2010 federal spending. Renewable energy research is a small percentage of the (reading clockwise) third red section of that pie chart - Department of Energy. Their entire yearly funding is down to the single digits of Billions, whereas our budget problems are in the thousands of billions.
How is this relevant whatsoever to what I said? You keep going on a different topic than I'm mentioning. What I'm saying is that we shouldn't focus on investing heavily into that market, in the current state of things. What that means is I'm saying we shouldn't increase spending into that category by pumping $10+ billion into it.
How in the world is the 2010 budget relevant to the debate on the future? If I'm saying we shouldn't pump a ton of money into an industry, your argument that "we're already not putting much in at all" is wholly irrelevant.
I editted my last post, so I'll put it here, too.
Our short term would be FINE if these fucking, so-called job-creators were doing their jobs by creating jobs!
So, what do you do, when these people aren't going to distribute that wealth for everyone's, including their OWN, benefit?
FYI, we've tried the tax incentive route for several years now, and still nothing.
And I think your perception of what constitutes a 'heavy investment' is skewed. Renewable energy costs went from $8B to $13B from 2010 to 2011. That's about 50% increase. That seems like a lot, until you look at it relative to the 5-10% increase in Department of Defense spending year-by-year.
are you really that ignorant? if it was in their interest to create jobs... they would, but it's not, because the cost of labor is too high, and the current interest rates are unsustainably low...
you and whitewing both understand economics so poorly, that it's almost futile to argue with you because you think that bad is good.
Oh please, get off your high horse, you pretentious ass. I understand micro and macroeconomics perfectly fine. $8-$13 B in government spending barely makes a dent. Pretending otherwise is nothing short of the same kind of childish opportunism that Conservatives are using to try and make these policies look bad to further their own agenda. You could take all of the money out of these 'UTTERLY WASTEFUL GOVERNMENT PROJECTS', and still come woefully short of fixing the current budget.
Isn't that the EXACT same kind of thinking that leads these so-called economists to predict that letting the Bush tax cuts would ONLY make an $800 B a year dent...wait. $800 B? That sounds like an awful lot similar to the entire Congressional discretionary spending budget.
Yeah, you have it exactly right, there are no jobs because they're cowards. The business world is currently locked up in this stupid self-fulfilling prophecy of a double-dip recession. Let me paint a picture for you:
Investors the world over hear news that a double-dip recession COULD happen (only because it has happened in the past. Presently, zero evidence of it occurring)
Something happens in the global markets causes some mischief. Fairly minor in general (e.g. US credit rating drop by a trivial amount from some obscure agency nobody had ever heard of until now, more repetition of the 'fear' of Greece defaulting, some oil derrick explodes, some backwater country that doesn't have shit to do with anything has a democratic revolution).
Investors see this as a coming of the prophecy and start pulling money out to prevent them losing money.
More jobs are lost as a result of investors 'turtling up' for the coming apocalypse. Now there's plenty of evidence of a double-dip recession on the way, caused by the very same people who were terrified of it to begin with.
Repeat ad nauseum.
It's easy to predict the future when you create it.
How did you acquire such a good understanding of economics without ever hearing of Standard and Poor's?
Oh I'm sorry, I was under the impression that you don't LEARN economics itself from reading the financial columns of a newspaper. I've got better things to do with my time than read business columns and try to discern which of a million so-called economists believe they can predict the future better than the rest. Willing to bet most people in the entire world had never heard of S&P until this Summer, and many more still don't.
Attack the argument, not the poster, if you wouldn't mind.
I actually can't figure out what your argument is. It seems to be that we should keep wasting money on green subsidies because we waste more money on other things anyway? Or maybe not...? If that's your argument it hardly seems worth attacking.
My point, I guess, is that anyone can have an opinion. But in order to have an informed opinion you need to actually be knowledgeable about the subject. I don't understand how you can be so dead certain about your beliefs when you (like all of us) still have a lot to learn about the way the world works.
You must be joking. Do I need to know the name of Newton's first pet to understand how gravity works, too?
Knowing what a credit agency DOES, and the names of every single one on the entire planet, are two very different things.
If you're too lazy to read to understand the argument (good lord, how many times have I used the words 'pocket change' up until now? I feel like a broken record), and too childish to prevent yourself from attacking the poster, rather than the argument, then I'm done responding to you until you can act like an adult.
Yes, it's clear that I need to stop attacking the poster. Sorry about that.
There are only 3 major credit rating agencies, and if you read much about this stuff you can't help but be familiar with them. This is basic stuff. If you were to start casting SC2 games and you didn't know the names of some of the units ("oh, wow, those tall thingies have laser beams!") then no one would take you seriously there either.
Still waiting. If your ultimate goal is to stop me posting, because you simply disagree with what I'm saying, you're really going to have to try harder than this.
On September 27 2011 01:49 FabledIntegral wrote: [quote]
Because I believe the green subsidies are even larger, but don't quote me on it. Regardless I think we should get rid of most subsidies overall.
[quote]
I think you're going on an entirely different topic than I was originally mentioning. I never said green jobs were intrinsically bad nor did I say there is no demand for green products. Rather, in the current state of the economy, I'm advocating that investing heavily into the green market should not be a priority on the agenda.
Why not? Again, it's pocket change. Even amidst this current jobs market, people should still have the common sense to save away money into their 401k, even if it is only a small amount. Renewable energy funding is merely the government doing the same thing. What, because we're spending umpteen fucking bajillions on a military that has nobody left to kill, and continuing tax breaks for the 'job creators' who STILL aren't creating jobs despite those tax breaks being held in place for another year, we should drop all of these mini projects to make up the numbers? Fuck that shit.
Nobody in politics has the cajones to talk about the elephants in the room (the big bills, which also includes other things like Social Security and Medicare) while we sit here fighting, bickering and arguing over that tiny fraction of money we're saving for our kid's college fund every week.
Investing heavily =! pocket change.
And I think the pocket change argument is stupid itself. Even if we are being retarded with the military, which I agree with you, it doesn't mean that we should be retarded or less cautious elsewhere.
2010 federal spending. Renewable energy research is a small percentage of the (reading clockwise) third red section of that pie chart - Department of Energy. Their entire yearly funding is down to the single digits of Billions, whereas our budget problems are in the thousands of billions.
How is this relevant whatsoever to what I said? You keep going on a different topic than I'm mentioning. What I'm saying is that we shouldn't focus on investing heavily into that market, in the current state of things. What that means is I'm saying we shouldn't increase spending into that category by pumping $10+ billion into it.
How in the world is the 2010 budget relevant to the debate on the future? If I'm saying we shouldn't pump a ton of money into an industry, your argument that "we're already not putting much in at all" is wholly irrelevant.
I editted my last post, so I'll put it here, too.
Our short term would be FINE if these fucking, so-called job-creators were doing their jobs by creating jobs!
So, what do you do, when these people aren't going to distribute that wealth for everyone's, including their OWN, benefit?
FYI, we've tried the tax incentive route for several years now, and still nothing.
And I think your perception of what constitutes a 'heavy investment' is skewed. Renewable energy costs went from $8B to $13B from 2010 to 2011. That's about 50% increase. That seems like a lot, until you look at it relative to the 5-10% increase in Department of Defense spending year-by-year.
are you really that ignorant? if it was in their interest to create jobs... they would, but it's not, because the cost of labor is too high, and the current interest rates are unsustainably low...
you and whitewing both understand economics so poorly, that it's almost futile to argue with you because you think that bad is good.
