Hey White People! - Page 8

>being a luditarian

On September 19 2014 19:17 dogmeat wrote:

lol this is exactly what is going on in Gnarlys mind

So you are suggesting the state forces the companies to pay for welfare instead of people?

Well what will happen is that since the profit margin for companies have been greatly reduced salaries will be reduced thus indirectly taxing the people, that extra money will have to come from somebody it wont appear magically.


Also your example is ridiculous not only it didnt generate in your example any wealth but just bankrupt 3 companies but it wouldnt even apply that way because first of all if you were to inject extra money to people the companies that would be directly benefited would be luxury items, so your retarded idea would only transfer money from companies that provide basic needs (food, gas etc) to luxury ones (cars, clothing etc).

we're talking about automation, meaning that profit margins have actually increased.

how would money go from basic needs to luxury, when you can't live without basic needs?

i just looked through the past 4 pages or so.
First of all, main stream economics should be ridiculed as a discipline, it has become about as fanatic as the spanish inquisition, not even exaggerating. Steve Keen who is a respected economist literally wrote in debunking economics that it is worse than the spanish inquistion. I wouldn't go that far, i'd say it's just as bad. Anyway i point this out because people are resorting to making the appeal to authority fallacy instead of making a direct refutation of Gnarly. No economics student should be respected if they resort to the appeal to authority of ‘go back to econ 101’ instead of making clear, easy to understand refutations.

However i agree with mainstream economics in many points. Gnarly is right in some respects, and its supported by mainstream economists such as nobel laurette Joseph Stiglitz, that giving money to poor people can increase aggregate demand. That's actually kind of obvious, since poor spend all the money they have, they would stimulate demand by spending most if not all the extra money they receive.

The people that wont increase aggregate demand is corporations, they have nothing to invest in the west anymore. A lot of people in this thread are laughing at the idea of giving money away so customers can buy their products. This is not an absurd idea and similar ideas were used in the past. Fordism for example paid employees a higher wage so that they could buy the cars they made. It's obvious, if you don't pay your wage slaves enough, no one is there to buy your cars. The Russian economy was turned from an agrarian society into an industrial society within a generation with the capitalist idea of Fordism as well. Money is made in finance since the 1970’s so it no longer matters for corporate profits that their workers need to buy their products. And demand has been shifted to ‘luxury demand’. Demand from the rich who spend it on 100million$ boats, ect.
A recent study done by the IMF shows that finance corporations in America make almost all of their profits from monopoly anyway, since they have a 'too big to fail' insurance policy, credit rating agencies give them an extremely high rating. The banks can’t fail even when they do. So banks get access to cheap credit because of this insurance, and they make roughly $100billion a year because of this. In fact those banks would make very little, if any money without this, since they use a lot of the money they make to pay their executives insanely high salaries.

Corporations will never just start giving money to people though. Their primary goal is to make short term profit. They are totalitarian institutions, who have a board of directors who appoint executives with a chain of command that goes down and gives orders from the top. The ceo's and executives make large bonuses from the stock value in the corporation. So if they give money away, they wouldn't make as much profit. Asking corporations to give money away is like asking hitler to persecute jews less. The only way that could be done is by forcing the corporaton to do it through popular struggle. Corporations have shown that they would invest very little in america anyway.
As for automization, I think that’s fine, it makes production more efficient. It’s not fine when workers are left jobless as well, though. The argument that a healthy economy is one with small amounts of unemployment is weak. Im sure that’s probably taught in high school economics, but as I said economists have no idea what they are talking about. The reason there is high unemployment, is the one given by Alan Greenspan. He said that high unemployment makes workers insecure, and if workers have to worry about losing their job or whether they can afford to live, you can exploit them more for high profits. Which according to him is good for an economy. Ok, for Alan Greenspan the 'economy' is a euphemism for corporate profits, but i agree with him on the first part.
If you look at a country like china it has chronic unemployment, and it has high growth. Take a look at America it also has chronic unemployment and low growth. Ok, I will admit I don’t know much about how growth happens, but neoclassical economists understand very little as well. Much less than they think they do, since their neoclassical economic ideas when they have been implemented have led to low growth economies, particularly in latin America. Especially in Mexico which was managed by a MIT trained economist during the 80’s, 90’s. Mexico was a disaster during that time as any economic historian should know.

