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On April 04 2015 08:52 Taguchi wrote:
Fun fact: Global GDP for 2014 was 72.6 trillion dollars. Net worth of 10 richest people in the world is 513.1 bn dollars or approximately 7% of global GDP. Would innovation and all the rest not happen if these obscenely rich people had, say, 1% of their current wealth?
You're comparing flow measures to stock measures. How do you propose we go about taking away 99% of their wealth? Should I get the torches and pitchforks ready?
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On April 04 2015 09:25 warding wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2015 08:52 Taguchi wrote:
Fun fact: Global GDP for 2014 was 72.6 trillion dollars. Net worth of 10 richest people in the world is 513.1 bn dollars or approximately 7% of global GDP. Would innovation and all the rest not happen if these obscenely rich people had, say, 1% of their current wealth? You're comparing flow measures to stock measures. How do you propose we go about taking away 99% of their wealth? Should I get the torches and pitchforks ready?
You aren't dumb so why pretend?
In this very post there was a link describing how corporations evade huge amounts of taxes. This sort of wealth accumulation is only possible through low tax rates. Have you heard of tax progressivity - tax brackets? Why should a billionnaire get the same tax rate as a millionnaire? Why do tax havens exist? Why do tax loopholes exist? How would the world be worse off if a multibillionnaire was 'merely' a multimillionnaire?
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Their networth is based on the value of the companies they own, not on their actual income. Their income might not even be that high in any given year. You can have tax progressivity on capital gains and dividends and in fact you already do in the US. Increase that further and what these people will do is to move abroad - because they can -, or simply not cash-out and fund their whims through foundations funded by their businesses.
I also don't see any gain for society from taxing these people more other than bringing joy to the envious. If Elon Musk hadn't been already very wealthy he wouldn't have been able to create Tesla and SpaceX. Bill Gates is arguably doing more good to the world with his money than the US Government would be.
EDIT: Tax havens exist because there are over 200 countries in the world with the incentives to be just that. Tax loopholes exist because it's really hard to create a system without them, without the system itself being a fucked up tyranny.
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On April 04 2015 09:40 Taguchi wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2015 09:25 warding wrote:On April 04 2015 08:52 Taguchi wrote:
Fun fact: Global GDP for 2014 was 72.6 trillion dollars. Net worth of 10 richest people in the world is 513.1 bn dollars or approximately 7% of global GDP. Would innovation and all the rest not happen if these obscenely rich people had, say, 1% of their current wealth? You're comparing flow measures to stock measures. How do you propose we go about taking away 99% of their wealth? Should I get the torches and pitchforks ready? You aren't dumb so why pretend? In this very post there was a link describing how corporations evade huge amounts of taxes. This sort of wealth accumulation is only possible through low tax rates. Have you heard of tax progressivity - tax brackets? Why should a billionnaire get the same tax rate as a millionnaire? Why do tax havens exist? Why do tax loopholes exist? How would the world be worse off if a multibillionnaire was 'merely' a multimillionnaire?
Wealth accumulation and progressive taxes are more so about personal income taxes than corporate taxes. As for progressive taxes, they're the norm in developed countries these days.
Tax havens exist because some government wants some easy money for their economy. It's a bit cheap, but sometimes that's all they can figure out to do.
Loopholes are more complicated because one person's 'loophole' can be another person's 'responsible government policy'. Other times loopholes arise from errors in tax code creation or are just minor attempts at creating a specific tax haven to get easy money.
Theoretically you don't need millionaires and billionaires. You could have the general population or more widely held organizations save enough to make up for what the rich don't have anymore. Easier said than done tho.
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On April 04 2015 10:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Theoretically you don't need millionaires and billionaires. You could have the general population or more widely held organizations save enough to make up for what the rich don't have anymore. Easier said than done tho.
We are still in a global savings glut, it has become so bad that billions are "invested" into government bonds with negative yields, and you seriously advocate for keeping that status quo? Why not lower the savings rate?
