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Cat Mattress posted:I do not believe that people who have learned to read and write French and English should be considered to be "illiterate in every language" by people in the EU. As someone who is married with someone from "one of those countries" and went through all that work poo poo Here are two facts: a) Speaking English/French/X at school or university and doing the level tests in non-EU countries does not equal doing the same in an EU country. EU schoolchildren have a better English education than many over there studying in English at university. In some countries this is also true for other topics. I have met Eastern European degree holders barely literate in their field. b) European Job markets, including French, British and German, are very deeply racist and at the very least require near native knowledge of the language. You might think that international organizations and banks might be an exception, but this is not true at all. The stories I could tell you about the overt or less overt racism in these countries would make your head spin Bonus points if Muslim woman, obviously
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Jun 26, 2016 21:13
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Dawncloack posted:
EU doesn't have economic experts tho In Germany especially, economists have very little influence. I recently talked to Merkels' economic chief advisor LH Röller. Apparently it is very frustrating work, especially compared to countries who actually listen to their economic advisors (aka the USA). So next time you see some idiot German minister overriding the monopoly comission's decision because *votes*, leading to the resignation of the comission's head, or when the German EU-centered economic policy doesn't seem to make sense except in light of *votes*, let me give you a hint. It's not because the economic advisors anywhere. TheDeadlyShoe posted:There is little downside of getting locked out from financial markets if you have to borrow to cover your existing debt obligations. The situation of not being able to import anything when you have to import all essentials is a very different situation. Even with how lovely it is currently, it can get much worse. YF-23 posted:That's like trying to say that any country that has ever taken a loan isn't a functioning nation on its own. The point is that Greece has functioned before 1990 in a sense that it was a poor country, even compared to now. Let's remind ourselves that the Greece GDP, in a crisis, in a lovely situation now, is still MORE THAN TWICE THAT OF 1990 and before. And let us remind ourselves that Greece paid higher interest rate on debt than it does now, debt which at times pre 1990 was also substantial. Of course some is due to technology and bla bla, but the mainstay of a Grexit Greece will not be technology sector or any production that substantially changed post 1990. It will be tourism, and agriculture and depending on the political climate perhaps large scale industry production but conditional to things being lovely enough such that wages are really effing low (aka pre 1990). And then, all the innovative stuff you'll want including essentials will have to be important for impossibly high rates. So if you are considering an alternative to now and it's gonna be "let's go back to pre 1990", then please also consider that you'll probably literally have half of everything you have now in monetary value and a lot less variety and high-tech goods. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 10:54 on Jul 13, 2016 |
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Jul 13, 2016 10:49
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Nitrousoxide posted:
but what of that is really a NATO issue? Americas hobby of killing Muslims and destabilizing countries in the Middle East you can finance yourself thank you very much.
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Jul 24, 2016 21:02
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Taking in refugees is obviously independent of economic value they may or may not create. Housing refugees is directly mandated by the teachings of Jesus and therefore part of the Christian foundation of many European nations. Furthermore, it seems to me very obviously basic to any humanist social ethos that is not hypocritic ie. poo poo. So if our European values are worth their poo poo in any way, the refugee ROI is not important. That being said, we SHOULD try to increase the ROI. Saying that refugees can not become engineers because they don't have a Bologna Bachelor or whatever is not really an insurmountable issue. Just because we educate technical workers normally around 16-18 years old, we could also make the system more flexible. This, by the way, would be very beneficial to the job market on the whole, because in the future increasing education mobility is absolutely necessary. So as always, this disadvantage can also turn out to become an advantage. Remember Germany being so poo poo at everything they had to do big reforms and everyone was like "ugh, look at Germany being all poor and terrible at making big bucks". Anyway, the core issue is that the majority of peeps in my country don't actually think that brown people refugees are actual human beings. It sounds funny but it's literally true.
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Aug 9, 2016 23:51
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Just bc this came up: The Bundeswehr is a complete and utter joke of an army and would not be able to even protect Germany from an invasion from a medium-sized eastern-european country. It's only redeeming quality is the ability to organize and support catastrophe help. It certainly can not fight a war. It's unclear if Germany would be able to produce a proper army and how long it would take, but it ain't happening anyway.
