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In the UK you repeat that it's necessary a lot and promise to mostly make the cuts affect a smaller portion of the active voter base, regardless of its wider effects or how large that portion of the population is.
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Jul 16, 2015 05:23
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KennyTheFish posted:Correct me if I am wrong, but most of the reason the household analogy for governments is stupid is because governments control the money supply. If they don't, as in the case with the euro, does the analogy hold? If it does, what does this mean for economics? If a government stops spending money then it shrinks its economy. All government spending goes back into the economy, as a rule, and without the redistributive force of government then money accumulates at the top and the people at the bottom run out of it to spend. If an economy is built on government redistribution (most are, because surprisingly it doesn't happen reliably if you rely entirely on private self interest) then taking that away fucks it up. Capitalism doesn't create wealth, it just concentrates it. Human labour creates wealth and capitalism can serve as a motivation for that, but it doesn't directly create it, and is actively self destructive because it relies on constant expansion to maintain profit. Redistribution is what offsets that in the absence of expansion. Ideally it turns the whole economy into simply a very overcomplicated and masked system to make sure everyone has enough stuff, while still pandering to people's urge to hoard wealth. But back to the first point, austerity in a household analogy is sort of like saying "I've over spent this week, so I will sell the car. This will solve my debt problem." OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:11 on Jul 20, 2015 |
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Jul 20, 2015 01:03
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Well I'm sure that lots of flagellation will make that all better.
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Jul 20, 2015 04:45
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Which the current situation is proving splendidly efficacious at doing, of course.KingFisher posted:Do you contest the basic fact that greek corruption, clientelism, inefficiency, profligate spending, and tax evasion coupled access to cheap credit was the cause of the crisis? Wasn't it something to do with them being lent a bunch of money they couldn't pay back by people who really should have known better and now their creditors are basically demanding the sale of the country? I'm sure that was involved somewhere.
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Jul 20, 2015 04:54
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Look we can't expect banks and people who work in finance as their profession to be able to judge whether or not the well known perfidious Greek would be able to pay back their loans but we can drat well blame the Greek electorate for their cunning mass exploitation of the European banks!
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Jul 20, 2015 05:08
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Won't someone think of the poor oppressed bankers!
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Jul 20, 2015 05:10
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Not sure Greece caused the recession because I have it on good authority that was the Labour Party. Also, it's a bit weird to blame something on excessive borrowing rather than excessive lending. It's sort of the bank's job to figure out whether it should lend you money or not.
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Jul 20, 2015 05:37
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No I don't max out my (non existant) credit card each month because if I did that once then the credit card company wouldn't let me do it again until I paid it off. Given that Greece now apparently owes more money than it can physically produce, because people keep throwing money at it to pay off its previous debt and demanding ever higher returns, then whinge at Germany when it doesn't get paid, possibly someone on the creditor end did something a bit wrong somewhere along the line? If an individual does this they declare bankruptcy long before this point and their debt is written off, because beating a dead horse is considered unproductive.
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Jul 20, 2015 05:49
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It especially doesn't make sense because you can decrease the deficit by raising taxes or waiting for the economy to grow, which are independent of spending.
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Jul 21, 2015 20:08
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If your definition of austerity includes both proverbial knives and potatoes then it's a bit of a bad definition.
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Jul 21, 2015 20:51
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Can we invade the banks and make them pay off their own loans?
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Jul 21, 2015 23:32
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Typo posted:Raising taxes on the rich during a recession is also a form of austerity. Not sure how that has anything to do with austerity, given that it's sort of the complete opposite of what the people championing austerity are doing. If "cut public spending, sell off public assets, and cut taxes for the wealthy in the name of reducing the deficit (which hasn't been a problem up to now)" and "raise taxes on the wealthy to increase public spending, borrow as necessary to invest in things which grow the economy and inflate GDP as a portion of debt to reduce the relative size of the deficit and also spend a bunch of money in good places" are both "forms of austerity" then austerity is completely meaningless. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 23:36
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Typo posted:Austerity is by definition raising taxes without increasing spending, or cutting spending without also cutting taxes. Raising taxes without increasing spending seems kind of pointless but it's better than cutting spending I guess?
