The Official Economic Tank Thread

[babe]

I'm basically calling Franklin out for a duel here.

the dudes got a job.... some kind of financial genius. Can name names and kick *** on economics.

I never had a good job. never. Not a good one. Paper route millionaire here. Borrowed money from my mother and bought a house. A couple in a tight divorce fight scared my neighbor, and he asked me to buy the house he was renting next door. It was a deal done in the dead of night to keep the property from the wife and give the guy some cash. Good price.
Borrowed money from my bro to buy another. It was a fed housing finance failure. I remember offering 22,000, and they countered at 22,200. I got them all paid off, and then mortgaged them all to buy a ranch.

now they're all paid off again. oh, what to buy, what to buy. Mortgage interest is still a deductible expense on rental businesses, with no cap at all. It's just people who live in houses who got that limit. I live in the paid-for place of least rental value.....

The reason I can claim to be a paper-route millionaire is just this. My mom went out into the grapevine patch when my dad was trimming the vines one February weekend, to ask for some money to help my sis buy college books. I was about a hundred feet away, trimming vines..... He told her "Hell No" and sent her back to her kitchen. Dad never stayed at our house. He was jetset corporate exec chief of labs in four major industrial cities, and he had his woman Friday. He didn't think it prudent to hand out money unless you earned it.

I had a paper route, and several thousand dollars in accumulated savings. That night I told my mom she could use my money.... and she did. And then she started an account in my name to pay me back in. that's the money that bought my first house. I considered it some kind of loan, but she considered it payback for all she had done with my money.

So, I like Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey, and Milton Friedman. I don't think gold or silver is really "monetary", but one of many commodities. We used to have a sort of international deal called Breton Woods, where a set of commodities was used to adjust international currency exchange rates, but it was a hellish sort of deal, and now gone the way of all the best-laid plans. Nowadays, countries like Russia, China, India look at our congress of drunken sailors (excuse the phrase, no reference intended to anyone in JFC) and have concluded, soberly, that there has to be something better than the dollar.

A lot of people have turned to bitcoin or other similar "currencies", and enjoying immensely private dealings, reaped huge profits. I think George Soros pays for his thugs with bitcoin.....

At any rate, there are still folks out there who are looking for the US economy to crash, even with Trump in office. Gold bugs, silver bees hawking the prospect of $50,000/oz gold and $1000/oz silver. International currency buzzards circling the US just waiting for our old uncle to sit down in the desert sands.

Meanwhile, there is a mining boom. all over the world. The price of oil is down. I dunno, something to do with solar chip technology gains, thermal power plant plans, real new nuclear power plants all over the world, built by the Russians, to be fueled in part with our U. The cost of production is about 80% the cost of oil/diesel moving heaps of lowgrade. But the cost is going down from around $17 to $15 for long term viability.

Overall, we do face a generational downturn. Housing is gonna tank because.... well.... we're running short on people. Some business types want more folks coming here to keep us all pumped up. But people like Bill Gates are doing their best to cut the pop peak to within about 5% of where we're at..... and aging.....it'll be going down within the decade. China is overbuilt. Russia is trying to encourage population growth.....

About every sixty years we will get the generational downturn, and it's here. Maybe Trump can turn things around some, but the fundamental equation is the same. Decline in commodity prices, job shortages..... dunno.... robots what the hell.... people will cut spending.

Trump bubble or Trump solid economic growth?

So Franklin, just what is a reasonable inflationary target? I think we've got to face deflationary forces here.

 

[franklin]

I read all your ramblings and can't figure out what it is you are calling me out on. And, it's no secret on here that I live in Orem. Sometimes you go off the rails trying to figure people out. Your calls on alts are almost always so far out in left field that they make me chuckle a bit.

 

[babe]

I read all your ramblings and can't figure out what it is you are calling me out on. And, it's no secret on here that I live in Orem. Sometimes you go off the rails trying to figure people out. Your calls on alts are almost always so far out in left field that they make me chuckle a bit.

