Leanding money != Spending money. The SSI trust has not been "spent". The SSI trust will continue to grow for the next 6 years.
Social Security has created no debt for our children. Congresses willingness to borrow from the trust has created that debt.
If the SS trust did not exist or was constitutionally protected, Congress would have just borrow the money from another source. We would have incurred the debt whether it came from the SS trust, bonds, a trillion dollar platinum coin, etc...
SS was just an easy target for them to borrow money from.
And getting rid of SS won't solve the problem unless we cut it off right now and forgive the debt we owe ourselves. Even then, the immediate savings from the end of the SS trust would effectively immediately be put back in to social security programs to support the poor, elderly, and infirm.
Isn't it a bit more complicated than that? Yes, there was excess liquidity, which itself has many causes.
But there was also a de-facto government guarantee of most of the mortgages out there (from Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac).
True, Fannie and Freddie hold almost 50% of the nation's mortgage debt, but up until ~2004, they had avoided the vast majority of the subprime market, only purchasing those sub-prime mortgages that fell under the anti-redlining regulations (FHA, err FHFA, or what ever that dang acrnym is). The sum-prime secondary mortgage market was compeltely dominated by private institutes. Even with Fannie and Freddie jumping on the bandwagon due to pressure from their investors, by the time the bubble popped, they were on the bottom end of the top 20 holders of sub-prime mortgages. The reason they ran into such huge problems is because the housing market as a whole came crashing down, not just the sub-primes. And when you own 50% of the whole market, and it's all coming down, you're going to take a huge hit.
The government also encouraged risky lending to puff it's chest about improving home ownership numbers.
Folks love to go after Clinton and his 'Making homes affordable' plan, putting pressure on F&F and FHA certified banks to invest in red-lined districts. But amazingly the last set of statistics I saw showed those red-line loans actually out performing the bulk of the sub-prime loans made by the free market. That isn't to say that Greenspan wasn't dead wrong in his assumptions about the approaching bust in the housing market, but I don't think it's fair to throw out the baby with the bathwater either.
And of course you have fraud committed by brokers and borrowers - but just a smidge of due diligence should have protected against that, so you also have gross incompetence from investors.
Yup, it's how the system works. Heck, I am an investor. I have multiple investment accounts with different banks, some in targeted funds, most in 4040 style funds, and in both cases, I have nooooo clue as to where my money is actually going. I count on my investment firm to handle it, only since the repeal of the GS act, my investment firm is also a bank, a bank that has troubled assets, that they can get a ratings house like S&P to rate well because they have a financial incentive to do so. I'm so disconnected from the money I don't even know how to validate those investments. The amount of fraud that goes on is astounding, and it's free to continue because of the seperation between the vast majority of investors and the investment decisions. This is typically where we'd count on the Feds to create meaningful regulations to protect us, but with the traditional revolving door between the regulators and the lobbyists, we are deluded if we count on it:(
And yes, consolidation of wealth certainly does not help when there is an excess of liquidity - but I'd like to point out that we seem to have a shortage of liquidity and the wealth gap has only expanded since 2007.
There was a shortage of liquidity right after the bust and in the craziness that resulted. But at this point, I'm not hearing a lot of issues with credit. Yeah, credit is a hell of a lot more tight than it was in 2006, but it SHOULD be. Hell, I shouldn't have been able to buy my house in 2004. I was a college grad with no full time employment.
And even with the credit market being slightly tighter, we still are seeing record amounts in corporate and top 1% savings. With $3 Trillion in the warchest, does the credit market really matter to many of the larger corporations in the world?
I won't claim this disproves any effect because the crash was certainly an anomalous event, but it does show that there are other forces besides wealth concentration at work.
Correct. Wealth consolidation on its own will not cause these issues. It must b
In the US HQ we have 8 application developers, 5 on the BI team, 10 on the AS/400 and SAP, 3 more in business engagement, a pair on Knowledge Management solutions, and 3 primary managers.
I think 2 of the people in that group are under the age of 30, and close to 50% are over the age of 45.
If agism is a problem in IT, it's not here. And it's not that we hire older people over younger people, a fair number of the folks here have been here since they were in their 20's, and in the last 3 months we hired a guy in his 50's and a 24 year old kid.
The housing bubble was a symptom of excess liquidity in the credit market. Excess liquidity in the credit market is primarily a symptom of excessive investment. Excess investment is a symptom of our current privatized retirement system, the deregulated nature of banks and investment houses, and the consolidation of wealth.
Keep looking for the causes of the things that you can measure.
but I haven't seen any convincing argument that we should fear an off-kilter distribution of wealth all by itself.
Check out the distribution of wealth in this country in the build up to the great depression. Compare that to the distribution of wealth in this country in the build up to the 2008 great recession.
They match almosy identically. The consolidation of wealth leads to excess liquidity in the credit markets, pushing poor investment strategies and opening significant risk of corruption, lies, and unfettered greed.
I'm not saying we should go full commie, but our economy was significantly more healthy in times in which our wealth distribution was significantly more narrow than it is now.
As for creating demand, the most effective way of creating demand is to lower the price
Glad to see you were awake for the first day of econ 101. If you had bothered to attend the rest of the course you would have learned that reducing the price will only increase demand if price is the demand constraint.
