One of the problems our insolvent industrial economics has, and it’s only one, is quantitatively aggregating value, GDP is the easiest example, then saying this provides a clear picture of what’s happening in the economy. Unfortunately, the fact is all dollars are not equal, for example a dollar spent on potatoes feeding a family of four, has a lot more value than a dollar spent on landscaping a home in Bel-Air, just don’t tell an economist this. It’s why they can interminably bleat American economy is no longer as reliant on oil, and when the price of oil goes up, it’s no harm to the economy, “After all, we now only spend “x”% of GDP on oil.” Nonetheless, the price of oil goes up, the economy slows. Who you going to believe, your lying eyes or a Nobel Laureate?
Which gets us to a little report by the Fed, a truly corporate global institution, on how the tit-titting about industry moving to China is much ado about nothing, after all it only adds up to 2.5% of GDP–well, actually the Fed estimates it as “personal consumption data.” Mr. Krugman, who owes his whole career to being a shill for corporate globalization, and in particular selling it to liberals, jumps right in to show how smart the Fed is–and of course, this globalization thing has always been overrated in its impact on the US economy. This by the way is the same guy who has written repeatedly in the august pages of the NYT that the key to revitalizing the American economy is for the Renminbi to appreciate.
So, who you gonna believe, a Nobel Lauraete, taking on his election year hack role as a Democrat, or your lying eyes, looking at miles and miles of abandoned manufacturing areas across the midwest and northeast, and shuttered main streets across the country where Wal-Mart, packed with Chinese manufactures, monopolizing a good chunk of “personal consumption” in those communities? Mr. Krugman concludes: “The rules of macroeconomics haven’t changed nearly as much as people imagine,” and he has a chart.
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62 Comments
Add your own1. irish_c | January 18th, 2012 at 2:30 pm
Neo-classical economics is a thoroughly discreditted sham at this stage. The Fed is one of the largest employers of economists. You don’t get tenure in econmics depts if you do not toe the party line. Economics is as scienctific as homeopoathy: How can you claim to be a scientist and yet ignore the empirical evidence right before your eyes? Neo-liberal economics has unleashed a wave of devestation across the globe (Globalisation of impoverishment, alright). GDP is something that the autistic can relate to but has very little to do with human well-being. Economics is maily ideologically driven; Economics is to science what Dr. Josef Mengele is to gynecology.
2. monopole | January 18th, 2012 at 3:35 pm
That’s a incredibly cheap shot, just to play the contrarian. Krugman explains that the relatively small share of the GDP that makes it to Chinese shores are due to the markup resulting from transport, distribution and “services”. Essentially, the corporations are selling items at the cost it took to make it in the US and pocketing the difference minus the added cost of transport. Hardly a ringing endorsement of corporate offshoring.
Krugman has not only decried the hollowing out of the US economy (famously stating that we have “been selling each other houses with money borrowed from China”) but is pretty much ahead of the curve on the decimation of high end white collar jobs to AI and offshoring:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/opinion/07krugman.html?src=me&ref=homepage
Krugman isn’t going to pass any purity tests for radicals, he’s a market trade theorist for god’s sake. On the other hand, he is very good at hammering away at inequality, expansionary austerity and lack of stimulus. Yes, but he’ll outsource your mom’s job and enslave a third-world peasant faster than you can say productivity, then reimport the job at third-world peasant rates so when your mom gets her job back, she’ll have to pimp our her ass to make ends meet. That’s the Krugmeister!
3. Eschatos | January 18th, 2012 at 3:56 pm
“Would you like to know more?”
Yes please.
4. irish_c | January 18th, 2012 at 4:10 pm
apologies for typos in last post. AEC: get a fucking edit function cos I’m fucked if I’m learning to spell an’ shit.
5. Hoyticus | January 18th, 2012 at 4:20 pm
We all know that manufacturing is the only way to have decent paying jobs without a college degree. So how do we get it back? Offer free land, subsidized utilities, temporary favorable taxes, capital grants, and tax breaks for each worker hired. But it return we need to demand companies that companies hire US workers, we also need the dollar to devalue to make exports more competitive and imports more painful in conjunction with a VAT. Most importantly we need to get money out of politics, especially corporate money. That way we don’t end up passing unilateral free trade agreements that ravage US workers and productive capabilities.
