Idiots Guide To Why Public Spending Doesn't Create Growth

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Jccarlton
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Idiots Guide To Why Public Spending Doesn't Create Growth

Post by Jccarlton »

Very good little video on Gov't and private spending:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi2l0NilEBE

AcesHigh
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Post by AcesHigh »

idiot´s guide = guide for idiots or GUIDE FROM IDIOTS?


it was quite a simplistic take on the issue. Many ECONOMISTS may disagree, at least partially, and they do have real theories and examples to argue with.

how hard do you think it would be to a new-Keynesian like Paul Krugman to debate all the points made in this video??


it would be like a nuclear physicist arguing with a high school student, about physics...
Last edited by AcesHigh on Sun Nov 21, 2010 6:21 am, edited 2 times in total.

AcesHigh
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Post by AcesHigh »

I agree partially with it, since it DOES creates growth sometimes. And the argument could be better constructed for why it usually doesnt, and also show arguments from the other side.

Jccarlton
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Post by Jccarlton »

AcesHigh wrote:idiot´s guide = guide for idiots or GUIDE FROM IDIOTS?


it was quite a simplistic take on the issue. Many ECONOMISTS may disagree, at least partially, and they do have real theories and examples to argue with.

how hard do you think it would be to a new-Keynesian like Paul Krugman to debate all the points made in this video??


it would be like a nuclear physicist arguing with a high school student, about physics...
In my experience nuclear physicists love arguing about physics with just about anybody in sight, including high school students. Been there done that. Had a lot of fun. Learned a lot.
Having read what Krugman is writing recently, he might argue against this video, but his arguments would have little to do with anything resembling reality.
After all Krugman wants to balance the budget by euthanizing the elderly and using regressive taxes to punish the poor:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-shepp ... nce-budget

Krugman is so much fun. he doesn't even say what he says:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/1 ... les-taxes/
Just tyranny tomorrow, not tyranny today. But it's still tyranny.

AcesHigh
Posts: 655
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Post by AcesHigh »

Jccarlton wrote:
AcesHigh wrote:idiot´s guide = guide for idiots or GUIDE FROM IDIOTS?


it was quite a simplistic take on the issue. Many ECONOMISTS may disagree, at least partially, and they do have real theories and examples to argue with.

how hard do you think it would be to a new-Keynesian like Paul Krugman to debate all the points made in this video??


it would be like a nuclear physicist arguing with a high school student, about physics...
In my experience nuclear physicists love arguing about physics with just about anybody in sight, including high school students. Been there done that. Had a lot of fun. Learned a lot.

exactly. YOU learned a lot. IF you are a high school student, dont try to teach physics to a nuclear physicist.

The same way, dont try to teach economics to a economist. You may think this video is convincing, but there are nobel prize winners who can easily argued about the simplistic points made there.

Jccarlton
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Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:14 pm
Location: Southern Ct

Post by Jccarlton »

AcesHigh wrote:
Jccarlton wrote:
AcesHigh wrote:idiot´s guide = guide for idiots or GUIDE FROM IDIOTS?


it was quite a simplistic take on the issue. Many ECONOMISTS may disagree, at least partially, and they do have real theories and examples to argue with.

how hard do you think it would be to a new-Keynesian like Paul Krugman to debate all the points made in this video??


it would be like a nuclear physicist arguing with a high school student, about physics...
In my experience nuclear physicists love arguing about physics with just about anybody in sight, including high school students. Been there done that. Had a lot of fun. Learned a lot.

exactly. YOU learned a lot. IF you are a high school student, dont try to teach physics to a nuclear physicist.

The same way, dont try to teach economics to a economist. You may think this video is convincing, but there are nobel prize winners who can easily argued about the simplistic points made there.
I daresay that I know some nuclear physicists who did indeed learn things from me. At least they said so. That's the kind of place a large physics lab is. there is also the fact that physics is a much truer science than economics and has a long history of new truths coming from unexpected places. Especially experimental physics where new observations are the grist in the mill. Again, been there, done that. Economists on the other hand spend way too much hauling theories out of their butts and playing around with unicorns and pixy dust to have any relevance to what actually happens in reality. That is especially true of Marxist and Keynesians like Krugman. Paul Krugman obviously struggles mightedly to keep his grip on his fantastic theories and fantasy world. I truly wish that more economists would spend more time making sense of the data we laboriously collect for them and less time on useless flight of fancy. but that would actually require real work, like what physicists do.
As for the video, well apparently it is a clip from the Trillion pound Horror Story done by Britain's Channel 4. Link here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gd6-zfeeaM
Plenty of economists there.
It may be simplistic, but as far as I am concerned that is an asset not a liability. As an engineer I am a firm believer in the KISS principle. Keeping an idea simple and cutting all the nuances out makes the issue clear and easy to understand. Complicating things just creates nuance. Nuance is what leads you on flight of fantasy and away from reality. If you don't believe in reality, you can, like Krugman, argue anything. But in the end what is argued is still meaningless. Garbage in, garbage out.

choff
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Post by choff »

I was looking at an article the other day that said the combined debt of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland was a trillion Euros. The article claimed these countries would very soon back out of the eurozone, and this would cause a collapse of the Euro. Apparently, in some parts of Spain, it's become so bad that kids can't go to school anymore because their parents can't afford shoes.
CHoff

zapkitty
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Post by zapkitty »

Yep, our lords and masters got their much-salivated-over austerity programs implemented in the EU and are reaping the benefits.... while the inevitable economic backlash of these no-growth policies thrashes the hell out of the little people. Which is the intended result.