Or do you think if buggy whip manufacturers reduced their price to $0.10 per whip that demand would spike again?
Also, you are making the grandious assumption that by reducing the COST of producing/marketing/selling an item or service, that the savings is passed on to consumers. Yet as we have clearly seen over the last 9 years, that is not the case. Corporate savings today is over $3 Trillion dollars. Tax cuts, subsidies, garunteed loans, grants, etc... to many companies are not being passed on to consumers, they are being put into war chests for future spend and into the hands of CEOs.
50 years ago CEOs made on average 30+ times as much as their non-executive staff's average salary. Today, that number is over 400 times as much.
The problem with demand and growth today isn't corporate taxation, its the destruction of the middle class. The US is on par with 3rd world countries in terms of income inequality. Uganda is giving us a run for the money! Countries we refer to as banana republics have a better distribution of wealth than we do.
I don't have the answers, but I'm sure as shit not going to put my confidence in someone who is counting on their Jr High education nor in someone with a D- average in college Econ classes (Bush Jr) for the guidance to see our country through these times.
Oh how I wish I had mod points. Creating demand is way more effective than handing out cash. If only the GOP would recognize that and get off their tax cut crack pipe.
Evolution is an adaptive mechanism, not some endless process churning out more and more advanced forms of life.
Kinda, it is. Evolution is the change over time of propagation of mutations.
Last year there was a study published on a 40 year old strain of bacteria. What they had found was for the first x years, as mutations occured they did so at a rather consistent rate, and the population 'evolved'. Some mutations propagated, some were out compeated, and so on just as we've come to expect.
But after that first number of years, there were no more changes to the environment, but the mutations continued at a very similar rate. What they found though was that at that point, with no other pressures on the population, that the % of the mutations that lead to improved survival/proginy dropped significantly. There were still lots of mutations, they just weren't leading to any further evolution.
The organizms had advanced to the point that most negative trait mutations did not effect them significantly enough to prevent their growth rate, and that positive trait mutations did not give them enough of an advantage to out-compete other organizms.
That isn't to say that some other mutation won't occur to greatly improve their survivability, or that introducing some new stimulus wouldn't lead to a new branch of evolution. But there is a point where evolutionary pressure deminishes while the mutation rate remains.
Who care's about the ribbon? The only time I ever used the menu was to get to the config options anyway. With the new one, I'll just compress the ribbon and it'll be out-of-sight and out-of-mind.
Now there is one change I have been beging for for years. Why oh why can I not filter file lists from the path input box?
Really. Why can't I type in C:\temp\*.sql in explore just to get all my SQL files from the temp folder? Why must I jump through sort orders or search interfaces to find this one file I know is in the folder I'm looking at?
I'd like to know more about how you did it for pennies per KWh? Did you build your own wind turbine or what? When I priced it solar it was *WAY* expensive and had a 10 - 14 year ROI.
For me it's easy, I can choose to have a percent of my electricity 'generated' by a wind farm not far away. It tacks on about 6 cents to the kWh to do so. Yeah, it's a fungible market, but it's funding the growth projects for that and other wind plants around the country.
When I was a kid, we ran solar cells for water heating. The install was dirt cheap (as they weren't photo-voltaic cells, just heat transfer). Saved us a lot of electricty by off setting the electric water heater.
And 10-14 year ROI is pretty damn good! I speced out integrated solar roofing a few years ago, and with the tax breaks it was pretty break even at 20 years. Which when you think about it, means your new roof pays for itself over its lifespan. Then again, I'm up in Wisconsin where we don't get as much sun time as you southern folk do.
And besides the more expensive photovoltaic cell systems, we're seeing a lot of movement in alternative solar systems. Solar collectors with molten salt and heat tents just for starters.
Another green approach I use is Bio Diesel. Yeah, I'm still belching carbon (less per mile than a gas alternative) but it's carbon that was sequestered by modern plant life instead of carbon that had been sequesterd millions if not billions of years ago.
Frankly, the green movement almost seems adverse to discussing *real* answers because they fear loosing their political football.
The same can be said for any movement. Conservatives and the economy, socialists and health care, football fans and their favorite teams, religious groups and their space men. Don't try to argue with a movement, you'll be shredded by the power of social norms and reinforcement. Debate people, it's much more productive:)
What impact will this have on developing nations and populations
I see this one trotted out all the time and it makes me wonder what people are smoking. Get out and visit some of these developing nations and populations. Yeah, stable electricity would have a huge benefit to their society, but the costs incurred by unregulated implementation and a complete disregard for health and emissions will only introduce other issues. Besides, the biggest issue screwing the developing world isn't a lack of electricity, it's a lack of agricultural markets. But that's an entirely different debate.
Suffice it to say that yes, pushing the developing nations to adopt clean power sources instead of dirty coal will cost more and may possibly delay their power infrastructure development. But if anyone in the modern world actually gave a damn, instead of marching this point out, they would be involved in building a power infrastructure in these locations. Really, this point is just a 'heart strings' attack that is completely superficial to 99.9999% of the people who bring it up.
Can we prove the costs outweigh the negatives?
