The Lie: We Are Worse Off Than Yesterday

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by Starjet, Jul 9, 2019.

  1. james M

    james M Banned

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    very very true!! the fewer states, regions, cities, and countries you trade with the poorer you get until eventually you are making everything yourself and dying of poverty. A simple concept but miles beyond what a liberal can understand.
     
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  2. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    But Trump doesn't agree with you, because he has observed that the prosperity resulting from free trade is not made available to everyone eg the citizens of Detroit and Baltimore ("rust belt" cities). But being Trump, he then blames the victims of unregulated free trade, or tries nonsensical policies like tariffs on European cars and steel, or recreating the US coal industry.

    As far as US industrial output is concerned, it too is not properly distributed amongst citizens, resulting in 40 million living in poverty in the US.

    Contradictions everywhere in your policy stance.....
     
  3. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    .....while you, with your reptilian brain - every bit as real as mine - have unfettered access to reason, rationality, and reality? …...

    Objectivism's main tenets are
    1. that reality exists independently of consciousness,
    …….(let's accept that, though the Subjectivists disagree).

    2. that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception (see direct and indirect realism),
    …….
    .yet humans from the beginning have been searching for 'God', and grasping after any charismatic prophet who happened along, despite these same prophets' disagreements (eg OT v. N.T v. Koran).

    3. that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic,
    …….ie by exercising one's capacity to reason (residing in the cortex (ie self aware, conscious) brain.

    leading to, inter alia, the delusion that individual liberty, not counterbalanced by rule of law, is compatible with community well-being.
    [Rule of law - a necessary basis of social organisation when more than one - instinctively* self-interested - individual exists
    (*instinct residing in the reptilian brain).
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2019
  4. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I want restrictions on speed limits on our roads and on trade, I do not think America is better off if all the good jobs go overseas

    corps are sending all our IT jobs overseas, I see that as a national security issue

    so we will just have to agree to disagree on this one
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2019
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  5. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    California is an American state... you know that right?
     
  6. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Give it up dude, you're wasting your time with me. And in not eating my time arguing nonsense. You live your life subconsciously, I'll live my consciously.

    Bye
     
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  7. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    I realise your concept of reality (and hence ideological blindness) prevents you from even attempting to defend Rand's views, so you are reduced to claiming my refutation of her views (namely my points about unconscious v. conscious motivation) are nonsense.

    Your "conscious living" is remarkably self-interested, which you cannot see - it's a trap of your own making (though unconscious). Hence your proposition:

    "If capitalism can't work, then the human race must perish".
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2019
  8. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    because if Americans have no jobs, the economy crashed, we can't buy everything from overseas and outsource all the jobs overseas, just doesn't work

    doing some of that stuff is ok, if everyone does it, our economy can't take it
     
  9. Old Man Fred

    Old Man Fred Well-Known Member

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    Most people have the terrible affliction of being lazy and stupid.

    If you're unproductive, capitalism will not work well for you.

    So you believe raising the minimum wage, tariffs, and restrictive immigration policies benefit us?

    You want to spend more on things to protect a handful of jobs?
     
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  10. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    You, like Starjet, have a bad case of unconscious self interestedness, which results in such outlandish claims as that above.

    Have you ever seen the shoeshine boys in the streets of Calcutta, or the windscreen cleaners at traffic lights? They are certainly having a go; they ain't lazy. Or even small retailers in the shopping malls doomed to be crushed by big monopolies like Amazon etc) Or taxi drivers lives ruined by Uber etc etc.

    I already noted your policy stance is full of contradictions.

    To answer those specific questions:

    1. Minimum wage.

    Well of course, in a functioning, inclusive economy, the minimum wage must be above poverty level . (MMT describes how a modern currency issuing government achieves this) . Neo liberal Capitalism of course fails at this basic level, but your ideological blindness (gross unconscious self-interestedness) won't allow you to see it.

    2. Tariffs.
    Of course there should be no tariffs any where (full-stop).

    But this would require a functioning WTO instituted to take account of different resources and levels of development in each nation. Your capitalist unregulated competition mantra means exploitative economic relations of the worst kind - and the resulting entrenched poverty we see everywhere. Trump is mindless enough to call entire countries trapped in entrenched poverty "****holes".

    The sort of half thought-out question only the ideologically blind would ask.
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2019
  11. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    so you want to outsource all of America's jobs and buy all our stuff from overseas?
     
  12. Old Man Fred

    Old Man Fred Well-Known Member

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    Speaking of stupid economic policy, MMT tops the list. We've been trying that since 1964 and it genuinely doesn't work. Fiat currencies are the bane of working people.

    A minimum wage is literally as stupid as tariffs. There's absolutely zero difference between the too.

    One can perform work and still be lazy.

    I certainly want to avoid doing unprofitable work, and maximize my particular economic strengths.

