The market is not irrational in having business cycles, there is nothing irrational about eating and then taking a dump, is it?
Wow. You are now literally talking shit.
If you don't understand how that is a boom, which leads to market being saturated with unneeded jobs (fat) and it is in a need of a correction, then I can't argue with you.
You can't argue with me because you are basically ignorant of economic theory. You think you know what things are called, but you have no idea how they are applied.
The people MUST lose jobs, some companies MUST fail and some lenders MUST go under and prices on consumer items MUST deflate. This keeps the lenders and companies honest and gives the consumers time to think over their expenses as well. Do you call that irrational?
There is nothing in that statement that conflicts with Keynesian theory. Keynesian theory suggests that counter cyclical investment and changes to the interest rate will soften the booms and the busts, and it did, from the late 1930s until the 2000s. There was consistent economic growth mixed with recessions. Before deregulation in the 1980s, the middle class grew from the 40s through the 70s, and income equality improved. After the regulatory agencies were gutted and left to die, and the unions were virtually dismantled, income equality went down, inflation went up, and then the American manufacturing sector was dismantled and moved overseas. CEOs went from making around 100x their average employee in the early 80s to 300x their average employee today.
It is all Keynes ideas of keeping the Bust out of the economy that is happening and is leading to over-consumption, and it is precisely for the Keynes ideas that government must keep the boom going and must not allow bust to happen.
Read above. You either refuse to understand Keynesian theories, or you are too stupid to comprehend them.
Why would government want a bust? Government is a disease of the society comparative to hypertension and obesity and diabetes, that's how society gets sick and dies. It is also an economic burden, it is not a productive force. Government hates the bust portion of healthy economic cycle because it forces government to shrink.
You think the government has a mind of it's own, just like the market? You cannot anthropomorphize large complex systems to be good or evil and be taken seriously anywhere but on an internet forum. If you think there's some institutional bias, then you need to provide some evidence for your claim, besides the flat repetition of "Government bad." If that were the case, strong states wouldn't dominate the world economically. Somalia would be the paradise of Africa. Please try to stick with reality.
in fact if it actually was able to take 100% of all personal incomes, it could not cover its expenses at this point
You're fucking lying. The GDP of the United States is far larger than the Federal Budget. We're not even at a historical high for external debt versus GDP. That spiked at 120% during WWII. I think we're around 100% now, which is bad, but is also the world average at this point in time.
Just because so many governments of the world have adopted this Keynesian idea does not make it right, it is wrong, just like slavery was wrong even though accepted by a majority.
Every country did not adopt Keynesian policies. The ones in South America who had the Chicago school of economics forced down their throats are doing very poorly, except compared to the countries ravaged by war or without any natural resources. They have not done nearly as well as the Keynesian states.
What else do you think all this money printing and borrowing is, that is then 'lent' to the banks at no interest? That's what it is, the goal is to provide the consumers with more credit and so they can take on more debt, just like the government is doing and buy more crap... Germany is unlike other countries in EU, it PRODUCES stuff people want. So what 'Keynesian' are you talking about in this case? It's much less than you'd believe, they don't borrow money to spend, they earn money to spend.
Consumerism is not the same thing as Keynesian. Germany just has better fiscal policy. It does not seek to balance the budget at the expense of investment every year as required by classical economic theory, but it does invest wisely and direct it's economy towards useful ends.
Here's the paragraph you need to read every time you want to assign some bad fiscal policies to Keynesian theories:
Keynes theory suggested that active government policy could be effective in managing the economy. Rather than seeing unbalanced government budgets as wrong, Keynes advocated what has been called countercyclical fiscal policies, that is policies which acted against the tide of the business cycle: deficit spending when a nation's economy suffers from recession or when recovery is long-delayed and unemployment is persistently high—and the suppression of inflation in boom times by either increasing taxes or cutting back on government outlays. He argued that governments should solve problems in the short run rather than waiting for market forces to do it in the long run, because "in the long run, we are all dead."
There are some lessons we cannot afford to learn every generation, and our economic system is no different. We don't throw away science every 40 years because that would be enormously wasteful. The only way to pass on this knowledge about the cyclical, irrational behavior of unregulated markets is through government policy.
And, as an additional exercise, find the first country on this GDP per Capita list that does not have a Keynesian oriented economy.
Keynesian economics argues that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes and therefore, advocates active policy responses by the public sector, including monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government to stabilize output over the business cycle.
The Keynesian experiment was back in the 1950s and 1960s, when the American middle class was the envy of the world. Countries like Canada, Germany, and France have Keynesian economies and strong government regulation, and are doing much better than the United States in terms of quality of life, external debt, and life expectancy.