And just as people are ignorant enough to call Obama a "progressive", so people are ignorant enough to claim that the current situation is the result of the failure of Keynesian policies... when the the same masters of the universe that collapsed the global economy took the trouble to ensure that the U.S. stimulus projects were too weak to start with and then watered them down even further.

And these same MOTUs have gamed the media to ensure that real growth policies are off the table and only "austerity" is discussed... austerity for the little people, of course, and not for them...

Jccarlton
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Location: Southern Ct

Post by Jccarlton »

zapkitty wrote:Yep, our lords and masters got their much-salivated-over austerity programs implemented in the EU and are reaping the benefits.... while the inevitable economic backlash of these no-growth policies thrashes the hell out of the little people. Which is the intended result.

And just as people are ignorant enough to call Obama a "progressive", so people are ignorant enough to claim that the current situation is the result of the failure of Keynesian policies... when the the same masters of the universe that collapsed the global economy took the trouble to ensure that the U.S. stimulus projects were too weak to start with and then watered them down even further.

And these same MOTUs have gamed the media to ensure that real growth policies are off the table and only "austerity" is discussed... austerity for the little people, of course, and not for them...
I'm going to take it that you haven't actually seen the video. What they call austerity doesn't even come close to solving the problems. It's pretty pathetic actually. The debt commission's recomendations were just as pathetic. We have yet to rediscover that there is no such thing as free ice cream:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/ ... canno.html
Frankly I'm tired of paying for somebody else's ice cream.
Meanwhile the Chinese are replacing their Mao busts with busts of this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_James_Cowperthwaite
I will leave it to your imagination as why that is not a good thing for us, but real good for them. I think I just found a new hero.

hanelyp
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Post by hanelyp »

I take it as an economic postulate that whatever rules are applied, people (taken as a whole) will seek to maximize gain and minimize risk.

Accordingly, if the rules (or uncertainty of what the rules will be) make running a business and creating jobs unprofitable or risky, fewer people will run businesses and create jobs. If the rules make being unproductive moderately comfortable, many people will be unproductive. If the rules allow you to do something stupid (like making a loan without regard to the borrowers ability to repay) and then pass the risk to someone else, people will do stupid things.

Any economic theory or policy that doesn't allow for this postulate I regard as utter bunk. So far the basic free market appears to account for this best.

choff
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Post by choff »

Here's the full article.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peter ... -the-euro/

This reminds me that some oil producing countries were thinking of ditching the dollar for the euro, it looks like any that did made a huge mistake. Now it looks like the same crew that brought in the euro want to bring in an a single international currency.
Like my mama used to say, "They dream up wonders and c**p out blunders."
CHoff

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

In structural terms: we have run out of easy profits from microprocessing everything.

And the next big thing hasn't arrived. We do have lots of good small things in the wings. Graphene looks promising for a number of uses. Biotech is coming along. Heck - Polywell could be a winner.

None of that is in volume use. Where it would make a significant economic difference.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

Jccarlton
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Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2007 6:14 pm
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Post by Jccarlton »

MSimon wrote:In structural terms: we have run out of easy profits from microprocessing everything.

And the next big thing hasn't arrived. We do have lots of good small things in the wings. Graphene looks promising for a number of uses. Biotech is coming along. Heck - Polywell could be a winner.

None of that is in volume use. Where it would make a significant economic difference.
I think, from looking at tech blogs and free magazines that there are about five or so game changer technologies waiting for the nuts to exit the picture.
1. new energy( polywell and other fusion tecnologies, gen 4 fission, molten salt fission, small reactors)
2. additive manufacturing
3. micro machining
4. advanced bio technologies and genetics
5. advance nanomaterials and processes
Before the previous boom the late Herman Kahn wrote a book about it when everything was doom and gloom, with the Progressives running nuts because the ice cream they were stealing had run out. The Progressives sneared and screamed and wnet just nuts. We got Ronald Reagan and look what happened.

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

An economist is someone who sees something that works in practice and wonders if it would work in theory. ~ Ronald Wilson Reagan.

AcesHigh
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Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 3:59 am

Post by AcesHigh »

this is a forum of engineers, I guess some here think engineers know more about economy than economists, more about biology than biologists, more about law than lawyers, and so on :lol:

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