That's what the cons and Shrub kept saying when they were doubling the national debt from $5.5 trillion to $11 trillion. Now they sing a whole different tune. Paying the debt off at $30 billion per month (which is what the cons were spending on the Iraq/Afghan wars) it will take a mere two thousand years.
I agree. But the reason why those new factories were more productive was that they were new assets with new owners (American credit lenders), instead of the old German owners. In the case of New Orleans, the ownership didn't change, so the assets didn't get renewed either, in other words, Katrina didn't change the economy. (Bush tried to change that economy by not helping a rebuilding for the middle class, which is exactly the difference between a war and a natural disaster; after war, the owners are lost.)
But, isn't this only politics? The more you tie up your political opponent in debt, the less money will they have to represent themselves, and you win ownership of all. So the US debt will never be payed, and even if it was paid, it would surge back to the maximum the US work force can bare, the very next day. The solution is not to tackle the debt, but to provide a worldwide mobility for the US work force, by teaching foreign languages, and removing taxation on earned foreign income, as well as on foreign capital gains earned in foreign pension schemes. If money flows worldwide together with jobs and economic opportunities, why should the world's "freest" country, the USA, discriminate against foreign life and emigration of US workers?
It's no use ranting but forgetting the question . This is what you wrote "All post-ww2 economies were built at the expense of those regions that lost that war." It is patent rubbish and you cannot defend its simplistic nature . But take your time . Think before you write .Forget the books you are copying from . Start with Africa , China and South America , so that you can paint in big strokes . Let's see how they benefited from those countries deemed the losers of WW!!
No, you need to read my statement in that post. The assets in Germany (for example) were transferred into the hands of American creditors, so the world economy was built at the expense of the losers of ww2. The dollar became like the Gold commodity, and the foundation of the world economy. Now the post-ww2 era has come to its end, new economies such as China, Russia, and Brazil are put on the map, so we are seeing the end of the western economies.
how is that relevant to what I said? don't you remember the GFC? you need to read some general economic history.
The whole purpose of the national debt is for the BEAST to enslave the masses. The BEAST has done that globally. Once you've jumped off the cliff, you can't say, "Oh, I've changed my mind." Splat!
It is the beast that writes our indenture contracts, but it is the government that makes us submit to it. We may not be able to do anything about it any more, but with the last few votes that we may still have, we can probably negotiate a deal with the government to allow us to go to the perimeter cage where the other countries are, away from our holding cell in the center.
The financial crisis in Greece had little to do with the GFC, other than lenders started to verify a borrows ability to pay - and Greece failed that. I have, that is why I disagree with you.
and I was talking about the GFC I suspect you understand economic history as well as you understand a simple sentence on a forum. not a lot.
Now you have given a narrative based on one example, which is not itself a general explanation or something or which hints at a necessary mechanism . There were at least five losers , Germany , Italy , Japan , France and the UK. It is true that the US picked up a huge wealth from the third Reich in return for favours , but most of those countries started to rebuild from funds provided by the Marshall Plan -- funds which we took about 50 years to repay . Germany and Japan benefited the most over the next 30 years for a variety of reasons , but there are few if any major similarities between growth and the reasons for it, in those five countries . Similarly , there are no common general or dependent links and reasons between Western Industrialised countries ( losers plus Japan ) , versus developing countries . The latter rose up essentially because they had natural resources and cheaper labour . One side ( losers) was quite independent of the other ( developers) . I believe you are trying to create patterns of convenience in an effort to find a simple general theory and even a mechanism for it . I see no evidence for it once you get down to details . I suspect we got off to a bad start because your opening post allowed two interpretations and we initially talked at cross purposes . Let me end by talking about the UK , which is only talked about as a "winner" in terms of who surrendered to who . In manpower , infrastructure and money terms , we were essentially bankrupt .For thirty years or more it was everyday chat to say that we would have been better off losing the war , UK versus Germany . Our assets were not transferred anywhere . We had none . We sold our future ( borrowed) to create wealth but that was not your narrative . imho
nobody should have to suffer fools gladly. regardless of the politics of the fool ... or the person enduring the fool.
Ok, if by printing loads of money isn't a worry for inflation, why do we pay any taxes at all? Why don't we just print all of the money the US government needs to cover its bills and have the fed buy the bonds?
Typical Reiver post - condescending, flaming and ZERO evidence included. In other words...near-useless (though I did have to look up 'hysteresis). Reiver is little more then an angry troll with a thesaurus.
The more pertinent question is "why are you referring to inflation when unemployment is such a problem?". The problem with unemployment is that we're not talking about short term problems. It ultimately refers to the destruction of economic activity (as shown by those hysteresis effects)
There isn't a straightforward trade-off between unemployment and inflation. However, clearly avoiding hysteresis in unemployment is basic sense. Allowing an economic shock to generate long term economic damage (reducing exchange opportunities and shifting the production possibility frontier inwards) just isn't rational!
How do you minimize hysteresis? In electronics, you just slow things down enough that the feedback loop is "critically damped". MIT's Beer Game shows what happens when the feedback is too fast. Lots of hysterisis. What are the economic "feedback loops"?
?!? Reacting to the shock is after the fact. Overshoot, thus "hysteresis" has already occurred. You may reduce hysteresis, but you haven't minimized it. You can follow Lord Keynes and pay half the people to break windows and other half to fix them, but then you have to deal with the debt (or ignore it like many are doing). The better way is to let prices and interest rates respond to the real world. As the market heats, prices and interest rates increase, slowing growth well before we hit the cliff. The problem is government wants more growth (than is sustainable), so it holds interest rates low. Then, increasing prices (houses for example) become an "investment". That increases demand, fueling the bubble, that results in a shock.
So that means shocks are OK? If that is the advice you sell, I better understand why we are in the mess we are.
LOL. The chinese workers/engineers hired for the Ca bridges and infrastructure, or Detroits bailout money, and the 75,000 jobs outsourced when all was said and done? Yes, there is some learnin going on, that is for sure.
Shocks occur. We can't play pretend! We can minimise the risk (e.g. shift away from neo-liberalism), but clearly the government should react to them if they want to avoid long term damage (which destruction of human capital certainly is)