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On April 04 2015 06:54 warding wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2015 23:46 WhiteDog wrote:
My problem is that most of your points are false. The biggest growth the european never had existed in a time where the state was MUCH MORE involved in economy than today. And it has been 20 years that the state has, in fact, took less and less initiative in the economy, with POOR result. So Europe is NOT dominated by "collectivist" : just because we have OLD structure and institutions that dates back to the thirty glorious doesn't mean that we are still collectivist. So you think government running things is what leads to economic growth? How did that work out for North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, USSR, pre-Xiaoping China. What about this: ![[image loading]](http://www.americanthinker.com/legacy_assets/articles/assets/Hoven%20-%20Slow%20Statism%201.png) Funny you mention that France is now a libertarian apocalypse, because when I checked I got this: My point was that Europe was more collectivistic than the US. You seem to disagree. Then explain this image to me: ![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Depense-publique-sur-PIB.png) Legend: maroon > 55%, red 50–55%, orange 45–50%, yellow 40–45%, green 35–40%, blue 30–35% US is 35%. As a Marxist you take issue with me calling current Europe collectivistic, I understand. However, it is much more so than the US and that is the relation I wanted to establish to make my point. Show nested quote +
And most of the ground breaking and innovative research has been made under PUBLIC FOUNDING. Investment in France prior to the euro is a much more heavily "collectivist" economy was way higher than today.
Yes, Europe produces a lot of science and technical advancements at its universities. However, it has done a terribly poor job at making them useful for society, and has very few success cases in the last decades. The failure of phil.ipp to see the point of these new companies of the digital age is symptomatic of how Europeans look at innovation. Europeans see innovation as a disturbance to the existing societal peace and local tradition.Uber creates a much better customer experience for car travel than the existing status quo. If it didn't, people wouldn't use it. It is also building the basis for a future where autonomous cars will function as taxis.
Anybody who has any knowledge on short term macroeconomics knows your comparaison are just DUMB. Stop watching TV. Gov. spending is supposed to be lower in growth period, and higher during low growth time, because during low growth time the safety net pump out a lot of money and automatically play as a stabilisator, by investing in a counter cyclical manner.
France is a perfectly good exemple for me, because we have been lowering everything we could (retirement, unemployment benefit, healthcare, etc.), but with 10 % UNEMPLOYMENT OF COURSE THE GOV SPENDING IS GOING TO BE HIGHER IN % OF GDP THAN WHEN THE UNEMPLOYMENT IS AT 5 % (LIKE IN 1981 where there are only 600 000 unemployed in France, compared to the 2.5 millions of 1983 and the 3.5 - 5 millions total - of today....). In your graph the gov spending drop down in 1998-2002 WITH A SOCIALIST party in power, but the high growth of this LOGICALLY bring down the public spending by creating many jobs and putting people back in employment.
It's that kind of tautological reasonning that bore me : when the growth is high, it naturally drop down gov spending, and then you use that fact to prove that low gov spending create growth..... LIKE REALLY ? When I run I am usually hotter, so it must mean that being hot favor running right ?
As for the US at 35 % you again didn't read my points. I specifically said the US is under developped in specific fields (unemployment benefit, healthcare, universal education) but it invest a lot in specific field. Look at investment field by field : compare what the french and european governments spend in their top tier universities or in public research with the US. Yes they don't give a damn about the poorest citizens and we do, how does that necessarily mean the state is a bad economic agent and must be lowered ? Note that even in this "liberal" heaven that is the US, the gov spending has been increasing for the last twenty years. Did you look at their debt ? They have 35 % of GDP but take LESS income through taxation. Different society, different desire, different spending scheme.
That's my beef with the likes you liberals, you don't even want to look at reality. Do you know the US practice way more indirect protectionnism than europe ? No you don't, because it does not match your blantantly false ideological discourse. Just look at how the US managed the crisis : IT INVESTED MORE THAN EUROPE. It is a counter cyclical policy (they invest when the growth is low, not the other way around), it is intelligent. You can look at the spending of the US in the last 20 years (I have already gave source about that in previous posts) and see that they always invest in a counter cyclical manner while we stupid europeans with ideological desire for the "free markets" always invest in a pro-cyclical tendancy (by reducing deficit in crisis to let the depressed market lead us to equilibrium and utility maximization) with POOR results.
