Germany owed war reparations in foreign currency - and it was a huge debt for the time. They had to sell marks to acquire that foreign currency driving the mark down. As the Mark declined France wanted hard goods - so Germany started sending all their productivity to France (lumber, coal) creating a shortage of goods to buy. So it was the war reparations owed in a foreign currency that was the root of the problem. A condition absent in this country and many others.

Elwoods define rich. Here in Maryland they raised taxes on the rich ($1million+ incomes), and when that did not generate the revenue they came after everyone else. Now localities do not create fiat so they need to tax, but also need to deliver services to all taxpayers, or they will demand lower taxes if the benefits are not seen.

1) Fairness at the federal level is how you allocate the budget and has nothing to do with taxes. Clinton raised taxes and inequality went up. Why? Because government spending increases slowed to a crawl and we ran a surplus reducing private savings. Lower taxes and deficit spend more on lower income groups - that is fair and targets lower income groups.

2) Who cares. Really, if someone wants to be a landlord let them. I do not see how this takes away anything. If you think it does please show me the mechanism how.

3) All for it, but higher taxes won't do it. Put limits on leverage maybe, ban certain securities. Warren Mosler has some nice proposals on banking, and these have nothing to do with taxes.

4) The 99% outnumber the 1% in votes so ask yourself why they never throw the bums out? Higher taxes make lobbying more valuable not less.

5) No its not because way more than the 1% demands lower taxes people earning middle incomes want lower taxes too - and services for the taxes paid. Military spending is not a great value service IMO.

Regarding health care.

1) Yes people need to be more healthy, but I have no idea how to tackle that than to make those people pay higher premiums if say they are overweight.

2) As boomers get older, and hit the ages where healthcare needs increase, then is there really any way to expect costs to not increase?

3) Health industry jobs pay well, so why do we want austerity there to push those wages down? Shouldn't we actually be ok with health spending?

4) Shouldn't we increase health supply?

Note: yes I believe healthcare can be more efficient, and I can point out some huge areas of waste, but those are because of stupid regulations (like when my mother automatically gets sent from nursing home to hospital because of a state regulation requiring it - which makes no sense). I also believe in having a nationally financed system.

Randall, it looks as if recent capital controls have slowed growth in Argentina. Not quite sure why they are even bothering to tighten those controls right now. From a psychological standpoint capital controls are creating unnecessary fear that is harming their economy. Seems like they should stick to the basics of what is/was working.
http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2012/09/18/curre...
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-21/argen...

Good stuff. I have a few questions:

1) Isn't the inflation simply a result of the economy's ability to finally raise prices after a period where there was little pricing power - is the inflation starting to show signs of slowing? So higher inflation along with better unemployment and income growth rates is not necessarily the end of the world? I think average salaries in Argentina grew almost 30% in 2011.

2) How much of the surpluses are from Oil prices versus economic growth pushing up tax revenues.

3) Why if running surpluses is their growth? Aren't surpluses bad per se from an MMT perspective - or are exports adding money into the economy?

4) Be interesting to see if the rich got richer, all while the poorer did better at the same time.