Austerity measures have they ever saved an economy?

and what of people such as I? Who have worked twenty years in the grocery industry yet find the corporations demanding more and more value for their stockholders and corporate paychecks? Am I to consider myself lucky to be a wee slave boy?

Now now don't get your knickers in a jumble! Ad hominem is the first sign of unintelligence...Everyone seems to think capitalism is the enemy...I find that utterly bizarre...does no one recognise the horrors of communism...not as an old fashion bugger bear but as a big brother thief of other peoples property.I might well be an asshole, but at least I'm a realistic one.

Hey jar that's otherwise known as communism...a system which has shown to FAIL dismally wherever it is found. In those places where it still exists (say China), even the leadership there have recognised that it does not work and have 'ammened' the marxian policies to accommodate for capitalism.Capitalism isn't the prettiest girl at the ball by no means, but she is by far the sanest, in a truly capital society there is potential for huge degrees of disparity, but I personally welcome this as I certainly don't want to have to share what I have slaved 40 years to achieve with someone who quite frankly couldn't be bothered to leave the couch.Oh, you might say that's a straw man, but I live in the uk and as any uk citizen can tell you, we're a bit sick to the back teeth of having to pay taxes to a government who then doles our cash out to people who simple stay at home and booze or shoot up all day. A substantial proportion of these folks are 3rd generation sponges.I'm quite happy to help people who have lost there jobs or cannot work for some reason but just doling out cash that doesn't belong to you is immoral and does not work. If I were told my income was going to be shared out equally with all the other people in my town I certainly won't be incentivised to work until midnight on a software project. The only reason why capitalism works is BECAUSE you get to keep what you earn.I work for myself and my family and for no one else...if that makes me a selfish laissez-faire rapist, then colour my red put a stamp on my forehead and i will wear it with pride.But please note in your communist society you have no right to any of your own property which effectively makes the poor even poorer.

Nonsense. Have you not heard of a mixed economy? You ought to have; you live in one. Any UK citizen? Like me for instance?You are talking nonsense again. I am perfectly content with the taxes that I pay. I would support higher taxes for some of the highest earners. I do not engage in the simple-minded demonisation of benefit claimants, as you do here.So yes, it's a straw man.No-one wants people to be able to live as spongers (note the "r" - it's "spongers" not "sponges". No-one is giving benefits to sponges), but at the same time, we don't want people who are in genuine need to go without. You present no solution to this quandary. Do you really think that such in extreme position is typical of the British voter? Really? Can you imagine any political party being elected on that platform? If so, I can only conclude that you are living in a fantasy world. You're fond of straw men aren't you. No-one has suggested any such thing. It certainly isn't public policy in the UK.It is remarkable that you seem to regard an admission of selfish motivation to be persuasive. It's not. It just underlines why disgustingly callous individuals such as yourself ought to be kept as far away from policy as possible. Oh, did I mention that you are a terrible liar? Another good reason why your kind is kept well away from the reins of power in the UK. Most Brits aren't quite dumb enough to fall for silliness of that order.Mutate and Survive

I would argue that there are good forms of capitalism and bad forms of capitalism. It's about how we share risk and reward. It's about a mixed economy.At the moment we seem to have a situation where the reward reaped by the few is disproportionate to the risk taken by them. In fact we seem to have socialised risk/loss for the many and privatised reward/profit for the few.This is not sustainable. But it is what your preferred economic model has led to. So please don't tell us how "realistic" you are being.

You are not a slave and in fact there is almost no chance of you ever becoming a slave and so as usual, you are simply whining and making stuff up and not reading what folk post.If you look at my post you will find that it works in your favor. Under Laissez-faire capitalism, when you can be replace by a machine you should be replaced by a machine and just tossed away.Is that what you want?

No, of course it is not called communism.Capitalism has a place but Laissez-Faire Capitalism is also the most inhumane of all the possible economic system. Basic empathy should be enough to show that.What is needed is a governmental check on capitalism to make sure that it does not rape everyone, only those who consent to being raped.