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Two things, mostly clarification. "Invest" is being very very kind to our government spending, more of just spending for spendings sake. Our health, education, courts, etc were not meaningfully improved. Second, I think its very hard, if not impossible to engage in countercyclical spending if your default spending level is as high as it is in a lot of modern countries. Going from 10% to 20% GDP as spending is much more impactful, and is going to not create the kind of investor scares than going from 50% to 60% of GDP.
I think there is a real conflict between effective Kenysian stimulus (assuming it is effective) and an expansion welfare state. This is why it appears to so many that Keynes has really just been co-opted by liberal parties who want to use stimulus as an excuse to lock in permanently higher levels of spending.
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WhiteDog so you look at that line graph and you don't see a trend, only economic cycles? I checked, and unemployment benefit expenditure in France was less than 2 p.p. of GDP in 2010. That hardly explains the difference between ~57% of GDP in recent years and ~45% in 1978.
I also don't get your point about US investment. Are you claiming that the US government spends more in R&D and universities and that's where the tech innovation comes from?
Anyhow, these are more or less tangent to the premises of my argument: Europe is more collectivistic than the US, there is a lot more tech innovation happening in the US.
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On April 04 2015 18:10 warding wrote:
WhiteDog so you look at that line graph and you don't see a trend, only economic cycles? I checked, and unemployment benefit expenditure in France was less than 2 p.p. of GDP in 2010. That hardly explains the difference between ~57% of GDP in recent years and ~45% in 1978.
I also don't get your point about US investment. Are you claiming that the US government spends more in R&D and universities and that's where the tech innovation comes from?
Anyhow, these are more or less tangent to the premises of my argument: Europe is more collectivistic than the US, there is a lot more tech innovation happening in the US.
Ho yes there is a trend, and it's an economic law : this is the law of wagner and it apply to both europe, the US, and even countries such as China or India. But this idea that specifically in europe we are "collectivist" and that it goes against our economic potential is a JOKE considering most of our policies in the last 30 years were liberal (and also dumb). There are on one hand cyclical matters, and on the other hand the necessity of the state in specific field (healthcare, environment, education, etc.) that are at the source of externalities, and those two things explain the rising part that the state take in our modern economy (that's what makes it modern : the state is useful because we're big enough to know what the market can and cannot do).
Aside from that, there is no "collectivist" behavior from europe, just old "collectivist" infrastructure doing their jobs and stupid liberal counter cyclical policies that are detrimental to us. I'm saying that when you compare the US and Europe, the debate is not collectivists vs liberals economic thinking, it's DUMB public policies vs NOT DUMB.
I also don't get your point about US investment. Are you claiming that the US government spends more in R&D and universities and that's where the tech innovation comes from?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending
1 United States 405.3 2.7% 1,275.64 2011
2 China 337.5 2.08% 248.16 2013
3 Japan 160.3 3.67% 1,260.42 2011
4 Germany 69.5 2.3% 861.04 2011
5 South Korea 65.4 4.36% 1,307.90 2012
6 France 42.2 1.9% 640.91 2011
If the US invest more in R&D than France (fucking communists right ?) or Germany, does it mean that the US is more collectivist ? Almost 1 pts of GDP more than France, that's an absurd amount of money.
Here is a french graph for higher education spending in % of GDP :
![[image loading]](http://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/373117dzaszas.jpg)
Ho what a shock, Germany and France are below the US - again ! And the private spending (in purple) are not even counted for the UK - the heart of liberalism - but it still does better than France public + private investment ! What ? How ? Communism ? The US potential growth must be very low with that much public investment... Freedom for dem markets !
source for the data http://www.oecd.org/edu/EAG2012_SL_B2.xls
Just saying, for you our lack of innovation is linked to our "collectivist" infrastructure : we can't innovate because we invest too much in healthcare and universal education, or to say it in another way, because we care about our citizens. It's an ideological argument, the reality is we don't innovate as much because we invest less in higher education and research.
