Monday, May 18, 2020

Mark Cuban Exposes Himself as Keynesian Central Planner

On Sunday, Mark Cuban sent out the below series of tweets which marks him as a Keynesian central planner. It is a very confused view of how the economy works.



Where the hell does he get the idea that consumers aren't buying because of their own free will?

Does he think fans aren't going to Dallas Mavericks games because they don't want to?

Does he not realize governments throughout the land have shut down most businesses?

What is he thinking?

Oh, I see. What he is thinking is that the government should hire snoops at transitional jobs.


Millions of them!

There are plenty of jobs available now, the lockdown just needs to end.

Does Cuban seriously think that COVID-19 is somehow significantly different from other flu viruses, so much so that government snoops need to be sent tracking people?

It appears he is suffering from dread risk.


Gerd Gigerenzer, former Director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, wrote in his book, Risk Savvy, published before the appearance of COVID-19:
Low probability events in which many people are suddenly killed, so-called dread risks, trigger an unconscious psychological principle... the fear is not about dying per se. It is about dying in a specific manner, namely when together at one point in time or in a short interval. In the United States alone, where are about 35,000 people die on the road every year, few worry about dying while driving. 
[On the other hand], we dreaded the swine flu pandemic after hearing the forecast of possibly tens of thousands of deaths which never occurred while few worry about being among the actual tens of thousands of people killed every year by the regular flu.
He goes on.




What is this, the make Jeff Bezos a trillionaire program?

The problem is large swaths of the economy are on lockdown. It is difficult to understand what Cuban is thinking.

It gets worse, I have never seen as much economic confusion in one tweet:



First off, where does he think the $500 billion is coming from? It is either taxed away from others or the Fed creates even more money out of thin air, which is a tax on those saving and holding cash balances (as their purchasing power will decline). This plan is just redistributing spending power.

Second, there is never a problem of general under consumption. That is a big fallacy. SEE: How to Explain Say's Law On a Napkin.

Third, does Cuban not understand that the demand for non-essential products and services has declined because numerous state and local governments have shut down the ability to conduct such transactions?

Finally, consumption in an open economy is never a problem. Increased production is what results in a growing economy and any government program to drive consumption, over production (which includes savings destruction), merely results in shrinking an economy.

Sadly, what Cuban has tweeted out is what many amongst the masses view as sound solutions to the current destruction of the economy by junior tyrants and their lockdowns across the land.

Cuban is a 99 percenter when it comes to economic understanding.

-RW




6 comments:

  1. He seems to think that the act of money changing hands somehow boosts the economy; As if higher money velocity is itself production and growth or something.

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  2. No Marxist Cuban, we need to start by abolishing minimum wage. That alone would be a great jump starter to getting people to work again.

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    Replies
    1. And abolish tariffs protectionism, and occupational-licensing laws.

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    2. I'd have to look at the tariff issue. Free trade is a crock of shit.

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  3. The economy is DOA and it will stay that way. Things are just getting up to speed and the carnage to come will only get worse.

    ReplyDelete