The Glade 4.0

Point out where he's told you you're stupid. I havn't seen any of this behavior you're citing. I HAVE, however, seen you unreasonably expecting everyone to remember what you posted who knows when in the past, and I DIDN'T see that the link you provided had the information you claimed.

As for "reading and remembering" I haven't seen a very good history of citation from you in recent years (maybe it was better back before 07-08; I don't recall) and yes, it is unreasonable of you to expect people to remember everything you post. It is ESPECIALLY unreasonable for you to expect everyone to just take your economic analysis over that of every other economist out there.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I'd be happier if you wait to include me in your posts until after I've actually engaged with you in the thread. I imagine it's hard for you, knowing there are folks that aren't impressed by your ego, but still, your attempts at getting their attention should be toned down just a tad.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Taskiss:

You stop telling people to prove a negative and then acting like you're smart because you have ...

And I'll stop including you in posts where I'm talking about people being dickfaces on the Glades.

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Diamondeye:

I don't expect anyone to remember everything I post. I expect them to remember things they've asked me to post. Since Arathain is particularly bad at remembering such things ... I can only conclude he's a total troll.

As for my economic analysis? How many times do I have to be right while all these pundits people cite keep ending up wrong before you understand ...

I am an actual god damned credentialed authority on matters of economics?

That'd be like me telling you you have no **** clue about anything military and we should disregard your posts on all things military because of some idiot in New Zealand with a blog ...

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As far as I can tell, the things you've asked him to remember also include responses to Monty over a year ago, so, while he may not remember your responses to him, you've also asked him to remember more than that.



You know, it's funny how you seem to be a credentialed authority on so many things. But that's ok, you're obviously a guy that seeks out education. However, you are not the only credentialled authority out there on any of these subjects, and more importantly, you may have made some accurate predictions, but economics are far too complex a subject for anyone to be unerringly "right" and everyone else "wrong". Any layman can see that, if they're willing to avoid the temptation of oversimplification.



I seem to recall at least one incident where you told me exactly that because I said something you didn't like. In any case, I never said you didn't have a clue, or that anyone should disregard anything you post. I said you're not the only knowledgable person out there and there's no reason we should just take your word as gospel. Do you expect no one to ever question you?

I certainly don't expect to go unquestioned on military matters. That's why I explain them in such lengthy detail, so that people will understand why I hold the opinions I hold. I'm not the only authority out there; if General Powell posted something contradicting me I wouldn't be just dismissing him as "wrong". I would, however, explain why I disagreed with him. I also make it a point not to allow my enthusiasm for military affairs to interfere with my judgement, and avoid the temptation to, for lack of a better term, simply adovcate for stuff based on how wanktastic it is. I may not always be perfect in that regard, I may not have the only opinion out there on security, and I may be excessively wordy sometimes, but I sure as **** do not expect someone to remember the details of what I posted regarding the air engagement channels of a Perry class frigate a year and a half ago, either.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

How about you offer up someone besides yourself as an authority? Seem to me I offered to do the legwork on our last disagreement and check out the opinions of any of the current experts you'd care to share names of on your idiotic, out of touch position on the need for jobs in the USA and all I heard was crickets.

Anyone ever disagree with you that you didn't then go out of your way to cast as an inferior?

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In time, this too shall pass.

Consider the following scenarios:

• Scenario 1: A group of 1000 people all want to have a rec center for sporting events, so they each contribute $100 to cover the cost and then go ahead and built it. Has wealth been created?
• Scenario 2: A group of 1000 people all agree to pool their $100 contributions and decide by majority vote what to do with the money. A majority (but not unanimous) vote results in a decision to build a rec center, which they go ahead and do. Has wealth been created?
• Scenario 3: A group of 1000 people decide to form a town, and on town meeting day, a majority of them vote to levy a $100 per person tax to fund the construction of a rec center, which they go ahead and build. Has wealth been created?

I don't see why the answer would be different in one scenario than in another. In each case, it's the same $100k construction project resulting in the same rec center.

Did all 1000 people vote in scenario 3? Or just their elected leaders?

