"... which will work fine until those countries have built enough windmills, dams and solar arrays to no longer depend on France."
I.e. "never". Or at least not until 2050, which is close enough. And by that time France will have newer and better reactors, most likely outperforming other alternative sources. Oh, and the world's first fusion power plant is also being built in France.
"... and then France will have a problem: indeed, it buys as much electricity from abroad than it sells there. Nukes can only supply base load, and for peak France mostly relies on buying back from other countries (who are constructing storage facilities as we speak)."
France has load-following powerplants, so no worries here.
"For example: "economic stimulus" has never been shown to work, to any significant degree. It prolonged the Great Depression in the US in the early 20th century by a good 10 years, and hasn't worked since, either...
Totally wrong.
"including this time. Despite the record stimulus spending by the US government, the US economy is still trying to recover, and now it is in more debt than ever. "
This stimulus WAS NOT BIG ENOUGH!!! It should have been 3 times larger, which is clear if anyone does a simple Keynesian analysis. So in this crisis Keynesianism has not been even tried! And more importantly, _all_ 'classic' ideas like austerity and tight money have failed spectacularly.
"Yet another disproven Keynesian idea. In fact this is one that never should have arisen in the first place. Since it only takes one counterexample to disprove a theory, here is your one counterexample: the economy of the American colonies and later the US, as robust as it was, was virtually flat and inflation-free for around 300 years, until the gold standard was removed"
Dude. Economic growth was less than 0.5% during most of the 1800-s, with most of population working on farms and not really participating much in the economy. Great counter-example. You won't be able to find inflation-free non-export driven economic growth in 20-th century modern economies.
"But if you need further evidence: Keynesian economic theory denied the possibility of "stagflation", in which unemployment and inflation both remained high. When it actually happened, during the late 70s, Keynesian economists had to scramble to modify their theory to explain how it could happen at all, much less why. "
Staflation is not predicted by Keynesian economy, just as gravitational redshift is not predicted by Newton mechanics. The situation during stagflation goes outside of classic Keynesian models. So these models had to be amended, and they work quite successfully. And needless to say, our current circumstances preclude the possibility of stagflation.
"The simple fact is: in the real world, Keynesian economics does not work. Nice theory, nice equations, charts and graphs. But Keynesian economists have never predicted a single significant economic event in advance"
Want to bet $100? Krugman (a very much Keynesian economist) has correctly predicted so far: 1) Currency crisis in Eurozone caused by tight money. 2) Absence of significant core inflation. 3) Low rates, despite 'easy money'. 4) Lack of 'business confidence' faeries. 6) Madness of 'expansionary austerity'.
While EVERY FUCKING SPECIFIC PREDICTION OF AUSTERIANS has been DEAD WRONG. Every one.
"even when Austrians and monetarists did. A theory is only as good as its ability to predict."
ROTFL!!! 'Austrian' economists _pride_ _themselves_ on the fact that they DO NOT make predictions, but 'explain' (or rather fail to) the facts.
"I am not sure. Nobody can determine that ahead of time. That is why central planning never works. At most I can guess that we need more manufacturing jobs, simply because our trade deficits have skyrocketed due to bad policies driving labor overseas (e.g. minimum wage)."
Dude, go read macroeconomy textbooks. Structural unemployment means that economy has no problem with creating jobs, just that these new jobs are not suited for existing workforce. Structural unemployment is characterized by high unemployment in several sectors and near-normal employment in most of other sectors. Maybe also soaring wages in a few sectors where there's not enough workforce.
Current economy is: almost uniformly depressed, with housebuilding depressed more than other sectors, but not by much. And most of 10 million unemployed Americans are in no way related to the construction sector. And most importantly, structural unemployment requires structural changes to the economy, such as: transition from one society to another (planned economy -> capitalism), transition from agrarian to industrial economy, technological revolutions and so on.
So no, that's not a structural unemployment for certain. It's a plain old vanilla recession-caused unemployment, that can be combated through a fiscal stimulus.
And canceling minimal wage does nothing, NOTHING at all. It'll only depress everyone's wages, cause a new round of deflation and pain.
"If you have an argument, feel free to state it. "Yeah sure" is not an argument. Those "robber barons" - at least, the ones not getting government assistance - offered customers better, cheaper products, benefiting everyone."
No they hadn't. They offered terrible service at high prices and survived by forcing other competitors off the market by unfair means.
"The modern day monopolies - e.g. cable companies - are only monopolies because competition has been prohibited by local government mandate."
