14 thoughts on “Economic Growth”

  1. democrat socialists also fail to understand, perhaps deliberately, how redistribution destroys production of wealth.

    1. Socialists believe that the economic pie is fixed. They believe that if one person gets more, then by definition everyone else gets less. This is absurd with even a few moments consideration. Look back in time, say to 1900 and see where the economy was at the time. They had oil (primarily for kerosene), they had railroads, they had ships, etc. Telephones were high-tech back then and most people didn’t have them. There was virtually no electronics back then. The airplane hadn’t been invented and only the very wealthy had cars. Look at the economy today. Technologies of various types grew the economy considerably even when factoring in inflation. We take for granted air travel (a multi-hundred billion dollar industry), millions of computers, over 100 million cars, over 300 million cell phones, etc. that has grown the economic pie. Even poor people have access to things that the wealthiest people on Earth couldn’t buy in 1900. And it will continue so long as government and socialists don’t kill it.

      1. And the anti-agriculture Democrats, who want us all to live subsistence lifestyles, don’t even realize how public works projects like dams or modern agriculture allow people to specialize in trades aside from subsisting.

        It is possible to live with modern conveniences and be a hermit in the woods but it is impossible to be a hermit without at least some modern conveniences. Whether it is a gun, knife, pots and pans, weather appropriate clothing, or any number of things, people who choose to live like a hermit still rely on the rest of society to allow them to specialize their lifestyle.

        I find it amazing that the pro-science crowd are so unaware of human history that they want to do away with agriculture, the greatest human advancement ever.

  2. I once showed a bleeding heart friend of mine a poverty chart that displayed a collapse in the poverty rates throughout the early 20th century. He literally could not see the drop in poverty and pointed to a small bump in the thirties.

    If you look back at what constituted poverty in the sixties and what makes poverty today, you’ll see that we’ve raised the bar considerably. Most poor people own color televisions, for example.

    Much of poor people’s behavior stems from bad habits passed on from poor parents (often single mothers) to their children. Much more results from poor economic decisions passed by an economically clueless Congress, Federal Reserve and Academic Elite establishment. Why the Fed thinks that inflation is a good thing is beyond me. It raises prices on necessities such as housing, food and health care. If these were kept down by not interfering in the market, we’d have a lot less poverty. The so-called spectre of deflation has done nothing but enrich those closest to the credit markets while keeping the poor and middle class even poorer.

    1. On inflation: inflation is essentially debt forgiveness, a little at a time. Deflation is debt tax.

      That’s why inflation is better than deflation: debtors don’t get killed. If deflation didn’t kill the economy, banks would love it – the money that they lent out has to be repaid with more valuable dollars than they lent.

      But deflation really does kill the economy. The easiest way to understand it is to look at incentives: if you could make 3% by just burying your money in your mattress, you would be less likely to invest in businesses.

      1. I must disagree. Inflation is not better than deflation. Perhaps if an economy is truly aligned to market forces, then it might be, but if inflation and deflation are the effects of money supply expansion and contraction, then in this case, deflation is better.

        There reason is because we have had asset based inflation based on credit and money supply expansion since the late eighties, thanks to Greenspan, et. al. This has done nothing for the middle class and poor person. All it has done is enrich those closest to access to credit.

        Have you noticed that health care, education and real estate are all tied to massive government subsidies? The subsidies expand the money supply and thus raise prices (not always, mind you. It isn’t cause and effect.) This same effect occurs simply by the Fed printing money. They want to keep inflation low, but even at one or two percent, the inflation compounds and we end up with higher prices.

        Now that our economy is in a depression, the Fed and other central bankers are doing everything they can to inflate the economy. But this is distorting the reality of the marketplace. The results are obvious: higher food prices, higher rents and home values. Money is going into the stock market via corporate execs buying back stock to inflate their stock prices. Amazon is not worth $560.00.

        How does any of this help the average person? It doesn’t. Salaries are not rising along with prices.

        The (Keynsian) idea behind deflation is that it starts a downward spiral of prices, which leads to people losing jobs and depressed wages. But what if those prices were artificially high in the first place? Deflation is just the market trying to come to grips with reality. And, if those in the higher wage brackets get fired, it could be because they were making artificially higher wages. Deflation doesn’t kill an economy, it resets it to normal.

      2. I maintain that an economy does best when currency generally holds value over time, neither inflating nor deflating at any great rate. Alternating periods of low rate inflation and deflation sounds fine to me. Deflation at too great a rate, more than reasonable time value of money on a loan, could be ruinous. But the constant positive inflation created by absolute paranoia of even minimal deflation also does damage over time.

  4. It’s ok though because Bernie isn’t a real socialist and it is beyond the pale to even think of comparing his policies to those of other socialists. Yes, that is something you will hear if you bring up Bernie’s own claims about being socialist.

    1. Back in the Cold War days, there was an almost infallible way to tell whether a country was communist just by looking at their name. With very few exceptions, any country that had the word “people” or “democratic” in its name was communist. Common examples included the People’s Republic of China and the German Democratic Republic. Democratic Socialism follows the pattern, but what would you expect from a man who spent his honeymoon in the Soviet Union.

  6. I think you’re over thinking it. Socialism is not a system of economics, it never was. It was a method for gaining political power, by stealing money from the rich to bribe the poor. Socialists couldn’t care less about economics or peoples welfare, they care only about their own power. It’s not rocket science.

    2. –I think you’re over thinking it. Socialism is not a system of economics, it never was. It was a method for gaining political power, by stealing money from the rich to bribe the poor.–

      I doubt anyone poor actually got bribed. First they take over the press and the press says poor are being bribed. Then take over whatever else they want [which is everything].
      If you take over a bakery, selling bakery products is work, whereas handing out bakery products is less work. And people like things which are free.
      Is that bribery or is it a promotional giveaway?
      Though a decree that bread must not be sold over say, 10 cent per loaf, is just as effective. And generally the government giving lots of rules about anything and everything gets the job done.

      Governments print money, so they don’t have to steal money, just take over the government, and then have the press say it’s the people’s government.
      Of course the press as general rule are already, mostly useful idiots- and generally cowards.

      Though the “poor” thugs used to take over the government get paid, or shot or whatever.

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