All Chant "Economic growth" ...

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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All Chant “Economic growth” …

Most criticisms against the idea of Economic growth are from the greens, environmentalists and other stooges, scaredy cats and such. But the real problem with the Economic Growth Myth and Model is that it is simply IMPOSSIBLE to achieve anymore for most of the USA, EU and JAPAN, structurally, inherently, as a saturated system, as a long end of the road situation, as a simple “Growth Achieved” mode, no going back, as in the future will never again be like the past.

That one time lucky quirk and combination of events and technology levels allowing mass employment, that local manufacturing jobs and situations being available in the golden 1950s to 1990s for the three stooges USA, EU and JAPAN, as in those times jobs weren’t optimized, automated and off shored out of existence to India, China, Indonesia and Brazil, etc, and the Eastern Europeans were still all sleeping as opposed to today where they are all awake and in Future Expectation and Growth Mode from consumption and such WILL NEVER COME BACK AGAIN, IT IS OVER, FINISHED, THE END. AMEN!

Now is that so hard to understand ? Is that so tough to wrap your heads around ? There are no activities that can replace millions of jobs, no jobs indeed are even needed in an Automatic Economy that generates all production and wealth through technology and such and with very little labor input needed structurally, hence no jobs will be available.

But a funny thing happened in the last 30 years. The USA, EU and JAPAN all had this illusion that their then present state of growth would go on forever so they made debts and kept on making debts with the false expectation that the Economy Will Grow in the Future and take care of any debts, etc. Well guess what ? The economy will never grow again for these places, it is Game Over, so just you all suck it up. And in the meantime, exactly when the governments of the USA, EU and JAPAN should be hiring millions of people to do Boldly and Proudly and Bluntly NOTHING AT ALL and give them a salary just to keep the consumer economy going, even just at a steady state, they all decide to cut costs, fire people, cut waste (what on earth is waste anyways ? and waste for who ? ) and such insanity in the hope that such will generate “Economic Growth”. Now how insane can you get ?

They need to furnish Cheap Rents, hire millions to do nothing at all and just give them a salary, and commence huge public private projects like thousands of Skyscrapers, Rockets to Mars, Bus systems, you name it, in order to do something useful and hire some people to actually do some work.

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What percentage of your posts are fundamentally exactly the same as this one? If I were to estimate, I’d say it must be around 30-50%, possibly more.

Where has it gotten you the last 500 times you’ve made this post? What have you accomplished so far with this same empty post? What do you hope to accomplish with it? If what you hope to accomplish is significantly different from what you have accomplished with it…Well, as Einstein said, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

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There are 2 differences with past posts, Jesus, the Son of Man, the King of the Jews:

I am highlighting how all criticism to the Model of Economic Growth has always come from the greens, environmentalists, and have always been associated with a Resource Scarcity Ideology, Peak Everything, lets go back to the stone age, lets stop the Technological Economy and Consumerism, etc. This ideology is totally false, there will keep on being more and more resources, more and more technology, more and more capability to manipulate and build and consume, this “lets go back to the stone age” idea is flawed, false and a losing proposition: we shall be and will be going to Mars and extracting energy directly from the Sun, we will split the Sun, just like we did with Atoms, we will harnish a huge amount of resources and wealth from the Solar System and build trillions of Skyscrapers, Cadillacs, Rockets etc.

The correct criticism to the Economic Growth Model is its assumption that the Future will be Like the Past, that the 1960s growth the USA, Germany, Italy and JAPAN had was a law of physics, “natural” and automatic. Nothing further from the truth, that was a one time combination of forces and events that created that increase in wealth and consumerism. Now growth must be forced, imposed from above, imposed by huge public and private projects hiring millions to go to Mars, hiring millions to build skyscrapers, robots, you name it, we must reach for the future and leave the past and this earth behind, we must overcome nature, we need the belief in the future, optimism, we need huge increase in consumerism, factories, wealth, buildings, etc.

Another correct criticism to the Economic Growth model is how the concept of debts, public and private is strictly tied into the concept of growth: you can make as much debt as possible since in the future the economy will grow past the debt levels and pay it all back. But this is false, unless you force growth by governments hiring millions to do nothing at all and to also build the Rockets to Mars, and only governments can do this since the private actors don’t create jobs, don’t have to, in fact have all the interest in decreasing jobs to increase their profit, look at the USA corporations sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars and just playing stock market and financial games with the money since they don’t need to hire anybody. In fact no one sees that the Technological Economy simply does away with work altogether, so how on earth can the economy grow and rebound ?