Oh please, get off your high horse, you pretentious ass. I understand micro and macroeconomics perfectly fine. $8-$13 B in government spending barely makes a dent. Pretending otherwise is nothing short of the same kind of childish opportunism that Conservatives are using to try and make these policies look bad to further their own agenda. You could take all of the money out of these 'UTTERLY WASTEFUL GOVERNMENT PROJECTS', and still come woefully short of fixing the current budget.
i wasn't talking about your ideas about environmental spending, i'm talking about your ideas on why jobs aren't being created.
Isn't that the EXACT same kind of thinking that leads these so-called economists to predict that letting the Bush tax cuts would ONLY make an $800 B a year dent...wait. $800 B? That sounds like an awful lot similar to the entire Congressional discretionary spending budget.
What? no it's not. Tax cuts don't really help either.
Yeah, you have it exactly right, there are no jobs because they're cowards. The business world is currently locked up in this stupid self-fulfilling prophecy of a double-dip recession. Let me paint a picture for you:
they're not cowards... they have finally gotten smart enough to understand that the government is trying to manipulate them into poor business decisions (see technology and housing bubbles.) So they know that they're better off not investing when the situation is so unstable.
Investors the world over hear news that a double-dip recession COULD happen (only because it has happened in the past. Presently, zero evidence of it occurring)
Something happens in the global markets cases some mischief. Fairly minor in general (e.g. US credit rating drop by a trivial amount from some obscure agency nobody had ever heard of until now, more repetition of the 'fear' of Greece defaulting, some oil derrick explodes, some backwater country that doesn't have shit to do with anything has a democratic revolution).
Or maybe investors realize that US treasury really isn't secure, because the debt will either not get paid back, or it will get paid back with an over-inflated currency.
Investors see this as a coming of the prophecy and start pulling money out to prevent them losing money.
More jobs are lost as a result of investors 'turtling up' for the coming apocalypse. Now there's plenty of evidence of a double-dip recession on the way, caused by the very same people who were terrified of it to begin with.
Repeat ad nauseum.
It's easy to predict the future when you create it.
Do you not understand that the low interest rates are there to TRICK investors into putting their money into the market, because low interest rates is normally a sign of people saving, which is usually a sign of cheaper resources which makes investing a good idea into projects that will utilize these resourcse...
Except now the investors aren't having anymore of this economic manipulation, so the only other thing that could push them into investing is an even higher inflation, the actual value of which is actually already really alarming. Of course luckily for people that have money there's still a place where they can hide their money from the big bad government and that's in commodities, and if you look at those it becomes brutally obvious what a farce this government's attempt at a recovery has been.
The very same people that pulled money out of their businesses when the US went through the credit drop back in August put that money into...
you guessed it...
US treasury bonds.
Well yes... obviously, US treasury make a sound investment if you actually believe the phony 1-2% inflation numbers that the government gives you.
but look at the yeilds of the government bonds, a lot of them are near their all time lows.
is it because the demand for them is so big? lol that could be a part of it, but maybe it's also because the money they're gonna use comes from the FED which is setting the rates low, and the government can't afford to give out bonds with a rate higher than the FED's rate.
They didn't feel secure investing in the jobs of the country and it's prosperity, but they were more than willing to invest in, STILL, the safest place to put their money despite the reduction in confidence that caused them to pull that money out in the first place. I could not even hope to dream of a greater irony than that in a hundred years.
... Those that are investing in government bonds are simply making a mistake... they realize that there's no real investments to be made in the market, because the resources aren't going down in price like low interest rates would normally suggest, it's just the money supply is growing, they jsut still haven't realized that the government bond yields don't compensate for the real inflation... unfortunately if you're trying to invest into a project that requires resources to sustain it, while the low interest rates certainly make it look inviting, the high inflation will come back and kick you in the ass making most businesses not sustainable in the long term.
Trick them? Please. It's an incentive, nothing more.
but it's actually not an incentive if you think ahead. It's actually incredibly unsafe.
Tricking them would be having low interest rates knowing absolutely full 100% damn well the country is going to get hit by a meteor tomorrow. Truth is, they're simply unwilling to invest, because nobody else is. We'll have to sit and wait for some ballsy guy to bring along the next big product that storms the market, before they start to realize that they're literally spooked over nothing. I hope it comes quick, because the longer they wait, the less likely that will happen.
If you have a good enough product, then sure you can probably make a business that would survive in any economy, but this economy is absolutely horrible for investments.
In fact if you consider your potential client-base, which has great incentives currently to go into debt, and you think ahead, you would see that in the future it would have even less money to spend on your products/services than it has now, because there's not enough savings... Sure average personal debts are slowly going down in America, but people need to eliminate their debt before they can even start to save, which would be an indication that they are able to spend more in the future, thus providing a real incentive for investing.
On September 27 2011 06:49 Bibdy wrote: Still waiting.
You're probably going to be waiting a long time. Most of the arguments by him and his "colleagues" hinge on economic theory which doesn't stand up to quantitative scrutiny. They're much more at home debating the ideas behind the man in the cave than postulating ideas about macro and micro economic theory. It would take nothing short of anarchy before they realized that the free market wasn't the end-all answer to every problem. They're so blinded by their own rhetoric that they can't even see how the free market intervention in traditionally government organizations is part of why our country faces the sizable debt.
On September 25 2011 22:04 fant0m wrote: This 999 crap seems entirely impractical, not to mention that it's extremely regressive. America will never stand for a regressive tax code, at least I *hope* we won't. .
Remember that while the Federal tax code is progressive, almost all of the states rely heavily on regressive taxes. I don't think it's likely, but it could happen.
On September 27 2011 06:49 Bibdy wrote: Still waiting.
the free market intervention in traditionally government organizations is part of why our country faces the sizable debt.
I've read this sentence many times and keep brainstorming what you are actually talking about, but I honestly can't figure it out. Could you elaborate what you mean please?
On September 27 2011 06:49 Bibdy wrote: Still waiting.
the free market intervention in traditionally government organizations is part of why our country faces the sizable debt.
I've read this sentence many times and keep brainstorming what you are actually talking about, but I honestly can't figure it out. Could you elaborate what you mean please?
LOL
yeah that is funny. he's just a contrarian lol.
"government intervention in the free market is bad."
"nooooooo.... the free market intervention in the government is bad."
On September 27 2011 06:49 Bibdy wrote: Still waiting.
the free market intervention in traditionally government organizations is part of why our country faces the sizable debt.
I've read this sentence many times and keep brainstorming what you are actually talking about, but I honestly can't figure it out. Could you elaborate what you mean please?
The biggest example of this bloomed during the Iraq War. We didn't have the personnel to actually put enough "boots on the ground." Congress and President Bush were faced with a difficult choice: enact a draft to shore up the numbers, or contract out what we couldn't recruit. They chose the latter, which has had severe monetary consequences. Instead of soldiers preparing other soldiers food, we have contractors to do that. Instead of soldiers training foreign forces for security, we have contractors to do that. So on and so forth, until we are contracting companies who give very generous salaries and pensions (for very hazardous work), which in effect pay each contracted soldier multiple times the salary and benefits of what a normal soldier gets.
