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So the solution was the fed pumped vast amounts of money into the system and looked the other way when finance companies were essentially insolvent. A lot of debt got restructured. One group did get punished, under water home buyers were locked in and either had to scrap up enough money to pay or go bankrupt and lose every cent invested.

Yep. Fed actually took over several large financial companies and government provided emergency fiscal stimulus to kick-start the stalled economy. As a result, the recession in the US was not as deep as it could have been.

Europe instead drank the Ayn Rand Koolaid wholesale and went with hard austerity, never mind stimuli. Results are obvious: http://www.tradingeconomics.co... At this point Greece should just exit the Eurozone and leave Germany to pick up the pieces.

The greatest lie is a half-truth.
http://articles.latimes.com/20...

Greece had almost a million civil servants in 2012 and apparently even Americans know that. That is not just people working for the government, that are people with a secure job for life. The population of Greece was 11 millions in 2012. Looks like indeed 10% of greek population consists of civil servants. Labour force in Greece is about 5 millions so whooping 20% of the labour force are civil servants in Greece, not 7%.
Just FYI, Germany has the same amount of civil servants, but 8 times the population/labour force. There are more people working for the German government than that, of course, but they are just salaried employees.

Actually in identifying some solar/wind promoters as anti-nuclear --- just a few but boy are they shrill --- I think I've hit the nail on the head.

Let's take a look at nuclear power in Japan, shall we. Japan is a small, energy-resource-poor country which has leveraged its technology to become a financial and industrial giant, in many areas out-producing the United States even before we outsourced to China. Some ~50 nuclear reactors were supplying ~30% of the nation's electricity in 2011. But that 30% is a misleadingly small figure in terms of estimable value, for even as rural Japan was finally being electrified those nuclear plants had been powering the factories and steel mills that put it on the world map. From being the first victim of nuclear war to putting its first reactor on-line in 1966, Japan is one of the world's greatest success stories and owes a great deal of its meteoric rise as a world power to those nuclear plants.

The Japanese are aware of this. It is why they responsibly reprocess their spent fuel, it is why they continued to expand their nuclear base even after the US Three Mile Island mishap, even after a pseudo-environmentalist sect (coal barons by proxy) in the United States began to suppress the advancement and innovation of this technology. The Fukushima Daiichi plant went on-line in 1971 and not one person in this part of the world seems to find it appropriate to recognize the many gigawatt-years of service it has contributed. We will honor a retired warship for its years of service, but if a nuclear power plant has fallen on hard times we will kick it like a dying dog and stamp the life out of it. Perhaps my allusion shocks you.

I go even further to describe as twisted and sick the way world press marginalized the unfolding tragedy of ~15,000 deaths to dwell on the minutiae of radiation release, and (worse yet) gathered anti-nuclear celebrities to continually supply worst-case scenarios, most of them absurd, scientifically deceptive and some outright dishonest. It represents a tabloid moment of which the entire human race should be ashamed. And yet? Even in the immediate aftermath of the disaster when all were in shock, merely 70% of Japanese believed that Japan should reduce its reliance on nuclear energy. There is reason to believe that this percentage is falling as the years pass, as they have re-elected a Prime Minister who vows to restore nuclear power to its previous levels. Perhaps the Japanese, for all this tragedy, are possessed of a certain clarity that is slipping away in the United States.

The second issue is nuclear weapons. One reason that the government wants nuclear power is so that it can build weapons at short notice.

Dissing conventional nuclear power on the grounds that it supports weapons manufacture is complicated. Suggesting that it is 'easy' or 'quick' or even 'feasible' (as opposed to refinement of natural uranium) is disingenuous. Rod Adams attempts to dispel this pervasive myth here and more recently here, and it is an uphill battle because politicians take their talking points from anti-nuke celebrities, not scientists or nuclear engineers. When the claim that terrorists could produce true fission weapons from nuclear plants breaks down, many seek refuge in the idea of a so-called 'dirty

I call BS. The unemployment is nowhere near "sky high".
Get your facts straight


http://data.bls.gov/timeseries...
http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

Call me EU-biased, populist, fourth Reich apologist or whatever, but I don't see how the Euro has been bad for Belgium by looking at its GDP growth. It isn't spectacularly different before/after the Euro, but it seems there is a lot more economic stability after than before.

Belgium:

Before Euro: http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

After Euro: http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

As for France, the tendency of diminishing growth has been there since at least the oil shocks, nothing in the chart I see that would point to the introduction of the Euro as the culprit.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/france-gdp-growth-annual.png?s=frgegdpy&d1=19500101&d2=20151231

Call me EU-biased, populist, fourth Reich apologist or whatever, but I don't see how the Euro has been bad for Belgium by looking at its GDP growth. It isn't spectacularly different before/after the Euro, but it seems there is a lot more economic stability after than before.