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Oct 7, 2016 09:22
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-> Poland takes most money out of EU out of any country both in relative and total terms -> Poland needs NATO and EU protection to survive the next day --- -> Poland takes no refugees even though they claim to be Christian -> Poland is an rear end about everything henceforth -> gently caress Poland
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Oct 13, 2016 17:53
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uncop posted:The absolute minimum requirement for an economic system to be academically considered communist is it not containing class hierarchies: No employer-employee, no renter-rentier, no master-slave and so on. A person makes the decisions about their own labor either alone or through a collective (like a cooperatively owned company) to which they belong. re: communism so I only read Marx, maybe I am not up to date, but the beginning of his writing before Kapital emphasized something I believe is important. Basically, humans are caught in the historic dynamic and alienate themselves from their true humanity in capitalist society, just one step above being dominated by religion. So to speak, class relations get objectivized (? I read in German) to which we adhere, making true humanism impossible. Communism is not just an economic system, to its achievement humans need to overcome the alienation. Basically, humans need to become different humans (or, as Marx would have it, more human). Even in his writing the communist system is completely incompatible with incentive structures. Instead, he believes that once true humanity is reached, these issues will not matter. People can be an artist one day and a farmer the next, because social responsbility and efficiency is within their human nature. So at least that's Marx. If you believe that humans will not change and stay the same even if capitalism is dead, if they do not achieve "true humanity" in that sense but still respond to incentives of private gain, then you basically can not be a communist. So if you believe that the communist experiments did not just fail because something was done wrong, but did fail because humans are humans, then you will have to find another ideology. This is always kind of forgotten in the discussion but I think Marx spend like a gazillion years on this part of the theory early on.
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Oct 31, 2016 17:04
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MeLKoR posted:Marx correctly pointed the finger at the problem but his solutions are outdated because the dynamic of the class war today is not the same as it was during the industrial revolution. Also I think communism doesn't work because Marx is ultimately wrong with his alienation theory but that is, just my opinion man, literally. His writing style is super good tho and he liked to get really angry with stupid people. Cool dude.
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Oct 31, 2016 17:23
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steinrokkan posted:That's the one part that is undeniably true, though. Capital trumps labor in the division of surplus production among the production factors, which makes the worker alienated from his own product. but men will always be alienated from his true human nature and ultimately also from his own product because that Hegelian/Marxist concept doesn't exist in reality. And even if it did, then a new relation between capital and labor would not solve the human condition, which I think becomes more and more clear in our society. Not that I know, living in capitalism and all that. But it's my belief. In other words you can establish a communist economic and political order, but it will fail eventually and you will never reach communism as described by Marx, because that requires complete unity of humans with their true social nature. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Oct 31, 2016 |
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Oct 31, 2016 17:37
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Friendly Humour posted:Where'd you get that? You aren't alienated from parts of your body under normal situations, and you aren't alienated from stuff you make yourself for yourself to use. Marx writing before Capital, around Paris to Belgium time. Friendly Humour posted:As for unity with social nature, that'll be resolved. If the problem is that we can't freely share our minds and intentions and come to a collective consensus, the solution is simply to give us that ability. Neural interfaces and the collective consciousness formed irrespective of space will allow us to form new kinds of societies without the need to alienate parts of our nature to bureaucracy or to the means of production for society to function. Cheers! Information is not what Marx speaks about at all, nor coordination. In Marx view, human nature is different in capitalism and communism. More correctly, humans under capitalism are not natural at all, as humans are this social being. In communism humans will automatically realize their social nature, their being and actions are targeted in achieving the social outcome as individual and social objectives are the same. This happens the same way as "humanism" transformation after breaking free of the religious system. Information or consensus are immaterial issues in communism, as goals are aligned. The question of incentives necessarily does not exist. If you do not believe that people will change in this way, you are simply not of communist (Marx) ideology. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Nov 1, 2016 |
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Nov 1, 2016 18:31
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uncop posted:
Can you be more specific? What is a team? Who makes teams? Who decides who gets to join which team? What does free association mean? Do I have to accept everyone in my team? How are profits shared? Who regulates my and other teams? What form of competition happens?
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Nov 1, 2016 18:36
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You are absolutely right that center parties do not have a good narrative. What they have is too complicated. But it's necessarily the case. Center parties have to appeal to the median voter. They just can not go overboard as they stand to lose on both sides of the spectrum. But yes, the incentive of center-right is clear and they move into anti-foreigner / anti-immigration / anti-EU perspective as is appropriate. Show me a center-right politican who stands by helping refugees, and I show you someone who a) a person of principals and b) who will not be in office next time (hint: its only Merkel).
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Nov 2, 2016 20:35
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Another thing is that the far-right parties in Germany has always been more or less socialist. So this is not really a new angle for them.
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Nov 2, 2016 21:18
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MeLKoR posted:
We also live in Drone world, Robot world, face recognition world, AI threat prediction world and total and complete surveillance world. This is ESPECIALLY true if there is actual infrastructure to use like in, say, Europe. Any state with decent police infrastructure could become literal Half Life 2, if the government is ruthless enough. In fact, some are already on the way. One week after I arrived in Turkey as a foreigner, they started rerouting my internet over a secondary DNS or something and tried to block all my VPN requests. I am sure they recorded everything I said. And this is routine. They do this by the millions.
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Nov 11, 2016 18:35
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It's actually the French's fault for creating the Euro and forcing it on everybody
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Nov 17, 2016 21:31
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Mistakes where made. Still, I am not sure I would call it mistake to clarify our constitution, also since it has been shown now that her words are not the actual reason for more refugees (in fact the amount stagnated afterwards afaik). Merkel will at some point be considered the only sane and compassionate leader in Europe when literally every country shut down its borders after taking ~10k refugees or did not take any in the first place. I think this will start when ISIS is done and they start uncovering all the hosed up things they did to random civilians. For sure it should be considered the next time the EU claims moral and social superiority in a topic. Merkel is Protestant and not to turn away refugees is a literally a basic and very clear command of Jesus. I find it refreshing that any political leader would stick with a clearly unpopular opinion in the own constituency for months and months just because it is morally consistent.
