There was talk about renaming the Krugman thread for this purpose, but that seems to be going nowhere. Besides which, I feel the Krugman thread should be left to discuss Krugman while this thread can be used for more general economic discussion.
Discuss:
- The merits of competing theories.
- The role of the government in managing the economy.
- The causes of and solutions to our current economic woes.
- Comparisons between the economic systems of different countries.
- Theoretical and existing alternatives to our current market system.
edited 17th Dec '12 10:58:52 AM by Topazan
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I'm perfectly aware of that. I wouldn't have a job otherwise, but I'be also seen firsthand how it can be abused.
United Earth
I never realized that the song Sweet Dreams could apply to SCIENCE!![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
V
edited 1st Jul '16 12:57:33 PM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling On
United Earth
OMG I had always imagined it taking place in an S&M club, not in a corporate boardroom! Though it still fits; a corporate boardroom is an S&M club where the doms gather while all the subs are forbidden to enter, yet are paying all the fees. It has contracts and leather and binding and everything! 
edited 1st Jul '16 1:05:18 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
V
Osborne drops 2020 budget surplus target after Brexit vote
It was the latest setback for Osborne who was once considered a future British leader but who has not put himself forward to succeed Prime Minister David Cameron after the two men failed in their campaign to keep Britain in the EU.
"The government must provide fiscal credibility, so we will continue to be tough on the deficit but we must be realistic about achieving a surplus by the end of this decade," Osborne said in a speech on Friday.
Even before the referendum, many economists had questioned the ability of Osborne to deliver the surplus by the end of the decade because of the scale of the spending cuts or tax increases that would be required to hit it.
Martin Beck, an economist with EY ITEM Club, said Osborne's announcement could help to counter the Brexit hit to confidence in the economy.
"This is a welcome step at a time of economic uncertainty. Achieving a surplus was always set to drag on activity over the next few years," Beck said.
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said on Thursday that he expected the central bank would need to pump more monetary stimulus into the economy over the summer.
Osborne inherited a deficit of more than 10 percent of gross domestic product when he became Chancellor in 2010. Since then, the shortfall has fallen and was just under 4 percent of GDP in the 2015/16 financial year which ended in March.
When Osborne announced a new fiscal plan last year, including the 2020 surplus target, he included a clause relieving the government of the requirement to put the public finances in the black in the event of a hit to the economy.
One of the front-runners to succeed Cameron as prime minister, interior minister Theresa May, said on Thursday that she would not stick with the 2020 budget surplus target.
Britain's opposition Labour Party has criticised the target.
"He should now lay out a programme of government investment and support for businesses, bringing forward shovel-ready projects particularly in those areas hardest hit by long-term economic decline," Labour's main spokesman on the economy, lawmaker John McDonnell, said.
he included a clause relieving the government of the requirement to put the public finances in the black in the event of a hit to the economy.
What a silly idea that was.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Lost in Space
It's actually a very important idea. Governments should be free to run countercyclical fiscal policy. Requiring balanced budgets during a demand crisis is actively harmful.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Exactly what I thought. Osborne's prior idea was pure distilled idiocy.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Must-Read: Ryan Avent: Everything Is Not OK
…[But] in the short run, there is plenty to worry about…. Yields around the world were already extraordinarily low before the Brexit vote. In the days immediately after they plummeted. While equities have risen, bond yields have not. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury is 30 basis points below where it was on June 23rd. The real yield is close to zero. The 10-year gilt yield is below 1%. The yield on 10-year bonds in Germany, France and the Netherlands are basically zero. Falling yields on safe assets indicate some combination of falling expectations for growth, falling expectations for inflation and a rising risk premium….
The range of possibilities has widened, and the odds of quite a bad outcome have increased. Worryingly, central banks have very little room to respond…. Neither short- nor long-term rates can be pushed much lower. The best hope for effective monetary stimulus is asset purchases designed to weaken a country’s currency. But not everyone can depreciate simultaneously…. Quantitative easing everywhere could help if it boosted expectations for growth and inflation. But at the zero lower bound and with little hope of massive fiscal stimulus, central banks might well struggle to raise animal spirits. In a world of very low inflation and very low interest rates, people only have to cling a little more tightly to their money to tip economies into recession…
The economy is a zombie.
So... are we fucked or not?
Yes.
Yes we are.
By a combination of "The Old are screwing the young on economic gains", "The markets are more concerned about dividends than health", "Governments found a sexy bulimic girlfriend in the form of austerity", "Crushing debt" and "Everyone is afraid to spend their money".
Something's Got To Give.
V
Looking at state of world Politics, it'll be the Governments that'll give, and the Markets will have to take it...