Belgium:

Before Euro: http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

After Euro: http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

As for France, the tendency of diminishing growth has been there since at least the oil shocks, nothing in the chart I see that would point to the introduction of the Euro as the culprit.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/france-gdp-growth-annual.png?s=frgegdpy&d1=19500101&d2=20151231

If Greece implodes, it could take the entire Eurozone with it by causing domino defaults, because Greece owes a lot of money to other nations that are already in dire fiscal straights

Two years ago maybe, when the whole euro-zone was in a depression and there weren't plans in place but now they've prepared and the Greek economy is only about 2% of the total. Germany has been very ready to play hardball and let Greece fall on their sword if they don't stick to the rescue plan. You have to remember that once you've made sure the other dominos won't fall many want to make Greece an example of what happens when you spend irresponsibly. So does their new PM really want to go "all in" and find out if they'll really get kicked out of the-euro zone? That's some real high stakes poker there if he gets called they tell him to get out.

Consider, we could wipe out our unemployment problem RIGHT NOW if the average work week was cut to 35 hours a week.

Done. Is it working? (In reality, I'm sure this example has multiple other factors to consider).

The money for quantitative easing was created, not taxpayer-funded.

How'd that work out for the Wiemar Republic?

Do note that I'm a knee-jerk anti-Fed zealot, I think most of those people are hopelessly naive at best. It just remains to be seen whether or not QE is a long term success or simply masked fundamental structural problems that will re-emerge at a later date. It's worth noting that our cheap money policy has virtually destroyed every form of investing other than stocks; I can't find any "safe" investments that can keep pace with inflation right now, can you? Wall Street sure is profiting from QE, I'm not so certain about Main Street. This is a very disturbing trend that few people are talking about, one that we're not likely to reverse so long as there's no incentive (near 0% interest rates) to save money and every policymakers response to a recession is "consume, consume, consume!"

Mark your calendar and we'll come back to this discussion in 10 or 15 years to find out what happened.

Also the current inflation rate in Iceland is 0.8%. Hardly a disaster like you claim it to be.

The average wage in Iceland is over twice higher than that in Greece.

Unemployment in Iceland was at 9% in 2011 and has lowered to 4% since. Unemployment in Greece in comparison hasn't been going down by the same amount and is essentially at a steady level of 25%.

The devaluation of the Icelandic krona also decreased the value of private debt denominated in krona. So it essentially made personal debts easier to pay. It is true inflation went up but wages went up as well to compensate.

You don't know WTF you are talking about.

The average wage in Iceland is over twice higher than that in Greece.

Unemployment in Iceland was at 9% in 2011 and has lowered to 4% since. Unemployment in Greece in comparison hasn't been going down by the same amount and is essentially at a steady level of 25%.

The devaluation of the Icelandic krona also decreased the value of private debt denominated in krona. So it essentially made personal debts easier to pay. It is true inflation went up but wages went up as well to compensate.

You don't know WTF you are talking about.

The average wage in Iceland is over twice higher than that in Greece.

Unemployment in Iceland was at 9% in 2011 and has lowered to 4% since. Unemployment in Greece in comparison hasn't been going down by the same amount and is essentially at a steady level of 25%.

The devaluation of the Icelandic krona also decreased the value of private debt denominated in krona. So it essentially made personal debts easier to pay. It is true inflation went up but wages went up as well to compensate.

You don't know WTF you are talking about.

"All Greeks own many houses".
"All Greek fish sold are from Thailand"!
"All Greeks own yachts"?!
"You get thrown out of buses"?!?!
... and of course, all Greeks will steal from you, cheat on you, etc, etc
That's the most complete collection of negative comments I've ever read online, kudos to you for collecting them.
However, compiling a list of negative press releases (like the 3000 blind people, which was a great scandal here as well) and putting some anecdotal self experience, is far from describing the truth. Enough with the "greek sterotypes", even the German don't believe them
I'm not sure what kind of spoiled rich Greek friends you have, that can obviously spend enough to travel abroad and play basketball and whatever, but I assure you that the *vast* majority of people here are struggling with 30% true unemployment and 500 Euros wages. Old people are suffering with a 50%-70% cut in their pension. Disabled people where stripped off their benefits overnight. Gas and heating prices went up 50%. Electricity went up at least 20%. All these along with a 30%-50% increase in taxation *of the poor* (and 0% increase for the rich). This is the actual austerity, and not some bull*hit about people "forced to cut down on spending". Just take a look at the numbers of people immigrating, committing a suicide, dying of heart attacks etc over the last 4 years. Do you really think these where people frustrated for losing one of their yachts?

The true problem of austerity was not that people where "forced to cut down on spending". It's that the state was forced to cut down on spending and find revenue by means of heavy and irrational taxation (insane actually). This had the obvious impact of putting the economy in a deep depression, thus leading the state into having to borrow again, leading to more heavy austerity measures etc. So we've ended up now with an economy 30% smaller, unemployment went from 10% to 30%, people have lost their jobs, their houses, their hopes, their lives and what for? , only this time it's not the private sector that holds it (european banks), but they have traded this with European state loans (see: european people's money). The new government doesn't promise it will "continue the policy of spending". It has promised (and we'll see if it manages that) that it will revert insane austerity measures. For example, cutting the basic wage from 750 Euros to 580 Euros was a measure that not even the employers wanted: They knew that this would drive the economy even more deep into recession.