What're you talking about you have to take into consideration the demographic factor if you re going to compare China to anyone else. The USA and China basically have the same territory in km2 except China has 8x bigger population, it would be a miracle for them to have a low unemployment rate. I would agree with the rest only for the fact that when you have higher unemployment people will be forced to either adjust - meaning they will have to progress in their development, or be misarable for the rest of their lives. Which leads to progress and growth and this is still frictional/structural unemployment since it wont be for a long time period. I doubt that he is talking about high unemployment rate for a long time, since that would lead a country into a trainwreck due to tons of different factors in the public finances. - I wont go into that coz it will take me about 2 hrs to write this post

To be honest you are right for everything else, and if it were someone else probably everyone would've explained well why Gnarly's point of view is retarded and inapplicable, except he floods the forum with those kind of posts, so people are looking to have fun.

Except that my posts aren't always retarded, and sometimes, are actually correct. (yes, I know, big shocker.)

I know I'm not Ben Bernanke with an infinite amount of knowledge of economics, but if you think I'm retarded for that, you have some real self-esteem issues. Literally, all you have to do is look at the active participation labor rate, which is more important than frictional v structural unemployment, because unemployment is dependent on the APLR. Then, when you look through the APLR, you look at who's got full employment, who's got part time employment, who's on unemployment, and who is unemployed but looking for work. Part time service McJobs are the biggest sector of jobs in America, and becoming increasingly more so every day. The amount of people working full time getting paid a decent wage, forgot to include wages here, that's also something to look at when you're looking at the different demographics of the APLR, is becoming increasingly smaller every day.

This is stuff you can easily look up, but of course, you'll dismiss me as a troll, while I'm trolling you by not trolling you. This is the United McStates of America.

wow that's McDeep

just like your McMom

yeah, a quarter of American jobs are what is called 'guard labor.' That's labor which is simply there to guard the capitalist system. And a huge % is in the service sector. Well, that's quite clearly linked to economic globalization. As countries have been forced to let down their barriers(tax rates on imports/exports) because of debt obligations and as corporations have the power to set up manufacturing in south east asia and get rid of the manufacturing jobs in the west. This turns the west into a service sector.

They also have the power to threaten countries that they will go over seas if they don't lower the corporate tax rate, the same goes for minimal environmental regulation, and all sorts of other things that they don't want to pay for. The result of this is a race to the bottom where every country will be looking like a third world nation as every worker in the world will eventually be competing on similar minimum wages, every country will have no environmental regulation. ect. Anyway, we are already halfway there. Real wages have stagnated and will continue to stagnate in the west, while they stay very low in the east. All this can be changed if people decide to do something about it.

i don't see how size and population density has much to do with unemployment rate. Japan is about the same size as New Zealand, with about 30 times greater population. Unemployment rates are probably slightly worse in NZ. It seems to me more about who runs the economy and for what purposes. It's not like the Chinese government cares about the developing their rural areas, and creating jobs there. A large number of unemployed in china will easily drive down wages as it means the population has no bargaining power. Ok, well that's great for the capitalists that run china, and the amazing profits they gain. And its great for the capitalist in America like Wallmart.

On September 20 2014 11:28 Gnarly wrote: , who's on unemployment, and who is unemployed but looking for work. .

I would absolutely take you seriously if you didn't write about things you don't know the basics of... you have to be actively seeking for work to be considered as "unemployed". Its things like this that make me completely disregard your posts

Stroggoz you don't see how governing 1.4billion people by a single government is different from governing 100m or 200m people? Obviously all of the stuff you mentioned matter, however creating a stable enviroment for such a large amount of people by a single government is still something yet to be seen.

If however what you're talking about comes to a reallity eventually service jobs will shift to the east as well, since they will also be cheaper ( obv outsource in eastern europe and india is something quite popular these days, but thats not really of a big scale ). However things usually reset themselves because of technical progress, jobs that are not even thought of yet, might be within the most sought for in 10 years


And Gnarly the so called APLR you re talking about is on a huge peak from 84 to 08, considering in 08 the crisis struck thats nothing to be surprised about.

