an argument with you would go no where. you're obviously a libertarian who made up his mind about this idea before thinking about it. like i said, i'm not talking about giving up freedoms. i'm talking about social pressures to the point where it's almost "unpatriotic" to spend/invest/save a certain way during a certain time. you still could and would. if you really wanted. compare this freedom to the freedom to say "fuck jews." granted, you can say it, but around the wrong people, it's really not a good idea. maybe not to that degree, but with the president only barely mentioning what he sees as wise fiscal ideas every once and a while doesn't seem too effective. like i said before, we can speculate back and forth about the changes in spending per household or whatever over the years or we can do the research, take the amount spent per household divided by total income per household and adjust for inflation. compare that over the years. if it changes at an unpredictable, the premise of my idea might be bunk. i still say the government attempting to directly influence the consumers as a whole to a greater degree could help.
Im no libertarian. The government does try to influence consumers. Ever hear of the federal funds rate? The government sets your interest rates on mortages (which mortgages are one of the biggest ways for big money to invest. Since you basically give them a 30 year secure window to invest money). Raising or shrinking the money supply??? Keysnian economics?? They do directly influence the consumer. They also try to spend more money during bad times to spark industriousness. Printing out billions of dollars to make sure that failing businesses stay afloat? The government influences us more than you might think. But ultimately, it's the individual which must make choices. Because the government has no wealth, they just take our wealth and use it in ways which may or may not benefit us. But some law made by a guy thousands of miles away may not be best for my town. My town knows what's best for my town, and so we act accordingly. Individual people each do what's best for them, and can react much better to market changes than some guy in his ivory tower. Im no libertarian, but I know you have to leave choices at the individual level because they always choose the most effective outcomes. While being forced to do something may not be beneficial at all. But to having the government do the job means that they sap the wealth of everyone. To effectively do it they have to maintain data from every single city in the US, so they can make proper choices based on each city's conditions. They'd have to hire thousands of employees, while using money that is really the citizen's (remember, the government has no wealth. They can only transfer it). Or!!!!! You could let each city figure out what's best for them by themselves. It's much more efficient. Unless you're talking about a whole new type of government intervention, which gets awfully close to Communist ideas. Like "Make tons of capital goods to build up our industry, but make few consumer goods!!!! It'll be good in the end.."..... Sure, government oversight could be something like taxes. They take a little of our wealth to guarantee security. That's fine and dandy, but maybe in another newly built system. Within our long chain of command, governmental heirarchy and secrecy, there is no accountability. The Fed answers to NO one, where is the balance in that? Gvt can spend your money on filet mignon and $500 a bottle wine. Who do you complain to? How do you make sure this doesn't happen? How do they justify it? Because they control the CIA, FBI, and Police, which enforce with guns, which enforce the laws which enforce the system's integrity. So before we talk about MORE government influence, we need to somehow talk about this long chain of command.
what's best for the individual is what's best for the community? i don't see that as truth. and as far as this being an idea that could be different depending on the community, whatever. if that's what's deemed the most effective way to positively influence the economy, then so be it. this idea is completely up in the air.
Basically recessions have to happen because of growth. You cannot grow have new and better things without losing old useless things. And unfortunately many people can be in that "old and useless" category, and will temporarily be out of the workforce. While we transition to integrating the new into our society we may be crippled for a bit. But after the "new" has integrated itself we will be much stronger than before. The latest recession was (thought) to of been caused by this great idea caused a CDO, a collateralized debt obligation. Basically the biggest source of debt in our country is buying new houses. People sign their lives away for 30 years, but what to do with all those loans lying around? Maybe we should flip cocaine with millions of peoples house mortages?? No!! The people who own those mortgages chop em up into bits, and give them to other people to invest however they please. A lot of these investors (urban developers) invested in making cookie cutter communities that never sold. And what happens when you buy a bunch of land and no return? You have a really big playground. So how do you prevent something like this? Do you not allow investments without physical cash? Do you limit the amount of a CDO you can invest? As you can see, when you prevent anything from happening you limit people's choices and possibilities. Which in the end of the day IS their freedom. LIke I said, the only way to prevent a recession is being stagnant. Eat cows and corn, keep your population the same, and pray for no droughts or crop failures (nature's recession). You will never have a recession ever. Or you can make everybody a subsistence farmer, so that everybody is a complete economic system within themselves. With growth comes new problems. New dynamics within the system that these new entities add, and new chain of the system that can be broken. It simply can't be helped.
i never said anything about restricting freedom. just offering incentive to do what's best for the economy. you and maybe someone else has said this before. what does recession have to do with advancement? and what does recession have to do w ith growth? you're talking wallstreet terms here. i'm talking economic terms. so what you're telling me here sounds like you're basing your theories out of air.
i never said anything about restricting freedom. just offering incentive to do what's best for the economy. you and maybe someone else has said this before. what does recession have to do with advancement? and what does recession have to do with growth? you're talking wallstreet terms here. i'm talking economic terms. so what you're telling me here sounds like you're basing your theories out of air.
