An eye opener if anything plus various other threads merged for lulz

Almost wide enough.

Speaking on praxeology, what are the chances that the guy with "now less than 15K of debt" is basing his conclusion of " total debt elimination" on zero preconceptions?

View attachment stock-photo-little-girl-put-coin-to-money-stack-76

The concept is there, it just doesn't describe reality.

If an item, oil, increases, it means there is less money available to buy other things, so the prices of all other items will drop a little bit in response to the increase in oil prices. So there is inflation in one sector, oil, and deflation in all other sectors, according to how flexible the demand is.

Again, there is not much disagreement among economists that the only way to inflate is what i said earlier. The only way to have general inflation, as we saw in the 70s, is to print money faster than the economy needs. The only way to have a general inflation is for large sums of money to be printed. Which, you might be interested in knowing, our Fed has done. We doubled the money supply in a couple years. That means more inflation is on its way.

Also note that the way the government calculates the CPI has changed about 25 times since the late 70s, so making comparisons between then and now require more data than the government gives us.
IOW, they are cooking the data to suit their needs.

Let's run with that oil example.

In reality, when the cost of oil goes up, due to the pervasive nature of the industry, costs of things like food, fertilizer, gasoline, electricity, plastics, cable, airfare, tourism, all go up too, not down. I can't see the increase in oil leading to "less money for other things," since there aren't too many "other things" out there, and as you say there is too much money in circulation anyway. What are some examples of things that have gotten cheaper (relatively) as oil increases?

Again, economic-layperson talking here, but I have to think that increases in day-to-day goods like gas, food, plastics (increase borne of an oil increase) have an effect on the purchasing power of the average person, just maybe not as much as the freshly-printed billions thrown around in the financial sector. Not trying to supplant standard economic theoretical consensus, just an outside look in.

Yeah looking around the net i see how many different ways CPI and PPI are calculated, and reminds me of how/where they draw the poverty line and come up with employment statistics: fuzzy.

OK STOP. Back up. Go to the begining of your life and temporarily forget everything you think about the economy pre everything you know that isn't based on personal experience about the economy. Forget all the government spreadsheets, forget the laws of economics unless you can give experienced examples. Imagine you can make the economy exactly how you want to make it as long as it benefits everyone. Forget all contracts, forget all laws ( they can change) and forget what you think everyone else will do based on what you've read and perceived from reading. Forget right and wrong just think about the balance. Clear your mind and imagine the economy is a giant scale that you must balance and you can do it anyway you want.

NOW how would you do it?

Now imagine your life depending on it because . . . it does whether you want to acknowledge it or not.

Let me unpack this:
Your example assumes that price of oil went up, but you give no reason for the sudden discontinuity. So let's look at scenarios:
One) a large part of the oil supply is cut off. This will result in the sudden jacking up of prices. This could come from a natural disaster (hurricane, lightning strikes, whatever)

or two) man made disasters such as war or embargoes.

As we saw after Katrina, the natural disaster results in a spike which then comes back to normal when the disruption is cleared.

But in the case of OPEC in 1973, there were many factors in the US that allowed OPEC to get away with their embargo. Very few people remember that OPEC tried and failed in 1967 to raise the price of oil. SO that failure has to be explained (simplest accurate explanation is by 1973 the Vietnam War had been sucking up money and resources for an extra 6 years, causing sector type inflation,) and when combined with the price and wage controls instituted by Nixon in 1971 gave OPEC the leverage it needed to jack prices up by 400% in a few months. And we went off gold in 1971, which is what enables our current predicament. We also instituted one rule (old oil and new oil) that was popular politically and economically disastrous. (Old oil was wells in production before 1975 iirc, and could only get the old price, ie, $2 per barrel versus $9.)
But understand the inflation was already in the system by this time, since the VN war was being paid for by printing money.

Which is why deflation occurs when one sector gets hit with price increases. When the 1973 oil crisis hit, I made a number of changes in my pleasure spending, mainly because I didn't have any spare money to spend, it all going to the inflation of the time, but that was purely the Fed causing the inflation, well, the Fed and the War. So while I was spending more on gas and the necessities, I was spending much less on discretionary items such as albums, movies and dinner out.