So you didn't believe Harambe (Sloanfeld) admitting to be Trout. hmmmm..... Trout was never very political, so I'm not sure I believe the claim either.

Pretty sure I really know nothing about alts.

So the challenge was that final line in the OP.

Keynesian economic theory. How's that supposed to work in deflation? We spend into more debt so the ball doesn't just go dead flat?

I think my dad got his lot for free from his dad in the Depression, and used a shovel and wheelbarrow to dig the basement, while mom and the first kid lived in a sort of screened porch off gramps' house. He drove outta town to get sand and gravel from some desert streambed, did all the cement that way. By 1952 the tax man said it's worth $5000. Today it's $600,000. Same bricks, same cement, same lumber. Same electric wires inside metal conduit too.

Rather than government printing funny money, I think we prosper if we can just act for our own interests, making some reasonable use of things at hand. Cut us off the land, and the guv has to haul food to our little hogans.

you spoke elsewhere of a sort of soft inflation ideal being beneficial to everyone.

guv isn't responsible for all inflation. development is a lot of the issue. The beads used to buy Staten Island were said to be worth about $24 once upon a time, but development..... all those sewers, electric conduits, water pipes, and roads..... with oh say some useful buildings here and there, has made a huge dif. Not just gov deficits.

Trump being in the White House has made American real estate more interesting to a lot of people..... Just believing we're gonna start wiping our own *** and looking out for our own interest makes a huge difference in the value of stuff American.

I like another idea. Alexander Hamilton's "American Credit System", which I think may have been the inspiration for Joseph Smith's banking idea.

 

[franklin]

So you didn't believe Harambe (Sloanfeld) admitting to be Trout. hmmmm..... Trout was never very political, so I'm not sure I believe the claim either.

Harambe is ElRoach, and you can probably find a poker game picture of him and trout and many other posters here including myself altogether somewhere. I think Jason took a group photo. Harambe was joking when he claimed that he was trout, and he's definitely not Sloanfeld.

Keynesian economic theory. How's that supposed to work in deflation? We spend into more debt so the ball doesn't just go dead flat?

If necessary. Monetarists believe in stopping deflation by any means necessary. You said you respect Milton Friedman, well, he was the king of this philosophy. Friedman was also proven wrong about inflation being "always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon" following Bernanke's QE (and the various government spending programs) that didn't create inflation as Friedman predicted. It's about more than MxV - I don't think we quite understand what, but the age and growth of population is the most obvious input at this point.

Friedrich Hayek, someone who would also be up your alley and probably more so than Friedman, also finally relented and said that deflation has no purpose in an economy. The most prominent Chicago School-Austrian economist admitted he was wrong.

Rather than government printing funny money, I think we prosper if we can just act for our own interests, making some reasonable use of things at hand. Cut us off the land, and the guv has to haul food to our little hogans.

So you want us to go back to the stone age? Barter system as opposed to "printing funny money", which is nothing more than a dysphemism term for sufficient quantities of a medium of exchange that enables prosperity?

I like another idea. Alexander Hamilton's "American Credit System", which I think may have been the inspiration for Joseph Smith's banking idea.

Hamilton wanted to use tariffs, which has been shown to reduce trade, reduce freedom of exchange, reduce alliances with co-dependent countries, and thus increase war.

As far as your main question: 2% on average is the target. The 50+ year data last time I checked is 4% compounded. That's what I use to base my financial decisions on.

Oh, and BTW, you're not the only one who grew up having to work more than what some would consider a kid should. I'm glad for you that you lived in a time when you were able to buy ranch land. I wasn't. I tried putting together a plan to grow hay one year on very cheap rental land and still couldn't make the #'s work. So yeah, I went the modern route of college instead.