    I have a maid, because my wife and I are highly skilled, and it makes sense that we use our time to our greatest strengths instead of wasting it on menial tasks.
     
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  13. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    if Americans don't have jobs, that hurts the economy, sorry, we can't all work for min wage service jobs and have a successful economy

    I understand some on the right support foreign outsourcing and foreign imports, but when all the corps do it to excess, we all suffer
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2019
  14. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    Nixon abandoned the gold standard because (quick google search): " The U.S. continued to allow foreign governments to exchange dollars for gold until 1971, when President Richard Nixon abruptly ended the practice to stop dollar-flush foreigners from sapping U.S. gold reserves".

    Whatever, fiat currencies are the only workable solution in a global trading environment.
    Now, MMT is merely a better description of how the economies of fiat currency issuing governments actually work; unfortunately, orthodox economists haven't brought their understanding of macro-economics into the fiat currency age.

    And yet entrenched (systemic) poverty is an infinitely greater crime than either of them, since the resources exist to ensure sufficient (equitable) access to the basics (not the same as equality of outcome).

    I suppose you mean : one can turn up to a place of work, and be lazy?

    Well, that ought to be easily measurable (quantitively or qualitively).

    But assisting a teacher in a classroom, or assisting nurses in aged care may indeed be profitable - from a social point of view (though perhaps not from a purely monetary perspective, but then .....is producing garbage like Cola "profitable" (apart from producing profits for shareholders and drug companies dealing with the diabetes and obesity resulting from consumption of junk....]

    Your method of measuring 'profitability' only by profits obtainable in a profit driven competitive marketplace is manifestly inadequate, in regard to production of the totality of services that people want.

    Fine. I hope you are paying her above poverty wages (and that she has access to a union if you are just a slave driver...)
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2019
  15. Old Man Fred

    Old Man Fred Well-Known Member

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    There is no lack of employment overall in America. There are particular areas where employment is scarce, but that is due to the natural shift of people and opportunities.

    Very few people work for minimum wage. And the number has rapidly declined, not increased.

    In 1963 the minimum wage was $1.25, but instead of a fiat currency it was an ounce of silver. Today an ounce of silver is worth $15, so how exactly has that fiat currency helped anyone but the rich?

    There's many individuals, and many local governments, who address systemic poverty well.

    Here in Dallas I volunteer with a group that trains veterans as farmers, many of them homeless, and provides tiny homes that can be parked on the land of local supporters to get them established in the profession. They've transformed an abandoned lot to an impressive urban farm, and helped hundreds, if not thousands of people.

    Profit is derived solely from giving someone something they want. Whatever a company does is a direct reflection of what it's customers want. Cola is becoming increasingly unprofitable, as sugary drinks is no longer something people want.

    And my maid makes considerably more than the median wage.
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2019
  16. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    keep believing that, Americans are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer

    foreign outsourcing and foreign imports will destroy this country if nothing is done, it's a national security risk
     
  17. Old Man Fred

    Old Man Fred Well-Known Member

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    How exactly are we getting poorer?

    Do you look back on your childhood and think you had more than you do now?
     
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  18. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    republicans tax cuts for the rich and greedy mega corps not paying any taxes and not hiring Americans

    also time to raise the min wage
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2019
  19. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Want some cheese with that whine. (Old, but still relevant today.)
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2019
  20. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I have a great job, but I care about future generations, if you call that whining, so be it
     
  21. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    Agreed. Debasing the money supply makes grandma eat cat food.
     
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  22. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    That's the kindest thing I can say, the monitors won't let me express my deepest thoughts on the better--too much truth hurts the feelings of the unenlightened.
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2019
  23. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    sorry about that...
     
  24. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    What's relevant is: a day's work at the median wage in 1963 bought roughly the same (or probably less than) the same (non-luxury) basket of goods and services that a day's work can buy today.

    Are we worse off today than in 1960? Certainly homelessness in more evident today, and I believe under-employment (especially youth) is higher today (and is still higher than pre GFC levels), and home ownership is less affordable relative to the median wage.

    And yet we still have Trump's "rat-infested holes", in reference to entire cities!
    I would not call that addressing the problem "well".

    I admire your practical 'on the ground' approach to the problem....but 40 million are still living in "rat-infested holes".
    Government could eliminate the problem in 12 months - seeing that China is able to build entire brand new cities housing many millions, from green field to completed, in 24 months flat!

    A problem with "the invisible hand" of competitive markets cf China's 'state intervention' model?


    ….yet the (purely profit seeking, mindless) advertising industry does everything in its power to delay/misinform people re the healthy/desirable choices/outcomes concerning consumption.

    Good. I'm happy to withdraw the "slave driver" comment.
     
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2019
  25. JakeStarkey

    JakeStarkey Well-Known Member

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    [​IMG]
     

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