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 Here is so u6 data to take into consideration. Obviously, not everything is predictable but certainly there is a pattern. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 14, 2017 21:22
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Squalid posted:What is this supposed supposed to mean? Yes, sorry u6 unemployment. We are in a periodic low for unemployment, but "lows" haven't lasted more than 2-3 years and the "floor" for u6 unemployment in the mid 2000s was higher than 1990s. We will have to see if unemployment shifts in the near term but if it stabilizes around 9.1-9.4 or if it increases from that range it isn't a great sign. skull mask mcgee posted:12-18 months? Just in time for me to graduate into a recession It happens to the best of us, maybe have a plan b? Ardennes fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 15, 2017 00:04
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Squalid posted:Lucky for you anybody predicting a recession with that kind of precision selling you a fantasy, regardless of what the tea leaves say There is probability of a recession, and as more factors line up that probability increases. When you talk about economic cycles there isn't certainty, but at the same time, if I was just getting out of school I would plan more defensively. I do think it is irresponsible to ignore "tea leaves" considering our past even if it doesn't give you a complete picture of what is going to happen. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 15, 2017 00:36
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Squalid posted:See I'm no bull but I know bullshit when I see it. Even when the signs of a recession/recover seem obvious there's no way you can predict when exactly they will come. It's incredibly hard even say exactly what is happening now, economists routinely fail to identify recessions until they've already been underway for months. So imagine the absurdity of a post like that of Ardennes' in which through careful study of the 'trends' as he calls them, he can confidently warn of a recession in 12-18 months. Of course in January 2016 he was warning that America was in the process of entering a "great stagnation," and eight months ago he "wouldn't dismiss the growing possibility of a recession in the next 6-9 months." One begins to wonder from what ugly recess he pulls these estimates. I still stand behind that "great stagnation" quote, currently Trump is in charge (as I long feared) and there is no fiscal policy to speak of. I think a period of "great stagnation" is already very possible in the near future if not arguably happening for much of the US. Wages are still barely budging, and while unemployment is lower the jobs being filled are usually with lower pay/hours. Also "wouldn't dismiss the growing possibility" isn't the strongest statement in the world. I will say I didn't have the unemployment data to stand behind then, and I should have waited until more of it came out but that said, historical trends in unemployment are matching up right now. Also, I am also just talking about historical probability and my interpretation of data, not actual predictions. If you have a different interpretation that is perfectly fine. That said, it sounds like you are taking this extremely personally. I suggest you just keep it to the actual discussion. MiddleOne posted: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. That is a fair point, that very low global interest rates and capital inflows (for example in the Canadian property market) have altered our assumptions of how long these bubbles can stay solvent. It is quite possible historically low interest rates do push a recession further out, but at the same time, wages aren't rising fast enough to support that housing market. What worries me is there eventually there isn't going to be the type of income necessary to support those assets in a sustainable manner. Also, Canada is in a bit of a weird situation since it is so dependent on commodities, and unemployment/growth have pretty moribund. I did notice the the Portland housing market may be cooling a bit, it use to be one of the fastest rising markets. http://www.oregonlive.com/front-porch/index.ssf/2017/01/portland_slams_brakes_on_risin.html Also, supposedly the capital controls/taxes are having an effect on the Vancouver housing market. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/vancouver/vancouver-home-sales-drop-further-as-market-continues-to-soften/article33878876/ Ardennes fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Feb 16, 2017 |
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Feb 16, 2017 12:16
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If anything if you want to talk about central planning, why not cut to the chase and talk about the Soviet Union itself and its successes (and yes there were ones) and failures?
