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Mozi posted:No, the big picture view is meaningful and the numbers are very clear. Your nitpicking is myopic. I'm not denying that many millions of people have risen out of absolute poverty. The statistics there are unambiguous. We know that in absolute terms people are getting more calories of food, more dollars of payment, consuming a larger basket of goods, etc. I would point out that the sustainability of this situation is questionable given the incredible strain we're putting on the planet's environment, and given that the current global economy has no effective mechanisms for regulating carbon emissions. But to be clear I am in no way denying that there have been improvements across many metrics. My point of contention here is whether it makes any sense to bundle all these improvements into one giant process that gets called "globalization" or whether there are actually numerous semi-independent processes at work here. asdf32 is trying to attribute the success of, for instance, China, in pulling large numbers of people out of poverty to a "liberal model" but this is a really sketchy statement to be making, and at bare minimum it ought to be accompanied with supporting evidence. To use a really extreme example: let's say I'm scratching a lottery ticket just as Beethoven's Fifth starts playing. I win a million dollars. It would be really stupid of me to just assume that because the two events were correlated in time, therefore I won the lottery "because I was listening to Beethoven!" I could even produce a graph over time showing how my income growth spiked at just the moment I was listening to the song. Just look at these before and after numbers, they can't lie! I went my whole life without listening to Beethoven and never earned more than $80,000 in a year. Five minutes after I put on Beethoven I was raking in a $1,000,000 jackpot! This reductive tendency to pretend every economic policy, model and idea of the last forty years is somehow magically vindicated by the fact a bunch of countries -- many of which violated the key rules outlined by neoliberal economists and governance organizations -- increased their income per capita, is propaganda, not reasoned argument. To properly frame an argument like that you need to go into way more specific detail.
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Jan 30, 2017 23:14
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It's very telling that the third world countries that didn't wholesale adopt the Washington Consensus are the ones that are actually doing better.
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Jan 30, 2017 23:31
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Helsing posted:I'm not denying that many millions of people have risen out of absolute poverty. The statistics there are unambiguous. We know that in absolute terms people are getting more calories of food, more dollars of payment, consuming a larger basket of goods, etc. I would point out that the sustainability of this situation is questionable given the incredible strain we're putting on the planet's environment, and given that the current global economy has no effective mechanisms for regulating carbon emissions. But to be clear I am in no way denying that there have been improvements across many metrics. Yeah, China remains today deeply state capitalist, and SOE industries still dominate its economy. Hell China still has five year plans even if they also have an active market sector. It is true they benefited from liberalized trade, but much of that was a legacy of the Cold War where the US worked to widen the Sino-Soviet split as far as possible and trade was part of that deal. There really no magic to giving a favorable trade advantage to a country, especially when it doesn't return the favor. Of course, all of this trade also setup China to becoming an aggressive world power, and deep structural problems in the US. It isn't the first time the Cold War and its legacy hosed us in the long-run.