This is the sticking point. I'll admit, we can not as of yet predict exactly what will happen. The only way to know for sure is to let it happen. And personally, I'd rather not take that risk.
But to spin that slightly, the green industry is a world wide market at this point. And some countries (like China) are absolutely dominating in some markets (try buying a photovoltaic cell that wasn't built in China!). Whether global climate change does indeed present a significant risk to man kind or not is IMO, imaterial. The sheer economic impact of being in on the industry outweighs the costs.
It's like going to the moon. It's not like there was an 'end of world' event that required us to get to the moon. So one could argue that the costs far outweighed the risks. But thanks to that "huge" investment, it has lead to a return on the investment so min
I am familiar with the story of the marooned banker and his invisible gold;)
Luckily we have two things in place that counter act that senario: 1) The feds control interest rates, so long as they can artificially keep the interest on their debts below the growth rate, it isn't an issue. 2) The feds can print money, which in and of itself is risky as it can lead to inflation, but in a worst case scenario, we can always mint that $1 Trillion platinum coin;)
Not to say that there are some people just F$#@ing the system over ('Quantitative Easying' my ass!)
But to say that it is an incurrable situation is FUD.
something it has failed to do for the last 200 years or so.
So far as I know, other than a scare back in the 1970's, the US has never failed to pay off a debt.
The US has not been "debt free" in 200 years. That is in no way the same as "failed to pay offdebts". Not even close! Heck, I haven't been debt free in 15 years, but every debt I've ever had has been paid off or is currently paid ahead of schedule.
Furthermore, the budget in effect right now, assumes that the money to pay off the debt is raises will come in a future generation/budget. It won't. It never has, and short of massive cuts, it never will
It came damn close. Clinton got the country back into surplus mode and Bush COULD have started paying down the debt in 2001.
Yeah, it's going to take fiscal responsibility and a LONG time to pay off, but it is absolutely possible.
(like taking 50% out of the military budget).
While I agree that taking 50% out of the military budget would have some effect on the economy (that's a whole lot of Soldiers, Airmen, Seamen, and Marines out looking for a job), I think it'd be a great place to start:)
any realistic person looking at international debt/income/payments
Total debt sits around $14.5T today. Gross Federal Revenue (not GDP, just the amount of money that the feds pull in through taxes) is projected around $4.5T for 2011. That puts our income to debt ratio to about 1:3.25. Now, the classic rule of thumb for buying a house is to never go over 3x your gross anual salary. So to any realistic person looking at our debt, it should not seem extreme at all. Yeah, we're on the high end of where we want to be, but we're not encroaching on the 'doom and gloom' side of things. Not by a long shot.
Responsible cuts, tax reforms, and fiscal responsibility over the next 30 years could reduce our federal debt to insignificant levels based on even minor growth rates.
Now, like I said, I'm not a math guy
Great, now here's the thing. You have just admited to being ignorant on the subject. That's fine, it just means you lack in knowledge, something that can be easily remedied through research and education. But after having just mentioned your short comings, you are espousing your self proclaimed ignorant opinion as fact.
Not trying to be harsh here, but if you admit that you don't know what you're talking about, don't spout your opinion as fact.
Yup, CO2 is plant food, you know what else it is? Poisonous to damn near everything else.
As for crop yeilds, if CO2 increases to the point to dramatically increase crop yields, it'll have increased to the point of dramatically decreasing animal longevity. All the CO2 in the world wont help if it deminishes the polinating insect popultions.
Not to mention that the ultimate issue (be it through greenhouse gases or energy consumption) is that inevitibly we will raise the temperature of the world, which will lead to regional ecological changes, and depending on those changes, it is quite likely that we will have less airable land to farm.
So yes, yields may infact rise, but the total produce would deminish.
What does GM crops have to do with CO2 levels?
Does industrialization increase CO2? Probably. But so do volcanoes.
Dude, volcanoes produce under two orders of magnitude LESS CO2 emissions than man kind does. That's not even a straw man, it's insignificant. And man kind's CO2 emissions are growing at an accelerating rate, volcanoes have been fairly consistent for millions of years.
As of right now, I don't see a way to get it done without developing nations paying an extremely heavy toll.
Pfft. Switching from coal/nuclear to 'green' energy costs me a couple of pennies per KWh. Yeah, it does have a cost, and that cost would be extremely heavy if we cut off all coal and nuclear energy tomorrow. But we're not going to do that. Heck, we're not even talking about removing coal from our power supply. What most logical folks are talking about is regulating with common sense, forcing coal plants to update century old burners to modern standards and to push for gasification and other clean-coal initiatives. To invest in more solar, wind, and tidal power sources. To look at replacing our aging fleet of dated and high risk nuclear reactors with modern and safe designs like pebble bed and thorium salts reactors.
Yeah, there is a cost, but it is something that can be amorted out over generations.
That is atleast, unless you want to continue doing nothing. To just sit on your hands until it is absolutely crystal clear beyond any conceivable doubt that it is an issue and we have to perform emergency changes, investing trillions into the energy sector to convert in a last ditch effort to reverse a sinking ship.
Personally, I'd rather use just a tad bit of pessimism and be proactive for a tiny cost, than be optimistic and run face first into extinction.
