Starting over again

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by LafayetteBis, Aug 4, 2020.

  1. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    From the Economist: A new era of economics

    Some really good thinking about where the world is going as a result of Covid.

    Excerpt:

    Quo vadis?

    Past thinking simply wont do. The past, as I witnessed it, was the Industrial Age. Both the US and the EU are way, way beyond that age. Which has moved very considerably to the Far East because of comparative wages between "there and here".

    So, what's the alternative? Quite simply this, and Uncle Sam had better fast get on the Band-Wagon: Free post-secondary education at all state supported schools. Meaning nursery-school, primary-school, secondary- and post-secondary schooling!*

    That is, Free - Gratis - and For nothing ... !

    *It would also help in America that a Civics Test become a sine-qua-non for a high-school diploma.
     
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2020
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  2. Chrizton

    Chrizton Well-Known Member

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    We are probably in a liquidity trap that varies slightly in detail from the theoretical one of Keynes.
     
  3. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    What a world and a boon for liberal supporters of unionized teaching/tenure.... guaranteed employment, and guaranteed indoctrination. The logic leap between our labor is more expensive than their labor doesn't justify this artificial guarantee system. The true goal of this measure would be to simply make folks into the smart little robots the collective autocracy wants them to become.
     
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  4. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Blah, blah, blah and more blah ...
     
  5. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Look, when a country finagles the tax-system so that the top 1-percenters get the humongous portion of it, then there is not enough left at the bottom.

    As I have shown here several times, the shares of Income in the US is grossly unfair:
    [​IMG]

    And the above means that there are plenty of very poor who could, one day, get very, very angry about this timewise persistent situation ...
     
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  6. David Landbrecht

    David Landbrecht Well-Known Member

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    Truly original thinking is required. The age of "money" is over.
     
  7. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    Classic. Folks who chide at not succeeding trying to change the game so they can....
     
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  8. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    Translation... "well, ya got me there Dr..... I got nothing...." And of course being sussed out in like the third post on a thread is likely embarrassing...
     
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  9. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I doubt that. Otherwise we go back to barter.

    We need only increase upper-income taxation, that Reckless Ronnie cut during his eight-year term of office. This started the rush of Wealth upwards to a very small percentage of the population.

    And the racial income gap is becoming very large:
    [​IMG]

    More wood for the eventual fire ... ?
     
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  10. Chrizton

    Chrizton Well-Known Member

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    They can get as angry as they want. As you will see that $1200 given to the green slice of pie people will inevitably end up in the hands of the blue slice of pie people. Either way, it still goes back to the liquidity trap. New hiring ends up depressing incomes of existing employees. It is part of the reason Trump is so keen on cutting payroll taxes. That becomes the only effective way to increase take home income for workers.
     
  11. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The number and kinds of people that have jobs depends upon one and only one factor. In economics we all that Demand for goods/services.

    A job therefore depends more on what the American public wants to buy (or not to buy) far more than payroll-taxation. Which, in any state, is simply run-through into the cost of the product/service being sold.

    And in our transformation from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, only 12% of workers are located in "industries". The country is almost wholly services-oriented in terms of output ...
     
  12. Chrizton

    Chrizton Well-Known Member

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    You totally missed the point. Demand is meaningless if people do not have the means to pay for it and cutting payroll taxes is about the last option the government has left to spur demand i.e. have more money to spend. Without more "demand" i.e. money for consumption, then businesses have zero motive to create new jobs.
     
  13. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You need badly a course in economics. There are only two elemental factors that decide how a country behaves economically. One is called Demand and the other Supply that is responding to Demand.

    Demand is NOT meaningless and thus so regardless of payroll taxes, which you keep harping about because you don't like them. All taxation-monies are destined for only one use - called "expenditure". Iow, what a government taxes it typically also spends. When it spends on goods&services, that boosts the economy. When it spends upon paying-off excessive debt spawned by exaggerated budget expenditures, then the economic outcome is negative!

    And just that is what the American economy has been doing for a long, long time ... !


    Furthermore, we are exchanging on very different grounds. You have a fixation on payroll taxation. I teach economics and know full-well that outcomes are decided more so by aggregate demand. Yes, taxation does affect Net Income (and thus the ability to spend). But all households, regardless of taxation spend a total amount of money that is grows in an orderly fashion - depending upon total consumer Demand.

