Millennials are killing numerous industries

[Loren Pechtel]

Perhaps the difference is that I support evidence based funding. Can you show that increased funding makes a difference? I've already put a few articles in this thread showing that it doesn't. Spending more is just about feeling good. Taxpayer dollars should not be wasted just so you can feel good.

You have not demonstrated that less spending would make anything better.

With spending and an economy it is best to put money into the hands of people who will spend it.

So for poverty the best solution is to take from people who have a lot and just give to people who have very little.

This will create a vibrant healthy economy as well as helping a lot of poor people directly.

What kills an economy is when a few are able to hoard or ship out great wealth.

What he's demonstrated is that spending more to improve education does not work. You can't solve poverty with improving school--it's akin to trying to make the horse drink. You're calling for spending on inner city schools.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Nonsense.

Government spending is what makes society bearable for most.

You can't claim that taking away the spending will make anything better.

What is needed is more spending.

We need to move to free college education for everyone. Something Germany is doing. Something Mexico has been doing for a while.

You are making the assumption that the spending is productive. What he's showing is that it isn't. Wasteful spending helps only those who have effectively make-work jobs.

He's right. Govt spending is beneficial. In fact, it's how net financial assets get into the private sector. True, it's better to spend to build something rather than blow something up, but spending is beneficial.

Much activity is unproductive. In a service economy, there is discretion.

 

[untermensche]

Nonsense.

Government spending is what makes society bearable for most.

You can't claim that taking away the spending will make anything better.

What is needed is more spending.

We need to move to free college education for everyone. Something Germany is doing. Something Mexico has been doing for a while.

You are making the assumption that the spending is productive. What he's showing is that it isn't. Wasteful spending helps only those who have effectively make-work jobs.

Putting money into the hands of people that will spend it is always productive spending.

If it is money going into the pockets of the rich it is many times hoarded and wasteful.

What he's demonstrated is that spending more to improve education does not work. You can't solve poverty with improving school--it's akin to trying to make the horse drink. You're calling for spending on inner city schools.

What exactly was the control group in this so-called proof of something?

 

[LordKiran]

That doesn't answer my question. Also, an employee having to obey dictates formed by a general concensus is still an employee obeying dictates. What makes yours so noble? Just because they're formed by group-think rather than by a small group of people/a single person? The tyranny of the majority is still a form of tyranny from the perspective of the dissenter and individual.

Do you understand the difference between democracy and dictatorship?

One is preferable to the other.

Do you understand that Tyranny is (or at least can be) subjective? If so, then you understand why your griping over corporate dictatorships is a pointless waste of energy.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I think it's time you surrendered your anarchist card.

Capitalism is the system we are stuck with. Not Anarchism.

Nobody ever voted for it.

It is a rat race for most simply to make the rich as rich as possible.

But when you have capitalism the only thing that makes it bearable for most is government regulation and government spending.

Without it life would become more miserable for most.

Under capitalism.

You utterly missed the point.

You want heavy-handed government intervention in the market--yet there is no such intervention in an anarchist system.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Tell me. In a society that allows for free ownership of property, what would you do to stop me from starting a business and contracting labor to my specifications?

In a society where people had employee owned and operated businesses all around how would you find people looking for a dictator so they could make less?

If your assumption of the economics were true she would get no employees.

In reality there are worker-owned businesses. They don't out-compete the capitalist enterprises and in fact tend to fare poorly in bad economic times.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You hire from the pool of unemployed, not the pool of employee-owners.

But if there are many opportunities to be in an employee owned company who will chose to be somebodies lackey in a dictatorship?

How does a person get the money to hire other people in such a system?

The frugal end up with more money than the spendthrifts. We have a good example in the real world: Israel. At it's formation the wealth was pretty equally distributed. Now, however, we see a distribution that's typical for a western democracy.

It is also a system that puts a check on inequality without the use of force.

Great wealth is made by making others your servants, or by having great ideas, but that is rare.

Eliminate the ability of some to turn others into their mindless servants and you prevent a lot of immoral inequality.

Yeah, dead people are all equal.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You are making the assumption that the spending is productive. What he's showing is that it isn't. Wasteful spending helps only those who have effectively make-work jobs.

Putting money into the hands of people that will spend it is always productive spending.

If it is money going into the pockets of the rich it is many times hoarded and wasteful.

1) The rich don't have money in their pockets. They have it invested in the economy.

2) If you were right we could make the economy boom by hiring all the unemployed to do something useless.

What he's demonstrated is that spending more to improve education does not work. You can't solve poverty with improving school--it's akin to trying to make the horse drink. You're calling for spending on inner city schools.

What exactly was the control group in this so-called proof of something?

I guess you didn't look at his evidence. One good one from Poland after WWII: The Russians had to rebuild the educational system and did so with considerable equality. It didn't change the results--children's educational attainment was strongly tied to parental profession, but not to any measure of the quality of the school.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Putting money into the hands of people that will spend it is always productive spending.

That's like saying that investing money in a new factory is just as good as blowing all that money on blow and hookers.

If it is money going into the pockets of the rich it is many times hoarded and wasteful.

They won't be rich long if they hoard it.

 

[Horatio Parker]

That's like saying that investing money in a new factory is just as good as blowing all that money on blow and hookers.

In a sense it is. Spending on productive things of course serves the public purpose better, but unproductive spending is still stimulus.

