That would be better, yet here we are. The really stupid thing that despite the self-evident truth that the cost of tackling problems like these becomes more expensive the more severe and frequent they get, the "profit now, fix later/never/deny it's a problem to start with" mentality still hasn't shown any sign of being overcome to any appreciable extent. It's seems we're quite happy watch the world burn (literally, in the case of California) as long as someone else pays the ever larger and more frequent bills to fix the damage over and over again.
That the ultimate bagholders for those bills are those paying taxes and rising insurance premiums (e.g. pretty much everyone and every company) just doesn't seem to register.
Yes it is really frustrating. It seems to come from a mentality in the leaders that they can personally benefit from all the short term profits and then get out of the game before it all goes to crap. It looks like a very dangerous game.
I have similar feelings when they keep saying we need to increase the birth rate due to an ageing population. Sure, that gives more potential tax payers in the short term, but why not borrow money to cover the shortfall now, so when the population drops there are more resources serving fewer people which combined with automation can give a greater quality of life. But those in charge do not care about quality of life for the masses.
-- Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
I have similar feelings when they keep saying we need to increase the birth rate due to an ageing population. Sure, that gives more potential tax payers in the short term, but why not borrow money to cover the shortfall now, so when the population drops there are more resources serving fewer people which combined with automation can give a greater quality of life. But those in charge do not care about quality of life for the masses.
My question here would be what are we getting for that borrowing?
I see three possibilities: borrowing for an emergency, borrowing for an investment, or borrowing for an elective purpose that neither fills an emergency or helps you pay back the loan. In car terms: if your car breaks down and you need to fix it in order to work and do your other necessary tasks - that's case one. If you buy a car with extremely good gas mileage equivalent with a reasonable expectation that you'll pay for the loan with the savings in fuel equivalent - that's case two. Case three would be buying a sports car because you want to drive something fast and red.
My view is that quality of life is solidly option three. A better quality of life isn't an emergency. Nor is it an investment. Having a great quality of life now doesn't help you have a great quality of life later. It doesn't help you in the future.
That leads to my earlier question, when are we paying that back? When a government borrows money, it borrows money against society's future. There should be something for the future in that. In a situation like the above where one is borrowing merely to cover the gap between resources provided by workers and the recipients of the entitlement, it's particularly hazardous because nothing ever improves. The demographics will be the same decades from now with that government borrowing all along, getting deeper and deeper into debt. As the saying goes, if something can't continue forever, then it won't. In this case, it will stop with government failing to pay (either directly or indirectly via inflation) and quality of life dropping for a while - possibly with a end to that government and a retrenching of that society at a lower level of quality of life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12, @02:09PM
(6 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday March 12, @02:09PM (#1396136)
"it will stop with government failing to pay"
Not when a government chooses to not pay, ehich is what is happening now instead of doing the hard work of building up society. Sadly some are blinded by greed and a simplified 'logical' approach derived from the axiom Greed Is Good.
Republicans are causing the crisis now, and I am sure they will insist that all the people harmed now is a smaller price to pay. All to allow a small group to steal public funds through corruption.
"quality of life dropping for a while - possibly with a end to that government and a retrenching of that society at a lower level of quality of life."
Guess you are not so optimistic about the MAGA plan.
Not when a government chooses to not pay, ehich is what is happening now instead of doing the hard work of building up society. Sadly some are blinded by greed and a simplified 'logical' approach derived from the axiom Greed Is Good.
"Hard work of building up society" would be investment. It's not merely vague "quality of life". My view is that this is another sort of blind greed - casually squandering Other Peoples' Money for garbage all while dogmatically assuming it's going to be good.
Republicans are causing the crisis now, and I am sure they will insist that all the people harmed now is a smaller price to pay. All to allow a small group to steal public funds through corruption.
How does that differ from before? Wrong side stealing funds?
My view is that this is better than merely holding course with the status quo. At least a different set of political merchants are milking the beast. And we now have precedent in turning over this crowd. I suggest some history [soylentnews.org] lessons are in order.