Wealth has nothing to do with what is created, but the demand for what is created, and what sort of business is derived from that creation. Simple investment into a thing is no guarentee of the creation of wealth. If more resources go into creating a thing than the thing can be valued at, then wealth was lost in the thing's creation.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

No, it was moved from people's pockets into a rec center?

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

All three of these scenarios are examples of consumption of $100k. Wealth is being forfeited in exchange for a Rec Center.

It seems more and more to me Democrats just don't understand opportunity cost.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I would argue that most American's do not understand opportunity costs, nor do they understand the concept of sunk costs.

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Paper dollars have been transformed into a capital improvement of real property that has increased the utility and value of said property. How is that not an increase in wealth? In any event, if you don't think this particular project entails an increase in wealth, that's fine, just insert some other hypothetical project that you think does increase wealth. The point of the scenarios is that I don't see what difference it makes whether the project (whatever it is) is completed through an informal/private pooling of resources or a formal/governmental pooling of resources. If the project is the same either way, what does it matter?

Come on, man, really? I can't remember the last time you focused on a discussion long enough for me to lose without you going off on some tirade and throwing insults and putting everyone down. It's unnecessary. I don't insult you, and you know it.



Again, so you say. But what links and citations I have seen (you don't provide these of late) don't back up what you're saying.



This is false, and you know it.



So in the same post where you accuse me of throwing around insults, we get this gem. Come on, man, you're barely even trying.



Are you kidding me? I don't recall ever calling you stupid. Quite the opposite, actually:



For a guy that complains so much about people not reading your posts, that's a pretty big miss. Meanwhile:



Lovely.



Come on, now. Responding to posts is not trolling. Especially when the response is discussing backup for on topic statements.

I've suggested to you repeatedly that this is a valid claim to make. If someone asks you for a citation, it's perfectly reasonable to say "No, I don't want to take the time to find that" or "This is my analysis based on my expertise" and let it go. If that's not enough for someone, so what? But you don't do that typically, that I've seen. You tend to just freak out.

You make several assumptions RD.

It only has increased utility if people want it.

A public council passes a tax to create a center because they want it. It passes. No one uses it because it was not demanded.

What utility was gained?

This is how a large amount if not most tax money is used.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Arathain:

I don't freak out when people challenge me; I get annoyed when you guys continue to make the same erroneous arguments despite being given more information to change that opinion in the past than I care to reproduce for a 5th or 6th or 7th time.

Indeed, this post does include the information you think is absent. It does, in point of fact, explain exactly why more jobs won't solve our problems:

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Fine, but that's not the point I was responding to. I was commenting on the oft-repeated claim that "the government cannot produce wealth"; not the claim you're making here that government often fails to produce wealth because it spends money on things people don't actually want or need. That's a very different (and much more defensible) claim.

Under current U.S. Tax Models the following are true:

Government expenditures never create wealth.

Never ...

Never ...

Never ...

Government expenditures do no create GDP either.

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It can but the deck is far stacked against it and so any time its exceedingly rare and I would argue at best it can break even with what the private markets would do.

First of all its trying to do good with other people's money which has a whole host of issues. Second if the demand is there its already going to be more efficiently done by private entities because they don't have to spend money on the support system to take move and re-issue the money that government does. Third governmental systems attract more corruption by their monopolistic state than do private enterprises (and those associated problems of a monopolistic system operating for elastic goods and services).

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Yes, I saw that, and addressed it here: http://www.gladerebooted.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6797&start=125#p156970

Please note that my response included follow up questions, including the bold:



I'm not sure why you are suggesting I don't read your posts, when I quoted them, discussed them, AND requested further discussion.

This was your response:



I had a follow-up post to this one as well that outlined where you were not addressing my questions, nor were, in my opinion, fully making your case. Regardless, using this example, you're doing one of two things: you're either not reading my posts (which would be problematic considering your complaints in this thread), or you are not being truthful when you make statements like this:

viewtopic.php?p=156974#p156974

This response negated any need for my to respond to your longer post. If the Law of Supply and Demand is valid, then nothing I posted was either out of place or unintelligible.

That said, you and Taskiss have yet to defend your positive assertion that jobs will improve our economic situation. Surely, since my position is "idiotic" and "out of touch", the two of you should have no problem finding a litany of links to disagree with me ...

