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On May 31 2018 21:42 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On May 31 2018 20:13 Big J wrote:On May 31 2018 19:37 Acrofales wrote:On May 31 2018 19:17 Big J wrote:
Italy is struggling because young and working people should be paying unrealistic amounts of debts that old and dead people have caused. There is nothing liberal in austerity once you have acquired debt. The liberal mechanism is not to pass on debts to someone else by abusing state institutions. The liberal mechanism is that when someone dies and hasnt fullfilled his personal contract then it becomes the personal problem of the creditor. As always the selfproclaimed liberals join in into the economic rape of our generation through conservative rule. For obvious reasons that doesn't work for countries (or for corporations). For starters, every day Italians die (and new ones are born). What part of the debt belongs to Italians who die, and should therefore be written off by the creditors? But in general, it's just not how things work. The money wasn't loaned to Giuseppe, it was loaned to Italy, in the expectation that in 20-30-40-50 years, depending on the duration of the loan, that money would be payed back, regardless of whether the money was to pay for Giuseppe's pension and Giuseppe is long dead, or whether it was to build a nice highway between Rome and Milan, that Giuseppe's grandson is happily using. If you are going to make the comparison between people and countries, you should take into account that a bank simply *does not loan* money to old people without pretty ironclad guarantees that they will repaid if the person dies. So what you actually mean is that Italy should declare bankruptcy, because young Italians should refuse to pay for their grandparents' debts. That is a valid point of view, but hasn't gone very well in countries that have tried. Argentina's corralito is still one of the most obvious examples of unbridled borrowing into telling the IMF to go fuck themselves. The economy crashed and burned, and is still a mess 18 years later (obviously there are other factors as well). Ranting and railing against free market economies only works if you are willing to pay the price of *not* going along with them. Because whoever Italy's creditors are (for a fairly large part, Italian pension funds, as I explained above) bound to not be very happy when the Italian states tells them to go fuck themselves. Since democracy is one-man/woman-one-vote you offwrite 1/(number of people at the time the contract was created) everytime one dies of every state debt contract. Of course states and other institutions don't work that way RIGHT NOW. That is why you should clean up their internal rules to work like that. I'm sorry if someone loses out on such a change in contract, but it should have been clear all along that in reality you can't expect to get a return no matter what. That's just the nature of multihuman interaction. Contract rules are there to instituionalize these things, prevent slavery and other unfair and unrealistic contracts. If that right - which in itself is a social contract - leads to impossible demands it is that right that has to be reformed, not the contract that has to be fullfilled. You could obviously postpone the problem to the next generation, by just making that amount of debt necessary to pay for the interest of current debt without having to take it from taxes. Anymore debt you make should be payed back in a short timeframe, less debt shouldnt be made. sounds implementable; some notes: nobody is going to lend you money long term without charging a higher interest to account for those losses in the debt contract.
Yes
it sounds like you're favoring simply not accruing debt in the first place. just add a balanced budget rule or some such to prevent accumulating any debt at all.
I don't mind debt, for as long as it stays between those people representing either side, or gets voluntarily traded. Making me a debtor by brith is fascism though. I don't care what metaphysical concepts, like nation states or enterprises you want to imply. They don't exist in the physical reality. Any social rule you make always has to be intrepted as (that rule) intersection (physical limitations). And I believe the anarchic freedom of a person to do what they want to be a physical rule. If you work against that too much you are going to trigger a response. That is why we need unbiased price systems that signal us what to do. Capital-untaxed Capitalism is no such system.
it's not unreasonable for the debt to be paid by generations not yet born IF the debt was incurred for projects with long term benefits that help those people. Like some infrastructure projects. The problem is that too many nations use debt to pay for current welfare spending.
I believe there are two things to note about that:
a) things devalue over time for all sorts of reasons. It's just objectively untrue that things are being built for future generations. They are first of all being built for the people currently living - and planned to their need which they project on that future generation. Which I don't believe is totally going to be wrong, but there is a reason why individual pricing is superior to social planning.
b) without a proper land-value taxation what an infrastructure project built on debt actually does is: upvalue the land of current owners - so it is harder for the next generation to acquire it from them or their heirs - on the cost of the next generation - they have even less money to spend on the upvalued land. State infrastructure built by debt or by taxes on work/consume are by far some of the worst measures a state can take, even if I agree that state infrastructure (land planning through regulation and pricing) in theory is great. The current practical implementation is a joke and imposes an additional handicap on our generation to live independent from our parents decisions.