Another book on the subject is Zaibatsu: The Rise and Fall of Family Enterprise Groups in Japan [amazon.com] which discusses the Japanese business environment from the beginning of Meiji Japan in 1853 through to the Second World War. Zaibatsus were huge family conglomerates that often had tremendous levels of integration and have since morphed into the keiretsu of modern Japan (for example, the "Big Six" [wikipedia.org], each with a large bank at its core). One notable lesson is the surprisingly low value of being purely a "political merchant" in the long run. When you are connected to the government, you can obtain some very powerful and very profitable advantages. But the problem is that your people don't stay in control. And as a result, the more that you milked the process and made enemies, the worse it is for you when those enemies assume power. Meanwhile businesses which have a sound business relatively independent of politics tend to fare well in the long run, though at the time they often leveraged that with some degree of political maneuver.
A fair number of political merchants ended up on the wrong side of the Trump administration. Similarly, the most eager participants with Trump will get their due when Trump and his supporters lose power. Remember the pillow guy still?
"quality of life dropping for a while - possibly with a end to that government and a retrenching of that society at a lower level of quality of life."
Guess you are not so optimistic about the MAGA plan.
I think it'll be a shitshow. I just don't think the borrowing-for-"quality of life" way will be any better because it's similarly delusional. My view remains that if your quality of life depends on endless borrowing, then that's a big sign you need to cut back.
I find it remarkable how the signs are so obvious that the US spends too much (*) yet we have we have all this heavy political fighting over who gets to put more water in the boat.
(*) there's always the arugment that we're not taxing enough rather than spending too much. My view is that if you're handwaving about quality of life or hard work of building up society rather than actual stuff, then that's a strong sign that we're spending too much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 13, @01:52PM
(4 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday March 13, @01:52PM (#1396242)
You are the user that argues about quality of life going down whenever people discuss moving away from oil and gas. Now suddenly it is fine no big deal.
What a ridiculous display of propaganda rhetoric from a super cereal non trumper.
You are the user that argues about quality of life going down whenever people discuss moving away from oil and gas. Now suddenly it is fine no big deal.
No. I argue that we have plenty of real world examples where quality of life went down because we moved away from oil and gas in an incompetent manner. That's the same problem here. I support systems that naturally generate better quality of life, not systems where you have to borrow ever increasing amounts to maintain a particular standard of quality of life.
Here's the takeaway that I want you to get. Economics is called the "dismal science" in large part because it's often about how you can't always get what you want, and sometimes the straightforward-appearing path doesn't go where you think it should. What other field has to repeatedly deal with people who say "I want X", try to force the economy to give them X, and then are surprised when the economy changes in a way that X doesn't happen? Physics doesn't have to deal with the inevitable treatises on why greed is bad either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 13, @04:46PM
(2 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday March 13, @04:46PM (#1396261)
You are slow on the uptake if you are just figuring out that economics is not real science. Physics sure does impact your Greed Is Good philosophy. Unless you are God, which often seems to be your position
Look up the definition of science. Economics as a typical empirical study checks off the boxes. Past that, there's nothing serious in your post. All I can say is that this is a really dumb excuse for being ignorant about economics. Given the sudden drop in the intelligence of the AC posts I I can only surmise that you're my stalker AC again. Ever thought about getting a life?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by zocalo on Thursday February 27, @05:38PM (12 children)
That the ultimate bagholders for those bills are those paying taxes and rising insurance premiums (e.g. pretty much everyone and every company) just doesn't seem to register.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Saturday March 01, @04:52PM (11 children)
Yes it is really frustrating. It seems to come from a mentality in the leaders that they can personally benefit from all the short term profits and then get out of the game before it all goes to crap. It looks like a very dangerous game.
I have similar feelings when they keep saying we need to increase the birth rate due to an ageing population. Sure, that gives more potential tax payers in the short term, but why not borrow money to cover the shortfall now, so when the population drops there are more resources serving fewer people which combined with automation can give a greater quality of life. But those in charge do not care about quality of life for the masses.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 4, Informative) by turgid on Sunday March 02, @04:06PM
but why not borrow money to cover the shortfall now
Because that would be Keynsian, in other words "Undemocratic Marxist." It's antithetical to Alt-Wrong dogma.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 10, @09:46PM (9 children)
And pay back when? My take is that if you don't borrow now, then you won't have borrow tomorrow just to pay the interest off.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday March 10, @10:35PM (8 children)
You pay it back once the population has dropped significantly enough that you can downsize everything without reducing quality of life per capita.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 11, @05:11AM (7 children)
My question here would be what are we getting for that borrowing?
