Keynesian Economics and Recession Counter-Measures

I first read the following in Funny Times. Barbara Ehrenreich: How Positive Thinking Wrecked The EconomyThe first paragraph:

quote:

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Greed - and its crafty sibling, speculation - are the designated culprits for the ongoing financial crisis, but another, much admired, habit of mind should get its share of the blame: the delusional optimism of mainstream, all-American, positive thinking. As promoted by Oprah, scores of megachurch pastors, and an endless flow of self-help bestsellers, the idea is to firmly belief that you will get what you want, not only because it will make you feel better to do so, but because thinking things, “visualizing” them - ardently and with concentration - actually makes them happen. You will be able to pay that adjustable rate mortgage or, at the other end of the transaction, turn thousands of bad mortgages into giga-profits, the reasoning goes, if only you truly believe that you can.

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Much more at the source.I wanted to get this out, and this topic seems like a good place. If I'm going off-topic, please contact Adminnemooseus and he will slap me down.Moose

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Professor, geology, Whatsamatta U
Evolution - Changes in the environment, caused by the interactions of the components of the environment. "Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." - Bruce Graham

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"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." - John Kenneth Galbraith

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"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." - H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

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"Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for ” but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him." - Hunter S. Thompson

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"I know a little about a lot of things, and a lot about a few things, but I'm highly ignorant about everything." - Moose

This seems to be too good of a topic to loose.Moose

Produce more per capita, consume more per capita.More so, produce more efficiently. A big boost to production efficiency? Being able to produce the same or more with less employees.But who's going to buy that production? Those employees can't soak it up - They lost their good job and now have less money to spend.Bottom line: Production and production efficiency has increased to the point that there is no way consumption can keep up. The non-wealthy would need to go into debt (even more) by buying stuff they probably didn't need anyway, and/or the wealthy would need to buy even more stuff they didn't need anyway. And the whole thing uses ever more natural resources to produce stuff that really didn't need producing.Modern capitalism has succeed in making the well-off even richer and the not well-off even poorer.The solution as I see it - Socialism. Tax the wealthy and spend the money to pay for maintaining the public infrastructure. But you need to do it in a way that doesn't require big business, to get the money to the people that really need it. Otherwise largely you're just recycling the money back to the wealthy.Or something like that.Moose

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Professor, geology, Whatsamatta U
Evolution - Changes in the environment, caused by the interactions of the components of the environment.

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"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." - Bruce Graham

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"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." - John Kenneth Galbraith

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"Yesterday on Fox News, commentator Glenn Beck said that he believes President Obama is a racist. To be fair, every time you watch Glenn Beck, it does get a little easier to hate white people." - Conan O'Brien

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"I know a little about a lot of things, and a lot about a few things, but I'm highly ignorant about everything." - Moose

I listened (wasn't watching) the first half or so of the video. That situation is something I was aware of from personal music recording buying experience - You have a artist that has so many quality recordings available that you don't know where to start and you're not about to buy them all. Thus you tend to not buy any.But while the "too much choice" may be a symptom, it isn't really the same as my "too much production" thoughts. Nobody's going to jump on that statement?MooseEdited by Minnemooseus, : Eliminated a department of redundancy department thing.

Certainly, I left all the details out of that statement.I am saying, part of the government supplied services to "the people" is to maintain the public infrastructure. By that I mean not just maintaining the roads and highways, but to maintain the ecology. We need a modern variation of the Works Project Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corp.In general, "eliminating the middle man" is a big part of the "progress" that got us to our overproduction problem, but in this case I think we do need to do such. Keep big business "upper middle management" out of the operations chain and get the government funds directly to small business "local management".Socialist enough?Moose

Just wondering if anyone wants to chip in on this topic?Moose