Mybe I wasn't clear. There is only one official way to calculate inflation (CPI and the producer equivalent) and the government has changed how they calculate inflation 29 times in 33 years. So inflation in 1975 is a much different animal than it is now. Which means comparisons are worthless, since they are measuring different things.
The government has changed the stats deliberately to make it harder to know what effect their actions have in us.

Exactly as I have been saying to do it of course. What a question.
The only solution is to let people have consensual trade.

So berries for fruit and sheepskin for jeans? That kind of thing or just gold for all of the above? If you are saying gold I'm saying there's not enough unless you want to try and take it from the people who already have most of it?

I think trading gold would work IF we used haarp technology we could rebound radio waves off different elements in the ground for cheaper way to find gold mines. We'd have to invest a lot into gold mines then and eventually we'd be fighting for gold AND oil if we didn't have enough.

It would be nice if the solution didn't lead to any more wars over money because of the fear of not having enough. That's where we are now.

"MAKE MONEY. MAKE MORE MONEY. MAKE OTHER PEOPLE PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MORE MONEY."

And throw the bastards into the RPF if they don't MAKE MONEY

Yep, that's a good plan for me, but what about you?

I'll tax you,

That makes sense, thanks

Legalize drugs and prostitution......tax it.

......and if our country isnt profitable every year, every single politican in office is not available for reelection.

Because elected officials + profit motive = works so well

<3

I want a line on all ballots that says: "None of the Above"
and if it gets a majority of the votes, that office is eliminated.

Adhrocrat that's the best thing I've heard from you yet . Your true honest non-violated, non-brainwashing (no offense I'm plenty brainwashed in my own way) opinion. I like hearing things that are said from the subconscious just like this. Things that reflect true opinions based on no outside influence. I agree not 100%, but more like 1000%.


Thank You . . . You have just gained my respect and my full attention as soon as I wake back up after I'm done sleeping. No joke.
Thank You . . .

This is exactly what I'm asking everyone for. An opinion based on true opinion not social Darwinism. If only we could all think this way about the economy we'd already have it taken care of.

I know you're still clinging to finite resources, but that doesn't matter anymore. I like what's really on your mind.

Is this where everyone else gives up and I continue pushing my views? I got an email from newsmax talking about the federal reserve wanting to disolve bigger banks after the ceo for JPMorgan lost some serious credibility. Slowly we are making a difference. Writing letters with good ideas to the federal reserve does bring about results.

Remember how we may pay them taxes, but the big banks pressing high interest loans to sub-prime credit are the ones who require the federal reserve to supply them with cash. We don't get loans from the Feds. The banks do. I still think we should change monitary policy, but allowing new banks with competitive interest rates to surface drops the "cost" of loans. Without loans how do we build quick businesses? Without businesses we have no jobs. Without jobs we have no money in circulation. The economy in my opinion isn't about goods and trade, it's about the businesses that provide the jobs and the product allowing for money to circulate. This allows trade. What good is a product if no one can afford to buy it?

However again, if we were to wipe the debt world wide and stop associating money and gold since it's a 3000 year old system that our forefathers changed multiple times. We'd be able to poor tons of money back into the economy. Even if we do not regulate goods. They would still drop considerably in price as new markets open and drop the cost for competition.

Do you remember the old school gas wars? Shell and Chevron across the street from each other dropping their prices once a week to compete with across the street. You may think that the price of oil would remain the same, however, it costs 250 million to open a new rig. At this rate we will run out. If we dropped debt we'd have the resources to tap more oil lines long enough to make a change to alternative resources while maintaining the products (everything) that have oil in them.

Just because you get inflation in your pants when you see a hot chick talk about a subject she was hired to do doesn't mean your anything, but distracted by your own opinion on the limitations of what you can change. Plenty of people have changed the world. Martin Luther King for example sure didn't have a lot of money, but he changed the world. You may not have a lot of money, but a good idea is like a seed that grows into a tree with the proper nutrients.