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On May 31 2018 20:21 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On May 31 2018 20:13 Big J wrote:On May 31 2018 19:37 Acrofales wrote:On May 31 2018 19:17 Big J wrote:
Italy is struggling because young and working people should be paying unrealistic amounts of debts that old and dead people have caused. There is nothing liberal in austerity once you have acquired debt. The liberal mechanism is not to pass on debts to someone else by abusing state institutions. The liberal mechanism is that when someone dies and hasnt fullfilled his personal contract then it becomes the personal problem of the creditor. As always the selfproclaimed liberals join in into the economic rape of our generation through conservative rule. For obvious reasons that doesn't work for countries (or for corporations). For starters, every day Italians die (and new ones are born). What part of the debt belongs to Italians who die, and should therefore be written off by the creditors? But in general, it's just not how things work. The money wasn't loaned to Giuseppe, it was loaned to Italy, in the expectation that in 20-30-40-50 years, depending on the duration of the loan, that money would be payed back, regardless of whether the money was to pay for Giuseppe's pension and Giuseppe is long dead, or whether it was to build a nice highway between Rome and Milan, that Giuseppe's grandson is happily using. If you are going to make the comparison between people and countries, you should take into account that a bank simply *does not loan* money to old people without pretty ironclad guarantees that they will repaid if the person dies. So what you actually mean is that Italy should declare bankruptcy, because young Italians should refuse to pay for their grandparents' debts. That is a valid point of view, but hasn't gone very well in countries that have tried. Argentina's corralito is still one of the most obvious examples of unbridled borrowing into telling the IMF to go fuck themselves. The economy crashed and burned, and is still a mess 18 years later (obviously there are other factors as well). Ranting and railing against free market economies only works if you are willing to pay the price of *not* going along with them. Because whoever Italy's creditors are (for a fairly large part, Italian pension funds, as I explained above) bound to not be very happy when the Italian states tells them to go fuck themselves. Since democracy is one-man/woman-one-vote you offwrite 1/(number of people at the time the contract was created) everytime one dies of every state debt contract. Of course states and other institutions don't work that way RIGHT NOW. That is why you should clean up their internal rules to work like that. I'm sorry if someone loses out on such a change in contract, but it should have been clear all along that in reality you can't expect to get a return no matter what. That's just the nature of multihuman interaction. Contract rules are there to instituionalize these things, prevent slavery and other unfair and unrealistic contracts. If that right - which in itself is a social contract - leads to impossible demands it is that right that has to be reformed, not the contract that has to be fullfilled. You could obviously postpone the problem to the next generation, by just making that amount of debt necessary to pay for the interest of current debt without having to take it from taxes. Anymore debt you make should be payed back in a short timeframe, less debt shouldnt be made. That's fine, and I think whoever lent all those massive amounts of money deserves to get burnt. I don't see a huge debt relief for Greece as a bad thing. And I wouldn't see debt relief for Italy as a bad thing either. If sanitizing the financial situation was actually what Italy wanted. What M5E and Lega were actually proposing was: We borrowed too much and can't pay it back. So fuck it. Live like there's no tomorrow and borrow more! Tax cuts for everybody! And when shit hits the fan, we'll blame the EU!
I don't support the M5S-Lega's economic policies, but it seems that they wanted to focus on growing the denominator.
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On May 31 2018 22:23 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On May 31 2018 21:42 zlefin wrote:On May 31 2018 20:13 Big J wrote:On May 31 2018 19:37 Acrofales wrote:On May 31 2018 19:17 Big J wrote:
Italy is struggling because young and working people should be paying unrealistic amounts of debts that old and dead people have caused. There is nothing liberal in austerity once you have acquired debt. The liberal mechanism is not to pass on debts to someone else by abusing state institutions. The liberal mechanism is that when someone dies and hasnt fullfilled his personal contract then it becomes the personal problem of the creditor. As always the selfproclaimed liberals join in into the economic rape of our generation through conservative rule. For obvious reasons that doesn't work for countries (or for corporations). For starters, every day Italians die (and new ones are born). What part of the debt belongs to Italians who die, and should therefore be written off by the creditors? But in general, it's just not how things work. The money wasn't loaned to Giuseppe, it was loaned to Italy, in the expectation that in 20-30-40-50 years, depending on the duration of the loan, that money would be payed back, regardless of whether the money was to pay for Giuseppe's pension and Giuseppe is long dead, or whether it was to build a nice highway between Rome and Milan, that Giuseppe's grandson is happily using. If you are going to make the comparison between people and countries, you should take into account that a bank simply *does not loan* money to old people without pretty ironclad guarantees that they will repaid if the person dies. So what you actually mean is that Italy should declare bankruptcy, because young Italians should refuse to pay for their grandparents' debts. That is a valid point of view, but hasn't gone very well in