So, please, check your facts before posting condemns about a whole race, just because you got cheated and had a fight with a bus employee on a crowded island in a crowded season.
I could write much more, about how German businesses funded corruption in Greece, How Germany benefits from the Greek crisis, etc, but it's pointless; You people will always believe that it's "the Greeks' absent mindedness" that is to blame about the crisis, that they had it coming, and that it will never happen to your country. Good luck.
Ah, and by the way, during my trips worldwide I've met literally hundreds of people who h

According to sources like this, about 85% of Sweden's population is in urban areas. When you only have 15% of the population that's really spread out, of course it's easy to just spend the extra money to wire all of them up.

You mean unlike the USA, which have to deal with the punishing 17% non-urban population which makes it impossible to roll out a decent infrastructure? Different for different states, of course, but less densely populated states also have a smaller population which you need to cover.
 

The population of Sweden is so small, you really can't extrapolate out from it very much to US sized problems either. You could barely fill the NY metro area here with everyone in Sweden.

I would argue the exact opposite. You can perfectly well extrapolate from Sweden, and use that extrapolation as an inspiration of where the USA can get with decent policies.
 

And our sparse states make Northern Sweden look like a huge party. Nationwide US policy has to consider what's feasible in states like Montana and Wyoming, at 2.7 and 2.3 people per sq km. And then there's Alaska at 0.5...a single state that is also 4X as big as Sweden, too.

So what kills decent broadband in the USA is rural Alaska, which has less than 0.24% of the US population? There are two ways you handle this problem. First of all, you begin by building out good infrastructure to the 50/90/95/99% which is cheapest to deploy. Secondly, you let those living in areas where building infrastructure is cheap sponsor the buildout in more expensive (typically rural) areas. As the value of networks grow with the number of people connected this is, within reasonable levels, profitable for everybody.

When it comes to the population density, you should note that Sweden has a considerably lower population density than most of the American states, yet much better telecommunication infrastructure. Northern Sweden has a population density of about 4 people per square km, yet good access to telecommunication services.

According to sources like this, about 85% of Sweden's population is in urban areas. When you only have 15% of the population that's really spread out, of course it's easy to just spend the extra money to wire all of them up. The population of Sweden is so small, you really can't extrapolate out from it very much to US sized problems either. You could barely fill the NY metro area here with everyone in Sweden.

And our sparse states make Northern Sweden look like a huge party. Nationwide US policy has to consider what's feasible in states like Montana and Wyoming, at 2.7 and 2.3 people per sq km. And then there's Alaska at 0.5...a single state that is also 4X as big as Sweden, too.

I don't know if BEA will let me deep link, so here's another presentation of the data. The data all comes from the same source.
http://www.tradingeconomics.co...

Please note this tells us something important about the effects of each party's policies on the ECONOMY, only. We need to look at other data to comment on party policy effects on social issues such as crime rate or anything else. So it doesn't mean Republicans are better; it doesn't mean you should vote Republican. Unless of course jobs and the economy are your primary concern

If you like the hopeful Democrat ideals, maybe you decide this means you should push your Democrat representatives to set the agenda, but allow Republican bean-counters to calculate the details of how to do it effectively and efficiently. This bit of fact doesn't address any of that, of course. It only shows that Republican policies improve the economy.

BoLS says unemployment is down to around 6%.

Now, you may argue with the specifics, but the general trend has been downward since 2009. Or a more detailed article.

I think the statistic you're looking for is this. Nobody believes the official US unemployment rate - it only makes sense as a short-term trend. The US doesn't count anybody who has been unemployed long-term.

Whether by choice or not, the participation rate does reflect the potential manpower available in an emergency without impacting the normal labor force.

BoLS says unemployment is down to around 6%.

Now, you may argue with the specifics, but the general trend has been downward since 2009. Or a more detailed article.

Communism and dictatorship orthogonal to each other. One can exist without the other.

Dictatorship can exist without Communism, yes — Sulla was one example, Pinochet was another. Communism, on the other hand, can not exist without dictatorship — its economic ineptitude is such, that people revolt very quickly unless the Communists manage to gain dictatorial power.

communism was never reached, never even tried for, in the authoritarian socialist republics. Socialism by itself is thriving and well in Europe in Sweden, Danmark, Finland, France, and others

Your attempts to distinguish between Socialism and Communism are silly — Socialism is nothing but "Communism-lite". Says so in "Das Kapital"...

Those are the countries with some of the highest standards of living.

No, they aren't — their apartments and cars are smaller, and everything (that is not subsidized) is more expensive. And what good they do have, is despite their Socialism, not thanks to it.

Hugo Chavez was not a dictator

Well, maybe, there are subtle differences between "president for life" and "dictator", but I'm not aware of it.

He also left the country [Venezuela -mi] in better state than he found it for its people

And what sources can you cite to support this claim? Maybe, it is the quadrupling of the murder rate in the country, which makes it better "for its people"? Or its "wonderful" GDP growth (despite the spiking demand for oil)?

And you just did [caused a coup and installed a dictator -mi] it in Ukraine last year.

