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Squalid posted:Come on dude, this isn't just tvs it's also diapers refrigerators and cars, things people can't exactly skip. And I would expect healthcare and rent probably have little to do with global trade anyway, so it's not like protectionism is going to help there Except that things were better under protectionism in several of those regards. You just don't seem to get why the loss of political bargaining power actually matters. It's not happenstance that lower-income's aren't keeping pace with the costs of essential needs anymore.
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Feb 8, 2017 18:06
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Squalid posted:Okay let me see if I understand the argument. You are saying that because liberalization has undermined labour's bargaining power, it has indirectly led to increases in the cost of healthcare and housing by preventing the implementation of policies that could have ameliorated the problem, correct? Pretty much.
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Feb 8, 2017 18:29
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TheNakedFantastic posted:These people are vetted and selected by a system designed to offer up people with positions already in agreement with the ruling classes (or in Trumps case is literally the ruling class) It doesn't matter that the ideas that they push are coming from somewhere else, these people wouldn't have shifted the path of the world economy without the middle class first consenting to it by voting for them. You're so stunted by the middle left/Democrats capitulation that you're forgetting that there was a time where they did in fact stand for another world order. Without Nixon, the Bretton Woods system doesn't break overnight. Without Reagan and Thatcher, the rest of the world wouldn't have pivoted towards neoliberalism. Electoral outcomes do play a big role at times. MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 09:16
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JeffersonClay posted:I'm giving the orthodox story here. Bad mortgages and hubris made the financial sector melt down. That was a bad thing because it blew up the entire credit system, which created a huge demand shock, which caused layoffs and business failures, which impacted demand even more in a positive feedback loop. I think you might have just articulated yourself poorly with your earlier argument because now you're making sense.
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Feb 14, 2017 19:57
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Most car loans are predatory.
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Feb 14, 2017 21:02
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Squalid posted:Hmm so since recessions reoccur every four years, and it's been 8 years since the last one, a recession occurring now is twice as likely as it was in 2010 correct? That's not how recessions work, they're not a natural phenomenon. Political intervention can prop up asset-bubbles for a very long time and credit crunches can be delayed by all kinds of independent intervention. Take the Canadian housing bubble thread. Goons (me included) have been vary about it popping for the better part of almost 4 years. But even now, with most of the Canadian economy still in the poo poo from the oil prices failing and Chinese capital getting increasingly locked out by local laws people still haven't tipped over that panic axis which sends it all crashing down. The Swedish housing bubble is similar, income to household debt keeps spiraling out of control but due to the central bank consistently lowering the central rate for the last 2 years (currently at -0.5%) the date of a potential crash keeps getting pushed forward. You can hedge for a recession but I wouldn't advise hoarding cash for it. To go with the cliche, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
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Feb 16, 2017 07:46
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Haha jesus christ, literally skimming for things to be offended about.
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Feb 24, 2017 04:47
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Subjunctive posted:I think you're talking about a smaller fraction than 1% if you're describing them as super-rich. To be in the global 1% you need about $750K net worth. This describes the top 10-15% of Americans. If that comes largely from house equity, income may be a much lower percentile. They are probably living comfortably, but I don't think they are manipulating the global financial ecosystem beyond buying index funds. If you have a net worth (you do know that net worth is the amount that assets exceed your liabilities, right?) of 750 000 then you're already rich enough to never have to work a day again in your life in any country on the globe. Of course the global 1% is a dishonest measurement. If we say 'the global west' or god forbid 'the US' suddenly the number skyrockets. Flatly counting 1% worldwide also discounts just how many billionaries and multi-millionares there are in the larger third world economies.
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Feb 25, 2017 19:20
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In reality these people do still work and they have humongous incomes both from labour and capital. They're your average upper class republican/Tory/CDU voter. EDIT: Small note here, but at that level of liquid capital you can start using leveraging to massively increase your revenue through capital intensive investments such as real estate. Globally the common beginner's option is Mcdonalds, which is both very safe and lucrative. MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Feb 25, 2017 |
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Feb 25, 2017 19:27
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caps on caps on caps posted:I am really interested in how this is supposed to work in practice. All of these things, with the exception of selling your shares, would be just as illegal under a socialist market system as they already are under a neo-liberal market system. All that's really changing in your example here is who controls the board. The idea could be separated from the company but typically that would have to happen under some kind of royalty agreement just like in the real world. MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 10:36 on Feb 26, 2017 |
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Feb 26, 2017 10:25
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Ardennes posted:It might have fixed some of them, but there were always intrinsic limits to central planning despite some useful benefits. One issue, as I mentioned a dozen times, are inflexible price controls which really couldn't be solved by computing. Other issue was simply selection, for example women's dresses. Yeah but the fact that different sectors are actually more or less optimized under public versus private control is one of the big lessons from the successes of the social democracies and the failure of the last decades of privatization. Not everything should be private and nor should it all be public.
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Feb 27, 2017 17:44
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Academia has started turning on neoliberalism over the last decade put politically it is still very strong.
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Mar 1, 2017 07:00
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Ardennes posted:Admittedly, China is more problematic. The big shift during the 1990s wasn't NAFTA as much as how much of our trade was dependent on China and how little we exported to them in return. The question at this point is how you unwind that system. You just build a bunch of factories. Very little of what the US imports from China is actually being produced in China due to necessity rather than labour costs. The US used to produce steel, now it buys it from China. The US used to produce micro-processors, now it buys it from China. Etc, etc, etc...
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Mar 2, 2017 14:00
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Ardennes posted:Of course there is a bit of a hidden subtext to all of this, we traditionally accepted a trade deficit with China in order to bind their fate to ours. The question at this point is if we are getting good value for that "payment"? China exports lots of useful stuff to you and all you give them in return is paper notes with 'US treasury bond' written on them. It's a pretty sweet deal.
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Mar 2, 2017 14:44
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got any sevens posted:We also lost jobs for americans and our politicians arent passing the surplus on to the people as a mincome, so this made many americans poorer. Yeah obviously, but that's more of a 'by design' thing than an unavoidable consequence.
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Mar 2, 2017 15:14
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uncop posted:As an aside, one interesting consequence of MMT is that government bonds are, first and foremost, welfare for the rich. Well that's basically been the case since Adam Smith though. The whole point of government bonds domestically is that you borrow the money that you need to sustain the state from the rich and pay them for the privilege through interest instead of just taking it through taxation as you do with those of less means. It's an extension of the idea that the state exists to protect the interests of the rich from the interests of the poor.
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Mar 3, 2017 07:50
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Dawncloack posted:You should. Also check the Baltic Dry Index. It's low as it's ever been. I'm not getting what you're implying here.
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Mar 7, 2017 20:13
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Companies aren't shipping that much stuff at the moment, indicating that the economy isn't in a great state? Check the index, it's been hovering between 500-1500 since 2014 and right now it's approaching a 1000 again. For comparison, last year in February it hit an all-time low at 290. Again, what am I supposed to be seeing here?
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Mar 7, 2017 20:34
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Dawncloack posted:A buttery pastry explained my point perfectly, that's what I meant. Am I wrong in thinking that it means trade is on the downswing? I seem to remember someone in this thread commenting that the shipping line in which they worked was going from global to regional. The problem with the shipping index is that it can just easily be predicated on an oversupply of shipping as it is a lack of demand. If shipping companies increase capacity because they overestimate a demand increase then the index goes down, even if demand is still at healthy levels. That it's lower than 2008 in isolation doesn't really tell me anything, nor that its been hovering around the same level since 2014. However, if we'd talk signs of the economy not being in great condition, you could look at other at other indicators such as growing household debt in the recovering northern economies, FIRE increasing its share of GDP in every recovering economy and financial markets rapidly outpacing economic growth. That's not even getting into political discontent or the parts of the West that never really recovered like Spain or Greece were youth unemployment is still at record highs due to the complete failure of the Eurogroup's and IMF's structural reforms. Not that any of this helps us accurately predict a crash. I'm actually not as worried this year as I was last. Trump is going to keep being a horrible poo poo on immigration but when it comes to the economy all that the republican party seems to be willing to let through is the policies that benefit them. Tariffs would probably be pretty horrible but on the other hand tax cuts and financial de-regulation will push the date of the crash forward. Le Pen is another concern but that's not yet in a couple of months. Uber is a legitimate worry as the market has been getting increasingly exposed in the last funding runs but who knows. Proud Christian Mom posted:Its almost like gambling on the market isnt a real long term retirement solution Incremental long-term investment into index funds isn't gambling. You could lose everything, but in that situation the United States and the world as we know it will no longer exist in which case you won't need the money anyway. Assuming that the world doesn't collapse (or full communism is around the corner) those savings are going to be the difference between you having a comfortable living or ending up in the streets.
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Mar 8, 2017 06:25
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shrike82 posted:Past performance yada yada. Market prediction is a bitch as it turns out. General savings advice is all fine and dandy but anytime someone starts talking about timing stuff you better know that you're playing with fire if you listen.
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Mar 8, 2017 07:46
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VitalSigns posted:Of course all this analysis assumes you actually do have a thirty-year window in all conditions: in other words your job is recession-proof or you have sufficient assets to live off of for a few years plus weather unexpected catastrophes without having to dip into your retirement fund and liquidate the equities therein at firesale prices at the bottom of the market. In other words, not most people. It's more plausible if you live a country with a less hosed-up healthcare and unemployment insurance situation than the US.
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Mar 8, 2017 15:51
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readingatwork posted:Honestly they should just increase Social Security payments up to a guaranteed living wage so that retirement planning is about making your senior years nicer rather than desperately trying to avoid dying in poverty. That was the intention of most baseline state pension system's when they were originally instituted. Living wage + a bonus based on contributions. It's just that since payouts weren't adjusted for inflation but rather on budget decisions when the 80's ended the bottom-line largely stopped being increased. Eventually, this lead to the situation of today were poverty amongst the elderly is increasing rapdily in countries like Sweden. MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 16:00
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caps on caps on caps posted:you can and will continue to be able to become rich by investing if you have the correct ratio of time to assets. Savings doesn't in any way fix the problem of wealth inequality, it only alleviates your own problems by making you yourself part of the problem.
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Mar 8, 2017 18:20
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call to action posted:I get what you're saying, but if we're really entering a period where climate change and automation will be drastically changing the face of society and the economy, we can't rely on the 20th century as a great historical model. Plus, if you sold right before the '08 crash and then bought at the bottom, you'd have probably made up for decades of saving. That could be said about any century. Also no you wouldn't, because like most of America you'd be drowning in interest payments while being fired from work. Even if you weren't timing downturns is in no way easier than timing busts. Amazingly this thread is somehow despite all the stupidity still higher in financial literacy than the average middle class neighborhood.
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Mar 8, 2017 19:10
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Because clearly gambling on the end of the world as we know it is the rational choice. Like you wouldn't have bigger problems than losing your savings if things actually came to that point.
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Mar 8, 2017 19:19
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call to action posted:Who said anything about the end of the world? More likely it's going to be a slow, painful reversion to the global mean - and that's a very, very long fall. And in that situation you are better off having no capital how again...? Seriously did you stumble out of the climate thread? That's were doomsaying goes. call to action posted:And yet, the only data anyone can really show me is post-WW I through present, as if that's somehow a representative period for all of human history. Once again, you're making an argument predicated on the end of modern civilization as we know it. Or you know, the end of everything as we know it. I'll repeat myself, and in that situation you are better off having no capital how again...?
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Mar 8, 2017 19:26
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call to action posted:https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/business/economy/jobs-report-retail-employment.html Automated away by way more efficient warehouses.
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Apr 8, 2017 06:08
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icantfindaname posted:What other countries are there in the first world? The UK's and Canada's economies have not done better than America's, Australia's has but only because it's a mining and commodoties rentier state, Japan is Japan, .... Maybe Sweden has registered better growth? That's about it It really cannot be understated just how poo poo the rest of the first world is doing.
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Apr 9, 2017 19:56
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icantfindaname posted:Surely Sweden is mega Russophobic tho, what with their lost empire and all that? There's been 2 world wars since then.
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Apr 10, 2017 09:55
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icantfindaname posted:Lol yeah sure, like I'm supposed to believe the Swedish PM doesn't have a secret plan to recapture St Petersburg in a locked suitcase Sssssssshhhhhh, how is Carl Bildt supposed to enact his conspiracy to topple the Russian autocracy if we keep talking about it! 
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Apr 10, 2017 15:27
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BrandorKP posted:Appealing to the consensus of reasonable experts is a different beast than an appeal to authority. Yes, lets just all pretend that economy is a natural science and not a social science deeply rooted in ideology and philosophical debates. Sure nothing bad could come of that.
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Apr 11, 2017 18:49
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paternity suitor posted:It's been about ten years since I had to look for a job, so it was a shock to me to find out how much recruiting companies are involved in the process now Welcome to the magical world of de-regulated employment contracts! Enjoy having your wages garnished by middle-hands so that your actual employer can fire you at a whim while also denying you benefits. It's great, your employer gets to offload both risk and costs while you in return get less job security and lower wages. Good luck unionizing when precarious is the defining theme of your work-life. This is actually so efficient that some companies just decided to cut out the middle-men and start their own temp agencies. It's okay because the market says so!