    Until there is an upending of the economic equation by consumers, as happens during a prolonged recession ...
     
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2020
  14. wgabrie

    wgabrie Well-Known Member Donor

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    So, I come here expecting a revolutionary new economic model, but it's only about free education. Well it's nice and all, and I support it, but it doesn't change anything. The only thing it will do is make more educated baristas.
     
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2020
  15. Chrizton

    Chrizton Well-Known Member

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    Must be easy to teach a course where supply and demand are the only two things discussed with zero nuance, and you are the one who brought income tax into this thread in post #5, not me. We are done.
     
  16. Rush_is_Right

    Rush_is_Right Well-Known Member

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    The U.S. economy is not a pie. If I earn a dollar, it doesn't take from anyone else from going to earn a dollar.
     
  17. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    NOT UP TO THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGE

    Supply and Demand are ONLY the beginning. In fact, they are given short-shrift in any economics course.

    I suggest nonetheless that you START there - economics can become a tangled-mess because the "theory" does not always match the "reality". Especially in these times when fundamentals change radically. We have exited the Industrial Age (that began at the end of the 19th century) and are now entering the Information Age.

    Just as the Industrial Age changed radically how and to whom income was generated, so will the Information Age. Uncle Sam's challenge is simple - his Industrial Age developed the present HUGELY UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME.

    We have a chance to change it, but that is going to take a long, long time to evolve. And, I suspect we Yanks don't have the resolve to do so. They think this age is just fine - because they are fixated on Income and not how it is developed and shared.

    I left the US a long, long time ago. And I must admit, for the same work AND higher taxes, living in Europe is the better alternative. There is no such thing as an "ER" in Europe, and my kids went through university at a tuition cost of around $1000 a year! (In the US, the average annual tuition fee in state-schools is $14K!)

    Furthermore, what Europe has done, America could do as well. It just takes the will of the people. But such resolution necessary simply does not exist* today in America ...

    *And why? Because we have a legislative system that was founded two centuries ago and is NOT UP TO THE CHALLENGE OF FUNDAMENTAL EVOLUTIONARY CHANGE!
     
  18. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Free education AND National Healthcare - both of which are important when comparing and ranking lifestyles across similar countries.

    Which is how the US is typically way, way down on the list - last, in fact. Or, first on the chart with the lowest rating. The OECD has a chart on life-expectancy here. Click down to page "Heath Status" (page 12). Note how the US is in LAST PLACE on the chart as regards "Life Expectancy".

    THAT is the consequence of a privatized healthcare system. Which means what? You-plural in the US will be living on average 4-years less than us in Europe in a country that has one of the highest health-care costs on this planet!

    Sad news, very sad news for Americans who pay through the nose for heath-care services ...
     
    Last edited: Aug 8, 2020
  19. wgabrie

    wgabrie Well-Known Member Donor

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    Oh, universal healthcare. Something I'm also for.

    But, don't the elderly have Medicare or Medicaid? Medicare for the elderly (which I know nothing about because I'm too young) and Medicaid for the poor (Something I DO know about because I'm on it). So, it seems to me that Americans can get medical care when they need it.

    People in the USA can also live our last days in a nursing home or hospice.
     
  20. Farnsworth

    Farnsworth Well-Known Member

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    Not necessarily; states manage and set the qualifications for Medicaid, and in Texas the cut off annual income is very low, lowest in the country, so any full time job will put you over the income limit. I had a neighbor whose daughter had to quit her job to take care of her full time, which she did for 3 years, and then she got sick herself; she made it under the $12K a year limit, but it turns out if you haven't worked in the last two years, you're also disqualified from Medicaid in Texas. She ended up dying, since relying on emergency room care sucks for treating long term illnesses.

    Medicare doesn't pay for everything, and HMOs and doctors have been treating Medicare as their own private piggy bank to be looted for decades, since the 1960's, and they pay lobbyists and pols to keep it that way, and so do drug companies; Americans get charged 10x what foreign countries pay for many drugs. Congress has to approve any extra spending in the Medicare budget to investigate fraud in the Medicare system, so we can forget that ever happening.
     
    Last edited: Aug 8, 2020
  21. wgabrie

    wgabrie Well-Known Member Donor

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    Oh, what a horrible story. People who support benefits with work should read.
     

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