How do we fix the economy???

Annachie wrote:Tensh. It's not just the right that only looks as far forward as the next election.
It usually takes someone special to not do it.

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If poverty among blacks is due to whites, why has the poverty rate among black married couples been in single digits every year since 1994, despite far higher poverty rates among other blacks? Do most white employers even know -- or care -- which blacks are married?

Anyone who is being serious -- as distinguished from being political -- would have to take many factors into account before saying that male-female income differences, or black-white differences, are due to people with identical qualifications and experience being paid differently.

Both from the same source.


Of course, we have never noticed how much most politicos put forward "solutions" that produce more control for them, while carefully not mentioning any root causes.

BTW, I read that a while back, New Zealand managed to reduce much government bloat. Can anyone from NZ tell us more about this, if true

We could still use a good sarcasm emoticon. Any suggestions?

NZ did it by cutting things too far.
They now have problems with education, defense, infrastructure, etc. Admitadly the earthquakes didn't help though the rebuilding effort is no doubt helping their ecconomy.
I think we've had a drop in Kiwi's moving toAustralia

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I've got New Zealand relatives and friends. Great people and their accent is amusing.
Don't use their cost cutting as a template. Their air force has nothing that can shoot, Hercules transport and such. Their defence strategy is basically any invader has to get past big brother Australia who will call uncle USA for help, and who the hell would want to invade anyway.
Lots of other shortfalls.

Annachie wrote:Tensh. It's not just the right that only looks as far forward as the next election.
It usually takes someone special to not do it.

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Of course not. But on the right, you will find it to be normal, excepting the occasional "visionary" or "hardcore", problem of course being with that, that half of THOSE have so fucked up ideas about what will or should happen in the future, and how to get there, that there´s absolutely no relation to reality.

On the left, the unrealistic ones are at least being unrealistic in ways that are usually beneficial to at least some extent instead of destructive to society (albeit too often also expensive).
The lefties also have a much greater constant influx of worker-background people, who often start out with a more longterm viewpoint.

While the greens too often have people TOO focused on longterm. Problem is that they´re often right per se, but extremely unpractical in trying to make things happen in ways that does not cause as much problems as they get rid of.

Daryl wrote:I've got New Zealand relatives and friends. Great people and their accent is amusing.
Don't use their cost cutting as a template. Their air force has nothing that can shoot, Hercules transport and such. Their defence strategy is basically any invader has to get past big brother Australia who will call uncle USA for help, and who the hell would want to invade anyway.
Lots of other shortfalls.

Yeah, kinda scary showoff of how to REALLY REALLY NOT handle budget cuts.

Of course, they´re feeling the effects by now and it will only get worse.

The Fundoo Professor Wrote
All crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment.

A principle that has served me is to set priorities well. You can't totally neglect the present or the future becomes moot. You can't totally neglect long range planning, or you freeze up.

In investing, some people suggest the 80/20 rule: invest 80% in what is solid, even if slow growing, 20% in possible rockets. Another splits three ways: slow and reliable; high yielding; and high growth possibilities.

This reminds me of the Pareto rule, that 20% produces most of the results - whether successes or failures. In some situations, it is more like 90/10 or even 95/5. Look at the income distribution in some of the showier occupations - a few big stars do well, most don't.

An example would be the Laffer curve. FTWDK, if taxes are at 0%, the government has no income; but otherwise, if taxes are at 100% there is also no income because nobody will work just to have it all taken away. So there is a maximum income point. Near or above that, there is no margin of safety.

The weak spot is that politicians can always find an excuse to spend more when income increases. One advantage of a real free economy is that those who do poorly fail and get out of the way. Another is that those who succeed get a chance to do more. This is often ruined by some form of crony economy, where what really counts is who you are with, instead of how well you keep costs down and value up.

Some items from other bloggers -

There is not enough value in burger flipping to support a middle-class lifestyle, and playing with numbers can’t change that.

"Sooner or later, the United States government has to learn that you cannot run an economy just cutting each other's hair"

Want to bet? Probably the change will only come in a crisis, and there is a strong chance that it will be the wrong change.

Also someone here has their signature about price and the difference between cost and value.

DDHvi wrote:In investing, some people suggest the 80/20 rule: invest 80% in what is solid, even if slow growing, 20% in possible rockets. Another splits three ways: slow and reliable; high yielding; and high growth possibilities.

I prefer to split my investment a different way, geographically.

There are no "solid" investments, end of story. There are more and less likely to act certain ways, but anyone who thinks ANY kind of investment is "solid" risks getting a panic attack eventually, because ALL stocks and shit crashes occasionally. And sometimes even the most solid stuff crashes completely.

So my investment is in investment funds divided up regionally. Equal share in one focused on Japan, one on Russia, one on EU/USA and one global with a specific industry focus instead.