6. hoops | January 18th, 2012 at 4:33 pm
Are you seriously trying to tell me that China getting richer automatically makes America poorer and that you’re not a neocon shill? Didn’t you get the Cato Institute & Heritage Foundation memo about the new post-post industrial economy that says we don’t have to worry about jobs/debt/food/sex because a new technological breakthrough in bottom comment trolls? Holla at me if you didn’t and I’ll mail you a signed collectors edition copy, because only neocon shills are trapped in that other idiotic, real world economic model.
7. Zhu Bajie | January 18th, 2012 at 6:04 pm
“Economics is as scienctific as homeopoathy”
It’s a lot like astrology. Econonomists and astrologers can both explain things after they happen, but they can’t predict.
8. vortexgods | January 18th, 2012 at 6:23 pm
I hardly read Krugman, I prefer Michael Hudson. This is what he put up today:
http://michael-hudson.com/2012/01/inside-the-world-banks-population-policy/
“Whether the United States and the World Bank have been led to this objective by their intention to preserve the obsolete and oppressive militaristic class institutions in developing nations, or whether they have been led to the preservation of these institutions in order that the mineral resources of these countries can continue to be stripped from them, may be a matter for conjecture. But the facts remain, whatever the dominant motives at work. ”
That’s from 1972. “First they came to impoverish the Third World nations… then they came to impoverish the former Soviet States… something, something…” You get the idea.
9. YankeeFrank | January 18th, 2012 at 6:58 pm
Not all economists and all economics are frauds. Check out Bill Mitchell, Steve Keen, Dean Baker and as vortexgods mentions above, the lovely Michael Hudson. They all called the housing bubble long before it collapsed, and none are neoclassical douchebags like Krugman. Oh sorry, Krugman is a “neo-keynesian” which just means a neoliberal with a smattering of Keynes on top to make it look less laughable. He has indeed made a career justifying to liberals the wonders of globalization, and will rot in hell for it. Nowadays he’s pedaling as hard as he can to obfuscate the truth that he really helped screw his countrymen in the ass. Krugman can suck a fuck.
10. R. | January 18th, 2012 at 8:19 pm
Jesus, these Exiled trolls have been really whiny lately.
11. Nazidethpig | January 18th, 2012 at 8:26 pm
What do you know that I do not know about Paul Krugman? I’ve always found him to be exceptional in explaining the politics of economics. I also don’t mind him outsourcing my mom’s union job to third world peasants.
Wouldn’t it be better to attack those who pervert the science of economics (“We are all Austrians tonight!”) like those who pervert journalism with shallow blog posts funded by the Oligarchy?
12. Nazidethpig | January 18th, 2012 at 9:39 pm
Aw c’mon AEC. What if my mom’s union job was in the service industry? Just because our manufacturing economy has been replaced by a service economy by globalization does not mean that a service economy can not also be unionized. Fuck, I’d be happy to be a unionized boot licker. But not one that is not unionized.
To condemn globalization for the loss of unionized manufacturing jobs that were mostly replaced by non-unionized service jobs is not because service jobs are inherently unionizable (My brain broke writing that non-word.) Unions were just unable to do as well during the transition.
I agree we never had to make the economic transition from manufacturing to services. But we did. I just disagree that employment is structural in nature, because nature is ad-hoc, and I like to hock loogies at pensioners in the mall and I’m worried about my pension…which I don’t have and neither does my mom, who’s got a “service” job..
13. Khan | January 18th, 2012 at 10:19 pm
First: I read that blog post as an argument for stimulus, or at least a counter-argument against critics. It didn’t say whether globalization is an inherently good or bad thing. I haven’t read much Krugman from pre-2008, but off-shoring rarely comes up these days, beyond that bit mentioned by monopole.
Second: Mom, can you bring the tv dinner sliders that you promised for dinner tonight? Because, damn. I sure is hungry reading the eXiled, me being a high school drop out and all.
14. Khan | January 19th, 2012 at 12:26 am
Touche. Welcome to exiled comments, me.
15. Anon | January 19th, 2012 at 2:09 am
China produces shit Americans don’t want to. Slaving away on factory floors manufacturing cheap electronics and consumer goods is a job for poor Chinese kids in a sweatshop. It’s not like China is stealing work from Ford or fucking Boeing. USA is the world’s most productive, most high tech manufacturer. As such, its production is more capital intensive than labour intensive. THAT is where all the old middle class jobs have been going: to mad productivity increases; not to Who Flung Dung slaving away for 2 dolla a day to feed his 10 kids. This is all well and good for the smart kids who have the genetic intellectual ability to be engineers, programmers, doctors, scientists, etc etc. It’s not that great for the average American. Unless the government was committed to compensating the losers through more income redistribution… fat fucking chance of that, unfortunately.