countries that have tried. Argentina's corralito is still one of the most obvious examples of unbridled borrowing into telling the IMF to go fuck themselves. The economy crashed and burned, and is still a mess 18 years later (obviously there are other factors as well). Ranting and railing against free market economies only works if you are willing to pay the price of *not* going along with them. Because whoever Italy's creditors are (for a fairly large part, Italian pension funds, as I explained above) bound to not be very happy when the Italian states tells them to go fuck themselves. Since democracy is one-man/woman-one-vote you offwrite 1/(number of people at the time the contract was created) everytime one dies of every state debt contract. Of course states and other institutions don't work that way RIGHT NOW. That is why you should clean up their internal rules to work like that. I'm sorry if someone loses out on such a change in contract, but it should have been clear all along that in reality you can't expect to get a return no matter what. That's just the nature of multihuman interaction. Contract rules are there to instituionalize these things, prevent slavery and other unfair and unrealistic contracts. If that right - which in itself is a social contract - leads to impossible demands it is that right that has to be reformed, not the contract that has to be fullfilled. You could obviously postpone the problem to the next generation, by just making that amount of debt necessary to pay for the interest of current debt without having to take it from taxes. Anymore debt you make should be payed back in a short timeframe, less debt shouldnt be made. sounds implementable; some notes: nobody is going to lend you money long term without charging a higher interest to account for those losses in the debt contract. Yes Show nested quote +it sounds like you're favoring simply not accruing debt in the first place. just add a balanced budget rule or some such to prevent accumulating any debt at all. I don't mind debt, for as long as it stays between those people representing either side, or gets voluntarily traded. Making me a debtor by brith is fascism though. I don't care what metaphysical concepts, like nation states or enterprises you want to imply. They don't exist in the physical reality. Any social rule you make always has to be intrepted as (that rule) intersection (physical limitations). And I believe the anarchic freedom of a person to do what they want to be a physical rule. If you work against that too much you are going to trigger a response. That is why we need unbiased price systems that signal us what to do. Capital-untaxed Capitalism is no such system. Show nested quote +it's not unreasonable for the debt to be paid by generations not yet born IF the debt was incurred for projects with long term benefits that help those people. Like some infrastructure projects. The problem is that too many nations use debt to pay for current welfare spending. I believe there are two things to note about that: a) things devalue over time for all sorts of reasons. It's just objectively untrue that things are being built for future generations. They are first of all being built for the people currently living - and planned to their need which they project on that future generation. Which I don't believe is totally going to be wrong, but there is a reason why individual pricing is superior to social planning. b) without a proper land-value taxation what an infrastructure project built on debt actually does is: upvalue the land of current owners - so it is harder for the next generation to acquire it from them or their heirs - on the cost of the next generation - they have even less money to spend on the upvalued land. State infrastructure built by debt or by taxes on work/consume are by far some of the worst measures a state can take, even if I agree that state infrastructure (land planning through regulation and pricing) in theory is great. The current practical implementation is a joke and imposes an additional handicap on our generation to live independent from our parents decisions.
please don't overuse the word fascism; there's no need for it to be so diluted by being applied to very disparate things.
I was talking about debt in the national sense; so yes, you simply oppose debt in the first place as I said. with the implicit qualifier that we were talking about nations debt, as we in fact were.
you are making a false assumption that things cannot be built for future generations. while they often are not, it is not an objective truth that you assert; not unless you want to bend the meaning excessively.
your point about individual pricing makes little sense to me, as I don't know what you're going on about.
you're simply wrong that state infrastructure is one of the worst measures a state can take; not sure how you reach such an obviously foolish conclusion.
that the current implementation may be poor in some nations does not in any way make it true for the general case.
also, you ignored the entire point, which is that the current implementation is NOT doing infrastructure investment; the whole problem is that the current systems often use the debt to pay for present welfare spending rather than future investments.
if you're going to argue against something, you need to argue against what was actually said. I had a very clear IF clause in my statement, and your notes about it seem to all assume the if clause was false. which means they don't actually argue against it at all.
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Meanwhile in Spain, it seems that Rajoy will fall?
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Does that mean new elections? Ciudadanos is polling high right?
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On June 01 2018 00:38 RvB wrote:
Does that mean new elections? Ciudadanos is polling high right?
No. Pedro Sanchez will be the president if it goes through. I think there is another card the goverment can use, the question of confidence, but i am not sure if that could work.