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Nov 19, 2016 10:23
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Reminder Angela Merkel, 2015: "And to be honest, if now we should have to start apologizing because we have shown kindness to people in need, then this is simply not my country" Poland, Hungary, FN, UK, Austria, 2015.... "wraaagh wraahgh brown people come to rape our children, let them all die in the sea or at the gates, we are FULL"
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Nov 20, 2016 19:34
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I think France has nothing to gain by Frexit. All that EU/Euro business was their idea in the first place, non? The undesireables in France are not really coming from other EU countries, rather from their colonies it seems like, economically it would suck as they profit a lot from the Euro, and of course without the Euro the Bundesbank finally reigns supreme again in Europe. I mean UK also didn't gain, but for France it seems extra counter intutive.
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Nov 20, 2016 21:29
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A Buttery Pastry posted:I don't think it matters if the bad ideas came from French politicians, if their attempt at shackling Germany failed so miserably that Germany managed to shackle the rest of Europe including France. I dunno dude, imagine instead of Draghi we would have Weidmann the whole time, and instead of southern states having majority voting in the ECB, it would literally only be Germany. I mean the Eurosystem did not solve the issue of course, but perhaps it did slow down the Bundesbank compared to what would have actually happened.
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Nov 20, 2016 22:02
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you feelin fucky posted:Not just directed at you, but do people put a lot of faith in economic models? I did a lot of modelling and once or twice the same kind econometrists use. It would scare me if they did. Validation seemed almost absent in that field. You gonna have to be more specific about which models you wanna talk. There's models about all sorts of things. Econometrics is miles ahead of any other social science in technique and method, having pretty much the monopoly (and this includes non-social sciences) on causal inference techniques, thought on identification and endogeneity and structural modeling (the former two things are just now finding their way into Machine Learning, as well). I have worked with Sociologists (and I have refereed for their top journal) and they are not anywhere close. Oh and all those "fancy" dynamic panel models, discrete choice, newish diff-in-diffs, matching, GMMs and structural network models? Yeah, all developed in econometrics. Econometrica is the hardest journal to publish applied stats in. And political science basically replicates economics papers since forever anyway. As far as validation goes... econ has a higher replicability rate than Psychology, a literal experimental science. Let that sink in. But those are probably not the models you want to talk about I guess... You wanna talk about "Neoclassics" and "Keynes", right? About good old Macroecon. The truth is that the data in economics is poo poo. It's observational, not experimental, and extremely limited. You have one observation of one country per timepoint. What'ya gonna do now? You either be a timeseries guy, assume there's a nice stochastic process somewhere and calculate VARs, hoping there's enough variation in the data. Or, you do what "New Keynesians" do, models which for the most part are not even estimated but calibrated and simulated. That is also the reason why they could be like 98% accurate pre and post crisis (the older ones sometimes even beat more sophisticated, newer models), but total poo poo during. You can thank Lucas&Prescott for that philosophy basically. It's not wrong, but when no subfield in microeconomics claims to have many solid and unquestionable truths, then taking all that stuff and putting it in a Macro model is basically just ad hoc. And that's exactly how much stock people put into it. Yeah, as soon as we lived long enough in our economic framework to use econometric techniques for Macro analysis, we will be sure to come back to you. But are there solid economic models in general? Hell yes. Look at IO, look at experimental, behavioral, game theory and policy stuff. There's a nice paper where some economists implement a mechanism design based compensation scheme for salesforce, literally increasing revenue by millions (not billions of course) of dollars. Oh and by the way the only people who told you that the Euro was a really bad idea? Economists. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Feb 25, 2017 |
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Feb 24, 2017 21:10
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efffffordpostyou feelin fucky posted:I'm not an economist and I don't pretend to be so I'll take your word for it when it comes to the theory behind them. I did do cfd at a place that develops and sells models. Even with theory 400 years old and still valid, even with physical experiments that have been done a hundred times, there is still a fuckton of work involved with getting your model to give anything approaching reality. You can't just make a model, calibrate it to one data set and assume it gives anything useful. That has zero predictive value. Unvalidated models never left the house. That is exactly why things like Okay let me go into more detail on economic modeling, because it is indeed not easy to understand what is going on when one comes from physical/biological sciences aka experimental sciences or more verbal approaches. Economic models come in two classes: Theoretical and Empirical (I will detail the connection below). 