16. Anton | January 19th, 2012 at 4:39 am
That’s a toughy: would I believe my own lying eyes, or rather bet on some Nobel laureate’s words of wisdom?
Well, lets see…
Milton Friedman got the Swedish massage for economics, right?
The peace price has been presented to Kissinger (mass murdered), De Klerk (apartheid-master) & Obama (a corporate whore whose services include murder and apartheid-policies)
In the field of literature:
F.E. Sillanpää (A laughably bad Finnish writer, even by Finnish standards)
Orhan Pamuk (Turkish fraudster)
Doris Lessing (Snotty and pretentious upper-class beeyatch)
J.M.Coetzee (J.M.Coetzee)
17. vortexgods | January 19th, 2012 at 7:03 am
“It’s not like China is stealing work from Ford or fucking Boeing.”
You are right about that, Ford is outsourcing to Thailand:
“Thailand is a regional manufacturing hub and supplier for many of the world’s largest auto makers. For example, it is a central base for Ford’s Asia production, which in June 2010 announced it will build a $450 million car factory, its first wholly owned plant in Thailand. Ford will manufacture Focus cars for the domestic and export market.” — http://www.thaitradeusa.com/home/?p=2368
This is because China still has ownership restrictions (a certain about of Chinese equity required in plants built there, this causes Ford to worry about ending up like Audi if they move their plant to China, which had it’s plant expropriated by their Chinese partners when their contract was up) whereas Thailand does not in this particular case.
I was telling my fiancé that Thailand is “The Detroit of Asia,” and she responded by saying, “Do you mean it’s the ‘hood?”
Ah, the youth of today, not remembering back to when we built cars in Detroit…
18. Klaus | January 19th, 2012 at 7:07 am
Exile is trolling the prog net by purity innuendo, as ever. But please, make yourself appear as the Viz Comics of politics.
19. NoPast | January 19th, 2012 at 8:30 am
(english is not my first language)
90% of macro economists are just third rate mathematicians/game theorists who use complex mathematical models in order to hide unrealistic,pro-status quo,pro-capitalistic
assumption(for example economic efficiency defined as Pareto efficiency,economic behaviour defined as rational, property rights as natural rights,methodological individualism,utilitarism etc)
Krugman,De Long and all Saltwater/progressive economists are obviously much more sane and reality-based than the freshwater quasi-market-foundamentalists clown(University of Chicago,I don’t cite the George Mason University because they are a joke even among the neoliberal) but you will never heard nothing of true radical from them because they are Neokeynesias,a strange mixture of little Keynesian economics and a shitload of neoclassical dogma,the true followers of Keynes are the Post-Keynesian
20. Hoyticus | January 19th, 2012 at 9:57 am
To all those who unleash diatribes, you should also leave a solution instead of just rage typing.
21. gatorade | January 19th, 2012 at 10:21 am
@15, just so you know, the price of manufacturing most things, aside from the cheapest most ~lightweight~ goods (which were made in hong kong long before china opened up anyway) in china tends to be something like 40% of manufacturing in the us, which is less, but its not like 10% or something drastic enough to give a spirit of whole truth to defenses of offshoring
22. Wilmer | January 19th, 2012 at 10:50 am
There is no Nobel prize in economics. It’s called Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and was instituted by Riksbanken (Swedish federal bank) probably to moosh prestige (although it’s the same hack commity that decides who wins).
Dear old Alfred Nobel being a scientist as well as a successful businessman knew economics wasn’t a science.
23. 69 Antime 88 On a Date | January 19th, 2012 at 12:10 pm
“Counterpunch” did some nice features on how Krugman NEVER attacks war spending as the cause of poverty in the US.
Personally, he’s a tad more readable than the School of Austrian Sadists, I’m glad he’s mortal enemies with lunatic Peter D. Schiff, he’s not a racist (that’s big in the 2012 National Regression), and I kinda dig Kruggie’s Harry Seldon fetish.
24. Trevor | January 19th, 2012 at 1:29 pm
How the fuck did Costello spin all that from the Krugman article? This is almost as bad as his Obama piece, prematurely claiming the great centrist twinkie was doomed before we all got a look at the GOP primary circus.
Go ahead and censor me you pussies.