I see three possibilities: borrowing for an emergency, borrowing for an investment, or borrowing for an elective purpose that neither fills an emergency or helps you pay back the loan. In car terms: if your car breaks down and you need to fix it in order to work and do your other necessary tasks - that's case one. If you buy a car with extremely good gas mileage equivalent with a reasonable expectation that you'll pay for the loan with the savings in fuel equivalent - that's case two. Case three would be buying a sports car because you want to drive something fast and red.
My view is that quality of life is solidly option three. A better quality of life isn't an emergency. Nor is it an investment. Having a great quality of life now doesn't help you have a great quality of life later. It doesn't help you in the future.
That leads to my earlier question, when are we paying that back? When a government borrows money, it borrows money against society's future. There should be something for the future in that. In a situation like the above where one is borrowing merely to cover the gap between resources provided by workers and the recipients of the entitlement, it's particularly hazardous because nothing ever improves. The demographics will be the same decades from now with that government borrowing all along, getting deeper and deeper into debt. As the saying goes, if something can't continue forever, then it won't. In this case, it will stop with government failing to pay (either directly or indirectly via inflation) and quality of life dropping for a while - possibly with a end to that government and a retrenching of that society at a lower level of quality of life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 12, @02:09PM (6 children)
"it will stop with government failing to pay"
Not when a government chooses to not pay, ehich is what is happening now instead of doing the hard work of building up society. Sadly some are blinded by greed and a simplified 'logical' approach derived from the axiom Greed Is Good.
Republicans are causing the crisis now, and I am sure they will insist that all the people harmed now is a smaller price to pay. All to allow a small group to steal public funds through corruption.
"quality of life dropping for a while - possibly with a end to that government and a retrenching of that society at a lower level of quality of life."
Guess you are not so optimistic about the MAGA plan.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 12, @09:13PM (5 children)
"Hard work of building up society" would be investment. It's not merely vague "quality of life". My view is that this is another sort of blind greed - casually squandering Other Peoples' Money for garbage all while dogmatically assuming it's going to be good.
How does that differ from before? Wrong side stealing funds?
My view is that this is better than merely holding course with the status quo. At least a different set of political merchants are milking the beast. And we now have precedent in turning over this crowd. I suggest some history [soylentnews.org] lessons are in order.
A fair number of political merchants ended up on the wrong side of the Trump administration. Similarly, the most eager participants with Trump will get their due when Trump and his supporters lose power. Remember the pillow guy still?
I think it'll be a shitshow. I just don't think the borrowing-for-"quality of life" way will be any better because it's similarly delusional. My view remains that if your quality of life depends on endless borrowing, then that's a big sign you need to cut back.
I find it remarkable how the signs are so obvious that the US spends too much (*) yet we have we have all this heavy political fighting over who gets to put more water in the boat.
(*) there's always the arugment that we're not taxing enough rather than spending too much. My view is that if you're handwaving about quality of life or hard work of building up society rather than actual stuff, then that's a strong sign that we're spending too much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 13, @01:52PM (4 children)
You are the user that argues about quality of life going down whenever people discuss moving away from oil and gas. Now suddenly it is fine no big deal.
What a ridiculous display of propaganda rhetoric from a super cereal non trumper.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 13, @02:55PM (3 children)
No. I argue that we have plenty of real world examples where quality of life went down because we moved away from oil and gas in an incompetent manner. That's the same problem here. I support systems that naturally generate better quality of life, not systems where you have to borrow ever increasing amounts to maintain a particular standard of quality of life.
Here's the takeaway that I want you to get. Economics is called the "dismal science" in large part because it's often about how you can't always get what you want, and sometimes the straightforward-appearing path doesn't go where you think it should. What other field has to repeatedly deal with people who say "I want X", try to force the economy to give them X, and then are surprised when the economy changes in a way that X doesn't happen? Physics doesn't have to deal with the inevitable treatises on why greed is bad either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 13, @04:46PM (2 children)
You are slow on the uptake if you are just figuring out that economics is not real science. Physics sure does impact your Greed Is Good philosophy. Unless you are God, which often seems to be your position
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 13, @06:29PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20, @04:34PM
Science: magic word used by libertarians to confirm or deny their personal feelings