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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

Trivialis Since: Oct, 2011
#5726: Jul 23rd 2013 at 10:16:37 AM

@Fighteer

I think that's just undermining the weight of personal help. It just sounds like helping a specific person (a close friend, for instance, or someone in Quickie Questions thread) is a zero-sum game because some other people in the world won't get that help, and will be out-competed by that person's superiority.

The reason we don't hand out $10 grand is because that's also an aforementioned "big change". We agree that (at least putting aside more long-term side benefits for the moment) that it's a desirable thing to do at the moment. But if that doesn't happen, we shouldn't stop the lesser provisional measures.

edited 23rd Jul '13 10:21:36 AM by Trivialis

Wildcard Since: Jun, 2012
#5727: Jul 23rd 2013 at 10:19:38 AM

I really think the best system would be nobody was homeless and only through work could you acquire luxuries. Instead of the awful "you miss one day and we can fire you and you can lose your home" system we got in a lot of places.

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#5728: Jul 23rd 2013 at 10:24:39 AM

Eh, I disagree. In a hypothetical economic system, I would still want people to be responsible for carrying their share of the burden. Assuming that, in our hypothetical economy, there is a sufficient jobs-to-people ratio that we can have everyone employed, if you don't work, you shouldn't eat.

Unemployment is complicated right now on account of the fact that there just aren't enough jobs to staff everyone who needs one, but in an ideal economic situation, the only excuse for being unemployed for six months should be that you're just not willing to work, and if that's the case, then society shouldn't have to carry you.

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Wildcard Since: Jun, 2012
#5729: Jul 23rd 2013 at 10:31:03 AM

I personally don't understand that idea, I work and plan on working all my life. But if someone wants to be a stay at home mom or dad or something they should be capable of making that choice. Personally when we have enough resources so that anyone can eat let them eat, but if they want a a luxury car or a nice meal out then make them work. Stuff like food and a roof over your head shouldn't be considered a luxury.

shimaspawn from Here and Now Since: May, 2010 Relationship Status: In your bunk
#5730: Jul 23rd 2013 at 10:31:21 AM

I am in so much pain most days that it's amazing I can get out of bed. I can't stand still for more than five minutes without literally passing out. Bending down and standing up too much again causes the same effect. It's caused by neurological issues and low blood pressure. This means I effectively can't hold most retail jobs and it makes school very hard because I miss deadlines because I can't actually think for pain some days.

I currently work as a live in caretaker for my grandmother running errands for her and driving her around, but full time employment in most fields really isn't an option for me. Not when I can't be sure I can even function on a daily basis.

Not everyone is physically capable of working.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Trivialis Since: Oct, 2011
#5731: Jul 23rd 2013 at 10:34:11 AM

Tobias is talking about an ideal economy. Everyone would contribute however much one can, with adjustments for disabilities.

Such economic conditions are not very feasible, but a useful limiting case for modeling.

edited 23rd Jul '13 10:34:35 AM by Trivialis

Wildcard Since: Jun, 2012
#5732: Jul 23rd 2013 at 10:35:11 AM

I guess were talking about a different ideal economy then. I'm talking about one where there is more than enough for everyone.

Karkadinn Karkadinn from New Orleans, Louisiana Since: Jul, 2009
Karkadinn
#5733: Jul 23rd 2013 at 10:36:11 AM

@Tobias:

That's an antiquated notion of labor, based on ideas of resource scarcity where everyone really did need to chip in, because if they didn't, we wouldn't have enough necessities for them. But things like food and clothing are no longer constrained by supply. And as technology advances, meaningful human labor - at least, as defined as full-time nine to five employment - is only going to exist in fewer and fewer numbers. This isn't just a temporary setback, although our economic problems have made it more blatant. It's an overall trend where companies are able to do more with less workers, leaving the rest out in the cold. It's only going to get worse still as our technology and our strategies for labor optimization get better.