On April 04 2015 17:55 cLutZ wrote:
Two things, mostly clarification. "Invest" is being very very kind to our government spending, more of just spending for spendings sake. Our health, education, courts, etc were not meaningfully improved. Second, I think its very hard, if not impossible to engage in countercyclical spending if your default spending level is as high as it is in a lot of modern countries. Going from 10% to 20% GDP as spending is much more impactful, and is going to not create the kind of investor scares than going from 50% to 60% of GDP.
I think there is a real conflict between effective Kenysian stimulus (assuming it is effective) and an expansion welfare state. This is why it appears to so many that Keynes has really just been co-opted by liberal parties who want to use stimulus as an excuse to lock in permanently higher levels of spending.
No it's not hard, the US proved it with the last crisis. You increase the debt but you reduce the loss of GDP, and thus the loss of tax income, which in turn lower the deficit and thus the debt. Investing more does not mean having more debt per say, it depend on the result of that investment, but when you invest during a crisis, there are a good chance that it will have a positive impact on the economy since most private economic agent refuse to invest (because of bad anticipations).
Keynesian stimulus has nothing to do with the expansion of the welfare state. For Keynes, we must lower investment during growth period, this is rarely if ever followed. That's the nature of counter cyclical policies.
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On April 04 2015 16:14 puerk wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2015 10:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Theoretically you don't need millionaires and billionaires. You could have the general population or more widely held organizations save enough to make up for what the rich don't have anymore. Easier said than done tho. We are still in a global savings glut, it has become so bad that billions are "invested" into government bonds with negative yields, and you seriously advocate for keeping that status quo? Why not lower the savings rate?
My post was agnostic towards global and national savings rates. It was about who saves, and by doing so has wealth; not how much is saved in the aggregate. So I think you misread something there.
In the short run you can absolutely lower the savings rate. That's what counter cyclical government policies like unemployment insurance do. But over the long run you're going to need a positive savings rate and not sell your factories to China so you can consume more today.
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WhiteDog, a couple things...
US government R&D spending as a percent of GDP has been falling over the past few decades. The overall percent of GDP spent on R&D has stayed roughly flat due to the private sector spending more. That still leaves many worried, because government and private sector tend to invest in different R&D.
You've said a few times now that the US is more protectionist / insular than Europe. Could you provide some data on that? The only thing I can think of is the US having low trade figures as a percent of GDP, but that figure is unfair. Larger countries tend to have lower percent of GDP trade figures due to how trade works, rather than because of protectionist measures.
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On April 05 2015 00:49 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2015 16:14 puerk wrote:On April 04 2015 10:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Theoretically you don't need millionaires and billionaires. You could have the general population or more widely held organizations save enough to make up for what the rich don't have anymore. Easier said than done tho. We are still in a global savings glut, it has become so bad that billions are "invested" into government bonds with negative yields, and you seriously advocate for keeping that status quo? Why not lower the savings rate? My post was agnostic towards global and national savings rates. It was about who saves, and by doing so has wealth; not how much is saved in the aggregate. So I think you misread something there.
You said if millionaires and billionaires save less, others have to pick up the slack and compensate.. that implies keeping overall savings aggregate constant (or diminishing their decline)...
In the short run you can absolutely lower the savings rate. That's what counter cyclical government policies like unemployment insurance do. But over the long run you're going to need a positive savings rate and not sell your factories to China so you can consume more today.
Are you thinking in some kind of blance sheet equivalence here, that someones savings are always some other peoples investment? Because demanding savings just for the sake of it seems foolish when they are not put to any use, which is exactly what is happening in the real world right now.
Just because someone saves a lot does not mean he will ever build a nice factory in the land he made his money from. Economic actors will not work for the greater good or some measure of maximal utils, that is why we need more redistribution and not less.
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On April 05 2015 01:06 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
WhiteDog, a couple things...