1. Theoretical Models ----- Theoretical models are basically a mathematical way to describe a relationship called a mechanism. They are based on a set of assumptions, which ensure that a suspected mechanism can be isolated. Since the model is mathematical, the only thing to really debate about are these assumptions. Each paper is usually attacked on the basis of how applicable to reality these assumptions are. That is why each theory paper has a section called "robustness", in which assumptions are relaxed and we see if the result still holds. A large part of the literature also deals with these assumptions. For example many papers isolate markets from "the rest". This is technically not correct, since if I change even a little thing in one market then all markets all over the world are affected. So doing economic modeling "correctly" is not even possible. Economists have thus tried to find out what needs to be true such that spillover effects are either small, or have no significant feedback effects. There are several ways this could be true and models using single markets therefore have these assumptions. Currently, a lot of research also looks at rationality of consumers and firms. Rationality means that preferences are transitive (A>B, B>C -> A>C) and complete (either A>=B or B>=A). This is a relatively weak ordering principle on the preference relation among choices which allows economists to already develop the models we use. Notably, this is formally much less demanding than what sciences with "informal theories" (aka sociology) posit on humans (they use "common sense"). But, especially when it comes to completeness of preferences and dynamic concerns, humans are not rational. A large literature is experimental economics. Here, we have the result that in a typical market setting where decisions are anonymous, people are indeed mostly rational. But in other situations they are not. And then the field of behavioral economics basically goes and reworks all models with new assumptions, such as consumers with habits, consumers who are sometimes dumb, etc. etc. It's an ongoing and popular research. The most valuable results are those, which have been shown in many contexts and assumptions. There are also results which assume a lot of things, but which are inherently robust to actors doing something else. This has been the approach of Mechanism Design, Matching, Cooperative Game Theory and so forth. These are examples where people's interest is not aligned with the policy maker and so the worst he can face is an actor who strategically tries to break the mechanism. Actors who, on the other, randomly do something stupid, are not really a structural problem. Here, it has been sufficient to assume "the worst" for the opponents and make mechanisms robust to that (although research takes this further still). A good example is Auction Theory. After its development in the nineties, governments have implemented a lot of different auction schemes that generally did better than they suspected, because actors didn't manage to bid 100% correctly and so - hey - more money for the designer. Or, as I said above with regard to Salesforce, more complex compensation schemes are directly based on theoretical models from contract theory, auction theory and mechanism design. That's also why Amazon, Google, Ebay and such employ a lot of economists now. 2. Empirical Models ----- Now, these theoretical models are very different from what other social sciences do. They almost only use the second part which are empirical models. Empirical models come in three flavors. First, structural econometric models (Microecon). Second, non-structural econometric models (Micro&Macro). Third, calibrated models (Macroecon). 1. Structural economic models are taking the above theoretical models and bringing them to the data. This is indeed exactly what you mean when you say validation. This is a very complex undertaking because one has to combine estimation techniques with abstract mathematics used in theoretical models (so like probabilistic differential geometry and lattice optimization, as an example). An economics PhD takes a minimum of 5 years. Someone doing structural econometrics is usually expected to finish exactly one model/paper during this timeframe. These models are validated in the sense that they are built to simply test how well a theory matches the data. The objective is not necessarily prediction, although these models do quite well all things considering. This kind of modeling started in the earnest in the late ninties. 2. a Non-structural econometrics are applied researchers using standard statistical theories to test hypothesis (as in sociology) or do policy evaluation. The popular technique now are quasi-experiments, that is, using instruments and statistical techniques such as panel data models, multiple diff-in-diffs, matching etc. to emulate experimental inference in observational data. The idea here is causal inference: What impact does raising taxes have? How does microfinance diffuse in India? Since prediction is not the key of these models, indeed they are not really able to do it, validation literally does not matter. The approach is more experimental Note that until here, all approaches belong to what we call Microeconomics. That's because the above techniques require good panel data, thousands of observations etc. These models work well but they are not what you read about when it says "GDP predicted to fall 2%". 2. b The second part of non-structural modeling are time series analysis, used in Macro and Finance mostly. I guess this is the closest to the models you are familiar with. These models are validated as you would expect, because people care either about inference or prediction. 3. Finally we have calibrated models. This is a subclass of models which are structural but not estimated. This is the only place where traditional Macro models (New Keynesian) still survive. It works like this: Models are created on a theoretical basis. Then, distributions from microeconomic models are included (for example consumer savings behavior etc.). No direct "data" goes into the model to be estimated expect the "calibration" (there's exceptions but that is the theory). Then, the model is simulated. A model is good when it can replicate first, second and possibly third moments of the true data. Since no data is estimate upon, the model itself is the validation. If it does something else than the true data, it is wrong. When it comes to predicting big Macro events, usually a mixture of time-series (so more "pure" statistical models) and DSGE calibrated models are used. Models nowadays are mixed using Bayesian techniques to get better prediction. Where prediction is the key, models are obviously validated very closely. But since data in Macroeconomics is just sparse, it is not enough to run time-series models and validate them. Calibration is basically something developed in the 80's to deal with the fact that we know a lot about the economy, have microdata, but do not have enough macrodata to really use statistical models. I hope this explains better the issues with economic modeling. Things are changing rapidly in the moment, the new thing is to combine machine learning/big-data with time series and causal inference (something machine learning doesn't care about since they only do prediction). As far as predicting until 2060 goes. Obviously it would be a misunderstanding to assume that this will resemble reality. The thing about the DSGE/Time-Series double approach is though, that these models are _extremely_ good when everything goes okay. Before the crisis, they matched the actual data more closely than any climate/weather forecast (I can link a good paper on evaluation of early DSGEs pre-crisis