In short, they are like parents who send their kids to college, but stop sending them money if they find out it's all going towards coke and hookers.
Here in the states, we've discovered the raging brothel, and continue to hand money over to corporations that do nothing economically useful with the money. The problem is not investment and full employment as a goal of government policy, but the corruption and colossal failures of American governments since 1980.
He's probably pointing out that they continue to be massive fuckups. Whether killing soldiers with faulty wiring, or overcharging the government and ripping off the taxpayer, Halliburton proves itself to be a solid American corporation!
The Persians were dissatisfied with the royalty terms of the British petroleum concession, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), whereby Persia received 16 per cent of net profits.
In 1921, a military coup d'état—"widely believed to be a British attempt to enforce, at least, the spirit of the Anglo-Persian agreement" effected with the "financial and logistical support of British military personnel"—permitted the political emergence of Reza Pahlavi, whom they enthroned as the "Shah of Iran" in 1925. The Shah modernized Persia to the advantage of the British; one result was the Persian Corridor railroad for British military and civil transport during World War II.
In the 1930s, the Shah tried to terminate the APOC concession, but Britain would not allow it. The concession was renegotiated on terms again favorable to the British. On 21 March 1935, Pahlavi changed the name of the country from Persia to Iran. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was then re-named the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC)...
The overthrow of Iran's elected government in 1953 ensured Western control of Iran's petroleum resources and prevented the Soviet Union from competing for Iranian oil. Some Iranian clerics cooperated with the western spy agencies because they were dissatisfied with Mosaddegh's secular government...
After the 1953 coup, the Shah's government formed the SAVAK (secret police), many of whose agents were trained in the United States. The SAVAK was given a "loose leash" to torture suspected dissidents with "brute force" that, over the years, "increased dramatically".
Another effect was sharp improvement of Iran's economy; the British-led oil embargo against Iran ended, and oil revenue increased significantly beyond the pre-nationalisation level. Despite Iran not controlling its national oil, the Shah agreed to replacing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company with a consortium—British Petroleum [40% owner] and eight European and American oil companies.
I thought I remembered the correct numbers in export per GDP. I have no interest in the raw numbers, because with per GDP numbers you have no context.
(Exports per GDP for 2007) China is #89 USA is #179
Raw exports (2009) China #1 (GDP of 4.5 trillion) Germany #2 (GDP of 3.5 trillion) America #3 (GDP of 14.2 trillion)
The point remains. China is whipping our ass already, and have only developed a small portion of their economy. We're about to experience the joy of being England at the turn of the 20th Century.
Of course Canada has more conservative laws. It's banks are nationalized, government owned, under the direct supervision of the federal government. So, yes, regulation they enacted in 1938 to nationalize all of their big banks has created a very sound financial system, because when things really matter, you don't just stick them in a market with no rules and watch the fireworks. At least if you have an interest in a sound market.
By the way, the WSJ is the same paper that called Canada a third world country in the 90s and missed the subprime boat entirely. Forgive me for taking their opinions with a bucket of salt.
Since Congress did not do the sensible thing and nationalize banks during the Great Depression - as Canada did - at least they managed to set up firewalls between insurance, investment banks, and regular banks, and also put limits on leverage, in effect, making derivatives illegal. Glass Steagall kept the American system mostly intact for 70 years. If you can point to some other regulation that has more relevance, I'm all ears.
Am i the only guy in the world here who can see that government regulation has contributed to the lack of doctors in the US?
Probably, because you made that up. The US has 2.50 doctors per 1000 people. England has 2.30, and France has 3.3 per 1000 citizens.
I HATE it when people complain how free markets fail and they point to very regulated industries like medicine or banking. I mean the banking industry is the most regulated this side of child porn, yet all those laws and oops still another crises every ten years.
In the 19th Century there were Panics about every ten years. Then there was the Great Depression, and virtually no banking failures until the Savings & Loan scandals of the 80s, which were caused by deregulation of savings and loan banks. The current banking crisis can be directly traced back to repealing Glass Steagall, which was done in 1999 with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Glass Steagall kept the US free of major bank failures for 70 years.
The Canadian Banking system, which is actually regulated, suffered virtually no bank failures, and is now voted the soundest in the world.
In summary, you are flat wrong. Strong government regulation has a long history of success, because it's the only way you can create a market. Markets depend on rules, just like physics. When the rules are not enforced and not followed, there is too much uncertainty, and that almost always leads to a crash once people return to reality. There can be no accountability without enforcement, and no enforcement without regulation.
