The Economy can't keep on growing forever

society is costing more and more and people are being paid less and less... formula for economic collapse

I am glad I grew up when I did...

 

not at all!!! People go to work every day and get better at what they do every day. Capitalism and evolution reward this so it will never end.

 

It's no wonder the younger generation these days has been having fewer children.

That will be having big demographic implications.

 

I am 54, so caught right in this at a bad time, have saved, so we will see....
Here it is, black and white https://matasii.com/us-ponzi-finance-stage-begins-in-2024/

 

yes, the more liberals sovietize our economy the less we can afford until 120 million slowly starve to death. Do you think its coincidence that Bernie honeymooned half naked in USSR?

 

yeah, republicans could destroy SS and Medicare... lets hope not

 

how would Americans like to have $25,000 refund each year which is what libcommie govt steals to pay for SS and Medicare??

 

most Americans are not stupid enough to think that if the gov took away SS and Medicare that Republicans would give them a check for 25k a year

 

Why stupid? It is Democrats who want socialism at gunpoint and Republicans who want freedom for govt exactly as our genius Founders intended. Do you understand?

 

no, republicans want to take our Social Security and Medicare and spend it on war and the rich....

90% of Americans do not want republicans to destroy Social Security or Medicare

 

If you have evidence of that I'll pay you $10,000. Bet?? See why we say liberalism is based in pure ignorance?

 

ok Romney,

"Republicans Are Killing Social Security One Tiny Service Cut at a Time"

https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/01/social-security-faces-death-by-a-thousand-service-cuts.html

'Republicans have made no secret of their long-standing desire to destroy Social Security as we know it. Indeed, Sen. Marco Rubio revealed just before Christmas that congressional Republicans plan to go after Social Security yet again."

"GOP introduces plan to massively cut Social Security"

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gop-introduces-plan-to-massively-cut-social-security-222200857.html

"The GOP 'Borrowed' your SocialSecurity Money for their Wars "

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/20...owed-your-SocialSecurity-Money-for-their-Wars

you can donate that 10k to this site.. thanks

 

Agreed, so how do we achieve universal above-poverty level participation in the economy, both in countries where population reductions might be desirable, as well as other countries where population growth is not yet a problem?

Answer: by adoption of MMT principles, in conjunction with oversight from a type of international 'clearing union' (derived from the famous Keynes' Bretton Woods concept), though perhaps for political reasons the international aspect can be put aside while individual nations prove the efficacy of MMT - since we have to start somewhere.



Here Prof. Mitchell discusses some peculiar aspects of interactions of Libertarians, mainstream Democrats, and Progressives.

Note: a core principle of MMT is that government spending/fiscal policy is limited by resources available to the nation, not by financial/monetary constraints. which are different to resource constraints, and which can be manipulated by the finance sector to hide the real fiscal possibilities open to government. The task of MMT is to expose the falsehoods/insufficiencies in mainstream economics.

 

I'm not sure I agree with that. We're essentially talking about moving around a bunch of paper, what does that ultimately do for better redistributing or creating of real wealth?

Maybe I am wrong, and you are saying that MMT is ignoring the monetary side to more accurately examine the underlying movement of resources? In that case I agree.

 

The way I see it there are 2 ways.
Create the necessary targeted demand, or help give these people what they are lacking to enable them to be productive (and that better not just be encouraging more credentialism, because that's been a common mistake in the past).

 

Yes, your second proposition is more correct, in placing the emphasis on available resources. Read all about MMT here.

https://www.themacrotourist.com/posts/2019/01/23/mmt/

(Scroll down to Stephanie Kelton's lecture for an excellent intro/description of MMT).

and this comprehensive blog from one of MMT's originators, Prof. Bill Mitchell.

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/

click on 'site map' near the top right hand side for a vast number of topics on macroeconomics, including country by country analysis, economic history, Krugman's - and other mainstream criticism - of MMT from the Left and the Right, based on ignorance of MMT's actual analysis.

BTW, apparently some US senators have in the last few day presented a Bill to outlaw MMT{!}. Bill says it's a good sign.....

 

Based on this response, you are an MMTer!

The JG (Job Guarantee) in MMT is an automatic price stabiliser, achieving inflation control via a 'JG buffer' of people who otherwise cannot find employment, as opposed to the mainstream inflation control by an unemployed buffer pool (via Philips curve, NAIRU and other mainstream mythologies).

 

That's a way of understanding economics, not necessarily in suggesting particular policies.

