IMF, Ukraine and Ireland

Originally posted by Teinosuke
No, it's like the wolf (corporations) and the sheepdog (government) sitting down together and agreeing to eat the sheep.

Your pure free market is a field where there's no sheepdog in the first place.

"Your pure free market is a field where there's no sheepdog in the first place."

If there were any history of governments consistently acting as a sheepdog, the analogy might be worthwhile. And if the sheepdog consistently acts just like the wolf, of what use is he?

In the market, the wolf has to provide things the sheep want, and the sheep determine the menu. My free market is the field that has an owner, who feeds the sheepdog, and trains him, and allows the wolves to live if they stay away from the sheep.

Originally posted by finnegan
Quite right. There is a real world in which free market ideology and propaganda is used to manipulate public policy to the benefit of the undeserving filthy rich and there is a fantasy, non existent faery land in which the spiritual ideal of a free market wipes away all the sins of the world. You are with the faeries.

There is also a fantasy land where government controls everything, including business, and everything is perfect. Your problem is you reject better, because it isn't best or perfect.

Originally posted by normbenign
There is also a fantasy land where government controls everything, including business, and everything is perfect. Your problem is you reject better, because it isn't best or perfect.

No. I reject the American model because all the evidence confirms that it is crap. I prefer the various forms of social democratic / socialist models tested over many decades in the countries of northern Europe because they have performed consistently well. The relatively less unequal society in Japan is another successful model though less easy to emulate.

Your problem is the way evidence all piles up around you

Originally posted by finnegan
No. I reject the American model because all the evidence confirms that it is crap. I prefer the various forms of social democratic / socialist models tested over many decades in the countries of northern Europe because they have performed consistently well. The relatively less unequal society in Japan is another successful model though less easy to emulate.

Your problem is the way evidence all piles up around you

You'd like to emulate Japan, this is to do with your 'inheritance' issues isn't it. People shouldn't leave wealth to the next generation, they should leave debt instead. Your dear old Dad left you a coat and through the state a debt finnegan, you'd like to not pay it off, but actually add to it and pass it to the next generation, live at the expense of those not born yet, it is an attractive option...for the moral-less.

Take a look at Japans debt before letting the fingers skitter all over the key board, most of the people that have ticked it up will not have to deal with it. Hey that's the price the next generation must pay for being born right, that's the price of being included in the 'Social Contract'.

Originally posted by Wajoma
Take a look at Japans debt before letting the fingers skitter all over the key board, most of the people that have ticked it up will not have to deal with it. Hey that's the price the next generation must pay for being born right, that's the price of being included in the 'Social Contract'.

An interesting argument here that Japan (and other developed countries) might not need to worry so much about "official debt" in a time of diminishing population and therefore demand:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/02/28/commentary/problems-with-abenomics/#.U1Fev0JdXRw

Japan, and now increasingly the other developed economies, face demand deficiency problems much more serious than they realize. Population aging sees more elderly cutting back on spending. Increasing inequality also cuts demand; spending by the few at the top cannot compensate for the lack of spending by the many at the bottom.

With the exception of the United States, the threat of population decline severely cuts investment incentives. Taken together it is recipe for chronic deflationary pressures, which even interest rates close to zero cannot counter. Add in the demand-killing effect of mistaken austerity policies and the problem is even greater. Abe, like many others, urges wage increases or more employment as an answer. But employers will not respond unless they can see higher profits and they will not see higher profits until they see the end to the demand deficiency — yet another vicious circle.

The only way out of all these dilemmas is for governments to rely on their own increased spending to provide the needed demand — the Keynesian solution. Abe has promised us a ¥5 trillion fiscal stimulus to do that. But that is a mere drop in the bucket, and will in any case be more than neutralized by the planned ¥5 trillion increase in the consumption tax.

Promises of future “fiscal consolidation” (the new word for cutting government spending) will do even more damage. We are back to the “structural reform” vicious circle of the Koizumi years — government spending cuts depressing the economy — which cuts tax revenues, which increases official debt, which encourages more fiscal cuts, which further depresses the economy. Then, as now, disaster was only staved off by currency depreciation.