The "economy" isn't some person who you buffer up to get well. Commy Russia had a great economy, tons of production but you could only find 1 kind of shoe in the store. What kind of incentives you want them to offer? Corn subsidies (that GIVES farmers money to waste our land growing biodiesel)? Bailouts (so we can keep FAILING businesses afloat which should be 6ft under)? When you offer incentives, it's always for a group of individuals. The economy is not a living being, it is a system which is made up of the collective choices of every individual doing what he thinks is the best for his life. When you force something to happen, you open doors for some but close them for others. Dont forget, recession is just a word that means our economy is consistently doing "badly" by some arbitrary standard. What can make our country do bad? If China has social instaiblity. If there is a widespread crop failure. Rising energy costs. The list goes on. There are many factors that contribute to recessions, and many potential causes. A simple scare caused bank runs, which shut down banks, which shut down investment, which hurt our economy (Great Depression). Foolishly putting all our eggs in 1 basket can lead to a recession (our recent one). Having a sudden industry shift can cause a recession. Having an earthquake destroy an important city can cause a recession. And my theories aren't from thin air. Take it this way. I need food, so I trade my neighbor for food. But he trades his neighbor pottery for food. And that guy grows his food with fertilizer. The fertilizer guy makes product from natural gases from Alaska. Don't you see the high dependency of the system? When the capital (blood) of this system bleeds out at one point, it affects the rest of the system. Because each individual economic unit works along a certain framework (the # of labor hours worked, bills, whatever). When a certain unexpected condition arises that disrupts the system (a meteor hits an Alaskan natural gas facility?) the rest of the system can't work at the output level they've been used to. Each unit adjusts to the new conditions of the system (higher energy costs), the next link has to adjust according to the previous guy. An easy way to hit a recession is by severely disrupting commodity prices (which are the base of a society). Staple crops such as wheat, rice. Iron and copper, or oil. If oil prices go up 100% tomorrow, it's going to cost u MORE than 100% (greedy bastards) more to do anything involving involving combustion engines. So you know that little pizza delivery business that made amazing pies? They have to receive this blow and somehow figure out how to maintain wages and stay in business. Driving on vacations now costs twice as much, as well as airplane fare. That's why I say with growth comes recessions. Because we cannot predict every possible weakness of every advancement we make. You have to look at everything in life as a system, just like the human body or a computer. You mess up the liver, the body suffers. You mess up the brain, the body suffers. But the thing is that society constantly EVOLVES, and so when you think you got the perfect safeguards. You don't!!! Because you can only protect against the what we know as the "past". But in the very moment of "NOW" it is a new world, with potentially new chains to the web that you haven't considered when working on your safeguards. You see? What's important is having a proper communications network. Because you can't predict every problem that will arise, but you can set up a social system that effectively deals with problems. Maybe every city should have carrier pigeons at their town hall, which would carry messages to the mother nest at Washington D.C. But then what if the avian flu hits??!?!? You see what I'm saying? Unless you halt yourself and never change, it will continue on to eternity.....
you're talking about what you hear in the news. i'm talking economic theory. there should be methods to control the aggregate demand and aggregate supply directly. more so that we already do. like i said before, people aren't wanting shit any less right now. they either can't afford it or are trying to take better care of their wallets. causing less shit bought. which might not be the entire problem with the economy, but it's at least a damn good chunk. i'm just saying that an economy is basically stuff and people wanting stuff. if the amount of stuff isn't changing. and the amount of want for that same stuff. the economy shouldn't have these spikes and drops. there just has to be something different that could be done.
Well put. The original posters premise would have a flat economy with no increases in profit,thus no future innovation, unless society all of sudden turns philanthropical and does things for the common good not profit alone as a motive. One of the reasons for the current recession is it was built on the idea that things like homes would continually go up in value. Nothing in life continues to increase in value forever and an economy based on debt swaps, margin and fancy derivatives is nothing more than a shell game and has nothing to do with selling actual products or consumption.
Actually we should have been doing exactly the opposite. With two wars in the making and global warming we should have been ask to save and conserve, but then that wouldn't have been good for the Wall St. greedy, but it would have been better for the nation. We are still not ask to conserve energy. During the seventies energy crisis we were ask to conserve, the speed limit was reduced. But today the only solution our government can see is to raise the price they say to force consumers to buy less. I wish they would just ask nicely. I think many Americans would. Ever heard of War Bonds, why didn't Bush issue War Bonds? The American people after 9/11 were looking for ways to help. But we were told to keep shopping. Maybe it's not too late? http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_24_55/ai_n13606710/
I think I understand where you are coming from. You're an idealist. The problem is right now what's best for our country the last few decades wasn't what was best for private enterprise and monied/corporate interests. That's why we overpaid private contractors on both war fronts for inferior goods and services with little or no oversight. Why war time accounting is deplorable. Why the financial reforms made during the depression were excised from the books, why fancy complicated financial instruments were developed that enabled firms like Enron and WorldCom to rape and pillage. Why Bush's three page bailout was passed with no oversight, regulation or transparency. What I think you are looking for is a system like that practiced by the Amish, which is a hybrid of capitalism with a social conscience. Each individual is allowed to be an entrepenuer and produce and sell their goods, and own and expand personal property. But they also donate to community pool and when others in the community fall on hard times that pool is used to help the members of the community.
man, you have no idea what being called that means to me. it's been too long since i felt like my old self. and i still say "there must be a way" when looking that basic principles. it's like a math problem. we're leaving a remainder, when we could find a better graph to fit the basic components. or maybe i'm trying to fit pi into 9 digits without rounding...
You're leaving out the overriding influencing factor of today: GREED. GREED is god to today, we measure our self worth on what we own and what we can own in the future. We always have to have more. 2% increase isn't enough for Wall St anymore And if they have to resort to shady dealings to reap more they will. Much like athletics today. The records set today can't be done without steroids. I don't know why we pretend they can.
Yeah, that accounts for some of the gains. But some champions have admitted using them. And I would assume some have used them and not admitted it. For Deranged: Canada just didn't take as many of them at as early an age in their training. And they probably have regulations against their use that are enforced.
Ofcourse a few have used steroids. But sport is so regulated now...cheating is near impossible to get away with. Especially at a higher profile.
Like Marion Jones? That's like saying Enron was an isolated case. There is always someone that will try to game the system, exploit the loophole, outright try to avoid the consequences by trying to prevent exposure of misconduct. When it becomes outrageous is when it's considered customary practice.