25. A. T. Hun | January 19th, 2012 at 1:38 pm
Krugman can’t be blamed for the blinkers he wears anymore than Rudyard Kipling or Kaiser Wilhelm. Neither of those people were capable of rising above their petty parochialism, but that doesn’t make them evil. Krugman helped get us where we are, but at least he’s congizant of what Whitehead would call the “stubborn facts of the matter” and making some effort to atone for his market jingoism. Upscale liberals will always find an excuse for clutching their pearls and sitting on their duff while the world goes to hell in a handbasket. It’s why Nietszche hated them so much.
26. Arthur | January 19th, 2012 at 1:49 pm
What about Richard Wolff? His website has several free lessons on Marxian economics, which explain that neoliberal economics is basically a junk science. I can’t articulate in a brief comment everything to be found there, but it’s worth checking out.
27. Sir Hendersson | January 19th, 2012 at 2:36 pm
Actually, the hack commity (sic) is named the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
And yes, the purpose is to moosh prestige. It was instituted in a tit-for-tat that involved the Nobel funds getting to speculate in more profitable schemes then governement bonds in exchange for letting this bastard price in. Two breaks of the will is no break of the will, showing in good economic tradition that in economics two can equal zero if it is profitable enough.
28. Mehmet | January 19th, 2012 at 2:52 pm
>for example a dollar spent on potatoes feeding a family of four, has a lot more value than a dollar spent on landscaping a home in Bel-Air, just don’t tell an economist this.
It’s called marginal utility of money. And its the main argument behind progressive income tax. Learn how to econ.
29. Ilona | January 19th, 2012 at 3:03 pm
@ 1. irish_c
“Economics is as scienctific as homeopoathy: How can you claim to be a scientist and yet ignore the empirical evidence right before your eyes?”
@ 7. Zhu Bajie
“It’s a lot like astrology. Econonomists and astrologers can both explain things after they happen, but they can’t predict.”
Very good points worth pondering.
A few years ago I saw an eye-opening documentary about the Hong Kong business practices. In the documentary the Hong Kong businessmen were consulting firms specialized in Fengshui on what kind of a buildings they should choose for their businesses and how to decorate the working spaces to get the most positive Fengshui juices flowing about in order to get their businesses blooming.
Wow! A truly scientific approach in the field which supposedly is based on strictly scientific economic calculations and hard facts. To me these Fengshui practices came over as nothing but a sheer hoodoo voodoo witchcraft.
The Fengshui documentary combined with the observations I had made on the monetary it-might-turn-out-like-this or it-might-turn-out-like-that crap shooting which the respected economy pundits were hollering down to the wishing wells over the years made me question the whole economic decision making machinery and the hard economic truths bolted to the reinforced concrete foundations the world over.
Wow! Is this the way the economic decision making operates? The decisions making which also influences my micro-economic position i.e. my wallet full or not so full of big big money and shiny stuff, my real estate value, etc.?
I mentioned about these hoodoo voodoo witchcraft practices to a friend of mine who’s a layer specialized on economics. Of course he laughed my remark right off being utterly bogus crap. He belittled the whole idea of the economic decision making wouldn’t be anything but serious economic science based on the hard economic facts.
30. Nazidethpig | January 19th, 2012 at 3:26 pm
AEC:
My mother is a retired communications worker on a pension because she was represented by a union. True, she was in a long established service job before the economy transitioned. But any job can have union representation.
And I know that the Oligarchs forced the transition to destroy union jobs. But it wasn’t the transition itself that fucked unions with the newly created service jobs. It was the sophisticated, multi-pronged attacks against them in media, business, and government.
Look, people will go on living no matter what economic changes occur. It’s only a matter of how fairly represented the worker is in the next economy.
BTW: I’ll still donate and buy your books no matter how much fun you make of my mother :p
31. Zirb | January 19th, 2012 at 3:50 pm
I’m a trol.
32. Big Nose Kate | January 19th, 2012 at 5:20 pm
Y’awl know Mark got a name-check in Adam Curtis’s latest? Mostly about eXile guiding darkness Podrostok Savenko:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/01/the_years_of_stagnation_and_th.html
Cheka it out.
33. Vendetta | January 19th, 2012 at 5:34 pm
RIP MegaUpload. Your convenience will be sorely missed.