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.
Enkufka Wandering Student ಠ_ಠ from Bay of White fish Since: Dec, 2009
Wandering Student ಠ_ಠ
#5734: Jul 23rd 2013 at 10:57:38 AM

@Fighteer, 5720: To expand a little on that, the bigger problem with the mentality that the poor should improve themselves with self-help motivational books or what have you is not simply that it's a bandaid, but in fact that people are looking at that bandaid and then not seeing the rather large spike impaling the patient (in this case representing the systemic problems and complete lack of mobility which is a symptom of such) and saying that the one bandaid will be enough.

The problem is not simply that poor people aren't motivated. They're motivated as fuck. They're hella motivated to not have to work 60 hours a week because they can't live on 40 hours a week worth of minimum wage pay. They're motivated as balls to get into a better position in life. But a massive, massive variety of reasons keep them from getting that better lot in life, and most people have multiple reasons at once why their life isn't getting better.

Most of it having to do with a corporate culture that maximizes profits over their workers to such a degree that workers have to use foodstamps, because the company doesn't give enough hours to sustain them. And more of it having to do with not being able to afford health care because it's a hundred dollars to get a checkup and even more when something goes wrong.

Yes, this is standard "The poor are really fuckin poor and here's why" spiel, precisely because the poor are stuck in a shitty situation not of their own making and there is a massive movement that characterizes that as a moral failing within the poor themselves, rather than the companies which employ most of the poor being utter shit and not paying enough for the poor to live on.

Very big Daydream Believer. "That's not knowledge, that's a crapshoot!" -Al Murray "Welcome to QI" -Stephen Fry
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#5735: Jul 23rd 2013 at 10:58:24 AM

I'm not particularly convinced that scarcity will ever cease to be an element of society. A situation where "there is more than enough for everyone" just doesn't seem feasible to me at all. Neither does a situation wherein only a small percentage of the population need to work in order for everyone to have everything they want. That kind of utopia still just feels like a pipe dream to me.

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Enkufka Wandering Student ಠ_ಠ from Bay of White fish Since: Dec, 2009
Wandering Student ಠ_ಠ
#5736: Jul 23rd 2013 at 11:00:12 AM

we already grow enough food for 10 billion people, yo.

EDIT: Or rather, we produce enough carbohydrates for 10 billion people. Fat and Protein are another matter entirely.

edited 23rd Jul '13 11:02:43 AM by Enkufka

Very big Daydream Believer. "That's not knowledge, that's a crapshoot!" -Al Murray "Welcome to QI" -Stephen Fry
soban Since: Aug, 2009 Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
#5737: Jul 23rd 2013 at 11:02:11 AM

@Karkadinn

Here's the thing though, the action of the market system creates wealth. You are correct in theory if they are offering identical goods to an identical market and buying together the same amount of goods from the same supplier. However, if anything is off, they create value. The most obvious would be by increasing the supply of a good they will decrease the price giving people more money to spend on other things. A more likely situation is that they bring the goods to a new geographical market.

CaptainKatsura Decoy from    Poland    Since: Jul, 2011
Decoy
#5738: Jul 23rd 2013 at 11:06:13 AM

Minister of Finances will likely not step down despite forgering statistics to make our debt look smaller. He claims he did all that to reassure investors and sees no reason why he should resign. And because he's one of the cronies of the Prime Minister, the ruling party will oppose any attempts to force him to resign by vote. As I mentioned somewhere here already, he has no economy degree, and is only MA in degree that has nothing to do with his job. All previous parties which ruled employed professors of economy who apolitical at least to some extent. This fake economist only shames my country with incompetence and bootlicking.

My President is Funny Valentine.
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#5739: Jul 23rd 2013 at 11:09:58 AM

@soban: The market system doesn't create wealth at all, if you mean net dollars. All it does is shift supply to meet demand. Wealth is in the quantity of goods produced and consumed. If there isn't enough consumption to purchase everything that's capable of being supplied, then adding more production capacity is useless. Classical economics says that prices must fall in this situation, but they observably do not.