if you want). The thing is however, given their structure, it is impossible to predict anything which is not in the model. So the result is only a pointer as to what would structurally happen if things stay the same. And perhaps a forecast for the next few months etc. But that's why any forecast of Macro models of this sort are necessarily worthless when your standard is: should be correct over the whole timeframe. But that's also not an issue of economics as such, because there literally are no sciences that can predict more accurately with this data-basis. We can do a bit more predicting variance of time series with long-memory processes after 1990 or so, but that does not really help and it's honestly all bullshit anyway looking at macro "random processes" because Chaos Theory and such (ah, which btw we also do...) So yeah. The truth is, conditional on the data that is available, economic models do really, really well. Other predictive sciences are not at all doing better. And for causal inference, sciences like sociology and political sciences are doing much worse and have a much more fragmented body of confirmed knowledge. But, poo poo sucks so that's like that. Things will get better with more computer power and more big data, basically. As everywhere. The big debates about "Keynes" vs. "XYZ" is basically a thing from the pre-90's and internet blogs. And politics. That's where it matters, not in academics. The reason is that politicians are not academics and no one has time to evaluate a lot of models, especially if the answer is still ambigious. So we have people like Krugman or Cochrane who just ramble out verbal theories based on the common sense they gained in their academic work. That's literally all it is. It's like sociology without data. If we are lucky, all those political economists that get to pretend they can predict the economy will be replaced by machine learning code soon. Let me know if you have any questions. Edit: Here is a good paper, see section 5 especially (but note that they are using a much more simple DSGE than what is employed in practice) https://sites.sas.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/schorf/files/er-final.pdf Squalid posted:I'm curious what economists said about the Euro prior to its implementation. Is there anything approachable available or is it all just bland technical articles? It would be interesting if there were any major authorities sounding alarms a few decades ago only to be roundly ignored. A majority group of economists in Germany formulated an open letter saying how the Euro is a bad idea before the Euro. As far as literature goes, the accepted theory of optimal currency areas developed exactly to that question basically told us that the Euro was a bad idea exactly for the reasons why it is indeed a bad idea. The Euro was 100% a political decision despite a very clear recommendation of both theory and actual economists. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 12:27 on Feb 25, 2017 |
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Feb 25, 2017 11:26
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Uhh what? I think a lot of economists supported the Euro, at least in theory ("Maastricht criteria are complied by", "no bailouts" or "more fiscal mixing"). And it isn't necessarily a failure. Don't know what the non-Euro counterfactual for most of Europe would be. Why do you think that tho? It's pretty hard to separate this from political concerns (France wanted the Euro, Germany did not etc.). Looking at the prevailing economic theory of that time, the Euro was a bad idea in exactly the sense which turned out to be true. So economists as such were against it. According to the newspaper "Das Parlament", the majority of actual economists world-wide (and especially in Germany) were very sceptical of the Euro. People predicting the collapse of the Euro were for example Friedman, Krugman, Greenspan, Sinn and many more. mobby_6kl posted:Thanks, this way more interesting than another Greeks sure here you go http://www.simon.rochester.edu/fac/misra/mkt_salesforce.pdf Edit: Here is one along similar lines that is cool&good, but less structural and more of type 2a. as I pointed out above. It's cool because it shows some shortcomings from simple compensation models http://www.econ.nyu.edu/user/debraj/Papers/Tea.pdf Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Feb 25, 2017 |
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Feb 25, 2017 19:46
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vs Neoliberals
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you feelin fucky posted:Thanks a lot for that. I was only somewhat familiar with the second part. In fact my only experience with econometrics was helping calibrate an old school gravity model that came from traffic engineering to simulate german trade. When we were done I found out there was no more data than what we had already used, which wasn't very inspiring. Well let me say it this way: Structural modeling in micro is less prone to these issues because there is good data and the assumptions generating the model can be checked by everyone immediately. That's indeed a good advantage of econ models (and why everyone can criticize them so easily, which is actually also good). And non structural models are usually not mainly used for prediction anyway. But oh boy, in competition policy? Like, when firms get sued for anticompetitive behavior? The firms lawyers will have an econ consulting firm producing a model for their case, no doubt. And you better believe that model supports their pov. But these models are not really data based, they just give an idea of a mechanism, at least currently. Judges use them for illustration. In Macro, yeah, I can pick and chose my models similarly - I can include this and not include that and so forth. And then if someone asks me to predict 60 years into the future, well it ain't worth much. The good news is that Macro models are pretty much only used for short term forecast - and never as a single model. If you look at the changes in business cycle variance throughout the years, you can see that policy became very good in reducing boom&bust cycling compared to earlier times... right up until something that was not structurally modeled in the DSGEs and was a structural break in the time-series models. I don't really see a way against this but to keep developing the models based on more and more data. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Feb 25, 2017 |
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Feb 25, 2017 20:20
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heh, Britain probably would have profited from the Euro. Doesn't really make it a success, right? also, lol at the majority of actual monetary economists being against the Euro.
