I can't think of any, but new technologies have been known to adjust relative military strengths, which can have a de-stablising effect.
Quite a few. Journalists have prompted any number of humanitarian campaigns to feed the hungry. Political scientists aren't as showy, but finding mechanisms to get the political system to address the problems of the poor has have fed even more. Sociologists, historians and psychologists tend to function as support staff for journalists and political scientists and probably deserve some second-hand glory.
None that I know of. That's not their area of expertise. On the other hand, those that don't know history are condemned to repeat it - or in James Arthur's case, to want to repeat it.
I believe that that is roughly what I said. I didn't make any estimate of the proportion who did exceptionally well, but "exceptional" does imply a fairly small percentage - otherwise they wouldn't stick out as "exceptions".
And will be tried again and again until it gets a bit better. We've got some crude, better-than-nothing tools that sort of work. If we can find a few more we may be able to do a bit better. We'll never eliminate all the time wasted by people trying to master skills that turn out to be beyond them - or, as in my case - not the skill that they should have been acquiring. nor the people wasted because they never got to exercise the skills where they would have excelled, but we may do better than we are doing at the moment.
Gene testing can only define your potential at birth. It's the phenome that goes through the development process. If everybody's up-bringing is perfect, then the genome becomes more useful, but an up-bringing that might have been ideal for Einstein might not have been as good for Nureyev.
Unless your job is in the humanities.
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I doubt it. A whole lot of them will become less pressing, but we've got rather too many greedy, selfish, individuals around for a simple reduction in population pressure to eliminate all problems.
The last two of them would probably go down fighting for the honour being the last greedy creep on the planet.
You mean the Fed is supposed to hijack private banks, to hide federal overspending? And pay interest on reserves to keep the banks from lending the money out?
I thought banks were for lending. And, the Fed's supposed to control how much by wiggling rates, for their ridiculous dual-mandate thing. Gorging them with loads of money, then paying them to not lend is obviously quite an extraordinary contradiction, for a different purpose.
You're saying, at bottom, that insane borrowing is supposed be some sort of safety valve. That's Keynesian, of course. But, Feds by overspending, effectively announcing an enormous taking of money but on a deferred basis--borrowing it today, charging us later--doesn't spur growth.
If you don't see the theory, you can surely see the empirical results. If you figure a trillionish in stimulus per year, multiplied by their wacky multiplier (~1.85), divided by the cost of an average job--say $60k--that should've created 31 million jobs.
If you believe they're lasting, wholesome jobs, that should be 31 million PER YEAR.
'Nuff said.
Are interest rates low because of people generating a super-abundance of excess cash, creating an excess supply of money available for loan?
Or is there excess cash for loan because people aren't starting new ventures and therefore don't need it, plus the Fed is printing more and more and more?
It's the latter.
That will eventually happen of course, regardless. The point is that there's no reason that shouldn't or couldn't have happened three years ago but for Barack Obama, and we'd be trillions ahead, with millions upon millions more jobs, of higher quality, and in sustainable industries.
Instead we'll have to try and do all that while saddled with much higher taxes, more regulations, and an enormous debt.
Somehow it always goes that way. Socialist or communist societies glide into dictatorships. Even from smaller kibbuzim I have heard comments similar to yours above. IMHO it's the nature of man. Regarding leadership it is similar to that of dogs and other animals, a large number of community members want to become alpha and then begin to duke it out until one wins.
Sad but almost inevitable over time.
I am squarely against the conditioning of people once they are adults, unless they fully agree to be conditioned. At some point one has to let them go to make choices. Else society becomes a bunch of robots.
That's what propaganda media say but it is not true. Much of the stifling is about local laws. Try opening a small company in places like CA. Whambam ... immediately you'll get hit with minimum tax (they don't care whether or not you turn a profit), myriad regulations, "fees", workers comp that is mostly out of control, stupid taxes such as the medical device tax, and on and on. Oh, ever tried to get a building permit out here? Set the alarm clock to ring in five years and then be prepared to wait some more. _That_ is what Republican usually work against and curbing such onerous regs is a very good thing.
Now we'll get a bunch of country-wide laws that will also stifle entrepreneurship and thus innovation. Laws that have already destroyed jobs. An example is a previous employer of mine, they are moving much of the operations to Costa Rica.
Ultimately such communities suffocate themselves, it's just a matter of time. Unless they are built on higher and indisputable priniciples like the Amish.
That model works since a lot longer than 100+ years. They came to America because they were driven out of Europe where they've lived this way for a very long time before that.
The model works because they follow the same lead since forever: The bible.
Let the people decide that, not government.
To me people are less of an influence. God is, and nature is.
Check out a good Lutheran church. Or another one that is fully bible-based. To me this is the future. Religions that add their own stuff to the bible or recognize the bible only in part are not true Christian religions. It says so in the bible.
It's not "hiding Federal overspending". For one, there's no way to
*DEFINE* overspending in this case. This doesn't hide Federal overspending anyway - it's a move designed to counter potential runs on banks. Bear Stearns got caught short, and there was a "run".
If we really had an objective standard for the appropriate level of spending all would be well. We don't. People think they do, but if it was an objective standard, there'd be no arguing about it.
I currently has Stockholm Syndrome with the ideas on this webpage, so
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It's not the only source that I've used. Historically, overspending has not been the primary problem with government. Spending is only bad when it crowds out real economic activity, and that happens very infrequently - like in wartime.
Retail banks, yes. iBanks, no. iBanks do "lending" but it's not like I think you mean lending... it's more akin to shorts and longs on ... things. Treating money as a commodity.
They don't even if there is a dual mandate. I mean they don't believe it any more, either. I won't defend or decry the dual mandate but some people think there are better ways - NGDP for one.
That's in the Irving Fisher/Milton Friedman/Scott Sumner tradition.
If the Fed requires higher reserves and doesn't provide the money, there would be a big shortfall in capital flows.
Otherwise we could.... you know, have firms fail. Like they're supposed to. But people think that the Depression bank runs were the cause of the Depression.
Oh wait - wasn't the Fed around during the Depression? What's up with that?
It's pre-Keynsian; the founding idea behind the Fed was to have a replacement for JP Morgan's ( the person, not the firm ) role in stopping the Panic of '04.
It's a way of selling indulgences for the "sin" of illiquidity. Iliiquidity comes from drinking your own Kool-Aid and thinking your Special Purpose Entities or CDO tranches are somehow Platonically Perfect and will be immune to the vagarities of the market.
But the study of financial panics is a large effort.
There are two things here; one is the Keynsian idea-set, and the other is the study and management of financial panics. Well, panics are all a lot the same and go back to John Law and the failure of the French Ancien Regime.
There are no actual Keynsians any more; Keynes did not hold that the financial system was to be used to counterbalance "corporations." I don't know what you call Krugman. He mainly identifies what he thinks are fallacies in what he sees as "liquidationist" ( as in Andrew W. Mellon ) positions; that this always a balance sheet problem. That is mainly people confusing stocks and flows. And he's right about that, but the stuff he proposes probably won't make any difference.
The "taking" never actually happens. That's why it's a big Kabuki theater. Yes, I know it's common to speak that it is real, and I do it, but no actual funds change hands.
i mean.... look at the iPhone. Once they got over the substantial barrier to entry and drove all the cost out, it was huge. The economy is still there, waiting. I don't see why it's "cool", but I accept that others do.
LOL! Yeah.
That sort of stimulus is pretty much nonsense. Again though, *my understanding* is that short of the liquidation of a Solyndra, it's mostly people moving money around on ledgers in the shadow banking system, and the "wavefunction" for that collapses very little.
It's like sandbags for a flood; you can move the contents of the sandbags back to where they were after the flood. It is as if the sandbags never existed. Assume you have infinitely cheap robots to do this.
No disagreement here. The economy is well past something like the CCC.
There is no way to know what the appropriate level of the money supply is. You have to observe effects and deduce that it's too low or too high.
now throw in that people aren't starting new ventures mainly because they don't think it will meet undiscovered demand, because everybody is broke ( or saving furiously ).
So when you add all this up, some people say "there may be enough money in some places, but not in the right places." Add that we've probably had very low inflation for a very long time - and that the CPI basket is a flawed measure that overstates actual inflation.
Too low inflation probably means there's not enough guardband in the money supply, and employment suffers. Yes, we had inflation in the '90s - inflation of equities.
I don't know what Obama has to do with that. I can't tell that other than stuff related to the Crash, he's done anything differently than his predecessor. But I don't "hear" the stuff that people use to differentiate between them. They still seem all but exactly the same to me. When a Rush Limbaugh starts in on Obama or ... somebody* starts in on Bush, it sounds to my ear like the basic same thing.
*can't think of a name; it's been a few years.
"Much" higher taxes? we're at historically low levels of taxation. We can absorb quite a bit more taxes, really. I don't understand how people can be against deficits and against taxes at the same time.
I understand "starve the beast" but ... good luck with that. You're up against the anthropic principle.
Of course it hides federal overspending--it's the deliberate hiding of new dollars in nooks and crannies where they can't circulate (or be seen), to prevent causing inflation. But, there WILL be inflation.
Inflation is the most likely legacy of Barack's massive spending. He/ we can't pay, so we'll inflate away the debt, and confiscate part of people's savings in the bargain. It's pent up, but it's in the pipeline.
It's easy to define. Overspending = spending more than revenues. So far this year we've spent 1.84x revenues. Is that smart? Can that continue?
If that were the purpose they wouldn't have to pay interest. If that were the purpose, we should all start banks so the federal gov't would pay us to keep virtual vaults of their money.
You're introducing a lot of unnecessary abstractions. Treasuries are paying negative effective yields today. Stocks are better. But, if you're risk-averse, you might buy Treasuries anyhow and let the gov't charge you for the privilege.
All of this illustrates how easily people are manipulated and fooled by the medium of exchange--money--and all the shell games people play with it.
If the "taking" never happens, let's print a quadrillion dollars and spread it across the country, rack it up on EBT cards and O-phones. Then a couple quadrillion more, and make the whole world rich too.
I doubt it. And I thought I explained about why they do the IOR thing. That's to provide a basis on collateralization for the banking system, not to hide spending.
We have high deficits because there's low GDP growth. We *probably* have low GDP growth because the money supply is *inadequate*. This is straight-up Milton Friedman. It's about as un-radical as economics can get.
"They" thought financial instruments would let them run the money supply leaner than they should have - since about the mid '90s - because financialization was going to reduce the risk premium. Low inflation has a political premium.
Didn't work out. We had a break for a while because there was this one-off flow of goods from China and bonds to China. That really subsided around seven years ago. Yeah, there's still a lot of Chinese good flowing in but there's no real pressure on Chinese finance people to accumulate a lot more Treasuries.
You can't run a government like a business. It doesn't work. Besides, they don't even run *businesses* that way any more.
Government debt can roll forever, *so long as there is growth*. This is the way it's been done for centuries. You can't just point to France and say "see" - had France been viable as a state, they would have recovered ( as the Dutch did ).
The British have had regime-threatening panics. the one in 1870 was a near thing. But they managed, because Britain is inherently politically stable. The US had the Civil war and survived.
Now, I'd kind of like to see the money supply be private myself, but that might as well be science fiction. We have to have government control of the money supply because it's expected. The next best thing is to use markets and good models of growth to manage the money supply. But they are always fighting the last war, which is why I posted the link to a Scott Sumner piece...
It will if it has to, but I'd hope we'll wise up and figure out why GDP growth is anemic.
I've never thought about that, so - that makes sense. I don't hold that interest rates work well as a regulatory element anyway.
Heh!
I am making it as simple as I can. All the abstractions end up being necessary, at least as I've found. But don't take my word for it; go read up. Micheal Lewis is an excellent start.
*None* of the stories on why there was a panic in 2008 hold up until you get to the basic "Bear Stearns went for overnight repo and was turned down", and that's a liquidity story.
Aye.
... or buy gold, bottled water, ammo, canned goods...
but "playing a game" isn't the primary objective; it's just something that emerges. It's the whole... kludgeocracy thing.
Leavenworth is cold this time of year... very cold....
Socialist countries don't glide into dictatorships. Communist countries are oligarchies, by definition, and have glided in and out of dictatorship. There's no doubt that Stalin was a dictator, but none of his successors had that kind of power, or that kind of psychosis.
Maybe too many of them want to start at the top and won't take a lower job like paralegal, paramedic, paraecologist or whatever. The health care industry might do better with more clinics staffed with PA's and practitioners, instead of expensive doctors. And most legal work can be done by paralegals, and less attorneys. But they all want the big bucks to start, so they live in their parents basement dreaming about it. A job at McDonald's would be better.
-Bill
.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
If you can ignore the fact that James Arthur is the shallow end.
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It's a nice idea. Somebody to track James Arthur, and dump on him whenever he cites a statistic which - taken in a broader context - actually destroys the argument he's making. Or claims that FDR's New Deal didn't end the great Recession in the US. Or that Bastiat died before the 1848 revolution in France, rather than before Louis Napoleon's 1851 coup d'etat.
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Some of the previously unemployed must have died, got shot, retired or emmigrated. If the Californian unemployment rate is 7.9% - the current US average - you'd only need to lose 380. Someone going postal an employment centre might do it. If there weren' t any photogenic kids around to get shot, it probably wouldn't have made the national news.
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They can't be picky about their employers if they are willing to work for you. They may not be representative.
Of course, if the AMA wasn't quite so enthusiastic about practicing "professional birth control", there would be more doctors around, and they wouldn't be quite as expensive.
The US is all about people with unfair advantages keeping a firm grip on those unfair advantages. That's what the founding tax evaders wanted, and that's what they got.
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