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Jul 21, 2015 23:40
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Typo posted:It's not if you plan on reducing the deficit or if you plan on servicing or reducing the debt Is that very necessary?
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Jul 21, 2015 23:46
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Typo posted:If you are greece then yes it probably is It doesn't seem to be doing them very much good so far.
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Jul 21, 2015 23:51
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Typo posted:So let me get your position straight. I would suggest that "raise the tax rate on the wealthy" would make bugger all difference to Greece's debt problem. If we grant that Greece has a tax evasion problem, as well as potentially that its economy has been hit particularly hard by the recession (as I assume that the wealthy Greek citizens didn't suddenly develop magical tax evasion powers overnight) then what is presumably needed is rather large reforms in how tax is collected, as well as finding a new economic basis for the country if its current one hasn't been able to recover. Both of those seem like relatively expensive things which you would probably need to borrow money to fund, especially as they would both take time to implement. So reducing borrowing and just saying "we want more taxes" doesn't seem practical, as people would continue to not pay tax in the interim while public services collapse and take more of the economy with them. The necessary thing would seem to be a sizeable capital investment in social, legislative, and economic reforms, combined with a lenient repayment plan and a maintenance of funding to services and welfare in the meantime to cover the inevitable fallout of an economic restructuring, as people will probably need retraining and to find new work. Or you could just poo poo all over the country by offering repeated bailouts with increasingly draconian repayment plans with the end goal of loving everything up so the country falls to bits and you repossess it on the cheap, that works too I guess.
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Jul 22, 2015 00:02
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Typo posted:I got a feeling if I simply called it a "wealth redistribution program" instead of "austerity" a few posts ago you'd be all for it right now. You're not really redistributing wealth if you just raise taxes and then give the revenue to bankers. If you suggested raising taxes and spending extra on infrastructure and reforms to secure the long term prosperity of the working classes then yes, but I don't think that really merits the title of austerity.
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Jul 22, 2015 00:16
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asdf32 posted:The thread is now supporting laffer. 100% taxation is counterproductive, therefore a napkin parabola is correct. Typo posted:Somebody is giving something up, in this case the rich now have to pay more taxes Diddums.
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Jul 22, 2015 00:44
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For the purposes of this discussion, we are using austerity to describe spending cuts and their associated ideological baggage that various governments are using to justify pursuing an ulterior agenda in the guise of fiscal responsibility, because that is how it's usually pursued and it's a good word for it. If you would prefer to use a different definition you can, but you will find it difficult to partake in the discussion.
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Jul 22, 2015 03:59
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Shooting all the bankers for the past twenty years would have prevented the debt crisis.
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Jul 24, 2015 16:12
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asdf32 posted:Either we decide debt crisis is inevitable in the euro or we recognize that debt management can prevent it. Government debt management can't do anything to resolve massive private debt being taken onto the public balance sheet. You can run a perfectly functional national budget which still collapses when all of your major banks come crawling for a bailout because they can't run their own finances properly, and your financial sector is bigger than the rest of your economy.
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Jul 25, 2015 03:49
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Pohl posted:Both individuals and systems can cause systemic theft and corruption in our culture. Overall, it is the system to blame. So no, I'm not going to hate on him, because he is a good guy. Do you think everyone in the banking industry or big business is Dr. loving Evil? Your friend sounds like a pretty massive rear end in a top hat from the way you've described him. You haven't listed any redeeming qualities.
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Jul 26, 2015 16:25
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I would go so far as to venture that an exceedingly wealthy person who sees everyone who earns less money than them as beneath them and undeserving is possibly not a good person.
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Jul 26, 2015 16:55
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ColoradoCleric posted:I wonder what Greece would have had to do to rack up so much debt where this even becomes an issue. Join the Euro, apparently.
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Jul 29, 2015 19:41
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