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On May 31 2018 23:41 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On May 31 2018 22:23 Big J wrote:On May 31 2018 21:42 zlefin wrote:On May 31 2018 20:13 Big J wrote:On May 31 2018 19:37 Acrofales wrote:On May 31 2018 19:17 Big J wrote:
Italy is struggling because young and working people should be paying unrealistic amounts of debts that old and dead people have caused. There is nothing liberal in austerity once you have acquired debt. The liberal mechanism is not to pass on debts to someone else by abusing state institutions. The liberal mechanism is that when someone dies and hasnt fullfilled his personal contract then it becomes the personal problem of the creditor. As always the selfproclaimed liberals join in into the economic rape of our generation through conservative rule. For obvious reasons that doesn't work for countries (or for corporations). For starters, every day Italians die (and new ones are born). What part of the debt belongs to Italians who die, and should therefore be written off by the creditors? But in general, it's just not how things work. The money wasn't loaned to Giuseppe, it was loaned to Italy, in the expectation that in 20-30-40-50 years, depending on the duration of the loan, that money would be payed back, regardless of whether the money was to pay for Giuseppe's pension and Giuseppe is long dead, or whether it was to build a nice highway between Rome and Milan, that Giuseppe's grandson is happily using. If you are going to make the comparison between people and countries, you should take into account that a bank simply *does not loan* money to old people without pretty ironclad guarantees that they will repaid if the person dies. So what you actually mean is that Italy should declare bankruptcy, because young Italians should refuse to pay for their grandparents' debts. That is a valid point of view, but hasn't gone very well in countries that have tried. Argentina's corralito is still one of the most obvious examples of unbridled borrowing into telling the IMF to go fuck themselves. The economy crashed and burned, and is still a mess 18 years later (obviously there are other factors as well). Ranting and railing against free market economies only works if you are willing to pay the price of *not* going along with them. Because whoever Italy's creditors are (for a fairly large part, Italian pension funds, as I explained above) bound to not be very happy when the Italian states tells them to go fuck themselves. Since democracy is one-man/woman-one-vote you offwrite 1/(number of people at the time the contract was created) everytime one dies of every state debt contract. Of course states and other institutions don't work that way RIGHT NOW. That is why you should clean up their internal rules to work like that. I'm sorry if someone loses out on such a change in contract, but it should have been clear all along that in reality you can't expect to get a return no matter what. That's just the nature of multihuman interaction. Contract rules are there to instituionalize these things, prevent slavery and other unfair and unrealistic contracts. If that right - which in itself is a social contract - leads to impossible demands it is that right that has to be reformed, not the contract that has to be fullfilled. You could obviously postpone the problem to the next generation, by just making that amount of debt necessary to pay for the interest of current debt without having to take it from taxes. Anymore debt you make should be payed back in a short timeframe, less debt shouldnt be made. sounds implementable; some notes: nobody is going to lend you money long term without charging a higher interest to account for those losses in the debt contract. Yes it sounds like you're favoring simply not accruing debt in the first place. just add a balanced budget rule or some such to prevent accumulating any debt at all. I don't mind debt, for as long as it stays between those people representing either side, or gets voluntarily traded. Making me a debtor by brith is fascism though. I don't care what metaphysical concepts, like nation states or enterprises you want to imply. They don't exist in the physical reality. Any social rule you make always has to be intrepted as (that rule) intersection (physical limitations). And I believe the anarchic freedom of a person to do what they want to be a physical rule. If you work against that too much you are going to trigger a response. That is why we need unbiased price systems that signal us what to do. Capital-untaxed Capitalism is no such system. it's not unreasonable for the debt to be paid by generations not yet born IF the debt was incurred for projects with long term benefits that help those people. Like some infrastructure projects. The problem is that too many nations use debt to pay for current welfare spending. I believe there are two things to note about that: a) things devalue over time for all sorts of reasons. It's just objectively untrue that things are being built for future generations. They are first of all being built for the people currently living - and planned to their need which they project on that future generation. Which I don't believe is totally going to be wrong, but there is a reason why individual pricing is superior to social planning. b) without a proper land-value taxation what an infrastructure project built on debt actually does is: upvalue the land of current owners - so it is harder for the next generation to acquire it from them or their heirs - on the cost of the next generation - they have even less money to spend on the upvalued land. State infrastructure built by debt or by taxes on work/consume are by far some of the worst measures a state can take, even if I agree that state infrastructure (land planning through regulation and pricing) in theory is great. The current practical implementation is a joke and imposes an additional handicap on our generation to live independent from our parents decisions. please don't overuse the word fascism; there's no need for it to be so diluted by being applied to very disparate things. I was talking about debt in the national sense; so yes, you simply oppose debt in the first place as I said. with the implicit qualifier that we were talking about nations debt, as we in fact were. you are making a false assumption that things cannot be built for future generations. while they often are not, it is not an objective truth that you assert; not unless you want to bend the meaning excessively.
I think I qualified what I meant in the sentences afterwards. If you build something right now than people right now profit in all various ways. So building it all by debt is already wrong, even if you assume you know what future generations want - which I don't deny is impossibly, although I believe you wanting something for someone else is still your very own need and should be paid exclusively by you. + Show Spoiler +That is what I meant with individual pricing being superior to social planning. If you want a road go and build a road at your own cost. If you want a road for your children go and build a road for your own cost. If your children want to build a road 20 years from now they should go and build a road at their own cost. The IF-part is the important thing. Maybe they would have rather spent the 120% cost for the road you have imposed for them on a train ticket.
