nadiatims wrote:

Tzadeck wrote:

nadiatims wrote:

with Romney, it's hard to say. I think the economy would initially rally to some extent

Why would it rally a bit?

Also, why is Romney more likely to make reforms that you say will help?

Because the business community probably has more faith in Romney to cut spending and restore some faith in the dollar.

So you think that if Romney is elected, the market will suddenly go: "This Romney guy, he'll make us money again. Alright HR drones, hire us some bodies, we got empty desks to fill! Lets get this recovery going!" ??
Now if you mean the stock market will rally. Then ya, I'm sure it will, but then its already pretty much back at 2008 levels (13k Dow, near record highs on S&P) and we're probably already in an recession, so I don't think it matters what the stocks say.

dizmox wrote:

Isn't hoping for significant economic recovery possibly over optimistic? Isn't it likely that the Western world has reached more or less a status quo now? I kind of get the feeling that they'll be waiting for decades...

I think it'll take time to recover, but I don't believe it is at status quo. I saw this graphic from a week or so ago.

http://stateofworkingamerica.org/who-ga … p;end=2008

Play with the sliders some. Most of the growth in the economy isn't trickling down into the rest of the populace, its caught up in corporations and the upper class. In other words there aren't enough jobs being made and salaries aren't raising enough. So I personally think there is room for a little more more equalization at least.

I don't believe either party has what it really takes to really recover the economy in a "New Deal" kind of way. I think if the govt. really wanted to but the fire under the economy it would have to commit heavily to keynesian style economics and with the "budget" being so important now, there just isn't the revenue or taxes to cut to make something like that doable.

This is just my personal opinion, but had we not squandered our "rainy day" savings on wars (Thanks Bush). We would have money to throw into projects to try and rejuv the economy. After all, thats how this stuff use to work. During the slumps the govt. infuses money into the market and during the bubbles the govt. taxes and stores some of it away. It was a decent way to deal with recessions.  If we had the money the best options would be to find something to empower the public that drives science and technology development. Then set up funds for it. I don't know if you would get anything as great as the cold war gave us, but the country needs ambitious goals and it just doesn't have those. I'm mostly repeating Neil deGrasse Tyson here, but I believe in the message he spreads. The Apollo program gave us thousands of advances, many that weren't realized till later.

kitakitsune wrote:

going to do in regards to taxes and a host of other issues.

Which is really funny since many are barely taxed as it is. Taxes are at their lowest in decades.

nadiatims wrote:

a lot to address in this thread...

For the time being, I'll just propose a thought experiment:

Imagine a hypothetical scenario whereby a section of the US (for the sake of argument, lets say Texax) is declared an independent country. A libertarian minarchist government is put in charge. This government phases in a system of reforms whereby after say 5 years there is progressive taxation peaking at say 5%. A strict per-capita limit is set dictating a certain amount of this total revenue to be used for the maintenance of domestic civil order (police and courts etc). Any remaining funds go towards a fund for people below a certain income level who lack health insurance.

How would this scenario play out?

I could tell you exactly how this would play out, but since it's playing out across most of the world as we speak, it's hardly necessary.

On the other hand, i'd love to hear your version of how the immense human social costs will turn out to be all for the best in the best of all possible worlds...

Last edited by IceCream (2012 September 26, 7:19 am)

yudantaiteki wrote:

(Also economics is a science, and popular opinion doesn't really determine what's good economic policy).

Honestly I don't think there's much either candidate can do to radically fix the economy.

Yep. Economics is a science, which is why it's so unfortunate that economic policy is to a large extent chosen by popular opinion. Economic reality however cannot be chosen, and that is one thing much of the west is now having to come to terms with.

The best way for government to fix the economy is to step out as much as possible and stop adding to the problems.

yudantaiteki wrote:

Romney hasn't really shown much willingness to do that, though -- the so-called "budget cutting" plans they propose involve huge tax cuts to the wealthy, and virtually every non-partisan organization says that his budget cut claims are impossible.

The current debt-to-GDP ratio is a little over 100% (102% or so?)  History and economics indicate it needs to be below 90% -- it's much more likely this will occur by economic recovery than by budget cuts.  Neither side really seems to be willing to do what would be necessary to cut the budget that much, and looking at Europe's austerity fiasco, that may not be a bad thing.