Even if you aren't persuaded though. Even if you still doubt what virtually every ecological scientist says is coming. Look at it from a different approach. Travel the world, go to some countries with out the EPA. Spend a week in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Smell the NOX and CO2, see the cloud of smog that hovers over the city, ponder the quality of life where breathing the air is a primary cause of lung cancer.
If thinking globally doesn't motivate you, think locally.
S&P called it because a political party in the US was prepaired to default on our debt.
If violating our Constitution had not been presented as a "valid" option by the Tea Party, the S&P rating never would have changed.
As soon as the Tea Party forced the issue and started pissing on the very document they claim to love and defend, the only way to prevent the down grade was to create a meaningful adjustment of spending and revenue. And again, thanks to the Tea Party, the outcome of that came up short.
And it isn't a "Risky investment". It's AA rated. It puts us on par with utility companies and other extremely stable business sectors. The point of AAA ratings is that they are for entities that are legally require to pay out on debts. The US is still constitutionally required to pay out on debts, so by the standard we should still be AAA. But far right ideologs like Bachman and Perry keep spewing crap that makes the world think that we could actually default dispite our constitution.
Some of the blaim is Obama's with out a doubt, he's been playing the gentle leader roll ever since the GOP coined the "Ramming it down our throats" talking point in the year long insurance reform debate.
I would hope he means that super high quality video isn't a requirement. Being able to watch 1080i is a nice to have, but watching 320p on those resolutions is really good enough.
it to a medical device that takes metabolic readings and alarms if they go out of bounds: You could do the same by sitting a nurse down to watch the patient, but the automated device only processing information is clearly patentable under current rules.
But should it be?
I think that a new novel invention that takes metabolic readings should be patentable. I mean, it has to have some form of input from the patient, be it a new invention to measure blood pressure or a new invention to measure blood-sugar levels, etc...
But why should adding an 'alarm' to it be patentable? That sounds like a really OBVIOUS addition. Why should making it 'automatic' be patentable? Not only does it sound like an obvious idea, it's not an invention, it's a process.
I was fine with it till the guy at the urinal next to me was texting as he was pissing.
Really man, I know some of us have more than others, but keep a hand on that thing, I don't want to catch your erant spray while you're too busy tweeting to bother keeping your junk pointed in the right direction.
If everything you know about stem cell research comes from the South Park episode where Cartmen makes a pizza joint out of aborted featuses, you should seek additional education.
Okay, so Obama's auto industry buy out that included payment in preffered NON-VOTING shares is some how far left of the EU's regulatory standard of mandating Union and or municipal representation on the board of directors?
Come on, get real. The mainstream democratic party in the US is a good stone's throw to the right of the EU's main stream left parties.
That these folks are not Americans. What we consider "Left" is what they consider "Right". It was explained to me by an Irishman once as follows:
"What you call liberals, we call conservatives. What you call conservatives, we call fascists"
The US skew is amazing once you travel outside the country. What our far right called the "government take over of the auto industry" is right on par with the European right wing parties goals for getting government OUT of the auto industry.
So Assange's claim that these were "Right-wing" organizations doesn't necesarily mean the US's GOP/Tea Party/Libertarians, as our Democrats are pretty comprable to the EU's "Right-wing" organizations.
I'm north of the bottom 50%, but south of the top 20% for household income, and with all the deductions I can muster, both sides of employee/employer payroll taxes, property tax, etc... I think I'm just a hair under 15% effective tax rate (excluding sales tax and registration fees).
But comparatively, my anual income is probably less than Buffets daily compounded interest gains, AND if necesary, I am able and willing to pay more in taxes.
Some of us Atheist/Agnostics are confirmed Christians that after decades of education and indoctrination felt that there is more to be gained through personal responsibility and respecting eachother than dependence on belief structures to abdicate us of our responsibilities and forcing our views on eachother.
I loathe this stupid 'open parent on click' interface. I was trying to find out what your post had been moded and thanks to the damn page jumping around I some how manged to mod you 'offtopic' with out having the drop down open. So consider this mod-canceling response an appology for the temporary down-modding.
I didn't mean to say that EEO is bad persay, nor that it isn't useful. Just that it isn't going to break the social norms.
As this thread is proof, a LOT of people still view EEO as a handout to undeserving minorities. So while I feel that EEO can be a useful tool, I think to help prevent abuses, to break the social norms, and to correct racial inequality in a way that doesn't create a wedge issue, investing in education and educational assistance, especially in the K-12 range is absolutely critical.
Correcting the root issue: poor education systems and family support of minority youth, will eventually lead to a status where EEO laws are no longer necesary (for purposes other than finding individuals with racist tendencies in their hiring practices). In the mean time, EEO laws can help by promoting more stable employment and family lives for minorities, but long term we need to look for solutions that fix the issue instead of bandaiding over it.
Then again, if wealth redistribution continues on its current path, classism will quite likely eclipse racism at the new most troubling social prejudice structure.
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Ahh, but that trust has already been leant.
FTFY.
Leanding money != Spending money. The SSI trust has not been "spent". The SSI trust will continue to grow for the next 6 years.