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Feb 26, 2017 10:52
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LemonDrizzle posted:All the polling says she'll lose, and not by a narrow margin. where did I hear this before
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Mar 21, 2017 00:21
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Sinteres posted:I feel like there has to be some kind of specific intelligence inspiring this. The future of flight is looking super depressing either way though, because security theater shows no sign of going back in the bottle ever. not saying that is a good thing, but the list is actually really good aka it includes Saudi Arabia. The USA travel ban was basically just Sudan and some Shia countries for whatever reason (as if Iran will suicide bomb a plane?) anything which makes life for Saudis more inconvenient is cool& good in my book
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Mar 21, 2017 21:39
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orange sky posted:
Making wages higher in the Southern countries is exactly what the EU did  Compare that to before EU  EU did nothing but raise wages. However, it did not raise productivity. That's the real issue. As long as labour productivity in the Southern countries is low, it doesn't matter. Note that this has nothing to do with being lazy, it is everything to do with industrial composition and capital usage in production. Nevertheless, if we want higher wages, we have to raise productivity first. NihilismNow posted:
Well you know by every economic indicator including wages, GDP, GDP per capita, product choice, innovation, public spending, access to capital markets etc. they would most certainly be wrong. Indeed in many categories these things have easily doubled. The issue is instead that there's more than a hunch that things could have been significantly better if the recovery would have been handled differently. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Mar 23, 2017 |
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Mar 23, 2017 15:01
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thanks, I am doing my very best
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Mar 23, 2017 15:08
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Dawncloack posted:Hey could you clarify something about those graphs? Are they inflation adjusted? What are the sources? I google imagesearched them but afaik it's changes in real wages. As you can see those took a dip post 2010 for Greece which actually continues down further until today. Here is another graph with axis  Just to go back to my point. It's not that real wages are cool now, it's that this substantial increase of real wages (especially for Greece historically) was not fundamentally stable. I quoted the notion that real wages should increase. If that is not to lead to a new crisis, it has to go in accordance with labour productivity. MeLKoR posted:The funny thing about that is that there have been gigantic gains in productivity in the last 40 years but wages for working class had barely kept up with inflation even before the crisis, now they're back to 1995 levels so in effect all wage gains by the lower class in the last couple of decades were wiped out in 5 years and yet our "chamber of industry" is still clamoring for lower wages. Why are they back to 1995 levels? At least unit labour costs in Greece (which has the highest wage loss) seems to be still 15% higher than in 1999? ChainsawCharlie posted:Well unemployment easily Doubled too so at least the increases are consistent. Well there are two things here. First, there is a huge supply of labor in the south as opposed to in Germany. You can see this in Germany by looking at start-up wages, which are drat low, because mostly foreigners work in these lovely contracts. And because eeeeverybody from Spain now works in Berlin, but does not have access to the regular German labor market (it's language and yes it's true), there are about 500 candidates for every startup position, taking mostly paid internship positions because I guess wages are still better than at home. Additionally though this has lead to skill deflation as qualified people move to regular companies because of the poo poo conditions. Second, as I said before, on an aggregate level the labor per cost productivity in the North is higher than in the South. So in your example, YOUR "labor productivity" is actually way above the German one. Congrats - you should get higher wages and the Germans should lose their jobs. But on aggregate this has not been true. Hence, it is essentially correct that wages are higher. Labor productivity is however not useful to describe actual people and "effort" or something, because, well, it's just a ratio influenced by lots of things. So basically on an individual basis there is probably no good reason for lower wages, certainly not from a moral perspective. But on an economy scope, it would be strange if it were otherwise, because then Portugese wages per unit would be many times higher than Germans, which was exactly what happened before the crisis. Basically, a Portugese would get twice as much for every car produced than a German. And this doesn't really work forever when companies can move somewhere else (for example Germany or France). This example also shows that the argument about unit labor cost is really not at all about effort or skill, but industrial composition, infrastructure and finally regulatory efficiency. So that's what needs to change. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Mar 23, 2017 |
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Mar 23, 2017 18:40
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well I am not entirely verbose on unit labor costs, productivity and wages but the basic argument goes through either way thoorange sky posted:I agree with a lot of what you said but this paragraph.... Ahahahahahahahahahah. Right. This is not a helpful measure imo because it depends on the country production which is not the relevant indicator for competitiveness (it also depends on how much one works etc). You wanna look at unit labour costs (or labor compensation per hour worked which shows the same picture in this case). Companies are comparing productivity between Greece and Germany, that's what I was saying. here (real unit labour costs) 
Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Mar 23, 2017 |
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Mar 23, 2017 18:47