The creation of wealth in a market system is largely a numerical illusion caused by the transfer of money from consumers to producers. Wealth is in what you have and can buy, not what you make. When an increasingly small portion of the population controls an increasingly large amount of the wealth, you get inequality. Inequality creates poverty; poverty leads to discontent; discontent foments civil unrest; civil unrest leads to revolution. This cycle has repeated thousands or tens of thousands of times throughout history.

edited 23rd Jul '13 11:15:45 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
soban Since: Aug, 2009 Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
#5740: Jul 23rd 2013 at 11:25:54 AM

Perhaps value is a better term, sorry. (I don't know the technical terms for things. I'm just using what seems to be the best word to me.)

Imagine a situation where I have three dollars and you have a water bottle. 3 dollars is obviously three dollars. To you, the bottle of water is worth a dollar. The total value in the system is 4 dollars. 3+1. I really want some water, it would be worth all three of my dollars to get it. I offer you two of my dollars for it. You, valuing the water bottle at 1 dollar accept. After the transaction, I have a water bottle that I vale at three dollars and a dollar and you have two dollars. 4+2=6. The amount of value in the system has been raised by 3 dollars by our transaction.

That's a simple example, but that is how our economy works. The value created is not a illusion.

TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#5741: Jul 23rd 2013 at 11:29:22 AM

Wut?

You're double counting the money, I think. It's hard to follow your logic here.

Value wasn't created, so much as that the value of the water bottle was transferred to a recipient whereby its value could be more fully realized. I guess you could argue that's pedantic though.

edited 23rd Jul '13 11:30:14 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#5742: Jul 23rd 2013 at 11:31:36 AM

I see what you did there, Soban. That's effectively haggling the price of the product in question. The problem is, that kind of price fluctuation is outdated. We have people now whose specific job is to set prices, and the customer buys for whatever the price they set is. Outside of garage sales, eBay, etc., the "value" of an object isn't up for debate anymore.

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
soban Since: Aug, 2009 Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
#5743: Jul 23rd 2013 at 11:34:43 AM

Actually, that's not true. It just means that one person/company has set a price that their not negotiating.

Karkadinn Karkadinn from New Orleans, Louisiana Since: Jul, 2009
Karkadinn
#5744: Jul 23rd 2013 at 11:38:22 AM

Let's get specific. Tobias, speaking strictly of the US, what basic necessities do you think we are suffering from a scarcity of right now and will continue to find scarce for the foreseeable future?

"Neither does a situation wherein only a small percentage of the population need to work in order for everyone to have everything they want. That kind of utopia still just feels like a pipe dream to me."

You're getting dangerously close to straw manning here, too. We went from 'you shouldn't have food if you don't work' to the above quote fairly quickly, but I don't remember ever claiming that soon we'll all be able to live in mansions and drive Mercedes. Regardless, luxury goods are defined purely by their perceived scarcity. Even if we do, some theoretical someday, end up in a place where we can make all the limos and mansions we want for everyone, those things will become the new norm and people will just create new luxury goods that remain hard to obtain. Consider the fact that we can now grow structurally flawless diamonds in labs, yet they remain underpriced compared to mined ones.

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#5745: Jul 23rd 2013 at 11:40:57 AM

I'm a pragmatist. I've heard people throw around comments like, "We grow enough food to feed ten billion people," but I will believe that when Americans aren't still going hungry. Until that happens, it's just empty promises.

Right now, in America, scarcity exists despite "enough food to feed ten billion people", so how much more will we need to eliminate it?

edited 23rd Jul '13 11:42:23 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#5746: Jul 23rd 2013 at 11:43:52 AM

@Tobias: What in the world? The problem isn't the production, it's the distribution. An elementary school student could figure that out.

Edit: We aren't trying to eliminate all scarcity, but if there's enough basic necessities for everyone, then there's no reason to force them to be distributed by competitive market forces. Let the market economy handle actual scarce goods.

edited 23rd Jul '13 11:49:03 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
TheStarshipMaxima NCC - 1701 Since: Jun, 2009
NCC - 1701
#5747: Jul 23rd 2013 at 11:49:06 AM

Guys we really need to stop talking past one another.

