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Post by kaldair on Jun 23, 2011 16:00:08 GMT
Hi all  I'm interested on comments on this video (I work at NMSU but have no vested interest in the video or anything related to it otherwise). I'm especially interested in a critique from the Funkster Kaldair www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKJLoIVGDIM |
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Post by FunkySwerve on Jun 23, 2011 16:44:48 GMT
I'm heading out the door right now, but will watch and respond later. Neither party has been doing the right thing, imo.
Funky
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Post by FunkySwerve on Jun 24, 2011 2:37:05 GMT
He's half right. The fact that we have the unemployment we do is a policy decision. The right turned the conversation in this country the wrong way, towards deficit reduction, in the singular worst time to do so - when government spending is needed to stimulate the economy. This fact was bemoaned by nearly every conservative economist who didn't have a horse in the US political race. The politics of this country are laboring under the burden of oppressive conservative ideology of ever-decreasing tax rates and regulation whose actual aim is enriching the ultrawealthy at the expense of the rest of the country.
As to why we can't magically match empty houses to homeless, that was absurd. In a word, logistics. Who gets what house? The answer more likely to leap to the mind of Americans - COMMUNISM - is both inapt and misguided, because putting people in those houses would be a huge gain in efficiency, preventing an enormous amount of property waste, which is what he's driving at. It just isn't practical, unfortunately.
Funky
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Post by uncanny on Jun 24, 2011 11:39:12 GMT
He's half right. The fact that we have the unemployment we do is a policy decision. The right turned the conversation in this country the wrong way, towards deficit reduction, in the singular worst time to do so - when government spending is needed to stimulate the economy. This fact was bemoaned by nearly every conservative economist who didn't have a horse in the US political race. The politics of this country are laboring under the burden of oppressive conservative ideology of ever-decreasing tax rates and regulation whose actual aim is enriching the ultrawealthy at the expense of the rest of the country. As to why we can't magically match empty houses to homeless, that was absurd. In a word, logistics. Who gets what house? The answer more likely to leap to the mind of Americans - COMMUNISM - is both inapt and misguided, because putting people in those houses would be a huge gain in efficiency, preventing an enormous amount of property waste, which is what he's driving at. It just isn't practical, unfortunately. Funky We have the same issue here in Ireland, except on a different scale. There are about 100'000 homes standing empty due to the banking crisis over here. Fully complete homes, I might add. There are about 40'000 families that are either living in undersized, or cramped home conditions - eg, family of four in a house with one bedroom - that are also unemployed (our unemployed count is higher but those are the immediate issues). The one political party argues that we should house those people in adequate housing, since the homes are there, standing open. The other party makes the same argument you do - who do we give homes to, what determines the ownership. Now, the difference between Ireland and the US is that first, the proportions are different. 14% of our workforce (about 80'000 or so) being unemployed will fit easily into the homes we have. I daresay in the US, this is hardly possible even if a million homes are available. One thing that I think should be done is the war veterans without homes should be first in line. According to NCHV, there are around 110'000 homeless vets - men and women who put their lives on the line for America and the American way of life. To be there in the front line, and return to homelessness after serving one's country is the most unforgivable circumstance I can think of. Would this make sense, or am I thinking too far afield? |
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Post by chainlink on Jun 24, 2011 11:59:15 GMT
Same situation in most of the first world countries as far as I can see.
Its an incredibly difficult problem to solve, yes you can house the homeless in them but somebody (the taxpayer) has to pay and who gets first choice is based on subjective and emotional reasons. The ex-vet, the family with young children, people with serious medical conditions, etc, the list can go on and you'd probably get a different answer everytime you asked.
