The biggest industrial sector next to real estate is oil, gas and other mineral resources. They don't report any taxable income, because if you depict yourself as earning a profit, you have to pay a tax on it. So, it's all about what accountants choose to declare as profit.

Money is not a factor of production. But in order to have access to credit, in order to get money, in order to get an education, you have to pay the banks.

Deflation is a leakage from this circular flow, to pay banks and the real estate, called the FIRE sector - finance, insurance and real estate. These transfer payments leave less and less of the paycheck to be spent on goods and services, so markets shrink.

I think the Republican tax law is so bad that it almost guarantees a Republican victory, precisely because it's so bad. The seeming irony is that it's so bad that it enables the Democratic Party to think, "A-ha, all we have to do is be the lesser evil.

The price decline is a result of having to pay debts. That drains income from the circular flow between production and consumption - that is, between what people are paid when they go to work, and the things that they buy.

If you increase living standards, you make labor more productive. This is why Asia today is becoming more productive than the United States.

The problem is indeed that one party's debt finds its counterpart in some other party's savings. Not paying debts therefore involves annulling some other party's financial claims on the debtor.