Japan lost two decades of economic growth due to these mistakes (which some of us predicted at the time — back in 1996). The other developed economies are beginning to face the same situation. Like Japan, they think that low interest rates and some monetary expansion will solve the problem, and hold back from the Keynesian solution fearing the conventional wisdom that says high levels of government borrowing and official debt are bad. They, too, puzzle over why they are still in trouble.

Like Japan, they have failed to realize that our developed economies have shifted radically from the economic paradigms of the past. Then we could assume that economies had unlimited demands needing to be filled but lacked the supply of goods needed to meet that demand. Inflationary pressures were chronic, and to ward them off, government spending had to be strictly restrained. Only in periods of stagnation could they rely on Keynesian fiscal stimuli, it was argued.

Today the problem is almost the reverse. Thanks to information and other new technologies, and the rise of developing economies like China, we now have few problems in the supply of needed goods. Our main problems is that chronic lack of demand for those goods. The inflationary fears of the past have gone. All that remains are its economic dogmas.

True, some economists are starting to realize a new paradigm has arrived. New York Times commentator Paul Krugman has spoken of “depression-like conditions” that might last for decades. “Secular stagnation” has also entered the vocabulary. And investment banker, Daniel Alpert, sounds a warning in his book “The Age of Oversupply: Overcoming the Greatest Challenge to the Global Economy.” But I doubt whether any of these warnings will penetrate the thick walls of dogma surrounding Abe’s advisers.

And few seem to realize the solution — that without inflation dangers the standard anti-Keynesian fears of rising official debt and deficit spending disappear. Why? Because governments no longer have to borrow the funds they want to spend; they are free to create their own funds.

The few who realize this in the U.S. are called deficit owls (as opposed to the majority deficit hawks) and can be found on the Internet. In Japan they focus on a small group called the Association for Japanese Economic Recovery. But neither expect any early breakthroughs, even though it could well be the key to China’s economic success.

Originally posted by Wajoma
You'd like to emulate Japan, this is to do with your 'inheritance' issues isn't it. People shouldn't leave wealth to the next generation, they should leave debt instead. Your dear old Dad left you a coat and through the state a debt finnegan, you'd like to not pay it off, but actually add to it and pass it to the next generation, live at the expense of thos ...[text shortened]... ion must pay for being born right, that's the price of being included in the 'Social Contract'.

Compare Japan with the USA on any range of socially significant measures - crime, health, quality of life - and you will not find the outcome favourable to your argument. The US is a totally dysfunctional failing democracy and not the best place to seek examples of intelligent government.

Where has all this debt come from? Follow the money you idiot. Where are the debts and where is all the wealth? Countless ordinary households are saddled with personal debt, which they have been induced to accept instead of improvements to their income or assets over the past thirty odd years. Governments around the world have bailed out a failed banking sector, which is mad since the same governments declined to regulate properly or in the interests of the majority. Demand has been collapsing in our economies and tax revenues have collapsed. That is why governments have such large deficits. Meanwhile the share of wealth and income taken by the top 1% has continued to grow, even through the recession and governments continue to protect their selfish interests at the expense of the majority of their citizens.

Neither I nor my Dad benefited in any way from the economic insanity of the past decades. We both pursued education, we both worked from a young age to retirement without gaining terribly much, we both brought up families to be decent citizens. Follow the money and the wealth to see who did benefit and accuse them, not us. Your sneering claim that we - or most ordinary people - are living at the expense of the next generation is a typically "Newspeak" type distraction from the real issues and you have been suckered. No we are not. That is what the rich are doing and having a fine old time in the process. Not only at the expense of future generations but at the expense of this generation.

spending by the few at the top cannot compensate for the lack of spending by the many at the bottom.

we now have few problems in the supply of needed goods. Our main problems is that chronic lack of demand for those goods. The inflationary fears of the past have gone. All that remains are its economic dogmas.

An excellent post above from Teinosuke

The obsession with wealth, the personal accumulation of it, and the feeling that it is imperative to pass it on to progeny, is a symptom of the underlying insecurity one feels living in the shifting sands of a free-market desert world. If you equate freedom with the unfettered right to accumulate capital without limit, you should ask yourself what environmental factors fostered such conditioning.