Austrian economics, unlike communism has never been tested in practice anywhere at any time. The closest we have been to Austrian economics is in the early US years. As I said before this is the reason for the US being such a phenomenal success story.Then regarding Austrian school being math lite...it's not because they're scared of it but that they realise the futility of conventional approaches. As any economist can vouch for, in the current conventional sense we have very limited powers of prediction in economics, so all the math under the sun is still giving us next to zero predictability, as the model is broken, unless you accept boom and bust economics to be intentional.If your science lacks the ability to accurately predict future events based on known inputs then the science is not working in terms of the third and fourth steps in the scientific method. By all means crank away at your algorithms and differential equations but the Austrian knows that 'ceterus' is very seldomly 'paribus' and so works toward a science that can carry out step four successfully. This has been referred to as Volitional Science.The MAN who owns the marketplace earns a portion of the market not as a result of fiat but as a result of being a voluntary participant in the market of marketplaces for the purpose of making a profit. As such he makes it his business to ensure all his customers are happy in there separate stalls, as he would not want to lose their business.This is not how the government operates, this is more aptly comparable to Vinny dropping in at your stall to see if everythings 'OK', "don't worry" he says, "I'll make sure no one rips you off, but you will need to pay for this". Try saying no to Vinny and see what happens, ditto with the Gov.As mentioned before limited Gov has utility as long as it is 'limited' to the bare essentials, including national defence, education, law & order (incl. protection of property) & limited monetary control. But as soon as all the other business that the Gov does is farmed out to capitalists the sooner profit can drive efficiency, innovation, excellence and the sensitivity to public opinion (customer is king), but when the bureaucracy decides to take part in the marketplace then we have the biggest monopoly of all to contend with.As far as my math is concerned, it's spot on (maybe crashfrog has whiplash...), read the post again. $100 - $35 = $65, but if gov spends $70 the $35 is debt which Joe will have to pay back in the future. If you've had any accounting training you will know you cannot simply ignore the -$35.I know you are itching to add the $70 to the $65 that Joe has but if you sit quietly in dark room and think about it you will see that that $70 which the government spends is to buy goods and pay services that DO NOT GENERATE INCOME, it simply transfers ownership of other peoples money (entropy). Therefore for each $100 deficit that the government spends within industry = potential $35 in taxes which equates to a net deficit 0f $65. So if the government budgeted to overspend taxes by $100bn then joe public effectively has his future tax burden increased by $65bn.That means he gets to shift his problem on to his children because the only reason why we have deficits is because politician are loath to increase the credit side of the balance sheet in the form of taxes to meet the debit side of expenses in fear of foregoing future elections, needless to say we can't even fire them for negligence. National debt cannot be written off, it will be paid come what may...which usually involves human tragedy.If we insist on having a government then we must equally insist that the government remains in surplus, and keeps taxes to a minimum. Progressive taxes will force intelligent entrepreneurs to go WITH their money to a country that WILL appreciate them for being...yes...RICH.If you don't like that it's probably because you have let the collectivism of christianity warp your sense of reality, believe or not we're all in it for ourselves, and only those fortunate few that have made it are capable when they are inclined, and inclined only when they're capable of being so, to be generous for the sake of charity, and I laud them for it (Bill Gates etal).

What you little analysis completely fails to consider is the role of investment in national infrastructure that is required to create the environment in which the entrepreneurial innovation that capitalism depends on can best take place.If a government borrows to invest in education, health, transport, telecommunications, scientific research, regulatory institutions etc. etc. and this investment pays dividends by making the nation more productive in the future - Then far from saddling future generations with unjustifiable debt we instead leave them with a legacy of infrastructure which facilitates their own innovations and amplifies their ability to be productive.There is indisputably a balance to be struck. But your government = bad and private = good analysis is simplistic in the extreme. Lassiez faire capitalism has demonstrated it's inability to achieve this balance. In fact the proponents of lassiez faire are usually so ideologically driven that they aren't even able to even recognise the productive value of public investment in a balanced economy. Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