Conclusion: the debts, all of them, will never be paid back, economic growth is finished structurally and the only way forward is for the government to hire millions to do boldly and proudly and bluntly nothing at all and hire other millions to build skyscrapers and reach for the future with rockets to mars and furnish cheap rents, like the free salary should be 800 dollars a month and the rent for a 4 bedroom house 200 dollars a month.

Do you have any other solution ? No you don’t, so see I am the only person in the entire world who has any real solution and answer to millions of unemployed and poor.

No go on, tell me the “Invisible hand” of the market will make the economy grow and create jobs by the millions, go on with the Right Wing Thug Free Market BS.

TOBOR THE APE

Also check out:

kunstler.com/blog/2011/11/the-bl … ng-us.html

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You just rant. You just rant and rant and rant. I don’t think I’ve ever actually read any reasoning in your posts. Just rants. Rants about building random shit, as if that will help anybody. Rants about throwing large sums of money at people, as if that won’t harm everybody else. Rants about decreasing rent, as if the present cost of rent is arbitrary, as if certain peoples’ livelihoods don’t actually depend on people paying the rent they currently pay. You propose loads of symptom-treatments, but no solutions. None. You see a symptom, and you see a way to treat the symptom, and you don’t realize that your treatment, if accepted, would exacerbate the problem that caused the symptom. You don’t seem to understand that you can’t just fiddle with the economy. People tried that. Every treatment you propose will apparently (and only apparently) help one part of the economy, but will cause a disaster elsewhere. It doesn’t work like you think it works. It’s a very complex machine, and all of the parts of it are very tightly integrated. You cannot interfere with one part of the machine without causing a chain reaction throughout the rest of the machine. It’s naive to think YOU, of all people, have figured out how to control the machine. What makes you think you have this amazing knowledge that has eluded the best minds since the beginning of civilization? What justification have you for this arrogance?

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I only read this post, but just an fyi. Power is often about circumstance, environment, luck. Not about silly best-man-for-the-job delusions.

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I know that the people in power also don’t know what they’re doing. That’s not evidence that he does.

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also, for the record, i wasn’t referring to people with power when i said “the best minds”

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There can’t be economic growth without consumerism and there can’t be consumerism if there’s no money and there is no money if there’s no way to earn that money. The US consumer spends money–using credit when he has no money–and that money is used to promote consumerism in other countries that have durable goods manufacturing and export–or crude oil.

Here’s one idea: blog.seattlepi.com/davidhorsey/2011

and here’s another: nytimes.com/2011/11/25/opini … d=fb-share

Iow, why not do nothing (the Federal Government) and save every penny we can and not use credit (we, the People)?

How much difference would it make if we cut down on our consumerism by %1, %5, or 10% and saved the money, instead? It would certainly cut down on credit card debt. What message do you think that would give give to corps? Looking at standard economic theory, what happens when demand goes down? And do we really need all the “stuff?”

Banks can foreclose on properties, but what’ll happen to them if they can’t resell the properties? People can renege on their credit card debt and never use credit again, then what’ll happen to the lending institutions? People can stop speculating in the stock market; will that mean the Corps will have to dig into their profits to finance themselves?

It’s an interesting thought, to me.

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Study all my past posts, my mind is the best mind ever as we can see where all the “other minds” brought us. Anyways the problem is:

  1. Even when consumerism does increase, and even if it increases a lot (for example there are now 12 million car sales in the USA yearly compared to 9 million 2 years ago, a huge increase in “consumerism” from an objective and not relative point of view) it generates very few new jobs, the system is automatic, the economy is technological and optimized, the robots and computers and some poor country’s low paid labor is doing that little extra work that is left to do. So increased consumerism doesn’t create many new jobs.

  2. The reason no one ever talks about how the system kills way more jobs than create new ones, is that saying that would imply that the entire Standard Economic model is flawed from the outset, is false, is a losing proposition and the only way to counteract that effect is to force the creation of jobs by governments hiring, the exact opposite of what all governments are doing. And the reason why no one says that Economic Growth is finished and over in the USA, EU and JAPAN is because this also implies the same as above, the model is broken, it can’t work anymore, all debts are now unpayable, etc. So again, the only solution is for the governments to step in and hire millions and huge public private projects, etc. Just like when a war breaks out, all of a sudden the governments find all the resources they can to fight wars that last years, so the same should be done today, a complete change of paradigma, of model and social projects, get out of punishment mode and sacrifice mode.

