I think people have already taken the good parts of Elm and implemented those ideas in other frameworks. Redux was inspired by the Elm, for example. I personally like using React, Redux, and Typescript. It's nowhere near the purity of Elm, but it's good enough.
> Money enters the economy via government spending. Money leaves the economy through taxation.
Dollars enter the economy when the Federal Reserve creates reserves out of thin air and trades those new reserves for treasuries or other assets.
Dollars are destroyed when the Federal Reserve sells off assets on its balance sheet.
Taxation plays absolutely no role in this process. The Federal Reserve controls the monetary base. This would be true even if the federal government levied zero taxes.
> Governments don't need to tax in order to spend, they are the issuers of the currency.
Governments can earn revenue entirely from selling bonds or printing money - you're absolutely right that they don't need to tax in order to spend. However, this statement doesn't back up your assertion that governments destroy money through taxation.
The effect of taxation is precisely the same as that of destroying money - it means that the money is no longer available for non-government entities to use. On the other side of the transaction, for the government, as you recognize, taxation presents no increase in buying power.
To directly compare the two scenarios - taxation and burning money - private entities can no longer use the money and government can still spend as much as it wants subject to self imposed limitations. There is no functional difference.
> The effect of taxation is precisely the same as that of destroying money
No it's not. The effect of taxation is the same as theft. The thief gains and the victim loses, but the overall purchasing power of the dollar is unchanged. Destroying money would increase the purchasing power of the dollar.
> On the other side of the transaction, for the government, as you recognize, taxation presents no increase in buying power.
Taxation is one of three ways the government can earn revenue (taxation, selling bonds, or printing money), so yes it does increase buying power.
> To directly compare the two scenarios - taxation and burning money - private entities can no longer use the money and government can still spend as much as it wants subject to self imposed limitations. There is no functional difference.
Those two aren't comparable. Burning money would mean that nobody can spend that money. Money gained through taxation can still be spent (and is spent).
If the government collected taxes but never spent that money, I would concede that the net effect is the same as destroying money. But that clearly doesn't happen. The government DOES spend the money it garners through taxation. So the claim that taxation destroys money doesn't make any sense.
The government can spend as much as it wants without needing your tax money. It doesn't matter how much money the government collects in taxes, it can spend as much as it wants regardless, because it can print as much money as it wants.
> The government DOES spend the money it garners through taxation
The government can spend the money regardless of how much it raises in taxes. Your taxes do not fund government spending.
Money is fungible. If government taxes $x and then spends $y, it is the same result as if it burns $x and then spends $y of newly printed money. In both cases the money supply changes by $y-$x
I don't disagree with you that the government is unconstrained in regards to how much it can spend. The government doesn't need to tax or sell bonds at all. It can just print money and force everyone at gun point to use it.
But you still haven't provided an argument as to why you believe taxation destroys money. Taxation merely transfers dollars from one entity to another. It doesn't change the amount of base money in existence.
The government doesn't need to tax you to get dollars to spend. They are the source of your dollars, they can will as many dollars into existence as they wish, subject to self-imposed limitations. Where do you think dollars come from? Why would an entity with an infinite supply of dollars need your dollars?
The purpose of taxation isn't to fund government operations, its to maintain demand for dollars.
> The purpose of taxation isn't to fund government operations, its to maintain demand for dollars.
Yes, taxation is one of the ways to create demand for an otherwise worthless fiat currency. So are legal tender laws. This still does not explain your assertion that the government destroys dollars through taxation.
You’re only looking at one side of the equation. Assuming demand stays constant, if you reduce the number of tomatoes, their price will go up. Likewise if you increase the number of dollars, the price of tomatoes will also go up, because each individual dollar isn’t worth as much.
That only matters if people are prepared to pay more for tomatoes, which I don’t think they are as evidence by inner-city real estate prices going up way more than the price of tomatoes in inner-city groceries.
On the whole people are drastically more interested in paying more for real estate / assets / buying or starting a business than they are in giving dollars to tomatoes producers.
Tomato producers will take whatever they can get at market, because the produce is perishable, whereas real estate vendors can (usually) afford wait to for a greater-fool with deeper-pockets.
You're missing the point of the example. Substitute tomatoes with something with a long shelf life, like Spam. It doesn't matter. The point is that the people utilize leverage (loans) in order to fund investments that will yield a return greater than the interest rate paid on the loan. People don't use leverage to buy milk, cigarettes, and gasoline, which are the types of goods tracked in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). They use leverage to buy assets. So when people say that inflation has been low despite the unprecedented amount of money printed over the last 10 years, they're only looking consumer goods and not assets.
Price inflation is not some force of nature - it’s deliberately induced by the central bank out of a belief that falling prices are bad. The trend in market economies is for everything to get cheaper every year. Look at TVs for example.
There’s no “magic” in inflation. If you have more dollars chasing the same number of goods, those dollars will have less purchasing power. Because the Fed creates new money if the form of bank reserves, the things that to tend to be inflated the most are assets purchased with loans (real estate, equities, businesses, etc). Nobody takes out a loan to buy tomatoes but they will take out a loan to fund a new business.