On September 20 2014 20:24 Spitfiree wrote: Show nested quote + On September 20 2014 11:28 Gnarly wrote: , who's on unemployment, and who is unemployed but looking for work. . I would absolutely take you seriously if you didn't write about things you don't know the basics of... you have to be actively seeking for work to be considered as "unemployed". Its things like this that make me completely disregard your posts Stroggoz you don't see how governing 1.4billion people by a single government is different from governing 100m or 200m people? Obviously all of the stuff you mentioned matter, however creating a stable enviroment for such a large amount of people by a single government is still something yet to be seen

Well i don't know much about this stuff but i don't see why a large country with 1.4 billion people couldnt be managed with 0% unemployment. It's possible, in some world that was governed democratically. The solution could be something extremely simple minded like dividing working hours into two, meaning work is half as long and twice as many people have to work. People could organize a society that way if they wanted. No government would ever want society organised that way though, so it's never been done. Not going to pretend i know much here, the ideas of what would happen if a country was organized by its citizens is uncharted territory.

It kind of reminds me of the world food crises. So half of the planet is starving, the other half is overweight. The solution is obvious yet no one can think about doing it. It's not even a problem of logistics either. For example in the late 19th century there was a huge famine in India, 20million or so starved to death. There was enough food in india to feed everyone, but it was sent to Britain because they could pay more for it. Ok, well there are similar situations now, but not many people in the educated classes want to say markets cause catastrophic problems. In fact there was a dogmatic belief in the economics profession called the efficient markets hypothesis which led almost no orthadox economist to predict the great financial crisis of 2008.

On September 20 2014 20:24 Spitfiree wrote: Show nested quote + On September 20 2014 11:28 Gnarly wrote: , who's on unemployment, and who is unemployed but looking for work. . If however what you're talking about comes to a reallity eventually service jobs will shift to the east as well, since they will also be cheaper ( obv outsource in eastern europe and india is something quite popular these days, but thats not really of a big scale ). However things usually reset themselves because of technical progress, jobs that are not even thought of yet, might be within the most sought for in 10 years

What i'm saying won't fully come to reality, was just giving a general outline of the horrors ahead if people stay apathetic about this issues. I doubt western workers would ever bow so low as to let their wages sink that far. And they wouldn't sink as far as what is in east asia because of transport costs required to move products from East Asia to America. Whereas manufacturing plants in America have no costs like that. So yeah, they may sink to 3x that of what's in China. But who knows, predicting the future is hard and not something i wanna do, a million things could happen before now and then.

And yeah, the one benefit of British colonialism in India is that they speak English and can get employed in the service sector now. So i can see IT service jobs being shifted to asia more. But not other service jobs. Remember rich people want a lot of people in the service sector around them so they can pay them to....service them. So they will want the economy structured in that way. But most service jobs cannnot be outsourced, it would be kind've ridiculous to see McDonald factories being set up in china, making burgers then sending them to America. That would make no sense, the food would be cold by the time it got to America.

I wouldn't hold out for technological progress to shift the global economy, unless it has to do with lowering transport costs. Social progress seems to me like a much bigger factor.