 

Intellect is necessary but not nearly enough. Rand was being a bit "romantic" about humanity.

Intellect is certainly necessary to create wealth, but such is not the only ingredient to a "wholesome society". What Rand refused to acknowledge was that Wealth is always a result of human endeavor. Meaning "work", and from conception to delivery.

And no great genius was able to do all that all alone. They needed considerable help and that came from those who worked for and with them to achieve success.

Far more important than the "brilliance" of a few truly intelligent people capable of conceiving New Horizons is also the humdrum of producing ordinary products/services that are necessary for our daily lives - each and every day of our life. Which this is true of mankind's existence in any nation on earth.

I suspect that allowing genius to produce new "things" (products/services, ideas, etc.) is all well and good. But only if it allows also the great many the ability to fulfill their lives doing some very ordinary work day-in and day-out.

Geniuses promote the ability for mankind to evolve - but ordinary people are necessary also for the everyday slog that sustains our existence ...

 

Beautiful dreaming but that's all.

No such "artifact" is capable of either such an effort or achievement in most complexly dynamic market-economies.

Which are far too variable/unpredictable and changeable to have any such result whatsoever ...

 

Good post, exposing Randian mythology for what it is* - an excuse for excessive/selfish claims on the world's resources. The cleaner deserves above-poverty participation, and by the way no-one should be denied above poverty level participation in the economy, hence the question should be: how do we achieve universal above poverty level participation in society.

*she failed to account for the effects of individuals' reptilian-brain (blind) instincts on the formation of conscious ideological theories/constructs, not recognising the limits of reason and conscious choice available to the individual.

 

'Dreaming' ….such as mainstream economic mythology designed to ensure a permanent pool of unemployed labour to keep wages low.

Fact is, there are sufficient resources available to achieve above-poverty level participation by all.

Mainstream economics is a tool of the wealthy designed to conceal the above fact, so the wealthy can continue to make their excessive claims on the world's resources. (eg the richest 8 people have as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity, etc).

MMT exposes mainstream macroeconomic mythology, moreover MMT is beginning to make waves:

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...he-unorthodox-solution-modern-monetary-theory

So much so, some GOP senators have presented a bill to the US senate demanding rejection of
MMT, which is after all a description of macro economics, at a time when orthodox economics is patently failing! Actually the next recession will sound the death knell of mainstream neoliberal economics, because private and state debt are still at record levels a decade after the GFC, not to mention low wages growth, persistently high under-employment, and per capita GDP's in many countries still below levels attained before that particular neoliberal catastrophe.
All power to AOC and the Green New Deal in the US, as part of the growing MMT movement that reveals the real limits to economic development faced by nations, not the mythological monetary restraints designed to protect the outsized claims of the aristocracy on resources.

 

I understand that there will be downturns in the future. What we must do to limit those downturns, however, is to be competitive. We must do everything in our power to make the U.S. the best place in the world to do business and to produce.

 

Being competitive won't limit downturns.

Let me illustrate an analogy. I live in an area where the Summer days are pretty hot but the nights are cold. There's cool winds constantly blowing in from the ocean that make things 10-20 degrees cooler than they'd otherwise be. But that effect isn't any greater during the day than the night.

A downtown could be compared to the day, in this analogy. Changing the effect of the wind won't change the amount of temperature fluctuation between night and day. If the temperature difference is 20 degrees with the wind, it would still have been 20 degrees without the wind. You understand?

Unless you're saying we should be more competitive during downturns.

 

Yeah, right. Every so often some dorks come along with a similar message, and tries to tell the world that EVERYBODY ELSE IS WRONG AND I'M RIGHT!

MMT is not the new Holy Grail of Economics!

What is MMT? It's definition:

All that "creating new money" does is to bloat the Money Supply, the consequence of which is to enhance the burden of debt that must be supported by our children in the future!

Meaning what? A nation's economic dynamic is not truly a matter of financial acrobatics. It is, rather, a matter of getting the population upgraded to a very new standard of knowhow and talent.

We are exiting the Industrial Age (where people were very happy to "put things together that other people wanted to buy"). We are progressing into the Information Age where the practical application of higher-level knowhow is mandatory for the economy to expand - and that only comes from an education that does not cost an arm-and-a-leg and is available to all who seek it ...

PS: And too that end it would be far, far better for Americans to "wake-up" and understand the Colossal Waste of more than half of America's Discretionary Budget being wasted on the DoD! When it could be better employed to educate our people for the challenges ahead that are clearly very new indeed!