Lurker > red sox 777

Gas is cheaper than it was in the summer of 2008 right before the crash. So adding it in would make inflation smaller. Food, yeah. But as long as you're consistent with the same standard across time periods, it's a good stat to compare to how we were doing in other time periods.

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Seriously, what is wrong with the inflation statistic that makes it so horrible (as opposed to merely not exactly accurate)?

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What is flawed about inflation?

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This isn't true at all. You can argue that in the very long run, since wages eventually adjust as well, it's a net neutral, although the Austrian school has pretty thoroughly documented that the creation of new money results in a net gain to its first users (nearly always the big banks) and a net loss to its final users (nearly always lower class workers).

Yes, inflation helps out those who are leveraged. So our hyperlevered banks would stand to gain a lot from it. Strangely enough we haven't had much inflation yet though, despite all the money printing going on.

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Right, but not until recently has all the stuff backing our credit started to drain away to foreign countries. With our service-based economy now, we can't rely on credit like that anymore. Evidence: last 10 years.

It's nothing new. More wealth was lost on paper in one day in 1929 when US markets crashed than the total damage from World War I. I'm not sure what stuff backing our credit has been lost- if you mean manufacturing jobs, services are just as good for that purpose. Better, because nowadays it would be impossible to maintain our current level of wealth based on manufacturing- a level far higher than a few decades ago, in a world that is more advanced than a few decades ago. We could be the workshop of the world before, but that isn't nearly so profitable now because other countries can also manufacture goods.

We've lost political credibility, but that's the most serious loss to US credit as far as I can see.

Exactly, and America's current business strategy is to keep poor people on fixed incomes, while inflating costs, which is effectively stealing money from the poor and giving it to the rich.

Not really, inflation tends to affect people who have a lot of standing wealth more than people who are working.

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To actual resources that have actual value, like gold and oil and even labor, all of which America has been rapidly losing to foreign countries. The US needs a sound currency to represent its wealth, because we don't have anything else (other than a military, of course, which is essentially our global currency at this point).

The wealth of the US has always been in credit. Dollars are just credit basically. It's been this way since at least World War I.

I'm not sure what exactly a sounder currency would be good for, actually. Inflation is not a problem except for people on fixed incomes, and is a boon for just as many other people. Sure, it'll be more expensive when you go on vacation in another country, but on the other hand, it will be easier for American businesses to compete internationally (see Nintendo and Sony's troubles with the strong yen recently). China actively tries to keep its currency weak.

The government has a strong interest in having the world's reserve currency, but I'm not sure it's so important for the people. If we don't have the world's reserve currency, the government will be forced to either spend less, raise taxes, or pay more interest on borrowed money. The pressure should be enough to force them to spend less.

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What exactly do we have now that "comes with empire" that we are in danger of losing if we cease imperialistic practices?

Power. Prestige. The ability to spread our ideology to other countries. Basically, all the traditional reasons for empire.

It might SEEM like Americans want an imperial type foreign policy, but if you look at all the war propaganda, it's 100% based in self-defense. Even saying that we need to "spread freedom and democracy around the world" invokes a little too much of an imperialist mindset. I think a lot of Americans would not support that statement. That's why most politicians just say that other countries are a threat to us and our allies and we need to stop them.

Every empire through history has used the same rhetoric of self-defense, so I don't think we can say that Americans don't want power and prestige based on that. The Roman Republic gained its massive empire through a series of wars, all of which I'm sure most the Roman people honestly believed were justified wars in which they were in the right. Defensive wars even. But the Roman army was very good at warfare, and they kept winning, until they had a massive empire on 3 continents.

And once that was accomplished, the people thought the existence of the empire was a very good thing. So pervasive was this belief that a thousand years later, people in the successor states still dreamed of the Roman Empire as the greatest thing ever.

So no, I think many Americans really do want to be the preeminent nation in the world, same as Rome and China.

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Indeed it is. Which is why the question we should be asking is: should America be an empire? Right now people want the things that come with empire but don't want to be an empire or to be "imperialist." There should be an honest discussion about this in politics, but there is not.

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This empire discussion reminds me of this letter, sent by the Mongol Khan Hulagu to Qutuz, Sultan of Egypt, right after the Mongols had sacked Baghdad. (Note: Hulagu was not a Muslim or Christian for that matter, although he cites the Quran.)