Fuck you, Fascist sympathizers
Long as we get Hillary in before the next crash and stock up the Supreme Court.
Then add in peak oil...
I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies
The economy's pretty much a time bomb. Wall Street's ridiculous highs have little to do with the actual state of the economy outside the wealthy increasing their own wealth.
Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.
Who pulls the Jenga piece that makes it all fall down.
V
Who says the piece hasn't already been pulled?
the portable electronics industry and Elon Musk solved that one already - The internal combustion engine and car combo is a walking corpse that hasn't quite realized it's dead yet. The tesla 3 is the model T moment, and what it heralds is that everyone is going to switch, because electric cars are just better. (and cheaper to drive) So if you want to panic about oil, you need to switch to a new tune. Here let me queue it up for you:
1: Oil has some uses other than cars, and those uses will put a floor of about 20-30 dollars /barrel under the price.
2: At that price, the only people not actively loosing money on pumping oil up is the middle east.
3: But at that price, the middle east also has their economies implode.
4:... oops
edited 2nd Jul '16 11:33:36 AM by Izeinsummer
Jupiterian Local
You realize that most of the power that goes into electric cars still comes from fossil fuels, right? They're just burning it at the power plant instead of in the car itself. Renewables are a growing, but still small, portion of most nation's energy supply.
Even with current technology, we could have 100% non-greenhouse-gas-emitting energy by using a combination of renewables and nuclear, but the political will to make that happen just isn't there.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
Electric cars are awful. They have a short range, too long a charge time and don't sound fun.
Maybe if you go for something like the Porsche 918 but even then that's still primarily running on gasoline.
They're not even that good for the environment, once you factor in their manufacturing and things like the lithium mines needed for their batteries they're actually ruinous for the ecosystem.
edited 2nd Jul '16 11:45:00 AM by LeGarcon
Oh really when?
V
And how will the car last? 50 years, or just 10?
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
That too, my car is almost 20 years old and has 300,000 miles and still runs perfectly and has never had any heavy work done on it. I've got serious doubts an electric car could do the same. Not without repeated engine rebuilds and battery bank replacements.
And at that point the common man can't afford to own one and for a lot of America not owning a car is effectively a death sentence. You won't be able to go to work, go buy food, anything.
edited 2nd Jul '16 11:51:20 AM by LeGarcon
Oh really when?
V
That would be regarded as old here — in Britain, after about 10 years old cars start to be scrapped in quantity (which makes ~20 years around the point where enthusiasts start to buy them for restoration). That may be because vehicle age is shown on the registration plate.
edited 2nd Jul '16 12:01:38 PM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling On
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
America's big and has a lot of people in it. We can't afford to start scrapping cars that young. Not when in the south or the midwest it's no exaggeration to say that every individual needs their own car to be able to live.
Oh really when?
The law in the night
The best approach I've seen was GM Chevrolet concept of a hybrid fuel car where you have a gasoline fueled engine that powers a battery which then transfers power to the electric motors that drive the car. Using a high efficiency combustion generator focused only on generating electrical power coupled with an efficient electric engine provided both horse power and autonomy of a combustion engine car and the a decent share of fuel efficiency of an electric car.
Internal combustion has the issue of having a horrible energy efficiency, 20% to 30% of all the energy on the fuel is used and the rest is wasted, meanwhile for electric cars the energy efficiency can vary from 60% to 90% depending of the model and the batteries. Then you account for some other factors how electric cars engines don't consume energy when idle thus reducing the amounts of energy consumed, specially inside urban areas.
Even when you account for the electricity being generated with fossil fuels, using them to fuel electric cars would still be more energy efficient than just having all the logistic hurdle and energy expenditure in the fuel refining process to diesel or gasoline, fuel transportation in pipelines and tankers to storing and pumping fuel to cars.
Compared to electric distribution where you already have a cheap, easy to use and build distribution infrastructure like power lines and none of the additional steps needed to distribute the energy when compared to combustion fuels. Where you only need to generate the energy at the power generation station and distribute it with the grid.
TL;DR: Even with electric cars being powered by power plants burning fossil fuels, they would be a lot less energy intensive than combustion engine cars, which also means a smaller carbon footprint and less fuel consumed and wasted.
Also I'd like to add that electric cars can also potentially last longer than regular cars, given that you change the batteries for recycling as the same way you would give your car a regular check up or preventive maintenance, due to needing less moving and breakable parts than regular cars.
Inter arma enim silent leges
Another problem is that there is no substitute for petroleum based fertilizer, and when the quantity they pump goes down, the price per barrel goes up.
I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies