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Guest Post: Destined to Fail – Magical Thinking at the G20
Submitted by Chris Martenson
Destined to Fail – Magical Thinking at the G20
The G20 meeting has revealed two important things that tell us something about our combined economic future. First we learned that the US lost the battle to try to get everyone back on the Keynesian print-a-thon bandwagon. This tells us something about US leadership in these troubled times. Once-upon-a-time, the US could dictate such things, and those days are apparently over which deserves to be noted.
I am a supporter of austerity as the least worst of two paths which I will outline below (the other being printing), but I want to be sure to give the global rejection of the US position on stimulus the proper attention it merits. Here’s the relevant information:
TORONTO — Despite President Obama’s pitch at the summit meeting for developed nations here for continued stimulus measures to prevent another global economic downturn, the United States will go along with other leaders who are more concerned about rising debt and join in a commitment to cut their governments’ deficits in half by 2013, administration officials said on Saturday.
(Source – NYT – all quotes below from same article)
In the lead-up to the G20, the US was lobbying heavily for a very different outcome. The US wanted continued stimulus and thin-air money printing and made its plea for this policy stance very publicly in the days and weeks leading up to the G20 meeting.
The reasons for this stance are numerous and complex, but one stands out prominently: Elections are coming up. If you are an incumbent, now is not the time to cut off the stimulus efforts.
The story here is that the US wants to stay on the path of printing, borrowing, and government stimulus, but a significant portion of the rest of the developed world has decided this is not a direction that makes sense. Such fundamental splits in philosophy are what great historical turning points are made of.
The second thing we learned is that, despite these differences in how to fund future growth, there is nothing yet to indicate that any the world leaders are aware that the very concept of perpetual growth is an unworkable fallacy. It’s obvious, hopefully to even the most casual of thinkers, that someday, sooner or later, whatever growth one is engaged in will have to stop. Nothing grows forever; everything has a limit.
But apparently the concept of limits is not part of the magical framework of modern economic thinking (emphasis mine, below):
Mr. Cameron and Mr. Obama, in their first private meeting since Mr. Cameron took office, acknowledged their different approaches toward balancing the need to promote greater economic growth and job creation in the short term with the long-term desire to reduce national debts, which reached dangerous heights during the downturn. But they played down those differences.
It’s funny how these things are always expressed as a “need.” We “need” economic growth and job creation. Have you ever wondered why this is? Why is it that we “need” either? Needs are not negotiable; wants are. How sure are we that job creation and economic growth are actually needs?
Well, we need job growth, because there are more and more people entering the work force each year due to population growth. If there were no population growth and everybody already had a job, then there would be no “need” to create jobs. Zero percent job growth is the right amount for a stable population. No growth = no need for new jobs.
So we can therefore reduce the politicians' statements about the need for jobs to its more basic level and discover that they are really saying we “need” population growth. It's certainly been a very real and dominant factor for a very long time, but it is not a need. There are many who would even say it shouldn't even be considered a “want.” We can trace an enormous number of the problems or predicaments we face to over-population or to the strain that results from accommodating the needs of a growing population.
It seems to me that if job creation is a ‘need’ then we’d do well to ask ourselves if we’d prefer to spend our time trying to figure out how to create an ever larger number of jobs in perpetuity or if we’d like to spend our time figuring out how to create a stable population. While this may be an uncomfortable topic for some, it also happens to be reality.
Since it’s logically true that eventually population growth will have to stop it’s entirely probable that we’d gain more bang for our buck if we expended our efforts towards creating a stable population than trying to build a perpetual-motion job creation machine.
And what about the “need” to grow the economy? Where does that come from?
If you’ve watched the Crash Course you know that this imperative for economic growth comes from the money system itself. Debt-based money requires growth. If we had a stable population engaged in stable and sustainable activities using non debt-based money as their freely circulating medium of exchange, then there would be no “need” for economic growth. Zero percent economic growth would work just fine.
But we’ve got a growing population and we’ve got debt-based money and that’s the long and the short of it. Hence, we are stuck with the political reality that we “need” growth in the economy and job creation (even though these “needs’ are self-inflicted by our decisions, not due to some fundamental law of the universe like gravity).
Knowing that something is wrong with this perpetual growth narrative, we've taken to adding a few comforting words around ‘growth’ to make it seem as if our thinking is actually very clever and mature:
“But we are aiming at the same direction, which is long-term sustainable growth that puts people to work,” Mr. Obama said.
