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Low GDP growth, we barely break the 2% in the last few years, we should try to aim for 3-4 %.
There is a big problem with praying at the altar of GDP growth.
GDP grows when you are ripped off for higher medical costs.
GDP grows when we spend more money on wars that are useless (or worse).
GDP often grows and benefits those at the top more.
GDP grows when we extract and sell more natural resources - the opposite of sustainable.
GDP grows when we have earthquakes, epidemics, floods, harsher winters.
GDP grows when your food costs more.
GDP grows more when we each buy larger cars, more McMansions, etc.
Do you still want GDP to grow a lot?
The above would seem obvious and it's a great indication of the propaganda we are exposed to about "growth".
It would be nice if we learned about what really counts instead of what "makes money".
GDP as published is actually real GDP. Simple prices changes are wrung out via the "implicit price deflator", an index based on all final goods and services produced in the economy. If population and productivity are going to to continue to expand, then GDP must grow or we suffer a drop in real standard of living.
People as a whole simply don't understand the Fed. They don't get the so-called bailouts or any of the Maiden Lane facilities. They don't get the stress tests, or balance sheet expansions, or quantitative easing either.
You'd think such folks would take extra care not to be bamboozled by political hacks, charlatans, and demagogues, but that's not the way it works out.
It's a cultural issue. Deeply rooted in American culture, is the perception that experts and professionals, are nothing of the sort… that they're phony, perfidious, narrow-minded and ultimately inept. Policy is regarded as being a gimmick. And if something is beyond the "common man's" ken, beyond mere common sense, then it necessarily must be shifty and malign. And it isn't a mere issue of trust. Americans trust nurses with a mere LPN, or dental hygienists, or lawn-care "specialists". Americans have no problem with deferring to a professional, when the profession is menial. But anything that smacks of academia, advanced degrees – and especially of abstruse mathematics – is egghead and phony and corrupt. Whenever we have a political scandal, or some question of policy, invariably I'll hear in the grocery-store checkout line: "The right thing was perfectly obvious to my 10-year-old. If it's obvious even to a 10-year old, how come our so-called experts don't get it? Pack of fools, the lot of them!"
And when someone imples this and you try to dig down to exactly who/what/where is doing nefarious actions you usually get a youtube video with scary music as a response that still doesn't answer the question.
A: The unemployment numbers are fudged!
B: By who?
A: The government! They're lying until the election is over!
B: That is thousands of people and many have worked in the govt through several administrations, can you name or give evidence of who is manipulating the numbers?
A: Sheeple, wake up! Check out this youtube. *start scary music*
Above can apply to Fed Reserve, BLS, any discussion of inflation, etc.
It's a cultural issue. Deeply rooted in American culture, is the perception that experts and professionals, are nothing of the sort…
I would say that this is actually a relatively recent thing. My memories of the 40s are spotty to be sure, but through the 50s and 60s, there were high degrees of respect for the opinions of experts and for the work that had been invested in becoming an expert in a particular field to begin with. Even though experts often differed in their conclusions, there was widespread popular acceptance of the need for and authority of experts and for the importance of taking their findings into account.
Things began to change in my view in the post-Vietnam/post-Watergate era. Flag-waver neocons had fled the left and taken over a battered GOP. They joined forces with the Christian fundies as a means of building numbers. That's when folks like Scaife, Koch, and Falwell began pooling their resources to carve out space in the marketplace of ideas for their own extreme notions while ultimately driving others out. It isn't like they didn't announce what they were trying to do either. They intended to use their money to build an entire alternate media and then their propaganda to create an entire alternate reality. Anti-intellectualism became a right-wing staple as "Four out of five doctors" all turned into "Ivory Tower elites who are out of touch with mainstream America." Things have only gotten worse since. They need to start getting better again. Soon would be good.
But anything that smacks of academia, advanced degrees – and especially of abstruse mathematics – is egghead and phony and corrupt. Whenever we have a political scandal, or some question of policy, invariably I'll hear in the grocery-store checkout line: "The right thing was perfectly obvious to my 10-year-old. If it's obvious even to a 10-year old, how come our so-called experts don't get it? Pack of fools, the lot of them!"
I was more or less willing to defer to the experts until recently, when I read this:
Now every time I see any of the hordes of morbidly obese, effectively ruined people (being fat affects how you think, too) meandering around the store or mall I can't help but think of Harvard and that Harvard did this, Harvard made everyone fat and ruined everything.