Why not? Again, it's pocket change. Even amidst this current jobs market, people should still have the common sense to save away money into their 401k, even if it is only a small amount. Renewable energy funding is merely the government doing the same thing. What, because we're spending umpteen fucking bajillions on a military that has nobody left to kill, and continuing tax breaks for the 'job creators' who STILL aren't creating jobs despite those tax breaks being held in place for another year, we should drop all of these mini projects to make up the numbers? Fuck that shit.
Nobody in politics has the cajones to talk about the elephants in the room (the big bills, which also includes other things like Social Security and Medicare) while we sit here fighting, bickering and arguing over that tiny fraction of money we're saving for our kid's college fund every week.
Investing heavily =! pocket change.
And I think the pocket change argument is stupid itself. Even if we are being retarded with the military, which I agree with you, it doesn't mean that we should be retarded or less cautious elsewhere.
2010 federal spending. Renewable energy research is a small percentage of the (reading clockwise) third red section of that pie chart - Department of Energy. Their entire yearly funding is down to the single digits of Billions, whereas our budget problems are in the thousands of billions.
How is this relevant whatsoever to what I said? You keep going on a different topic than I'm mentioning. What I'm saying is that we shouldn't focus on investing heavily into that market, in the current state of things. What that means is I'm saying we shouldn't increase spending into that category by pumping $10+ billion into it.
How in the world is the 2010 budget relevant to the debate on the future? If I'm saying we shouldn't pump a ton of money into an industry, your argument that "we're already not putting much in at all" is wholly irrelevant.
I editted my last post, so I'll put it here, too.
Our short term would be FINE if these fucking, so-called job-creators were doing their jobs by creating jobs!
So, what do you do, when these people aren't going to distribute that wealth for everyone's, including their OWN, benefit?
FYI, we've tried the tax incentive route for several years now, and still nothing.
And I think your perception of what constitutes a 'heavy investment' is skewed. Renewable energy costs went from $8B to $13B from 2010 to 2011. That's about 50% increase. That seems like a lot, until you look at it relative to the 5-10% increase in Department of Defense spending year-by-year.
are you really that ignorant? if it was in their interest to create jobs... they would, but it's not, because the cost of labor is too high, and the current interest rates are unsustainably low...
you and whitewing both understand economics so poorly, that it's almost futile to argue with you because you think that bad is good.
Oh please, get off your high horse, you pretentious ass. I understand micro and macroeconomics perfectly fine. $8-$13 B in government spending barely makes a dent. Pretending otherwise is nothing short of the same kind of childish opportunism that Conservatives are using to try and make these policies look bad to further their own agenda. You could take all of the money out of these 'UTTERLY WASTEFUL GOVERNMENT PROJECTS', and still come woefully short of fixing the current budget.
i wasn't talking about your ideas about environmental spending, i'm talking about your ideas on why jobs aren't being created.
Isn't that the EXACT same kind of thinking that leads these so-called economists to predict that letting the Bush tax cuts would ONLY make an $800 B a year dent...wait. $800 B? That sounds like an awful lot similar to the entire Congressional discretionary spending budget.
What? no it's not. Tax cuts don't really help either.
Yeah, you have it exactly right, there are no jobs because they're cowards. The business world is currently locked up in this stupid self-fulfilling prophecy of a double-dip recession. Let me paint a picture for you:
they're not cowards... they have finally gotten smart enough to understand that the government is trying to manipulate them into poor business decisions (see technology and housing bubbles.) So they know that they're better off not investing when the situation is so unstable.
Investors the world over hear news that a double-dip recession COULD happen (only because it has happened in the past. Presently, zero evidence of it occurring)
Something happens in the global markets cases some mischief. Fairly minor in general (e.g. US credit rating drop by a trivial amount from some obscure agency nobody had ever heard of until now, more repetition of the 'fear' of Greece defaulting, some oil derrick explodes, some backwater country that doesn't have shit to do with anything has a democratic revolution).
Or maybe investors realize that US treasury really isn't secure, because the debt will either not get paid back, or it will get paid back with an over-inflated currency.
Investors see this as a coming of the prophecy and start pulling money out to prevent them losing money.
More jobs are lost as a result of investors 'turtling up' for the coming apocalypse. Now there's plenty of evidence of a double-dip recession on the way, caused by the very same people who were terrified of it to begin with.
Repeat ad nauseum.
It's easy to predict the future when you create it.
Do you not understand that the low interest rates are there to TRICK investors into putting their money into the market, because low interest rates is normally a sign of people saving, which is usually a sign of cheaper resources which makes investing a good idea into projects that will utilize these resourcse...
Except now the investors aren't having anymore of this economic manipulation, so the only other thing that could push them into investing is an even higher inflation, the actual value of which is actually already really alarming. Of course luckily for people that have money there's still a place where they can hide their money from the big bad government and that's in commodities, and if you look at those it becomes brutally obvious what a farce this government's attempt at a recovery has been.
The very same people that pulled money out of their businesses when the US went through the credit drop back in August put that money into...
you guessed it...
US treasury bonds.
Well yes... obviously, US treasury make a sound investment if you actually believe the phony 1-2% inflation numbers that the government gives you.
but look at the yeilds of the government bonds, a lot of them are near their all time lows.
is it because the demand for them is so big? lol that could be a part of it, but maybe it's also because the money they're gonna use comes from the FED which is setting the rates low, and the government can't afford to give out bonds with a rate higher than the FED's rate.
They didn't feel secure investing in the jobs of the country and it's prosperity, but they were more than willing to invest in, STILL, the safest place to put their money despite the reduction in confidence that caused them to pull that money out in the first place. I could not even hope to dream of a greater irony than that in a hundred years.
... Those that are investing in government bonds are simply making a mistake... they realize that there's no real investments to be made in the market, because the resources aren't going down in price like low interest rates would normally suggest, it's just the money supply is growing... unfortunately if you're trying to invest into a project that requires resources to sustain it, while the low interest rates certainly make it look inviting, the high inflation will come back and kick you in the ass making most businesses not sustainable in the long term.
Tricking them would be having low interest rates knowing absolutely full 100% damn well the country is going to get hit by a meteor tomorrow. Truth is, they're simply unwilling to invest, because nobody else is. We'll have to sit and wait for some ballsy guy to bring along the next big product that storms the market, before they start to realize that they're literally spooked over nothing. I hope it comes quick, because the longer they wait, the less likely that will happen.
If you have a good enough product, then sure you can probably make a business that would survive in any economy, but this economy is absolutely horrible for investments.
In fact if you consider your potential client-base, which has great incentives currently to go into debt, and you think ahead, you would see that in the future it would have even less money to spend on your products/services than it has now, because there's not enough savings... Sure average personal debts are slowly going down in America, but people need to eliminate their debt before they can even start to save, which would be an indication that they are able to spend more in the future, thus providing a real incentive for investing.
Oh come the hell on. Being an investor in the US is still a thousand times better than the next option. You're making it sound like there's rioting on the streets and people smashing open bank vaults as we speak.
Interest rates are low because the FED set them low, BECAUSE we still haven't reached the same economic levels we were at before the recession. The absolute last thing you want to do in a post recession climate is ramp up the price of borrowing money. It has to be a gradual process, or you risk spooking those investors again, and risk causing an enormous shift in people's way of life (which would cause THEM to reduce their spending - just as bad).