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Jan 30, 2017 23:44
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Arguably it's even more telling if you look at "second world", i.e. ex-communist, countries. This is a bit simplistic but if we're talking big picture then compare Russia and China. Both former Marxist-Leninist states (technically China still is one I guess), both had some impressive early growth thanks to their command economies, followed by stagnation and over reach due to bad leadership, both started experimenting with serious reforms in the 1980s. Russia liberalized much more fully, actually abolished its command economy and opened itself up to "liberal" reforms. When the cost of those reforms started to hit home the Russian parliament objected and Russian president Yeltsin basically overthrew the elected parliament in a coup which was enthusiastically backed by the United States. Under American guidance and pressure the Russian government basically turned into a hyper-capitalist oligarchy over night while life expectancy plummeted and tens of millions of people lost benefits. The US happily encouraged a few oligarchs gobbling up all the former state owned enterprises since it's much easier to deal with a few oligarchs. Like Russia the Chinese government faced unrest. They ruthlessly crushed it and then proceeded to implement reforms on their own terms while retaining many elements of a command economy. To this day China may have liberalized in many ways and it's not in any way a traditional Marxist-Leninist state, but it also isn't anything like the kind of system that supposedly vindicates the liberal model of development. Yet somehow the example of Russia being almost destroyed as a country while China flourished by telling the US to gently caress off with its "advice" gets completely ignored. And then people act incredulous when foreign countries treat American discourse on human rights, democracy and free markets as nothing more than self-interested rhetoric disguising the foreign policy goals of the US government. (None of this is to say the Chinese economy is doing swimmingly or that they don't have their own huge problems to deal with! But since they're getting treated as one of the poster children for the success of "globalization" it's interesting to compare their story thus far with that of Russia). It's really sad because a few decades ago there were seemingly some true believers in the need for liberal reforms, including democratization. But after watching what happens to countries that democratize -- i.e. they get turned into American colonies -- many people decide they'd prefer to be governed by a local strongman. Which is maybe part of the reason that when the US looks for rebels against dictatorial regimes they end up allying with the scumbag drug runners, criminal mafiosos and worst of all crazy fundamentalist jihadis. Any chance for restructuring the world along more stable and sustainable lines got thrown away by idiot American liberals celebrating the "end of history" and deciding they could go ahead and loot as much of the rest of the world as possible. And now with the United States looking shabbier and shabbier to the rest of the world neoliberal apologists have gotten so desperate they've started trying to defend their broken ideology by claiming they are somehow responsible for lifting the Chinese out of poverty while downplaying the damage they did to their own countries, and completely ignoring the fact that they fanned the flames of political extremism in America and deserve the lions share of the blame for getting a wave of demagogues elected who now threaten to undo the rest of their precious political project. Wrap it up neolibailures
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Jan 30, 2017 23:53
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shrike82 posted:I know we have to do this song and dance every couple months but yes, the average Chinese/Indian is better off today than (s)he was as a peasant historically. Saying otherwise smacks of first world privilege. Yeah, we're privileged, and admitting to it or not doesn't change it. I'm still, gasp, going to put my children's welfare ahead of some random Chinese person - sorry if this squicks you out even if y'all act along these lines regardless.
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Jan 30, 2017 23:53
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call to action posted:Yeah, we're privileged, and admitting to it or not doesn't change it. I'm still, gasp, going to put my children's welfare ahead of some random Chinese person - sorry if this squicks you out even if y'all act along these lines regardless. And that's precisely why Trump's vision of the world won out.
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Jan 31, 2017 00:04
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Helsing posted:Arguably it's even more telling if you look at "second world", i.e. ex-communist, countries. This is a bit simplistic but if we're talking big picture then compare Russia and China. Both former Marxist-Leninist states (technically China still is one I guess), both had some impressive early growth thanks to their command economies, followed by stagnation and over reach due to bad leadership, both started experimenting with serious reforms in the 1980s. I wanted to just mention a misconception, your right about the damage Russia took, but even today significant parts of the economy remained state owned and if anything remaining SOEs have actually kept the country partly together in the 1990s even though workers weren't paid for months at a time. Furthermore, the president who shall not be named nationalized significant portions of the energy sector since that time. If anything I would still call Russia state capitalist and still quite centralized even if there are still oligarchs allied with the Kremlin. Of course, the Soviet Union/Russia's issue is mostly related to Dutch disease and the fact the Russian economy is still overly reliant its exports are focused around energy. quote:And now with the United States looking shabbier and shabbier to the rest of the world neoliberal apologists have gotten so desperate they've started trying to defend their broken ideology by claiming they are somehow responsible for lifting the Chinese out of poverty while downplaying the damage they did to their own countries, and completely ignoring the fact that they fanned the flames of political extremism in America and deserve the lions share of the blame for getting a wave of demagogues elected who now threaten to undo the rest of their precious political project. Yeah, free trade did benefit China because the US was willing to make it one way at the cost to itself. However, China has never been liberal either economically or politically and reforms that happened were also measured in order to promote growth. Trade helped China, this is without a doubt but it also doesn't really make such a great case for a modern liberal model. Yeah, if an industrialized economy is willing to absorb the export from a relatively underdeveloped economy with a protectionist policy, the gap between them is going to close. Right now, it looks like the chickens are starting to coming home to roost because the US model looks like it is experiencing a growing crisis at the moment. It isn't a surprise that people have become completely desperate and uninterested in living month to month because some Chinese or Vietnamese SOE needs to meet its projections. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Jan 31, 2017 |
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Jan 31, 2017 00:12
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shrike1682 posted:I know we have to do this song and dance every couple months but yes, the average Irish/Scot is better off today than (s)he was as a peasant historically. Saying otherwise smacks of first world privilege.