From the King of Kings in the East and the West, the mighty Khan: In your name, O God, You who laid out the earth and raised up the skies. Let al-Malik al-Muzaffar Qutuz, who is of the race of Mamluks who fled before our swords into this country, who enjoyed its comforts and then killed its rulers, let al-Malik al-Muzzafar Qutuz know, as well as the Emirs of his state and the people of his kingdom, in Egypt and in the adjoining countries, that we are the army of God on His earth. He created us from his wrath and urged us against those who incurred His anger. In all lands there are examples to admonish you and to deter you from challenging our resolve. Be warned by the fate of others and hand over your power to us before the veil is torn and you are sorry and your errors are rebound upon you. For we do not pity those who weep, nor are we tender to those who complain. You have heard that we have conquered the lands and cleansed the earth of corruption and killed most of the people. Yours to flee: ours to pursue. And what land will shelter you, what road save you; what country protect you? You have no deliverance from our swords and you cannot avoid dreading us for our horses are swift, our arrows do pierce, our swords like thunder-bolts, our hearts like rocks and our numbers like sand. Fortresses cannot withstand us; armies are of no avail in fighting us. Your prayers against us will not be heard, for you have eaten forbidden things and your speech is foul, you betray oaths and promises, and disobedience and fractiousness prevail among you. Be informed that your lot will be shame and humiliation. "Today you are recommenced with the punishment of humiliation, because you were so proud on earth without right and for your wrongdoing" (Quran, xlvi, 20). "Those who have done wrong will know to what end they will revert" (Quran,xxvi. 227). Those who make war against us are sorry; those who seek our protection are safe. If you submit to our orders and conditions, then your rights and duties are the same as ours. If you resist you will be destroyed. Do not, therefore, destroy yourselves with you own hands. He who is warned should be on his guard. You are convinced that we are the infidels, and we are convinced that you are debauchers. God, who determines all and judges all, has urged us against you. What much for you is little for us, the honorable for you is base for us. Your kings should expect nothing from us except humiliation. Therefore, do not wait long but quickly answer us before the fire of war is set and the spark is thrown over you then You will not have from us dignity, nor comfort, nor protection, nor sanctuary and you will suffer at our hands the most fearful calamity, and your land will be empty of you. By writing to you we have dealt equitably with you and have awakened you by warning you. Now we have no other purpose but you. Peace be with both us and you, and with all of those who follow divine guidance, who fear the consequences of evil and who obey the Supreme King. Say to Egypt, Hulagu has come with swords unsheathed and sharp. The mightiest of her people will become humble and he will send their children to join the aged. "

I find the Mongols the empire that was the most honest with itself. Every other empire seemingly honestly believed that it was a colossal force for good in the world.

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The funny thing is that I'm fairly confident that from December 1941 to 2006, if you polled the American public on whether we should do the things an empire does, but without using the word empire, you would have gotten majorities, and fairly big majorities, through that whole time.

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Well, we are an empire in fact, and have been so since 1941. There is a lot of power and prosperity associated with it. Also, if you rephrased the question from, "Should the United States be an empire?" to "Should the United States promote freedom, democracy, and prosperity around the world?" you would get a lot of yes answers.

The other thing, as with that China example, is that countries that become weaker end up getting bullied around even on their own land. By 1900 the Chinese government had less power in China than the British, French, German, Japanese, etc. governments. And of course, while China was as wealthy as Europe as late as the late 1700s, by 1900 it was vastly vastly poorer on a per capita basis.

So I guess there are situations where you have to act: an example being World War II. The reason you have to act is that the enemy will not leave you alone if you do not. Our choice was to fight Germany then, wait until Germany had beaten the UK and USSR and then fight them, or submit. As a non-imperial country these situations arise rarely, but as a leading empire, they are not rare, because loads of things in the world directly impact an empire's interests.

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If we're going to vote out all the deserving winners we may as well go all the way and make Pokemon win.

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Piers: "But aren't there times where you have to be the policeman of the world?"
Paul: "No"
Piers: "Really??"