Wow... Am I talking to Joe Biden? Please, cite the sources proving both: a) the US caused a coup in Ukraine last year; b) the current President of Ukraine is a dictator.

The only period of sustained economic growth in your country? The economic and political hegemony?

I asked you, what did the US grab — as you alleged we did. The hegemony was simply due to the fact, we weren't destroyed by the bombings — thanks to geography, not any premeditated evil plan... Our laissez-faire Capitalism may have had something to do with our economic power too.

Cared for defeating Hitler and the Nazis? Stopping the atrocities?

Nothing was known by the outside world about Hitler's atrocities until circa 1943 — when Polish intelligence managed to smuggle some proofs from their (occupied) country. Earlier rumors were dismissed as anti-German propaganda. One of us, indeed, ignorant of history...

Of course, by 1943 we already deeply involved — helping our allies both economically and militarily — because we did (and do) care for these values even if we didn't know the worst of it, when we started.

When I make arguments, list couple articles on wikipedia

Listing a couple of articles does not make an argument. You can cite such articles to support an argument, but you didn't... Your arguments — and I am using the term loosely — were quite apart from the links you gave.

First go and learn history and politics

Shkolota, my knowledge of history and politics far exceeds yours — and even that of your Kremlin handlers :-)

Doesn't a significant portion of the EU have, like, MASSIVE unemployment?

I'm talkin' over 25%.

I don't think that unions cause unemployment, or prevent it.

However, when you have unemployment figures like that, companies tend to do everything they can to take advantage of the situation (i.e. enslave their employees), so unions could be extremely helpful.

Disclaimer: I'm not a huge fan of unions in the US East Coast, where they are little better than gangsters.

I think you may be working with old information.

The lowest minimum wage in China is 7.5 RMB/hr, which is roughly US$1.22/hr. For comparison, the highest minimum wage (Beijing) is 16.9 RMB/hr ($2.75/hr). According to another source, average yearly manufacturing wages in China are 46431 CNY/year ($7547.92/year).

The Panama Canal was dug around 1910. In 1910, about 38% of Americans were employed in agriculture... now it is under 2%. In other words, humankind is radically better at things like "moving dirt."

This argument makes no sense whatever.

Agricultural employment in the states is under 2% because we are "radically" better at things like farming.

Employment in agriculture (% of total employment) in China was last measured at 34.80 in 2011, according to the World Bank.

Employment in agriculture (% of total employment) in China

By July 1, 1914, a total of 238,845,587 cubic yards had been excavated during the American construction era. Together with some 30,000,000 cubic yards excavated by the French, this gives a total of around 268,000,000 cubic yards, or more than four times the volume originally estimated for de Lesseps' sea level canal.

END OF CONSTRUCTION

I define a brazillion as an amount equal to however many there are of something in Brazil. For example, a brazillion people is 200 million, but a brazillion soldiers is however big Brazil's army is. A brazillion dollars is 900 billion USD (based on real M2 at current exchange rate between reais and USD), but a brazillion dollars per year is Brazil's GDP.

Uhm, you know that US imports most of its consumer goods?

That means that the US also need to export things to have a healthy trade balance, otherwise the economy will go in the crapper (even more so than it is).

The US has been running a trade deficient since 1980's and if foreign countries stop buying US made products it's going to be a huge problem financially. In March the US trade deficit was a staggering $40 billion. See http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade for current and historical data on the US trade.

In other words, saying that "the US is not particularly dependent on foreign trade" is patently wrong.

The USA 'exports' 'intellectual property' problems to the rest of the world.

Uhm, you know that US imports most of its consumer goods?

That means that the US also need to export things to have a healthy trade balance, otherwise the economy will go in the crapper (even more so than it is).

The US has been running a trade deficient since 1980's and if foreign countries stop buying US made products it's going to be a huge problem financially. In March the US trade deficit was a staggering $40 billion. See http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade for current and historical data on the US trade.

In other words, saying that "the US is not particularly dependent on foreign trade" is patently wrong.

Along comes Chavez and demands that the country gets some revenue for the oil. He then poured this money into development.

What development? Inflation is up, infrastructure ever more decrepit, crime is up — homicides quadrupled over the last 15 years

No wonder he is hated by the USA.

I don't see, who but an enemy of the people could possibly like a ruler like that. No wonder, you prefer to stay anonymous.

Wrong bogeyman - It's all good (as in a "progressive worsening of civil and human rights/Censorship") because they are paying their international debt owed, at the expense of civil and human rights. Venezuela is the only petro-state with a debt over 50% of the GDP.

If the Venezuelans kicked out the corrupt, started nationalizing anything owned by foreign companies and/or stopped paying any odious international debts and started putting the inerests of common Venezuelans before their debt obligations, then suddenly civil and human rights and censorship would become an "issue" for the world to "label Maduro a dictator or demanding the OAS' Democratic Charter be activated.". A sad, hypocritical reality, really...

A zero rate of inflation – or even a constant rate of inflation – is theoretically impossible. Those who have implemented it have destroyed their economies.

Where do people get this crap? Inflation in Switzerland has routinely touched zero had periods below zero (i.e. deflation) in recent times. Switzerland is one of the worlds wealthiest countries.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Professional economists have studied the link between deflation and depression and found it does not exist.