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Feb 27, 2017 10:54
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Dead Cosmonaut posted:Had any of the optimization theory the Soviets painstakingly developed been applied through computing, the Soviet Union would have fixed a good deal of its problems. 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. Computing might more accurately tell where/when you need inputs, but it won't help you if you don't have any way to address supply in the first place. The Soviets weren't in the dark that there were massive supply issues and quotas weren't fixing them, but at the same time they didn't want to raise prices to address this. On the other hand, let's not pretend the Soviet Union was a "flash in the pan" or didn't accomplish anything. How else did a battered agricultural society become a superpower in little more than generation?
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Feb 27, 2017 11:21
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MiddleOne posted: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. Yeah don't get me wrong I am not arguing in favor of privatization, if anything I am going in the other to direction some extent. The state can handle quite a bit, especially essential services and public goods. If you look at the Soviets, they actually had pretty impressive accomplishments regarding housing, heavy industrialization and transportation especially regarding the circumstances of the period. The current take away from the Soviets, especially from Americans, is that the Soviet Union failed in every aspect and made everyone lives worse ie "made everyone poor." However, from the perspective of a lot of people in the former Soviet Union, life in the Soviet Union was comparably stable and predictable to present-day circumstances There are lot of lessons to take from the Soviets, and not all of them are negative. Of course, there is also the other side, the political repression and growing supply issues during the 1980s. In that context, I think most people can agree or at least should agree that socialism, authoritarianism and price controls make for a unstable mix. That said, there are multiple ways forward. Also, yeah the Nazis were infamous for lettering private industry do pretty much whatever it wanted until late into the war. If anything the Nazis couldn't compete with the Soviets pumping out endless numbers of T-34s from state owned factories stretching to past the Urals.
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Feb 27, 2017 18:04
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Granted, there are present-day projects that could certainly use central planning but it is effectively impossible for political reasons, especially housing in coastal cities, energy, and health care. I know plenty of people would give their right arm to get a small unremarkable apartment with affordable rent in SF, DC or NYC. (You don't even need to go that far to find examples of where this already works in Europe or Asia.) Does it make sense to have state factories try to turn out game consoles and potato chips? I am skeptical, although certainly employee owned cooperatives could take a shot at it (I like shopping at Winco). Also you could also allow individual enterprises (such as the NEP) as long as they stay under a certain size. I think the problem with a concentration on mathematical modelling is that you are going to eventually hit a wall regarding human behavior that can only be communicated so far in a data set. You can say X and Y dresses are clearly in season, but how do you predict what will be the popular look next season? Ardennes fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 18:28
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SickZip posted:Russia was rapidly industrializing pre-revolution as well. Progress was sharply knocked back by the Civil War but it wasnt the complete backwater portrayed by pro-communists By most accounts, industrial workers made less than 10% of the population of Tsarist Russia. It was a nation of peasants (which complicated the rhetoric of the Bolsheviks obviously). It was only "rapidly industrializing" in a sense because it was starting with so little industry in the first place. It is quite likely that Tsarist Russia wouldn't have industrialized in any serious capacity until after the Second World War (if it had survived). It would have taken them until at least 1926-1927 for them to fully recover from the war and its aftermath, and then they would get hit with the depression in 1929. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 18:51
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I think you could make a pretty fair argument the Bretton Woods was a relative rollback of capital controls, especially on trade compared to the pre-war status quo. In the US, after the war, tariffs fell dramatically as a source of income for the federal government (not to mentioned the ECSC/EEC). That said obviously capital controls existed, it was just in a more internationally coordinated manner. Basically, convertibility was a relative non-issue in the late 1940s since European economies simply could not compete with the US. This changed by the 1950s, not only did the US incur a constant trade deficit, this deficit became a lynch-pin of both the system and American foreign policy. That said, Bretton woods almost certainly needed to collapse because convertibility into gold was just a fantasy at that point, and the US needed a way to depreciate the dollar. One thing I don't see the currency system of Bretton woods coming back, I don't think most governments (especially considering what happened with the Euro) at this point want to give up that degree of monetary policy. As for whether the world would be better with greater capital controls, it probably depends on what exactly you want to do with them. China has strict capital controls to benefit itself, but does this help Laos? You could certainly argue we (in the West) have gone too far allowing the free flow of capital, and something has to be done about it but then again it really depends on what exactly you want to do. Just to put this out there, going from the Bretton woods system to a floating exchange rate was almost certainly going to cause devaluation and eventually effect inflation. However, the very high periods of inflation in the US during the 1970s was linked at to the first and second oil crises. I don't know if Volcker is really the "genius" he is made out to be. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Mar 1, 2017 |