In other words, that level of corruption is observable reality for a lot of people out there, not some abstract paranoia. And all of the running-dog barking about "but you can't prove it" is really just immaterial piling-on at this point.
I was more or less willing to defer to the experts until recently, when I read this:
Three guys at Harvard being bought off by the sugar industry pales in comparison to what was done by tobacco interests and what is still being done by fossil fuel interests. The take-away however is not to distrust experts, but rather to understand whose experts it is that you are listening to.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Item1of1
Now every time I see any of the hordes of morbidly obese...
70% of Americans are officially overweight. Many among the rest should probably bulk up a little.
I would say that this is actually a relatively recent thing. ...
Things began to change in my view in the post-Vietnam/post-Watergate era. ...
Interesting. I keep hearkening back to "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin", where good old Ben – whose narrative sounds more like a cunning venture of self-promotion than a veritable rendition of his own opinions, or at least his own opinions from later in life – savages the aesthetes and the theoreticians, turning to homespun nose-to-grindstone simple-folk for the highest wisdom. Again, this might have been in jest, or under ulterior motive. But it has become a thread throughout American life. The Jacksonian era, the William Jennings Bryan populism of the late 19th and early 20th century, the nationwide revulsion at the supposed elitism of the Ivies… all suggest a lionization of the peasant at the expense of the professor, the scientist, the civil servant.
But I do agree, that something went horribly awry with the Republican party since the 1960s and 1970s. Some blame Goldwater, but I gather that Goldwater himself would have been appalled at the current situation. Others blame Reagan. But I regard Reagan more as a symptom, than a cause; and likely Reagan too would have been befuddled by what we're seeing in 2016.
Returning to economics, my pet conjecture is that the comparative flattening of the socioeconomic scale in mid-20th-century America was an aberration. It could not be sustained, or at least not sustained without greatly altering our core precepts of markets, property and government. Many today pine for a Jacksonian-style small government, and a 50s-style broad prosperity. These two are inapposite, and trying to merge them leads to all sorts of silly contradictions. To embrace these contradictions, we have to wave away criticism as frumpy and tainted meddling by "experts" insulated from the common man's travails. This has become the emerging narrative.
To rephrase, broadbased equality can be achieved, but at rather severe cost. Maybe this cost is worthwhile, maybe not. But curiously, some of the most shrill and strident voices clamoring for such equality, also recoil from the severity of the cost (or don't acknowledge it). This is only possible by repudiating learned advice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Item1of1
...In other words, that level of corruption is observable reality for a lot of people out there, not some abstract paranoia. And all of the running-dog barking about "but you can't prove it" is really just immaterial piling-on at this point.
Experts are only human, too. Nearly everyone has a price, but not everyone can admit it. I'm sure that there are Nobel-prize-winning economists peddling quack investment-schemes on cable-TV; even that $1M prize eventually runs out. The point isn't to dismiss everyone as hopelessly flawed, but to realize that education and professional training elevates the incumbent's opinion from merely lay knowledge, and that if the overwhelming majority of such practitioners do happen to reach consensus, then probably they are right.
I could also argue, that invariably insiders will get a sweetheart deal. The person charged with doling out the soup from a bucket with a ladle, will never himself go hungry. This isn't "corruption" – or if it is, it's nothing new.
Many large states, most notably California, but also Florida and the rest of the Southeast, are still dealing with double digit U6 unemployment rates. By comparison, Florida historically has a U6 unemployment rate of 6-7% during "boom times", not 10% or higher.
And that rate has been stagnant now for a whole year, despite corrupt Yellen's call for no interest rate increases and a "high-pressure" economy.
Returning to economics, my pet conjecture is that the comparative flattening of the socioeconomic scale in mid-20th-century America was an aberration.
Perhaps only because conditions had not previously been made right for it. It isn't difficult to find examples before or since those mid-century decades of what befalls the common man in the absence of a meaningful voice in things for labor.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ohio_peasant
It could not be sustained, or at least not sustained without greatly altering our core precepts of markets, property and government.
I don't know what any of that would mean. To my mind, there is no real reason why a different division of the fruits of American energies could not be accomplished.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ohio_peasant
Many today pine for a Jacksonian-style small government, and a 50s-style broad prosperity.
Jackson sent warships against South Carolina long before Lincoln did. And he walked out on his own Vice President over a toast that had seemed to put freedom ahead of union, and states ahead of the federal government.
As for the 50's, they are often remembered in terms far more rosy than warranted. They were actually a cold, dark, and depressingly gray decade. The coming of JFK was much like the lights suddenly popping back on after a power failure.
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