Again, that's a simplistic view. Local monopolies are not relevant for cell phone operators, and here in Ukraine we have 5.5 independent cell phone operators (PeopleNET, UMC, BeeLine + Kyivstar, Intertelecom, Life) and then there's a bunch of local 4G operators. With great prices and competition. Why? Because government forced them to compete. Yet in the US it seems that soon there'll be just one cell phone operator. Why?
"That's not an example, because it is nonsensical rambling. What are you talking about? Demonstrate how interactions between individuals are different from interactions between groups of individuals, such that individual rights should be protected in the former, but not in the latter."
Strawman. I've told earlier that excessive savings are bad for the economy as whole, even though they are beneficial for individuals. You found it hard to stomach, so I gave you another example where individual and collective benefits do not coincide. What more do you need?
Then publish a paper at a respectable journal. What's the problem? Your arguments have been refuted, and it's easy to check it with Google.
And I've actually professionally worked in the field of climate modeling, including working with hydrological data, weather system simulation, etc. You might not realize, but we literally have hundreds of various datasets and nearly ALL of them scream 'AGW!!!'.
It's feasible that, say, meteostations might have flaws causing artificial upward trends, it's feasible that our hydrological records are somehow skewed, it's feasible that our satellite records are flawed (though it's difficult to imagine how) and that the recent upswing of hot weather records is just a fluke.
But it's not feasible at all that ALL our datasets are in error. That would require truly bizarre circumstances, bordering on world wide conspiracy involving hundreds thousands of people.
....goble-goble-goble......cut&paste more crap.......more scatter shots that'll take pages to refute.......some small grains of truth to make Goebbels cry...
Sure. If one leg of a fetus, for example, threatens life of mother and the safest way is to sacrifice the fetus - then certainly the fetus should be sacrificed.
Republicans don't care about children after they are born. However, if you mention that bad weather forecasts might drive up abortions - you'll get funds in a nanosecond.
Read the definition of 'deflation' in a dictionary. As in 'inflation' it applies to _ALL_ prices.
"Btw, one test for whether or not your beliefs are bullshit is this: if everything about the topic were deleted from everyone's mind, but you studies it scientifically thereafter, would you reach the same conclusions for the same reasons?"
Yes. Keynesian economy has been validated multiple times. And unlike other models it gives correct predictions for the current crisis. And since people prefer to ignore them time after time, by now we are absolutely sure Keynesian economy in liquidity trap scenarios works.
Oh, and it can be formalized - read Krugman's books about it.
"Absolutely not. It is not simply a matter of "more jobs" and "less unemployment". People need to be working the *right* sort of jobs, as determined by the free market. "
And these jobs are? There are NO sectors with highly inflating salaries (which indicates structural unemployment). Well, unless you consider CEOs and bankers.
"Government stimulus has disincentivized manufacturing jobs, incentivized service/public sector jobs, and through various agencies and regulations"
Patently wrong. There's still no "crowding out" (though it should be there by now).
"It is only through government backing that companies can lock in customers and prevent competition."
Yeah, sure. Google: "robber barons".
"You have yet to demonstrate that *groups* of people interacting is a "different problem" from individual people interacting."
That's easy. Is one million dollars good for one man? Yes. Would it be good if EVERYONE got one million dollars? Certainly not. Here's one example for you.
Is it hard to believe that there are other such scenarios?
Nope, everything after 1920-s is considered a modern economy. There were no real stock market before that time, there were little public banking, large masses of people on subsistence economy, etc. In short, nothing like the modern economy.
So no, not accepted. You can as well say that everything was swell during the Stone Age - we didn't even have money way back then!
"Really? It's hard to delay purchases, buy them for less, and stow away the price difference you saved?"
Dude, THINK.
Why do you think things cost less? Because employers have to cut price, otherwise people can not afford their goods or services. And that in turn means that your salary is most likely going to be slashed (because your employer is also cutting costs). So most likely by the end of the year you have even less money then last year, even considering deflation.
"Can you find any bad example of deflation that *doesn't* involve a recession already playing out? Or does your whole theory revolve around "the money supply contracts when the economy sputters, therefore falling prices must CAUSE the disaster"."
No. Falling prices are a sign of the disaster. They mean that you are in a liquidity trap. And in a modern economy that's not just a sign, but a criterion. I.e. if you have a deflation then you are in a liquidity trap and a recession.
You don't get it. Without inflation chances are they WOULDN'T have these savings in the first place. It's very hard to make savings in a deflating economy, it turns out.
And people during a crisis are much better helped by rising economy then by a small deflation of their savings.
