interesting economic opinions

There are lots of ways to fix the country, starting with de-electing the demotivating job-killer-in-chief, Obama.

Simplify the tax system--flat tax, etc., that can save $400 billion a year in tax compliance alone. That's *real* stimulus--it saves time, energy, and creativity wasted on taxes. 2.6% instant growth, for free (not to mention the multipliers).

If we could just 1099 temps instead of having to buy them+kin outright, employment and innovation would soar.

We could be far more energy self-sufficient, if Obama would let us. That's worth a couple hundred billion a year too.

Stop spending twice our income--that kills jobs, and it's stupid.

The US needn't collapse--it's completely preventable.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Renouncing endemic tax avoidance might work better, but is even less likely.

Sure. And pigs have wings. Note that James Arthur doesn't seem to want to simplify away the thousands of tax loop-holes that make the US the country with one of the highest nominal rates of corporate taxation and one of the lowest rates of corporate tax collection.

The US offers less employee security than Europe and has a higher rate of unemployment. It's perfectly obvious that if it became even less like Europe on employment security, unemployment would suddenly fall below European levels.

Of course you then run the longer-term risk of melting the Greenland ice sheet and submerging all your ports, and might even get to turn off the Gulf Stream and stage a re-run of the Younger Dryas, but James Arthur lacks the wit - and the background knowledge - to appreciate the existence of this kind of risk.

It actually dropped unemployment from 10.1% to the current 9.1%, but the jobs James Arthur are referring to come from his flat-earth economic theories rather than any kind of real-world situation.

For every complex problem there are any number of simple, plausible solutions that won't acutally work. James Arthur and the Daily Telegraph can be relied on to draw them to our attention.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

The Daily Telegraph does specialise in telling right-wing nit-wits what they want to hear.

If the US uses hydraulic fracturing to free itself from importing foreign oil at the cost of doubling its already extravagant CO2 emissions, its economy is going to get screwed up by anthropogenic global warming even faster than it is at the moment. Happily, it isn't going to happen over-night, and there's a chance that there will be enough climate-generated problems to put the program on hold before we hit any of the interesting tipping points.

Meanwhile, John Larkin seems to manage to ignore the fact that he lives in the US version of Greece, where the residents refuse to pay more local taxes and still expect progressively more municipal services ...

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

On a sunny day (Sun, 23 Oct 2011 16:30:27 -0700) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

Better watch Disney channel, at least that is true in itself.

The Daily Telegraph does have a lot in common with the Disney channel

- it produces fantasies that gratify those whose critical faculties aren't sufficiently well-developed to reject fantasy as an irrelevant waste of time.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

That's insane. Natural gas is mostly methane, which has 4 hydrogens for each carbon. Liquid hydrocarbons are a lot worse. I thought you used to be a chemist.

Happily, it isn't

California is some version of Greece? Equally insane. Between my business and my personal properties, I pay about $40k a year in local property taxes. I wonder how many Greeks pay that much.

Plus there's at least a dozen other city/state/federal taxes and fees we pay, which add up to a lot more than $40K. We evade none of them. I'd be delighted with less municipal services.

You're on the dole, so naturally you want other people to pay.

John

The US has lots of technology, lots of resources, lots of great educational institutions, lots of food, lots of land, and lots of babies.

John

Liquid hydrocarbons as close to nxCH2, and coal is nostly carbon. Burning methane generates less CO2 per watt than burning gasoline, and less again than burning coal, but hydraulic fracturing is aimed at getting gas out of coal seams and shale beds, and seems to involve burning quite a lot of the hydrocarbon mix underground to get some kind of inflamable gas to the surface, along with the CO2 produced in the process of freeing up the stuff you can extract and sell.

It doesn't produce methane on it is own, and the carbon budget is going to look a lot more like shale bed extraction.

Even ex-chemists pay attention tot his kind of detail, which may not register with the less well-informed.

Quite a few. There are profitable businesses in Greece, and they can't avoid paying some taxes.

You are pretty well-off, and consequently less in need of municipal services than most.

I haven't been "on the dole" since I turned 65 nearly three years ago. I do get some Dutch pension payments, but I've deferred my various British pension payments until the end of next year, when my wife's salary will be reduced.

I'm in favour of municipal services that work - as opposed to John Kenneth Gailbraith's "private affluence and public squalor" -

and I'm happy to pay for them. They mostly come out of our local council rates which are insensitive to my employment status.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

But a diabolically antiquated electoral system that puts an unhealthy amount of political influence in the hands of the wealthy, giving you a political set-up that essentially legalises Greek-style tax evasion, though primarily for people with loads of money.

And your primary and secondary education is paid for by the municipality, not the state or federal governments, so all those babies aren't all going to get a respectable primary and secondary education, rather reducing the advantage you can get out of your world- class tertiary education institutions, which aren't - in any event - all that accessible to the children of the less well-off (unless they can score well enough on the admission exams to qualify for scholarships).