 

[untermensche]

Do you understand the difference between democracy and dictatorship?

One is preferable to the other.

Do you understand that Tyranny is (or at least can be) subjective? If so, then you understand why your griping over corporate dictatorships is a pointless waste of energy.

The structure is such that ultimate power rests at the top. That is how high paid executives at profitable companies forced American based companies to move to foreign nations for cheaper labor putting the American work force out of a job. No employee run company would do something so thuggish.

That is dictatorship.

As far as tyrannical?

Dictatorship is more tyrannical than democracy.

We've known that for a long time. Despite the crazy denials of some.

 

[untermensche]

That's like saying that investing money in a new factory is just as good as blowing all that money on blow and hookers.

Both are productive spending if the people you give the money to spend it.

An economy works by transfer of money for actual goods.

Much of the US economy is phony. It is trading in perceived value, not goods or services. It is speculation, gambling for the rich. Not productive and the cause of bubbles and crashes.

If it is money going into the pockets of the rich it is many times hoarded and wasteful.

They won't be rich long if they hoard it.

How does that work?

I put 10 million in a vault.

In 20 years am I broke?

 

[Jayjay]

Both are productive spending if the people you give the money to spend it.

An economy works by transfer of money for actual goods.

Much of the US economy is phony. It is trading in perceived value, not goods or services. It is speculation, gambling for the rich. Not productive and the cause of bubbles and crashes.

If it is money going into the pockets of the rich it is many times hoarded and wasteful.

They won't be rich long if they hoard it.

How does that work?

I put 10 million in a vault.

In 20 years am I broke?

No, but if you can't buy yacths and private planes with that money, what is it good for?

 

[untermensche]

Both are productive spending if the people you give the money to spend it.

An economy works by transfer of money for actual goods.

Much of the US economy is phony. It is trading in perceived value, not goods or services. It is speculation, gambling for the rich. Not productive and the cause of bubbles and crashes.

They won't be rich long if they hoard it.

How does that work?

I put 10 million in a vault.

In 20 years am I broke?

No, but if you can't buy yacths and private planes with that money, what is it good for?

Humans hoard.

I can't explain it.

 

[braces_for_impact]

I've really been noticing a baby boomer "kids get off my lawn" effect as of late. I think some of this includes our recent university crises ala Evergreen University.

 

[Horatio Parker]

No, but if you can't buy yacths and private planes with that money, what is it good for?

Obviously you can. U's point is that money not spent isn't stimulative.

Not that everyone should spend all their money, but people at the lower end of the spectrum tend to spend their money. Hence, money distributed to poorer people is more stimulative than money directed to the wealthy.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Both are productive spending if the people you give the money to spend it.

An economy works by transfer of money for actual goods.

Much of the US economy is phony. It is trading in perceived value, not goods or services. It is speculation, gambling for the rich. Not productive and the cause of bubbles and crashes.

They won't be rich long if they hoard it.

How does that work?

I put 10 million in a vault.

In 20 years am I broke?

No, but if you can't buy yacths and private planes with that money, what is it good for?

Humans hoard.

I can't explain it.

You're so stuck in your worldview that you simply dismiss anything that goes contrary to it.

Very few people hoard money. They may accumulate large amounts of it but they put it to useful use, they don't just keep it.

- - - Updated - - -

No, but if you can't buy yacths and private planes with that money, what is it good for?

Obviously you can. U's point is that money not spent isn't stimulative.

Not that everyone should spend all their money, but people at the lower end of the spectrum tend to spend their money. Hence, money distributed to poorer people is more stimulative than money directed to the wealthy.

When you loan it out or invest it it has the economic effect of being spent.

 

[Horatio Parker]

When you loan it out or invest it it has the economic effect of being spent.

So saving and spending are the same?

I thought the economy was over 60% consumer driven.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When you loan it out or invest it it has the economic effect of being spent.

So saving and spending are the same?

I thought the economy was over 60% consumer driven.

The point is neither takes it out of the economy.

 

[DrZoidberg]

That's like saying that investing money in a new factory is just as good as blowing all that money on blow and hookers.

In a sense it is. Spending on productive things of course serves the public purpose better, but unproductive spending is still stimulus.

No, it's not. That's Keynsian lunacy. It's magic with numbers. Econometrics are less than perfect ways to measure the economy. We can't measure the economy directly. So we do it via proxies. What you are describing is an increase in activities in the proxies that Keynsian economists use to measure. They're just proxies. They only work if you've already made a bunch of assumptions, and those assumptions hold true. But if you start manipulating the economy to artificially boost the metrics, then you don't know where you're at.

Here's a Keynsian way to boost the economy tens of thousands of percent in one fell swoop. Everybody stops mowing their own lawns. Instead everybody finds a neighbour and they mow each others lawns. They all pay each other for the service. They all pay each other the exact same amount. That will create a massive boost to the economy. Or rather the econometrics. But you've of course done fuck all for the economy. You've just added a layer of bullshit making the economy less efficient.

Boosting the economy by spending money on hookers and blow "works" in the exact same way.

How much the economy benefits from cocaine and prostitution is impossible to say. Since we're trying to measure happiness. But what we can say is that there's zero economic leverage from this happiness investment. There's no compound interest. The only way this can work to help the economy is if the hooker and drug dealers use the money they get to invest in other, actually productive, industries better than the person who buys the hookers and blow would have been. Again... impossible to measure.