US government R&D spending as a percent of GDP has been falling over the past few decades. The overall percent of GDP spent on R&D has stayed roughly flat due to the private sector spending more. That still leaves many worried, because government and private sector tend to invest in different R&D.
You've said a few times now that the US is more protectionist / insular than Europe. Could you provide some data on that? The only thing I can think of is the US having low trade figures as a percent of GDP, but that figure is unfair. Larger countries tend to have lower percent of GDP trade figures due to how trade works, rather than because of protectionist measures.
That the trend in R&D is a bad augur for the US future is another matter, it is still true that we invest less than the US in anything related to innovation, and we often tax more those innovative field which makes it even funnier. How is that collectivism ?
The europe is a bigger area than the US in term of population and trading, and Europe has a positive commercial balance. As for datas : http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS?order=wbapi_data_value_2010 wbapi_data_value wbapi_data_value-first&sort=asc
United states has 12,1 export as % of GDP in 2011 (just saying it is below Gaza lol), France is at 26, Germany at 42 %. Really the US sporadic protectionnism is famous, just look at toyota and the likes.
And here are imports as % of GDP http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.IMP.GNFS.ZS?order=wbapi_data_value_2010 wbapi_data_value wbapi_data_value-first&sort=asc
US at 15.8 %, France at 27.9 %, Germany at 37.1 %. France is a good average for the eurozone for anything economic, being growth or import / export.
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of course thats how you win the game, protect your own markets against competitors, and force them to open their own for your companies...
isnt that the gist of what happens in the third world. of course i want to force third world countrys to open their markets, we can only win, cause sure as hell no african company will sell products in europe or america. but for us its millions of potential customers.
some years ago i saw a documention "lets make money" they talked about the cotton industry which is heavily subsidized in america and the EU, so african companys cant compete. Burkina Faso got 20 billions in development help in 2008, and lost 80 billions cause they couldnt sell their cotton cause of the subsidy's.
no country in the world lives true liberalism. at least we in europe say this openly, that we dont want absolute liberalism.
in america it all about liberalism on the outside, and in the background they rig the scales with everything they got.
china is even better at this, they say you can sell shit in our country, but you can buy everything we have.
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On April 05 2015 01:23 puerk wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2015 00:49 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 04 2015 16:14 puerk wrote:On April 04 2015 10:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Theoretically you don't need millionaires and billionaires. You could have the general population or more widely held organizations save enough to make up for what the rich don't have anymore. Easier said than done tho. We are still in a global savings glut, it has become so bad that billions are "invested" into government bonds with negative yields, and you seriously advocate for keeping that status quo? Why not lower the savings rate? My post was agnostic towards global and national savings rates. It was about who saves, and by doing so has wealth; not how much is saved in the aggregate. So I think you misread something there. You said if millionaires and billionaires save less, others have to pick up the slack and compensate.. that implies keeping overall savings aggregate constant (or diminishing their decline)...
The discussion wasn't about economic cycles, it was about wealth. Structurally you need a positive savings rate to grow - hell you need a positive savings rate just to replace depreciation. Yes, cycles complicate the matter but cycles weren't part of the discussion.
Show nested quote +In the short run you can absolutely lower the savings rate. That's what counter cyclical government policies like unemployment insurance do. But over the long run you're going to need a positive savings rate and not sell your factories to China so you can consume more today. Are you thinking in some kind of blance sheet equivalence here, that someones savings are always some other peoples investment? Because demanding savings just for the sake of it seems foolish when they are not put to any use, which is exactly what is happening in the real world right now. Just because someone saves a lot does not mean he will ever build a nice factory in the land he made his money from. Economic actors will not work for the greater good or some measure of maximal utils, that is why we need more redistribution and not less.
You seem to be trying to inject a discussion about economic cycles into a discussion about wealth redistribution. That's an error. If you have a factory worth $100,000,000 and you want to redistribute it, you can't sell it to China and let everyone consume $100,000,000 more. Yes, that could boost your economy in the short run, but next time period your economy will shrink, because you no longer have income from the factory - China has that now. Instead you'd want the people your redistributing to be the new owners, which would happen via a savings function.That savings function could mean an aggregate increase or decrease in savings or it could me that the savings rate remains stable. Whatever. It's not a discussion about GDP, other than assuming you don't want to wreck it over the long run.