And quite objectively speaking pretty much all things that are not somehow supported through repairs and renovations are going to be worthless 20-years from now. True, those cost are usually much lower than just starting to build 20-years from now. But quite simply, you did not build it for them. You built it for yourself. And when you do it by debt you are implying that they want that in the future at that price, which you absolutely can't know.
you're simply wrong that state infrastructure is one of the worst measures a state can take; not sure how you reach such an obviously foolish conclusion.
No I believe that state infrastructure in some abstract world is a great thing. State infrastructure in the real world where I pay taxes for work and consume to build roads I don't use, don't want to use (for enviromental reasons) and that make land values (and with it rents) rise for land that I want to buy as cheap as possible is bad.
You tax me for the profit of others. If you finance your infrastructure through a land-value tax and taxes on using state infrastructure I believe that would be great, but we do not live in this abstract world where we finance it like that.
that the current implementation may be poor in some nations does not in any way make it true for the general case.
There is no general case. There is reality. And since I am of the kind that believes anything that has to do with the primary distribution and planning of land should go through the hands of a democratic state i do very well believe that infrastructure should be done by the state. That doesn't mean that it does not matter HOW we do it, in particular WHO pays for it in the end and WHO profits.
also, you ignored the entire point, which is that the current implementation is NOT doing infrastructure investment; the whole problem is that the current systems often use the debt to pay for present welfare spending rather than future investments.
Not really. The tax systems in the West are rather similar as far as I know:
There are two major taxes that finance most things, which are work and consumption taxes. And then there are all sorts of smaller taxes. All that gets thrown together and used for all sorts of stuff. There is absolutely no measure in place that would tell us what costs too much, since we haven't defined how much it should cost. The governments just set arbitrary numbers for things or make arbitrary projects like building a wall in some desert and then try to repair the damage they are doing. Of course YOU may believe we spend too much on welfare. Because it is YOUR INDIVIDUAL PRICING, that says we should spend less there. I on the other hand believe that given we are working with the money of working and trading people we should cut all infrastructure spending, all property security spending and all debt spending, because these things don't have anything to do with work and trade and should be paid for by other groups, while welfare is a lot about giving people that rely on work an insurance in certain cases and it makes sense that most of the money from work and trade taxes goes there.
if you're going to argue against something, you need to argue against what was actually said. I had a very clear IF clause in my statement, and your notes about it seem to all assume the if clause was false. which means they don't actually argue against it at all.
True, I may have had to be more clear: Your if-clause is simply mostly wrong. That case is very exotic. You are doing something for yourself and future generations will profit, but you are not doing it for them most of the time. In particular not if they have to pay it for themselves and can't choose if that was actually the most benefitial for them for the money/economic power they now have to spend.
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On the issue of debt from a page before, there's no debtors prison for individuals, we're not living in the middle ages. If you die nobody is forced to inherit your debt if they don't want to. States don't die though (hopefully) so of course, their debt is a perpetual obligation for future generations if they want to continue to be lent money.
Also, not all structural reforms amount to austerity obviously.
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On May 31 2018 18:34 TheDwf wrote:
Verhofstadt trying his hardest to boost the Italian far-right
In this case Verhofstadt is almost certainly right. Long term economic growth and income is driven by productivity growth and Italy's has been dismal for more than 2 decades.
Since the adoption of the euro Italy has lagged behind its peers in economic growth
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/rSwQTn4.png)
Italy's growth rate has been trending downwards way before the adoption of the euro and it's unenplyment rate has been trending upwards since way before it as well.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/oWkzOk5.png)
Where it largely differs from the other countries is its productivity growth:
Within this global trend, Italy stands out: productivity has been the main determinant of the
dismal GDP growth recorded in the last 20 years (Giordano et al., 2017).
Italy’s negative productivity growth gap characterized both the pre-crisis (1995-2007) and the
crisis periods (2007-13). In the latter, the collapse of TFP growth in Italy (-0.9 per cent per year on
average) contrasts with the experience of the other European economies that managed to maintain a
constant level of TFP (Germany and Spain) or limit its decline (France) during the crisis.
There are a large amount of reasons why Italy's productivity lags behind its peers (and many papers on it too of which I linked 1). I'm not going to delve too much into it but it's clear that Italy has a much larger problem than the euro.
bruegel.org
www.bancaditalia.it
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On June 01 2018 00:50 Godwrath wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2018 00:38 RvB wrote:
Does that mean new elections? Ciudadanos is polling high right? No. Pedro Sanchez will be the president if it goes through. I think there is another card the goverment can use, the question of confidence, but i am not sure if that could work.
So the PSOE would govern? With who?
