EPT
On July 20 2008 00:23 Choros wrote:
Well you make some valid points including one that i make myself. I did economics in high school and thought it the best economics course i have done so far (i'm doing economics at university) but hardly anyone actually does economics i think it would be far more beneficial to people than English (our final year compulsory subject) so when the press and politicians talk about economics they can have some idea when its accurate and when it simply is not. When i blame the media a problem that the US and Australia share (though you gotta admit your media has some serious issues tho) and i'm assuming most of the rest of the world also has it as well. Your mainstream audience generally don't understand economics so why even mention it in depth at all. There are media sources in Australia who do talk about such things and they may be in the United States also but the fact is that as long as the main stream media offers effectively no real economic discussion at all it will remain a hinderence to effective economic policy.
With regard to Obama i am in fact aware that a lot of his donations come from small sources and thank god for that too, perhaps there is hope yet. I have no idea really how competent he will be its very difficult to hear policy amongst the rhetoric but one thing i have heard is that he will cancel the bush tax cuts. Very important, if your gonna have a war and jack up expenditures fine but you do not give tax cuts out at the same time its just stupidity, traditionally taxes would rise.
With regard to spending of rich being ineffectual your right they don't just put it in banks but it is vare indeed that profitability in the United States would outway oportunity in the boom towns of Asian and even eastern Europe and South America. Just say 50% of rich investment went into the US that is still a long shot from the near 100% which would result from increases in expenditure on services, capital works, welfare and so on if that money was in federal hands (and spend properly). Or if it was in the hands of workers in Australia the minimum wage for workers is something like $14 and hour, in Canada its around 8ish varies from province to province in the United States it also varies according to state but the highest is 8 right down to no minimum at all. This is why you have people working for $5 an hour dubbed the working poor. How did this come to past well largely because the US successfully de-unionized and while i'm sure some unions still remain well they do not really have any power. Thus poor wages hurting demand and standard of living. I dunno if you are saying laisse faire is good but it certainly is not.
Also ill point out that while economists design the tools used in economic policy i.e reserve banks fiscal policy etc it is not they who have created the US system but the 'real' rich who's faces never grace our television sets.
Any economic policy you care to mention will work some times and not work other times, we can learn from the past to make educated guesses about the effect that will have and although we can never know for sure well such is life we must do as best we can with what we have, The main point about macroeconomic policy in the United States is simply that monetary policy will not work in this instance, American debt is far too high for people to seriously consider taking on more debt. Thus the only real thing to do now is expansionary fiscal policies i never ment to say they should be contractionary maybe there was a typo or something and as long as the economic managers try to rely on monetary policy the situation will deteriorate. In Australia we have a serious problem where our reserve bank is doing contractionary policy when its inappropriate.
We are in a very bad situation for reserve bankers world wide right now however because as the economy slips requiring expansionary policy, inflation is rising too requiring contractionary policy. The result is this kind of limbo, the Federal reserve doesn't really seem to know what to do neither does our own reserve bank in Australia. What must be done is significantly expansionary policies this is the only way we can overcome our infrastructure bottlenecks and capacity constraints in Australia and fundamental weakness in demand in the US this will cause inflation to rise in the short term but hey this is why they call economics the dismal science.
Well you make some valid points including one that i make myself. I did economics in high school and thought it the best economics course i have done so far (i'm doing economics at university) but hardly anyone actually does economics i think it would be far more beneficial to people than English (our final year compulsory subject) so when the press and politicians talk about economics they can have some idea when its accurate and when it simply is not. When i blame the media a problem that the US and Australia share (though you gotta admit your media has some serious issues tho) and i'm assuming most of the rest of the world also has it as well. Your mainstream audience generally don't understand economics so why even mention it in depth at all. There are media sources in Australia who do talk about such things and they may be in the United States also but the fact is that as long as the main stream media offers effectively no real economic discussion at all it will remain a hinderence to effective economic policy.
With regard to Obama i am in fact aware that a lot of his donations come from small sources and thank god for that too, perhaps there is hope yet. I have no idea really how competent he will be its very difficult to hear policy amongst the rhetoric but one thing i have heard is that he will cancel the bush tax cuts. Very important, if your gonna have a war and jack up expenditures fine but you do not give tax cuts out at the same time its just stupidity, traditionally taxes would rise.
With regard to spending of rich being ineffectual your right they don't just put it in banks but it is vare indeed that profitability in the United States would outway oportunity in the boom towns of Asian and even eastern Europe and South America. Just say 50% of rich investment went into the US that is still a long shot from the near 100% which would result from increases in expenditure on services, capital works, welfare and so on if that money was in federal hands (and spend properly). Or if it was in the hands of workers in Australia the minimum wage for workers is something like $14 and hour, in Canada its around 8ish varies from province to province in the United States it also varies according to state but the highest is 8 right down to no minimum at all. This is why you have people working for $5 an hour dubbed the working poor. How did this come to past well largely because the US successfully de-unionized and while i'm sure some unions still remain well they do not really have any power. Thus poor wages hurting demand and standard of living. I dunno if you are saying laisse faire is good but it certainly is not.
Also ill point out that while economists design the tools used in economic policy i.e reserve banks fiscal policy etc it is not they who have created the US system but the 'real' rich who's faces never grace our television sets.
Any economic policy you care to mention will work some times and not work other times, we can learn from the past to make educated guesses about the effect that will have and although we can never know for sure well such is life we must do as best we can with what we have, The main point about macroeconomic policy in the United States is simply that monetary policy will not work in this instance, American debt is far too high for people to seriously consider taking on more debt. Thus the only real thing to do now is expansionary fiscal policies i never ment to say they should be contractionary maybe there was a typo or something and as long as the economic managers try to rely on monetary policy the situation will deteriorate. In Australia we have a serious problem where our reserve bank is doing contractionary policy when its inappropriate.
We are in a very bad situation for reserve bankers world wide right now however because as the economy slips requiring expansionary policy, inflation is rising too requiring contractionary policy. The result is this kind of limbo, the Federal reserve doesn't really seem to know what to do neither does our own reserve bank in Australia. What must be done is significantly expansionary policies this is the only way we can overcome our infrastructure bottlenecks and capacity constraints in Australia and fundamental weakness in demand in the US this will cause inflation to rise in the short term but hey this is why they call economics the dismal science.
I think I agree with almost all of this, which is why I've been bitching about Congress so much lately. And I also agree macroeconomics is a hugely important class, along with Logic, and both should be taught in highschools, but we're far away from that point.
The media is bad, but like anything else with capitalism, when top dollar is involved the coverage is much better.
I do think most unions are no longer useful and are actually hurting their members, as we've seen in Michigan with the UAW.