Totally ignoring the rest of the world and how it can have a major effect on US economy, look at bigger picture!

god DAMN it's 'pour' not 'poor'

^^^
fail

An unregulated economy is a wealthy economy.



Pu'er me a cuppa this.

I stopped paying attention to this thread a while ago. I probably disagree with about half or more of what adhocrat says, and half of what idealisticguy says. But I'm too lazy to read it all. One hundred words or less, remember?

Since this is what the thread's for, I just stopped by to give another hare-brained economic solution that probably won't work, but is fun to talk about:

Asteroid Mining

That is all.

[BRB flagging every post longer than 100 words.]

One, It doesn't matter what we think. It does matter what works.
Two, you are obviously not SciFI reader, otherwise you'd know that mining the asteroids is a great idea.Imagine not having to mine earth for nonrenewable resources.

Examples of when predictions are seen as silly, as yours will be in 100 years.

Oh, I'm all for asteroid mining. I think it will work to bring resources back to earth - and to crush any aspirations that anyone has of switching back to precious metal-backed currency. I'm a huge sci-fi reader - wouldn't have posted it otherwise.

I don't know that it will work in the sense of solving structural problems with the current financial system that I assume are the point of OP.

Agreed there, no business can solve the issue of government
But the idea of asteroid mining is sound and will be good for people, as long as the government keeps their hands off it.

Don't understand this. Could you explain?

I'd meant to say precious-metal backed currencies. Please correct me if I'm wrong. If precious metals experience precipitous unpredictable downward fluctuations in price as a result of these ventures, wouldn't it be a bad idea to return to tying the value of currency to gold, silver or platinum?

EDIT: I guess I probably should've said, "If precious metals experience precipitous, unpredictable UPward fluctuations in SUPPLY as a result of these ventures, wouldn't it be a bad idea to return to tying the value of currency to actual quantities of gold, silver of platinum?"

I thought that's where you might be going, but we had a huge uptick in the amount of silver and gold post 1849, when gold was found in California and silver a few years later in Nevada. The economy handled it just fine.

I agree that if the supply were to be 'unpredictable' then money would lose meaning. But that isn't what happens, Gold and silver require effort to obtain, which limits how much can be introduced. And don't forget that a growing economy can handle more money circulating.

And only in the Fed view is deflation a bad thing. For the rest of us it means prices are going down while wages stay steady. Natural deflation is a regular occurrence in a species based economy.

I agree that 'unpredictable' changes in the money supply are a bad thing, but that isn't what would happen here. The amount of labor needed to mine the next ounce of gold effectively limits the amount of metals that can be mined. This is what limits money, the fact that immense human effort is required to obtain it (unobtanium, anyone? Could he have been more obvious?) (Which is why paper is so easily inflated, the amount of effort to create the next unit is essentially zero.)

Once we know how much the mine can produce, the economy factors it into future prices.
Unpredictable is when the Fed injects a trillion dollars into the economy, now that is inflationary.

In one of the Neil Gaiman threads it was recently revealed that the entire SciFI industry is being controlled by Scientology. People who read that stuff may be consuming cult mind-control without ever knowing it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_car_(aircraft)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Cure_for_Cancer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power

Between overconfidence and overpessimism is a line that's not always clear until historians (and pawnbrokers) get to fight over the scraps some time after.

Ohes noes, they're taking over my mind...whatever can i do.

Easy: a Higgs boson-based currency

Bitches loves the boson

Time for me to suggest heresy:

Cut the military budget by 2/3rds and give Americans universal healthcare, free education, and pay that mounting interest on US government debt. That will never happen though, guns are clearly more important the welfare of the American people; hence why Washington (whatever the party) doesn't give a damn about the beggars on the street.

Unpredictable is when your big fat mouth injects more tacos into you, now that's ilflattionary

I didn't read this whole thread.
Tax the cult and all other real religions with tax exempt property
that outta bring in a butt load of cash! lol

Stop paying for war.
It'd be a good start.

also: http://www.mondragon-corporation.com/ENG/Who-we-are/Introduction.aspx

Basic income economy.