The Cause of the Upcoming Worldwide Recession (Depression)

inlet13

he still stands wrote:

inlet13 wrote:

I think you should read about the Austrian perspective. I'm not saying the federal government should not do anything related to the economy. I'm saying they shouldn't try to "help" the economy. The reason is, they always make things worse when they try to help. Think of it this way, every dollar the government obtains comes from the private market place. Spending that money wisely on public goods may be worthwhile. But, spending the money strictly to "boost" the economy is ridiculous. The government can't get us out of trouble, only we can.

I'm not derailing this thread with a conversation on philosophical semantics on the terms capitalism and free markets. I understand you want to say they are not synonymous. I am responding, who knows, depending on the semantics, you may be right. I just don't think it's even slightly relevant to this thread.

I think it is relevant... because I don't see any evidence that a "free market capitalist" economy has (or has ever in the past...) been successful. See the Chomsky video that I posted earlier... he talks about this.

I didn't want to derail the thread, as I said, but since you're pushing to talk about Chomsky...

Chomsky, in my humble opinion, is a philosopher with a political agenda. Not saying we all don't have agenda's of some sort. Just saying he's an activist. There's nothing wrong with that other than this...

He macro's macro issues, then macro's them again and tries to use verbiage to make his point. He's a linguist, after all. Your point here is a linguist-style semantic point and I don't really care about semantics.

For Chomsky, it makes sense, that's his expertise... he's a linguist. I believe, he never really pokes at real issues, instead (in my opinion) he floats above them on some sort of philosophical cloud. Not saying he doesn't make points that make you go hmmmm, in the philosophical sense. He does. That video is proof. I hmm'd a few times. I just think he's a philosopher. He'll get a person thinking. But, I'd say he's not an economist and knows very little about the economy.

Finally, getting at your point... "free market" to me means... a market free from state intervention. "Capitalism" to me means.. an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit, usually in competitive markets. To me, free market capitalism (the combination of the two above) has never and will never be tried at it's fullest because governments exist. I don't think this is as simple as saying do away with governments. This is a linear scale. You want to go as close to the do away with governments as possible, while allowing the government to produce public goods and keep law. That's it. That should be the government's job, to enforce laws and provide public goods. I'm not going to discuss public goods because that's a topic for an entire thread. But, my point here is that in my opinion, we should be reaching as far to the free-market capitalist end of the linear relationship as possible. Saying this has been tried successfully is subjective and could easily be argued. But, my point is I didn't even want to go here because, still, in my opinion, this has absolutely nothing to do with the thread. It's a philosophical argument. And to me, philosophy is great, but really useless because it's rarely ever really practiced. It's just a debate society. Economic ideologies, on the other hand, are practiced and matter more than people know.

he still stands

no one is talking about philosophy. I keep going back to the fundamental problem which isn't whether or not the government gets involved, it is that the economy itself doesn't have any foundation and is an inherently flawed system because it relies on infinitely increasing production and consumption of finite resources. Several years ago Putin said "I don't understand the American economy, it seems like all they do is sell houses to each other." In 15 years, all we will do is sell cheeseburgers to each other and then go watch Transformers 7. What you produce, what you spend time working on, etc should be an organic process. It should be what you want to do to feed yourself and your family and live the life you want. It should NOT be about trying to find a shit job for a wage that you need to survive, which is what almost all of us do. All I'm doing is arguing for the free market and against capitalism.

inlet13

he still stands wrote:

no one is talking about philosophy.

You were talking philosophy by bringing Captain Philosophy (Chomsky) into this.

he still stands wrote:

I keep going back to the fundamental problem which isn't whether or not the government gets involved, it is that the economy itself doesn't have any foundation and is an inherently flawed system because it relies on infinitely increasing production and consumption of finite resources.

Your arguing against the economy here. I don't get your rationale at all. We allocate scarce resources through markets. Technology can increase scarce resources. This, at least to me, is the best way of doing such.

he still stands wrote:

Several years ago Putin said "I don't understand the American economy, it seems like all they do is sell houses to each other." In 15 years, all we will do is sell cheeseburgers to each other and then go watch Transformers 7.