  3. What we need is a huge increase in goals, projects and consumerism, a huge increase in activity, we need bold new projects, we need the new generation concentrated on landing on Mars and extracting resources from the Solar System, we need to go forward. And this is done by huge public and private entities paying for it by the FED and the ECB (European Central Bank) and the BAJ (Bank of JAPAN) printing trillions and paying for all of it.

Instead, everyone is playing computer games with money (after all, the debts and banks and stock markets, etc. are just one gaint computer game not producing anything, just an arena for status challenges, for power trips between people, for confrontations on who wins the next round of poker, etc.), everyone thinks that they will become the new Bill Gates or Steve Jobs (that was a one time quirk, you can’t invent the personal computer or windows all over again, and there is very little real novelties left to invent) as in the myth of the startups and new entrepreuners and be your own boss, and new small businesses, innovation, competition, more education, etc. all BS buzzwords that mean nothing will change, the rich will keep on hogging trillions and there will be less and less work since you will never be competitive or innovative or educated enough, since you will never be able to discover electricity again and invent computers all over again, etc.

And eveyone thinks that we have all of these environmental problems, all of these greens scaredy cats against Atom Energy and such, against huge increases in Mass Consumption, they all believe in Peak Oil and such BS, etc.

Instead we need to hire millions, build those skyscrapers, you can do it, get out of punishment mode (eveyone blaming everyone else of “not working” when work is obsolete structurally) all the governments following the same idiotic formulas destined to fail such as paying back impossible debts, cutting jobs, cutting waste and all such BS, where will that take you ? They should be doing the exact opposite, what insane civilization, what insanity, wake up, get out of punishment mode and get those Rockets to Mars, jackasses.

Now, go on,reply with a one liner, reply with some idiotic standard ideology, don’t propose anything really new, don’t try to figure out some new path, go on, say the “Invisible hand” of the market will create millions of jobs, tell that to the JAPANESE especially, or to more than half of the USA, go on with the BS.

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Here’s my one-liner:

You’re not proposing anything new either: I thought all the same things when I was 4. Most children think things like that.

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From:

kunstler.com/blog/2011/11/the-bl … ng-us.html

And in fact the Right Wing Thug answers:

Here’s my one-liner:

You’re not proposing anything new either: I thought all the same things when I was 4. Most children think things like that.

from:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=177391

Come on with the one liners jackasses, no one has ever attempted some deeper analysis, they are all broken robots and records just repeating the Standard Economic Myth and Model. Try to think a little bit, will you ?

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you didn’t make an analysis jackass, much less a “deep” one. you just say build loads of things and make things cheap for people.

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Easy, guys.

FJ, if there’s anything in the OP you’d care to specifically argue against…

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Hey, guys, I really wasn’t being facetious when I suggested the ‘do nothing’ approach. The ‘system’ won’t change until and unless it’s really threatened with complete collapse. I’d bet there are great economic minds waiting for that to happen, so they can put their ideas forward.

Did anyone follow my links?

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I dunno, when I read that first post I got a weird tingly sensation, I think it’s working on me on the inside, down there in my testis. I don’t know what to do now. I see hairs popping up down there now. I think I need to go to the hospital. My peppie is sick, it’s bleeding white everytime I think of it.

Would we hire illegal immigrants to build the houses, or only bona fide real people?
Also, do we have to pay them with the same money we use, or can we pay them with monies not usable here, and worth only half as much as our money?

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Just for the record, another aspect of the Economic Growth Myth and Model is like “lets pretend we are getting rich”, slaves to numbers, slaves to a numerator and denominator, Debt / GDP, statistics, make the numbers look good, lets manipulate the numbers, and future growth. But you can do all kinds of tricks with the numbers to make them look good, a lot of the USA growth is simply through increase in population, about 3 million more people every year and this makes the GDP “grow” and “look like” the USA is “getting richer”: obviously, nothing further from the truth, they are just numbers, don’t reflect the possibility and potential of future real “exchanges”, the only thing that really counts.