Fortunately I live in the US, which like most developed countries, where nobody has “first access to money”, so I don’t have to contend with that issue. And by money I assume you mean currency which, of course, is very different then money.

I think you'll find semantic distinctions between money and currency are pointless for anything except confusing people and making you feel like you won debates when actually you lost. Of course there are people who get first access to money in the USA - banks do, when they write it into your account and charge you interest for the privilege.

Brazil is not an example.

Looking at Brazil's GDP there is no growth. I'm not sure how you are measuring to claim Keynesian is a success.

Looking at unemployment rates, it depends on the portion you are looking at. While the rate of unemployment dropped, so did the wages of the lower class. Factoid.

Wealth disparity in Brazil is one of the worst in the world.

Brazil by it's own terms is called "Post Keynesian" because Keynesian principles pretty much failed. I'll give a link in a moment, but want to make sure you pay attention to what the document claims and not the titles. Such as...Aggregate demand constraint - As we have already stressed, a laissez-faire market economy does not create a level of aggregate demand consistent with full employment. and the whole of Inflation constraint. Here is the link.

Brazil is not an example.

Looking at Brazil's GDP there is no growth. I'm not sure how you are measuring to claim Keynesian is a success.

Looking at unemployment rates, it depends on the portion you are looking at. While the rate of unemployment dropped, so did the wages of the lower class. Factoid.

Wealth disparity in Brazil is one of the worst in the world.

Brazil by it's own terms is called "Post Keynesian" because Keynesian principles pretty much failed. I'll give a link in a moment, but want to make sure you pay attention to what the document claims and not the titles. Such as...Aggregate demand constraint - As we have already stressed, a laissez-faire market economy does not create a level of aggregate demand consistent with full employment. and the whole of Inflation constraint. Here is the link.

Really? They're not importing a significant part from it's neighbors?

And prices are pretty close to what I said.

Picked from 1995 here but it at least wasn't becoming much worse:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/gdp-growth

Then again never amazing either.

(Sweet page but not useful for this: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/11/european-economy-guide
Lots of downloadable data: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?page=2
Employment numbers: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php?title=File:Employment_rate,_age_group_15-64,_2001-2011_(%25).png&filetimestamp=20121030182934 http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Employment_statistics)

I don't think stagflation means what you think it means. Japan has had deflation and low interest rates, and an unemployment rate that has never reached 6%.

Japan also holds over $1 trillion of US debt.

Basically, Japan (like Reagan) has proved that deficits don't matter, and a high debt-to-gdp ratio is sustainable. They should increase their debt and use it to increase their safety net.

That isn't true. They are independent. Who would pay attention to them if they were not independent?

You just did.

I'll just add that CBO deficit projections are one of the areas that they are particularly notorious for getting wrong (2009 CBO economy and deficit projections). For example, in that link they forecast 4% real GDP growth rate for 2011-2014. So far it's been about 2.5% through to this fall. They understated unemployment (6.4% through the same 2011-2014 period, actual average unemployment appears to be a bit under 8% so far, but probably will remain above 7% average when 2014 ends IMHO).

But it's their deficit projections which are off the most. Here's the figures from that report of 2009:

CBO projected deficits in billions of US dollars:
2010 -703
2011 -498
2012 -264
2013 -257

Actual deficits in billions of US dollars:
2010 -1294
2011 -1300
2012 -1087
2013 ~-680 (picked up from news sources)

Notice the problem? How far off these CBO projections are (over 800 billion over for 2010 and 2011!)? I picked this particular report because it was the most important CBO report of the past few years since it was used to justify 2009 stimulus spending and as justification for increase other sorts of spending in 2009 and early 2010.

Now you might think it just a coincidence that the CBO greatly exaggerated the fiscal health of the US budget at a time when it was highly advantageous to Congress to have such an exaggeration. I don't. I think this sort of deceptive propaganda is part of the CBO's reason for being.

I was about to post a mathematical rejection of that idea, but you know, the numbers aren't really that crazy. Someone correct me if I've made a big mistake somewhere, but I've used the poverty level income from here: http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/13poverty.cfm, used the GDP as roughly the total spending we can tax (found here: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp) and used the 2012 budget figures from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_federal_budget

Basically, if you want to pay everyone a poverty line income, you need to increase the government spending by that amount. The sales tax will push up the poverty line, so you need to increase those payments, and then increase the sales tax to pay for that. Fortunately we worked out Zeno's paradox some time ago, so if we pay people enough that a house of more than 8 people can get by you'd need a 24% tax. If we want to pay everyone enough to live one their own it would be a 47% tax. Those numbers look big and scary, but maybe you could sell it if you promise to get rid of the other taxes, and compared to the taxes you see in other socialist countries it's not that bad...

I'd be worried about a repeat of what happened when they introduced the GST (goods and services tax) in Australia. They promised us that the money would be collected federally, and returned to the states, with the states cutting all of their sales taxes/stamp duty/other crap. As you might imagine, the federal government used their new power to put pressure on the states, so the states couldn't afford to get rid of all their taxes and we're left with a big mess. I don't have any hopes that the US would do better...

