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On September 16 2013 07:23 sam!zdat wrote:
I hope the dissolution of the republican party will mean that the democratic party can split and people who care about things like ecology and anti-neoliberalism will actually be represented and not held hostage to democrats because the opposition are a bunch of terrifying lunatics. Time for the US to have an actual Left, as opposed to two center-right parties (who differ on sexy cosmetic social issues but not much else)
A non center right party isn't electable in a center right country. This isn't a question of ideology but mathematical Inevitability.
Idealism isn't going to help anyone at any point, it just hurts the people who legitimately want change. Just look at obama.
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On September 16 2013 07:23 sam!zdat wrote:
I hope the dissolution of the republican party will mean that the democratic party can split and people who care about things like ecology and anti-neoliberalism will actually be represented and not held hostage to democrats because the opposition are a bunch of terrifying lunatics. Time for the US to have an actual Left, as opposed to two center-right parties (who differ on sexy cosmetic social issues but not much else)
I'd like to see the ignorant right go away. I wouldn't want to see the ignorant left come into power.
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lets see how long the country stays center right when a new generation which has already lived through one financial crisis and had their american dreams dashed lives through the next one coming up as well. There's a whole bunch of young people who will never have stable employment bubbling up through our demographics
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And you think this new generation growing up in the age of the supposed left controlling the country will make them sympathetic to the lefts cause?
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United States43989 Posts
I can't imagine many Obama supporters from 2008 are feeling particularly happy with the way things worked out, it's only the terrifying spectre of the Republicans that keeps it all together.
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United States43989 Posts
On September 16 2013 07:32 Sermokala wrote:
And you think this new generation growing up in the age of the supposed left controlling the country will make them sympathetic to the lefts cause?
It's likely to make them get pissed off whenever a millionaire tells them that if they can't support their families it's because they're not trying hard enough to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
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On September 16 2013 07:31 sam!zdat wrote:
lets see how long the country stays center right when a new generation which has already lived through one financial crisis and had their american dreams dashed lives through the next one coming up as well. There's a whole bunch of young people who will never have stable employment bubbling up through our demographics
There's also a lot of well educated young people. I don't think ignorant populism will take over any time soon.
Edit: if it was going to it would have with OWS.
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they're going to realize that obama has never been and never will be 'Left'.
I'm a disillusioned obama voter. I voted for him the first time because I had never known anything besides bush. Then I realized there was nothing Left about him (hes from uchicago for crying out loud) and didn't vote for him the second time. Once the whole gay people thing blows over the dems are going to run out of easy cultural issue ammunition to bamboozle young people into thinking they are anything other than a bunch of neoliberals like the republicans.
edit: the idea that OWS was the final chance of the left is absurd, the big crisis hasn't even hit yet we are still kicking the can down the road (like with this QE which you think is oh so complicated and subtle in order to avoid ever having to have an opinion about)
edit: OWS just the first cracks in the cold war ice. That glacier's starting to break up my friend, and nothing better than another market crash to melt it. And the market WILL crash once we sstop artificially propping it up with magic QE which, according to jonnylogic, nobody understands so it must be good
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United States43989 Posts
Can you talk me through exactly how this crash works? Because as long as people want stuff and are producing stuff and are willing to trade the stuff they produce for the stuff they want the survival of the economy in some shape or form seems pretty inevitable, doesn't it? There's only so much damage finance can do, the foundation of the exchange of labour, goods and services is a constant.
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On September 16 2013 07:41 sam!zdat wrote:
they're going to realize that obama has never been and never will be 'Left'.
I'm a disillusioned obama voter. I voted for him the first time because I had never known anything besides bush. Then I realized there was nothing Left about him (hes from uchicago for crying out loud) and didn't vote for him the second time. Once the whole gay people thing blows over the dems are going to run out of easy cultural issue ammunition to bamboozle young people into thinking they are anything other than a bunch of neoliberals like the republicans.
edit: the idea that OWS was the final chance of the left is absurd, the big crisis hasn't even hit yet we are still kicking the can down the road (like with this QE which you think is oh so complicated and subtle in order to avoid ever having to have an opinion about)
edit: OWS just the first cracks in the cold war ice. That glacier's starting to break up my friend, and nothing better than another market crash to melt it. And the market WILL crash once we sstop artificially propping it up with magic QE which, according to jonnylogic, nobody understands so it must be good
My current opinion on QE is that it's doubtful that it's doing any good.
My problem with your opinion is that you don't understand things like QE. You see them as magic, and run away scared.
