Comment by doctorpangloss | Hacker News Reader

Comment by doctorpangloss | Hacker News Reader

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I agree with you that Bretton Woods was doomed from the beginning, both Keynes and Friedman said so, and this should be a better known POV. Economists are not historians though, and historians write human-driven stories (i.e., it was Nixon who ended Bretton Woods, it's not that it was going to inevitably collapse as an econometric question).

All that said, Bretton Woods matters because people look at the gold standard as a time when wages in the United States rose. Like that's why Bernie Bros on HN care. It's the same reason they oppose globalization: me me me. So it's worth knowing why it was flawed. They don't comprehend that before and after Bretton Woods, hourly wage charts measured a fundamentally different thing.

I think it's better to attack the charts - I mean, you're responding to a Charts Guy, a guy who's like, look at this Gold Denominated Chart guy - because that's what their brains work on. Don't worry about economics. These guys are not economists. They are Charts. The real attack on their worldview is that, well, just because the year in the X axis is an increasing, doesn't mean that you can compare a bigger year to a smaller year. They would really like the world to be ordered that way, but it's not, and taking leadership on convincing them of that is very hard.

Perhaps you could expand on why you're convinced the entirety of neoliberal economic dogma isn't "me me me"?

The gold bugs are almost entirely on the right. The left are far more likely to be MMTers.

> The gold bugs are almost entirely on the right. The left are far more likely to be MMTers.

see, i don't want to generalize about left and right. it's much simpler than that. look at what this thread is actually about: "chart for $/GLD is going up and to the right, therefore, gold good." okay? it's not complicated. it's not left vs right as much as it is, for every 1 person who's like, "things are complicated, economics are interesting, let's talk about it" there are 19 who live day to day in a relentless grind, and get-rich-quick is literally their only apparent salvation. they want the world to be ordered where they are a Green Wojack, where some random bet or gamble makes them a ton of money. that's why we're talking about it, not to figure out economic policy. same reason we talk about cryptocurrencies and startups. to most regular people - and programmers are regular people - it's about, $$$.

it is a totally valid complaint to say, "floating exchange rates do not produce charts that go up and to the right." I mean, that's their problem! They made the wages per hour chart stop going up and to the right! It's not that they are bad policy!

Do people on HN care about joe schmoe hourly worker? No. You can certainly make tons of money trading currencies, but look, these people are not trading. They're gambling. This class of get-rich-quick person likes: real estate, cryptocurrency, gold, startup stock... are you getting it?

You are making it about, "neoliberal dogmas" and "gold bugs" or whatever. Trust me, those people are not the morons. The gamblers are 10x as stupid. They are the antagonists.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

government policy definitely has the greatest power to create (or destroy) wealth, there are a lot of things wrong with economic policy in this country, but floating currency exchange is not one of those problems.

I would argue that any policy that allows the government to print money freely and inflate the currency is a major thing wrong with a country.

Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments.

the best way to expand your worldview is to consider that time series charts do not tell a whole, or even accurate, story, a lot of the time. for example, looking at a chart of a line going up and to the right for money supply isn't as meaningful as you think it is.

And you'd be wrong. It's not even difficult to understand why. Uncontrolled inflation is bad. Deflation is much, much worse. You do not want deflation. It rots your economy and nukes lend and spend. We trade a small amount of inflation to avoid the nuke that is deflation.

This is, like, one of the few things economists -- even most of the crazy ones -- agree on.

That's an oversimplification. Demand-side deflation can be bad for the economy, but it's also because our modern economies are basically reliant on inflation to manage our insane debts. Typically, critique of inflationary principles is coupled with a broader critique of MMT and how our economies are run. Deflation is fine or even beneficial when it comes from increased productivity (supply-side). Heck, we have deflation in some sectors of our economy (eg. technology) and consumers greatly benefit from it. Unfortunately the good type of deflation we see in our economies is overshadowed by the money printer going brrrrrrr.

Deflation is bad for the elites and politicians, and good for consumers. When the former are running the show, of course they will claim that deflation is the worst thing ever, despite the immense harm inflation inflicts on the average person. And if you spend like 5 minutes pondering the justification for why that is, you'll see it's mostly BS.

> Deflation is bad for the elites and politicians, and good for consumers.

Hahahaha no. Other way around. I assume you meant "consumers" as a short hand for "normal people" and not its actual meaning of "people who need to buy things on a regular basis" because you do not want to be a consumer in a deflationary market. You're constantly having to piddle your wealth away because you're forced to exchange money for goods and services. Like food and shelter.

Deflation means no access to modern lending because there's no incentive to do anything with money except hold it. That's fine if you're already wealthy, because either you have it on hand, have assets for collateral, or can call in a favor. If you're not wealthy, you're just fucked.

Having easy access to debt is, overall, a phenomenal thing for the non-wealthy. Can you abuse it? Yup. Can it be predatory? Sure. Does it mean the average person gets access to capital without access to generational wealth or decades of saving? Absolutely. The middle class kind of doesn't exist without it. See also: The Ability to File For Bankruptcy is Good, Actually.

> And if you spend like 5 minutes pondering the justification for why that is, you'll see it's mostly BS.

I'm always a fan of examining things, but there's a prerequisite. You need enough education, critical thinking skills, and maturity to understand why you start at the null hypothesis: any "Secret Knowledge They Don't Want You To Know" theory is conspiracy bullshit.

And enough cynicism to know when people start talking about "elites and politicians" like they're one homogenous lump of evil agenda, it's usually a shibboleth for other, ah, less socially acceptable beliefs.

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