34. Roderick | January 19th, 2012 at 8:05 pm
I’m usually impressed by eXiled’s handling of economics, but I guess I’m just too fucking brainless, mostly ranting and with little substance. Costello’s attack on market propagandists like ol’ Krugmeister makes me feel…sad and angry…You know why? Because as a market propagandist myself, I have a real respect for that bearded little gerbil so adept at scampering up deep colonic recesses of the global ownership class…I’d take his place any day. So I’d like to say that Mr. Costello hasn’t bothered to research his topic before commencing his rant.
The Fed’s report doesn’t say the decline in manufacturing is “much ado about nothing”. The report doesn’t talk about the state of the manufacturing sector nor about how/if to assist it. The main point of the report is assessing if Chinese inflation will be passed on to American consumers. The report quantifies how much of consumer spending is actually on Chinese-made exports – 2.7%. This may seem like a low number, but if you’ve paid your rent, eaten a meal and had a haircut lately, 2.7% going to China shouldn’t come as a surprise. The report also points out that this has number has doubled since 2000.
As Monopole and Khan point out, Krugman’s discussion of the Fed report is using it as an argument against fiscal austerity, hardly a new angle for him.
There are plenty of topics you can criticise the Fed and Krugman on, but these are the wrong ones. This is a lightweight piece not worthy of this site.
35. Flatulissimo | January 19th, 2012 at 8:11 pm
#8 is right, Michael Hudson is the shit. You ought to recruit him to write some pieces for this site. Let him use a pseudonym so he can really lay it out. Not that I think he doesn’t already, but he probably feels he can’t drop any f-bombs in his usual articles, and he wouldn’t have that problem here.
36. Anon | January 19th, 2012 at 9:08 pm
@ 21
But consumers benefit as well from those cheaper prices. Which *should* free up economic resources in the US to make the stuff America is best at making. Why pay extra to make an ipod here, when you can make it 40% cheaper elsewhere and spend that cash elsewhere in the economy?
The vast majority of studies into this (I mean real economic studies published in the peer-reviewed literature) indicate that it is productivity improvements hurting jobs in the long run, not off-shoring.
37. joe | January 19th, 2012 at 11:50 pm
@30
“Look, people will go on living no matter what economic changes occur.”
Um…not necessarily:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29
also:
1.Service sector jobs are a lot harder to unionize.
2.Off-shoring jobs is a union-busting strategy in and of itself.
A few other points.
Keynesian economic models while still not perfect are a lot better at predicting business cycles than neoliberal models.
The neoliberal theories all boil down to an axiom that states people en-masse are perfect rational beings of self intrest. This statement is patently absurd.
I was watching a video on the MONIAC computer. http://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1094078
The interesting part of the video was the part where thy talk about increasing the marginal propensity to consume caused the economy to shoot through the roof. In other-words if no one saved any money and everyone spent it immediately the economy would soar.
Why dosen’t every economics department have one of these as a teaching aid?
I also remember reading another article about how all the economics periodicals where bought up by neoliberal think tanks. Then the only people who get published and therefore the only people who get tenure are economists who tout the neoliberal agenda. I think the article was posted on exiled if someone could remember the link.
38. joe | January 19th, 2012 at 11:58 pm
Why hasen’t someone even made a java applet for the MONIAC?
39. mark stengel | January 20th, 2012 at 3:46 am
I read the first three sentences 6 times. Then I gave up. Bad writing is scary.
40. tom | January 20th, 2012 at 11:48 am
“the key to revitalizing the American economy is for the Renminbi to appreciate”
And what exactly is wrong with this statement? If the RMB appreciates, it’s going to cost more to buy stuff from China, and consequently more stuff will be made elsewhere (such as America). If you think that manufacturing should be done in America, you should support having other countries currencies appreciate.
In fact, China has been intentionally depreciating their currency in order to be able to sell more stuff to the rest of the world, thereby building up their manufacturing capacity.
Perhaps in matters of international trade, you would do well to at least listen to the guy who’s famous for studying international trade.
41. wengler | January 20th, 2012 at 12:06 pm
In the ’60s people were predicting that with automation and robotics Americans would be working only a few hours per week and spending the vast majority of their time in leisure.
Fast forward 50 years and the automation and robotics came to manufacturing, and instead of hours of leisure the vast majority of Americans are overworked and underpaid. The productivity bonus of that automation all went to the 1 percent. Those who do not even work a couple hours of week, and have more and more money to show for it. That is a classic economic model of peasant and lord.
Too bad enough of the overworked/underpaid part of this country are too stupid to figure this out.