And the food seems to score better on quantity than quality. You don't have much trouble with starvation, but obesity is killing a lot of Americans. Something like 1 in 3 Ameircans are expected to get type 2

- which used to be adult-onset - diabetes at some stage in their career.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Usenet has lots of babies. They are easy to spot, because they keep nymshifting.

Absolutely wrong.

John

You're going to need more Chinese and Indian CEO's to manage that resurgent economy. Do you think they'll be hiring Americans as local managers? Why bother? Their kids already speak better English, and they know calculus too.

-- Joe

You'd like to think so. Maybe you should have read a bit more of the text before posting the URL - which I had read, but it wasn't my only source.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

We look especially good next to those under-regulated (>:-) Europeans.

(The comments are particularly biting.

"Before the Euro, Greece [financed socialism] by raising loans and then defaulting on them. They did this over and over, so that defaulting on loans became part of their GDP.

Investors got wise to this, and Greece interest rates rose to 10-15%, but then they joined the Euro, interest rates came down sharply and they went on an orgy of borrowing,[...]"

Keynesian stimulus! )

-- Cheers, James Arthur

in

...

Check this out James, Greek 1-Year Bond Yield Hits 189% (October 21).

-Bill

Beware of Greek bearer bonds!

John

in

...

In a situation where as - Keynes pointed out - it would lead to insatiable demand and consequently inflation, except that once Greece had joined the euro-zone, they weren't free to let their currency inflate. Business as usual suddenly stopped working.

Since - according to you - Keynesian stimulus doesn't work, you've just admitted that your flat earth economic theories are rubbish.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

On a sunny day (Mon, 24 Oct 2011 08:39:06 -0700) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

OK, first I wrote this late last night and was really tired, and did not want to send it because it was so negative. But I will send it anyways as this is what I think of the current situation.

I noticed the late Tom Jimpson mention that more republican babies argument a few days ago, you must have read my reply (Jackrabbit in Arizona). Now I see the same republican jive on that UK newspaper site. Maybe they try to attract blacks away from Obama, as those are really into f*cking. Lots of white countries have low birth rates, and are getting grey. So, to make a long story short, once N America becomes like Somalia, and not only financially, reproduction will have to keep up with death from bad nourishment, diseases, fights between war lords, what not, you get the idea.

If this is the republican agenda that they want to grab the next presidency with, then it is really really sad.

Roman empire, there was an interesting documentary on German TV about how emperor Augustinus managed to restore old values after Cesar got murdered. But what came after him was the end of that empire. He killed everybody from Cesar's blood line who could claim to be the next emperor... The Bush family... Obama is already .. well eh.. anyways,. in your arguments you mention technology. You are wrong, 30 or was it 40 years ago they could go to the moon and come back. I bought some US products, they are not that good. Aviation, A380... TV, ATSC, cars plenty still needs doing there, many other fields, Europe and China is ahead... The Russians put your people into space... I think if this keeps up, the Chinese will walk on mars first. After all it is called the 'red planet'. But worst of all the republicans and democrats dual political system destroys the US. No leader with vision. And people revolt, like occupy wallstreet etc...

That leaves weapons and war for the US, and they try so hard to destabilise Europe. For 15 years, ever since Soros gave that lecture at some university, about destabilising Europe, I have been mentioning that again and again, [ it made me buy his book 'The Alchemy of Finance"] The demon-rats are trying to destroy the Euro by short selling and false valuations just according to that Soros plan.

The Roman empire fell because it made enemies out of all the so hard won allies. US is trying so hard, Obama is the lord of darkness, by his work you shall know him, chaos and destruction everywhere. The US plan may be to get ultra right in Europe rising again, the left will rise too, then they will play the right and the left against each other.. But you know, even we learn from history, and soon everybody and their dog will have the bomb. So total annihilation it is then, Somalia of N America.

OK, and then I add that I am not absolutely sure about Europe learning from history.. ;-)

John, US could be saved by a leader with vision, who inspires the people. Know anybody over there? I don't, last republican nominates? confrontation was jut a lot of bickering. So not from that corner, and demon-rats? No way, Obama is not the one, that is clear.

On a sunny day (Mon, 24 Oct 2011 07:09:23 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Bill Sloman wrote in :

Disney channel is advertised as such, but The Telegraph is as news or truth.

The papers or the press is really a pawn of the political system, and its service is to guide the cattle (to the slaughter house if must be).

Fantasy is big business [Hollywood], Cesar had 'bread and games', made him loved by the people, managing the masses is what politics is all about.

But the blind leading the blind usually results in an accident.

So war after war comes over humanity, what does not kill you makes you stronger hehe.

In the bigger aspect of things big stars swallow little stars, galaxies collide, big bangs banged, and we, we rule our world. Or do we?