As I understand it, sailors have strong ethics because the sea is the common enemy of all. Even sailors on ships at war will rescue the enemy after incapacitating their boat.
Yeah, but if you're a ship with a skeleton crew of civilians, you're going to think twice about rescuing a full compliment of soldiers from a dictatorship that just tried to sink you with no reason whatsoever.
There can not be any thinking twice about pulling people from the water. Even Somali pirates were first pulled up from their junks, and only then the boats were used for target practice.
EDIT: and they, being pirates, were subject to being killed on the spot.
IIRC uboats were only “supposed” to sink ships if they could aid in rescuing the crew and passengers after... but gave that policy up when the Allies kept attacking them with aircraft while they were conducting rescue operations.
"Columbia Cruise Services says Resolute remained in the area until it was clear its services were not required to help in the rescue of the 44 crew members. It then continued on, as planned, to the Port of Willemstad in Curaçao."
Then
"Even if the cruise liner had deliberately sailed within 12 miles of Isla La Tortuga, it very likely would have been legally entitled to do so under the right of innocent passage, unless Venezuelan officials believe the ship of conducting some other prohibited activity."
Military and law enforcement personnel tend to be pretty high up in the current hierarchy due to corruption and abuse of power i.e: they have easier access to food, for example. Not sure how that applies to the Navy, though.
Airbnb has over 5 million listings and 150 million customers around 190 countries and they don't make enough in commissions to pay rent, salaries and server costs?
They don't. Period. That's a simple fact. No questions need asking here; they do NOT make enough money from their listings to cover all of their costs, full stop.
At what point does Management not realise that they need to balance their books and so at least, expenditure = revenue for them to break even?
Airbnb is 12 years old. If they haven't figured out that they shouldn't spend more than they earn by now, I don't think the current management will be able to figure it out in another 12 years.
That’s basically what I’m doing, except with a 3 unit building in Michigan. In an average month, the two AirBnB units bring in 3-4x the mortgage in revenue. Not enough to retire of course, but it’s a nice side hustle.
That being said, our bookings been hit pretty hard by the coronavirus. We’ve hade multiple cancellations recently, and the month of April is basically wide open. We usually have an occupancy rate for 85%. I think we’ll be lucky to have 50% of the next couple months.
Paying off two dwellings at little effort is a nice "side hustle". No wonder nobody in the west is working! Meanwhile the Fed pumps more money to protect banks from rentiers blowing up, while taxes go unpaid and hospitals are underfunded.
Short term rentals to tourists isn't occupancy, it's occupation. Sorry for the hyperbole I just thought that was good wordplay.
These rentals drive up rents for the people in the community and remove housing stock from the market, making it more expensive and less likely for people to purchase their home and build equity. Rent is non recoverable unlike a mortgage, even if you ultimately take a loss.
Flooding the housing market with units for sale at a bargain would be great for common people trying to build wealth.
Seeing housing as a vehicle for wealth building is what leads to policies that increase or maintain housing prices. People don't need to put their money in to housing to build equity, they can just build equity. You know, save. Put it in diversified assets not chuck it all in to one asset and then leverage debt to chuck even more in to that asset.
Home ownership is how the system keeps the common man down. It should absolutely not be championed in his favour.
As a home buyer you aren't making the choice between a diversified set of assets without leverage and one highly leveraged asset. You're spending money for another month of shelter while making the decision to keep it when you've paid for it long enough.
A lot of people would love to pump their savings into a diverse portfolio with little debt. Unfortunately we still have to pay rent. Personally if I do the math on it, putting savings into equities to save up for a 20% down payment on a mortgage is by far the most sound plan I can have because it optimizes my returns for my income.
And even without talking about returns, in terms of utility I don't want to raise a family in my expensive and tiny apartment - basically I don't want to save up so I can buy a nice house when I retire, I want to buy a nice house to build my life in then sell it when I retire. You've got the incentives completely flipped in my opinion.
> People don't need to put their money in to housing to build equity, they can just build equity. You know, save. Put it in diversified assets not chuck it all in to one asset and then leverage debt to chuck even more in to that asset.
On paper yes. In practice no. Because the common man will buy a new car, or order some trinket from Amazon, or some other splurge.
> Home ownership is how the system keeps the common man down. It should absolutely not be championed in his favour.
Home ownership forces the common man to save because he knows he’ll be kicked to the curb if he doesn’t pay the mortgage.
If people treated their retirement savings like a true mortgage, e.g. putting it before all other monthly expenses, then yes it’d be possible. But they won’t.
Shouldn't the increased tourism be a net win for the local economy though?
I agree its unfortunate if airbnb units increase rents, even a small amount. Finding good data isn't all that easy, but this study [0] from last year suggests airbnb was responsible for about 20% of total rent increase amounts in the areas studied. But, ignoring other potentially beneficial effects is one sided - if tourism was always bad, people should also be against building or operating hotels that could be apartments instead.
And they should build wealth by saving their surplus value, which means adding value. If they buy land at a reasonable price they avoid paying tax to bankers via interest.
Create wealth instead of appropriating it and everyone benefits!