42. Dimitri Ratz | January 20th, 2012 at 1:42 pm
Servitude as a class. The Upper Class commanly referred to as simply the rich is defined and separated from the Middle Class in that it generates it’s income from stocks and investments vs. the middle class that gets it’s income from profession sush as lawyers, doctors, ect. I couldn’t help hearing one of the radio commentators how horrible it is if people lose the need to work, and the callers (regardless) of screened or not were in total agreement. I’ve heard many people talk this way, as a badge of honor being dependent on income, and how great and important motivator it is in society. Clearly it brought back memories when I was reading Douglass and about slave mentality as defined by him and how it was tied into the south’s religion, and his description of how the more religious the slave owner the harder the slave got it as panishment was distributed as a duty. After listening to the radio, the commentators and simply people everywhere, in tune and agreement, I think it’s time to rename the class, the working class as Servitude as it’s a more correct description then working class, as one can and does work when being left without dire straights, and clearly that is not what is being endorsed or supported.
43. call of doody: poop ops | January 20th, 2012 at 2:46 pm
@1
GDP is something that the autistic can relate to
oh man, can you please not
I mean, I realize that using names like “post-autistic economics” will get the vote of people who are from the internet, but do we really need to turn this into a thing? Is there any other term you could use?
44. joe | January 20th, 2012 at 3:22 pm
@ 40 “the key to revitalizing the American economy is for the Renminbi to appreciate”
Ill tell you whats wrong with that statement.
1. The Renminbi may never appreciate.
2. If it does production will simply shift to some other country with cheaper labor.
3. Why the fuck are we waiting around for the problem to fix itself. If your house is burning down do you “wait for the fire to run out of fuel” or do you put the fire out.
The way to stop shipping production overseas is to impose tariffs. T*A*R*I*F*F look it up. It’s an interesting concept.
45. Runninge A. Fowle | January 21st, 2012 at 10:58 am
Um, guys…there is a level-headed analysis that takes all of the above into empirical account and yields a proven PREDICTIVE theory.
1)http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/1/
It’s too bad that said level-headed analysis is disallowed:
2)http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/12/differential-accumulation/
46. kms | January 21st, 2012 at 5:08 pm
Did anyone notice that the article really only said: GDP as the sole measure of the economy=boo; krugman=angst against a strong USD/RMB. Ummm, that doesn’t mean a lot.
Any economist (not apologizing for the lame state of the profession here) could tell you that. And an artificially strong dollar IS bad for American manufacturing. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only iron in the fire that needs tending (challenge me to a folksy-off, I dare you). It accuses krugman of being overly simplistic and then the author makes a similar error- offering no solution. The world economy is in trouble, and as a tightly coupled, highly complex system- fixing it will take some doing. But it can be done, we just need to be engaged, pragmatic and concerned with actual social justice. (After all, in America, we the people have both the guns and the numbers…) Given the level of investigative journalism that lives at The Exiled, I expected so much more. But anyone can have an off day.
47. Anders Ericsson | January 22nd, 2012 at 1:09 am
Ok folks. I’m here, get used to me. Now, wake up and pay attention. ALL mainstream economic theory is bullshit. It was invented before we understood ecology. If one person here can explain how an economy can grow infinitely, while bound by a finite resource base, I’ll get on my knees and bob. It is ALL a lie! It is a theory based on illogical premises that is only sustained because a small fraction of the world’s population is getting stinking rich. The answer is here, but you’ll never hear it. ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS! Burn it on your brain. Repeat it. Spread it. Shut down anyone who talks about “growing” the economy to solve our economic problems. Simply pose the question I did earlier and watch them shut down. Never heard of ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS? Never heard of Herman Daley? Never heard of William Rees? Robert Costanza? Joshua Farley? They are our future, but they need us. We need to bring this argument to the forefront. Educate yourself by starting here: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/on-dangerous-disconnect-between-economics-and-ecology.html
and here: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/on-dangerous-disconnect-between-economics-and-ecology.html
Krugmann…screw Krugmann. Screw Friedmann and Hayek and Keynes and Von Mises and Smith and Bentham. Screw them ALL. They are dinosaurs and they are leading us to the same fate. STOP buying into the rhetoric!
48. Sir Hendersson | January 22nd, 2012 at 9:33 am
@47
How the economy can grow infinitely on a finite planet? It is called inflation my friend, and inflation is the reason that the economy can be a hundred times larger then it was some time ago while not having hundred times more things, land, houses and animals.
