Economics Discussion

[Ark]

Wow, 64% of our total yearly budget goes to the DoD?

Military-industrial complex, indeed.

 

[JamesG]

The problem is the US is financially broke and will be until most of the baby boomers have kicked the bucket.
There is no pressing national security reason for a manned space program. All the erstwhile rivals in space are all notionally friends, or at least not in a openly antagonistic relationships. The USAF has a considerable lead in space based sensors and weapons, which does not use manned systems.

By and large commercial space use is restricted to LEO. Even when micro-G manufacturing gets going, its likely to be unmanned and teleoperated. Despite attempts to drum up interest, Lunar and beyond, where manned systems will be nessissary, remains out of grasp. Likewise space tourism.

So with either 2 little wars or 1 big one going on, and a country in deep recession and going thru an economic transition that it most likely is going to come out poorer from, I can understand Obama giving NASA a lower priority than infrestructure and education.

It sucks and I hate waiting for it, but all the technological pieces aren't there yet to make manned space travel practical yet. Materials are about there, but an order of magnitute drop in the cost to LEO is needed. Or some reason to make "us" (the population at large) went to expend the resources on it.

I think its about the year 1489, and Columbus is still young punk hitting on college girls somewhere. (not a perfect analogy I know, but its funnier than trying to make an irrevereant joke about Puritans and the Mayflower)

 

[John_L]

I don't know if he finally did something right, as he's done a lot of things right... that whole saving the world from financial meltdown thing was pretty important, but I've digressed.

Are you serious? Do you actually believe that he "saved the world from financial meltdown" ??? The stimulus package was nothing more than the biggest ripoff EVER. Our economy would have rebounded anyway, and things aren't exactly all chipper with over 10 percent unemployment. On top of that, all he wants to do is pass health care and destroy 16 percent of our economy, pass ridiculous taxation in the form of VAT taxes and cap & trade which will do nothing but destroy more jobs.

You need to stop watching the propaganda on television and get with what's actually going on. I suggest http://www.drudgereport.com/ for a start.

The biggest problem we have is that our media falls lock step behind whatever liberal is in office, and people like you make such silly comments without actually knowing what goes on. Wake up, for all our sakes.

 

[Ark]

Are you serious? Do you actually believe that he "saved the world from financial meltdown" ??? The stimulus package was nothing more than the biggest ripoff EVER. Our economy would have rebounded anyway, and things aren't exactly all chipper with over 10 percent unemployment. On top of that, all he wants to do is pass health care and destroy 16 percent of our economy, pass ridiculous taxation in the form of VAT taxes and cap & trade which will do nothing but destroy more jobs.

You need to stop watching the propaganda on television and get with what's actually going on. I suggest http://www.drudgereport.com/ for a start.

The biggest problem we have is that our media falls lock step behind whatever liberal is in office, and people like you make such silly comments without actually knowing what goes on. Wake up, for all our sakes.

Pfft, what the hell kind of propaganda have you been watching, Beck's nightly fearcast?

Health reform isn't "destroying 16 percent of our econony". In fact all it's really going to do is make buying health insurance from that same part of the economy a mandated requirement for everybody. I'm sure they'll be perfectly fine having more people's money poured into their coffers...

The economy wouldn't have magically rebounded by itself, we'd just be stuck with a few more percentage points of unemployment and a longer list of corporate bankruptcies if we did nothing at all. Hell, Alan Greenspan's rediculous "cut regulation and the economy will run itself" idea is what drove the out-of-control bubbles all over the economy and caused this mess in the first place.

 

[Urwumpe]

Ahem...you are against Propaganda and you recommend Drudge Report? That is like fighting alcoholism by recommending vodka. Have you ever took a short moment to think about which kind of attributes propaganda has?

Also, your knowledge about why people invented health insurance seems to have large gaps. Your priests might be from Harvard and Yale, but joining a political party always requires you to give away a part of your brain. The democrats have to give away their sense of realism, the republicans are only permitted to keep the cerebellum. After all, as back room party grand master, you sure don't want to permit that anybody joins your party who is openly smarter than you... (Just look at Sarah Palin, she was really willed to give all for the republican party, and she sure did)

You don't pay for giving ill people a luxury treatment, but you pay for preventing poor ill people from making YOU ill, too. Nothing more, nothing less. The cholera epidemic of Hamburg was for example one of the reasons why Germany has a long history of public health insurance since imperial times. I doubt you can imagine how many donations you would have to give away every year for replacing a health insurance by NGO carriers. NGOs like "medics without frontiers" have much higher standards, as the public health insurances in most countries I know - heck, even a vet has higher standards.

Also, to defend Greenspan, his job was never to make managers think, but to limit the damage caused by the activities of these managers. The US Federal bank is nowhere as powerful as the European Central Bank or its predecessor in doctrine, the Bundesbank of Germany. The US federal bank gets commanded around by presidents. Greenspans cheap money politics kept the US economy alive longer, which is already a major achievement when looking at the structural problems.