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On April 05 2015 02:12 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2015 01:23 puerk wrote:On April 05 2015 00:49 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 04 2015 16:14 puerk wrote:On April 04 2015 10:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Theoretically you don't need millionaires and billionaires. You could have the general population or more widely held organizations save enough to make up for what the rich don't have anymore. Easier said than done tho. We are still in a global savings glut, it has become so bad that billions are "invested" into government bonds with negative yields, and you seriously advocate for keeping that status quo? Why not lower the savings rate? My post was agnostic towards global and national savings rates. It was about who saves, and by doing so has wealth; not how much is saved in the aggregate. So I think you misread something there. You said if millionaires and billionaires save less, others have to pick up the slack and compensate.. that implies keeping overall savings aggregate constant (or diminishing their decline)... The discussion wasn't about economic cycles, it was about wealth. Structurally you need a positive savings rate to grow - hell you need a positive savings rate just to replace depreciation. Yes, cycles complicate the matter but cycles weren't part of the discussion. Show nested quote +In the short run you can absolutely lower the savings rate. That's what counter cyclical government policies like unemployment insurance do. But over the long run you're going to need a positive savings rate and not sell your factories to China so you can consume more today. Are you thinking in some kind of blance sheet equivalence here, that someones savings are always some other peoples investment? Because demanding savings just for the sake of it seems foolish when they are not put to any use, which is exactly what is happening in the real world right now. Just because someone saves a lot does not mean he will ever build a nice factory in the land he made his money from. Economic actors will not work for the greater good or some measure of maximal utils, that is why we need more redistribution and not less. You seem to be trying to inject a discussion about economic cycles into a discussion about wealth redistribution. That's an error. If you have a factory worth $100,000,000 and you want to redistribute it, you can't sell it to China and let everyone consume $100,000,000 more. Yes, that could boost your economy in the short run, but next time period your economy will shrink, because you no longer have income from the factory - China has that now. Instead you'd want the people your redistributing to be the new owners, which would happen via a savings function.That savings function could mean an aggregate increase or decrease in savings or it could me that the savings rate remains stable. Whatever. It's not a discussion about GDP, other than assuming you don't want to wreck it over the long run.
No you missed the discussion and injected the false narrative of fixed assets and liquidation.
We were talking about billionaires saving money without investing, and how higher taxation could have prevented this form of undesirable savings glut. Nobody except you ever said anything about liquidating productive assets.
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On April 05 2015 01:33 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2015 01:23 puerk wrote:On April 05 2015 00:49 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 04 2015 16:14 puerk wrote:On April 04 2015 10:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Theoretically you don't need millionaires and billionaires. You could have the general population or more widely held organizations save enough to make up for what the rich don't have anymore. Easier said than done tho. We are still in a global savings glut, it has become so bad that billions are "invested" into government bonds with negative yields, and you seriously advocate for keeping that status quo? Why not lower the savings rate? My post was agnostic towards global and national savings rates. It was about who saves, and by doing so has wealth; not how much is saved in the aggregate. So I think you misread something there. You said if millionaires and billionaires save less, others have to pick up the slack and compensate.. that implies keeping overall savings aggregate constant (or diminishing their decline)... In the short run you can absolutely lower the savings rate. That's what counter cyclical government policies like unemployment insurance do. But over the long run you're going to need a positive savings rate and not sell your factories to China so you can consume more today. Are you thinking in some kind of blance sheet equivalence here, that someones savings are always some other peoples investment? Because demanding savings just for the sake of it seems foolish when they are not put to any use, which is exactly what is happening in the real world right now. Just because someone saves a lot does not mean he will ever build a nice factory in the land he made his money from. Economic actors will not work for the greater good or some measure of maximal utils, that is why we need more redistribution and not less. That the trend in R&D is a bad augur for the US future is another matter, it is still true that we invest less than the US in anything related to innovation, and we often tax more those innovative field which makes it even funnier. How is that collectivism ? The europe is a bigger area than the US in term of population and trading, and Europe has a positive commercial balance. As for datas : http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS?order=wbapi_data_value_2010 wbapi_data_value wbapi_data_value-first&sort=ascUnited states has 12,1 export as % of GDP in 2011 (just saying it is below Gaza lol), France is at 26, Germany at 42 %. Really the US sporadic protectionnism is famous, just look at toyota and the likes. And here are imports as % of GDP http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.IMP.GNFS.ZS?order=wbapi_data_value_2010 wbapi_data_value wbapi_data_value-first&sort=ascUS at 15.8 %, France at 27.9 %, Germany at 37.1 %. France is a good average for the eurozone for anything economic, being growth or import / export.
