독일 출신으로 브라질에서 교편을 잡고 있는 뮬러(Antony P. Mueller)는 <브라질: 천박한 케인즈 정책의 희생양(Brazil: Victim of Vulgar Keynesianism), 2015년 3월>이란 글에서, 룰라 이후 브라질의 경기 침체가 전임 대통령이었던 룰라의 케인즈 식 정책 때문이었다고 주장한다. 그에 따르면 모든 케인즈 정책은 결국 스태그플레이션에 이르고 마는데, 1970년대에 유럽과 미국이 그러했고, 현재의 브라질이 또 그러하다는 것이다.

브라질 정부는 룰라 대통령 재임 기간에 케인즈 식의 경기 진작 정책을 펼쳤는데, 당시 운 좋게도 중국발 경기 호황으로 원자재에 대한 수요가 높아지면서, 브라질은 반짝 호황을 맞았다. 하지만 원자재의 호경기가 끝나고 중국의 성장세가 주춤하면서, 브라질의 소비자들도 지갑을 닫자, 브라질 정부의 곳간은 비고, 그 동안 풀어놓은 돈으로 인플레는 자꾸 상승하는 이중의 고통을 받고 있다.

한때 룰라 대통령은 브라질 경제가 영국을 추월하고 선진 대국의 반열에 오를 거라고 장담했다. 또 2014년에 열리는 축구 세계챔피언 대회를 개최하고, 2016년에는 리우데자네이루에서 올림픽을 개최한다고 했을 때, 브라질 국민은 정말 세계의 선진 대열에 올라선 듯한 착각을 했다.

뮬러 교수는 룰라 정부와 노동당이 브라질에서 시행한 케인즈 정책은 매우 조악한 형태였고, 더구나 미샤우 칼레츠키(Michał Kalecki, 폴란드 경제학자, 케인즈 이전에 케인즈와 유사한 생각을 갖고 있었고, 마르크스 경제학을 자신의 경제학에 도입했다)의 마르크시즘과 혼합되어 있었다고 한다. 그 결과 기타의 거시경제학은 제쳐두고, 오직 칼레츠키 식의 케인즈 정책이 시행되었다는 것이다.

칼레츠키 식의 케인즈 정책은 “노동자들은 그들이 번 것을 소비한다.” “자본가들은 그들이 소비한 것을 번다.”라는 간단한 결론에 이르고, 이에 바탕해 국가가 자본가 역할을 해서 소비를 하면 나라가 번영하고, 노동자들은 소비자로서 그들의 합당한 몫을 챙길 수 있다고 믿는다.

그에 따라 목적에 상관없이 대량 소비와 결합된 정부 지출은 번영에 이르는 방법이 되었고, 그것이 브라질 노동당 정부가 12년 동안 행한 정책이 되었다. 

---> 본인의 책 <대한민국, 이렇게 망한다>(위퍼블 출판)에서.  브라질의 칼레츠키 식의 케인즈 정책은, 한국에 와서 장하성의 소득 주도 성장이라는 괴물이 되었다. 

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말이 안 나온다. 흥청망청 다 쓰고 죽자인가?

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4대강 보의 주요 기능중에 하나는 홍수 조절능력이다. 하지만 올해 무식한 환경단체의 반대로 수문을 개방했고 갑작스런 폭우로 금감의 수위가 급작스럽게 올라가 대전 공주 세종시의 배수가 수월하지 않았다는 것이다.

원래되로 수문을 개방하지 않았다면 갑작스러운 폭우에도 보가 수용할 수 있는 수량을 분산 수용하므로 갑작스러운 폭우에도 완충 작용을 할 수 있지만 이번처럼 수문이 개방된 상태에서는 그 기능을 잃어 버린 것이다.

그 결과 폭우가 갑작스럽게 오면서 강의 수위가 갑작스럽게 높아 졌고 각 도심 하천수가 강수위가 높아졌기 때문에 빠져나가질 못해 범람을 한것이다

한마디로 이 번 금강주변도시의 침수는 환경단체가 일으킨 인재인 것이다.