 

[babe]

Harambe is ElRoach, and you can probably find a poker game picture of him and trout and many other posters here including myself altogether somewhere. I think Jason took a group photo. Harambe was joking when he claimed that he was trout, and he's definitely not Sloanfeld.





If necessary. Monetarists believe in stopping deflation by any means necessary. You said you respect Milton Friedman, well, he was the king of this philosophy. Friedman was also proven wrong about inflation being "always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon" following Bernanke's QE (and the various government spending programs) that didn't create inflation as Friedman predicted. It's about more than MxV - I don't think we quite understand what, but the age and growth of population is the most obvious input at this point.

Friedrich Hayek, someone who would also be up your alley and probably more so than Friedman, also finally relented and said that deflation has no purpose in an economy. The most prominent Chicago School-Austrian economist admitted he was wrong.




So you want us to go back to the stone age? Barter system as opposed to "printing funny money", which is nothing more than a dysphemism term for sufficient quantities of a medium of exchange that enables prosperity?




Hamilton wanted to use tariffs, which has been shown to reduce trade, reduce freedom of exchange, reduce alliances with co-dependent countries, and thus increase war.

As far as your main question: 2% on average is the target. The 50+ year data last time I checked is 4% compounded. That's what I use to base my financial decisions on.

Oh, and BTW, you're not the only one who grew up having to work more than what some would consider a kid should. I'm glad for you that you lived in a time when you were able to buy ranch land. I wasn't. I tried putting together a plan to grow hay one year on very cheap rental land and still couldn't make the #'s work. So yeah, I went the modern route of college instead.

Pretty good response.

So I went on a tangent about "inflationary" appreciation in values due to development, utility, technological gains or whatever we can muster to our advantage in making stuff productive or bringing in more cash flow.....

Now, what I need is a farmer robot. We've come a long way since Gone With The Wind. But I would be OK if I had oh twenty robots going around doing specified tasks while I sit in the shade and swill my lemonade. water efficiency technology can greatly increase productivity as well.

However, my other point was systemic cycles in demand driven by population cycles. We're facing flatter population growth worldwide, then declining population further out. Japan and Russia have been there, done that. Trying to encourage population growth from within, now.

those three paragraphs all lead, logically, to overproduction..... and eventually.... lower prices......

Some say we cannot stop this cycle. It will come, it will wash over the whole landscape, and whatever is left standing will be the great future for the next generation.....

 

[franklin]

Pretty good response.

So I went on a tangent about "inflationary" appreciation in values due to development, utility, technological gains or whatever we can muster to our advantage in making stuff productive or bringing in more cash flow.....

Now, what I need is a farmer robot. We've come a long way since Gone With The Wind. But I would be OK if I had oh twenty robots going around doing specified tasks while I sit in the shade and swill my lemonade. water efficiency technology can greatly increase productivity as well.

However, my other point was systemic cycles in demand driven by population cycles. We're facing flatter population growth worldwide, then declining population further out. Japan and Russia have been there, done that. Trying to encourage population growth from within, now.

those three paragraphs all lead, logically, to overproduction..... and eventually.... lower prices......

Some say we cannot stop this cycle. It will come, it will wash over the whole landscape, and whatever is left standing will be the great future for the next generation.....

I doubt I'll ever have an answer to this. I constantly go back and forth on it in my own head. I think we already have had severely deflationary tech forces for about 30 years. Economists started discussing this early on, and the main takeaway was always "why aren't all these advances in tech translating into real wage raises for the masses?".

My takeaway is that real wages aren't calculable because we cannot calculate a comparable CPI valuable for technologies that didn't exist. We cannot calculate the value of having a library called googling with us at almost all times. We cannot calculate the value of being able to research symptoms of disease and make an educated decision on whether or not to run to the doctor's office or just let something pass. We cannot compare prices of televisions today with those old tube TV's, which were the same price in 1970 as modern ones are today. Adjust that figure for inflation and almost every product that isn't a commodity and there's your deflation. We call that the purpose of capitalism.