They're not idiots. They're putting their money in the smartest and safest place possible. Problem is, it's a HUGE number of self-serving smart people, who all think alike. The moment that one of them thinks they've found a good place to put their money, given current short-term trends, the rest follow suit.
What the fuck else can the country do at this point to incentivize their investment? Tax rates are still at record lows (constantly adding to the deficit as we speak), US tax laws make it an amazing place for the rich to live and work and the costs of borrowing money are practically nil.
How can someone so vehemently defend the very same people that aren't providing them with jobs, despite all of the incentives staring them right in the face? I don't get it. You can't be one of them, because why on earth are you on a Starcraft 2 forum arguing about it, instead of on the phone with your broker making bank? When the government even CONTEMPLATES the notion of raising taxes on the wealthy, the first response is always "You're killing jobs!". Keynesian economics doesn't work if you don't raise taxes during periods of economic growth. Yet, Bush didn't do that. He did the exact opposite by lowering tax rates and easing regulation, risking a huge bubble (which popped, as we all well know) and you want to put these people back in charge of the economy?!
On September 27 2011 06:49 Bibdy wrote: Still waiting.
the free market intervention in traditionally government organizations is part of why our country faces the sizable debt.
I've read this sentence many times and keep brainstorming what you are actually talking about, but I honestly can't figure it out. Could you elaborate what you mean please?
LOL
yeah that is funny. he's just a contrarian lol.
"government intervention in the free market is bad."
"nooooooo.... the free market intervention in the government is bad."
I think he had a specific point in mind, but it did come out vague and I am also curious what he meant in particular. Perhaps he was talking about firms like Blackwater being contracted for military operations, or the extensive private sector involvement in our schools and universities. Or hospitals? Not sure.
Yet, Bush didn't do that. He did the exact opposite by lowering tax rates and easing regulation, risking a huge bubble (which popped, as we all well know) and you want to put these people back in charge of the economy?!
Please stop acting like it's the fault of one person that this happened. When shit hits the fan to the degree it did in '08 (and even worse '29), one person is almost never to blame. More often than not its a combination of people + systems failing that leads to these disastrous results.
What? There's a market for green products, just like there's a market for everything else. People don't buy a Prius because it's the most powerful, flashy automobile on the market.
If there's a market for green products then shouldn't it emerge via the private market? Why is heavy gov't intervention needed? And if heavy gov't intervention is needed, then it's probably not helping the economy whatsoever in the short term, which is what's crucial.
They tried to remove the oil subsidies though...and failed...the market is already being skewed, ya know? Who's to say that green jobs aren't out there but simply can not compete when government is aiming to keep the other competition inflated?
I'm also a fan of all subsidies ending so...
Because I believe the green subsidies are even larger, but don't quote me on it. Regardless I think we should get rid of most subsidies overall.
On September 27 2011 01:45 Bibdy wrote:
On September 27 2011 01:32 FabledIntegral wrote:
On September 27 2011 01:29 Bibdy wrote: [quote]
What? There's a market for green products, just like there's a market for everything else. People don't buy a Prius because it's the most powerful, flashy automobile on the market.
If there's a market for green products then shouldn't it emerge via the private market? Why is heavy gov't intervention needed? And if heavy gov't intervention is needed, then it's probably not helping the economy whatsoever in the short term, which is what's crucial.
Last I checked, the government isn't fully paying off every hybrid vehicle and handing them out to anyone who wants to 'save the planet'. The companies researching them, and the people buying them, get a few tax breaks here and there, sure. But, like pretty much every debate we've had so far on the economy in this thread, hell this entire website, we're arguing over frigging pocket-change. Oh no, some green companies went bankrupt despite government assistance! Big deal. Loans always go out with the expectation that some of them are going to default. This is part of the reason why we've come to have a fiat money system. It allows money to evaporate through everyday human mistakes with nary a hiccup in the economy. If not, we'd see a good old-fashioned rebellion every time someone lost their job.
Solyndra going under is no big deal. At all. It's normal. Conservatives have turned it into a big deal because, to the uneducated, it's a big story and further 'evidence' of this administration's incompetence - therefore ammunition in order to get the Republicans elected and on a personal basis, further their own desires (whether it's social control, or economic control).
In the end, it's a long-term investment, because there is LITERALLY (not the figurative usage of the word literally) no way we're going to maintain our current trend of oil production and consumption forever. The US economy WILL need something else in the future to maintain its energy needs, or it will crumble the moment word gets out that all of the oil is gone. The way I see it, the Republicans want to further jeopardize the country's future to make short-term political gains by pissing and moaning about pocket-change from the bottom of the sofa to try and make the Democrats look bad.
I think you're going on an entirely different topic than I was originally mentioning. I never said green jobs were intrinsically bad nor did I say there is no demand for green products. Rather, in the current state of the economy, I'm advocating that investing heavily into the green market should not be a priority on the agenda.
Why not? Again, it's pocket change. Even amidst this current jobs market, people should still have the common sense to save away money into their 401k, even if it is only a small amount. Renewable energy funding is merely the government doing the same thing. What, because we're spending umpteen fucking bajillions on a military that has nobody left to kill, and continuing tax breaks for the 'job creators' who STILL aren't creating jobs despite those tax breaks being held in place for another year, we should drop all of these mini projects to make up the numbers? Fuck that shit.
Nobody in politics has the cajones to talk about the elephants in the room (the big bills, which also includes other things like Social Security and Medicare) while we sit here fighting, bickering and arguing over that tiny fraction of money we're saving for our kid's college fund every week.
Investing heavily =! pocket change.
And I think the pocket change argument is stupid itself. Even if we are being retarded with the military, which I agree with you, it doesn't mean that we should be retarded or less cautious elsewhere.
2010 federal spending. Renewable energy research is a small percentage of the (reading clockwise) third red section of that pie chart - Department of Energy. Their entire yearly funding is down to the single digits of Billions, whereas our budget problems are in the thousands of billions.
How is this relevant whatsoever to what I said? You keep going on a different topic than I'm mentioning. What I'm saying is that we shouldn't focus on investing heavily into that market, in the current state of things. What that means is I'm saying we shouldn't increase spending into that category by pumping $10+ billion into it.
How in the world is the 2010 budget relevant to the debate on the future? If I'm saying we shouldn't pump a ton of money into an industry, your argument that "we're already not putting much in at all" is wholly irrelevant.
I editted my last post, so I'll put it here, too.
Our short term would be FINE if these fucking, so-called job-creators were doing their jobs by creating jobs!
So, what do you do, when these people aren't going to distribute that wealth for everyone's, including their OWN, benefit?
FYI, we've tried the tax incentive route for several years now, and still nothing.
And I think your perception of what constitutes a 'heavy investment' is skewed. Renewable energy costs went from $8B to $13B from 2010 to 2011. That's about 50% increase. That seems like a lot, until you look at it relative to the 5-10% increase in Department of Defense spending year-by-year.
are you really that ignorant? if it was in their interest to create jobs... they would, but it's not, because the cost of labor is too high, and the current interest rates are unsustainably low...
you and whitewing both understand economics so poorly, that it's almost futile to argue with you because you think that bad is good.
I would reverse the arguement and say that you have little to no understanding of economics, but it's pointless to argue at all, and I don't actually think you're completely incompetent, just wrong. I'll just say this: economists have always disagreed with one another on the best policies and ways to do things. There's a reason jokes like "If you lay every economist in the world down, end to end, feet to head, in a straight line, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion." exist. That said, There's absolutely no reason for you to be so hostile and flat out rude on a regular basis.
On another note, you are both right and wrong with regards to creating jobs. Yes, in one sense, the cost of job making is too high in the U.S. But that's a relative cost, compared to creating jobs overseas. The reason so many jobs go overseas instead of staying here should be obvious, and that needs to be fixed. You also consistently ignore equity issues, people can't make a living off of minimum wage, but you want to lower the minimum wage? Do the rich, who control absurd amounts of wealth, really need huge tax breaks? It isn't making jobs at all, so take the tax breaks away. The bottom 50% of our country controls 2% of the nation's wealth, and you want to lower their income?
Also, by your own instability arguments, regulation is a good thing. While it does create inefficiencies and does cost, it significantly reduces risk and instability in markets.
As for the whole greening of america deal, the fact of the matter is that it's an investment in the future of our country (and frankly the entire planet), and it will be necessary eventually. Even if you ignore that (or just don't care), you should not cut it while also not cutting other things. Yes, if you don't care about it, go ahead and cut it (at least for now). But also, defense spending must be cut, at least some of it. It's way too high and it's extremely unnecessary. Almost half of the worlds military spending comes from the U.S., that's outrageously high.
The argument that Bibdy is making is that it's ridiculous to scream "cut environmental programs" as if it's a big deal while also ignoring more important issues like the absurd amounts of money that are being wasted by the Department of Homeland Security and other military areas, when these environmental programs are not a large cost, relative to the cost of these other programs you refuse to want to cut.
Yet, Bush didn't do that. He did the exact opposite by lowering tax rates and easing regulation, risking a huge bubble (which popped, as we all well know) and you want to put these people back in charge of the economy?!
Please stop acting like it's the fault of one person that this happened. When shit hits the fan to the degree it did in '08 (and even worse '29), one person is almost never to blame. More often than not its a combination of people + systems failing that leads to these disastrous results.
You're right, I should have said the Bush administration, although I did say 'these people' to name the collective Republicans who are definitely doing a bad job of convincing me they won't adopt exactly the same policies; keep taxes on the rich as low as possible, cut all of the programs that keep everyone in the middle-class and down afloat and keep spending like a motherfucker.
How on earth the Republicans have convinced people that THEY are the fiscally responsible ones is something I think future generations will study as a part of Political Science classes. If they don't spend it on socialized systems, they'll definitely find something else to spend it on. The Bush administration sure found a way to spend a metric fuckton of money we didn't have over the previous decade. Why wouldn't these guys? Because they said so?
On September 27 2011 02:09 FabledIntegral wrote: [quote]
Investing heavily =! pocket change.
And I think the pocket change argument is stupid itself. Even if we are being retarded with the military, which I agree with you, it doesn't mean that we should be retarded or less cautious elsewhere.
2010 federal spending. Renewable energy research is a small percentage of the (reading clockwise) third red section of that pie chart - Department of Energy. Their entire yearly funding is down to the single digits of Billions, whereas our budget problems are in the thousands of billions.
How is this relevant whatsoever to what I said? You keep going on a different topic than I'm mentioning. What I'm saying is that we shouldn't focus on investing heavily into that market, in the current state of things. What that means is I'm saying we shouldn't increase spending into that category by pumping $10+ billion into it.
How in the world is the 2010 budget relevant to the debate on the future? If I'm saying we shouldn't pump a ton of money into an industry, your argument that "we're already not putting much in at all" is wholly irrelevant.
I editted my last post, so I'll put it here, too.
Our short term would be FINE if these fucking, so-called job-creators were doing their jobs by creating jobs!
So, what do you do, when these people aren't going to distribute that wealth for everyone's, including their OWN, benefit?
FYI, we've tried the tax incentive route for several years now, and still nothing.
And I think your perception of what constitutes a 'heavy investment' is skewed. Renewable energy costs went from $8B to $13B from 2010 to 2011. That's about 50% increase. That seems like a lot, until you look at it relative to the 5-10% increase in Department of Defense spending year-by-year.
are you really that ignorant? if it was in their interest to create jobs... they would, but it's not, because the cost of labor is too high, and the current interest rates are unsustainably low...
you and whitewing both understand economics so poorly, that it's almost futile to argue with you because you think that bad is good.
Oh please, get off your high horse, you pretentious ass. I understand micro and macroeconomics perfectly fine. $8-$13 B in government spending barely makes a dent. Pretending otherwise is nothing short of the same kind of childish opportunism that Conservatives are using to try and make these policies look bad to further their own agenda. You could take all of the money out of these 'UTTERLY WASTEFUL GOVERNMENT PROJECTS', and still come woefully short of fixing the current budget.
i wasn't talking about your ideas about environmental spending, i'm talking about your ideas on why jobs aren't being created.
Isn't that the EXACT same kind of thinking that leads these so-called economists to predict that letting the Bush tax cuts would ONLY make an $800 B a year dent...wait. $800 B? That sounds like an awful lot similar to the entire Congressional discretionary spending budget.
What? no it's not. Tax cuts don't really help either.
Yeah, you have it exactly right, there are no jobs because they're cowards. The business world is currently locked up in this stupid self-fulfilling prophecy of a double-dip recession. Let me paint a picture for you:
they're not cowards... they have finally gotten smart enough to understand that the government is trying to manipulate them into poor business decisions (see technology and housing bubbles.) So they know that they're better off not investing when the situation is so unstable.
Investors the world over hear news that a double-dip recession COULD happen (only because it has happened in the past. Presently, zero evidence of it occurring)
Something happens in the global markets cases some mischief. Fairly minor in general (e.g. US credit rating drop by a trivial amount from some obscure agency nobody had ever heard of until now, more repetition of the 'fear' of Greece defaulting, some oil derrick explodes, some backwater country that doesn't have shit to do with anything has a democratic revolution).
Or maybe investors realize that US treasury really isn't secure, because the debt will either not get paid back, or it will get paid back with an over-inflated currency.
Investors see this as a coming of the prophecy and start pulling money out to prevent them losing money.
More jobs are lost as a result of investors 'turtling up' for the coming apocalypse. Now there's plenty of evidence of a double-dip recession on the way, caused by the very same people who were terrified of it to begin with.
Repeat ad nauseum.
It's easy to predict the future when you create it.
Do you not understand that the low interest rates are there to TRICK investors into putting their money into the market, because low interest rates is normally a sign of people saving, which is usually a sign of cheaper resources which makes investing a good idea into projects that will utilize these resourcse...
Except now the investors aren't having anymore of this economic manipulation, so the only other thing that could push them into investing is an even higher inflation, the actual value of which is actually already really alarming. Of course luckily for people that have money there's still a place where they can hide their money from the big bad government and that's in commodities, and if you look at those it becomes brutally obvious what a farce this government's attempt at a recovery has been.
The very same people that pulled money out of their businesses when the US went through the credit drop back in August put that money into...
you guessed it...
US treasury bonds.
Well yes... obviously, US treasury make a sound investment if you actually believe the phony 1-2% inflation numbers that the government gives you.
but look at the yeilds of the government bonds, a lot of them are near their all time lows.
is it because the demand for them is so big? lol that could be a part of it, but maybe it's also because the money they're gonna use comes from the FED which is setting the rates low, and the government can't afford to give out bonds with a rate higher than the FED's rate.