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On June 01 2018 01:10 RvB wrote:In this case Verhofstadt is almost certainly right. Long term economic growth and income is driven by productivity growth and Italy's has been dismal for more than 2 decades. Since the adoption of the euro Italy has lagged behind its peers in economic growth Italy's growth rate has been trending downwards way before the adoption of the euro and it's unenplyment rate has been trending upwards since way before it as well. Where it largely differs from the other countries is its productivity growth: Show nested quote +Within this global trend, Italy stands out: productivity has been the main determinant of the
dismal GDP growth recorded in the last 20 years (Giordano et al., 2017). Show nested quote +Italy’s negative productivity growth gap characterized both the pre-crisis (1995-2007) and the
crisis periods (2007-13). In the latter, the collapse of TFP growth in Italy (-0.9 per cent per year on
average) contrasts with the experience of the other European economies that managed to maintain a
constant level of TFP (Germany and Spain) or limit its decline (France) during the crisis. There are a large amount of reasons why Italy's productivity lags behind its peers (and many papers on it too of which I linked 1). I'm not going to delve too much into it but it's clear that Italy has a much larger problem than the euro. bruegel.orgwww.bancaditalia.it Populists dont get votes because they are correct, they are getting it because people want to believe the fairy-tale that the situation can be turned around in 1-2 years by simply doing X.
They don't want to be told they have to make sacrifices to fix the mistakes of the past, no matter how true it might be.
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On that note: The EU should also consider that the Trump administration is not competition enough to implement the tariffs. But I agree that the EU should punch back. The only way to hurt president's support in congress is to hit the economy of their states. And Trump will keep doing this until congress stops him.
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On June 01 2018 00:58 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On May 31 2018 23:41 zlefin wrote:On May 31 2018 22:23 Big J wrote:On May 31 2018 21:42 zlefin wrote:On May 31 2018 20:13 Big J wrote:On May 31 2018 19:37 Acrofales wrote:On May 31 2018 19:17 Big J wrote:
Italy is struggling because young and working people should be paying unrealistic amounts of debts that old and dead people have caused. There is nothing liberal in austerity once you have acquired debt. The liberal mechanism is not to pass on debts to someone else by abusing state institutions. The liberal mechanism is that when someone dies and hasnt fullfilled his personal contract then it becomes the personal problem of the creditor. As always the selfproclaimed liberals join in into the economic rape of our generation through conservative rule. For obvious reasons that doesn't work for countries (or for corporations). For starters, every day Italians die (and new ones are born). What part of the debt belongs to Italians who die, and should therefore be written off by the creditors? But in general, it's just not how things work. The money wasn't loaned to Giuseppe, it was loaned to Italy, in the expectation that in 20-30-40-50 years, depending on the duration of the loan, that money would be payed back, regardless of whether the money was to pay for Giuseppe's pension and Giuseppe is long dead, or whether it was to build a nice highway between Rome and Milan, that Giuseppe's grandson is happily using. If you are going to make the comparison between people and countries, you should take into account that a bank simply *does not loan* money to old people without pretty ironclad guarantees that they will repaid if the person dies. So what you actually mean is that Italy should declare bankruptcy, because young Italians should refuse to pay for their grandparents' debts. That is a valid point of view, but hasn't gone very well in countries that have tried. Argentina's corralito is still one of the most obvious examples of unbridled borrowing into telling the IMF to go fuck themselves. The economy crashed and burned, and is still a mess 18 years later (obviously there are other factors as well). Ranting and railing against free market economies only works if you are willing to pay the price of *not* going along with them. Because whoever Italy's creditors are (for a fairly large part, Italian pension funds, as I explained above) bound to not be very happy when the Italian states tells them to go fuck themselves. Since democracy is one-man/woman-one-vote you offwrite 1/(number of people at the time the contract was created) everytime one dies of every state debt contract. Of course states and other institutions don't work that way RIGHT NOW. That is why you should clean up their internal rules to work like that. I'm sorry if someone loses out on such a change in contract, but it should have been clear all along that in reality you can't expect to get a return no matter what. That's just the nature of multihuman interaction. Contract rules are there to instituionalize these things, prevent slavery and other unfair and unrealistic contracts. If that right - which in itself is a social contract - leads to impossible demands it is that right that has to be reformed, not the contract that has to be fullfilled. You could obviously postpone the problem to the next generation, by just making that amount of debt necessary to pay for the interest of current debt without having to take it from taxes. Anymore debt you make should be payed back in a short timeframe, less debt shouldnt be made. sounds implementable; some notes: nobody is going to lend you money long term without charging a higher interest to account for those losses in the debt contract. Yes it sounds like you're favoring simply not accruing debt in the first place. just add a balanced budget rule or some such to prevent accumulating any debt at all. I don't mind debt, for as long as it stays between those people representing either side, or gets voluntarily traded. Making me a debtor by brith is fascism though. I don't care what metaphysical concepts, like nation states or enterprises you want to imply. They don't exist in the physical reality. Any social rule you make always has to be intrepted as (that rule) intersection (physical limitations). And I believe the anarchic freedom of a person to do what they want to be a physical rule. If you work against that too much you are going to trigger a response. That is why we need unbiased price systems that signal us what to