The General Economics Thread

Real estate is probably still the most stable asset to hold.

Some in the Chinese community over here consider it bad luck to sell real estate. Must keep it in the family.

Buy inland real-estate so it will become valuable beachfront property in fifty years.

. Unless the country's Taiwan or whichever country likes to sprinkle giant cement jackstones along its shoreline.

Singapore also does crazy well with land reclamation. There was a documentary wherein they converted waste plastic into landfill.

Anyway, unless they are stupid, beachfront owners (now) should know the many ways to keep their property from eroding away.

Singapore does crazy well with just about everything really.

Anchorage is looking at November and December rain again. Can't say I'm unhappy about this development.

Just finished chapter 1 of the robots are rising book. Most of it felt familiar, read about those bots already, but the ones I hadn't read about are... Ouch.

Japan already has strawberry picking robot which can identify by shade of color. Cloud computing + robots = Borg. Radiologists are doomed.

China's manufacturing sector is going robots. No surprise there. I've heard they want the call center biz. I expect chapter 2 to highlight how service jobs are doomed.

I'm curious about that book myself. If you're reading it, I'd love to see your continuing thoughts. I'm doing a similar thing about NeuroTribes, a book about autism, in another thread.

I'm very interested in learning more about how far robots have come or where they may go next. I read an article about a "robot kitchen", but it was barely even in what would be called its infancy - it could only make recipes if ingredients were placed in exact locations.

. iPad refresh ate my post. Dammit. So here's rush-y reply.

Not the entire kitchen yet. Right now, it's more like mini factory machines. There's a burger bot that can make 300 per hour. Think donut making machine with tubes for burger materials.

The ones in way more immediate danger are the cashiers and waiters. What Eatsa is doing, and there's a discount sushi chain that uses both conveyer belts and touch pads.

Chapter 2 was like a crash course of the USA economy.

Thanks. I'm gonna read about Eatsa right now. If it's relevant to this thread (and it probably will be, as the book is about how robots will affect the economy after all), I think it would be great if you continued to keep us up to date with any interesting information that you find in the book. It could also possibly spark some interesting discussions.

Well, chapter 2 pretty much makes me think that (these days) Keynes and inducing job growth isn't as directly proportional as it used to be.

Pretty much the 1% used the bailout money to further increase productivity via technology. So, even if though USA GDP recovered (shockingly fast), it wasn't because there were more jobs over there. At least 9 million jobs (still) missing. That's why the term - Jobless Recovery.

The book also compared income equality in the USA as like that of the Philippines (wince). I'm just going to assume that there's a lesser chance of America's 1% running off and leaving huge debt for the rest of the population to pay.

Chapter 3 is mainly why the buggy whip argument can't be applied to information technology.

So, my country (Argentina) is about to have presidential elections this sunday, and one of the candidates says his minister of economy will follow a Developmentalist line of thought. Is this something I should be worried about?

To be honest it sounds like more of a system for talking about economics than an economic system.

Edit:partly it sounds mercanitilistic though, which would raise the price of living.

edited 20th Nov '15 4:11:37 AM by Kzickas

Seems to make sense, when the US was starting out it loved to tariff the shit out of everything. Of course everything went to shit when we lifted those tariffs.

When the US started out was in the age of mercantilism, everyone had high tariffs back then. The consensus of economic thought since has been that mercantilism was pretty much a net negative.

What is the buggy whip argument?

. Buggy whip is horse whip. Popular argument against the folks who worry about tech killing jobs.

Someone already developed a robot which can experiment and come up with scientific theories, on its own. Jesus Christ.

Finished the book. Have to admit that the last chapter puts out a pretty compelling argument for guaranteed minimum wage replacing welfare. I can see how it can simplify things... but I'll only consider voting for it if the junk food/drink industry is heavily regulated. Plus, I'm worried it may increase drug use.

And something has to be massively done with the healthcare system first.

Ah, you come around finally. Yes, if robots (more properly, technological capital) are to take over the world, everyone left in the economic dust must be supported by redistributive taxation.

. If my country was like the Scandinavian countries with good public healthcare and good public education systems, then even 60 percent of income is a bargain. They are also famously anti-junk food.

However, if I'm still expected to pay for decent healthcare and education, 30 percent is my limit. I'd up it to 40% if I was as immune to junk food as I wish I was.

Btw, so long as the Republicans have majority in both houses, I wouldn't bet on Keynes being better than Austerity, in dealing with the tech apocalypse or bringing back jobs. You'll end up with more fabulously expensive gas stations in Iraq.

The political angle is crucial, of course. As long as Republicans hold Congress, and thus the nation's purse-strings, then a rational economic policy is impossible.

Anyway, you're still thinking about taxation as a percentage of labor-income, but under this near-future scenario you discuss, most people won't have any labor-income at all, or rather they'll have a basic stipend for living expenses and the ability, if they wish, to take jobs to earn more than that basic stipend.

The funding for this would come from the capital sector that's providing all the goods and services that people consume. The government would be acting as the guarantor of demand — essentially, producers would pay the government for the privilege of having customers so they can sell products.

edited 20th Nov '15 9:05:07 AM by Fighteer

Can't the Government provide the funding, or maybe take over the means of production, as well?

In a true post-scarcity society, yes, but we're talking about a post-scarcity capitalist society, implying that we retain some semblance of a private economy.

. I was already pro free housing, electricity, water, internet connection, libraries for a long time.

And for those, I expect the govt. to not pay jacked up prices. Unfortunately, at this time, I do not have confidence in my govt. nor in the US govt. to not misuse funds. Especially with the current national debt levels.

The robots book had a chapter all about the US healthcare system. Such rampant piracy. Right now, I can't help but think that the Republicans control most of it.

Govt. tend to be way too inefficient. Unless... we get the Singaporeans or Taiwanese to manage... Or maybe the Germans.

A guaranteed minimum wage would theoretically avoid the bureaucratic hassle of welfare programs. Unfortunately, according to the book, not a country has done so, though Switzerland may vote on it in the future.

edited 20th Nov '15 9:20:56 AM by probablyinsane

I think you mean guaranteed living wage; most countries have a minimum wage already, albeit often an insufficient one.

Anyway, whether you trust government or not, some agency has to act as the vehicle for providing the guaranteed income, and the money to do so has to come from the capital owners who are profiting from the people getting said income and buying their products.

For an economy to work, the money has to go from consumer to producer to consumer, and so on. Break that cycle and you no longer have an economy.

Not a guaranteed minimum wage, a minimum basic income. The two are subtly different - MBI is for everyone, including those who don't work, and is paid by the government. Minimum wage is for workers, paid by their employers.

MBI would reduce, but not eliminate, the bureaucracy around Social Security/SSI/SSD/DAC/other alphabet soup for supporting people who don't get a living wage, though obviously other supports such as healthcare and housing aid need to remain. (Personally, I'd like food stamps flushed and replaced with cash benefits, because they kind of assume that the person receiving food stamps has any means of cooking their food.)

And Singapore, as I've said many times, is an alien case - it's also a city-state, which is much easier to manage. Running the US like Singapore would be very difficult (for starters, you'd have to get rid of public participation in politics).

edited 20th Nov '15 9:59:35 AM by Ramidel

The book calls it guaranteed minimum income or basic guaranteed income.

I think the more proper term is guaranteed minimum "allowance". The book proposes 10k annual allowance per adult between 21 and 65. It would cost 2 trillion, but should only need an additional 1 trillion because it will replace the welfare programs which cost 1 trillion.

Basically, welfare wise, the govt. just collects and redistributes. It will be up to the capitalists to figure out how to get a piece of that 2 trillion market.