Question of the Week: When Will the Economy Suffer the Consequences of the Fed’s Easy-Money Policy?

This is an easy question for me to answer. To be honest, I have no idea.

If I knew such things, I could time the market and I’d be rich beyond my wildest dreams and relaxing on the beach in the Cayman Islands instead of sitting in my kitchen in chilly Virginia.

Heck, I don’t even know whether the Fed’s policy is wrong or just worrisome. It’s possible, after all, that the central bank has provided appropriate liquidity and it will soak it up at the right time.

I don’t think that’s the case. I fear Bernanke is in over his head and that the Fed is engaging in the monetary version of Keynesian economics.

And if that’s true, something bad will happen at some point. If there’s too much liquidity out there, it presumably will show up at some point as either rising prices or an asset bubble.

Then again, we know banks are keeping more than $1 trillion of excess reserves parked at the Fed and maybe it will stay that way forever. In which case the private sector is inadvertently protecting us from bad monetary policy. Thomas Sowell has suggested that something like this is happening.

I can say for sure is that we wouldn’t have to worry if we were in a libertarian fantasy world and the private sector was responsible for money.

You may think that sounds crazy, but that’s the way it used to be, as explained in this short video.

John Stossel has made the same point about competing market-based currencies.

And if you want to see how well money has maintained its value since the Federal Reserve took over, this link has an excellent video.

P.S. I often get asked about the gold standard. It’s good in theory, but the real issue is whether governments can be trusted to operate it prudently and honestly.

P.P.S. Since Christmas is just two days away, we can all wonder whether we will get this present from Ben Bernanke. And if you still have some last-minute shopping to do, here’s a Bernanke t-shirt for your liberal friends.

P.P.P.S. For some laughs, check out Ben Bernanke’s Facebook page.

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How the Welfare State Traps the Poor in Dependency, the British Version

Back in 2011, I linked to a simple chart that illustrated how handouts and subsidies create very high implicit marginal tax rates for low-income people and explained how “generosity” from the government leads to a tar-paper effect that limits upward mobility.

Earlier this year, I shared an amazing chart that specifically measured how the welfare state imposes these high implicit tax rates. Unbelievably, some people would be better off earning $29,000 rather than $69,000.

Simply stated, the multitude of redistribution programs are worth a lot of money, but you begin to lose those goodies if you begin to live a productive and independent life.

And since we know that rich people respond to high tax rates by declaring less income to the government, we shouldn’t be surprised that poor people also respond to incentives.

We also shouldn’t be surprised to learn that other nations have these same perverse policies. Here are some excerpts from a powerful piece for the UK-based Spectator.

…today’s Sunday Times magazine has a long piece asking whether there is a “fundamental difference in our attitudes to work”. It’s still one of the most important questions in Britain today: what’s the use of economic growth if it doesn’t shorten British dole queues? And should we blame these industrious immigrants; aren’t the Brits just lazy? …The quality of the British debate is so poor that we almost never look at this from the point of view of the low-wage worker. Every budget, the IFS will dutifully work out if it has been “fair” – ie, gives the most to the poorest. The LibDems will judge a budget by this metric. That’s a nice, easy, simple graph. But what about destroying the work incentive? Each budget and each change to tax should be judged on how many people are then ensnared in the welfare trap. I adapted the below (nasty, complex) graphs from an internal government presentation, which still make the case powerfully. The bottom axis is money earned from employer and the side axis is income retained. The graphs are complex but worth studying, if only to get a feel for the horrific system confronting millions of the lowest-paid in Britain today.

Here are the two charts. the author is correct. They are quite complex. But they show that there’s no much incentive to work harder, whether you’re a young person or a single parent.

After showing these amazing charts, the author makes some very powerful additional observations.

…if I was in a position of a British single mother I have not the slightest doubt that I would choose welfare. Why break your back on the minimum wage for longer than you have to, if it doesn’t pay? Some people do have the resolve to do it. I know I wouldn’t. …So let’s not talk about “lazy” Brits. The problem is a cruel and purblind welfare system which still, to this day, strengthens the welfare trap with budgets passed without the slightest regard for its effect on the work incentives on the poorest. …Meanwhile, the cash-strapped British government is still creating still the most expensive poverty in the world.

The final sentence in the excerpt really sums it up, noting that the government is “creating the most expensive poverty in the world.” Sort of like a turbo-charged version of Mitchell’s Law. The politicians create a few redistribution programs. Poverty begins to get worse. So then they add a few more handouts to address the problems caused by the first set of programs. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In other words, this poster applies in all nations.

P.S. If you want some real-world examples of the horrible impact of the British welfare state, you can see how the welfare state destroys lives, creates perverse incentives, and turns people into despicable moochers.

P.P.S. We have the same problems in America, and even leftists are beginning to admit this is bad for poor people. Heck, just look at this chart showing that the poverty rate was falling until the War on Poverty began.

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