[출처] 이번 금강유역 도시의 침수는 환경단체가 일으킨 재앙이다
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언제나 미국의 약속과 위대성에 대한 신념을 잃지 마라.

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한 여름밤의 아쉬운 꿈만 남기고 여름이 가고 있다.

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Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Favorite Literature Books

언론은 사실로 거짓말을 하고, 작가는 옳지 않은 사실로 진실을 말한다. 

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왜 의학에 관한 논문은 대부분 거짓인가? 영양학 부분은 철저한 개선이 필요하다.

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기업을 국유화 하려는 엘리자베스 워렌의 계획

번영은 기업가와 자본에 의해 추진되고, 번영을 성취하려면 자유와 자유 시장이 필요하다.

엘리자베스 워렌 상원의원은 <책임 있는 자본주의 법안>을 제안해서, 기업들을 관료들의 통제 하에 둘 것을 제의하고 있다.

랜드가 <거부한 아틀라스>에서 묘사한 것은 허구가 아니다. 그것은 사회주의의 유혹에 빠진 국가들에서 매일 재현되고 있다.

 

Atlas Mugged: Elizabeth Warren's Plan to Nationalize Corporations

 

Jeffrey Harding

 

Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged depicts a world where freedom and free markets are crushed by not-so-well-meaning politicians and bureaucrats. The story is a blueprint for the creation of a command economy where prices, wages, and production are dictated by bureaucratic apparatchiks. Like all regimes seeking autocratic power, the outcome, as she chillingly reveals, is cronyism, corruption, economic depression, and the rise of dictatorship.

 

The lesson of the book is that prosperity is driven by entrepreneurs and capital. And, you need freedom and free markets to achieve it. This system is called free market capitalism. Rand’s plot twist: what would happen if all the entrepreneurs, the drivers of a dynamic economy, went on strike. She takes the ideals of socialism, where business is dictated by government mandate “for the benefit of workers and the people”, to its logical, destructive end. The strike accelerates the collapse of society and the strikers re-emerge to rebuild society. It was a story that Rand knew well, being a Russian émigré fleeing Bolshevik terror.

 

Unfortunately, the book has become disturbingly prophetic.

 

One of the scenes in Rand’s book is the story of Twentieth Century Motors, a leading automobile manufacturer until the company was reorganized to be under control of the workers and operated for their benefit. Among other things, worker pay was not based on individual productivity but on “fairness” to accommodate workers’ needs. That “noble” idea drove the company into bankruptcy and failure. While this is fiction, history is awash with real world examples of this.

 

Enter Senator Elizabeth Warren and her proposed Accountable Capitalism Act . It is straight out of Atlas Shrugged. She proposes to regulate corporations with gross revenues of $1 billion or more, requiring them to obtain a federal corporate charter as a “United States corporation”. They would be regulated by a bureaucracy under the Office of United States Corporations. These corporations must be operated to “create a general public benefit” and must consider how its profit making activities affect not only their shareholders, but their employees, suppliers, “community and societal factors”, and the local and global environment. At least 40% of its board of directors must be elected by its workers. If they wish to support a political candidate, they must have approval of 75% of the board.

 

This is a proposed takeover of corporations by the government. It’s a power grab. It is the socialist path to hell. I say this based on the tenets, economics, and history of socialism.

 

You can imagine what the outcome would be. Vast new regulations would be drafted by the Office of United States Corporations defining in great detail what is the “public benefit.” The Office’s Director would be a “czar” with immense power over these corporations. Bureaucratic departments would be created to monitor corporate activity; an office of the Assistant Director for Public Benefit would inquire into and prohibit activities it deemed detrimental to “society”. These corporations would have to file annual compliance reports demonstrating their conformity to the regulations. A quasi-judicial hearing board would hear appeals from rulings by the Office. Lawyers specializing in the minutiae of Office canon would proliferate. Profit, the signal to companies that they are doing something right, would become less and less important as the “public benefit” would become the overriding concern. Unions, true to their nature, would demand more pay for their workers not based on worker productivity.