Hong Kong and Singapore have exports ~ 200% of GDP. The way the math works is that smaller countries naturally post larger trade as a percent of GDP. The Eurozone as a whole still trades more externally than the US does, but the figures are a bit closer. If I google openness to trade, the US seems to rank average, and EU members tend to rank above average, with a few below US (France seems roughly the same as US).
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Anti european/racist in nice clothes + some neo liberalism.
But mainly just anti eu
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On April 05 2015 02:44 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2015 01:33 WhiteDog wrote:On April 05 2015 01:23 puerk wrote:On April 05 2015 00:49 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 04 2015 16:14 puerk wrote:On April 04 2015 10:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Theoretically you don't need millionaires and billionaires. You could have the general population or more widely held organizations save enough to make up for what the rich don't have anymore. Easier said than done tho. We are still in a global savings glut, it has become so bad that billions are "invested" into government bonds with negative yields, and you seriously advocate for keeping that status quo? Why not lower the savings rate? My post was agnostic towards global and national savings rates. It was about who saves, and by doing so has wealth; not how much is saved in the aggregate. So I think you misread something there. You said if millionaires and billionaires save less, others have to pick up the slack and compensate.. that implies keeping overall savings aggregate constant (or diminishing their decline)... In the short run you can absolutely lower the savings rate. That's what counter cyclical government policies like unemployment insurance do. But over the long run you're going to need a positive savings rate and not sell your factories to China so you can consume more today. Are you thinking in some kind of blance sheet equivalence here, that someones savings are always some other peoples investment? Because demanding savings just for the sake of it seems foolish when they are not put to any use, which is exactly what is happening in the real world right now. Just because someone saves a lot does not mean he will ever build a nice factory in the land he made his money from. Economic actors will not work for the greater good or some measure of maximal utils, that is why we need more redistribution and not less. That the trend in R&D is a bad augur for the US future is another matter, it is still true that we invest less than the US in anything related to innovation, and we often tax more those innovative field which makes it even funnier. How is that collectivism ? The europe is a bigger area than the US in term of population and trading, and Europe has a positive commercial balance. As for datas : http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS?order=wbapi_data_value_2010 wbapi_data_value wbapi_data_value-first&sort=ascUnited states has 12,1 export as % of GDP in 2011 (just saying it is below Gaza lol), France is at 26, Germany at 42 %. Really the US sporadic protectionnism is famous, just look at toyota and the likes. And here are imports as % of GDP http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.IMP.GNFS.ZS?order=wbapi_data_value_2010 wbapi_data_value wbapi_data_value-first&sort=ascUS at 15.8 %, France at 27.9 %, Germany at 37.1 %. France is a good average for the eurozone for anything economic, being growth or import / export. Hong Kong and Singapore have exports ~ 200% of GDP. The way the math works is that smaller countries naturally post larger trade as a percent of GDP. The Eurozone as a whole still trades more externally than the US does, but the figures are a bit closer. If I google openness to trade, the US seems to rank average, and EU members tend to rank above average, with a few below US (France seems roughly the same as US).