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Mar 1, 2017 18:04
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NAFTA has always been a bit of a red herring, we do a ton of trade with Canada and Mexico but our actual account deficit is fairly moderate considering the degree of trade we do. China -- $579 billion traded with a $347 billion deficit. Canada -- $545 billion traded with a $11 billion deficit. Mexico -- $525 billion traded with a $63 billion deficit. Japan -- $196 billion traded with a $69 billion deficit. Germany -- $164 billion traded with a $65 billion deficit. 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. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Mar 2, 2017 |
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Mar 2, 2017 13:30
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MiddleOne posted: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... 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"? Also, the fact that Japan and Germany are still in the top 5 of our export partners speaks about how much of our current regime of trade goes back to the post-war period itself. The question comes down to, is how much the current economic and geopolitical status quo personally worth it to you?
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Mar 2, 2017 14:40
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MiddleOne posted: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. China gets a good deal considering the US dollar is going to remain the prime reserve currency for a while.
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Mar 2, 2017 14:56
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BrandorKP posted:Have you ever watched Bridge Over the River Kwai? Even in that situation there is something deeply human in finding meaning in work even if it is forced and detrimental to our own ends, and even if one ends up pushing the plunger blowing it all up. This something that strongly motivates a good percentage of people, to the point of it being a fundamental part of thier identity. It's dangerous to just toss it out as protestant work ethic. If anything one of the core themes of that vote was how perverse that pride ends up. They are indeed proud of the work they did (entirely ahistorical but it is a story nonetheless), but that didn't discount the reality of their situation which was one of forced labor and misery. It seems like Rowe's point is that workers should be left nothing but that hollow pride. (Granted, I don't think work itself is a bad thing and if anything can be extremely unifying but that doesn't actually fix the issue of starvation pay and terrible working conditions.) Ardennes fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Mar 4, 2017 |
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Mar 4, 2017 21:28
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AstheWorldWorlds posted:FWIW, I do agree that one should do good work but that this is heavily contingent on the degree of coercion involved. Rowe is ideologically committed to never seeing any coercion in capitalism, and so the entirety of his manifesto is garbage. I do think work does have a socially unifying effect, the question is what it can be used for especially in a society that deeply values wealth. In the Soviet Union, the country was a worker state in a literal sense since there was practically full employment and everyone was classified as some type of worker (including intellectual workers). You can make a point this was still exploitative and in the end failed in it's goals but at the same time it did give society a unified sense of purpose and even at times comradery. In comparison, in the US where is this actually leading? You can tear down the ideology of the Soviets, but there doesn't actually seem to be any foundation to the same type of "worker pride." At least the Soviets thought there were struggling towards something even if the cause collapsed on itself, what is the point of pretending we are "all in it together" when it is very very clear we aren't? Ardennes fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Mar 4, 2017 |
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Mar 4, 2017 22:03
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Cerebral Bore posted:I know I'm pointing out the obvious, but it's much easier to exploit someone if they think you are in it together. As I already stated, but at the same time, you can also make a point that sometime that type of social leveling and common identity can also be a positive thing. It is also easy to exploit people if they are fighting among themselves for the lowest possible wage.
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Mar 4, 2017 23:28
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call to action posted:Ever since 2008 happened I've been obsessed with the idea of timing the next crash and selling everything right before it happens. While I'm glad I didn't dump anything yet and got to enjoy the ill-gotten Trump stock market gains, I'm wondering if it's around time to bow out into cash for a bit. Yeah, timing is always difficult, I am continuing to watch unemployment data to see if the current trend holds.