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Post by FunkySwerve on Jun 24, 2011 14:34:20 GMT
The one political party argues that we should house those people in adequate housing, since the homes are there, standing open. The other party makes the same argument you do - who do we give homes to, what determines the ownership. Now, the difference between Ireland and the US is that first, the proportions are different. 14% of our workforce (about 80'000 or so) being unemployed will fit easily into the homes we have. I daresay in the US, this is hardly possible even if a million homes are available. One thing that I think should be done is the war veterans without homes should be first in line. According to NCHV, there are around 110'000 homeless vets - men and women who put their lives on the line for America and the American way of life. To be there in the front line, and return to homelessness after serving one's country is the most unforgivable circumstance I can think of. Would this make sense, or am I thinking too far afield? It makes sense, but not, I think, in an economically workable way (possibly in a politically workable way, though I doubt - more below). The problem is a need for a replacement to the market mechanism that can allocate the houses both a) efficiently and b) in a way that will be perceived as fair (efficiency are the twin, intertwined 'pillars' of the market system). The market mechanism allocates 'scarce' resources efficiently by allowing demand and supply to interact. Here, the problem is the same as the one underlying the economy as a whole - there is a massive lack of demand. But, you say, surely those families WANT a home - why doesn't that count as demand? Let's turn to the wikipedia definition for a moment: "The demand schedule, depicted graphically as the demand curve, represents the amount of some good that buyers are willing and able to purchase at various prices, assuming all determinants of demand other than the price of the good in question, such as income, tastes and preferences, the price of substitute goods, and the price of complementary goods, remain the same. Following the law of demand, the demand curve is almost always represented as downward-sloping, meaning that as price decreases, consumers will buy more of the good.[2]" Here, they are unable to purchase homes. The root cause of this is, again, regressive economic policies being carried out by conservatives that have been funneling money away from the poor and middle class, to the hyperwealthy. I could give you a laundry list of such policies, but suffice it to say that they range from a failure to peg tax brackets to inflation (resulting in an effective year-by-year tax hike on even the lowest income brackets) to flat-out money grants in the form of subsidies and bailouts to already-flush industries. Even things like failure to impose environmental regulation fall into this category (assigning, in essence, the rights at stake, to the few rather than the many, often because the few have lined the pockets of politicians). The result of these policies, which have been actively pursued in the US since Reagan took office, has been to channel nearly all the productivity gains of the last thirty years to the top 1%. Our capacity to produce has greatly increased, but our capacity to consume that production has been limited because of this massive upwards wealth transfer - ironically, given how Republicans 'decry' 'socialism', their party has been practicing socialism for the wealthy. Take a look at this chart, by way of example: money.cnn.com/2011/02/16/news/economy/middle_class/index.htmA rising 'tide', it turns out, does NOT lift all boats, and (shocking, I know) simply handing money in the form of tax cuts to 'job creators' does not allow that wealth to 'trickle down'. It concentrates it, resulting in the massive demand hole we currently sit in. How to fix this? Simply giving homeless people houses would be very inefficient, since there would be no matching mechanism of relative desire - no accounting of who wants the house more. For most people, they would no doubt want the house, and treat it well. Others might see its value diminished by having been simply handed it (a common argument made by regressive conservative commentators, but one with a grain of truth), and still others might not value it very highly at all, failing to take proper care of it, and allowing the property waste (literally, degradation of property due to lack of proper care) to continue. Now, the government COULD try to play matchmaker, but human ingenuity is simply not up to the task of determining efficient outcomes nearly as well as the market. I could point to Communism as an example of this, but the more practical reason why this doesn't work is that we lack the theory to do it- our socioeconomic technology simply isn't advanced enough (though I suspect that one day command economies will be able to compete with and surpass even regulated market economies, given sufficient computing power and working theory). The real answer here lies with the market - we need to fix the demand gap. However, we need to do so QUICKLY if we want to prevent massive property waste. I'm deliberately leaving out obvious 'liberal' concerns here like housing homeless people, because what I'm about to propose is RADICALLY liberal as solutions go (at least in today's political climate in the US) - and yet, it's still the best fix. The answer is simply to bolster demand for houses by curing the problem - inability to pay. You give them money, and let the market allocate the houses. You could do it in the form of a housing subsidy (though it'd have to be a generous one), but the problem here is that the right in this country would scream socialism (which this is) and accuse us of throwing money at the problem (which we are, because money is the solution). Their ideology, which has, in the last three decades, evolved to be reality-denying as its opposite, communism, is simply blind to every market solution that requires government intervention, touting the free market as superior, despite how broken it is. So, we need a politically feasible way of doing this. Insofar as political feasibility goes, your idea of helping veterans is pretty far up there. Create a housing bill for vets, giving them enough money to afford the house. Pay for it with higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy - simply fixing tax loopholes would likely cover it - it's unconscionable that companies like General Electric benefit massively from US infrastructure but pay not a penny in taxes for that benefit. The downside of this is likely to be perceived as an upside by many - it would encourage enlistments in a time when they're very low (in my book, we need to fight fewer wars and spend our money at home instead). In essence, give vets the money so that they can express their demand on the open market, and let the usual market function sort out the hairy details. Funky |
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Post by ricoyung on Jun 24, 2011 18:04:45 GMT
The fact is the money-junkies moved the cash the wrong way. Dylan Ratigan says that the total cost to date for the Mortgage-Backed Security Fraud is $27 trillion. That works out to $81,000 for every living American from the tiniest newborn to the retired curmudgeon. Had we moved that money the other way; had we given every American $81,000, there would have been no missed mortgage payments. There would not be a housing crisis. Had we given every American $81,000, all the credit cards would be up-to-date; there would be no credit crisis. Had we given every American $81,000, they would have bought new American cars and there would have been no need for Auto-maker bailouts. Had we given every American $81,000, they would have been down at the malls buying the products of American manufacturers; we would still have our manufacturing and full employment.
The men and women who founded this nation understood that when there is ample money in circulation, issued by the government free of accruing interest charges, there is full employment and no poverty. But when a private central bank issues all currency as the proceed of a loan at interest, there is poverty and starvation of the people, while the wealth is captured by the bankers.
This nation fought a revolution in large part to be free of the evils of private central banking, only to be sold back into bondage by corrupt Congresses and corrupt Presidents.
While we were looking the other way, the most important freedom, the freedom to prosper by our own labor, was stolen from us by our own government, and sold to the private central bankers, that we would toil endlessly to make the bankers rich, while the schools and churches lied to us that this was the way life was supposed to be, and that freedom meant the freedom to choose which banker to be a slave to.
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