 

The economy would stagnate.

 

Senator Warren’s justifications for this law are based on economic fables that only Democratic Socialists and Progressives could naively and uncritically believe. She crafts a rationale that isn’t based on the historical record or current empirical data. But it does square with Progressive mythology.

 

Senator Warren has a fantasy of a corporate Golden Age where businesses were run not just for profit (a word always used in the pejorative by Progressives) but for the benefit of their workers and their communities and where income was distributed more fairly and not to just to line the pockets of their greedy executives and shareholders. That utopia never existed. Companies then and now operate to make a profit. The effect of profit then and now is that workers have good paying jobs and companies’ successes, payrolls, and taxes benefit their communities. We all benefit, just not in the ways Senator Warren wants.

 

There is another arc to the Atlas Shrugged plot that is about the cronyism and corruption surrounding the regime. In order to prop up failed economic policies, more and harsher regulations are imposed on businesses making it almost impossible to operate. The country sinks into economic depression. But, some regime-favored companies thrive because they bribed bureaucrats to get exemptions from regulations. Smoke-filled back-room deals are made to keep the regime and its cronies in power. It’s a who-ya-know kind of business. Rand describes the types of people on both sides of these transactions, people who could not normally succeed in life without the corrupt power to give and receive special favors.

 

The Trump Administration has imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports and also on certain goods imported from China . In both cases, the Administration announced a process whereby importers of these goods can obtain exemptions from these tariffs. And, anyone can file an objection to an application for an exemption.

 

The procedures for exemptions basically revolve around the issue of whether or not the same goods can be acquired from U.S. manufacturers, regardless of the cost. So, if your business’s financial structure is based on cheaper imported products, you must buy the more expensive American-made product even if you can’t afford it .

 

When the steel and aluminum tariffs were implemented, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative which handles these exemption requests received 20,000 applications. So far they have granted only 42 exemptions requested by seven companies. American companies making more expensive products have vigorously opposed exemption requests to keep out cheaper foreign competition. For example, Bekaert, a manufacturer of steel wire, applied for an exemption. According to the New York Times ,

 

“Nucor, an American steel company that has supported the tariffs, argued against Bekaert’s request for an exclusion for wire rod that it uses to produce cord that goes in tires. Nucor said Bekaert had access to enough of the rod without requiring an exclusion.”

 

There was no consideration of what the cost to Bekaert would be, but obviously Nucor’s wire rod will be more expensive. What that means is that American tire manufacturers will have to pay more for wire cord thus increasing the cost of tires which in turn will be passed on to consumers. This will result in consumers having less money to spend on other things. Or, American tire manufacturers might lose business to cheaper imported tires resulting in layoffs. Or, Bekaert eats the tariffs, becoming less profitable resulting in layoffs. We all lose. Except Nucor, of course. There are 320 million of us and 25,000 of them. So much for “fairness”. It should be noted that John Ferriola, the president of Nucor , was sitting on President Trump’s right when the steel tariffs were announced. Perhaps he should have told the president about his plant in Mexico.

 

It seems that the Trump Administration has spawned the Wesley Mouches and Orren Boyles of Rand’s fabled novel. Whether it’s pull or pleading, the guys with the most clout with the Administration will win favors. And that is wrong.

 

The story Rand tells in Atlas Shrugged is not just fiction, it is played out every day in countries flirting with socialism and it is being played out here. American history has always been a delicate balance between the simplistic appeal of socialist utopia and the individualism of free market capitalism. We came to a tipping point with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, but pulled back from that brink, thanks mainly to Constitutional protections of private property. We seem to be testing that balance again. One would think we would learn from history and economics, but we don’t.

 

Originally published at An Independent Mind.

 

Jeffrey Harding is a real estate investor in Santa Barbara, California. He currently writes at An Independent Mind

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