It's because the construction of infrastructure has not seen productivity gains like the manufacturing industry. It's much harder to mechanize, and labor costs are a major component. I imagine the increasingly legalistic nature of the American economy is also a component, but I'm not sure that it's a huge difference.
It's the same reason health care has become so much more expensive compared to other fields. One manufacturing employee can now produce much more than he could one hundred years ago, but there have been near zero productivity improvements for doctors. The answer is to have more doctors who make less money, but not a popular one, so we have a ton of nurses instead.
#23 United States: 68.672 bbl/day per 1,000 people
#144 China: 5.733 bbl/day per 1,000 people
And China is the #1 exporter in the world, and we are #179.
I know (from CSX commercials, of all places) that a ton of freight can be moved over four hundred miles with a single gallon of diesel fuel, so I don't think moving a person on multi-stop rail would be much worse than that. I couldn't find any good data on breakdown of usage, but I did find an interesting article here:
This suggests that while America may be making bad choices now, China is trying it's best to catch up. Apparently they could overtake our car count by the year 2020 (meaning 1/5 of their population would own one, though), and have a larger highway system within a few years. Still, they are making massive investments in electrified rail, and from what I can tell, have a long way to go before they waste as much energy as we do to perform the same work.
Or by vastly more efficient freight rail services and electric vans with enough range to cover the the majority of Americans who live near urban areas. Last I checked, 70% of the population lived in 3% of the same land mass.
No, I'm assuming that will be enormously expensive when all pieces of equipment used to transport and construct new infrastructure use oil as their primary fuel source, and that for every calorie of food consumed in the US, 3500 calories of petroleum are expended to produce, harvest, transport, and process it. In 1970 the ratio was 1 to 1.
That, and the fact that the average American lives tens of miles away from their workplace, and has no way to get there without using a highway. Just project in your head what Sean Hannity would say if, to pull through such a shortage, we needed to legalize bicycles on interstates and put quotas on oil usage to preserve them to build rail stations and non-motorized vehicle lanes. He'd try to get everyone in line to invade Venezuela, which of course will only put off the inevitable and entrench our dependence on foreign resources.
If there was no finite limit to the oil supply, sure. Whoever is more dependent on more finite resources eventually loses, even if you don't run out. If the price of oil went to $500 a barrel, it would basically make America a non-competitive economy, because we would have no cheap, fast way to get our workers to their jobs, or to move resources around our highway system.
The terrorist calculation I did myself, spreading out 4,000 deaths due to terrorism over the past 50 years. Spreading it out over the last 100 years (vehicles were just barely in use then) is 1 in 95,000. In that article they said the rate for having a 9/11 size event every year would bring the lifetime rate to 1 in 1,300.
Some people may complain that that particular figure does not include deaths from military combatants in Iraq or Afghanistan, in which case the figure would be about 1 in 20,000 per lifetime, figuring terrorism caused deaths at 4,000 per 50 years.
Many of those improvements have been spent on dragging around safety systems, rather than discarded for better fuel economy.
This is true, and both the rate of vehicle deaths and number of deaths per year has been declining for 20 years.
So how do you translate "unimpressive performance" into "less safe"?
Because if everyone drove a small and light car with a smaller, more fuel efficient engine, we would have less fatalities and much less fuel consumption nationwide. We could also save an immense amount of money on replacing infrastructure, since hauling around 4,000 lb SUVs to get a single person from one place to another has more externalities than just the waste of metal and oil resources. Not to mention the increased danger to other, smaller vehicles.
This is why libertarian movements may be the nail in the coffin of the United States. The more a society refuses to pool easily shared resources, the more costs go up for individuals subjected to each other's externalities, and the more efficiency goes down for the society as a whole. If China can turn one gallon of fuel into a few hundred miles of transport per person, and we can only turn one gallon of fuel into twenty miles per person, guess who wins.
Not the least of which being the Toyota Corolla, the most popular car of all time. I used to have a Mazda 323 from 1980 or so that got 45 mpg at 55mph or less, which was great until I ruined it by changing the oil and not tightening the plug sufficiently.
And, given the choice between "unimpressive performance" and "living to see your children grow up," it's amazing people continue to be so shortsighted. Investment in vehicle safety could save far more lives than the war on terror.
Lifetime chance of dying in a car accident: 1 in 83 Lifetime chance of dying of terrorist acts: 1 in 45,000 Lifetime chance of dying of a lightning strike: 1 in 80,000
When Americans have backdoors, it's to protect American interests and therefore "good". When the Chinese have backdoors, it's to protect Chinese interests and therefore "bad".