On September 20 2014 04:04 Stroggoz wrote: i just looked through the past 4 pages or so. First of all, main stream economics should be ridiculed as a discipline, it has become about as fanatic as the spanish inquisition, not even exaggerating. Steve Keen who is a respected economist literally wrote in debunking economics that it is worse than the spanish inquistion. I wouldn't go that far, i'd say it's just as bad. Anyway i point this out because people are resorting to making the appeal to authority fallacy instead of making a direct refutation of Gnarly. No economics student should be respected if they resort to the appeal to authority of ‘go back to econ 101’ instead of making clear, easy to understand refutations. However i agree with mainstream economics in many points. Gnarly is right in some respects, and its supported by mainstream economists such as nobel laurette Joseph Stiglitz, that giving money to poor people can increase aggregate demand. That's actually kind of obvious, since poor spend all the money they have, they would stimulate demand by spending most if not all the extra money they receive. This is what Keynesian economics is based off of. You're going to have arguments between Keynesian and Free Marketeers (e.g. Austrian). Giving money to poor people can increase aggregate demand, but can increasing demand by redistributing the wealth be the answer? Joseph Stiglitz is a keynesian thinker, but there's also people on free market end that would be considered mainstream. (Fredrick Hayek, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell) The people that wont increase aggregate demand is corporations, they have nothing to invest in the west anymore. A lot of people in this thread are laughing at the idea of giving money away so customers can buy their products. This is not an absurd idea and similar ideas were used in the past. Fordism for example paid employees a higher wage so that they could buy the cars they made. It's obvious, if you don't pay your wage slaves enough, no one is there to buy your cars. The Russian economy was turned from an agrarian society into an industrial society within a generation with the capitalist idea of Fordism as well. Money is made in finance since the 1970’s so it no longer matters for corporate profits that their workers need to buy their products. And demand has been shifted to ‘luxury demand’. Demand from the rich who spend it on 100million$ boats, ect. A recent study done by the IMF shows that finance corporations in America make almost all of their profits from monopoly anyway, since they have a 'too big to fail' insurance policy, credit rating agencies give them an extremely high rating. The banks can’t fail even when they do. So banks get access to cheap credit because of this insurance, and they make roughly $100billion a year because of this. In fact those banks would make very little, if any money without this, since they use a lot of the money they make to pay their executives insanely high salaries. Corporations will never just start giving money to people though. Their primary goal is to make short term profit. They are totalitarian institutions, who have a board of directors who appoint executives with a chain of command that goes down and gives orders from the top. The ceo's and executives make large bonuses from the stock value in the corporation. So if they give money away, they wouldn't make as much profit. Asking corporations to give money away is like asking hitler to persecute jews less. The only way that could be done is by forcing the corporaton to do it through popular struggle. Corporations have shown that they would invest very little in america anyway. Well of course, the corporations will always do everything that in their best interest. Now the question is, how far has technology come because of these corporations like Apple, Google, etc? Because of companies going for profit, how is the standard of living now versus 50 years ago? As for automization, I think that’s fine, it makes production more efficient. It’s not fine when workers are left jobless as well, though. The argument that a healthy economy is one with small amounts of unemployment is weak. Im sure that’s probably taught in high school economics, but as I said economists have no idea what they are talking about. The reason there is high unemployment, is the one given by Alan Greenspan. He said that high unemployment makes workers insecure, and if workers have to worry about losing their job or whether they can afford to live, you can exploit them more for high profits. Which according to him is good for an economy. Ok, for Alan Greenspan the 'economy' is a euphemism for corporate profits, but i agree with him on the first part. If you look at a country like china it has chronic unemployment, and it has high growth. Take a look at America it also has chronic unemployment and low growth. Ok, I will admit I don’t know much about how growth happens, but neoclassical economists understand very little as well. Much less than they think they do, since their neoclassical economic ideas when they have been implemented have led to low growth economies, particularly in latin America. Especially in Mexico which was managed by a MIT trained economist during the 80’s, 90’s. Mexico was a disaster during that time as any economic historian should know.

I'm not saying you're wrong and I'm right, I'm saying there are two schools who both have research done for what's best for the economy that will have never ending arguments. (Also see bold in quote)

Man, I'm so ashamed to be white. Not. Keep the drinking the liberal koolaid TS. It seems like it's doing wonders for your esteem. And yes, I am politicizing this, because it's political. Get over it.

You know what actually keeps black people down?

A culture of violence, single-parent homes, negative role models, socio-economic conditions, and a feeling of entitled victimization brought to you by the likes of NBC. Racism still exists, but it's far down the list of the real problems in 2014.

It's sad, but there are black leaders like Larry Elder, Dr. Ben Carson, Allen West, etc. that people should actually be listening to, who actually GET IT. These are the anti- Al Sharptons.

On September 19 2014 21:58 Baalim wrote: So you are suggesting the state forces the companies to pay for welfare instead of people? Well what will happen is that since the profit margin for companies have been greatly reduced salaries will be reduced thus indirectly taxing the people, that extra money will have to come from somebody it wont appear magically. Also your example is ridiculous not only it didnt generate in your example any wealth but just bankrupt 3 companies but it wouldnt even apply that way because first of all if you were to inject extra money to people the companies that would be directly benefited would be luxury items, so your retarded idea would only transfer money from companies that provide basic needs (food, gas etc) to luxury ones (cars, clothing etc).

