Audio: What Really Causes Global Depressions?

Austrian this, Keynesian that. Why should one embrace one over the other?

Kevin Swanson doesn't get into that, but he does say that our practical atheism is the reason why America is doing so badly nowadays.

Listen below.

What Really Causes Global Depressions - Major Wobble for the First Domino

It's true that Austrian economics is more in line with the biblical worldview, but what authority do Austrian economists stand on?

Mises and Rothbard.

In other words, men.

In the same vein, we have also embraced man's erroneous views of laws and economics -- that is why we will be in a depression.

Put the economic crisis in perspective

Put the economic crisis in perspective:

The government has been using stimulus to thwart a recession since I was 13.

I'm 27 now. They've been pushing off a recession for over half of my lifetime.

They've been using stimulus since 2001 and what do have they to show for it?

If stimulus worked so well, then why are there 2 million breadwinner jobs -- $50k a year -- less than 2000? Why are wages still declining?

By pushing off the recession with stimulus, they make the inevitable correction even worse.

What if we had one bad recession in 2001 and then that was it? What if we all had to toughen it out for one bad year when the economy was much stronger?

What happens now that the crisis is still forthcoming and people don't have the incomes and savings to brace for it?

Imagine if all of the people who went to college from 2001 to 2015 -- including myself -- had to make decisions to go to school based upon real price sensitivity, based upon what they could actually afford, versus enrolling in federal student loan programs? How financial freer would those people be?

The solution is to drastically cut spending, preferably Ron Paul 2012 presidential platform style by $1 trillion, end local, state, and federal bureaucracies, drastically lower taxes (no regressive flat tax, conservatives), and end the American Empire overseas and at home. Oh, and of course, End the Fed.

There's also other things that could be done but that's for another blog post. But for starters, we could legalize capitalism.

15 years of Economic Policy: What do we have to show for it?

In a recent article, David Stockman sets up the American Economic Scene since 2000 quickly:

Indeed, during that span we have encompassed several business cycles, two financial crises/meltdowns and nearly a non-stop blitz of “extraordinary” policy interventions. To wit, a $700 billion TARP, an $800 billion fiscal stimulus, upwards of $4.0 trillion of money printing and 165 months out of 180 months in which interests rates were being cut or held at rock bottom levels.

You’d think with all that help from Washington that American capitalism would be booming with prosperity. No it’s not. On the measures which count when it comes to sustainable growth and real wealth creation, the trends are slipping backwards—– not leaping higher.

The kinds of breadwinner jobs that we need the most -- those that provide the most productivity and output -- are slipping behind. He explains:

Moreover, within the 70 million breadwinner jobs category, the highest paying jobs which add the most to national productivity and growth——goods production—-have slipped backwards even more dramatically. As shown below, there were actually 21% fewer payroll jobs in manufacturing, construction and mining/energy production reported last Friday than existed in early 2000.

Takeaways:

• Non financial business productivity has grown 1.1 percent annually since the 2007 peak. 
• This is only half of the productivity from 1953 until 2000.
• So despite 15 years of stimulus there is little to show for it.
• During the Eisenhower years, which saw balanced budgets, this growth rate was two and one half times what it is now.
• The number breadwinners jobs in the economy is still 2 million lower than it was in 2000.
• Breadwinner jobs are defined as "construction, white collar, manufacturing, FIRE, transport, information, trade."
• Breadwinner jobs are jobs that pay around $50K. 
• There are about 70 million of these breadwinner jobs.
• $50K is enough to support a household without government assistance.
• Editor's Commentary: I make much less than $50K. While I am not on government assistance, I am on parental assistance.
• The part-time economy -- $14/hour or $20K/year jobs -- is booming.
• This is the second part-time job boom of this century.
• This means that all of the job growth that occurred in the first boom -- the Bush II years -- were also part-time jobs. 
• The top 10% of income earners account for 40% of the spending in an economy.
• We are in the middle of the third financial bubble of this century.
• This bubble will pop too.
• The part-time jobs that were created as a result of wealthy people spending more will vanish in the next bust.
• As Stockman puts it, "On a net basis, the only jobs created during this entire century are in the HES Complex (health, education and social services)."
• But why? Well, again, as Stockman puts it, "they are a function of the entitlement state and the massive $200 billion per year of tax subsidies which support employer-funded health benefits."

There's more information that I did not summarize. See the rest by clicking the link below.

Read David Stockman's 15 Years Of Stimulus—–Nothing To Show

David Klinghoffer quotes my work in Evolution News and Views

This is so cool. David Klinghoffer, a writer who I look up to and is a guide for me in the vast area of physical science, quotes me extensively in a recent article of his on the Discovery Institute's "Evolution News and Views" website, which I am subscribed to via RSS feed.

See here:  On Science, Passivity or Independence? 

A Conversation that Needs to Happen Among Conservatives

I own Klinghoffer's "The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos: Fact and Fiction in Neil deGrasse Tyson's Landmark Science Series" which I started to read about a month or so ago.

Keynesianism as False Religion

"Keynesianism is the economic equivalent of whatever religion you don't believe in."

Me, The Goins Report

WaPo: 'Mitt Romney, Keynesian'

Ezra Klein notes.

Gary North says there is Keynesianism in the conservative camp

Keynesian is in the conservative camp, Gary North says, and that is not, by the way, a good thing.

It starts with this:

Someone posted a video of a LKeftist millionaire entrepreneur with a Ph.D. in philosophy. He told us that raising taxes on the rich will not reduce jobs. He is an economic idiot, even though he is a smart businessmen. There are lots of them.

What disturbed me was the reply.

It went on with this:

The site member begins with straight Keynesianism: “It is consumers who create demand and therefore jobs. The rich are globalists.” This is the very heart of Keynes’s economics. He began his analysis with the consumer. He assumed that the consumer had come out of nowhere, ready to consume, yet for some reason he was unable to consume. Keynes blamed the refusal of capitalists to invest, to employ unemployed people. He called on the government to borrow money and hire people. Everything centered on increasing demand.

Read the rest for more analysis. It's better in its full context.

Keynesian economics is welfare state economics

Keynesian economics is welfare state economics. It has always been a cover for wealth-redistribution. Officially, this wealth redistribution has been justified in the name of helping the poor. Operationally, it has always been wealth transfers to very large banks.

Every time there is a financial crisis, the government and the central bank bail out large banks. Every time, Keynesian economists hail this policy during the crisis period. Then, after the dust settles, and the surviving banks are larger than ever before, they bewail the fact that Wall Street was bailed out again.

These people are not slow learners. They are non-learners.

Gary North, The Crack in the Ice

Humor: Is Obama A Keynesian? Rally For Sanity, 10/30/10

Listen to the first lady. She thinks Keynes is a country and people from Keynes are called Kuh-knee-shan. Sorry lady. Its pronounced Kanes-zi-en.