You can apply this same logic to foreign policy. Both value systems are based on power instead of principle.
I really don't think blaming the puppet masters for our own failure to form our own political parties is going to help. The obstacles faced by our generation are simply not comparable to the ones overcome by other oppressed groups. We have free access to information, free assembly, and we cannot be jailed for our political views. They at least have to throw some trumped up charges around instead of just the breach of thoughtcrime.
All this talk of armed revolution is introducing a very bad idea. It's the hardest way to solve a simple problem: turn off the TV, organize local political parties, and refuse to elect candidates from the Democratic or Republican power centers.
That kind of idealistic gullibility would be laughed out of even a high school civics class.
I recommend you give a test run in the morning to see if you're right.
There is no evidence that law implies civilization, and more than a few counter examples: Most of the middle east, much of central Africa, Texas.
You have confused culture with civilization. Any sufficiently complex religious or political organization is called a civilization. There are good civilizations, bad civilizations, and likewise, there are good laws and bad laws. The existence of a legal code does not presuppose any form of government. The rulers who claimed they were Gods were simply above the law when they wanted to be.
Equality before the law, without kings or holy men outside of it, is an ideal that has been pursued since the time of ancient Greece, and one that was partially realized in the US Constitution. It's been trampled since then, but I've never run across anyone who denied it's significance as a major step towards legal equality.
More abstractly, *all* government power to enforce laws is derived from one of two sources: Willingness of the people to go along with it, or violence. The former does not scale beyond the most local levels, leaving the latter for most state and federal laws. Before you claim that is not the case, think of what would happen to the schmuck who breaks one of these laws and decides that he's not going to cooperatively go to prison.
And mob justice is somehow superior? Or divine justice? Would you like to submit to the authority of the Pope as the arbiter of the One True Religion, or to an Imam, or to some Hindu priest? Do you really understand the differences between barbarous tribalism and civil society? Government overreach of it's authority to use force is certainly an injustice, but also entirely within the power of a democratic society to be altered.
The entire purpose of laws is to collectively trade some liberties for some security
No, law is there to remove uncertainty and enable progress. You establish sets of standards, like weights and measures and the width of roads. You establish how property is owned and sold, and most importantly, how citizens go about seeking justice when they feel they have not received it. As long as it is mostly functional, it's vastly superior to the injustices of mob violence, blood feuds, and totalitarianism.
Unfortunately, when a society stupidly allows itself to fall into a fox/henhouse situation like we have in the U.S, the "rule of law" becomes no longer sacrosanct, and instead becomes a vehicle for the corruption to spread virally.
You can't blame our modern ideals about law for human failings. This is exactly analogous to blaming fidelity because your wife had sex with someone else. The problem isn't with the standard of fidelity or law, it's our constant failure to meet the standards that have been set.
When they are allowed to make end-runs around any methods to stop them that the people who might object to this situation might have, they have little reason to be concerned with the will of the people anymore. That's the situation the US is in now.
Your problem is not with the ideals of equality before the law. Your problem is with the current US Government, which not incidentally, I also hate and despise. But I haven't confused this particular iteration of judiciary and political power with the ideals of Enlightenment.
So you can't think of any oppressed group in America's history that has fought the "structures that are" and beaten them?
The landless poor got the right to vote. Then the slaves earned their legal freedom, though they were still denied it for decades. Then the workers united in the early 20th century and fought bitterly for better wages and working conditions, and got them. Then the women's suffrage movement won their democratic rights. Then the Civil Rights movement finally resulted in the beginning of true equality for all Americans.
The battles are still being fought for gay rights, reproductive rights, immigrant rights, indigenous rights, and now the middle class is demanding rights (though they seem to be unaware of who took them.)
The structures can be beaten if you have a populace willing to sacrifice material comfort for real freedoms, but it seems that willful ignorance, apathy, and materialism are the most powerful structure our democracy has yet faced.
Slashdot Mirror
The market is not irrational in having business cycles, there is nothing irrational about eating and then taking a dump, is it?
Wow. You are now literally talking shit.
If you don't understand how that is a boom, which leads to market being saturated with unneeded jobs (fat) and it is in a need of a correction, then I can't argue with you.
You can't argue with me because you are basically ignorant of economic theory. You think you know what things are called, but you have no idea how they are applied.
The people MUST lose jobs, some companies MUST fail and some lenders MUST go under and prices on consumer items MUST deflate. This keeps the lenders and companies honest and gives the consumers time to think over their expenses as well. Do you call that irrational?