Your point is well proven by the fact that during the current Obama administration (I know we have a black president despite racism being a huge driving force in our country, it's weird right?) - the stock market has recovered tremendously (AKA rich people getting richer) - yet the median income (an actual stat that MATTERS) has gone down about 5 percent. This is what low-level socialism, AKA the nanny state, does (we already know what full blown socialism does). It's historically proven time and time again. It doesn't taken an MIT economics professor to figure it out - just someone who isn't fully invested in the mainstream progressive media and has half a brain. Just look at Dallas vs Los Angeles, it's fucking as obvious as the sky is blue.

Jubert69.
Most of the innovation American society has been done in the public sector, through universities and various public institutions that have developed far more than what has been done in the private sector. And it's easy to test this. You can test this by looking at all the great innovations over the past 50 years and seeing where they came from. Internet, computers, information processing, lasers, satellites, transistors were all mostly if not completely developed in the public sector until they could be commercialised, in which they were handed over to private power. And the people that developed these weren't motivated by profit, they were probably motivated by what normal human beings are motivated by. The joy of creativiely working on technological innovation. Sure google has done some innovation. Apple some as well.. However the innovation from apple and google pales in comparison to what the public sector has done from what i can see. Now if the profit motive has done anything it has motivated corporations to simply make their own parasitic laws like intellectual property rights. They have effectively hindered growth and wellbeing in economies around the world by stopping ideas/technology, cheap medicine from being shared, which it should be.

The idea that the profit motive entails innovation has NEVER been shown to be true. There is no evidence shown for this. It's just a dogmatism that is perpetuated throughout the economics profession.It's not even an economical argument, it's one that you should see a psychologist or a sociologist making. The sub-discipline of behavioral economics has, with some evidence shown that people are more motivated by meaning in their work anyway.

In fact, the profit motive is what is destroying the world, literally. An energy company for example will gain far more short term profit by pursing cheap fossil feuls like oil than developing one that will be useful in the long term. Other energy companies will have to compete vs the oil based energy one, and will fail if they also do not choose oil. Ok, well this results in the externality of climate change. The concept of externalities is one which free market economists have downplayed.

As for mainstream economics, your right about that. I wouldn't consider Austrian mainstream though-it's very radical. I happen to not follow the mainstream but when i find something i agree with then i will point it out, so people do not waste their time with the argument that i'm wrong because i'm not part of the mainstream consensus. I probably identify with post-keynsian/neomarxian the most, of which both are considered radical. I have never taken a class on econ, for reasons i've already given.

On September 20 2014 22:09 soberstone wrote: Show nested quote + On September 19 2014 21:58 Baalim wrote: So you are suggesting the state forces the companies to pay for welfare instead of people? Well what will happen is that since the profit margin for companies have been greatly reduced salaries will be reduced thus indirectly taxing the people, that extra money will have to come from somebody it wont appear magically. Also your example is ridiculous not only it didnt generate in your example any wealth but just bankrupt 3 companies but it wouldnt even apply that way because first of all if you were to inject extra money to people the companies that would be directly benefited would be luxury items, so your retarded idea would only transfer money from companies that provide basic needs (food, gas etc) to luxury ones (cars, clothing etc). Your point is well proven by the fact that during the current Obama administration (I know we have a black president despite racism being a huge driving force in our country, it's weird right?) - the stock market has recovered tremendously (AKA rich people getting richer) - yet the median income (an actual stat that MATTERS) has gone down about 5 percent. This is what low-level socialism, AKA the nanny state, does (we already know what full blown socialism does). It's historically proven time and time again. It doesn't taken an MIT economics professor to figure it out - just someone who isn't fully invested in the mainstream progressive media and has half a brain. Just look at Dallas vs Los Angeles, it's fucking as obvious as the sky is blue.

eh, if you venture out of the united states, people would collapse in hysterical laughter if you told them that Obama was a socialist. To everyone not in the united states his policies are very right wing.