"If it did, why not print million dollar bills for everyone, and let them spend it all?"
Right now it would be quite a good idea (well, not million dollar bills, but at least some stimulus). However during times of normal economy with natural 3% inflation this would cause additional inflation without increasing consumption.
People are saving more for a reason indeed - because they are afraid that they'll be fired next month without any possibility to find a new work. Which obviously is not good. By your token, we should increase unemployment because market 'wants' it. Also, we shouldn't regulate monopolies - market also wants them.
Can you fathom that different problems demand different solutions?
I'm talking exactly about what I've said. Excessive savings are BAD for the economy.
Imagine that suddenly everyone stops spending their money on non-essential products and puts all their money on bank deposits. What would happen? Simple, the consumption would fall - people are not spending money, they're saving them. Since there's little spending businesses would be forced to fire employees - never mind that money is easy to come by (since banks have a lot of deposits), there's no sense in expansion if there's no demand. So you get a Depression.
That's yet another example of counter-intuitive behavior in the global economy. What's good (or bad) for a single individual/company is not necessary bad (or good) for the whole economy if everyone starts doing it.
Care to name a few economies with sustained (5 years at least) and significant (3-5% at least) growth but without inflating currency?
It can be done for a short time by leveraging debt, essentially replacing money with debt obligations. But it's not sustainable, because in this case the percentage of debt to GDP would grow continuously. Until one day you get a liquidity crisis when enough people decide to call in their debts.
No. Saving are BAD for investment, because they reduce amount of money in the economy. Investments come of extra money supply, created by leveraged debt or by inflation.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, we do need to change it.
"There really isn't one. Microsoft spent money researching, created something, and patented it. "
Then other people researched AND implemented it. And started selling it. Independently from Microsoft.
Now, why should MS get even a penny from them?
Ok. "The world's first energy-positive fusion reactor is being built in France"
That's just another way of saying: "Whoops, someone has uploaded this data on ThePirateBay".
"... which will work fine until those countries have built enough windmills, dams and solar arrays to no longer depend on France."
I.e. "never". Or at least not until 2050, which is close enough. And by that time France will have newer and better reactors, most likely outperforming other alternative sources. Oh, and the world's first fusion power plant is also being built in France.
"... and then France will have a problem: indeed, it buys as much electricity from abroad than it sells there. Nukes can only supply base load, and for peak France mostly relies on buying back from other countries (who are constructing storage facilities as we speak)."
France has load-following powerplants, so no worries here.
"For example: "economic stimulus" has never been shown to work, to any significant degree. It prolonged the Great Depression in the US in the early 20th century by a good 10 years, and hasn't worked since, either...
Totally wrong.
"including this time. Despite the record stimulus spending by the US government, the US economy is still trying to recover, and now it is in more debt than ever. "
This stimulus WAS NOT BIG ENOUGH!!! It should have been 3 times larger, which is clear if anyone does a simple Keynesian analysis. So in this crisis Keynesianism has not been even tried! And more importantly, _all_ 'classic' ideas like austerity and tight money have failed spectacularly.
"Yet another disproven Keynesian idea. In fact this is one that never should have arisen in the first place. Since it only takes one counterexample to disprove a theory, here is your one counterexample: the economy of the American colonies and later the US, as robust as it was, was virtually flat and inflation-free for around 300 years, until the gold standard was removed"
Dude. Economic growth was less than 0.5% during most of the 1800-s, with most of population working on farms and not really participating much in the economy. Great counter-example. You won't be able to find inflation-free non-export driven economic growth in 20-th century modern economies.
"But if you need further evidence: Keynesian economic theory denied the possibility of "stagflation", in which unemployment and inflation both remained high. When it actually happened, during the late 70s, Keynesian economists had to scramble to modify their theory to explain how it could happen at all, much less why. "
Staflation is not predicted by Keynesian economy, just as gravitational redshift is not predicted by Newton mechanics. The situation during stagflation goes outside of classic Keynesian models. So these models had to be amended, and they work quite successfully. And needless to say, our current circumstances preclude the possibility of stagflation.
"The simple fact is: in the real world, Keynesian economics does not work. Nice theory, nice equations, charts and graphs. But Keynesian economists have never predicted a single significant economic event in advance"
Want to bet $100? Krugman (a very much Keynesian economist) has correctly predicted so far:
1) Currency crisis in Eurozone caused by tight money.
2) Absence of significant core inflation.
3) Low rates, despite 'easy money'.
4) Lack of 'business confidence' faeries.
6) Madness of 'expansionary austerity'.
