻すことができるのかということです。

ケルトン

経済学者が出しているレポートのような圧力に屈することから来ていますし、支出を一定の閾値以下に抑えたいという欲求から来ています。1.9兆ドルという数字に一旦コミットしたら、すべてをその数字に収まるようにしなければなりません。

そして、彼らは価格を抑えて、すべてのものを収める方法を探しています。

M：

そうですね......あなたの仕事の中でも特にあなたの仕事は多くの人に光を当てていると思いますが......それは、このすべてのことが、赤字支出自体が悪いという枠組みの中で、最終的には返済しなければならないということです。

ケルトン

  あー、そうですね、まさにその通りですね、この数字が私たちを怖がらせ、政治家も数字に怖がらせることを許しています。一部の人々にとっては怖すぎるので、私たちは、有権者を怖がらせるような価格設定をしたり、議員があまりにも大きな金額を出すのを恐れたりして、私たちの願望を制限し続けています。赤字などの問題で、私が考えていることのほとんどは、本当に政治的なものです。経済学ではなく、残念ながらそうではありません。もし私たちが直面している危機に対処するために、本当に政策を練っているのであれば 問題を適切な大きさで解決するためには必要に応じて戻ってきて、経済を支えるために必要な資源を投入して、家族を支えるために必要な資源を投入することもできますが、最初に正しい数字を選ぶことはしません。

W：

政治家を怖がらせないために恣意的な値札を付けようとするのではなく、必要なことをするという枠組みで運営されているとしたら、今必要なことは何だと思いますか？

W：

クリスタル.........私たちが感じているのは、線路を下っていく列車のようなものだということです。景気後退に陥らないためには、もっと野心的なアプローチを取るべきだと思います。この危機を実際に受け止め、この危機を機会に違うことをして、次は違う、より良い方向に持っていくことができると思います。その数字は労働市場がどれだけ早く回復するか 分からないからです 私は労働市場に集中しています 雇用の回復と所得の向上に向けて

W： 注目すべきは......今週の新規失業申請件数が増加したことですが........もちろん心配な兆候です。 ケルトン教授...............................ありがとうございます。

ケルトン：

ありがとうございます。

W：

ペドロ・ゴンザレスは、保守派が15の最低賃金を支持すべき理由について話そうとしています。