And another deep limit to growth is that all the circuits are getting saturated (somewhat related to some resource scarcities), you can only sell so many iphones and ipads since the mobile phone internet network gets saturated and slows to a halt, same with malls and traffic, long lines at black friday, if the lines were shorter more exchanges could have been made, same in airports and flights, crowds, saturated circuits, etc. But the USA has a huge advantage since they have space and can freely build big box stores, malls, highways, and so on, and they did, although these “investments” are slowing down: but JAPAN, South Korea, Spain, Italy, France etc. are all puny, crowded, even if they would like to grow more they have small houses so they can’t fill them up with stuff (what they should do, the USA has much larger, albeit cheaper built houses), fewer big box stores, traffic, puny roads and clogged traffic, crowds, small spaces, etc. And even Germany and Northern Europe are greeny, they like the “environment”, they don’t want to consume and buy like crazy, build highways and skyscrapers and McMansions like crazy, big malls, ever more exchanges and such, so in these puny economies, they can’t grow even if they wanted to, all of their circuits are saturated, they should be building and consuming like crazy, but all they want to do is “export” (mostly to the USA, the only real consumer worldwide and just to turn around and say “oh look how bad the USA is they are so materialistic and consumerist”, but they like the cash they get by selling crap to the USA, such turds!) and get the cash and such. What turds, and then they say they “can’t grow enough”, to “pay back the debts” ! Well, build and build and consume and consume jackasses!

Now, reply with the one liner, protect Nature (what cocks, Nature is there to be manipulated and used for our needs)…

TOBOR AN APE MAN

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First GDP was just a reflection of an Economic Situation, was just an idea: then it itself became the goal, it substituted the importance of the economy with the importance of a number. The measurement became the subject, that which what was being measured became the excuse: the measurement became the goal. But this is because our mind can associate anything with anything, can invent any cause and effect, any relationship it wants and make it become real. It can relate any random item with any other, etc.

Another point regarding saturated circuits is also related to the often difficulty of actually “spending money”,of reaching goals with the money you got, of extracting value, like companies that say they have openings but can’t find the right people (of course this remains to be really verified…), or you got the cash but can’t find the right thing to buy or the thing you want to buy (is happening more and more, unless you risk buying from the internet), or the greens blocking your new Atom Energy plant or high speed rail or skyscraper and such etc. As with companies having billions and just sitting on them or buying other companies since they don’t know what to do with the cash anymore.

Anyways, Europe sucks, should become like the USA, one monolithic cultural system, instead they all want to keep their crappy traditions, each one wants to be special, what turds: there is way more in common between a German and a random American and an Italian and a random American then between a German and Italian. In fact the USA is a standardized culture and system, it is tuned for consumerism, for the future, for going forward, Europe is a puny shit hole tuned into their crappy local traditions, what turds. They should become a state of the USA and get those big box stores, highways, and all the rest.

And then Europe would be in much better shape and richer if the UK, Norway, Sweden and all the others just grouped together in one country (instead of them all wanting to be “special”, the UK doesn’t want the EURO and such huge crappy ideas), exactly like the USA, with one currency, government etc. then they wouldn’t be in the shit hole they are now. Craps and turds, they should be merged into China or the USA…

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Status Quo Protector says, about the economy:

"Rants about decreasing rent, as if the present cost of rent is arbitrary, as if certain peoples’ livelihoods don’t actually depend on people paying the rent they currently pay. "

"It’s a very complex machine, and all of the parts of it are very tightly integrated. You cannot interfere with one part of the machine without causing a chain reaction throughout the rest of the machine. It’s naive to think YOU, of all people, have figured out how to control the machine. "

NO. In fact it is very simple, a one transistor circuit, A against B, A versus B, end of story, one will power against another, 1 against 0, which bit wins, who wins, that is all, a simple action reaction. So either you want to build skyscrapers, the governments hire millions upon millions, even to just do nothing at all but to simply give them a salary so they can consume and buy more and more (we need trillions of Cadillacs and highways, rockets, split the Sun, energy, you name it, do it, go for it, you can do it man!) or you want to maintain the present punishment mode system, all against the workers and free lunches the economic system generates automatically, all against the future and progress, all tied to the past and traditions and such huge crap instead of a one world monolithic block conquering the future and going to Mars and such, etc.

And, by the way, rents are arbitrarily set, they should be free, houses should be given away free as they are a standard technology, a commodity, instead people want to use this basic need to squeeze cash out of the weaker social classes. Cash is used as a weapon, property is used as a weapon.

From:

kunstler.com/blog/2011/11/the-bl … ng-us.html

other right Wing Thugs says:

"Tegmark said:
Europe is a puny shit hole tuned into their crappy local traditions, what turds. They should become a state of the USA and get those big box stores, highways, and all the rest.

Duh, right. That’s why virtually ALL of these “puny shitholes”, even places like Spain, have a higher longevity and lower infant mortality rate than us “correct” Americans. You are out of your goddamned mind and sound like the whole lot of the Republikook radio and TV guys. There have been innumerable studies on total lifestyle, happiness of citizens, etc. and the USA is never close to the “shitholes” you cite.