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Jan 31, 2017 01:36
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Helsing posted:I'm not denying that many millions of people have risen out of absolute poverty. The statistics there are unambiguous. We know that in absolute terms people are getting more calories of food, more dollars of payment, consuming a larger basket of goods, etc. I would point out that the sustainability of this situation is questionable given the incredible strain we're putting on the planet's environment, and given that the current global economy has no effective mechanisms for regulating carbon emissions. But to be clear I am in no way denying that there have been improvements across many metrics. There is no question that China owes a large chunk of its success to the 'liberal' post WWII global order and specifically the first world's willingness to invest so heavily in global manufacturing which is the result of their own liberal political policy of the period. That's just a reality. You seem to have an instinct for rolling in other bad aspects of the same process and then labeling the whole system failed which is no less reductive but out of touch with the big picture. China using some protectionist policy within the globalized context doesn't change anything so it's not a rebuttal to pointing out what actually happened, which clearly couldn't have happened without key aspects of liberalism. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Jan 31, 2017 |
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Jan 31, 2017 02:44
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I you really want to defend a system solely on the basis that people on average had a better standard of living in year X+Y than they had in year X, you ought to be a big fan of Stalinism.
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Jan 31, 2017 09:17
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So what's the over/under for a recession? I think that's the big question...
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Jan 31, 2017 16:50
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The line is 3.5, with an over under of 35.
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Jan 31, 2017 16:55
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Well we had a constitutional crisis in a fraction of the time I expected so the recession is on track to happen this year.
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Jan 31, 2017 17:14
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SHY NUDIST GRRL posted:Well we had a constitutional crisis in a fraction of the time I expected so the recession is on track to happen this year. Economic repercussions always take a bit of time to manifest so my money is on 2-3 years from now. Though at the end of the day it will boil down to what he fucks with and when. If he keeps focusing on abusing immigrants for the next year or two it could be a bit further out than people think.
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Jan 31, 2017 17:24
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shrike82 posted:And that's precisely why Trump's vision of the world won out. If you think you're above this impulse, you're lying to yourself. On the off chance you're not, I feel bad for your kids. Every Tiger Mom, every dad who strived for a better future for their children, every grandparent who immigrated believes this. Somehow, though, liberals believe that "gently caress all that noise, think of the children (not yours, theirs)" is a message that's going to win out. It won't. call to action fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Jan 31, 2017 |
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Jan 31, 2017 17:33
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Cerebral Bore posted:I you really want to defend a system solely on the basis that people on average had a better standard of living in year X+Y than they had in year X, you ought to be a big fan of Stalinism. Fantastic comparison. Circa 1970 the Soviet Union was the best economic story the world had seen. But but it never delivered its other half - worker control of the means of production or acceptable rights. Liberal success stories of the post 1970s beat the Soviet economic records and got freedoms at the same time. China has improved on both fronts simultaneously (to a lesser extent).
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Jan 31, 2017 17:51
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I think this White House screwing with Obamacare even before it's officially repealed is not going to help the economy. I would say a year or year and a half we will be in a recession.
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Jan 31, 2017 18:09
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FlamingLiberal posted:I think this White House screwing with Obamacare even before it's officially repealed is not going to help the economy. I would say a year or year and a half we will be in a recession. The GOP is the dog that caught the car with Obamacare, and if they do a full repeal and don't have something in place to pick up the pieces I would guess the medical industry side of things is going to start falling apart in a big hurry. Healthcare in America makes up 17% of the country's GDP and if it starts failing as a whole the rest of the country's economy is basically going with it. As well as the population as a whole because of the obvious.