There is nothing in that statement that conflicts with Keynesian theory. Keynesian theory suggests that counter cyclical investment and changes to the interest rate will soften the booms and the busts, and it did, from the late 1930s until the 2000s. There was consistent economic growth mixed with recessions. Before deregulation in the 1980s, the middle class grew from the 40s through the 70s, and income equality improved. After the regulatory agencies were gutted and left to die, and the unions were virtually dismantled, income equality went down, inflation went up, and then the American manufacturing sector was dismantled and moved overseas. CEOs went from making around 100x their average employee in the early 80s to 300x their average employee today.
It is all Keynes ideas of keeping the Bust out of the economy that is happening and is leading to over-consumption, and it is precisely for the Keynes ideas that government must keep the boom going and must not allow bust to happen.
Read above. You either refuse to understand Keynesian theories, or you are too stupid to comprehend them.
Why would government want a bust? Government is a disease of the society comparative to hypertension and obesity and diabetes, that's how society gets sick and dies. It is also an economic burden, it is not a productive force. Government hates the bust portion of healthy economic cycle because it forces government to shrink.
You think the government has a mind of it's own, just like the market? You cannot anthropomorphize large complex systems to be good or evil and be taken seriously anywhere but on an internet forum. If you think there's some institutional bias, then you need to provide some evidence for your claim, besides the flat repetition of "Government bad." If that were the case, strong states wouldn't dominate the world economically. Somalia would be the paradise of Africa. Please try to stick with reality.
in fact if it actually was able to take 100% of all personal incomes, it could not cover its expenses at this point
You're fucking lying. The GDP of the United States is far larger than the Federal Budget. We're not even at a historical high for external debt versus GDP. That spiked at 120% during WWII. I think we're around 100% now, which is bad, but is also the world average at this point in time.
Just because so many governments of the world have adopted this Keynesian idea does not make it right, it is wrong, just like slavery was wrong even though accepted by a majority.
Every country did not adopt Keynesian policies. The ones in South America who had the Chicago school of economics forced down their throats are doing very poorly, except compared to the countries ravaged by war or without any natural resources. They have not done nearly as well as the Keynesian states.
What else do you think all this money printing and borrowing is, that is then 'lent' to the banks at no interest? That's what it is, the goal is to provide the consumers with more credit and so they can take on more debt, just like the government is doing and buy more crap...
Germany is unlike other countries in EU, it PRODUCES stuff people want. So what 'Keynesian' are you talking about in this case? It's much less than you'd believe, they don't borrow money to spend, they earn money to spend.
Consumerism is not the same thing as Keynesian. Germany just has better fiscal policy. It does not seek to balance the budget at the expense of investment every year as required by classical economic theory, but it does invest wisely and direct it's economy towards useful ends.
Here's the paragraph you need to read every time you want to assign some bad fiscal policies to Keynesian theories:
Keynes theory suggested that active government policy could be effective in managing the economy. Rather than seeing unbalanced government budgets as wrong, Keynes advocated what has been called countercyclical fiscal policies, that is policies which acted against the tide of the business cycle: deficit spending when a nation's economy suffers from recession or when recovery is long-delayed and unemployment is persistently high—and the suppression of inflation in boom times by either increasing taxes or cutting back on government outlays. He argued that governments should solve problems in the short run rather than waiting for market forces to do it in the long run, because "in the long run, we are all dead."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian
There are some lessons we cannot afford to learn every generation, and our economic system is no different. We don't throw away science every 40 years because that would be enormously wasteful. The only way to pass on this knowledge about the cyclical, irrational behavior of unregulated markets is through government policy.
And, as an additional exercise, find the first country on this GDP per Capita list that does not have a Keynesian oriented economy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
I look forward to your response.
Keynesian economics argues that private sector decisions sometimes lead to inefficient macroeconomic outcomes and therefore, advocates active policy responses by the public sector, including monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government to stabilize output over the business cycle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics
The Keynesian experiment was back in the 1950s and 1960s, when the American middle class was the envy of the world. Countries like Canada, Germany, and France have Keynesian economies and strong government regulation, and are doing much better than the United States in terms of quality of life, external debt, and life expectancy.
In short, they are like parents who send their kids to college, but stop sending them money if they find out it's all going towards coke and hookers.
Here in the states, we've discovered the raging brothel, and continue to hand money over to corporations that do nothing economically useful with the money. The problem is not investment and full employment as a goal of government policy, but the corruption and colossal failures of American governments since 1980.