And, yet, neither of you ever offered a single citation or even explanation for your position.

Why is it I'm supposed to accept your (mostly Taskiss there) "refutation" (which is a bare assertion) when you two have demanded over and over I "prove" a negative? And, when I actually even bother to entertain your irrational request, you ignore what's posted because of whatever impetus you have?

Sure, you asked a bunch of questions; I read your post and determined that asking a "yes or no" question of my own would solve the problem in the most expeditious manner: either you agree with the Law of Supply and Demand or you don't. If you do, then "jobs" won't help ... if you don't, then "jobs" might help ...

But, you know, I've provided a sourced explanation for my position and only received a bunch of ... bullshit containing no citations and a whole lot of appeal to tradition and popularity. What incentive do I have for continuing the debate, when you throw out such lovely false dilemmas like this last one?

But, all of that said, since you really don't get it and neither does Taskiss ...

And because Hopwin actually asked nicely ...

It's pretty much all about money. Money ... money ... money ...

Money and the velocity thereof.

Government policy concerns itself, at least as far as the U.S. is concerned, pretty much only with the rate at which currency changes. You'll note, I used "currency" there, not "money", because our government and talking heads have a very deluded and inaccurate understanding of "money" ... as does the vast majority of the population. In fact, Americans and pretty much everyone else who has lived their entire life under a fiat currency conflate the two terms; but, "money" and "currency" are not synonymous.

So, what constitutes "money" in the United States? Well, to answer that, we need to know what a commodity is and is not ...

Hint, at least as far as macroeconomic policy and government action is concerned, the following definition is no longer valid:Rather, because as Frederic Jameson has said, "We're all Marxists now;" the actual definition of commodity is something like this:Of course, there's a whole lot of conflation between the two in the media and government and in political speech; but, unless someone specifically mentions pork bellies or cotton futures, they're using the Marxist definition.

Money and commodities are very much involved with each other; and, in the United States, that fungible, ever present, and value regulating commodity happens to be ...

Human Labor.

2010 Census Data will likely show median incoming dropping from 2000, but even so the median household income in the United States is right around $50,000 a year ($50,233 in 2006). So, we can divide $50,233/2080 to find the median value of a dollar in a standard work year ($0.40 / minute). This means a dollar is functionally worth 2.5 minutes if human labor if we use the median household income. But, that's probably a bad idea, because Bill Gates "made" about $1,000,000,000 (1 billion dollars) last year (or enough to bring 20,000 people with 0 income to the median line). And, obviously, because we're in the business of trading in human labor, a five-dollar bill has significantly less real value to Bill Gates than it does the panhandler on the corner of 5th and Park. (That's $134 or so a second by the by for Gates).

Now, were our money not labor and our currency a marker for some other commodity, something that isn't quite so disparate as human labor, we'd see a lot more stability in prices and inflation; we'd also see more stability in wages and earning, instead of a continual decline over the last 50 years.

In any case, we're trading in human labor; we valuate things in time units of labor; we back our currency in time units of labor ...

But our government and our economic policy really don't care about that; they simply don't. In fact, the value of a five-dollar bill or a thousand-dollar bill is essentially the same: worthless. U.S. monetary supply is ... (and consequently policy) is stupid ... it is stupid in epic ways ...

Money Supply

If you click that link, you'll see part of the conflation between money and currency. The Money Supply is the total number of physical currency in circulation plus ... well, plus mostly credit.

Here's where things become problematic for "creating" jobs ...

1. The Federal Reserve has been engaging in "quantitative easing."

...

More later when I have a chance ...

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So you say, but you just walked away from the thread without addressing any of my follow up, wherein I discussed the issues I had with your explanation.



/facepalm Wow.











Again, for someone that takes such offense at people supposedly not reading their posts, this is a big miss. I did not say that jobs will improve our economic situation.



I’m not asking you to prove a negative. Never did. In fact:



This was repeated several times. And I wasn’t asking you to prove this, just back this up. Let me know where you’re getting this, because obviously – this is contradictory to everything that’s reported. Hell, I wasn’t even really saying that – what I was saying was simply repeating it without backup won’t convince anyone.



No, I didn’t get your position at all. Hence the questions….



Looking forward to it….