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Apr 14, 2017 15:47
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tekz posted:That clip didn't really go through the exact circumstances of the debt though - was there anything similar to the financial crisis where relatively manageable debt was ballooned up into something massive using hosed up financial instruments? You need have to have money in the first place to spin up speculatory bubbles.
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May 4, 2017 14:42
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Grouchio posted:So you're implying that recessions can be predicted to an extent if you're smart enough? They can be guessed based on variables but they can never be predicted by any scientific standard. There's no real method even though there are plenty of valid indicators to look for. MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Jun 26, 2017 |
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Jun 26, 2017 08:20
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paternity suitor posted:It is. The value of stocks and the market are not a magic number people just make up. It's based on revenue, profit, growth, and projections of all of the above. If a company earns $X per year and is growing at a certain rate, or is projected to grow at a certain rate, investors are willing to pay a multiple of $X to own a part of that company, and by extension, receive the profits of that company. Right now that multiple is a little higher than the historical average, and maybe that's because there aren't as many attractive alternatives with rates so low. Of course it might also make sense for the multiple to be higher: higher growth companies get higher multiples. You'd pay more for a company that earns $X but is growing 50% a year than you for a company earning $X that's growing 10% a year. If the revenue of the companies in the market is going to grow more than average in the next couple of years, the market is priced fairly. This is all correct but what you're leaving out with this part is that the stock markets follow basic rules of supply and demand. Stocks are investment avenues and as stocks are limited in supply if demand becomes higher than supply then stock value inflates beyond what can be justified by for example book value or growth analysis. Currently many of the traditional capital soaks of the economy are kinda dead in the water due to the low-rate environment which makes capital move increasingly towards stocks and high-risk bonds. With this increased demand prices go upwards, even though the underlying assets and their expectations remain the same. Wealth inequality is also playing into this as savings in the economy are increasing faster then the need for investment. With no where else to go this aggregate capital ends up largely on the stock market as stocks while risky are highly liquid.
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Jun 27, 2017 23:24
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Lightning Lord posted:Meaning it was forced to happen not because of market forces, but because of capitistic ideology That's literally every recession we've had since the 1980's back when monetarism came into fashion by that definition.
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Jun 28, 2017 07:09
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Monetarism explicitly favors the interest of creditors over those of debtors by curbing inflation and therefore drives income inequality, by depressing wages as you mentioned, which leads to wealth inequality in the long-term. Since high earners spend less and save more then low-income earners an overabundance of capital is created within the economy. With nowhere productive for that capital to go (due to the aforementioned wage supression and its effects on demand) speculation bubbles pop up (either domestically as in the US or exported abroad as with Germany) that inflate asset values and when they pop we inevitably find ourselves in a recession. You can't de-couple monetarism from ideology because it was a development that was driven explicitly by ideological interests. Similarly, there's nothing organic about the de-regulated environment that sparked 2008. It was ideological from the ground-up and was over 30 years in the making. MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Jun 28, 2017 |
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Jun 28, 2017 09:19
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Both neo-liberalism and monetarism flow from the same base assumption that economics should be de-politicized. Independent central banks and de-regulation might be motivated differently politically but the end result is the same. The state decreases its role in the economy in favour of a laissez faire market. To curb inflation above all else is to protect debt, there is no such thing as a non neo-liberal monetarism because the two are intertwined in their goals. Protection of property rights and voluntary contracts. Your last argument threads into accelerationist territory.
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Jun 28, 2017 11:40
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The DPRK posted:On a slight tangent: I found Mark Blyth's book on Austerity really interesting. It helped me understand some aspects of the cause of the 2008 GFC. I'd like to understand what happened in the 1970's that caused the lurch towards what we have today, is there a book or a commentator as erudite and entertaining as Blyth on this subject? Look for books about the collpase of Bretton Woods and the aftermath of the second saudi oil crisis. There's been a lot of revisionism over time as in what actually happened during the stagflation years.
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Jun 28, 2017 13:20
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namaste faggots posted:Thanks for the great post. I don't mean to be trite or render your post trivial but isn't that what progressive taxation is for? It's not enough, as the last 90 years have shown the pendulum will always find a way to swing back.
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Jun 28, 2017 20:54
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