Your post reminds me of the the religious zealots who keep prognosticating the end of the world.
For those who are interested, here's a fair outline of QE's pluses and minuses:
+ Show Spoiler +QE is good for the economy because:
1) Signaling channel (reinforces signal of rates policy)
2) Asset inflation channel
3) Portfolio rebalancing channel
4) Bolsters some kinds of extant collateral (houses, riskier assets)
5) Bigger monetary base => higher inflation expectations
QE is bad for the economy because:
1) Signaling effects unclear, easy to bungle signal (see: Bernanke, May-June 2013)
2.1) Removes rehypothecable collateral from financial system
2.2) Removes safe asset that’s better than what it gets swapped for (IOER)
3) Asset inflation mainly helps the people with assets. Also: bubbles!
4) Causes weird market functioning effects related to Treasury and MBS liquidity
Link
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Sam, it's a trap, don't argue with this English capitalist. He got DEB and now he is after you.
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because right now the economy is on life support and we have no exit strategy. The life support isn't even actually helping the economy it's just inflating assets of people who already have wealth.
the problem is jobs. Just because people want stuff doesn't mean that they have an opportunity to work to get it, when more and more stuff can be made with fewer and fewer people (and, even more importantly, fewer and fewer AMERICANS). Technological unemployment will only accelerate (remember our 90s 'boom' was based on a sector whose raison d'etre is technological unemployment). And we ran out of ways to keep people busy 30 years ago. We've simply 'innovated' human beings out of the economy.
there will never be any job-creating economic recovery ever again. There will only ever be jobless recoveries. That is a recipe for social instability and an opportunity for left politics (also, of course, an opportunity for caesarism and fascism, that's the trouble)
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On September 16 2013 07:58 Boblion wrote:
Sam, it's a trap, don't argue with this English capitalist. He got DEB and now he is after you.
You're so dramatic I love it XD. How could you not want this?? Reading Sam's posts is one of the most entertaining things you can do, especially when he gets in a heated argument  . Besides I'm interested in hearing how the market can crash.
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On September 16 2013 08:03 sam!zdat wrote:
because right now the economy is on life support and we have no exit strategy. The life support isn't even actually helping the economy it's just inflating assets of people who already have wealth.
the problem is jobs. Just because people want stuff doesn't mean that they have an opportunity to work to get it, when more and more stuff can be made with fewer and fewer people (and, even more importantly, fewer and fewer AMERICANS). Technological unemployment will only accelerate (remember our 90s 'boom' was based on a sector whose raison d'etre is technological unemployment). And we ran out of ways to keep people busy 30 years ago. We've simply 'innovated' human beings out of the economy.
there will never be any job-creating economic recovery ever again. There will only ever be jobless recoveries. That is a recipe for social instability and an opportunity for left politics (also, of course, an opportunity for caesarism and fascism, that's the trouble)
Do you think that we're in a post scarcity environment or not? You seem to be saying that here (can't find more work for people), but you've dismissed such thinking before as capitalist nonsense.
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On September 16 2013 08:03 sam!zdat wrote:
because right now the economy is on life support and we have no exit strategy. The life support isn't even actually helping the economy it's just inflating assets of people who already have wealth.
the problem is jobs. Just because people want stuff doesn't mean that they have an opportunity to work to get it, when more and more stuff can be made with fewer and fewer people (and, even more importantly, fewer and fewer AMERICANS). Technological unemployment will only accelerate (remember our 90s 'boom' was based on a sector whose raison d'etre is technological unemployment). And we ran out of ways to keep people busy 30 years ago. We've simply 'innovated' human beings out of the economy.
there will never be any job-creating economic recovery ever again. There will only ever be jobless recoveries. That is a recipe for social instability and an opportunity for left politics (also, of course, an opportunity for caesarism and fascism, that's the trouble)
I'm pretty sure this is the same exact argument that they had back in the day when the industrial revolution hit the world.
Making more stuff is just going to make that stuff cheaper allowing people to buy more stuff. The great economic lie is that economics is a thing.
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United States43989 Posts
On September 16 2013 08:03 sam!zdat wrote:
because right now the economy is on life support and we have no exit strategy. The life support isn't even actually helping the economy it's just inflating assets of people who already have wealth.
the problem is jobs. Just because people want stuff doesn't mean that they have an opportunity to work to get it, when more and more stuff can be made with fewer and fewer people (and, even more importantly, fewer and fewer AMERICANS). Technological unemployment will only accelerate (remember our 90s 'boom' was based on a sector whose raison d'etre is technological unemployment). And we ran out of ways to keep people busy 30 years ago. We've simply 'innovated' human beings out of the economy.
there will never be any job-creating economic recovery ever again. There will only ever be jobless recoveries. That is a recipe for social instability and an opportunity for left politics (also, of course, an opportunity for caesarism and fascism, that's the trouble)
I don't follow. If the problem is that there is simply not enough labour involved in the creation of the stuff we want how is that a problem? If previously the total labour requirement of society/number of people in society was 40 hours per person per week and now it's 20 hours per person per week then that's a colossal success for everyone involved and we can all go home early.