It’s not 1975 any more, dude. The USA is a failed empire that doesn’t even know how far it’s fallen because it’s so full of itself."

"Anyways, Europe sucks, should become like the USA, one monolithic cultural system

It’s idiots like you that are the cause of all evil in the world. It’s idiots like you that have ALWAYS been the cause of all evil in world.

You fucking imperialists never learn. You never learn from history and you never learn from nature. You need to be locked up in a monotone room, where you can practice your idiot ways for the rest of your lives."

I am not an imperialist, I am for a one world government that dictates what Man must do and namely go to Mars, build trillions of skyscrapers and highways, do and build and split the Sun jackasses.

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Statistics, big numbers, the myth of numbers, a numerical target to reach like life expectancy, GDP, how many blacks have college degrees, how many woman are managers and such “political correctiveness” crap: well who gives two ccks and a dck ? Numbers don’t mean anything, like the myth of 100,000 iphone APPs and such when they all do practically nothing to very little. The numerical target as the goal. By the way, the GDP numbers are all false anyways, there is no way the USA exchanges 10,000 billion dollars a year, that would be like them building 100 million homes a year or a billion people working for 10,000 dollars a year, totally insane and false numbers, a bluff, a myth, a high maintenance target society, and more then saying that the debts can never be paid back, it would be more correct to say that the USA, EU and JAPAN can’t “Live Up” to their fairy tale target of imagined wealth and GDP level.

So, I want that, my will power only, 7 billion people must follow my command, like a cry baby, I want that, trillions of Rockets and Cadillacs, my numbers are the only target, I too like big numbers, but my numbers. Society is just a machine that must be programmed towards a goal, and my goal is the correct one because I said so, I am the only one, just suck it up.

So the problem of the “machine” is how to resolve conflicts and conflicting will powers between millions of people, quirk decisions, quirk values and such. There is no solution, only a communist dictatorship forcing billions to build the rockets and skyscrapers. And how can a sequence of symbols, a one dimensional thought see all the angles of the complex economical machine ? How can you solve everyone’s problems everywhere and for all time ? No way, jose’, it must be forced, hire billions of people to do nothing. And cheap rents. And free salaries, And a BUS system.

I heard google has cars that drive themselves, that is what we need, a billion highways on Mars with trillions of Cadillacs with no one inside driving themselves all across the planet, with no goal or target but just to drive themselves, Automatic for the People, really cool, a work of art, a deep spiritual event. Jackasses.

TOBOR AN EIGHT MAN

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From:

kunstler.com/blog/2011/12/the-co … mbles.html

“And now, alas, at Christmas time, the world has gotten a margin call and needs to fork over a whole lot of collateral in order to demonstrate that the global system of financial obligations is legit. Only the collateral turns out to be all this dubious paper, really just a bouquet of promises to pay in distant future Tuesdays for trillions of hamburgers today.”

No, the collateral is mostly simply the worldwide stock of real estate: houses, skyscrapers, malls, etc. That is mostly the collateral and what is backing up everything. But real estate can only be exchanged so many times, can only be inflated up to a certain point, after you need other activities, other exchanges, other entities to exchange but at that point you run in the wall of the Technological Economy that has done away with the need of work to produce almost everything, has automated and optimized work out of existence. Therefore, governments worldwide should pay 800 dollars a month to a billion people, just to keep the consumer economy running. And furnish cheap rents, 200 dollars a month for a 2 bedroom house - apartment. This never will happen, then just prepare for millions of fights of everyone against everyone for millions of reasons…

By the way, Europe isn’t even defined, delimited, is such a vague and ambiguous entity, no one knows where it starts or ends (from Iceland to Turkey ? or Russia ? how far in Russia ?, etc.) No one knows how they are tied together (are they ?) and even who they are Norway ? UK ? Switzerland ? Ukraine ? anyone ? Oh but Norway and UK don’t have the Euro, they are all very special little turds, etc. They think they are cool or simply hogs that want to keep their cash like Norway and Switzerland, what a huge real clusterph*k of a continent, so many languages, so many different cultures, they should simply be merged into the USA, the entire continent (except Russia) should just become a new USA state (state name could be NEW EUROPE or EAST VIRGINIA) and adapt the standard USA culture, language and system, since that is a standard that anyone can relate to, in fact the europeans relate much better to the USA then between themselves, go figure.

And then the FED can print trillions and hand it over to them…