8.03%

Until there is a Libertarian candidate, who is remotely viable, picking Republicans is what Libertarians ought to be doing. Because Republicans are far less wrong on economy. And economic freedom is required for prosperity...

The opposite is literally true. I don't personally vote economic issues (there's nothing wrong with doing so), but if I were to, voting Republican would not be an optimal choice.

On contrast, if an ultra-Conservative "RethugliKKKan" wins elections and, horrors, manages to outlaw abortions... Guess what? I'll still be able to afford my daughter's trip to Canada, should she ever want the procedure.

You seem to primarily vote your wallet, and you also have a liberal position on at least one social issue, or, at least, you're not crazy about the Republican platform position on that issue (please correct me if I read you wrong). Again, nothing wrong with that, but holding a Republican preference with what you've shared of your political views seems... decidedly strange. I'd honestly be interested in how you arrived at the preference you have.

...the deterioration of our economy...

What deterioration? Now, I'll be the first to admit that we're not exactly seeing Clinton-era growth, but we are seeing steady, albeit slow, improvement. Again, literally the opposite of deterioration.

So (there are btw. two ACs responding to you here) if the interest exceeds inflation you are not losing money, so dollar savings value over your period can be said to be extremely stable. I don't see how this can be viewed as a huge problem, quite the opposite. Most economists agree btw. that a low steady inflation is good for economic growth, and that deflation can have a negative impact on economic development.

Agree, but it's not often you will get a 3% interest rate so inflation will still keep on eating it up the money.. Usual pure interest-rates are much lower, usually a bit lower than the current repo-rate. Btw, http://www.tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate gives quite a good view of the current inflation-rates for most countries.

From wikipedia:
Inflation's effects on an economy are various and can be simultaneously positive and negative. Negative effects of inflation include an increase in the opportunity cost of holding money, uncertainty over future inflation which may discourage investment and savings, and if inflation is rapid enough, shortages of goods as consumers begin hoarding out of concern that prices will increase in the future. Positive effects include ensuring that central banks can adjust real interest rates (to mitigate recessions),[5] and encouraging investment in non-monetary capital projects.

And here are a few of the positive and negative sides. But IMO the positive sides are not enough for the negative effects.

Instead of adjusting interest-rates you can adjust taxation to mitigate recessions. But just the idea that adjusting interest-rages to mitigate a recession is a bad idea for society as a whole since it points to a society that is infested with loans..
If people would start to save up money before buying random crap people would actually afford to buy even more random crap..
Buy something for $1000 at %5 percent and a 5 year plan will cause you to pay $150-200 in interest. (too lazy to calculate the exact amount).
If you instead saved up to this, maybe having the money invested in something while saving, you would then have $150-$200 more to buy stuff with (not counting any payout from the investment).
Ie.. Promoting lending money for consumption is not a good thing IMO.

Lending money for a house can be good, but today most people never plan to pay off the mortgage. This is also not a good idea since in the long-term there will be allot of money paid to the bank in interest instead of buying new things that would speed up the economy.
Also if you save up and have a house your children can inherit something of value that they can either use to buy a new place or just stay in as is...

This is why i promote a currency without inflation. Deflation could maybe even be a good thing too by making people save up before buying, and while saving maybe have the money invested.

Not saying that any of my ideas are good/bad/insane, just good to have a discussion.. Maybe i/you/other readers can get new idea's and perhaps actually learn new stuff! :)
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Just pointing out, that you list some of the major cities, and in both cases for US and Sweden it approaches about 30%-40% of population.

LA Metro
POPULATION: 18 million
SIZE: 34K sq mi
DENSITY: 526.5/sq mi

Sweden
POPULATION: 10 million
SIZE: 450K sq mil
DENSITY: 53.9/sq mil

Per the above, one would assume that to achieve a 90% coverage, that Sweden had to run far more cable than the LA Metro did.

15% of Sweden's population is considered rural, what percent
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/sweden/population-density-people-per-sq-km-wb-data.html

But let's look at a map of Sweden with population densities.

http://chatt.hdsb.ca/~1lauriesar/FOV1-00144A6C/S0FD9D1B9.0/19102011_55200_2.jpg

Note that probably 60% of the land mass is near vacant (13 persons per square mile or less). In fact most of the population is focused on the southeast coast, and Harnosand (sp?). Much of the rest doesn't get beyond 65 people per square mile. And I'd wager, even in those areas, much of that population is in a singular village or town.

Why does that matter? Because in the U.S. we sprawl a lot more...when you get to rural areas of Pennsylvania, you don't have a little village or town, you have continuous homes spread along roads. The amount of cabling to run a long line into a town or village and then short likes to homes. Is a lot lot less than the spider-web that America must run.

Now get back to propping up our economy and owning most of our soverign debt.

Care to back that up with a source? They are the largest foreign holder of debt but that is far from owning most of our debt. China owns about 8% of public debt.