While EVERY FUCKING SPECIFIC PREDICTION OF AUSTERIANS has been DEAD WRONG. Every one.
"even when Austrians and monetarists did. A theory is only as good as its ability to predict."
ROTFL!!! 'Austrian' economists _pride_ _themselves_ on the fact that they DO NOT make predictions, but 'explain' (or rather fail to) the facts.
"I am not sure. Nobody can determine that ahead of time. That is why central planning never works. At most I can guess that we need more manufacturing jobs, simply because our trade deficits have skyrocketed due to bad policies driving labor overseas (e.g. minimum wage)."
Dude, go read macroeconomy textbooks. Structural unemployment means that economy has no problem with creating jobs, just that these new jobs are not suited for existing workforce. Structural unemployment is characterized by high unemployment in several sectors and near-normal employment in most of other sectors. Maybe also soaring wages in a few sectors where there's not enough workforce.
Current economy is: almost uniformly depressed, with housebuilding depressed more than other sectors, but not by much. And most of 10 million unemployed Americans are in no way related to the construction sector. And most importantly, structural unemployment requires structural changes to the economy, such as: transition from one society to another (planned economy -> capitalism), transition from agrarian to industrial economy, technological revolutions and so on.
So no, that's not a structural unemployment for certain. It's a plain old vanilla recession-caused unemployment, that can be combated through a fiscal stimulus.
And canceling minimal wage does nothing, NOTHING at all. It'll only depress everyone's wages, cause a new round of deflation and pain.
"If you have an argument, feel free to state it. "Yeah sure" is not an argument.
Those "robber barons" - at least, the ones not getting government assistance - offered customers better, cheaper products, benefiting everyone."
No they hadn't. They offered terrible service at high prices and survived by forcing other competitors off the market by unfair means.
"The modern day monopolies - e.g. cable companies - are only monopolies because competition has been prohibited by local government mandate."
Again, that's a simplistic view. Local monopolies are not relevant for cell phone operators, and here in Ukraine we have 5.5 independent cell phone operators (PeopleNET, UMC, BeeLine + Kyivstar, Intertelecom, Life) and then there's a bunch of local 4G operators. With great prices and competition. Why? Because government forced them to compete. Yet in the US it seems that soon there'll be just one cell phone operator. Why?
"That's not an example, because it is nonsensical rambling. What are you talking about? Demonstrate how interactions between individuals are different from interactions between groups of individuals, such that individual rights should be protected in the former, but not in the latter."
Strawman. I've told earlier that excessive savings are bad for the economy as whole, even though they are beneficial for individuals. You found it hard to stomach, so I gave you another example where individual and collective benefits do not coincide. What more do you need?
Then publish a paper at a respectable journal. What's the problem? Your arguments have been refuted, and it's easy to check it with Google.
And I've actually professionally worked in the field of climate modeling, including working with hydrological data, weather system simulation, etc. You might not realize, but we literally have hundreds of various datasets and nearly ALL of them scream 'AGW!!!'.
It's feasible that, say, meteostations might have flaws causing artificial upward trends, it's feasible that our hydrological records are somehow skewed, it's feasible that our satellite records are flawed (though it's difficult to imagine how) and that the recent upswing of hot weather records is just a fluke.
But it's not feasible at all that ALL our datasets are in error. That would require truly bizarre circumstances, bordering on world wide conspiracy involving hundreds thousands of people.
....goble-goble-goble... ...cut&paste more crap.... ...more scatter shots that'll take pages to refute.... ...some small grains of truth to make Goebbels cry...
And here it is, a climate denial post!
Nope, there's no infant at that point. There's fetus.
Sure. If one leg of a fetus, for example, threatens life of mother and the safest way is to sacrifice the fetus - then certainly the fetus should be sacrificed.
Republicans don't care about children after they are born. However, if you mention that bad weather forecasts might drive up abortions - you'll get funds in a nanosecond.
Read the definition of 'deflation' in a dictionary. As in 'inflation' it applies to _ALL_ prices.
"Btw, one test for whether or not your beliefs are bullshit is this: if everything about the topic were deleted from everyone's mind, but you studies it scientifically thereafter, would you reach the same conclusions for the same reasons?"
Yes. Keynesian economy has been validated multiple times. And unlike other models it gives correct predictions for the current crisis. And since people prefer to ignore them time after time, by now we are absolutely sure Keynesian economy in liquidity trap scenarios works.
Oh, and it can be formalized - read Krugman's books about it.
Dude, THINK! I know, it's hard and probably very new to you, but still try.
Computer prices have fallen not as a result of deflation, but as a result of technology growth far outpacing inflation.