Social Security has created no debt for our children. Congresses willingness to borrow from the trust has created that debt.
If the SS trust did not exist or was constitutionally protected, Congress would have just borrow the money from another source. We would have incurred the debt whether it came from the SS trust, bonds, a trillion dollar platinum coin, etc...
SS was just an easy target for them to borrow money from.
And getting rid of SS won't solve the problem unless we cut it off right now and forgive the debt we owe ourselves. Even then, the immediate savings from the end of the SS trust would effectively immediately be put back in to social security programs to support the poor, elderly, and infirm.
-Rick
Isn't it a bit more complicated than that? Yes, there was excess liquidity, which itself has many causes.
But there was also a de-facto government guarantee of most of the mortgages out there (from Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac).
True, Fannie and Freddie hold almost 50% of the nation's mortgage debt, but up until ~2004, they had avoided the vast majority of the subprime market, only purchasing those sub-prime mortgages that fell under the anti-redlining regulations (FHA, err FHFA, or what ever that dang acrnym is). The sum-prime secondary mortgage market was compeltely dominated by private institutes. Even with Fannie and Freddie jumping on the bandwagon due to pressure from their investors, by the time the bubble popped, they were on the bottom end of the top 20 holders of sub-prime mortgages. The reason they ran into such huge problems is because the housing market as a whole came crashing down, not just the sub-primes. And when you own 50% of the whole market, and it's all coming down, you're going to take a huge hit.
The government also encouraged risky lending to puff it's chest about improving home ownership numbers.
Folks love to go after Clinton and his 'Making homes affordable' plan, putting pressure on F&F and FHA certified banks to invest in red-lined districts. But amazingly the last set of statistics I saw showed those red-line loans actually out performing the bulk of the sub-prime loans made by the free market. That isn't to say that Greenspan wasn't dead wrong in his assumptions about the approaching bust in the housing market, but I don't think it's fair to throw out the baby with the bathwater either.
And of course you have fraud committed by brokers and borrowers - but just a smidge of due diligence should have protected against that, so you also have gross incompetence from investors.
Yup, it's how the system works. Heck, I am an investor. I have multiple investment accounts with different banks, some in targeted funds, most in 4040 style funds, and in both cases, I have nooooo clue as to where my money is actually going. I count on my investment firm to handle it, only since the repeal of the GS act, my investment firm is also a bank, a bank that has troubled assets, that they can get a ratings house like S&P to rate well because they have a financial incentive to do so. I'm so disconnected from the money I don't even know how to validate those investments. The amount of fraud that goes on is astounding, and it's free to continue because of the seperation between the vast majority of investors and the investment decisions. This is typically where we'd count on the Feds to create meaningful regulations to protect us, but with the traditional revolving door between the regulators and the lobbyists, we are deluded if we count on it :(
And yes, consolidation of wealth certainly does not help when there is an excess of liquidity - but I'd like to point out that we seem to have a shortage of liquidity and the wealth gap has only expanded since 2007.
There was a shortage of liquidity right after the bust and in the craziness that resulted. But at this point, I'm not hearing a lot of issues with credit. Yeah, credit is a hell of a lot more tight than it was in 2006, but it SHOULD be. Hell, I shouldn't have been able to buy my house in 2004. I was a college grad with no full time employment.
And even with the credit market being slightly tighter, we still are seeing record amounts in corporate and top 1% savings. With $3 Trillion in the warchest, does the credit market really matter to many of the larger corporations in the world?
I won't claim this disproves any effect because the crash was certainly an anomalous event, but it does show that there are other forces besides wealth concentration at work.
Correct. Wealth consolidation on its own will not cause these issues. It must b
In the US HQ we have 8 application developers, 5 on the BI team, 10 on the AS/400 and SAP, 3 more in business engagement, a pair on Knowledge Management solutions, and 3 primary managers.
I think 2 of the people in that group are under the age of 30, and close to 50% are over the age of 45.
If agism is a problem in IT, it's not here. And it's not that we hire older people over younger people, a fair number of the folks here have been here since they were in their 20's, and in the last 3 months we hired a guy in his 50's and a 24 year old kid.
-Rick
The housing bubble was a symptom of excess liquidity in the credit market. Excess liquidity in the credit market is primarily a symptom of excessive investment. Excess investment is a symptom of our current privatized retirement system, the deregulated nature of banks and investment houses, and the consolidation of wealth.
Keep looking for the causes of the things that you can measure.
-Rick
but I haven't seen any convincing argument that we should fear an off-kilter distribution of wealth all by itself.
Check out the distribution of wealth in this country in the build up to the great depression. Compare that to the distribution of wealth in this country in the build up to the 2008 great recession.
They match almosy identically. The consolidation of wealth leads to excess liquidity in the credit markets, pushing poor investment strategies and opening significant risk of corruption, lies, and unfettered greed.
I'm not saying we should go full commie, but our economy was significantly more healthy in times in which our wealth distribution was significantly more narrow than it is now.
-Rick
As for creating demand, the most effective way of creating demand is to lower the price
Glad to see you were awake for the first day of econ 101. If you had bothered to attend the rest of the course you would have learned that reducing the price will only increase demand if price is the demand constraint.
