[lbo-talk] Sawicky's Math (was Re: Obama on poverty: straight DLC=

Max B. Sawicky sawicky at verizon.net
Wed Apr 2 16:38:54 PDT 2008


Dmytri Kleiner wrote:
> . . . If wage is X and cost of living is C (including location and other rents,
> naturally) and X goes up, by say XTC, what happens to C?
>
> Now let me know if this is crazy, but more money chasing the same goods
> and locations means, it seems, higher prices? (especially higher rents).

Not crazy, but nobody has ever shown that the Earned Income Tax Credit raises prices. It's $35-40billion in a $14 trillion economy. And even then, the issue would be whether the price rise totally offsets the credit (and then, maybe the wage goes up too, since it's a price as well).


> How much up? Well if the amount of extra money competing
> for the same goods and locations is XTC, what's to stop landlords and
> there fellow rentiers from raising prices to absorb XTC?

If they could have raised their prices, they would have done it previously. In this vein, it's not obvious how much a given person is entitled to under the credit. The law is sufficiently complicated to confuse taxpayers, let alone employers or merchants who have even less information to go by.


> Therefor, yes if "a" in your formula is the value of higher prices
> (especially rents), then it will indeed equal any TC.

If. But there's no evidence. Nobody has even thought it an important enough possibility to investigate it.


> And if the ability to accumulate wealth and form capital is !"$%&*
> and therefor !"$%&* = X - C, and if a rise in X means a rise in C,
> then how does a tax credit or anyother factor of nominal wage
> effectively cause a real change in !"$%&*?
>
> Sorry if my math is wanting for not having consulted Capital v.III
>
>
> "It is sometimes said it would illogical for labour to resist
> a reduction of money-wages but not to resist a reduction of
> real wages [...] experience shows that this is how labour
> in fact behaves"
> -- John Maynard Keynes,
> The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
>
>
>
>
>



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