They didn't feel secure investing in the jobs of the country and it's prosperity, but they were more than willing to invest in, STILL, the safest place to put their money despite the reduction in confidence that caused them to pull that money out in the first place. I could not even hope to dream of a greater irony than that in a hundred years.
... Those that are investing in government bonds are simply making a mistake... they realize that there's no real investments to be made in the market, because the resources aren't going down in price like low interest rates would normally suggest, it's just the money supply is growing... unfortunately if you're trying to invest into a project that requires resources to sustain it, while the low interest rates certainly make it look inviting, the high inflation will come back and kick you in the ass making most businesses not sustainable in the long term.
Trick them? Please. It's an incentive, nothing more.
but it's actually not an incentive if you think ahead. It's actually incredibly unsafe.
Tricking them would be having low interest rates knowing absolutely full 100% damn well the country is going to get hit by a meteor tomorrow. Truth is, they're simply unwilling to invest, because nobody else is. We'll have to sit and wait for some ballsy guy to bring along the next big product that storms the market, before they start to realize that they're literally spooked over nothing. I hope it comes quick, because the longer they wait, the less likely that will happen.
If you have a good enough product, then sure you can probably make a business that would survive in any economy, but this economy is absolutely horrible for investments.
In fact if you consider your potential client-base, which has great incentives currently to go into debt, and you think ahead, you would see that in the future it would have even less money to spend on your products/services than it has now, because there's not enough savings... Sure average personal debts are slowly going down in America, but people need to eliminate their debt before they can even start to save, which would be an indication that they are able to spend more in the future, thus providing a real incentive for investing.
Oh come the hell on. Being an investor in the US is still a thousand times better than the next option. You're making it sound like there's rioting on the streets and people smashing open bank vaults as we speak.
Of course it's way better to be in the position where you can invest money than in position where you don't have money... that doesn't mean that you should invest, as a matter of fact it's your responsibility to yourself and your family, and whoever else that directly depends on you that you don't lose all your money, and it's not obligation to invest when you think it's not a good idea to do so.
Interest rates are low because the FED set them low, BECAUSE we still haven't reached the same economic levels we were at before the recession. The absolute last thing you want to do in a post recession climate is ramp up the price of borrowing money. It has to be a gradual process, or you risk spooking those investors again, and risk causing an enormous shift in people's way of life (which would cause THEM to reduce their spending - just as bad).
... Actually you want to increase the rates so that people have incentive to repay their debts, and then save.
when you have massive mal-investments of capital... resulting in debt, you must first repay your debt, before you should start investing again. that's why the recession is necessary.
You need actual savings order for investments to work-out... I don't see how you don't understand this. If everyone is borrowing now, where's the guarantee that they will have assets to spend on your product even if they want it? On the other hand when people are saving and have actual assets and not liabilities, this IS an incentive to invest, because you know that the people are saving (cutting their spending presently in order to have the ability to spend more in the future.)
They're not idiots. They're putting their money in the smartest and safest place possible. Problem is, it's a HUGE number of self-serving smart people, who all think alike. The moment that one of them thinks they've found a good place to put their money, given current short-term trends, the rest follow suit.
what does this even mean?
sure they follow one another a lot, but i'm sure there's at least a few investing in the actual market, why isn't the majority following them instead? The market isn't a healthy thing to invest in right now... that's why.
What the fuck else can the country do at this point to incentivize their investment? Tax rates are still at record lows (constantly adding to the deficit as we speak), US tax laws make it an amazing place for the rich to live and work and the costs of borrowing money are practically nil.
You have to let people repay their debts... that's what you have to do. When you have an import-consumption driven economy where tons of people are in debt partially due to the low interest rates, where a huge portion of jobs are those that help deliver foreign goods into the homes of American people, while the labor laws are making our industry uncompetitive... It is NOT the time to invest.
It is the time to decrease consumption and save, while making decreasing labor costs, so that when people are finally saving and there's more excess resources in the marketplace the investors can come in and use their money to buy those resources to invest in projects for the future. It is extremely dangerous to invest when the customer-base you're going to try to sell your product to is already in debt, because the likelihood that they'll have the money to spend on your product is low.
How can someone so vehemently defend the very same people that aren't providing them with jobs, despite all of the incentives staring them right in the face? I don't get it. You can't be one of them, because why on earth are you on a Starcraft 2 forum arguing about it, instead of on the phone with your broker making bank?
Making bank via investing? lololol. These are fake incentives. these are the same incentives that people used to go into technology market, and the housing market when they were growing out of control...
When the government even CONTEMPLATES the notion of raising taxes on the wealthy, the first response is always "You're killing jobs!". Keynesian economics doesn't work if you don't raise taxes during periods of economic growth. Yet, Bush didn't do that. He did the exact opposite by lowering tax rates and easing regulation, risking a huge bubble (which popped, as we all well know) and you want to put these people back in charge of the economy?!
[/quote]
... LOL the bubble started growing under Clinton because of the GSE's and the low interest rates in the first place.
Now we're trying to solve the problem of everyone facing debt as the result of the burst with.... even lower interest rates?... How does this make any sense?
As for the tax cuts, or tax hikes, in the end they don't matter anywhere near as much as the low interest rates. you can increase the tax on the rich, and it's not gonna be the end of the world for the most part as long as that money is actually used to balance the deficit and not for more brainless economy stimulus... but just doing that isn't gonna help the economy either becasue unless you do something about the cost of labor there aren't going to be more jobs, so you need to cut some regulations, and a lot of spending military and entitlements in particular, and once you're doing all that whether you're cutting taxes or raising them will be small bananas. Of course you want to prevent those who pay the marginal tax at 35% from paying much more than they already are imo, because 35 % just for federal taxes is a lot.
Yet, Bush didn't do that. He did the exact opposite by lowering tax rates and easing regulation, risking a huge bubble (which popped, as we all well know) and you want to put these people back in charge of the economy?!
Please stop acting like it's the fault of one person that this happened. When shit hits the fan to the degree it did in '08 (and even worse '29), one person is almost never to blame. More often than not its a combination of people + systems failing that leads to these disastrous results.
You're right, I should have said the Bush administration, although I did say 'these people' to name the collective Republicans who are definitely doing a bad job of convincing me they won't adopt exactly the same policies; keep taxes on the rich as low as possible, cut all of the programs that keep everyone in the middle-class and down afloat and keep spending like a motherfucker.
How on earth the Republicans have convinced people that THEY are the fiscally responsible ones is something I think future generations will study as a part of Political Science classes. If they don't spend it on socialized systems, they'll definitely find something else to spend it on. The Bush administration sure found a way to spend a metric fuckton of money we didn't have over the previous decade. Why wouldn't these guys? Because they said so?
Republicans don't advocate going out to war and doing a lot of the shit they end up doing. It's unfortunate, because I like "general" republican economic policies but they often don't seem to stick to their fundamentals when in power. Regardless, I still hope, because I know the Democrats won't even try in that area. It's one of the reasons I kind of wouldn't mind Ron Paul winning. Despite completely disagreeing with a LARGE amount of things he wants because he's so extreme, I'm aware he wouldn't be able to accomplish almost any of it, but might be able to move it in the right direction, while simultaneously hopefully not spending frivilously.