@44
The Renminbi will appreciate vis-a-vi the USD when the Chinese government decides to let Renminbi appreciate or when the US government decides to depreciate the dollar vis-a-vi the Renminbi. Watch if you like the ease with which the Swiss central bank keeps the Swiss-franc from appreciating over 1.2 euro.
And you are quite right neither may happen any time some, the current situation being rather comfortable for the people who matter in both countries.
49. Bradford C. | January 22nd, 2012 at 1:20 pm
Then I take it that this means war!!!
http://youtu.be/9Nsfwin8Tis
50. Wilmer | January 22nd, 2012 at 3:18 pm
It’s common sense that economics and ecology works the same and telling when you remember that 80% of all species are parasites.
51. Bradford C. | January 22nd, 2012 at 4:01 pm
The idea that economic applications could never extend beyond the ecological framework was such a BS no-brainer that any yokel could have figured it out. The fact that it takes an actual ecologist/economist to illustrate that point means that you really CAN shape a person’s mind by inundating it with garbage.
I subscribed to The eXiled a long time ago because I knew good work like this would be the outcome. Truths are very simple to illustrate, even to the mentally challenged, which is why the elites are feeling so much hot breath down their necks while the rest of us wisen up to reality.
This is the kind of journalism I’m willing to pay for.
52. Zhu Bajie | January 22nd, 2012 at 6:10 pm
“This is all well and good for the smart kids who have the genetic intellectual ability to be engineers, programmers, doctors, scientists, etc etc.”
But the US has never produced it’s own engineers and scientists. Think of Tesla or Einstein. Ordinary Americans, even smart ones, don’t study math and science, the better to produce. They study law and business, the better to connive.
Chinese education has lots of problems, but China is a civilization which has always respected nerds (unlike the US) and Chinese universities are producing a lot of engineers and scientists. The top leaders are mostly engineers. The top leaders in the US are mostly lawyers and business school grads.
53. radii | January 22nd, 2012 at 7:45 pm
and now the global bankster class is set for another meeting in Davos – this time to brain-trust on a “new kind of capitalism” … which will mean even more wealth shifting to the top no doubt … do you guys really need a whole new site to out the hack-shills? – wouldn’t it drive more traffic to Exiled to keep it as a feature here?
54. Dimitri Ratz | January 22nd, 2012 at 11:31 pm
World’s economy can only be based on national as well as individual reserves. Living beyond ones means exists in our developed world as a by product of slave wages that existed in the emerging economies in the 2Oth Century. However, as the industrial revolution has transformed the developing emerging China, India, Brazil, and many others they find themselves no longer at the mercy of Western financing or technologies for their living to be subjected to bank roll the existence of civilizations on endless credit. Current Chinese administration has recently setup a 300 billion (US dollar fund) specificly to start buying out American and EU assets(companies) as bonds are low yielding, high risk (as Greece, Italy, and even Spain, Ireland) have shown, while stocks give better returns and with China (and others) holding our bonds we can’t really tell them they can’t invest in our stockmarket without risking going under completely. So Chinese don’t need to save less, Russian state debt at 9% and Chinese at 16% is the future of what’s in store for all countires as nobody is stupid enough to finance someone else when they simply no longer have to, especially those that nag and lecture others. And with India receiving their nuclear submarine and lunching it this week just highlights how far the world really changed. African Union was the only place where developed world could force it’s will militarily in this century, and after it did in Libya it ended up sharing (Enu, that Italian oil company sounds like Enu ended up working with Gazprom there) and NATO negotiations with Talibon as well as arming Islamissists in Syria and throughout the Mediterranean Area cannot realistically stop the reserves, anti-credit living model that Eastern recently emerged economies are spreading throughout the world, it’s effects of Japan China trade in local currencies, China Russia trade no longer using the dollar and many many others.
55. Jedi Mind Trick | January 23rd, 2012 at 2:11 am
The most amusing thing about these preachers of wealth is that they, to the last man, profess that they are Christian.
They really should at least look up the Demon known as “Mammon” because they have been worshiping him.
56. Vendetta | January 23rd, 2012 at 7:01 pm
Hahaha I love how the AEC went back and edited that one comment that he said he’d leave alone. Only a temporary reprieve, #34. The eXiled doesn’t do mercy well.