China's exports by country - US buys 20% from China.
Also China runs an year-on-year positive trade balance

US goods trade: total showing a deficit since at least 1989.
Goods trade with China only - deficit again

Gotta ask yourself the population of which country would suffer the most if the trade between the two would suddenly stop?

The WWI Western front is the point of Europe? That's what you said just then.

Yes, WWI and the Sequel WWII are some of the prime motivators behind the European Union. It has grown far beyond that but the people who originated the EU were partially motivated by the idea of preventing future wars by increasing economic integration to the point where war had become a sport that was to expensive to indulge in. and for what little it seems to be worth to conservative anti EU tossers these days, hundreds of thousands of those reasons that are buried in Flanders, and whom the GP spoke of, are British.

Where's Iceland fit into this?

Iceland exports in excess of 70% of it's manufactured goods to the EU. Iceland has enacted about 75-80% of the laws needed to join the EU and Icelandic politicians have proven them selves to be a bunch of incompetent nepotistic tosspots who cant keep the inflation graphs from looking like a set of sharks teeth. If you want to have a laugh compare the inflation graph for Iceland to that of Germany:

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/iceland/inflation-cpi
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/germany/inflation-cpi

Notice how the German figure hovers between 0 and 5%, now compare it to the Icelandic graph. You would laugh even harder if you could see data from before 1989. Inflation in Iceland since 1944 fluctuated between ~3% to as high as 25-30% and occasionally topped 100%. In 1979, these wankers that make up the Icelandic political class, finally had to index-link loans to inflation to motivate capital owners to start loaning money. What that means is that if your loan carries 6% interest and there is 8% inflation you are effectively paying 14% interests. Now try to imagine what happens when inflation hits 20% and you will understand why Icelanders are so angry they are spitting acid. Joining the EU would force their brainless politicos to... well... behave. And additionally when you export 70% of your manufactured goods to the EU it's kind of dumb to want to have no say in how the EU's inner market evolves which makes me wonder why the British, who depend on the EU for 50% or so of their exports want to leave the EU. It's kind of like robbing yourself of the ability to influence how your country is begin governed by voluntarily relinquishing your right to vote.

The WWI Western front is the point of Europe? That's what you said just then.

Yes, WWI and the Sequel WWII are some of the prime motivators behind the European Union. It has grown far beyond that but the people who originated the EU were partially motivated by the idea of preventing future wars by increasing economic integration to the point where war had become a sport that was to expensive to indulge in. and for what little it seems to be worth to conservative anti EU tossers these days, hundreds of thousands of those reasons that are buried in Flanders, and whom the GP spoke of, are British.

Where's Iceland fit into this?

Iceland exports in excess of 70% of it's manufactured goods to the EU. Iceland has enacted about 75-80% of the laws needed to join the EU and Icelandic politicians have proven them selves to be a bunch of incompetent nepotistic tosspots who cant keep the inflation graphs from looking like a set of sharks teeth. If you want to have a laugh compare the inflation graph for Iceland to that of Germany:

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/iceland/inflation-cpi
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/germany/inflation-cpi

Notice how the German figure hovers between 0 and 5%, now compare it to the Icelandic graph. You would laugh even harder if you could see data from before 1989. Inflation in Iceland since 1944 fluctuated between ~3% to as high as 25-30% and occasionally topped 100%. In 1979, these wankers that make up the Icelandic political class, finally had to index-link loans to inflation to motivate capital owners to start loaning money. What that means is that if your loan carries 6% interest and there is 8% inflation you are effectively paying 14% interests. Now try to imagine what happens when inflation hits 20% and you will understand why Icelanders are so angry they are spitting acid. Joining the EU would force their brainless politicos to... well... behave. And additionally when you export 70% of your manufactured goods to the EU it's kind of dumb to want to have no say in how the EU's inner market evolves which makes me wonder why the British, who depend on the EU for 50% or so of their exports want to leave the EU. It's kind of like robbing yourself of the ability to influence how your country is begin governed by voluntarily relinquishing your right to vote.

Ireland which went through some severe austerity

Except it didn't. "Ireland recorded a Government Budget deficit equal to 7.70 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product in 2012." And it was as high as 30.9% in 2010. Now, if you want to argue it was foolish to bail out Anglo-Irish Bank, that's a different argument.

Which part of "Real austerity is cutting spending until outlays match receipts" was unclear?

Did you forget Portugal, which is now trying the severe brand of austerity that you seem to favor

Except it isn't.

"Portugal recorded a Government Budget deficit equal to 6.40 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product in 2012.

Which part of "Real austerity is cutting spending until outlays match receipts" was unclear?

Ok, I'm curious. Let's run the numbers for my home country - Australia. The total taxation rate of GDP is about 22%; our GDP per capita is about $71k. That's about $15k per person. The minimum cost of living in Australia is about $16k per person assuming for a typical family of four. The Mincome experiment showed that people do not stop working on basic incomes, but in fact contribute to produce and to gain higher education. It could be quite possible to set the minimum income to be something like $7.5k per annum per capital (as many people will not need it, if paid a higher wage) and use remaining tax revenue to fund defence, infrastructure and health (which account for about half the budget). It does not appear to be outlandish to me.
CAVET EMPTOR: this post and its figures were hastily researched using google and are probably deeply flawed and entirely wrong... but they're a starting point for facts-based discussion.