Or do you think if buggy whip manufacturers reduced their price to $0.10 per whip that demand would spike again?
Also, you are making the grandious assumption that by reducing the COST of producing/marketing/selling an item or service, that the savings is passed on to consumers. Yet as we have clearly seen over the last 9 years, that is not the case. Corporate savings today is over $3 Trillion dollars. Tax cuts, subsidies, garunteed loans, grants, etc... to many companies are not being passed on to consumers, they are being put into war chests for future spend and into the hands of CEOs.
50 years ago CEOs made on average 30+ times as much as their non-executive staff's average salary. Today, that number is over 400 times as much.
The problem with demand and growth today isn't corporate taxation, its the destruction of the middle class. The US is on par with 3rd world countries in terms of income inequality. Uganda is giving us a run for the money! Countries we refer to as banana republics have a better distribution of wealth than we do.
I don't have the answers, but I'm sure as shit not going to put my confidence in someone who is counting on their Jr High education nor in someone with a D- average in college Econ classes (Bush Jr) for the guidance to see our country through these times.
-Rick
Oh how I wish I had mod points. Creating demand is way more effective than handing out cash. If only the GOP would recognize that and get off their tax cut crack pipe.
-Rick
Evolution is an adaptive mechanism, not some endless process churning out more and more advanced forms of life.
Kinda, it is. Evolution is the change over time of propagation of mutations.
Last year there was a study published on a 40 year old strain of bacteria. What they had found was for the first x years, as mutations occured they did so at a rather consistent rate, and the population 'evolved'. Some mutations propagated, some were out compeated, and so on just as we've come to expect.
But after that first number of years, there were no more changes to the environment, but the mutations continued at a very similar rate. What they found though was that at that point, with no other pressures on the population, that the % of the mutations that lead to improved survival/proginy dropped significantly. There were still lots of mutations, they just weren't leading to any further evolution.
The organizms had advanced to the point that most negative trait mutations did not effect them significantly enough to prevent their growth rate, and that positive trait mutations did not give them enough of an advantage to out-compete other organizms.
That isn't to say that some other mutation won't occur to greatly improve their survivability, or that introducing some new stimulus wouldn't lead to a new branch of evolution. But there is a point where evolutionary pressure deminishes while the mutation rate remains.
-Rick
Who care's about the ribbon? The only time I ever used the menu was to get to the config options anyway. With the new one, I'll just compress the ribbon and it'll be out-of-sight and out-of-mind.
Now there is one change I have been beging for for years. Why oh why can I not filter file lists from the path input box?
Really. Why can't I type in C:\temp\*.sql in explore just to get all my SQL files from the temp folder? Why must I jump through sort orders or search interfaces to find this one file I know is in the folder I'm looking at?
-Rick
I'd like to know more about how you did it for pennies per KWh? Did you build your own wind turbine or what? When I priced it solar it was *WAY* expensive and had a 10 - 14 year ROI.
For me it's easy, I can choose to have a percent of my electricity 'generated' by a wind farm not far away. It tacks on about 6 cents to the kWh to do so. Yeah, it's a fungible market, but it's funding the growth projects for that and other wind plants around the country.
When I was a kid, we ran solar cells for water heating. The install was dirt cheap (as they weren't photo-voltaic cells, just heat transfer). Saved us a lot of electricty by off setting the electric water heater.
And 10-14 year ROI is pretty damn good! I speced out integrated solar roofing a few years ago, and with the tax breaks it was pretty break even at 20 years. Which when you think about it, means your new roof pays for itself over its lifespan. Then again, I'm up in Wisconsin where we don't get as much sun time as you southern folk do.
And besides the more expensive photovoltaic cell systems, we're seeing a lot of movement in alternative solar systems. Solar collectors with molten salt and heat tents just for starters.
Another green approach I use is Bio Diesel. Yeah, I'm still belching carbon (less per mile than a gas alternative) but it's carbon that was sequestered by modern plant life instead of carbon that had been sequesterd millions if not billions of years ago.
Frankly, the green movement almost seems adverse to discussing *real* answers because they fear loosing their political football.
The same can be said for any movement. Conservatives and the economy, socialists and health care, football fans and their favorite teams, religious groups and their space men. Don't try to argue with a movement, you'll be shredded by the power of social norms and reinforcement. Debate people, it's much more productive :)
What impact will this have on developing nations and populations
I see this one trotted out all the time and it makes me wonder what people are smoking. Get out and visit some of these developing nations and populations. Yeah, stable electricity would have a huge benefit to their society, but the costs incurred by unregulated implementation and a complete disregard for health and emissions will only introduce other issues. Besides, the biggest issue screwing the developing world isn't a lack of electricity, it's a lack of agricultural markets. But that's an entirely different debate.
Suffice it to say that yes, pushing the developing nations to adopt clean power sources instead of dirty coal will cost more and may possibly delay their power infrastructure development. But if anyone in the modern world actually gave a damn, instead of marching this point out, they would be involved in building a power infrastructure in these locations. Really, this point is just a 'heart strings' attack that is completely superficial to 99.9999% of the people who bring it up.
Can we prove the costs outweigh the negatives?