Who are these non-partisan organizations?
His budget cut claims may well turn out to be impossible. Romney was not my preferred candidate anyway. There's plenty about him I disagree with, but I believe his policy is in general more nuanced and rational that obama. He has proposed across the board tax cuts, will not raise the minimum wage, and purports to be against subsidies and tarriffs (ie. for free trade) and these are all things that are definitely better for the economy than anything Obama is trying to achieve.

vix86 wrote:

I think if the govt. really wanted to but the fire under the economy it would have to commit heavily to keynesian style economics and with the "budget" being so important now, there just isn't the revenue or taxes to cut to make something like that doable.

It's belief in Keynesianism voodoo that has caused so much of the problems the we're in.

vix86 wrote:

During the slumps the govt. infuses money into the market and during the bubbles the govt. taxes and stores some of it away. It was a decent way to deal with recessions.  If we had the money the best options would be to find something to empower the public that drives science and technology development.

This is really questionable. It's always good to save for a rainy day. But slumps are a time to come to terms with bad investment decisions not just spend money. Investment should always be considered rationally wrt cost/benefit (and there is always an element of uncertainty and risk).

nadiatims wrote:

yudantaiteki wrote:

(Also economics is a science, and popular opinion doesn't really determine what's good economic policy).

Honestly I don't think there's much either candidate can do to radically fix the economy.

Yep. Economics is a science, which is why it's so unfortunate that economic policy is to a large extent chosen by popular opinion. Economic reality however cannot be chosen, and that is one thing much of the west is now having to come to terms with.

That's right, economic reality cannot be chosen. But it can easily be twisted, as shown by this comment. Please remember that it was the de-regulation of banks and their greed which caused the crash, not "socialism". Granted, the governments dealt with it in the wrong way, but they didn't cause the problem, filthy greedy capitalist banker scum did.

Economists will lie to you wherever they have a private interest in doing so, which is frequently. They will tell you the "truth" is whatever benefits them most personally.

nadiatims wrote:

Rational libertarians never claim that everything will turn out perfectly for everyone. As long as people are free to make their own economic or other decisions in life, people will sometimes have errors in judgement and make mal-investments. That is life. We have to deal with risk and uncertainty. That is why people have evolved to hunger for sweets and store energy as fat. It's this human desire to believe in some higher power (be that religion, government, society, status quo) that can offer us guarantees in life that always gets us in the end, because it assumes that the world is in some kind of homeostasis.

Do you understand how shoddy most working conditions are in the developing world right now? It's a very very long way from "not perfect", or "people being free to make bad decisions and take risks". I don't understand why you're ignoring these basic facts.

And people aren't free to make their own economic decisions in life. I'm sorry, but that assumes the world is in homeostasis far more than governments meddling where they are needed does. People simply don't have equal opportunities in life. They never will,  they aren't born equal. And conditions are far far worse for the majority of people under free market capitalism than they are under a system with minimum wages and labour laws and so on. The ONLY people who benefit from free market capitalism as opposed to another system are those at the very top. Why do you want that system as opposed to a system whereby the minority at the top have to deal with making slightly less profit so that everyone is ensured a basic standard of living?

nadiatims wrote:

Capitalism does not steal from it's workers...who is this capitalism fellow anyway?

Governments and other groups that rely on coercion steal. This is a moral issue. Capitalists can steal but it is not a part of being a capitalist.

As long as people continue choosing to remain sheep, there will be predatory elements will emerge to fill that void. It's a totally legitimate survival strategy. How is this different from nature exactly. Until technology is invented that creates the necessities of life out of free air, life involves cost.

Exactly, it's not different from nature. I think i've said this before, but we create society so that we don't have to live in nature and deal with those conditions. This is what i meant by "everything is for the best in the best of possible worlds". You are conflating how things actually emerged with the "best" way of running things.

Yes, life involves cost, but there are many different ways of organising and viewing those costs. Each different system will lead to different effects, but i'm yet to be convinced of how the way you suggest is going to be the only possible way that society will not collapse.

