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The roots of economic chaos

Posted by $ sjatkins 9 years, 4 months ago to Economics
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What Will Rogers said was once funny: "Thank God we don't get all the government we pay for!"

It isn't funny today. We get not only the government paid for by massive takings by force from all of us but even more government paid for by putting our children for generations in debt, massive borrowing and running the money printing presses like mad.

Worse this is supported by officially sanctioned economic doctrine. Keynes and latter day disciples like Krugman claim that spending and "demand" are the engines of wealth and that the only investment in production ta actually helps is from government. You couldn't make this crap up.


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  • Posted by $ HeroWorship 9 years, 4 months ago
    Ahhh, but unfortunately, you can make this stuff up, and people who want products without production will be more than happy to swallow it whole.
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  • Posted by dwlievert 9 years, 4 months ago
    SJATKINS: Just what is it that you think said consumers are using with which to "demand?"

    Are the demands of an American millionaire or a poor filth-laden slob in one of the hell-holes of the world somehow different? I think not.

    Ideally, (certainly NOT what is at work in the current economic environment wherein it is taught - and you have apparently accepted, that we can "demand" our way to prosperity) the former has REAL money that represents past production that is "unconsumed," with which to demand current and future production. On the other hand the poor wretch wishes he might be able to "demand" same, though owing to not having been able to first produce more than he has consumed, has little or nothing with which to "demand."

    "Demanding" or consuming your way to prosperity is much like f...ing on behalf of virginity.
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  • Posted by straightlinelogic 9 years, 4 months ago
    If it's economic sanity you're looking for, may I suggest the Debtonomics Archive tab at my website, Straight Line Logic, which is my own articles, and many of the articles I've featured from other writers, especially David Stockman (accessed by entering "David Stockman" in the search field).
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That same group grope has been trying on occasion to get it together for a half a century. Now they are just a bunch of grey haired and most smell bad.
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    Posted by $ allosaur 9 years, 4 months ago
    What? Me worry? Y'all take a chill pill and get in the groove.
    Let's all vote for Bernie so our kids can have a free education. Pot will be free too.
    Everything will be hunky dory. It's flower power, y'all.
    Who says we can eat our cake and have ti too?
    Excuse me. Time to contemplate my navel.

    http://www.usdebtclock.org/
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  • Posted by term2 9 years, 4 months ago
    I think government by force is basically evil. We put up with it because of the failure of us citizens to have a proper philosophical base. If we all respected human rights I don't think we would need or want government
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Ditto it's all about greed. Their greed has more sucking power than your greed. precisely because you pass control every time you vote...and wait for a miracles ....and fairy tales...

    Stop Enabling
    Take Control
    Make Change

    Or if you like the way things are going vote Democrat or Republican. Doesn't matter which. It's the same party and come to think of it they are the only ones allowed to have candidates on the ballot.

    Thanks to you.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 4 months ago in reply to this comment.
    “AS AN ECONOMIC HISTORIAN who has been studying American capitalism for 35 years, I’m going to let you in on the best-kept secret of the last century,” James Livingston wrote in a May 2011 column for the New York Times. The secret was this: “Private investment— that is, using business profits to increase productivity and output— doesn’t actually drive economic growth. Consumer debt and government spending do.” 1

    Gilder, George (2013-06-10). Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World (p. 65). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.
    1 James Livingston, Against Thrift: Why Consumer Culture Is Good for the Economy, the Environment, and Your Soul (New York: Basic Books, 2011).

    More from Livingston..
    "Between 1900 and 2000, real gross domestic product per capita (the output of goods and services per person) grew more than 600 percent. Meanwhile, net business investment declined 70 percent as a share of GDP. What’s more, in 1900, almost all investment came from the private sector— from companies, not from government— whereas in 2000, most investment was either from government spending (out of tax revenues) or “residential investment,” which means consumer spending on housing, rather than business expenditure on plants, equipment and labor. 5 Business investment is, meanwhile, an actual hazard: So corporate profits do not drive economic growth— they’re just restless sums of surplus capital, ready to flood speculative markets at home and abroad. In the 1920s, they inflated the stock market bubble, and then caused the Great Crash. Since the Reagan revolution, these superfluous profits have fed corporate mergers and takeovers, driven the dot-com craze, financed the “shadow banking” system of hedge funds and securitized investment vehicles, fueled monetary meltdowns in every hemisphere and inflated the housing bubble…. Consumer spending is not only the key to economic recovery in the short term; it’s also necessary for balanced growth in the long term…. [W] e consumers need to save less and spend more in the name of a better future. 6"
    6 Livinston, “It’s Consumer Spending, Stupid!”

    Gilder, George (2013-06-10). Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World (p. 305). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 4 months ago
    Worse the current people in charge went further than Keynes himself allowed. "This will work until you can no longer pay the interest." Having reached that point it of course failed but instead of admitting to bankruptcy they just did the deer in the head line huuuh! routine and refused to pay the bills So they no longer have the cover Keynes gave them and are standing naked. Along with those who support them. Couch potato rhetoric which requires no balls at all especially when you feathered you nest elsewhere on the planet earth.

    As for your comment on demand driven back it up with facts and prove the use of 'never' same as before couch potato rhetoric with no proofs offered.

    Nyet nyet no change the subject. Back up your statement with something besides .....nothing.
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  • Posted by $ 9 years, 4 months ago
    By design a demand driven economy can never produce true abundance. By design it has no place for innovation that massively changes what is available.
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