This is the sticking point. I'll admit, we can not as of yet predict exactly what will happen. The only way to know for sure is to let it happen. And personally, I'd rather not take that risk.
But to spin that slightly, the green industry is a world wide market at this point. And some countries (like China) are absolutely dominating in some markets (try buying a photovoltaic cell that wasn't built in China!). Whether global climate change does indeed present a significant risk to man kind or not is IMO, imaterial. The sheer economic impact of being in on the industry outweighs the costs.
It's like going to the moon. It's not like there was an 'end of world' event that required us to get to the moon. So one could argue that the costs far outweighed the risks. But thanks to that "huge" investment, it has lead to a return on the investment so min
I am familiar with the story of the marooned banker and his invisible gold ;)
Luckily we have two things in place that counter act that senario: ;)
1) The feds control interest rates, so long as they can artificially keep the interest on their debts below the growth rate, it isn't an issue.
2) The feds can print money, which in and of itself is risky as it can lead to inflation, but in a worst case scenario, we can always mint that $1 Trillion platinum coin
Not to say that there are some people just F$#@ing the system over ('Quantitative Easying' my ass!)
But to say that it is an incurrable situation is FUD.
-Rick
something it has failed to do for the last 200 years or so.
So far as I know, other than a scare back in the 1970's, the US has never failed to pay off a debt.
The US has not been "debt free" in 200 years. That is in no way the same as "failed to pay offdebts". Not even close! Heck, I haven't been debt free in 15 years, but every debt I've ever had has been paid off or is currently paid ahead of schedule.
Furthermore, the budget in effect right now, assumes that the money to pay off the debt is raises will come in a future generation/budget. It won't. It never has, and short of massive cuts, it never will
It came damn close. Clinton got the country back into surplus mode and Bush COULD have started paying down the debt in 2001.
Yeah, it's going to take fiscal responsibility and a LONG time to pay off, but it is absolutely possible.
(like taking 50% out of the military budget).
While I agree that taking 50% out of the military budget would have some effect on the economy (that's a whole lot of Soldiers, Airmen, Seamen, and Marines out looking for a job), I think it'd be a great place to start :)
any realistic person looking at international debt/income/payments
Total debt sits around $14.5T today. Gross Federal Revenue (not GDP, just the amount of money that the feds pull in through taxes) is projected around $4.5T for 2011. That puts our income to debt ratio to about 1:3.25. Now, the classic rule of thumb for buying a house is to never go over 3x your gross anual salary. So to any realistic person looking at our debt, it should not seem extreme at all. Yeah, we're on the high end of where we want to be, but we're not encroaching on the 'doom and gloom' side of things. Not by a long shot.
Responsible cuts, tax reforms, and fiscal responsibility over the next 30 years could reduce our federal debt to insignificant levels based on even minor growth rates.
Now, like I said, I'm not a math guy
Great, now here's the thing. You have just admited to being ignorant on the subject. That's fine, it just means you lack in knowledge, something that can be easily remedied through research and education. But after having just mentioned your short comings, you are espousing your self proclaimed ignorant opinion as fact.
Not trying to be harsh here, but if you admit that you don't know what you're talking about, don't spout your opinion as fact.
-Rick
Yup, CO2 is plant food, you know what else it is? Poisonous to damn near everything else.
As for crop yeilds, if CO2 increases to the point to dramatically increase crop yields, it'll have increased to the point of dramatically decreasing animal longevity. All the CO2 in the world wont help if it deminishes the polinating insect popultions.
Not to mention that the ultimate issue (be it through greenhouse gases or energy consumption) is that inevitibly we will raise the temperature of the world, which will lead to regional ecological changes, and depending on those changes, it is quite likely that we will have less airable land to farm.
So yes, yields may infact rise, but the total produce would deminish.
What does GM crops have to do with CO2 levels?
Does industrialization increase CO2? Probably. But so do volcanoes.
Dude, volcanoes produce under two orders of magnitude LESS CO2 emissions than man kind does. That's not even a straw man, it's insignificant. And man kind's CO2 emissions are growing at an accelerating rate, volcanoes have been fairly consistent for millions of years.
As of right now, I don't see a way to get it done without developing nations paying an extremely heavy toll.
Pfft. Switching from coal/nuclear to 'green' energy costs me a couple of pennies per KWh. Yeah, it does have a cost, and that cost would be extremely heavy if we cut off all coal and nuclear energy tomorrow. But we're not going to do that. Heck, we're not even talking about removing coal from our power supply. What most logical folks are talking about is regulating with common sense, forcing coal plants to update century old burners to modern standards and to push for gasification and other clean-coal initiatives. To invest in more solar, wind, and tidal power sources. To look at replacing our aging fleet of dated and high risk nuclear reactors with modern and safe designs like pebble bed and thorium salts reactors.
Yeah, there is a cost, but it is something that can be amorted out over generations.
That is atleast, unless you want to continue doing nothing. To just sit on your hands until it is absolutely crystal clear beyond any conceivable doubt that it is an issue and we have to perform emergency changes, investing trillions into the energy sector to convert in a last ditch effort to reverse a sinking ship.