Capitalists steal from their workers by stealing land so they have power, and then by paying their workers not the value of their labour but as little as possible as determined by how replaceable they are as individuals. The capitalist takes the rest of the value of their labour as their own profit.

It's basically Marx, and he can explain it much more clearly than i can. I recommend reading it, if only for you to see that there are alternative ways of viewing the history of economics.

Last edited by IceCream (2012 September 26, 2:14 pm)

as much as possible

Doesn't mean unchecked.

Last edited by kitakitsune (2012 September 26, 3:27 pm)

yudantaiteki wrote:

Historical evidence doesn't seem to support that, though -- as far as I'm concerned, the government is the only protection people have against the corporations (and banks), and even that's shaky since the corporations do everything they can to buy politicians politicians leave enough loopholes open to let corporations 'support' them, without looking like complete corporate shills.

Fixed it for you.

IceCream wrote:

Capitalists steal from their workers by stealing land so they have power, and then by paying their workers not the value of their labour but as little as possible as determined by how replaceable they are as individuals. The capitalist takes the rest of the value of their labour as their own profit.

This assumes there's an absolute value for labor. However, absolute values are nonexistent. All values are determined by the market.

The key implication of market determination is that all values are subjective. Of course, there may be a difference between how much employers value their employees' labor and how much the same labor is valued by the employees themselves. For example, an employer may pay ¥800/hr to its employees although the employees think they deserve ¥1200/hr. However, there is no instruction manual or protocol for deciding whose valuation is correct, and therefore it is subjective.

Consequently, actual market values are a much better standard for determining how much something is worth than ideal values because it represents what people actually pay (or are paid) rather than what they would like to pay (or be paid). Therefore, the amount the employees are paid is the actual value of their labor, and so it doesn't make sense to accuse the employers of stealing. The employer may be an exploiter or a profiteer (i.e. an utter scoundrel), but certainly not a thief.

Last edited by vileru (2012 September 27, 4:02 am)

I think libertarians would say that in a perfect libertarian world, the factory owner would not be able to force you off land, and you could still compete with the factory person to sell your berries for $1 if you preferred to do that instead of working for him.  In that environment, the factory person wouldn't be able to exist if he wasn't providing something you couldn't do on your own, and no one would work for 10 cents if they could do the berries themselves for $1.  But this is utopian talk.

kitakitsune wrote:

Romney out-polls Obama within the middle class by over 15 points. Either they are all very stupid or they are on to something about the economy.

You know what? I know shit all about the economy! And I don't expect my fellow Swedes or American average citizens to know all that much either, because how would they? If we're lucky we managed to gain some understanding of basics of economy when in high school but other than that it's mostly just loads of propaganda using alien terminology that you can't really follow unless you've taken university courses in economics or if you dedicate a significant portion of your free time to learning about these things. And like Tzadeck said, to begin with a lot of economics is grasping for straws and trying to predict outcomes that are affected by thousands of factors you aren't even including in your calculations, so even to an expert it can be basically impossible to tell which decisions are the best in the long run. Average citizens cannot, nor should they be expected to, understand the intricacies of the economical system and stay up-to-date on what happens to it.

National economics presents a very important problem in my opinion when it comes to politics. Everyone agrees that the population should have some say in what directions should be taken re: economics but there are very different viewpoints on how that should be done exactly. To me, it seems ridiculous for different sides to be saying "we have the BEST economics". It should be a given that the ruling party is making use of the best possible advice. Both sides should be using economists with the same level of expertise, that choice of economists shouldn't be determined by political ideology. The difference should be in what direction the politicans ask these economists to steer the economy. Statements like "Romney/Obama/Anders Borg knows what to do with the economy! vote for them!" represent, to me, a failure of our democratic systems.

Edit: And if the economists cannot adjust their suggested financial decisions to the wished goals of the politicians and by extension the people, as seems to be assumed quite often (with people saying things like "yeah she's a Democratic economist"), that doesn't strike me as very professional or "expertlike".

Last edited by Surreal (2012 September 27, 7:44 am)

JimmySeal wrote:

The likely outcome there is that since the capitalist has machines to do the jam-making work that humans were previously doing, he can sell the same amount of jam for $2.00 and pay his berry pickers $1.60.  Once his lower prices have put all of the independent jam makers out of business (because nobody will buy any of their jam anymore), he can bring his prices up to $2.75, lower his berry pickers' wages to $0.20, and pocket all the profits.

