...to continue with the real world, as opposed to the stats... I never said Rochester existed because of Kodak. If you go back and actually read what I said, what I said was that if any one export became too successful, it would kill the city. Which is what happened when Kodak became so wildly successful they distorted the economy of Rochester and killed it. This is also what Kellogg did and is still doing to Battle Creek, and what GM and Ford did to Detroit. In evolution, this is a known phenomenon: generalists thrive, while specialists gradually die off. Human beings are generalists. Mountain gorillas, who are closely related to us, are specialists. We live everywhere, in the billions; they live in one place in Africa, and number maybe in the thousands. That was my point in that bit. But then I knew, as I said, that the wrong conclusion would be drawn. Everyone is too tied to their view of how the world works and won't take off their blinders to take a walk through their own town and observe reality in action. Getting back to austerity, you have, as usual, the right analysis and the wrong prescription. You remind me so much of Mundell that I really wonder sometimes if you're him. Austerity in Europe is a result of Germany doing a song and dance around what they've done to their neighbors, as Banjo's link, if anyone here bothered to read it (on the evidence, no one did) showed quite conclusively. The problem in Europe isn't fiscal deficits but trade deficits, and this is a predictable result of Germany dominating the eurozone and therefore getting, at all times, the correct rate of interest and the correct exchange rate for its needs, whereas everyone else in the eurozone only got the price of money they needed by sheer coincidence. The result, over time, in this case a very short time, is that one place, Germany, got all the benefit, and everyone else suffered. There can be only one winner in a currency union. This is fine if you're a nation and have made that choice; but not so good if you're not. It's one thing for the north of Italy to subsidize the south, although the northerners still resent it sometimes, they will live with it, because blood is thicker than water and all that. It's another thing entirely for Germany to subsidize Greece, as we are now finding out. As for the eurozone in the aggregate, it makes its living by selling German cars to the rest of the world. But if Germany itself, as we noted in my first rant here, is selling cars and exporting capital and therefore setting itself up to be another Detroit, that means somebody else somewhere else had better be working on something else for the eurozone to live on. If not, in not too long a time Europe won't even count in anyone's view of the world economy; the rest of the world will have passed it by. But for that someone else to be successful in the European multinational context, they're going to need to live in a place that has sovereign control over its own price of money. You can now all go back to talking about "investment", "taxes", and the rest, and mistaking the effects and the byproducts for the cause and the solution.
I see that you are doing to Keynes what you have done to Dawkins. You have repeatedly implied that Dawkins makes the case for design because he remarked that there appears to be design. You are what's wrong with the Internet.
You do not understand the subject matter. You are a leftist who appears to be incapable of accepting facts which conflict with your leftist worldview. Dawkins states in the video... which I present all the time to counter your b.s.... that many top physicists in the world state our universe appears designed. then he gives for explanations.. 1. he dismisses the creator option... (because it does not solve anything) 2. He states some scientists speculate there could be 10 to the 500 other universes 3. Some are holding out for a theory of everthing 4. one guy victor stenger denies the appearance of fine tunings When I quote Dawkins or Hawking or any of the others... I quote them to explain that if you believe in one universe... our universe appears designed. I do not state that say it is designed. That is a distinction that seems to be outside your ken.
I was just thinking about that. If I was running for President of the United States and they asked me if I believed in god, my best answer would be, "Well, I suppose it all had to start somewhere."
Trefoil, you explain here that your original comment was a bio-diversity metaphore of hemispheric scope trying to make an economic development point of 'generalism,' and not an accurate account of historic development. Kodak did not kill Rochester any more than a single industry killed Detroit, Battlecreek or Elmira, Corning, Utica, Watertown, Batavia, Buffalo or Syracuse and I could go on, and on...Newark, Camden, Patterson, Worchester, Toledo, etc. Using your bio-diversity foil, you fail to notice that the soil in each case has been poisoned by bad government with high taxes and curruption that kills off business in general and leaves only 'Government Business' in its wake. For your information, I am not Mundell, but I have met him several times. I agree that Germany got the best of the EU deal. They got a cheap currency (for them), a protected trade zone where no one inside it offered them any competition and cheap credit. That does not mean that the weaker players did not benefit from cheap credit and a network of subsidies. The difference is that the weaker players pissed it all away and did nothing to raise their game...they used the cheap credit to did a bigger hole for themselves and they have nothing to show for it. I also agree that blood plays a role in burdening the pain of subsidy. It is another demonstration that 'diversity' without brotherhood is merely divisive. Again you oversimplify when you say that all Europe has in the sale of German cars. That is really ridiculous even if you are only talking about Germany. More than cars Germany is a world leader in Machine Tools, Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, Engineering, Steel and Materials, High Tech applications and all the important value added sectors of production. If you just think for a minute you can probably think of a giant multi-national corporation in each of the sectors I list here. Even this fails to acknowledge that the great strenth of the German economy is in its breadth of small business referred to as the 'Mittlestrand.' Germany does not try to kill off the 'Mittlestrand' by intent or neglect in contrast to the way 'K Street' and Washington are hostile and neglectful to small business economy in the U.S.
well, I'd give it 2 and half to Ed and 2 to trefoil, but I'd give trefoil a half point for introducing trade deficit, which is really the crux of the matter
I dock them both a couple of points for using 10x the words necessary to make their respective points.
Which PLANET the funds for more investments are coming to the US Treasury from? This question needs to be answered to justify the most exciting possibility of 'production via investments to grow the economy'.