Encouraging anybody (not simply the poor) to help themselves is not "distracting from the wider problem"; no more than saying "get the kids out of the house!" is ignoring the fact that the house is, in fact, on fire. There's a chronic problem called inequality in opporunities available AND in the will to effectively use those opportunities.

The problem is that certain people are so bent on their wonk, they ignore the other issue. Whether it's the former 'Murica rocks!' Republican (totally not referring to myself) who ignores that Big Business rapes the people; or whether it's the rabid liberal who genuinely tries to pretend that kids investing in iPHones, Jordans, and Xboxes and not attending class has no bearing on the growing poverty gap.

And like I said, people helping themselves is not about letting the wealthy off the hook. Far from it. There is such a thing as noblisse oblige; there's no crime in making a lot of money (and no, you are not obligated to pay more for services, simply because you use them more effectively) but you absolutely do have an increased obligation to use your increased means wisely and benovelently.

But people are willfully ignorant about the issues, while crying and complaining and rich-blaming (yes Taco, I know that's not everyone).

Again, many people call for a Chick Fil A boycott, meanwhile, by all accounts, Chick-Fil-A actually pays decently, promotes and hires fairly, and offers benefits for certain upper-level positions. Meanwhile, there's no call to boycott McDonald's. People protest moving American manufacturing to countries that shaft it's workers, but who really stops to check the label and "Buy American"?? We weep for the demise of unions, but how many union members truly speak up and say "We can't make demands and not consider the economic climate,"?

In short, I'd like to see more fingers pointed in the mirror, and perhaps then, we'd see change.

It was an honor
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#5748: Jul 23rd 2013 at 11:50:50 AM

But there's still a problem. That's the point. There always seems to be something.

I'll believe in a scarcity-free society in which all people in the nation have access to sufficient food, water, and shelter when I see one. Even then, I would be concerned about the possibility of the population in a scarcity-free world expanding to the point that it reintroduces scarcity. If you can consistently make and supply enough food to feed 7 million and you have a population of 5 million, you have a scarcity-free society. But what happens when your population grows to 10 million?

Scarcity is relative to population, and with fewer constraints on that population, it is free to grow. The problem with that is that a population that grows uncontrollably due to the absence of diminishing factors such as scarcity will soon grow to the point that it reintroduces scarcity.

edited 23rd Jul '13 11:52:03 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#5749: Jul 23rd 2013 at 11:53:10 AM

kids investing in iPHones, Jordans, and Xboxes and not attending class
[citation needed] Because that looks awfully like a stereotype that has no basis in reality, like Reagan's infamous welfare queens.

who really stops to check the label and "Buy American"
Some do, but it's damned hard. You try finding a kids' toy that's made in America at a major retailer. There's no way for consumers to stop that trend by themselves; they have no market power when prices are all important. Even if you imagine a scenario in which we're all well-off enough to afford to boycott non-American products, that fantasy in no way describes today's world.

You'll please note that most liberals are also in favor of community outreach, education, and all sorts of other assistance programs for impoverished areas. All of that takes an investment of resources; it's not enough to proclaim good will and insist that people yank themselves out of poverty out of their own will alone.

Scarcity is relative to population, and with fewer constraints on that population, it is free to grow. The problem with that is that a population that grows uncontrollably due to the absence of diminishing factors such as scarcity will soon grow to the point that it reintroduces scarcity.
If that were true, then why do middle- and upper-class people consistently bear less children than lower-class people in every country across the entire world? High birth rates are associated with poverty. Remove that sort of scarcity and most people will not choose to dump tons of kids on the world in the hopes that some of them prosper but will instead seek out personal and professional advancement.

Provide everyone with enough food and population growth will decline. Sounds crazy but it's true. [down] And birth control, of course, plus comprehensive sex ed.

edited 23rd Jul '13 11:57:33 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Karkadinn Karkadinn from New Orleans, Louisiana Since: Jul, 2009
Karkadinn
#5750: Jul 23rd 2013 at 11:54:37 AM

Supply is not the problem.

This is.

And if you're worried about population expansion, it's worth noting that the technological advances in birth control have also proceeded over time.

edited 23rd Jul '13 11:56:11 AM by Karkadinn

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

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