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Mar 7, 2017 21:40
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Twerk from Home posted:If you don't think that equities will have a positive return on a 30 year timescale, where are you putting your money? Real estate? Dried food? Asbestos mines? Granted, the question is if you have a 30 year time scale, it is now a good time to invest? It is a difficult question to answer, it is possible we could see another run-up as we had after the election of Trump or it could be significantly less positive. I know several once red hot housing markets are starting to show some signs of slowing, and unemployment data is still unclear (February data is coming out on the 10th). However, there is little sign of an immediate crash either. Moreover, There is certainly a logic with the way the market has acted since November 8th (and it clearly started with the election itself). Trump almost certainly was going to regulate both financial markets and most industries he could get a hand on. How long that will last though is more debatable. Another big issue that hasn't been addressed, is it is very difficult to predict what will happen after such an extended period of constant low to zero interest rates. Nothing like that has really happened before to the same degree and we are indeed in uncharted territory. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 11:46
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Freakazoid_ posted:I hope that by the time I have kids, we will have implemented a basic income, so that I and my children don't have to work. We aren't going to have enough jobs to keep upholding a protestant work ethic anyway, might as well go for it. Basic income even if it happened probably wouldn't keep up with inflation, and most people on it would probably live like people on welfare/food stamps.
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Apr 11, 2017 21:08
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Oxxidation posted:Civilization will literally end before this comes to pass. I notice a lot of "basic income is going to save us" going around.
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Apr 11, 2017 21:15
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Paradoxish posted:That's because it's relatively hard to see a way out from where we are. I'm actually a much bigger fan of guaranteed employment, but that has a huge host of problems associated with it as well and it's just as dystopian (if not more so) if it's done poorly. Granted, I think we are locked in for "dystopian" at this point. The problem is mincome/basic income really just doesn't fit in the liberal model and if you are looking for another model, you can do much better. Also, I think it is much more likely governments and their allies would rather spent on a police state to suppress riots/revolution than the type of massive spending that mincome requires. There is no way to fund such a program without complete capital controls and huge transfer of wealth from the rich to the state. If those very same people are doing everything possible to stop the most minimal progress at this point, why wouldn't they pull out all the stops? There there are the other reasons I have mentioned previously. In all honesty, I think the state socialist and the liberal model both failed and we are completely out of workable ideas (I haven't every of anything). If anything the great question of the modern age is "what the gently caress do we do now?"
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Apr 11, 2017 21:34
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Paradoxish posted:Wait, why do you think a UBI doesn't slot into liberal economic models? It's far closer to being a market based solution than any other form of social welfare given that it's entirely based around individuals making choices about when and how to spend benefits. This is one of the main reasons why there are a ton of people on the left who strongly oppose it. A key part of the liberal model is the protection of property, UBI would require massive amounts of taxation which would violate that. Also, I don't know why guaranteed employment would be "way outside" of where we are now compared to guaranteed income.
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Apr 11, 2017 21:53
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The_Franz posted:How much would it cost vs what's currently spent on welfare, food stamps, housing subsidies, unemployment, low-income tax credits, etc..? I would assume that if you are giving everyone a level of income which allows for basic survival that it would replace these programs since they would become irrelevant. If it costs the same as those programs, then it wouldn't actually change that much compared to the current situation in the first place. (Administrative costs are not a significant part of that spending.) If anything, you are just melting down the social safety net for "bloc grants." Paradoxish posted:UBI isn't actually a downward wealth transfer. Keep in mind that companies that don't pay their employees enough to live enough on are really the largest beneficiaries of most social services and a UBI isn't going to be any different, especially since anyone who would strictly benefit from it is going to be too poor to do anything other than shove the money right back into the economy. It's politically difficult (probably impossible), but it's not going to massively shake up society. People at the lower end will still work, they'll just do it for a pittance now since the majority of their income will come from the government. The people who don't work are going to pay all that money back into the system as consumers too. The money moves around, but the wealth is still going up. Likewise, if UBI isn't an actual transfer of wealth, what is being done at this point beyond changing the name? If people can't survive on the social safety net at this point and a transfer of wealth isn't happening, how are people getting to A to B here? (I don't want to be rude but...don't say saving on administrative costs.)