do. Capital-untaxed Capitalism is no such system. it's not unreasonable for the debt to be paid by generations not yet born IF the debt was incurred for projects with long term benefits that help those people. Like some infrastructure projects. The problem is that too many nations use debt to pay for current welfare spending. I believe there are two things to note about that: a) things devalue over time for all sorts of reasons. It's just objectively untrue that things are being built for future generations. They are first of all being built for the people currently living - and planned to their need which they project on that future generation. Which I don't believe is totally going to be wrong, but there is a reason why individual pricing is superior to social planning. b) without a proper land-value taxation what an infrastructure project built on debt actually does is: upvalue the land of current owners - so it is harder for the next generation to acquire it from them or their heirs - on the cost of the next generation - they have even less money to spend on the upvalued land. State infrastructure built by debt or by taxes on work/consume are by far some of the worst measures a state can take, even if I agree that state infrastructure (land planning through regulation and pricing) in theory is great. The current practical implementation is a joke and imposes an additional handicap on our generation to live independent from our parents decisions. please don't overuse the word fascism; there's no need for it to be so diluted by being applied to very disparate things. I was talking about debt in the national sense; so yes, you simply oppose debt in the first place as I said. with the implicit qualifier that we were talking about nations debt, as we in fact were. you are making a false assumption that things cannot be built for future generations. while they often are not, it is not an objective truth that you assert; not unless you want to bend the meaning excessively. I think I qualified what I meant in the sentences afterwards. If you build something right now than people right now profit in all various ways. So building it all by debt is already wrong, even if you assume you know what future generations want - which I don't deny is impossibly, although I believe you wanting something for someone else is still your very own need and should be paid exclusively by you. + Show Spoiler +That is what I meant with individual pricing being superior to social planning. If you want a road go and build a road at your own cost. If you want a road for your children go and build a road for your own cost. If your children want to build a road 20 years from now they should go and build a road at their own cost. The IF-part is the important thing. Maybe they would have rather spent the 120% cost for the road you have imposed for them on a train ticket. And quite objectively speaking pretty much all things that are not somehow supported through repairs and renovations are going to be worthless 20-years from now. True, those cost are usually much lower than just starting to build 20-years from now. But quite simply, you did not build it for them. You built it for yourself. And when you do it by debt you are implying that they want that in the future at that price, which you absolutely can't know. Show nested quote +you're simply wrong that state infrastructure is one of the worst measures a state can take; not sure how you reach such an obviously foolish conclusion. No I believe that state infrastructure in some abstract world is a great thing. State infrastructure in the real world where I pay taxes for work and consume to build roads I don't use, don't want to use (for enviromental reasons) and that make land values (and with it rents) rise for land that I want to buy as cheap as possible is bad. You tax me for the profit of others. If you finance your infrastructure through a land-value tax and taxes on using state infrastructure I believe that would be great, but we do not live in this abstract world where we finance it like that. Show nested quote +that the current implementation may be poor in some nations does not in any way make it true for the general case. There is no general case. There is reality. And since I am of the kind that believes anything that has to do with the primary distribution and planning of land should go through the hands of a democratic state i do very well believe that infrastructure should be done by the state. That doesn't mean that it does not matter HOW we do it, in particular WHO pays for it in the end and WHO profits. Show nested quote +also, you ignored the entire point, which is that the current implementation is NOT doing infrastructure investment; the whole problem is that the current systems often use the debt to pay for present welfare spending rather than future investments. Not really. The tax systems in the West are rather similar as far as I know: There are two major taxes that finance most things, which are work and consumption taxes. And then there are all sorts of smaller taxes. All that gets thrown together and used for all sorts of stuff. There is absolutely no measure in place that would tell us what costs too much, since we haven't defined how much it should cost. The governments just set arbitrary numbers for things or make arbitrary projects like building a wall in some desert and then try to repair the damage they are doing. Of course YOU may believe we spend too much on welfare. Because it is YOUR INDIVIDUAL PRICING, that says we should spend less there. I on the other hand believe that given we are working with the money of working and trading people we should cut all infrastructure spending, all property security spending and all debt spending, because these things don't have anything to do with work and trade and should be paid for by other groups, while welfare is a lot about giving people that rely on work an insurance in certain cases and it makes sense that most of the money from work and trade taxes goes there. Show nested quote +if you're going to argue against something, you need to argue against what was actually said. I had a very clear IF clause in my statement, and your notes about it seem to all assume the if clause was false. which means they don't actually argue against it at all. True, I may have had to be more clear: Your if-clause is simply mostly wrong. That case is very exotic. You are doing something for yourself and future generations will profit, but you are not doing it for them most of the time. In particular not if they have to pay it for themselves and can't choose if that was actually the most benefitial for them for the money/economic power they now have to spend.