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Jan 31, 2017 18:23
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asdf32 posted:There is no question that China owes a large chunk of its success to the 'liberal' post WWII global order and specifically the first world's willingness to invest so heavily in global manufacturing which is the result of their own liberal political policy of the period. No one is going to deny that China benefited from it's trade relationships with the west but we're talking about whether this vindicates liberalism. Because China benefitted precisely because it did not reciprocate. China's success certainly vindicates the concept of trade, something humans have been doing in various forms for more than 10,000 years. The fact two large regions of the world which barely interacted economically began to exchange goods, resulting in one of those regions becoming substantially wealthier, is not a surprising or counter intuitive response. Nothing about liberalism is particularly useful in explaining these results. But if you actually look at the details of how this interaction has played out then the record for liberalism looks a lot worse since the Chinese were able to open themselves to trade without actually transitioning into a liberal society, which is what everyone was predicting would happen. And meanwhile the supposed benefits to western consumers came at the cost of massive social dislocation, which produced a backlash, which now threatens to overthrow the whole system, assuming that the unsustainable environmental costs we're running up don't get to us first. China doesn't just "use some protectionist polic[ies]", it's got a fundamentally illiberal system which has been consciously engineered to exploit western trade policies, something the United States overlooked for domestic political reasons (i.e. crushing labour was preferable to maintaining a sustainable balance of trade). And the result has been socially catastrophic, to the point that now guys like Trump are winning elections or leading polls everywhere. It's contemptible watching free trade advocates continuously move the goal posts. A policy that was sold as enriching the countries that enacted it is now being re-framed as an act of charity by the west (which just coincidentally enriches certain domestic interest groups while screwing off overs).
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Jan 31, 2017 19:30
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Helsing posted:It's contemptible watching free trade advocates continuously move the goal posts. A policy that was sold as enriching the countries that enacted it is now being re-framed as an act of charity by the west (which just coincidentally enriches certain domestic interest groups while screwing off overs). Extremely well said, you could even see this play out on this very page as asdf implied I was a racist for putting my family's welfare over all.
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Jan 31, 2017 20:19
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DeathSandwich posted:The GOP is the dog that caught the car with Obamacare, and if they do a full repeal and don't have something in place to pick up the pieces I would guess the medical industry side of things is going to start falling apart in a big hurry. Healthcare in America makes up 17% of the country's GDP and if it starts failing as a whole the rest of the country's economy is basically going with it. As well as the population as a whole because of the obvious. It's also abundantly clear that they have no replacement that anyone will vote for.
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Jan 31, 2017 20:45
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Helsing posted:. And meanwhile the supposed benefits to western consumers came at the cost of massive social dislocation, which produced a backlash, which now threatens to overthrow the whole system, assuming that the unsustainable environmental costs we're running up don't get to us first. NAFTA and the WTO are responsible for a decrease of 0.36% in manufacturing employment. The culprit was always automation, and protectionism would have changed very little (other than saddling the poor with higher prices for consumer goods). https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/24/14363148/trade-deals-nafta-wto-china-job-loss-trump
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Jan 31, 2017 21:35
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JeffersonClay posted:NAFTA and the WTO are responsible for a decrease of 0.36% in manufacturing employment. The culprit was always automation, and protectionism would have changed very little (other than saddling the poor with higher prices for consumer goods). https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/24/14363148/trade-deals-nafta-wto-china-job-loss-trump Hmm. This article mentions 'labor union' approximately zero. You can't have a fair analysis of NAFTA without talking about it's effects on labor unions - namely, gutting any leverage they had to fight automation and/or off-shoring.
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Jan 31, 2017 21:50
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The analysis includes any potential effect of decreased labor union bargaining power on employment. It wasn't trade, it was automation. We know because the trend started long before NAFTA passed or China entered the WTO. We see the same trend in countries like Germany.