Is this such a difficult concept for people to understand now? These people run daily political shows and have been involved with politics and the news for years, and they still haven't learned anything?

There may never be times when you have to be the world policeman, but there are times when an empire has to act, or else lose its ability to maintain its status as an empire. See: China in the 18th/19th centuries.

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I am sick of losing to the Manning brothers. It's been like 5 years of this, no? And it's now 3 to 3 as far as Super Bowl rings go.

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How long have you been a Giants fan?

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Gift tax and estate tax just smack of confiscation of property. I suppose what bothers me about it is that gift and estate tax will eventually shrink an estate to nothing, whereas with income tax, tax won't ever shrink it to nothing, because you're only taxed on gains.

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Most of Board 8 is early to mid 20s, I think. If the average age has increased as much since Yoblazer's poll as it has for the rest of the site, it's probably 23-24 now.

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It's only 1/6 my fault. Voting for CT would have made it a tie, so there's a 1/2 chance it would still have lost in overtime. And I voted in the FFVII and SSBM matches so it's not my fault that those games lost.

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Whoa, gift tax is at 35%? Now that's ridiculous. So if you give someone 200k to go to college, that's fine, but if you give them 200k to do something else, the government wants 70k (ok, slightly less once you except the first 13k) from you.

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All. Credibility. Lost.

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For discussion of the awesome strategy game Go (known as Weiqi and Baduk alternatively in Chinese and Korean).

The best place to play online is probably KGS (gokgs.com).

Anybody want to play a game?

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2nd place looks within reach today.

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I'm pretty sure they're joking, and I sure hope so.

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We were supposed to have an SSBM/FFVII rematch in the final! To prove that nothing changes!

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If my count is right, this contest is officially far worse than the original NCAA Games Contest.

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SSBM

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If FFVII loses this one, it won't be my fault!

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Final Fantasy VII

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It's refreshing how out of touch Mitt Romney is. "I like to fire people." "Corporations are people." "I don't want to help the poor." "You're from Hollister, California, right?"

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Interesting, I suppose Hong Kong could be different because it has a Cantonese majority and has never been part of the PRC government's effort to standardize language across the country (by making Mandarin, traditionally spoken across about the northern half of China, the official language of the whole country).

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Chinese is referred to as "Chinese" in Chinese, and either includes all of them or else means Mandarin.

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They're actually part of completely different language families. Similarities are from loan words.

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Wow, Sony stock is up 11% today after being down 6% yesterday.

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The point is that if you don't have tons and tons of legislations trying to make the average stats look better, you allow each individual to benefit in the best way possible -- their own way. Give them the Liberty to help themselves, and the government suddenly is now free to do a lot more important stuff than babysitting and hand-holding 300 million individuals.

And yet there are situations where government action to improve things for most people will succeed in doing that. That seems obvious, but what does that mean?

It means that the majority of individuals are doing better.

These situations are pretty rare for the reason you stated- that individuals are more capable of helping themselves than a central planner is of helping them. But they do exist, and that's what the prisoner's dilemma describes.

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Well that's just why economics is less precise than the physical sciences.

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So... you're agreeing with me that government makes everyone worse off?

That may be true, and I agree with you that it mostly is. But that's not the prisoner's dilemma argument. Let me spell it out.

Options (say, for science research)

A: No government research, no taxes
B: Voluntary payment to government by you only, no government research
C: Everyone pays taxes, government research

It's entirely possible for people to prefer C > A > B. But if we are at A, you cannot get to C by each person acting individually, because first they have to go to B, and B is worse than A.

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Of course better off exists. You are better off under option A over option B if you would choose option A over option B.

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But all your arguments in this topic either attack all economic models, or do not actually say anything that discredits government as a prisoner's dilemma situation.

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Austrian economics makes none, except that humans will act in a way as to maximize their own happiness as they themselves see it.

Well, same with every other branch of economics. But that's like saying the Supreme Court does nothing except read the Constitution to mean what it means. It's not as easy as it sounds.

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It's not a strawman, but it's not an attack on prisoner's dilemma as a good model for government either. It's an attack on all economic models generally. And it's not a very good one, because you're just saying, things are too complicated, so let's not think about it at all.

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Well, we already feed starving people in Africa with our tax dollars (not really, but we send money over there with that intention). So what's your point?