ok, I see your stance, and I'm simply going to disagree on some significant parts of the assumptions you're making. I think there's sufficient data to conclude that certain long term things will be desired by future generations at a sufficiently accurate rate to make some worthwhile spending that future generations will have to pay maintenance/debt on. though that does become murkier with modern technology making things change so fast (it'd have been more true in ancient times where there was less flux in tech).
some of it is also undoubtedly reading thins differently than you intended them; as these problems get very complicated, and without getting very deep into the details on what exactly everything means it's easy to misunderstand points. and this isn't a place where going into that level of detail would be fruitful/interesting.
also no tsure why you bothered to capitalize the parts about me saying too much spending on welfare; as that's more of an objective fact kind of thing in some cases than a my personal opinion/pricing thing. and it's a thing you agreed to yourself (not explicitly, but implicitly). doesn't matter that much though.
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On June 01 2018 01:28 Plansix wrote:
On that note: The EU should also consider that the Trump administration is not competition enough to implement the tariffs. But I agree that the EU should punch back. The only way to hurt president's support in congress is to hit the economy of their states. And Trump will keep doing this until congress stops him.
What's funny is Trump thinks he can win a trade war against anyone. The only problem is he forgets the solution to "divide & conquer" is "together we stand, divided we fall". So, if the EU retaliates and perhaps invites countries like China to join, then Trump and his administration will fall on their ass.
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On June 01 2018 01:16 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2018 00:50 Godwrath wrote:On June 01 2018 00:38 RvB wrote:
Does that mean new elections? Ciudadanos is polling high right? No. Pedro Sanchez will be the president if it goes through. I think there is another card the goverment can use, the question of confidence, but i am not sure if that could work. So the PSOE would govern? With who?
Sorry i am on exams right now and i haven't been able to check it out, but my first guess would be the PSOE as a minority goverment, support would come from independentists, podemos and pnv mostly. Only thing i expect from this is the moral victory which is decent enough due to the blatant corruption of the PP. Budget will remain the same, so austherity stays in atleast this year.
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On June 01 2018 01:24 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2018 01:10 RvB wrote:In this case Verhofstadt is almost certainly right. Long term economic growth and income is driven by productivity growth and Italy's has been dismal for more than 2 decades. Since the adoption of the euro Italy has lagged behind its peers in economic growth Italy's growth rate has been trending downwards way before the adoption of the euro and it's unenplyment rate has been trending upwards since way before it as well. Where it largely differs from the other countries is its productivity growth: Within this global trend, Italy stands out: productivity has been the main determinant of the
dismal GDP growth recorded in the last 20 years (Giordano et al., 2017). Italy’s negative productivity growth gap characterized both the pre-crisis (1995-2007) and the
crisis periods (2007-13). In the latter, the collapse of TFP growth in Italy (-0.9 per cent per year on
average) contrasts with the experience of the other European economies that managed to maintain a
constant level of TFP (Germany and Spain) or limit its decline (France) during the crisis. There are a large amount of reasons why Italy's productivity lags behind its peers (and many papers on it too of which I linked 1). I'm not going to delve too much into it but it's clear that Italy has a much larger problem than the euro. bruegel.orgwww.bancaditalia.it Populists dont get votes because they are correct, they are getting it because people want to believe the fairy-tale that the situation can be turned around in 1-2 years by simply doing X. They don't want to be told they have to make sacrifices to fix the mistakes of the past, no matter how true it might be.
Verhofstadt is right, but it's risky to say what he said from his position. Makes it really easy for eurosceptics to sell the story of evil Brussels trying to coerce a poor, innocent nation to do its bidding. Verhofstadts and Oettingers need to stay quiet until they figure out how not to sabotage their allies in less successful member states with their statements.
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On June 01 2018 01:34 sc-darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2018 01:28 Plansix wrote:
On that note: The EU should also consider that the Trump administration is not competition enough to implement the tariffs. But I agree that the EU should punch back. The only way to hurt president's support in congress is to hit the economy of their states. And Trump will keep doing this until congress stops him. What's funny is Trump thinks he can win a trade war against anyone. The only problem is he forgets the solution to "divide & conquer" is "together we stand, divided we fall". So, if the EU retaliates and perhaps invites countries like China to join, then Trump and his administration will fall on their ass.
Trade wars are mostly the goverment picking winners and letting other nations pick the losers until both sides decide it is time to stop. It isn't a question of who wins, but how much damage is done before everyone remembers is hard to bully sovereign nations.
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They announced counter tariffs last time, I don't see why this time will be different.
EU has shown its willing to stand up to Trump.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://ep01.epimg.net/elpais/imagenes/2018/05/31/inenglish/1527775136_707346_1527779439_sumario_normal_recorte1.jpg)