He's probably pointing out that they continue to be massive fuckups. Whether killing soldiers with faulty wiring, or overcharging the government and ripping off the taxpayer, Halliburton proves itself to be a solid American corporation!
Choose Halliburton!
(Or Cheney will shoot you in the face.)
Like 9/11 and terrorism have anything to do with oil... err wait.
1953 Iranian coup d'etat
http://wearechangecoloradosprings.org/docs.php (pdf source documents for OPERATION AJAX)
The Persians were dissatisfied with the royalty terms of the British petroleum concession, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), whereby Persia received 16 per cent of net profits.
In 1921, a military coup d'état—"widely believed to be a British attempt to enforce, at least, the spirit of the Anglo-Persian agreement" effected with the "financial and logistical support of British military personnel"—permitted the political emergence of Reza Pahlavi, whom they enthroned as the "Shah of Iran" in 1925. The Shah modernized Persia to the advantage of the British; one result was the Persian Corridor railroad for British military and civil transport during World War II.
In the 1930s, the Shah tried to terminate the APOC concession, but Britain would not allow it. The concession was renegotiated on terms again favorable to the British. On 21 March 1935, Pahlavi changed the name of the country from Persia to Iran. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was then re-named the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC)...
The overthrow of Iran's elected government in 1953 ensured Western control of Iran's petroleum resources and prevented the Soviet Union from competing for Iranian oil. Some Iranian clerics cooperated with the western spy agencies because they were dissatisfied with Mosaddegh's secular government...
After the 1953 coup, the Shah's government formed the SAVAK (secret police), many of whose agents were trained in the United States. The SAVAK was given a "loose leash" to torture suspected dissidents with "brute force" that, over the years, "increased dramatically".
Another effect was sharp improvement of Iran's economy; the British-led oil embargo against Iran ended, and oil revenue increased significantly beyond the pre-nationalisation level. Despite Iran not controlling its national oil, the Shah agreed to replacing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company with a consortium—British Petroleum [40% owner] and eight European and American oil companies.
Fuck. Unless you use per capita/per GDP numbers you have no context. Hit the wrong button.
I thought I remembered the correct numbers in export per GDP. I have no interest in the raw numbers, because with per GDP numbers you have no context.
(Exports per GDP for 2007)
China is #89
USA is #179
Raw exports (2009)
China #1 (GDP of 4.5 trillion)
Germany #2 (GDP of 3.5 trillion)
America #3 (GDP of 14.2 trillion)
The point remains. China is whipping our ass already, and have only developed a small portion of their economy. We're about to experience the joy of being England at the turn of the 20th Century.
Of course Canada has more conservative laws. It's banks are nationalized, government owned, under the direct supervision of the federal government. So, yes, regulation they enacted in 1938 to nationalize all of their big banks has created a very sound financial system, because when things really matter, you don't just stick them in a market with no rules and watch the fireworks. At least if you have an interest in a sound market.
By the way, the WSJ is the same paper that called Canada a third world country in the 90s and missed the subprime boat entirely. Forgive me for taking their opinions with a bucket of salt.
Since Congress did not do the sensible thing and nationalize banks during the Great Depression - as Canada did - at least they managed to set up firewalls between insurance, investment banks, and regular banks, and also put limits on leverage, in effect, making derivatives illegal. Glass Steagall kept the American system mostly intact for 70 years. If you can point to some other regulation that has more relevance, I'm all ears.
Am i the only guy in the world here who can see that government regulation has contributed to the lack of doctors in the US?
Probably, because you made that up. The US has 2.50 doctors per 1000 people. England has 2.30, and France has 3.3 per 1000 citizens.
I HATE it when people complain how free markets fail and they point to very regulated industries like medicine or banking. I mean the banking industry is the most regulated this side of child porn, yet all those laws and oops still another crises every ten years.
In the 19th Century there were Panics about every ten years. Then there was the Great Depression, and virtually no banking failures until the Savings & Loan scandals of the 80s, which were caused by deregulation of savings and loan banks. The current banking crisis can be directly traced back to repealing Glass Steagall, which was done in 1999 with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Glass Steagall kept the US free of major bank failures for 70 years.
The Canadian Banking system, which is actually regulated, suffered virtually no bank failures, and is now voted the soundest in the world.
In summary, you are flat wrong. Strong government regulation has a long history of success, because it's the only way you can create a market. Markets depend on rules, just like physics. When the rules are not enforced and not followed, there is too much uncertainty, and that almost always leads to a crash once people return to reality. There can be no accountability without enforcement, and no enforcement without regulation.