The true paradigm shift is to comprehend that there can be a different system of economics wherein the unbridled accumulation of capital is precluded, and yet the individual is freer and happier for it, has a greater voice in community affairs, and is more empowered to shape his or her own life and interests. At an end would be the years of growing old whilst fearfully counting one's beans and hoping against hope to have enough to survive the next storm caused by corporate malfeasance and stochastic free-market shenanigans.

Originally posted by finnegan

Neither I nor my Dad benefited in any way from the economic insanity of the past decades. We both pursued education...

The pursuit of an education, in my view, makes one far richer, and lastingly so, than any number of stock options and derivatives.

Originally posted by finnegan
Compare Japan with the USA on any range of socially significant measures - crime, health, quality of life - and you will not find the outcome favourable to your argument. The US is a totally dysfunctional failing democracy and not the best place to seek examples of intelligent government.

Where has all this debt come from? Follow the money you idiot. Wh ...[text shortened]... gone. All that remains are its economic dogmas. [/quote] An excellent post above from Teinosuke

"Compare Japan with the USA"

Didn't mention the US, my point was just that the Japanese economic model is nothing to emulate, follow the money indeed and you'll find that Japans debt far exceeds the wealth of it's rich so even if you were to claim that all wealthy people come by their wealth through state debt the numbers don't stack up. So yes it is ordinary Joe thinking they're due this that and the other, and so yes it is this generation living at the expense of the next. Debt is racked up by pollies buying votes by mortgaging the next generation.

It's not a nice fact for you to face Finnegan, so you will resist the truth.

The post that was quoted here has been removed

…or the quest to accumulate wealth. (Not all who value money over mind necessarily possess much of either.)

Originally posted by finnegan
Compare Japan with the USA on any range of socially significant measures - crime, health, quality of life - and you will not find the outcome favourable to your argument. The US is a totally dysfunctional failing democracy and not the best place to seek examples of intelligent government.

Where has all this debt come from? Follow the money you idiot. Wh ...[text shortened]... gone. All that remains are its economic dogmas. [/quote] An excellent post above from Teinosuke

Though at the vanguard of climate change denial, it is interesting to observe how US conservatives habitually speak of the national debt as if it were some kind of inimical force of nature poised to destroy the universe. Indeed, where does the debt come from? Who is "owed" the money? It is not future generations, as is often pronounced in slogans. Individual government bond holders are some of those to whom the money is owed, but also a lot is owed to China and other nations. This is all on paper, to be sure, but value is psychological and much "wealth" in the world is merely in the eye of the beholder (and in the hands of the puppet masters pulling the strings of financial markets). The justification offered by conservatives for the tearing of every social safety net in the US is time and again the notion that "we cannot afford it" on account of the national debt; but it all rings hollow in light of how military spending and corporate welfare continually enjoy a free pass. As for the national debt itself, it is not going to destroy the US economy, for the simple reason that it is not in the interests of the debt-holders to kill the hand that feeds them.

The debt, in short, is not a force of nature. It is a human phenomenon, and therefore can always be reckoned with. It is not an excuse for inflicting needless suffering on society, but it is a good reason to look hard at the real costs of juggling global empire with poorly regulated markets for the sport of unaccountable oligarchs.

Originally posted by Soothfast
Though at the vanguard of climate change denial, it is interesting to observe how US conservatives habitually speak of the national debt as if it were some kind of inimical force of nature poised to destroy the universe. Indeed, where does the debt come from? Who is "owed" the money? It is not future generations, as is often pronounced in slogans. Indiv ...[text shortened]... f juggling global empire with poorly regulated markets for the sport of unaccountable oligarchs.

Phew, what a relief Soothfast waved all the debt away with his magic wand, hooray for Soothfest.

Originally posted by Wajoma
Phew, what a relief Soothfast waved all the debt away with his magic wand, hooray for Soothfest.

That of course is not what I did, dum-dum. But pray, prate on.

Originally posted by Soothfast
…or the quest to accumulate wealth. (Not all who value money over mind necessarily possess much of either.)

The real beauty is a place where one can make the choice.