57. Khakjaan | January 24th, 2012 at 2:57 pm
AEC disclaimer: When an article is rejected by the Almighty Exiled Censorship Tribunal, many are known to hurt, and that hurt is perfectly normal. We don’t feel your pain, but we do read it.
@34 & @45 Sux, but what are you going to do about it? People think in idiotic binaries. “Larry Summers sez he’s for capitalism, therefore the opposite must be the moral system.” It’s childish thinking. I’m pretty disappointed in the Exile. Ames knows I pitched a piece back when I was writing for the place about how the Euro zone was fracturing and that Europe was going to be the first major casualty of the total trade war between China & the US, but he said it ‘smacked of American triumphalism’ and so he nixed it. But then he replaces me with this joker? WTF? For a journalistic hero, he too frequently emulates his enemies (sycophant stacking). So I find the whole claim in this article that ‘classical econ predicts nothing’ to be idiotic. I got a few steps in the dance wrong, but I predicted this Chinese inflation mechanic on here, several years before it started becoming the NYT party line. But then again, back then Ames fully admitted to not understanding econ, so I totally get how his becoming the darling of leftest circles has negatively impacted his formerly interesting neutral stance on econ. As others pointed out, this article is a total joke. I’m increasingly growing ashamed of the Exiled’s reactionary 3rd wayism. It increasingly reminds me of the same sort of stale bitterness I’d hear from aging hippies in San Francisco. Those late 80s & early 90s pop cultural references are just going to grow more and more dated along with that late 80s & early 90s New Left stuff. Alas. At least you’re still doing hit pieces on propagandists, so it’s not all bad news. But I worry when my ally’s enemies start warping my ally’s judgment. When ideology trumps intellectual honesty, the end is near.
58. joe | January 24th, 2012 at 3:08 pm
@ 41 wengler
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I don’t understand why more people can’t see this. My dad tells me that back in the 50s there was talk of shortening the work week. You can now buy a micro-controller that used to fill an entire room for less than a can of soup. Shouldn’t robots be doing all our work. The only conclusion that I can draw is that we are working longer hours is so that rich people can buy luxury items. Luxury items by definition are inefficient to produce.
59. Whyawannaknow | January 25th, 2012 at 9:27 am
Mainstream economics and mainstream journalism both serve the same purpose as a magicians’ left hand waving in your face while the right hand picks your pocket, regardless of the earnestness of their practitioners. Arguing over these minor differences in texture seems fairly pointless.
The solution to the automation driven labor surplus and the inconvence all these unemployed, unnecessary, increaseingly unruly and inconvenient ex-consumers represent to the ownership is pretty obvious. They pay smart, ruthless people good money to look after the details of shepherding their resources… I expect the contingency plans and the means are allready in place.
Just view the current economic situation as a kind of harvest and consolidation of resources before the end moves and it makes perfect sense. Kind of like the way we used to harvest small national economies for the first world’s benefit, but it’s nearly all of us getting sheared this time.
I mean, heck, they won’t even need to build labor camps this time, unskilled human labor is at such a surplus.
Oh all powerfull AEC, am I batshit crazy? You decide…
The AEC Responds:
60. Whyawannaknow | January 25th, 2012 at 9:38 am
@ 41, 58-
A modest proposal-
The solution to the automation driven labor surplus and the inconvenience all the unemployed, unnecessary and increaseingly unruly ex-consumers represent to the ownership is pretty obvious. They pay smart, ruthless people good money to look after the details of shepherding valuable resources… No reason to waste any on obsolete technology! I expect the contingency plans and the means are allready in place.
Just view the current economic situation as a kind of harvest and consolidation of resources before the end moves and it makes perfect sense.
I mean, heck, they won’t even need to build labor camps this time, unskilled human labor is at such a surplus.
61. joe | January 25th, 2012 at 11:14 am
@60
We already have prison camps. Except we just call them prisons. (Tent city is an actual camp) The US already has more people in prison than China. (That’s total people not per capita)
The solution we should have is better labor standards, increased minimum wage, shorter work week, anti-trust laws being enforced, public healthcare, green energy, mandatory union membership, guaranteed employment, tariffs on imported manufactured goods and a better social safety net. This should be paid for by a highly progressive tax structure. All of these ideas have been tried in the real world successfully.
The only way this will happen is if labor gets organized. This will happen eventually if the current political conditions continue to dismantle our country. Unfortunately this process may take 50 years.
62. Whyawannaknow | January 25th, 2012 at 12:03 pm
Sorry about the double post… That’ll teach me to edit in another window.
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