On September 20 2014 23:07 Stroggoz wrote: Jubert69. Most of the innovation American society has been done in the public sector, through universities and various public institutions that have developed far more than what has been done in the private sector. And it's easy to test this. You can test this by looking at all the great innovations over the past 50 years and seeing where they came from. Internet, computers, information processing, lasers, satellites, transistors were all mostly if not completely developed in the public sector until they could be commercialised, in which they were handed over to private power. And the people that developed these weren't motivated by profit, they were probably motivated by what normal human beings are motivated by. The joy of creativiely working on technological innovation. Sure google has done some innovation. Apple some as well.. However the innovation from apple and google pales in comparison to what the public sector has done from what i can see. Now if the profit motive has done anything it has motivated corporations to simply make their own parasitic laws like intellectual property rights. They have effectively hindered growth and wellbeing in economies around the world by stopping ideas/technology, cheap medicine from being shared, which it should be. This is where I disagree, well, redefine public sector. Internet, computers, etc.. were developed by private enterprises. Computers in the beginning Apple vs. Microsoft were both private companies. They were both startups by individuals. Or maybe I'm not sure what you mean by public sector. I think in the current state of economics, stopping ideas/technology and cheap medicine from being shared is happening, but I don't think it's due to the corporations directly and it's because of big government being an issue. E.g. Cheap medicine is hard to come by in the US not because of the "greedy" corporations, but due to the regulations set forth by the FDA which increases costs to pass regulations The idea that the profit motive entails innovation has NEVER been shown to be true. There is no evidence shown for this. It's just a dogmatism that is perpetuated throughout the economics profession.It's not even an economical argument, it's one that you should see a psychologist or a sociologist making. The sub-discipline of behavioral economics has, with some evidence shown that people are more motivated by meaning in their work anyway. In fact, the profit motive is what is destroying the world, literally. An energy company for example will gain far more short term profit by pursing cheap fossil feuls like oil than developing one that will be useful in the long term. Other energy companies will have to compete vs the oil based energy one, and will fail if they also do not choose oil. Ok, well this results in the externality of climate change. The concept of externalities is one which free market economists have downplayed. I don't think profit = the only motivation for innovation, but it has a considerable amount to do with it. Again using cell phones as an example, all companies are trying to be as innovative as possible to have the best product on the market. Whether it comes from better screens, faster service, smaller devices, etc.. the ones that have the best product will win. As for the example of climate change, you're generalizing all free market economists that none of them believe or downplay climate change. Most US republican representatives will say climate change isn't real and they will call themselves free market people. Please don't confuse them with all free market economists. There's some, but unfortunately not many who take climate change seriously. As for mainstream economics, your right about that. I wouldn't consider Austrian mainstream though-it's very radical. I happen to not follow the mainstream but when i find something i agree with then i will point it out, so people do not waste their time with the argument that i'm wrong because i'm not part of the mainstream consensus. I probably identify with post-keynsian/neomarxian the most, of which both are considered radical. I have never taken a class on econ, for reasons i've already given. I think that's the wrong way to look at it. I think you should take classes, but certain points you can take as a grain of salt. I have taken economics in college, didn't agree with some professors, but gave me a better understanding both sides of the equation.

I think i was perfectly clear about the public sector, just re-read and think about what i wrote more carefully. As for Corporations, they are directly involved in stopping medicine, information from being shared. They are the ones that set up the TRIPS law, trade related intellectual property rights law, and have tried to interfere with indian companies which copy hiv drugs and sell them cheaply to poor countries, particulary south africa. That's one example. I could go on with others such as disney, ect.

You're misrepresenting me about climate change. I said those economists downplay the concept of externalities, i didn't say anything about economists downplaying climate change nor would i have thought that. The concept i was talking about was externalities, which says that says if two people have a transaction then a third party can get hurt. Those externalities(pollution) add up with cars being sold. And what i said was that the competition and profit motivation forces companies to get oil instead of developing an alternative energy resource, and destroy the planet because of this. Ok, well this a profit motive that is designed specifically to stop innovation.

profit motivation has nothing to do with innovation, as i've already said this has never been proven. its complete dogmatism. Just ask any economist for a proof, they won't be able to give a scientific answer.

The best product does not always win either, i didn't talk about this, but if an inferior product is more heavily advertised chances are it will sell more. For example the product of Obama was heavily advertised in the 2008 election and he won because of it. He was worse than a green party alternative, which had very little advertising. Ok, strange example for me to pick, but this applies to smaller products like phones. And like i said, the innovation of better screens, smaller devices pales in comparison to the innovation done in the public sector which actually developed the things like lasers from scratch. But that's not really the point. The things like better screens could be developed in any institution just as well, and you wouldnt need a profit motive for it to happen.

Taking an economics class would be a complete waste of time for me, i wouldn't enjoy the subject and don't enjoy indoctrination.