"Absolutely not. It is not simply a matter of "more jobs" and "less unemployment". People need to be working the *right* sort of jobs, as determined by the free market. "
And these jobs are? There are NO sectors with highly inflating salaries (which indicates structural unemployment). Well, unless you consider CEOs and bankers.
"Government stimulus has disincentivized manufacturing jobs, incentivized service/public sector jobs, and through various agencies and regulations"
Patently wrong. There's still no "crowding out" (though it should be there by now).
"It is only through government backing that companies can lock in customers and prevent competition."
Yeah, sure. Google: "robber barons".
"You have yet to demonstrate that *groups* of people interacting is a "different problem" from individual people interacting."
That's easy. Is one million dollars good for one man? Yes. Would it be good if EVERYONE got one million dollars? Certainly not. Here's one example for you.
Is it hard to believe that there are other such scenarios?
Nope, everything after 1920-s is considered a modern economy. There were no real stock market before that time, there were little public banking, large masses of people on subsistence economy, etc. In short, nothing like the modern economy.
So no, not accepted. You can as well say that everything was swell during the Stone Age - we didn't even have money way back then!
"Really? It's hard to delay purchases, buy them for less, and stow away the price difference you saved?"
Dude, THINK.
Why do you think things cost less? Because employers have to cut price, otherwise people can not afford their goods or services. And that in turn means that your salary is most likely going to be slashed (because your employer is also cutting costs). So most likely by the end of the year you have even less money then last year, even considering deflation.
"Can you find any bad example of deflation that *doesn't* involve a recession already playing out? Or does your whole theory revolve around "the money supply contracts when the economy sputters, therefore falling prices must CAUSE the disaster"."
No. Falling prices are a sign of the disaster. They mean that you are in a liquidity trap. And in a modern economy that's not just a sign, but a criterion. I.e. if you have a deflation then you are in a liquidity trap and a recession.
You don't get it. Without inflation chances are they WOULDN'T have these savings in the first place. It's very hard to make savings in a deflating economy, it turns out.
And people during a crisis are much better helped by rising economy then by a small deflation of their savings.
THINK about it before knee-jerking.
Deflation hits the hard-working people first and foremost. Chances are, you wouldn't have you your saving if you were in a deflating economy. Here's a nice graph for you: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_vhPkPUN2aT8/S1dxroArbYI/AAAAAAAABZk/EkSyucPxnQk/s1600-h/savings+rate+households.JPG - in the deflating economy savings tend to dissipate, not grow.
Only people benefiting from deflation are rich leeches.
So, no modern economies? Islamic Golden Age, lol.
And Victorian Britain had an abysmal growth, less than 1% a year - that would be considered a crisis in the modern world. And there was some inflation even then, including hidden one: http://histories.cambridge.org/extract?id=chol9780521820370_CHOL9780521820370A002&cited_by=1
So, no examples of modern economies?
"If it did, why not print million dollar bills for everyone, and let them spend it all?"
Right now it would be quite a good idea (well, not million dollar bills, but at least some stimulus). However during times of normal economy with natural 3% inflation this would cause additional inflation without increasing consumption.
People are saving more for a reason indeed - because they are afraid that they'll be fired next month without any possibility to find a new work. Which obviously is not good. By your token, we should increase unemployment because market 'wants' it. Also, we shouldn't regulate monopolies - market also wants them.
Can you fathom that different problems demand different solutions?
I'm talking exactly about what I've said. Excessive savings are BAD for the economy.
Imagine that suddenly everyone stops spending their money on non-essential products and puts all their money on bank deposits. What would happen? Simple, the consumption would fall - people are not spending money, they're saving them. Since there's little spending businesses would be forced to fire employees - never mind that money is easy to come by (since banks have a lot of deposits), there's no sense in expansion if there's no demand. So you get a Depression.
That's yet another example of counter-intuitive behavior in the global economy. What's good (or bad) for a single individual/company is not necessary bad (or good) for the whole economy if everyone starts doing it.
Though there IS a sub-project in GCC to try and use Boehm instead of their own GC.
Care to name a few economies with sustained (5 years at least) and significant (3-5% at least) growth but without inflating currency?
It can be done for a short time by leveraging debt, essentially replacing money with debt obligations. But it's not sustainable, because in this case the percentage of debt to GDP would grow continuously. Until one day you get a liquidity crisis when enough people decide to call in their debts.
No. Saving are BAD for investment, because they reduce amount of money in the economy. Investments come of extra money supply, created by leveraged debt or by inflation.