Yeah, this is also a good method of theft.

yudantaiteki wrote:

I think libertarians would say that in a perfect libertarian world, the factory owner would not be able to force you off land, and you could still compete with the factory person to sell your berries for $1 if you preferred to do that instead of working for him.  In that environment, the factory person wouldn't be able to exist if he wasn't providing something you couldn't do on your own, and no one would work for 10 cents if they could do the berries themselves for $1.  But this is utopian talk.

Yeah, that's definately la-la land. Why would the capitalist not be able to force me off his land? Or is this the libertarian utopia where there is no law at all and i can simply murder the capitalist whenever i feel like it? The other argument i've heard is that land ownership was historically fair, which is frankly absurd since it emerged out of feudalism, and frankly irrelevent since it's not like everyone has an equal chance at land ownership today.

One option for a fairer system of land rights could state that corporate land must be owned by everyone who works on it. This creates competition externally and co-operation internally, which avoids the problems of both capitalism and of total government ownership. Everyone takes a fair share of the risk, and everyone takes a fair share of the profit.

Speaking of which, you often hear capitalists talk about the risk involved, and that all those profits are the reward for taking the risk. Except, usually it's the workers who bear the brunt of that risk, and are not rewarded at all. The CEO bows out when things go wrong, but has already collected the millions he'll need to never have to work again in his lifetime. The workers who get made redundant never got a fair share of the profit to begin, then get told that they are lazy dole scroungers who need to take responsibility for their own lives.

nadiatims wrote:

If the workers had any brains, they'd save the extra wages (60 cents) along with what they save thanks to the reduction in the market price of jam. They'd use this capital to improve the market value of their own labor or start their own businesses. A reduction in the scarcity of jam has been achieved thanks to what proved to be a wise investment in jam-making machines by the factory owner, and while some may be put temporarily out of work, society as whole is now wealthier. Any consumer with access to this reduced price jam will ultimately have more money now to spend on other things thus stimulating the development of other industries. Some of the berry pickers will jump ship to these other industries, and others may unionize to demand higher wages. Meanwhile the factory owner's profits will not last forever, as others will inevitably try to emulate their success.

And what would happen to society if all the workers realised they were being exploited and decided to start their own businesses? There would be no co-operation, and no large scale industry. Everyone would just scrape by picking up whatever money from their own ideas they could. Workers are necessary to achieve the reduction in scarcity of jam. A capitalist and his jam factory alone are worthless without workers, but workers and a jam factory are not worthless without the capitalist. So why is it that you support a system which allows the worker's exploitation rather than one that doesn't?

You can still acheive a reduction in scarcity and reduction in the price of jam without divorcing the workers from the value of their labour. So what is it that makes the exploitative system better?

nadiatims wrote:

Icecream wrote:

One option for a fairer system of land rights could state that corporate land must be owned by everyone who works on it. This creates competition externally and co-operation internally, which avoids the problems of both capitalism and of total government ownership. Everyone takes a fair share of the risk, and everyone takes a fair share of the profit.

Well, employees are free to negotiate such terms when they become employees. I actually agree that in many instances such an arrangement could work well but i think such conditions are more likely to occur through the natural operation of the free market.

In what universe can you negotiate those kinds of terms?!?! (see the recent Lonmin mine strikes in SA for a good example of such "negotiation".) Most capitalists will simply sack you and re-employ you under a new contract if you disagree with their terms, because you are replaceable. In the end, they will asset strip the company and run off with the money if the workers start asking for a fair deal. They will then set up again somewhere where the workers are not as savvy. I mean, it's a lovely idea in theory, but since the land rights have already been given to the capitalist by the time you arrive on the scene, you have literally 0% chance of negotiating such a right. The capitalist would have to give away "their" land to you, which is simply never going to happen.

What do you mean by "more likely to occur"? More likely to occur than what? If you change the law relating to land rights, you solve this particular problem. Simple. You don't have to wait for it to occur naturally, that's what law is for.

Last edited by IceCream (2012 September 27, 12:57 pm)