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Apr 11, 2017 22:10
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Paradoxish posted:You've misread my posts if you think that I'm suggesting that we gut government services and replace them with a UBI. You could probably drop some means tested stuff, but I think implementing a UBI while gutting safety nets is an abhorrent idea. Ideally a UBI would result in far, far fewer people on means tested services, but that doesn't mean you get rid of them. Even better, drop the means testing and just provide the services. The issue is how to pay for it i.e taxation in a world with free capital movement. quote:This is good if we literally no longer need labor, but my big fear is that detaching people from the labor market risks creating a permanent underclass. I'm down with people who don't want to work not having to work, but as long as we actually need human labor you're going to end up with that divide between people who have jobs and people who don't have jobs. Guaranteed employment at least prevents people from becoming unemployable because they haven't worked for a decade. I think most people like having " a place to be" even if their job is relatively unimportant. People shouldn't have to slave away in order to survive, but by the same token, I think most people probably would still crave some type of schedule even if it was subconsciously. I have seen this first-hand with people on "funemployment" and a lot of the time they have no idea of what to do with themselves. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Apr 11, 2017 |
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Apr 11, 2017 22:38
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call to action posted:You only need this because what we used to have (community and family) is destroyed Eh, I feel like I am doing fine on both fronts but I think would rather have somewhere regularly to be with a goal to it as well even if was only part-time.
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Apr 11, 2017 22:55
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Well a UBI (even a very small one) is still a transfer of wealth...but thats okay. I do think any proposal that tries to carve out a UBI from our existing tax/social safety net structure is doomed to fail (they just isn't enough in the system to provide anyone anything close to a livable income). Our social safety net doesn't actually have much waste in it, it is just ridiculously starved of funding. Also, it relies way way too much on tax credits which are often confusing and time consuming to obtain. Something like the EITC is a transfer of wealth (and in some ways is already trying to accomplish something like a UBI) but it isn't automatic and its pay scales are usually quite low (especially if you are single).
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Apr 13, 2017 09:02
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MiddleOne posted: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. Granted, a lot of it is due to the changing relationship between the US and the Saudis from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. We don't want to admit that the Saudis had essentially controlled inflation during most of the 1970s through the 1980s (not to mention were the ones that kicked the Soviets in the teeth in 1985/86). Yeah, if anything the history of oil is ridiculously under studied and has almost absolutely no funding (I wonder why...).
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Jun 28, 2017 16:48
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uncop posted:Are there tax deductions on the bottom end that heavily change it from the numbers listed on the internet? On paper, nordic-style progression looks very different from, say, US-style. You got to remember to consider US FICA taxes/State taxes in the equation and the US system also starts to look flatter as well. (FICA is an additional 7.5% and in Oregon the lowest bracket is 5%). If anything Americans are already taxed more than a bit but we just have cut up our taxation in a different manner and we honestly get comparatively garbage in terms of services.
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Jun 29, 2017 13:22
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Yeah, usually the argument goes back to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff (which is in some quarters, guess which ones) has been blamed for the Great Depression, the problem is it is also contemporaneous with a greater financial catastrophe and a nearly impotent Federal government. FDR did lower tariffs as a far of the New Deal but it is difficult to say if it made a difference especially since most countries kept their tariff laws. Also, it isn't necessarily important how much your trading but what your balance of trade and if your internal production is actually sustainable or useful.
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Jun 30, 2017 20:32
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