Putin wouldn't understand the American economy.

he still stands wrote:

What you produce, what you spend time working on, etc should be an organic process. It should be what you want to do to feed yourself and your family and live the life you want. It should NOT be about trying to find a shit job for a wage that you need to survive, which is what almost all of us do. All I'm doing is arguing for the free market and against capitalism.

This sounds like you live in a Utopian dream world.

The system we have now, allows one to do what they want to feed themselves... if they are good at it. If they are just ok, they may be able to do it. If they are horrible, they can't.

The alternatives to the current system of free-market capitalism is MORE government involvement in production, or anarchy. I'm fairly sure, your guy Chomsky would favor the former. But, then he would start going into word games and try to completely dodge the original question from high above with some sort of philosophical/semantical rant.

he still stands

I disagree with literally everything that you say, and it is clear that you do not have any intention of understanding my point of view but rather to talk exclusively about yours. So... peace, dude.

PJ_Soul

Maybe this story will end up giving this thread a comeback! Yeehaw!

Congress passes rollback of banking rules put in place after financial crisis, sending bill to Trump to sign

by Washington Post Staff May 22 at 5:41 PM

The House voted to exempt small and regional banks from some of the most stringent rules put in place after the financial crisis, while also loosening some of the rules aimed at keeping the biggest banks from failing. The measure does not repeal the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, as some in the GOP had hoped, but it does represent the most significant scaling back of the rules to date.

Supporters say the rollback frees banks from needlessly onerous rules and will boost economic growth, while critics say it exposes the economy to unnecessary risks at a time when banks are posting record profits.

The bill is near certain to become law. It is backed by the White House and was passed by the Senate in March.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/22/congress-passes-rollback-of-banking-rules-put-in-place-after-financial-crisis-sending-bill-to-trump-to-sign/?utm_term=.b26c8d4d3362&wpisrc=al_news__alert-economy--alert-politics--alert-national&wpmk=1

Smellyman

inlet13's prediction certainly didn't come true.

Economics and those who expound on it make me sad.

brianlux

Smellyman said:

inlet13's prediction certainly didn't come true.

Economics and those who expound on it make me sad.

Economics... such a crap shoot.  The only thing we can predict with any certainty is it goes up and it goes down.  Even well studied James Howard Kunstler, who wrote some marvelous fiction and non-fiction about the great economic collapse he calls "The Long Emergency", has been off widely thus far in his predictions.

I'm not quite old enough to have live through the Great Depression of 1929 but I have lived through the 1973 OPEC embargo, the big early '80's recession, the 1987 Black Monday, the 2001 Dot-com crash, and the 2008 so-called "Great Recession"  and the only one that affected my life much at all was the OPEC embargo and that was mostly just a matter of timing my gassing up the car and cutting back on any excess driving which was no big deal.  My roughest economic times (like having to live in my van) were due to personal matters, not the so-called "economic crises".  I don't get it about that.

PJ_Soul

brianlux said:

Smellyman said:

inlet13's prediction certainly didn't come true.

Economics and those who expound on it make me sad.

Economics... such a crap shoot.  The only thing we can predict with any certainty is it goes up and it goes down.  Even well studied James Howard Kunstler, who wrote some marvelous fiction and non-fiction about the great economic collapse he calls "The Long Emergency", has been off widely thus far in his predictions.

I'm not quite old enough to have live through the Great Depression of 1929 but I have lived through the 1973 OPEC embargo, the big early '80's recession, the 1987 Black Monday, the 2001 Dot-com crash, and the 2008 so-called "Great Recession"  and the only one that affected my life much at all was the OPEC embargo and that was mostly just a matter of timing my gassing up the car and cutting back on any excess driving which was no big deal.  My roughest economic times (like having to live in my van) were due to personal matters, not the so-called "economic crises".  I don't get it about that.

No recession or depression affects everyone negatively (and some benefit from them). Just because an economic crisis doesn't affect you (or anyone), it doesn't mean it's "so-called", or that it deserved its own quotation marks.... I'm sure all those people who lost their job or business or home or savings or investments during any one of those times wouldn't use those quotation marks!