My point is that you can't argue that CERN is a waste because the money could have been used to feed starving people. At least not while maintaining consistency with your other positions.

As an aside, if we really wanted to end hunger in Africa we'd send ships full of grain over there, not money. It would have to be the US, because the US is the biggest agricultural producer in the world. It would be like what the Roman Empire did with the city of Rome. Every year ships full of grain would arrive in Rome from the rich farmlands of the provinces of Africa (modern Tunisia, not the whole continent) and Egypt. The emperor would hand out the bread to the poor of Rome. And he would be popular.

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It's interesting that usually leftists are the ones who decry economic models and theory.

Anyway, to address your points, no economic model is perfect, and indeed no economic model is remotely close to perfect. Macroeconomics makes sweeping assumptions about how most people operate. In a nation of 300 million there are of course people who are different, even if they are not irrational. This is also true for models that support less or no government.

Prisoner's Dilemma is a good model for government in many ways, which have been explained already in many of these topics.

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On another note.

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/02/disclosed-fed-prez-who-owns-over-1.html

But yeah, keep voting for Presidents who see absolutely no problems at The Fed. That'll work out well for you. Really.

Excellent. Turn on the presses! Inflate and profit!

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Also, even if people in their own countries aren't starving, that money could easily be given to people who are, in other places.

This sounds really harsh, but feeding starving people in Africa doesn't turn a profit for the European taxpayer (or the American taxpayer), while physics research does.

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Is your assertion that we aren't spending a dime on this thing? Because I'm 100% certain that isn't true. Also, even if people in their own countries aren't starving, that money could easily be given to people who are, in other places.

IIRC, there was a lot of discussion about building the LHC or something similar in the US, but it couldn't get enough funding and the plans fell through. I don't know if American taxpayers are funding CERN at all, but we're definitely not contributing the lion's share of its funding. And physics research has produced a ton of economic gain in the past century. CERN is a bad example of wasteful spending, because on the level of a society, physics research produces big profits.

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Also, markets can get pretty crazy during bubbles. AOL was once valued at over 200B. The stockholders did pretty well though because they bought out Time Warner near the peak of AOL stock's performance, using AOL stock that would have subsequently become near worthless. Time Warner shareholders got shafted though, when they ended up with a minority share in AOL Time Warner, which became, for profit purposes, basically just Time Warner.

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Well, the current price is based on what the market thinks the company will do in the future. It's not necessary for Facebook to diversify into other profitable areas as long as the market thinks it will. If it ultimately doesn't, and the market thinks it will now, the stock price will go down later.

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I'm sorry, I thought you were arguing about why government was GOOD! You're absolutely right though. It's an awfully large expense for something of no practical value. Meanwhile, people are starving to death and can't find jobs. It's a good thing we have government to take our money away, therefore preventing us from buying things of actual value to human beings, to use on completely useless "research."

I'm pretty sure people in Europe aren't starving even though they have no jobs (it's true that they have massive unemployment, but that doesn't lead to starvation in Europe). Switzerland (where half of the Large Hadron Collider is located) is doing fine too.

Anyway, to reiterate the point about how government protects property: people didn't believe OWS could develop into Russia in 1917 or China in 1949 without a government there to enforce laws. Maybe that's true, and maybe the thousands of small states the countries would break into wouldn't go to war with each other (think Exxon and Chevron going to war, and remember, it only takes one side to start a war). Even then, there are plenty of foreign nations that would invade. With real armies. Because there's plenty of wealth to seize here.

Even if you got rid of governments across the world (wow, this sounds a lot like Marx's vision.....) it still wouldn't work. Because as the saying goes, power abhors a vacuum. Where there is no power, the strongest will seize it. And they will expand it. A world without government is not a sustainable equilibrium. That is yet another reason why Communism doesn't work. If your idea suggests that you do the same things as Communism, you should question it thoroughly.

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If we care more about our exporters than our consumers buying things from other countries, this is a reminder that it may be a good idea for the Fed to bring out the printing presses and inflate the currency (further).

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Time to sell the TV business? Sounds like the kind of company that's worth more in pieces than together, i.e. the kind of company where you bring in Mitt Romney to fire people and sell the assets.

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