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double nine posted:Is it inflation? It looks to me like the rest of eurozone countries mostly follow inflation to keep income stable while germany remained stagnant (thereby sacrificing real wage for price competitiveness) No these are real aka without inflation fishmech posted:It'd really help if you had some charts that directly compared the wages in different countries instead of just how they grew from where they were. You can do that on the OECD site, looks about the same aka Germany is below everyone but Japan before the crisis edit: not before the Euro tho The Euro made Southern countries less competitive and give comparably higher wages. Which was not a good deal for the Southern countries as it turns out. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Mar 23, 2017 |
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Mar 23, 2017 19:30
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What is the relationship of free-movement to trade-union currently? For the EU, ideally, I thought the UK had to choose either free movement or tariffs and border controls. In contrast, according to the Guardian for example, you can in fact have a trade-union without free-movement, which apparently was May's plan. I always thought this proposition is inherently dangerous for the EU, because it's partly what certain countries want as well. What's the actual relationship here? A trade-union implies unified external tariffs, but free movement of wares within, which is what the UK wants. Does the EU allow this proposition without free movement? It would at least mean that the financial sector survives in London aka the British economy? Secondly, in the UK thread it seems there is a lot of opposition to a trade union (in the UK). Is this specifically because outside tariffs need to be coordinated? I thought that if the UK gets no immigration + free trade, then they basically reach their Brexit goals and the EU loses. Is it more related to not being able to dump tariffs unilaterally? This all confuses me. If the UK gets rid of free movement, yet gets no-tariff trade, then I'd say they are doing pretty good and the EU diplomats hosed us. Yet, the rethoric is the other way around.
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Jan 18, 2019 14:22
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Private Speech posted:What was negotiated was specifically regulatory alignment for goods without free movement for services and people, though it does come with Norway-style 'abide by all rules and contribute financially without a say in anything' with an extra side of 'as long as Northern Ireland is part of the UK you can't quit this agreement'. If you do the quiz of the guardian, and you put that you don't want free movement but also don't want issues with trade, then you automatically get May's deal as the only viable outcome. So in conclusion, May's deal says there'll be free trade of goods, but not services? I didn't read the actual deal paper which is why I am not actually clear on what it entails.
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Jan 18, 2019 16:25
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not a cult posted:you mean like the trick votes where every party on offer is a capitalist one? that kind of trick vote? this is the EU thread, no? In most countries, you literally can vote for a Marxist, Leninist or Communist party. Edit: Or are you saying that parties like the "Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany", or the " Communist Marxist-Leninist Organization" in France, the " Communist Organization Greece", the "Comitati di Appoggio alla Resistenza", the "Communist Organization of Luxembourg", the "GML" are capitalist. I just copy pasted some names here but come on man Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Jan 21, 2019 |
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Jan 21, 2019 03:05
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not a cult posted:As long as the ruling party has the word "communism" in its name the state is communist? Those parties all have to work within a capitalist system, even if by some miracle they get elected. That's my point. No you said every party is capitalist. Those parties would certainly disagree with you, and you (and everyone else) can go and vote for them right now! But of course, if your goalpost is a communist party in a communist state, then that'll be hard to find in the EU, yes. A good portion of us had that system before and we are quite happy to be rid of the situation, thanks!
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Jan 21, 2019 13:06
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not a cult posted:lol you're playing around with semantics and delibarately missing the point - yes, communism is the goalpost, not capitalism with a little sign that says "communism" glued over it. What I am saying is that right now, in this country, if the majority of the people would want a communist party, then it would be voted into power and without a doubt, transform us into a communist country. In contrast, your original post literally said that there are no such parties, and thus seemed to imply that there is no communism because you can not vote for communist parties. Otherwise the proletariat would rise up and get bona-fide communists into power. In reality, no one wants communism, and the people in question, who are not a majority, even, vote for socialist/left parties. Edit: I mean you might say the idea to vote for communism instead to revolt for it is stupid, and wth is a communist party in a capitalist system even etc. I don't disagree. Just in the context of democratic participation that we be talking about, you can't just go and make a fantasy world statement such as "there are only capitalist parties" because that ain't true. Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Jan 21, 2019 |
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Jan 21, 2019 13:38
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Tesseraction posted:tbh it sounds like you don't know how communist parties work Apparently, not so well. Tesseraction posted:here's a clue, just 4 u: Why was the Communist Party of the Soviet Union the party in power of the United Soviet Socialist Republics? Not because it was voted in. But are you saying that the communist parties cited earlier are not communist? In which case, the concept of a communist party itself doesn't make sense, since it can only exist (according to y'all definition) if it is already in power in a socialist system and, since we are talking about voting, has therefore nothing to do with the topic? Like, why then would you even bring up the lack of communist parties when none can exist in the first place. That's just really mean baiting me into googling communist parties in the EU and all that. Shame on you.
