Here's the stats he was referencing FYI: go to stats.oecd.org find the left-hand column and the "Data by Theme" tab, scroll down to "Public Sector, Taxation and Market Regulation" --> "Taxation" --> "Revenue Statistics in OECD Countries" --> "Comparative Tables of OECD Countries". You can use the drop-down arrows at the top of the table to isolate different sources of tax revenue. Sure enough, if you compare federal tax revenue as a percentage of GDP, the United States is significantly lower.
The best bit of this video is the two minute introduction as opposed to the usual thing you get which is an academic who gives a five minute introduction to another academic who introduces the chancellor whose job is to give a ten minute introduction to the speaker. Almost every video like this has a raft of grandstanding prats who want five minutes in the limelight so they talk bollocks on stage until we all want to strangle them. The most underrated virtue in existence is brevity.
@9:30 Blyth is totally right about government debt. He really means Treasury bonds. This is not debt for a sovereign government issuing a fiat currency. Such a government can never go broke, so never needs to borrow in another currency, it can issue money forever. The risk is inflation, not debt, and another risk is massive wealth inequality, with the bankers gaining so much wealth they will eventually be able to hire a private army and throw out the government, should the government ever wish or dare to regulate the banks a bit more. The USA is damn near this instability. Watch what happens when Bernie Sanders suggests regulating the banks.
Gotta tell ya, he was spot on with Syriza being "kicked". What happened was they made Varoufakis resign (given that he would not sign the thrid bailout) and everyone else submitted. Painfully and lucidly documented in "Adults in the Room".
Mark, "undisputable" is a legitimate word; it's just an alternate version of "indisputable". There are a few words like that in the English language (un/in)
Without reporting the War and Peace derivivation of beliefs about existence.., after the talk, read Steve Keen Debunking Economics. It's the functional world of Magical Thinking.., Labelling is optional, Thinking fast and slow for yourself applies constantly-continuously.
who compared private with public? I am implying that under current system, government austerity can't force delever. You really need to pick up some SAT
H S Thank you for the reply, but I meant I don’t know of any “Mister Farben”. Krupp on the other hand was not only a company name but also the name of a real person.
@@anonymous.youtuber IG Farben was created through the merger of six chemical companies, so there never was a Mr Farben. However, I suppose you could talk about Mr Farben in the same was as Mr Krupp simply due to how important IG Farben was.
Blyth is so caught up in his own theory and promotion of abanding austerity that any shred of objectivity eludes him and stops him from being able to see his own bias. What he call "Austerity" is really just financial accountability through balancing a budget by controlling spending to live within one's means instead of borrowing and forcing others to pay for the debt caused by deficits. The strongest evidenced of his bias and double standard is the lack of that application to all other levels of government of the same idea he is putting forward. If he wasn't so biased he would be able to see that his argument in a nutshell is that everyone ought to be forced to practice austerity except the central federal governments. Imagine if private businesses and people could expand the money supply including every business, every person and every regional government. Why? - Because the failure to stick to austerity will ruin the financial accountability that people and institutions need and therfore lead to ruining of the economy. In reality it is onlya power grab.
I mean you're not wrong in that out come. I don't think either solution is really stable, doing austerity cuts the economy lowering the total amount of activity making it harder to pay off debt while you obviously can't keep spending beyond the means to pay off. That would lead to inflation in the best case that you're able to just print more money and default in the worst case, and either way distrust of the system builds up until it reaches a critical point where the whole thing stops working, like in Argentina and probably what's happening in Turkey now. At the end of the day economic systems just aren't stable. Any rule based system has biases towards who benefits from it and resentment from the part of society that pays for it builds up over time. The problem with austerity is that it favors creditors and there are more debtors than creditors. To the extent it does work it's at the express expensive of those who seek benefits from the government with those who have money for private alternatives. Spending beyond the budget works the other way, debtors are favored over creditors. One way or another the creditors end up eating the losses whether gradually through inflation or abruptly through default or gradually through fighting the default putting more capital up trying to save the on paper loan value by supporting a military government or some nonsense. Neither of then are stable long term. You got populism as debtors get increasingly unsatisfied which leads to the erosion of capital's rights, also a lot of state murder usually. If capital is pissed off on the other hand they have oh so many options to retaliate. Besides the more dramatic options like funding coups and what not a lot of times they can just choose to invest money elsewhere. Happened with Argentina to disastrous effect and even in a relatively stable country like China capital flight has been a nonstop issue because investors would rather go to places where they have rights. At the end of the day you have two systems. One that makes sense on paper but favors those already with capital and leads to serfdom and peasant revolts, one that has to be actively enforced by a strong government or independent muscle. The other is a system that is inherently illogical but mostly keeps everyone happy during boom times but has busts because the inherent logic behind it is flawed. I don't really see a third option.
@@shawnjavery Firstly you have to understand that all debt is credit in another party's hands. That does not and did not change ever because it can't. All sovereign designated currency (all sovereign fiat money in the system) is both credit and debt. You say " doing austerity cuts the economy lowering the total amount of activity making it harder to pay off debt." I don't know where you got that idea from because a deficit by government is backed by borrowing either from the reserve bank or from existing money already in the economy or from overseas entities who have already obtained money from the stock of it in the system or from private banks when they lend. Whatever is borrowed has to be paid back and is paid back over time. Government funds deficits by those methods and their borrowings have to be paid back when the securities they sell to get the money actually mature and are paid out.
What stupid shills for the rich like you that have life miserable for majority of people in this planet don't understand is that a nations means would drastically goes does when you are doing the austerity. So by doing austerity, you are never going to live within you means because the more you caught the more your means shrink, that's what he showed through data but I guess your paycheck depends on not understanding that part so you just ignored it.
The only problem with this lecture is the accent :)....guess I have to buy the book instead and read it with my broken english :D Today, austerity, a tool by neoliberals to fill their own pockets
How do you not know that Scotland produces more than they get back from the Barnet formula? You sound like a Gers fan or one of those we're too wee, too poor, too stupit folk. Is that why you left?
Stop feeling victimised - by things too hard for you to understand, by anything that makes you feel threatened. Try harder, learn to listen with dignity and humility, rather than just jumping in with underhand comments, and you might just better yourself in life.