It's because the construction of infrastructure has not seen productivity gains like the manufacturing industry. It's much harder to mechanize, and labor costs are a major component. I imagine the increasingly legalistic nature of the American economy is also a component, but I'm not sure that it's a huge difference.
It's the same reason health care has become so much more expensive compared to other fields. One manufacturing employee can now produce much more than he could one hundred years ago, but there have been near zero productivity improvements for doctors. The answer is to have more doctors who make less money, but not a popular one, so we have a ton of nurses instead.
According to NationMaster: Oil usage per capita
#23 United States:
68.672 bbl/day per 1,000 people
#144 China:
5.733 bbl/day per 1,000 people
And China is the #1 exporter in the world, and we are #179.
I know (from CSX commercials, of all places) that a ton of freight can be moved over four hundred miles with a single gallon of diesel fuel, so I don't think moving a person on multi-stop rail would be much worse than that. I couldn't find any good data on breakdown of usage, but I did find an interesting article here:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6126
This suggests that while America may be making bad choices now, China is trying it's best to catch up. Apparently they could overtake our car count by the year 2020 (meaning 1/5 of their population would own one, though), and have a larger highway system within a few years. Still, they are making massive investments in electrified rail, and from what I can tell, have a long way to go before they waste as much energy as we do to perform the same work.
Or by vastly more efficient freight rail services and electric vans with enough range to cover the the majority of Americans who live near urban areas. Last I checked, 70% of the population lived in 3% of the same land mass.
No, I'm assuming that will be enormously expensive when all pieces of equipment used to transport and construct new infrastructure use oil as their primary fuel source, and that for every calorie of food consumed in the US, 3500 calories of petroleum are expended to produce, harvest, transport, and process it. In 1970 the ratio was 1 to 1.
That, and the fact that the average American lives tens of miles away from their workplace, and has no way to get there without using a highway. Just project in your head what Sean Hannity would say if, to pull through such a shortage, we needed to legalize bicycles on interstates and put quotas on oil usage to preserve them to build rail stations and non-motorized vehicle lanes. He'd try to get everyone in line to invade Venezuela, which of course will only put off the inevitable and entrench our dependence on foreign resources.
If there was no finite limit to the oil supply, sure. Whoever is more dependent on more finite resources eventually loses, even if you don't run out. If the price of oil went to $500 a barrel, it would basically make America a non-competitive economy, because we would have no cheap, fast way to get our workers to their jobs, or to move resources around our highway system.
Sorry, that last paragraph should end in:
"...figuring terrorism caused deaths at 10,000 per 50 years."
The terrorist calculation I did myself, spreading out 4,000 deaths due to terrorism over the past 50 years. Spreading it out over the last 100 years (vehicles were just barely in use then) is 1 in 95,000. In that article they said the rate for having a 9/11 size event every year would bring the lifetime rate to 1 in 1,300.
Some people may complain that that particular figure does not include deaths from military combatants in Iraq or Afghanistan, in which case the figure would be about 1 in 20,000 per lifetime, figuring terrorism caused deaths at 4,000 per 50 years.
Many of those improvements have been spent on dragging around safety systems, rather than discarded for better fuel economy.
This is true, and both the rate of vehicle deaths and number of deaths per year has been declining for 20 years.
So how do you translate "unimpressive performance" into "less safe"?
Because if everyone drove a small and light car with a smaller, more fuel efficient engine, we would have less fatalities and much less fuel consumption nationwide. We could also save an immense amount of money on replacing infrastructure, since hauling around 4,000 lb SUVs to get a single person from one place to another has more externalities than just the waste of metal and oil resources. Not to mention the increased danger to other, smaller vehicles.
This is why libertarian movements may be the nail in the coffin of the United States. The more a society refuses to pool easily shared resources, the more costs go up for individuals subjected to each other's externalities, and the more efficiency goes down for the society as a whole. If China can turn one gallon of fuel into a few hundred miles of transport per person, and we can only turn one gallon of fuel into twenty miles per person, guess who wins.
There are dozens of cars from the late 70s with that kind of mileage:
http://www.mpgomatic.com/2007/10/08/super-cheap-high-mpg-cars-1978-1981/
Not the least of which being the Toyota Corolla, the most popular car of all time. I used to have a Mazda 323 from 1980 or so that got 45 mpg at 55mph or less, which was great until I ruined it by changing the oil and not tightening the plug sufficiently.
And, given the choice between "unimpressive performance" and "living to see your children grow up," it's amazing people continue to be so shortsighted. Investment in vehicle safety could save far more lives than the war on terror.