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Jan 31, 2017 22:00
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That article never seems to satisfy the question of why there is there is such an "excessive drop" in employment in the US versus Germany. Manufacturing employment in Germany dropped by half since the 1970s, in the US is it much closer to a fourth and then he just throws in two articles (one affiliated with the University of Chicago FML) to hand-wave it can't come from trade due to China-WTO. Yeah, I have been reading over that thing (it is not well written) and he silently seems to drop the issue of "excessive shedding" without addressing where did these jobs go? Were Americans just that much better at automation (pretty doubtful to be honest)? The US now has almost a third the population of Germany engaged in manufacturing, why are they so different? quote:
https://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/trade-impacts-american-jobs-research-roundup Ardennes fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Jan 31, 2017 |
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Jan 31, 2017 22:13
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Ardennes posted:That article never seems to satisfy the question of why there is there is such an "excessive drop" in employment in the US versus Germany. Manufacturing employment in Germany dropped by half since the 1970s, in the US is it much closer to a fourth and then he just throws in two articles (one affiliated with the University of Chicago FML) to hand-wave it can't come from trade due to China-WTO. If the effect were China's entry into the WTO we'd see the effects in Germany too, because they are also in the WTO. Chinese currency manipulation would affect both countries. Excess shedding, if it's about trade, can only be about NAFTA, not China. And even aggressive estimates for NAFTA on manufacturing job losses represent less than 1% of total losses since the 70s. Why did the US shed more manufacturing than Germany? He posits: a strong dollar hurt exporters (but that's offset by a strong dollar making imports even cheaper), failures to invest in education and infrastructure, and a failure to redistribute the profits from free trade.
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Jan 31, 2017 23:07
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Germany and the US are apples and oranges as far as trade with China, Germany trade with China is a much smaller part of their total trade (European trade is obviously far larger) and their deficit with China is significantly smaller as a result of both the size that trade and its comparably smaller deficit. Just because both are part of the WTO doesn't mean they have the same trade situation, especially when you account for something like the EU. Also, yeah Germany has traditionally had historically positive balance of trade. As far as education and redistributing the profits of trade, that would make sense if you were talking about income distribution in the country itself not really the size of manufacturing employment. Moreover, the German Mark/Euro were never really that weak to begin with especially we are all talking post-Bretton woods. Hell, if anything the German Mark was steadily gaining on the dollar since the 1970s and the Euro was quite strong as well. It is much more fair to stay that the robust nature of the Mark/Euro was holding back exports more than the dollar. Bretton woods if anything kept the Mark artificially low by pegging it to the dollar, which allowed German exports after the war to be cheaper and once it floated the Mark then steadily strengthened. Germany essentially had its own protected sphere of trade called the EEC/European Union which allowed it keep a (relatively) robust manufacturing base and largely limited its exposure to China and much of Asia compared to the US. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Jan 31, 2017 |
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Jan 31, 2017 23:23
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DeathSandwich posted:The GOP is the dog that caught the car with Obamacare, and if they do a full repeal and don't have something in place to pick up the pieces I would guess the medical industry side of things is going to start falling apart in a big hurry. Healthcare in America makes up 17% of the country's GDP and if it starts failing as a whole the rest of the country's economy is basically going with it. As well as the population as a whole because of the obvious. Probably the bigger snag is going to be education. The American education system is already a dumpster fire and the GOP loathes public funding in schools. It'll be great for the rich if the "all private, all the time" thing goes in but it's going to suck for the rest of us. That's also going to dick over America as a whole overall in the very long term. You'll have fewer college graduates, fewer people graduating high school with the numeracy required for modern jobs, and an overall lower education level. That means fewer engineers, fewer programmers, fewer doctors, fewer mathematicians, etc. Less funding for colleges means less pure science getting done which is going to cause America to lag behind especially given the right's tendency to reject any science that disagrees with their beliefs. It'll be like the Nazis getting screwed over for rejecting "Jewish science" all over again. This is also going to utterly dick over America if it gets into yet another war as well. An unhealthy population that can't see doctors and can't afford enough food doesn't generate good soldiers. Similarly a badly education population can't generate better gear than the enemy especially considering that the military industrial complex only cares about shoveling money into the pockets of people who own the contractors. Deregulation leading to shoddy, dirty products will cause worse innovation in the private sector in general and good that can't compete internationally. What I'm saying is that Trump's plan to fix America is comparable to remodeling a house with nothing but a gas can and a book of matches.