All 4 tend to increase roughly the same over time, but over short time, it´s very common that 1 or 2 drops, while the others remain more unchanged or goes up.
Of course, at best, all 4 goes up.

As an example, checking right now, with the not so great market recently(last year was so much better it´s not funny), only the Russian fund has gone up since Jan 1st, but right today, it´s down 2% while the Japan and EU/USA goes up about .5%.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... ansas.html

I would like to see a GOP-supporter's response to the content of the article I linked,

Mine is spread over a wide variety of investments. Investment houses that I rent out (not slums at the bottom but middling that will always get rented) which have returned about 5% plus about 10% capital gain so far -
my superannuation fund (over which mix I have some control) owns shopping centres in the UK and Australia plus a mix of shares and other stuff (about 8% tax free) - things to avoid expenditure like solar panels and a few acres - and at the bottom of it is a rock solid government worker pension, which enables me to be cheekier in other investments that I might be otherwise.

Tenshinai wrote:

DDHvi wrote:In investing, some people suggest the 80/20 rule: invest 80% in what is solid, even if slow growing, 20% in possible rockets. Another splits three ways: slow and reliable; high yielding; and high growth possibilities.

I prefer to split my investment a different way, geographically.

There are no "solid" investments, end of story. There are more and less likely to act certain ways, but anyone who thinks ANY kind of investment is "solid" risks getting a panic attack eventually, because ALL stocks and shit crashes occasionally. And sometimes even the most solid stuff crashes completely.

So my investment is in investment funds divided up regionally. Equal share in one focused on Japan, one on Russia, one on EU/USA and one global with a specific industry focus instead.

All 4 tend to increase roughly the same over time, but over short time, it´s very common that 1 or 2 drops, while the others remain more unchanged or goes up.
Of course, at best, all 4 goes up.

As an example, checking right now, with the not so great market recently(last year was so much better it´s not funny), only the Russian fund has gone up since Jan 1st, but right today, it´s down 2% while the Japan and EU/USA goes up about .5%.

Nico wrote:http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/03/gop-must-answer-for-what-it-did-to-kansas.html

I would like to see a GOP-supporter's response to the content of the article I linked,

Kansas - The article references Kansas's economic theory - the classic slash taxes get government out of the way and the economy will soar model. And the article as is typical for left wing media showcases the downsides of the governmental budget cut portion of the plan. As is would be expected the WSJ showcases what upsides are measurable to date.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/seeded-with ... 1431729743

Left and right are both cherry picking statistics to fit their world view.

For my personal opinion: The changes were put in place during the 2010-13 time period. So they've basically be in place for about 3 years. At this point I'm with the too soon to tell crowd. The theory is that the tax cuts and other business friendly measures will attract new businesses to Kansas and inspire Kansas residents to start their own businesses or expand existing ones. Well the truth is that starting new businesses, attracting businesses movement etc takes time and one shouldn't expect to see a lot of economic growth in a 3 year time period (no matter how much the cheerleaders promise immediate gratification). But one would expect to see immediate pain. I really think that this needs to be evaluated at 10 years out not at 3 years.

My best crystal ball guess for a 10 year reading: Economic growth will improve but not nearly as much as the cheerleaders hope. The budget cut pain will be reduced as alternative solutions are found. However this may actually be too far. I tend to be a big proponent of the "too much of anything" is bad theory and there is a genuine possibility that this plan is too much. Therefore I love the fact it was tried at the state level not the Federal one. I like trying these sorts of ideas as small scale before trying to scale up.




Lousiana - Louisiana isn't the best test case. Hurricane Katrina wrecked the state and that sort of damage can be long term (draconian population reduction as residents who fled don't come back, industries who try and fail to recover and then close etc etc). So a lot of the economic moves were really desperation moves, bribes to keep industry etc in the state.

The economic desperation moves didn't really work that well, the article is correct there. And since most of them occurred earlier than in Kansas there has been more time to evaluate their efficacy.

On the other hand the education desperation moves (ignored by the article's cherry picking) did work. After the hurricane wrecked the New Orleans school system, they switched by necessity to charter schools. Educational achievement (K-12) has soared ever since.

So Louisiana is a mixed bag. Some of their post hurricane desperation moves worked, some didn't.



Then there is some anti-Republican rhetoric about how the tax plans they are promising are unrealistic. Politicians promising exaggerated claims. To quote Casablana "I'm shocked shocked that gambling is going on in Rick's."





Basically the big problem is that neither party's economic plans are working. We desperately need some new ideas on how to fix the economy. The Republican solution to everything is cut taxes. The Democratic solution to everything is more welfare of various sorts. Neither seems to work the way it's proponents hope. So back to the title of the thread. "How do we fix the economy?" There are about 11 pages of ideas here. Some of them similar to portions of ideas presented by politicians some quite different. What are your thoughts on the various proposals Nico?