Lifetime chance of dying in a car accident: 1 in 83
Lifetime chance of dying of terrorist acts: 1 in 45,000
Lifetime chance of dying of a lightning strike: 1 in 80,000
http://reason.com/archives/2006/08/11/dont-be-terrorized
When Americans have backdoors, it's to protect American interests and therefore "good". When the Chinese have backdoors, it's to protect Chinese interests and therefore "bad".
You can apply this same logic to foreign policy. Both value systems are based on power instead of principle.
I really don't think blaming the puppet masters for our own failure to form our own political parties is going to help. The obstacles faced by our generation are simply not comparable to the ones overcome by other oppressed groups. We have free access to information, free assembly, and we cannot be jailed for our political views. They at least have to throw some trumped up charges around instead of just the breach of thoughtcrime.
All this talk of armed revolution is introducing a very bad idea. It's the hardest way to solve a simple problem: turn off the TV, organize local political parties, and refuse to elect candidates from the Democratic or Republican power centers.
That kind of idealistic gullibility would be laughed out of even a high school civics class.
I recommend you give a test run in the morning to see if you're right.
There is no evidence that law implies civilization, and more than a few counter examples: Most of the middle east, much of central Africa, Texas.
You have confused culture with civilization. Any sufficiently complex religious or political organization is called a civilization. There are good civilizations, bad civilizations, and likewise, there are good laws and bad laws. The existence of a legal code does not presuppose any form of government. The rulers who claimed they were Gods were simply above the law when they wanted to be.
Equality before the law, without kings or holy men outside of it, is an ideal that has been pursued since the time of ancient Greece, and one that was partially realized in the US Constitution. It's been trampled since then, but I've never run across anyone who denied it's significance as a major step towards legal equality.
More abstractly, *all* government power to enforce laws is derived from one of two sources: Willingness of the people to go along with it, or violence. The former does not scale beyond the most local levels, leaving the latter for most state and federal laws. Before you claim that is not the case, think of what would happen to the schmuck who breaks one of these laws and decides that he's not going to cooperatively go to prison.
And mob justice is somehow superior? Or divine justice? Would you like to submit to the authority of the Pope as the arbiter of the One True Religion, or to an Imam, or to some Hindu priest? Do you really understand the differences between barbarous tribalism and civil society? Government overreach of it's authority to use force is certainly an injustice, but also entirely within the power of a democratic society to be altered.
The entire purpose of laws is to collectively trade some liberties for some security
No, law is there to remove uncertainty and enable progress. You establish sets of standards, like weights and measures and the width of roads. You establish how property is owned and sold, and most importantly, how citizens go about seeking justice when they feel they have not received it. As long as it is mostly functional, it's vastly superior to the injustices of mob violence, blood feuds, and totalitarianism.
Unfortunately, when a society stupidly allows itself to fall into a fox/henhouse situation like we have in the U.S, the "rule of law" becomes no longer sacrosanct, and instead becomes a vehicle for the corruption to spread virally.
You can't blame our modern ideals about law for human failings. This is exactly analogous to blaming fidelity because your wife had sex with someone else. The problem isn't with the standard of fidelity or law, it's our constant failure to meet the standards that have been set.
When they are allowed to make end-runs around any methods to stop them that the people who might object to this situation might have, they have little reason to be concerned with the will of the people anymore. That's the situation the US is in now.
Your problem is not with the ideals of equality before the law. Your problem is with the current US Government, which not incidentally, I also hate and despise. But I haven't confused this particular iteration of judiciary and political power with the ideals of Enlightenment.
Is this the level of discourse in your imagined adult world? "No, YOU shut up"?
Sorry guy. You sound like an unhappy person who also happens to be a failed lawyer, judging from your grammar structure and argumentative acumen.
And communism and corporatism are two wolves deciding which 98 sheep to devour. The choice is obvious.
So you can't think of any oppressed group in America's history that has fought the "structures that are" and beaten them?
The landless poor got the right to vote. Then the slaves earned their legal freedom, though they were still denied it for decades. Then the workers united in the early 20th century and fought bitterly for better wages and working conditions, and got them. Then the women's suffrage movement won their democratic rights. Then the Civil Rights movement finally resulted in the beginning of true equality for all Americans.
The battles are still being fought for gay rights, reproductive rights, immigrant rights, indigenous rights, and now the middle class is demanding rights (though they seem to be unaware of who took them.)
The structures can be beaten if you have a populace willing to sacrifice material comfort for real freedoms, but it seems that willful ignorance, apathy, and materialism are the most powerful structure our democracy has yet faced.