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Feb 1, 2017 00:13
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Ardennes posted:Germany and the US are apples and oranges as far as trade with China, Germany trade with China is a much smaller part of their total trade (European trade is obviously far larger) and their deficit with China is significantly smaller as a result of both the size that trade and its comparably smaller deficit. Just because both are part of the WTO doesn't mean they have the same trade situation, especially when you account for something like the EU. Also, yeah Germany has traditionally had historically positive balance of trade. This is circular. You're claiming that the massive volume of cheap goods from China destroyed US manufacturing, and then claiming we can't compare Germany and the US because China trades a lot more with the US than Germany. China's entry into the WTO meant free trade with both nations. What was unique about US manufacturing here? quote:As far as education and redistributing the profits of trade, that would make sense if you were talking about income distribution in the country itself not really the size of manufacturing employment. Moreover, the German Mark/Euro were never really that weak to begin with especially we are all talking post-Bretton woods. Hell, if anything the German Mark was steadily gaining on the dollar since the 1970s and the Euro was quite strong as well. It is much more fair to stay that the robust nature of the Mark/Euro was holding back exports more than the dollar. Bretton woods if anything kept the Mark artificially low by pegging it to the dollar, which allowed German exports after the war to be cheaper and once it floated the Mark then steadily strengthened. Germany has more robust manufacturing employment because 1) Their educational system produces more productive manufacturing workers due to its fantastic vocational focus 2) They spend a lot more on infrastructure and direct investment 3) They have much better government regulation around unions which make people more productive. Note Germany's unions were able to survive free trade with China. As you say, the Mark was weak compared to the dollar in the 70's and 80's, and the Euro was quite weak when China joined the WTO, and didn't recover until the financial crisis in 2007. These periods benefited German manufacturing. How was the EU in any way a protected sphere of trade when those countries are all (?) WTO nations? The US can trade with all these countries too. Why would they only protect the Germans?
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Feb 1, 2017 01:14
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JeffersonClay posted:This is circular. You're claiming that the massive volume of cheap goods from China destroyed US manufacturing, and then claiming we can't compare Germany and the US because China trades a lot more with the US than Germany. China's entry into the WTO meant free trade with both nations. What was unique about US manufacturing here? You can compare them but you have to recognize they are two different types of beasts. The unique thing versus Germany is that Germany was part of a trade bloc that ultimately offset much of Chinese trade while the US was fully exposed. quote:Germany has more robust manufacturing employment because 1) Their educational system produces more productive manufacturing workers due to its fantastic vocational focus 2) They spend a lot more on infrastructure and direct investment 3) They have much better government regulation around unions which make people more productive. Note Germany's unions were able to survive free trade with China. Education and infrastructure spending is fine, but it doesn't explain such dramatic differences (especially when you talk about the type of infrastructure that is involved here). Likewise, the persistence of unions keeps wages higher even if the work is still quite skilled. Bretton woods ended in the early 1970s, but the Mark generally gained versus the dollar except for a brief period during the mid 1980s. The Euro gained strength quite quickly after it was introduced and generally stayed above its 1.20 target (which to be honest was perhaps too high) and may have actually negatively impacted European trade and been a factor in the Eurozone crisis to some degree. Countries with no formal borders, under a common regulator system and in many cases the same currency are going to have less barriers to trade that another country under the WTO outside the EU. The WTO restricts the type of actions governments can conduct to control trade (tariffs) but it doesn't suddenly create a blank slate since there are a multitude of factors that can effect trade.