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Jan 21, 2019 13:53
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Jan 21, 2019 14:12
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YF-23 posted:This fails to take into account several pragmatic limitations that make this impossible. I mean the parties do exist. For example, the Marxist-Leninist party of Germany says that everything since Mao, and everything from the Soviets, was a betrayal of the socialist ideals. I think current mainstream left-wing parties are not what is meant here. How those parties would react to getting a lot of votes mainly touches upon what you believe happens when people get a lot of power. For your last point, I do think that an elected communist party in the EU would have to show some political sense and ingeniuity. Let's say people just had enough and vote the Marxist-Leninist workers party into power in Germany. If the grand strategy consists of implementing communism this very minute, you'll probably fail, economically even. No one debates that plopping a socialist country in the middle of Europe is enough. Obviously, and against the pushback, international expansion is necessary. All I said that there are parties who want this. But what do you think would happen if the next executive and the majority of the legislative in Germany were literal, full on communists with half a brain? It would simply put the country on a path toward communism, because people in those 0,2% parties are believers. They are not in it for the fame. So yeah, given the right party leadership, and the support of the population, I do think we'd get there. Will you have your classless society while Switzerland chills next door. Probably not. But I never claimed this. Anyway, how likely is it that people would vote majority communist in exactly one country? Of course this is all unrelated to whether you believe the idea of voting a communist party into power in a capitalist system is a thing that makes sense in the first place - as it isn't immediately clear to me what the plan of action for this is in the communist playbook. Perhaps someone has some theory there, but from prior conversations in this forum is that the consensus for full on socialism, even, is to "make it up as we go", which is by the way the reason why no one votes for those parties and actual socialism is dead. Edit: And to me being anti communism, as stated earlier. Apparently we have never observed real communism nor socialism anywhere in the world, and it seems I lack the imagination to see how the received literature translates to a different practical application to what was before. It certainly is not your job to convince me and my rasin-sized brain. I just see a lot of hype and I don't understand how it would practically work. There's literally no value statement attached to this, and you can call me dumb, hell, you'd be right. There's probably a lot of dumb people like me who can't actually imagine how exactly their lives would look under actual communism. We know the fake version that prevailed in Europe previously, and that one sucked. I also read an article by this Australian dude earlier stating how everything would be better and no one has to work due to "innovation", and everyone has more money and there's only small businesses, and even though I only have three working synapses, I can easily tell you that's a load of crap. But the real communism ain't that, I guess, and I am not intellectually versed nor capable enough to understand what that would be. Perhaps pass that on to your marketing departement? Haramstufe Rot fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Jan 23, 2019 |
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Jan 23, 2019 01:32
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YF-23 posted:Your entire argument prior to this was that if people in a country wanted communism they would just vote for a communist party and that party would bring communism, and now you are saying you never said that, so colour me some shade of confused here. No I am still saying that? I just never said that as soon as votes were in, a magical flip would switch and country would immediately be communist. So I guess I have to change my statement: you can vote for a communist party and bring your country on the path to communism as long as the leaders of said party are not dumb and politically inept. If no such party is to be found, then I retract my statement. I also need to amend, given the prior discussion, that failure is possible. YF-23 posted:Socialism, economically, means two things; worker ownership of the means of production, and the mobilisation of these means to the benefit of society, rather than in the pursuit of the accumulation of capital. The stalinist argument as to why the USSR was socialist would be that the state acted as a representative of the proletariat, and by transitive property the means of production were owned by the working class; I'll leave it to you to decide what part of that is bogus. You could stretch that definition to apply to anything left-of-centre. A hardcore social-democrat could argue that they are representing the working class, and therefore their governments, as stewards of capitalism, can claim to be the vehicle of a worker-controlled economy, and where capitalisms excesses harm society, they intervene to prevent that (again, whether that meets the criteria stated above, I'll leave as a thought experiment). The first part of your definition is clear, the second part I don't get. What does "benefit of society" mean specifically? For example, the current constitution of the very capitalist country Germany states that "Ownership (i.e. Captial) is an obligation. Its (capital's) use must benefit society". I know that this sentiment was echoed both after WWI and by the creators of the current constitution after WW2. In contrast, I am not aware that accumulation of capital was a stated goal in that debate. Since the difficulty seems to be to the definition of benefit of society, it is not clear to me how "benefit of society" for socialists differs from "benefit of society" by these "capitalist" thinkers. Frankly, you guys seem to have the same intention! The latter part of your text gives two examples of possibly existing actual socialism. I am aware that there is a lot of debate about the USSR being actual socialists, for example. My simplistic opinion on the matter is that any existing and historic case that was labeled socialism does not seem to be very appealing, in particular the iterations we saw in this very country a few years ago. I guess the difference must be the "benefit of society" part, where I suppose contemporary communist theory has reached some sort of consensus on what that means, even though it seems very nebolous to me. Then again, I am not a intelligent person irl so
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Jan 23, 2019 17:04
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