You probably won't like my response because it's not going to placate you...sorry, but if you don't adapt you die...your business that is. I'm sorry that you haven't diversified or made other inroads to increasing your busniesses success, but let's consider the opposite. Let's say you had, and you started as a small grocer but through being more adaptive to the EVER CHANGING market place you managed to secure a good 10% of the grocery industry in your state.Now Joe Grocer starts pointing at you and demanding that you fork over more than him, just because you were more able to adapt than he was. "Up yours jack" or 'joe' as it goes, "there's no way you are going to pin entitlement on me, I've worked bloody hard night and day to get my business turning over $1bn a year", you might say, "I'm sorry you haven't but should I be expected to bare the brunt of your inability?", if you think that's fair then Russia or China is your preferred model.Marx said..."from each according to his ability, to each according to his need", in other words, if I am more capable than you then I am obliged to hand over my earning to you because your needs outweigh mine. THAT, folks is a recipe for confiscation of property and we all know how that worked out in Russia and China, both are now cow-towing to their capitalist opponents by introducing capitalism into their NON Laissez-faire economies...and guess what?, ever since they made this move their economies are beginning to thrive.WHY?, because every man wants to keep what he earns, and no man really wants to share his earnings with total strangers.

China seems to be doing quite well, these days.

So, in fact, your own position is that Austrian economics has never succeeded or even convinced anybody to use it. You're free to say no at any time to the US government, and the way you do that is by moving to another country and renouncing US citizenship. There's a "marketplace" of nations, each competing for your business, and if you don't like the way business is done in one country, there are hundreds of others. But if you're going to continue to live within the envelope of security and community established by US laws and the US monopoly on force, then you have to pay your America bill. Otherwise you're stealing, same as stealing cable. I'm not. You're the one ignoring numbers. Specifically, you're the one ignoring that when the government spends money, it spends it for Joe Public's goods and services. So Joe Public is taxed $35 on his $100, but the govenment's deficit spending puts an extra $35 in his pocket ($70 - $35.)Your math is completely wrong, because you assume that when the government spends money, it "spends" by taking that money and dropping it into a black hole. But that's nonsense. When the government spends money, it spends it at businesses owned by Americans. It spends it on salaries to pay Americans. It spends it on services provided by Americans. Public spending is private income. To have a government persistently in surplus means that you're advocating for a system where people transfer their wealth to a government pile that keeps getting larger and larger. Why should anyone do that? And how does that square with your notion of a "smaller government"? Forget "accounting", you don't even know how to add and subtract. Um, no, I'm an atheist. But I'm also very much a collectivist, because it's just a matter of biological reality that human beings, like our evolutionary cousins, are a collectivist species. Sorry, it's just the way we are. To pretend otherwise is just another example of how Randroids like yourself completely ignore physical reality.

Yes I do understand that higher efficiency would mean less man-hours of work to be done. But I believe the end result would be a population full of lazy layabouts. As a result, a system were it is okay, and in fact required that large segments of people not work is not a sustainable system.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Actually I think we're in the process of appreciating that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were keeping tens of thousands of men and women off of the dole.

After reading this in the news.....

quote:

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Here's a quick and fascinating breakdown by total amount held and percentage of total U.S. debt, according to Business Insider:

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Hong Kong: $121.9 billion (0.9 percent)
Caribbean banking centers: $148.3 (1 percent)
Taiwan: $153.4 billion (1.1 percent)
Brazil: $211.4 billion (1.5 percent)
Oil exporting countries: $229.8 billion (1.6 percent)
Mutual funds: $300.5 billion (2 percent)
Commercial banks: $301.8 billion (2.1 percent)
State, local and federal retirement funds: $320.9 billion (2.2 percent)
Money market mutual funds: $337.7 billion (2.4 percent)
United Kingdom: $346.5 billion (2.4 percent)
Private pension funds: $504.7 billion (3.5 percent)
State and local governments: $506.1 billion (3.5 percent)
Japan: $912.4 billion (6.4 percent)
U.S. households: $959.4 billion (6.6 percent)
China: $1.16 trillion (8 percent)
The U.S. Treasury: $1.63 trillion (11.3 percent)
Social Security trust fund: $2.67 trillion (19 percent)

​

So America owes foreigners about $4.5 trillion in debt. But America owes America $9.8 trillion.

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Im thinking to myself how it is that people will be able to spend more in an era of reduced wages, reduced incomes, and faced with future prospects for higher taxes and reduced services.Seems to me we have painted ourselves into a corner. It only makes sense to pick on the wealthy, since they alone still have money that is not being used. Edited by Phat, : No reason given.