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On September 16 2013 08:10 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 08:03 sam!zdat wrote:
because right now the economy is on life support and we have no exit strategy. The life support isn't even actually helping the economy it's just inflating assets of people who already have wealth.
the problem is jobs. Just because people want stuff doesn't mean that they have an opportunity to work to get it, when more and more stuff can be made with fewer and fewer people (and, even more importantly, fewer and fewer AMERICANS). Technological unemployment will only accelerate (remember our 90s 'boom' was based on a sector whose raison d'etre is technological unemployment). And we ran out of ways to keep people busy 30 years ago. We've simply 'innovated' human beings out of the economy.
there will never be any job-creating economic recovery ever again. There will only ever be jobless recoveries. That is a recipe for social instability and an opportunity for left politics (also, of course, an opportunity for caesarism and fascism, that's the trouble) I don't follow. If the problem is that there is simply not enough labour involved in the creation of the stuff we want how is that a problem? If previously the total labour requirement of society/number of people in society was 40 hours per person per week and now it's 20 hours per person per week then that's a colossal success for everyone involved and we can all go home early.
It's a distributional problem. For example it may not be practical / efficient / culturally accepted to break up work into two 20 hr work weeks rather than a single 40 hr workweek. If so one person wins and one person loses, unless there's a way to distribute from the winner to the loser in an acceptable way.
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capitalism artificially manufactures scarcity. This is why you have to believe that all use-value is a sacrosanct subjective thing about which nobody may judge.
i've lived at right about the poverty line for the last two years. At this same time, I was one of the richest human beings who ever lived.
this is all separate from the issue of technological unemployment, which is about the fact that as the organic composition of capital increases due to technological 'innovation' you have to open up new industries in order to employ people (or just give them sustenance but that threatens the social order). But the problem is that we have everything that we need already (and more).
post scarcity is kind of a stupid concept however because we are stealing our abundance from the future (through exploitation of nonrenewable resources construed broadly).
edit:yes kwark we SHOULD go home early. But we can't because that's not how the system works. But this is why advocating a shorter working week has been a mainstay of left politics (but then you have problems competing with labor forces in other countries)
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United States43989 Posts
On September 16 2013 08:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 08:10 KwarK wrote:On September 16 2013 08:03 sam!zdat wrote:
because right now the economy is on life support and we have no exit strategy. The life support isn't even actually helping the economy it's just inflating assets of people who already have wealth.
the problem is jobs. Just because people want stuff doesn't mean that they have an opportunity to work to get it, when more and more stuff can be made with fewer and fewer people (and, even more importantly, fewer and fewer AMERICANS). Technological unemployment will only accelerate (remember our 90s 'boom' was based on a sector whose raison d'etre is technological unemployment). And we ran out of ways to keep people busy 30 years ago. We've simply 'innovated' human beings out of the economy.
there will never be any job-creating economic recovery ever again. There will only ever be jobless recoveries. That is a recipe for social instability and an opportunity for left politics (also, of course, an opportunity for caesarism and fascism, that's the trouble) I don't follow. If the problem is that there is simply not enough labour involved in the creation of the stuff we want how is that a problem? If previously the total labour requirement of society/number of people in society was 40 hours per person per week and now it's 20 hours per person per week then that's a colossal success for everyone involved and we can all go home early. It's a distributional problem. For example it may not be practical / efficient / culturally accepted to break up work into two 20 hr work weeks rather than a single 40 hr workweek. If so one person wins and one person loses, unless there's a way to distribute from the winner to the loser in an acceptable way.
At which point redistribution, both by government and by the invisible hand, come into play. If some of the guys are rolling in money from their twice normal hours and other dudes have no money from not working at all then the dudes with the money are gonna want some servants and suddenly their take home income is nearer 30 hours and the guys who were unemployed are up at 10.
Prosperity changes the basis of the economy but the rules remain unchanged.
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they don't want servants they want robots.
this is your english fantasy about the old country house system :p
liberals believe in a say's law for jobs. It's just not like that
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EPT