The crux of your question is how can we retain some semblance of economic freedom, small government, and not taking the drive out of people, which is an important part of humanity. You said you'd be happy sitting on your porch sipping Mike's Hard Lemonade while the robots were doing all the work. No you wouldn't and neither would or should anyone else. Being overly lazy isn't satisfying.

The only solution to what you and other's worrying about this different [from the John Deere complaints of old] environment is much more socialism, government make-work programs, a new rise of co-ops to help farmers have purchasing and selling power, and a dismantling of the rise of our duopoly economy. In 100 years or so, I imagine we will have to have so many make-work programs that most of society might work for the government.

 

[babe]

well, you're right about that fake claim I'd ever really just be sitting on my arse happy to let the bots do the farm work. It would mean I have an opportunity to do something of higher value than the bots, and I really wouldn't sit and do nothing. I like being out in the sun, hydrated well enough, of course.

I fancy that most people if they cared to could do as well or better at finding productive outlets. I do like co-ops. The kind of "socialism" that still figures out cost/benefit situations and does the better things. That is more local, more direct, more accountable. I'm a member of four co-ops now. One power co-op that sends me a check once a year to share the profits, exclusive of capital improvement needs. One cattle auction co-op, two ag co-ops supplying seeds/materials. They have annual meetings and you get to volunteer your neighbors for more work!!!!!!!

 

[Rubashov]

Now, what I need is a farmer robot. We've come a long way since Gone With The Wind. But I would be OK if I had oh twenty robots going around doing specified tasks while I sit in the shade and swill my lemonade. water efficiency technology can greatly increase productivity as well.

Sounds a lot like a vision of Utopian Socialism, babe you've changed...

 

[fallenchicken]

wtf

 

[babe]

Sounds a lot like a vision of Utopian Socialism, babe you've changed...

I still have my pocket Kipling with the ode to "The Gods of the copybook headings", mate.

I'm a sorta Mo, and I recognize the socialism in the early Mormon theology, not entirely unprecedented in American religion since the Puritans started out as Christian communalists dreaming of "having all things in common"..... Well, the Puritans almost starved until they gave it up, and the Mormons antagonized their neighbors with bold talk about taking over western Missouri in one great unified collective.

Joseph Smith and Brigham Young did some interesting things with communal or collective principles, but.... alas.... the Mos made a deal with Chase the bankers and turned all Republican a little over a hundred years ago. Utah woulda been the bluest of blue states, and is still, despite the R heading, one of the more socialist communities in the United States. The LDS Welfare Program is world-class. And we can boast one great Fed Reserve Chief.... Spencer Eccles... as perhaps the most influential Fed Chief in history, who helped FDR develop our housing assistance programs.

But yes, the question of a better world brings out some of the same music in all kinds of political thinkers.

 

[babe]

I still have my pocket Kipling with the ode to "The Gods of the copybook headings", mate.

I'm a sorta Mo, and I recognize the socialism in the early Mormon theology, not entirely unprecedented in American religion since the Puritans started out as Christian communalists dreaming of "having all things in common"..... Well, the Puritans almost starved until they gave it up, and the Mormons antagonized their neighbors with bold talk about taking over western Missouri in one great unified collective.

Joseph Smith and Brigham Young did some interesting things with communal or collective principles, but.... alas.... the Mos made a deal with Chase the bankers and turned all Republican a little over a hundred years ago. Utah woulda been the bluest of blue states, and is still, despite the R heading, one of the more socialist communities in the United States. The LDS Welfare Program is world-class. And we can boast one great Fed Reserve Chief.... Spencer Eccles... as perhaps the most influential Fed Chief in history, who helped FDR develop our housing assistance programs.

But yes, the question of a better world brings out some of the same music in all kinds of political thinkers.

ps.....

As much as I decry the experts who all wanna run the world..... consider it more like I'm preaching to myself to try to shave a little ego off my own grand schemes for world governance.....