I also don't believe you should be able to raise a family on minimum wage, but that's just me (more of a response to WhiteWing's snippet on minimum wage).
I hate politics, but isn't Ron Paul the guy that wants to remove ( not lower but remove) minimum wage? Usually I suspend layman's judgement, but how the hell does that benefit the poor?
On September 27 2011 01:32 FabledIntegral wrote: [quote]
If there's a market for green products then shouldn't it emerge via the private market? Why is heavy gov't intervention needed? And if heavy gov't intervention is needed, then it's probably not helping the economy whatsoever in the short term, which is what's crucial.
They tried to remove the oil subsidies though...and failed...the market is already being skewed, ya know? Who's to say that green jobs aren't out there but simply can not compete when government is aiming to keep the other competition inflated?
I'm also a fan of all subsidies ending so...
Because I believe the green subsidies are even larger, but don't quote me on it. Regardless I think we should get rid of most subsidies overall.
On September 27 2011 01:45 Bibdy wrote:
On September 27 2011 01:32 FabledIntegral wrote: [quote]
If there's a market for green products then shouldn't it emerge via the private market? Why is heavy gov't intervention needed? And if heavy gov't intervention is needed, then it's probably not helping the economy whatsoever in the short term, which is what's crucial.
Last I checked, the government isn't fully paying off every hybrid vehicle and handing them out to anyone who wants to 'save the planet'. The companies researching them, and the people buying them, get a few tax breaks here and there, sure. But, like pretty much every debate we've had so far on the economy in this thread, hell this entire website, we're arguing over frigging pocket-change. Oh no, some green companies went bankrupt despite government assistance! Big deal. Loans always go out with the expectation that some of them are going to default. This is part of the reason why we've come to have a fiat money system. It allows money to evaporate through everyday human mistakes with nary a hiccup in the economy. If not, we'd see a good old-fashioned rebellion every time someone lost their job.
Solyndra going under is no big deal. At all. It's normal. Conservatives have turned it into a big deal because, to the uneducated, it's a big story and further 'evidence' of this administration's incompetence - therefore ammunition in order to get the Republicans elected and on a personal basis, further their own desires (whether it's social control, or economic control).
In the end, it's a long-term investment, because there is LITERALLY (not the figurative usage of the word literally) no way we're going to maintain our current trend of oil production and consumption forever. The US economy WILL need something else in the future to maintain its energy needs, or it will crumble the moment word gets out that all of the oil is gone. The way I see it, the Republicans want to further jeopardize the country's future to make short-term political gains by pissing and moaning about pocket-change from the bottom of the sofa to try and make the Democrats look bad.
I think you're going on an entirely different topic than I was originally mentioning. I never said green jobs were intrinsically bad nor did I say there is no demand for green products. Rather, in the current state of the economy, I'm advocating that investing heavily into the green market should not be a priority on the agenda.
Why not? Again, it's pocket change. Even amidst this current jobs market, people should still have the common sense to save away money into their 401k, even if it is only a small amount. Renewable energy funding is merely the government doing the same thing. What, because we're spending umpteen fucking bajillions on a military that has nobody left to kill, and continuing tax breaks for the 'job creators' who STILL aren't creating jobs despite those tax breaks being held in place for another year, we should drop all of these mini projects to make up the numbers? Fuck that shit.
Nobody in politics has the cajones to talk about the elephants in the room (the big bills, which also includes other things like Social Security and Medicare) while we sit here fighting, bickering and arguing over that tiny fraction of money we're saving for our kid's college fund every week.
Investing heavily =! pocket change.
And I think the pocket change argument is stupid itself. Even if we are being retarded with the military, which I agree with you, it doesn't mean that we should be retarded or less cautious elsewhere.
2010 federal spending. Renewable energy research is a small percentage of the (reading clockwise) third red section of that pie chart - Department of Energy. Their entire yearly funding is down to the single digits of Billions, whereas our budget problems are in the thousands of billions.
How is this relevant whatsoever to what I said? You keep going on a different topic than I'm mentioning. What I'm saying is that we shouldn't focus on investing heavily into that market, in the current state of things. What that means is I'm saying we shouldn't increase spending into that category by pumping $10+ billion into it.
How in the world is the 2010 budget relevant to the debate on the future? If I'm saying we shouldn't pump a ton of money into an industry, your argument that "we're already not putting much in at all" is wholly irrelevant.
I editted my last post, so I'll put it here, too.
Our short term would be FINE if these fucking, so-called job-creators were doing their jobs by creating jobs!
So, what do you do, when these people aren't going to distribute that wealth for everyone's, including their OWN, benefit?
FYI, we've tried the tax incentive route for several years now, and still nothing.
And I think your perception of what constitutes a 'heavy investment' is skewed. Renewable energy costs went from $8B to $13B from 2010 to 2011. That's about 50% increase. That seems like a lot, until you look at it relative to the 5-10% increase in Department of Defense spending year-by-year.
are you really that ignorant? if it was in their interest to create jobs... they would, but it's not, because the cost of labor is too high, and the current interest rates are unsustainably low...
you and whitewing both understand economics so poorly, that it's almost futile to argue with you because you think that bad is good.
I would reverse the arguement and say that you have little to no understanding of economics, but it's pointless to argue at all, and I don't actually think you're completely incompetent, just wrong. I'll just say this: economists have always disagreed with one another on the best policies and ways to do things. There's a reason jokes like "If you lay every economist in the world down, end to end, feet to head, in a straight line, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion." exist. That said, There's absolutely no reason for you to be so hostile and flat out rude on a regular basis.
I'm being rude, because you dodge arguments past saying that we need more inflation, when the inflation is way over 5%, probably closer to 10%...
On another note, you are both right and wrong with regards to creating jobs. Yes, in one sense, the cost of job making is too high in the U.S. But that's a relative cost, compared to creating jobs overseas. The reason so many jobs go overseas instead of staying here should be obvious, and that needs to be fixed. You also consistently ignore equity issues, people can't make a living off of minimum wage, but you want to lower the minimum wage? Do the rich, who control absurd amounts of wealth, really need huge tax breaks? It isn't making jobs at all, so take the tax breaks away. The bottom 50% of our country controls 2% of the nation's wealth, and you want to lower their income?
Well lowering minimum wages wouldn't be the first regulation I'd repeal, but overall you need to start repealing labor laws that are making the employment cost too high...
Labor isn't just too expensive with respect to how much it costs outside the country... It's expensive with respect to how much it produces... that's the problem. Marginal gains are still gains if our labor was worth what it produces then investors/businessmen would be all over our high rate of unemployment...
we have to reduce the cost of labor, there's 2 ways to do it, reduce the wages, or reduce the indirect, liability related costs... we both agree that the minimum wage is quite low, and the poor are struggling so we have to start with the liabilities then, in the end when the economy is healthy, I think minimum wage law can go too, it could still improve the situation now I don't know, but it's definitely not the first one on the list.
Also, by your own instability arguments, regulation is a good thing. While it does create inefficiencies and does cost, it significantly reduces risk and instability in markets.