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Feb 1, 2017 01:29
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Probably the bigger snag is going to be education. The American education system is already a dumpster fire and the GOP loathes public funding in schools. It'll be great for the rich if the "all private, all the time" thing goes in but it's going to suck for the rest of us. That's also going to dick over America as a whole overall in the very long term. You'll have fewer college graduates, fewer people graduating high school with the numeracy required for modern jobs, and an overall lower education level. That means fewer engineers, fewer programmers, fewer doctors, fewer mathematicians, etc. Less funding for colleges means less pure science getting done which is going to cause America to lag behind especially given the right's tendency to reject any science that disagrees with their beliefs. It'll be like the Nazis getting screwed over for rejecting "Jewish science" all over again. This is also going to utterly dick over America if it gets into yet another war as well. An unhealthy population that can't see doctors and can't afford enough food doesn't generate good soldiers. Similarly a badly education population can't generate better gear than the enemy especially considering that the military industrial complex only cares about shoveling money into the pockets of people who own the contractors. Deregulation leading to shoddy, dirty products will cause worse innovation in the private sector in general and good that can't compete internationally. The part I highlighted is already a huge problem. Only about a quarter of Americans 18-26 years old meet the US military's fitness standards. I'm sure we'll lower them to the floor again like we did when we invaded Iraq and people stopped signing up, but the quality of the average soldier will be worse.
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Feb 1, 2017 02:08
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OhFunny posted:The part I highlighted is already a huge problem. That's also partly because Americans are gluttonous and sedentary.
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Feb 1, 2017 02:21
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The GOP has been setting this in motion for years. Burning the country for the insurance money has been their goal since Reagan.
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Feb 1, 2017 02:31
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Radish posted:The GOP has been setting this in motion for years. Burning the country for the insurance money has been their goal since Reagan. Well it will benefit a few people and that's what matters all hail neoliberalism
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Feb 1, 2017 02:45
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Would housing prices matching or exceeding their pre-mortgage crisis values be a clue in regards to economic issues? Because I'm making plans to move this year and noticed that zillow thinks all the housing in my town have done just that. It's been a bit under 10 years since then, that seems like enough time to recover, but without knowing the exact reason why they're that value, I have this feeling we're being taken on another ruse cruise.
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Feb 1, 2017 05:36
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Freakazoid_ posted:Would housing prices matching or exceeding their pre-mortgage crisis values be a clue in regards to economic issues? Because I'm making plans to move this year and noticed that zillow thinks all the housing in my town have done just that. It's been a bit under 10 years since then, that seems like enough time to recover, but without knowing the exact reason why they're that value, I have this feeling we're being taken on another ruse cruise. If you want a house and you're planning on not moving for 6 or so years don't think too hard about second guessing the market.
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Feb 1, 2017 05:48
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We just bought a condo and I'm super convinced the crisis is going to happen either this year or early next year, but maybe I'm an idiot.
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Feb 1, 2017 05:51
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It would help if people like Helsing clarified what exactly they're railing against. The tirades about capitalism, globalisation, and neoliberalism are pretty meaningless when you see them shifting goal posts depending on what's advantageous to their argument e.g. China as good versus Russia because they did not 'liberalize' whatever that means, and then on the other hand argue that China is worse off because they have adopted capitalist/market practice.
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Feb 1, 2017 06:02
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Rated PG-34 posted:We just bought a condo and I'm super convinced the crisis is going to happen either this year or early next year, but maybe I'm an idiot. Not only are we overdue for one, but I think its going to be a recession. All the factors are there: A shrinking middle class, who lacks the income to consume as much. Lack of corporate reinvestment but instead distributing more profits into exec bonuses/compensation and shareholders. Even individual investments such as personal savings isn't remunerated but instead the banks get the gains. Our government continues to overspend on our defense and underspends on infrastructure. Imports surpass exports as our trade for the past 20 years has put global interests and utility first (you can include corporations here too) over the benefits and interests of Americans. The interesting thing about all this is Trump's administration has economic policies that are anti-neoliberalism and anti-globalization. I just can't see how he can prioritize national interests without triggering trade wars with various countries or sending them into a recession (like Mexico). There's nothing Trump can do to stop the impending economic downturn though.
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Feb 1, 2017 06:08
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| # ? May 8, 2024 16:55 |
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The student loan debt bubble is also going to continue to get worse under this Presidency. At least Obama was able to crack down on scam private colleges. Our esteemed new President literally runs one.
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Feb 1, 2017 06:12
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