How flawed the financial world is, can easily be seen by the statements of a US bank manager, who complained about the planned more rigid standards for banks, which requires them to have more real assets as counterweight for the transactions they do... somehow he has not understood that a thrust-worthy bank HAS money.

 

[Kurt M. Weber]

Health reform isn't "destroying 16 percent of our econony". In fact all it's really going to do is make buying health insurance from that same part of the economy a mandated requirement for everybody. I'm sure they'll be perfectly fine having more people's money poured into their coffers...

They might be, but those of us who prefer to make our own decisions concerning our wallet (how dare we!) aren't.

The economy wouldn't have magically rebounded by itself,

It wouldn't have been "magic," but it would have.

The great thing about markets is that they're always self-correcting. When lending money becomes an unprofitable proposition, it compels those who were depending on loans to re-evaluate their operations and wring every last bit of efficiency out of it they can. It compels those who made loans they shouldn't have to re-evaluate their past behaviors so they can avoid facing the same immediate mess they're facing now, again. When this happens, those who are left working become more productive; as they're producing more, one of two things can happen: either they get paid more, or prices drop. In either case, consumption increases on its own accord, and the increased demand means it becomes profitable to hire workers and ramp production back up.

All this will happen on its own, without government stepping in to make things worse than they already are.

All the "stimulus package" did is redirect money that would have otherwise gone to more productive endeavors, to less-productive endeavors; and we know they're less-productive because otherwise the capital would have gone there anyway, by free choice, without government-mandated redirection. The "stimulus," then, only served to make the situation worse than it otherwise would have been.

Hell, Alan Greenspan's rediculous "cut regulation and the economy will run itself" idea is what drove the out-of-control bubbles all over the economy and caused this mess in the first place.

No, it really isn't.

---------- Post added at 11:32 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:30 AM ----------

but you pay for preventing poor ill people from making YOU ill, too.

Whether or not the benefit to me is worth the expense to me is my decision and mine alone. If I decide it is, great; if I decide it isn't, no one ever has any sort of morally legitimate authority to force me to make the expenditure anyway.

 

[Urwumpe]

Whether or not the benefit to me is worth the expense to me is my decision and mine alone. If I decide it is, great; if I decide it isn't, no one ever has any sort of morally legitimate authority to force me to make the expenditure anyway.

Then build your own roads, your own power lines and your own internet and get your own hospital - and tell me when you managed to afford buying your first second-hand X-Ray device. Or become Amish. You are known to be using a lot of stuff build from the citizens of YOUR country with THEIR taxes, since it benefits the majority, including you. And don't claim you only use what is already there.

I think your argumentation is insanely bigot and maybe you know that too.

 

[Kurt M. Weber]

Then build your own roads, your own power lines and your own internet and get your own hospital - and tell me when you managed to afford buying your first second-hand X-Ray device. Or become Amish. You are known to be using a lot of stuff build from the citizens of YOUR country with THEIR taxes, since it benefits the majority, including you. And don't claim you only use what is already there.

Don't pretend I said something I didn't. It's dishonest.

I don't mind paying for stuff provided by other people. I do mind not being able to decide, in any given case, whether or not to obtain a given product or service from someone else, with that decision being being made based on whether or not the benefit to me is worth the expense to me.

I don't mind paying for roads if I want roads. I do mind being made to pay for roads if I decide I don't want roads, or at least not badly enough to pay what is being requested. The same is true for anything else.

Your total misrepresentation of what I actually said is quite childish.

 

[Urwumpe]

If we would start using taxes only for what really everybody wants...

 

[John_L]

The economy wouldn't have magically rebounded by itself...

Well, yeah, it would. There's no point in throwing money at a failed enterprise. It's how capitalism works. If a business is ran poorly, it should fail and go out of business. The whole "too big to fail" argument is BS because if the government was doing it's job (via antitrust laws), those companies wouldn't have ever grown to such a size that failing would damage the economy. Also, your statement about Beck's "nightly fearfest" is just more leftist propaganda. I don't get afraid from watching Beck, simply informed. The thing everyone needs to realize is that our government isn't here to help us. If they did, they'd do the absolute most basic thing, secure our borders, which they don't. If anyone thinks that (either side, red or blue) is trying to do anything for you, then that's where you're wrong.

 

[Eagle]

The alternative is to buy everything from the private sector, but that'll just turn NASA into another military-industrial complex, vulnerable to extreme gouging and corruption because there aren't any alternatives. NASA would just become a check-writing front for corporate handouts, again much like our military.

You mean that isn't the case already? :blink:

 

[jedidia]

The great thing about markets is that they're always self-correcting.

I'm currently living in Bosnia, and I can tell you, no they don't. Totally free market is basically economic anarchy, which means the criminal with the biggest club rules.

 

[Kurt M. Weber]

I'm currently living in Bosnia, and I can tell you, no they don't. Totally free market is basically economic anarchy, which means the criminal with the biggest club rules.

Except if the market were anarchic, it would not be a "totally free market," because if actors can get away with violence then the market cannot be considered "free."

So no, a totally free market is most certainly not "economic anarchy." If there were economic anarchy, then it would not, by definition, be a totally free market.