The instability is due to the artificially low rates... the problem with them is that it's uncertain whether they will ever be allowed to rise. If they're not allowed to rise then investing is still stupid becasue you can do way better in commodities since they cause huge inflation, but if they are allowed to rise then you start saving which will eventually lead to investment.
regulation of hte rates is what causes this instability because every single economist knows that the moment FED stops lending money at these rates all banks that are not capable of printing their own money and have to obey the laws of the free market will have to raise rates drastically.
As for the whole greening of america deal, the fact of the matter is that it's an investment in the future of our country (and frankly the entire planet), and it will be necessary eventually. Even if you ignore that (or just don't care), you should not cut it while also not cutting other things. Yes, if you don't care about it, go ahead and cut it (at least for now). But also, defense spending must be cut, at least some of it. It's way too high and it's extremely unnecessary. Almost half of the worlds military spending comes from the U.S., that's outrageously high.
I'm all for cutting defense really hard, but entitlements have to go too. Of course, you can't just sweep the rug from under people, but gradually they need to be cut out.
The argument that Bibdy is making is that it's ridiculous to scream "cut environmental programs" as if it's a big deal while also ignoring more important issues like the absurd amounts of money that are being wasted by the Department of Homeland Security and other military areas, when these environmental programs are not a large cost, relative to the cost of these other programs you refuse to want to cut.
I have nothing against environmental programs... I do think that if the economy was healthy the free market would take care of it, but the economy is so far from being healthy that we may very well kill ourselves without these programs before the economy is healed enough to deal with its problems on its own...
No, we're trying to solve the problem of everyone facing debt as a result of the burst by offering a combination of
A) continued low taxes for the wealthy, to incentivize creating jobs here and
B) low interest rates for investors to borrow the money they need to open the businesses they want to open
C) low interest rates for 'common folk' to reduce the burden of their existing bills by lowering their costs each payment, and to borrow what they need to keep going
All of this is predicated on the assumption that the country isn't going to go spiraling out of control and sink into the depths of R'lyeh any time soon.
It's ONLY a bad time to invest if you're sure the country is going to go into a second recession. The mere MENTION of a double-dip recession has been enough to spook these people out of investing and, as previously mentioned, it's now become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This is what I mean; the ENTIRE system operates on faith. And the only things that can control the herd-like decisions of the wealthy, is other wealthy people and government incentive. When a few of them catch wind that maybe, JUST MAYBE, the US could go through a second recession, everyone turtles up and awaits the coming storm until its safe to come out - a storm caused by the turtling up.
What in the nine hells did Clinton, or his administration, have to do with banking institutions picking up, repackaging and trading bad loans and mortgages? It was a completely new and unprecedented piece of financial magic. Not even the next 8 years of the next administration saw it coming when they foolishly kept low taxes rates through the boom of 2002-2007 (they should have been risen to pay back some of the existing national debt we used to SPUR that boom in the first place - the other half of Keynesian economics that gets routinely ignored by administrations on both sides).
You can't blame any administration for that. If anything, the one lesson to learn, that should be abundantly clear, is that completely unregulated business practices like that are HORRIFICALLY dangerous for everyone. The less regulated the market gets, the more volatile it gets. I don't know how that couldn't be more obvious following that financial crisis. I'm just as confused as to why someone would continue to think that the free market is infallible following that.
On September 27 2011 07:44 jbee wrote: I hate politics, but isn't Ron Paul the guy that wants to remove ( not lower but remove) minimum wage? Usually I suspend layman's judgement, but how the hell does that benefit the poor?
Economically speaking it heavily benefits the poor... overall. By reducing unemployment. Many companies can't afford to employ very many people in the U.S. due to minimum wage, and thus will move jobs abroad. An abolished minimum wage would almost assuredly create a TON of jobs in the U.S., significantly helping those who are unemployed, while simultaneously hurting those who already have jobs. The net result is always that the overall social welfare is larger, but it's more complicated than that. I'm not a supporter of the abolishment of minimum wage anyways, but I think it is a little on the high side at the moment.
And as I said before, I don't think you should be able to raise a family on minimum wage. If you think you should be able to raise children as well as provide for yourself while affording food, housing, transportation, clothing, etc. for your children on a single job wages by doing something that requires almost no critical thinking and can easily be replaced doing, I think you're crazy.
On September 27 2011 07:59 Bibdy wrote: No, we're trying to solve the problem of everyone facing debt as a result of the burst by offering a combination of
A) continued low taxes for the wealthy, to incentivize creating jobs here and
B) low interest rates for investors to borrow the money they need to open the businesses they want to open
C) low interest rates for 'common folk' to reduce the burden of their existing bills by lowering their costs each payment, and to borrow what they need to keep going
All of this is predicated on the assumption that the country isn't going to go spiraling out of control and sink into the depths of R'lyeh any time soon.
It's ONLY a bad time to invest if you're sure the country is going to go into a second recession. The mere MENTION of a double-dip recession has been enough to spook these people out of investing and, as previously mentioned, it's now become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This is what I mean; the ENTIRE system operates on faith. And the only things that can control the herd-like decisions of the wealthy, is other wealthy people and government incentive. When a few of them catch wind that maybe, JUST MAYBE, the US could go through a second recession, everyone turtles up and awaits the coming storm until its safe to come out - a storm caused by the turtling up.
What in the nine hells did Clinton, or his administration, have to do with banking institutions picking up, repackaging and trading bad loans and mortgages? It was a completely new and unprecedented piece of financial magic. Not even the next 8 years of the next administration saw it coming when they foolishly kept low taxes rates through the boom of 2002-2007 (they should have been risen to pay back some of the existing national debt we used to SPUR that boom in the first place - the other half of Keynesian economics that gets routinely ignored by administrations on both sides).
You can't blame any administration for that. If anything, the one lesson to learn, that should be abundantly clear, is that completely unregulated business practices like that are HORRIFICALLY dangerous for everyone. The less regulated the market gets, the more volatile it gets. I don't know how that couldn't be more obvious following that financial crisis. I'm just as confused as to why someone would continue to think that the free market is infallible following that.
I really dislike how people say "low taxes for the wealthy." I mean, they aren't low taxes for the wealthy, they're actually substantially (imo) higher than that of the rest. You can speak relatively, but once again I think it's a terrible argument to point to other countries in comparison. Rather, you should be saying
a) Keeping tax rates only marginally (as I'd presume you'd put it) higher than the poor
for your first point. I know you said "low" and not "lower" but it's very much so implied by a lot of people that rich people pay less, whether it be an absolute value or percentage, when it's clearly not the case.
On September 27 2011 07:44 jbee wrote: I hate politics, but isn't Ron Paul the guy that wants to remove ( not lower but remove) minimum wage? Usually I suspend layman's judgement, but how the hell does that benefit the poor?
The argument goes that allowing lower wages would increase overall employment, which it no doubt would, because many employers would likely be willing to hire additional employees if the costs were lower. It would primarily help people who are unemployed and desperate for any income, or those looking for part time work, or teenage students for example. There's always been a kind of trade off: either higher unemployment with higher minimum pay, or a greater number of jobs available at a wider range of pay.
On September 27 2011 07:44 jbee wrote: I hate politics, but isn't Ron Paul the guy that wants to remove ( not lower but remove) minimum wage? Usually I suspend layman's judgement, but how the hell does that benefit the poor?
Here's a basic explanation. Basic counter-intuitive concepts like this is completely lost on the majority of the population.
EPT![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ce/Fy2010_spending_by_category.jpg)