Really, where's all this inflation you speak of? This quantitative easing has been going on for years now and I'm not seeing the inflation. The inflation rate is actually quite low: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi. And here's a link for how all that "high inflation" is helping the economy: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CD0QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hlntv.com%2Farticle%2F2012%2F08%2F09%2Flow-inflation-pushing-us-toward-recovery&ei=EIQIUeKTD4ePrgH23IGQDQ&usg=AFQjCNGRXXnPWulOGPkxyd_0yEvcOCrWPg&sig2=hM2C_h2ubx3eXdzoqXAPzQ&bvm=bv.41642243,d.aWM

And seriously, what fucking exchange pressures? You mean like the dow and s&p being at near record highs?

http://www.wgal.com/news/money/Dow-S-P-500-nearing-all-time-highs/-/9360224/18318560/-/115r051/-/index.html

Ok, I'm skeptical too. Let's check it out! I apologise in advance for large numbers.

From this website I've got a figure of just over 4 million sq. kilometers of arable land in the United States. This website gives daily cross-year average sunlight falling on a square meter of ground as about 160 W. That's 640 x 10^12 W-days of power falling on the land, per day. Wikipedia cites that plants have a metabolic conversion efficiency of six per cent. This website cites a biomass-to-energy conversion efficiency of 20 per cent. So, if we assume that only 1 per cent of arable land was actually covered with plant, and then turned into electricity, total daily production would be 77 x10^9 W-days of power. This sounds like a lot; obviously there will be some more production and transport inefficiencies in there.

For comparison, the US consumes 1.39 x10^9 litres of fuel per day. According to Wikipedia, the energy density of petrol is 49.2 x 10^6 J/L, so that's 684 x10^12 J of energy per day... or, expressed in Watt-days (86400 seconds in a day), that's 7.91 x10^9 W-days of energy.

There are a lot of real world factors not being included in these estimates, but the 10-to-1 ratio here indicates to me that the energies involved are of a comparable scale; if we devoted 10 per cent of arable land to agriculture, we could (with highly efficient processes), conceivably put a sizable dent in our energy usage.

I think you must be talking about a totally different Japan, because the Japanese unemployment is significantly lower than most other developed nations.

First google result, that easy to find...
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/unemployment-rate

So what's the considerable problem?

So then beef production moves slightly north?

This is a confusingly ignorant misunderstanding that I constantly see reiterated on Slashdot. There is only a finite amount of arable land and that is 18% of the United States with 0.21% of that being permanent crops. From this site, you can see in this graph that the figure of 18% actually fluctuates. Now, there's a lot of factors at play but drought is a big one and this idea that you "just move the cattle North" to the new land is downright laughable. Temperature is not the only factor in making land arable. Why does Iowa produce more corn than per acre than any other state? Well, the soil has a lot to do with it but also the temperature is better than, say, Minnesota even though there's a lot of corn and soy grown in Minnesota.

During the dust bowl of the 1930s, we should have learned that you can't just "move cattle and farming North a bit" to avoid droughts. We also should have learned how important it is to combat erosion and protect our water supplies.

What happened last season in Texas was they failed to grow their own roughage (hay, straw, alfalfa, sorghum, etc) for their steers to eat and so they paid top dollar to have it shipped down to them and other states profited from Texas' loss. This is not a sustainable model. Moving cattle northward will not work, there is a reason ranching flourished in Texas -- any areas north of there that have the same conditions have long become ranches. Even if someone does the math and says "Oh, hey, this area of Montana here is going to be highly sought after" it's not like a massive ranch in Texas can pick up operations and move them to Montana in a single season. You're going to see restructuralization problems and the United States consumer will cry highway robbery when their already subsidized McDonald's burger costs $1.33 instead of $0.99. Should Texas become akin to Arizona, our economy will feel it.

Or maybe I can finally get grass fed beef from the USA?

You can already buy this from Montana and other states. The problem is how much grassland can support free roaming cattle. Again, a lesson learned from the Dust Bowl, we need to build ranches and feed them in order to prevent top soil erosion. If you demand they be free roaming and you calculate it, beef will become incredibly expensive and not a viable option for the entire populace.

Over all a small increase in the price of beef is not the end of the world. The decreased red meat consumption would probably be a good thing on average for us.

Right, those grapes were sour anyway?

Texas still has lots of oil and natural gas.

So? Most states depend on multiple sources of revenue, right? You should be alarmed when any major industry faces a major problem. Otherwise, why not just kill off all the other industries and embrace "lots of oil and natural gas"? Well, that's simple, you use what you got and Texas is losing arable land to grow food for their cattle.

Its agriculture was living on borrowed time anyway. Once the aquifer went dry that was coming to an end.

An unsustainable agricultural strategy is bad agriculture. Doesn't everything -- even your oil and natural gas -- depend on the availability of water? You make it sound like we just turned Texas into Mars and probably for the better? Ruining land is not the answer and this report states that Texas will get more arid so measures should be taken to at least prepare for that, wouldn't you think?