China, India, bigger than the US higher export ? Russia is comparable and higher export % of GDP ? And Eritrea with 5% exports as GDP must be a huge country right ? Stop please. You are arguing for something else. Bigger country are more encline to have deficit of their commercial balance, yes, but the weight of a country does not define the importance of its exports and imports compared to its GDP.
Thank god you googled "openness to trade"... what does it even mean ? The US is less invested in global trading and is more oriented toward growing its own internal demand and production, that's a fact that the stats perfectly shows. 15% of GDP is very far from 25 %, whatever the "openness to trade" is.
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On April 05 2015 02:37 puerk wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2015 02:12 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 05 2015 01:23 puerk wrote:On April 05 2015 00:49 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On April 04 2015 16:14 puerk wrote:On April 04 2015 10:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Theoretically you don't need millionaires and billionaires. You could have the general population or more widely held organizations save enough to make up for what the rich don't have anymore. Easier said than done tho. We are still in a global savings glut, it has become so bad that billions are "invested" into government bonds with negative yields, and you seriously advocate for keeping that status quo? Why not lower the savings rate? My post was agnostic towards global and national savings rates. It was about who saves, and by doing so has wealth; not how much is saved in the aggregate. So I think you misread something there. You said if millionaires and billionaires save less, others have to pick up the slack and compensate.. that implies keeping overall savings aggregate constant (or diminishing their decline)... The discussion wasn't about economic cycles, it was about wealth. Structurally you need a positive savings rate to grow - hell you need a positive savings rate just to replace depreciation. Yes, cycles complicate the matter but cycles weren't part of the discussion. In the short run you can absolutely lower the savings rate. That's what counter cyclical government policies like unemployment insurance do. But over the long run you're going to need a positive savings rate and not sell your factories to China so you can consume more today. Are you thinking in some kind of blance sheet equivalence here, that someones savings are always some other peoples investment? Because demanding savings just for the sake of it seems foolish when they are not put to any use, which is exactly what is happening in the real world right now. Just because someone saves a lot does not mean he will ever build a nice factory in the land he made his money from. Economic actors will not work for the greater good or some measure of maximal utils, that is why we need more redistribution and not less. You seem to be trying to inject a discussion about economic cycles into a discussion about wealth redistribution. That's an error. If you have a factory worth $100,000,000 and you want to redistribute it, you can't sell it to China and let everyone consume $100,000,000 more. Yes, that could boost your economy in the short run, but next time period your economy will shrink, because you no longer have income from the factory - China has that now. Instead you'd want the people your redistributing to be the new owners, which would happen via a savings function.That savings function could mean an aggregate increase or decrease in savings or it could me that the savings rate remains stable. Whatever. It's not a discussion about GDP, other than assuming you don't want to wreck it over the long run. No you missed the discussion and injected the false narrative of fixed assets and liquidation. We were talking about billionaires saving money without investing, and how higher taxation could have prevented this form of undesirable savings glut. Nobody except you ever said anything about liquidating productive assets.
That doesn't seem to have been the discussion I was responding to:
On April 04 2015 08:52 Taguchi wrote:
Fun fact: Global GDP for 2014 was 72.6 trillion dollars. Net worth of 10 richest people in the world is 513.1 bn dollars or approximately 7% of global GDP. Would innovation and all the rest not happen if these obscenely rich people had, say, 1% of their current wealth?
On April 04 2015 09:40 Taguchi wrote:
You aren't dumb so why pretend?
In this very post there was a link describing how corporations evade huge amounts of taxes. This sort of wealth accumulation is only possible through low tax rates. Have you heard of tax progressivity - tax brackets? Why should a billionnaire get the same tax rate as a millionnaire? Why do tax havens exist? Why do tax loopholes exist? How would the world be worse off if a multibillionnaire was 'merely' a multimillionnaire?
I interpret this as 'why do we need the rich' rather than a discussion on a savings glut among the general population. That makes sense to me since the rich are referenced and a savings glut is not.
To which I replied that we don't, so long as someone fills the savings role. Which is true.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/france-government-spending-to-gdp.png?s=francegovspetogdp&d1=19780101&d2=20151231)