Personally, I'd rather use just a tad bit of pessimism and be proactive for a tiny cost, than be optimistic and run face first into extinction.
Even if you aren't persuaded though. Even if you still doubt what virtually every ecological scientist says is coming. Look at it from a different approach. Travel the world, go to some countries with out the EPA. Spend a week in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Smell the NOX and CO2, see the cloud of smog that hovers over the city, ponder the quality of life where breathing the air is a primary cause of lung cancer.
If thinking globally doesn't motivate you, think locally.
What will it cost if we don't?
-Rick
S&P called it because a political party in the US was prepaired to default on our debt.
If violating our Constitution had not been presented as a "valid" option by the Tea Party, the S&P rating never would have changed.
As soon as the Tea Party forced the issue and started pissing on the very document they claim to love and defend, the only way to prevent the down grade was to create a meaningful adjustment of spending and revenue. And again, thanks to the Tea Party, the outcome of that came up short.
And it isn't a "Risky investment". It's AA rated. It puts us on par with utility companies and other extremely stable business sectors. The point of AAA ratings is that they are for entities that are legally require to pay out on debts. The US is still constitutionally required to pay out on debts, so by the standard we should still be AAA. But far right ideologs like Bachman and Perry keep spewing crap that makes the world think that we could actually default dispite our constitution.
Some of the blaim is Obama's with out a doubt, he's been playing the gentle leader roll ever since the GOP coined the "Ramming it down our throats" talking point in the year long insurance reform debate.
I would hope he means that super high quality video isn't a requirement. Being able to watch 1080i is a nice to have, but watching 320p on those resolutions is really good enough.
-Rick
it to a medical device that takes metabolic readings and alarms if they go out of bounds: You could do the same by sitting a nurse down to watch the patient, but the automated device only processing information is clearly patentable under current rules.
But should it be?
I think that a new novel invention that takes metabolic readings should be patentable. I mean, it has to have some form of input from the patient, be it a new invention to measure blood pressure or a new invention to measure blood-sugar levels, etc...
But why should adding an 'alarm' to it be patentable? That sounds like a really OBVIOUS addition. Why should making it 'automatic' be patentable? Not only does it sound like an obvious idea, it's not an invention, it's a process.
-Rick
I was fine with it till the guy at the urinal next to me was texting as he was pissing.
Really man, I know some of us have more than others, but keep a hand on that thing, I don't want to catch your erant spray while you're too busy tweeting to bother keeping your junk pointed in the right direction.
-Rick
If everything you know about stem cell research comes from the South Park episode where Cartmen makes a pizza joint out of aborted featuses, you should seek additional education.
-Rick
Okay, so Obama's auto industry buy out that included payment in preffered NON-VOTING shares is some how far left of the EU's regulatory standard of mandating Union and or municipal representation on the board of directors?
Come on, get real. The mainstream democratic party in the US is a good stone's throw to the right of the EU's main stream left parties.
-Rick
That these folks are not Americans. What we consider "Left" is what they consider "Right". It was explained to me by an Irishman once as follows:
"What you call liberals, we call conservatives. What you call conservatives, we call fascists"
The US skew is amazing once you travel outside the country. What our far right called the "government take over of the auto industry" is right on par with the European right wing parties goals for getting government OUT of the auto industry.
So Assange's claim that these were "Right-wing" organizations doesn't necesarily mean the US's GOP/Tea Party/Libertarians, as our Democrats are pretty comprable to the EU's "Right-wing" organizations.
-Rick
I'm north of the bottom 50%, but south of the top 20% for household income, and with all the deductions I can muster, both sides of employee/employer payroll taxes, property tax, etc... I think I'm just a hair under 15% effective tax rate (excluding sales tax and registration fees).
But comparatively, my anual income is probably less than Buffets daily compounded interest gains, AND if necesary, I am able and willing to pay more in taxes.
-Rick
Some of us Atheist/Agnostics are confirmed Christians that after decades of education and indoctrination felt that there is more to be gained through personal responsibility and respecting eachother than dependence on belief structures to abdicate us of our responsibilities and forcing our views on eachother.
-Rick
I loathe this stupid 'open parent on click' interface. I was trying to find out what your post had been moded and thanks to the damn page jumping around I some how manged to mod you 'offtopic' with out having the drop down open. So consider this mod-canceling response an appology for the temporary down-modding.
-Ric
I didn't mean to say that EEO is bad persay, nor that it isn't useful. Just that it isn't going to break the social norms.
As this thread is proof, a LOT of people still view EEO as a handout to undeserving minorities. So while I feel that EEO can be a useful tool, I think to help prevent abuses, to break the social norms, and to correct racial inequality in a way that doesn't create a wedge issue, investing in education and educational assistance, especially in the K-12 range is absolutely critical.
Correcting the root issue: poor education systems and family support of minority youth, will eventually lead to a status where EEO laws are no longer necesary (for purposes other than finding individuals with racist tendencies in their hiring practices). In the mean time, EEO laws can help by promoting more stable employment and family lives for minorities, but long term we need to look for solutions that fix the issue instead of bandaiding over it.
Then again, if wealth redistribution continues on its current path, classism will quite likely eclipse racism at the new most troubling social prejudice structure.
-Rick