“Long-term sustainable growth” that “puts people to work.” Sounds good, doesn’t it? Who could be against that?
The problem is that the first part of the statement is an oxymoron. There’s no such thing as “long-term sustainable growth”. Heck, in the long run, there’s no such thing as “sustainable growth.”
Sooner or later, whether its bacteria in a Petri dish, mice in the pantry, or humans on a globe, growth stops. The only question is whether you cease that growth by design, on your own terms, or by disaster on some other terms.
Whenever you hear the words “sustainable growth” I invite you to recall this line of thinking and ask yourself if such a thing as sustainable growth is even possible. If it is, I have certainly I have never seen any workable plan, not even sketched onto a napkin in crayon, that explains how growth can be sustainable. Growth always ceases the only question is when and under what terms.
Some more quotes from the G20:
Mr. Cameron added, “Those countries that have big deficit problems like ours have to take action in order to keep that level of confidence in the economy which is absolutely vital to growth.”
(...)
The Obama administration did have allies at the meeting in opposing rapid moves to withdraw governments’ stimulus measures. The Brazilian finance minister, Guido
Mantega, told reporters that the debt-reduction targets could compromise economic growth
(...)
Trying to bridge the differences among leaders here, [Timothy Geithner] said: “Our challenge, as the G-20, is to act together to strengthen the prospects for growth. This will require different strategies in different countries. We are coming out of the crisis at different speeds.”
(...)
The setback underscored the difficulty Mr. Obama has had in making the case for stimulus. At home as abroad, Mr. Obama is confronting the limits of the consensus that took hold after the economic crisis began in 2008, which favored bigger deficits to spur job creation. At stake, as the administration sees it, is continued global recovery or a relapse into another recession.
Recovery, growth, and jobs. This is what the world seems to want in unison, and this is something we can easily understand and appreciate given the fact that all the world’s leaders were born and raised during a period without limits.
Now that we can clearly see a wall of limits right in front of us, the question remains as to which countries will be able to navigate the treacherous shoals of change as we try to find a different set of understandings upon which to build a new world that can offer prosperity without growth.
It’s a big challenge and I am keeping my fingers crossed that somehow we’ll manage to figure out that our current trajectory is unsustainable and that we need entirely new thinking, centered on reality, to enter our global discourse. The alternative is to default into the comforting arms of growth only to discover, much to our dismay, that it was prosperity we wanted after all and that growth and prosperity are very different things. In a world of limits, one steals from the other. My preference would be to have prosperity be the thief and growth the victim, but our leaders seek the opposite.
This theme of what we might expect in a world of limits is a dominant portion of my analysis that I perform for my enrolled members. We do not live in a world where anything will suddenly run out, but a world where there will be slightly less and less that needs to be spread around more and more people, and more and more debt.
Running an analysis of all three E’s, the Economy, Energy and the Environment, and tying these to personal actions and financial implications is one unique service I that I provide. The other is to be your information scout.
The Challenge For The US
Now, back to the more immediate challenge for the US:
Yet even within Mr. Obama’s administration there are fault lines on how much additional stimulus is desirable.
Some news reports in recent days suggested that Peter R. Orszag, the budget director who recently announced that he would be leaving in late July, was resigning partly out of frustration that he had lost the argument for deeper and quicker reductions in projected deficits.
The apparent rift here is between Orszag, who wants the US to begin to live within its economic means, and the staunch Keynesians Geithner and Summers who want to print and spend to achieve political aims. As a card-carrying member of the green eyeshade club, Mr. Orszag knows that their path represents the eventual and probably catastrophic bankruptcy of the US.
Rather than continue to duke it out with the “print now, pay later” club, Orszag has opted to leave for greener and friendlier climes. In full disclosure, Larry Summers is among my least favorite people on the planet. I cannot figure out how he manages to get to such prominent positions given the fact that his track record is a nearly unblemished trail of poor decisions and economic ruin. Everything in his record suggests that his only form of competency is political ambition, yet somehow he keeps getting his ideas enacted. It’s a real mystery and not the good kind, like where that extra $20 in your pocket came from. In my view Summers is a gigantic liability for this country and the current administration and the sooner he is sent packing the better. Geithner too for that matter.
At any rate, the G20 plan calls for the US to cut its existing budget deficit to only 3% of GDP by 2013. For the US this would represent a decline from a $1.4 trillion deficit to a roughly $420 billion deficit, or ~$1 trillion in cuts in just three years.
Without getting too technical, this is just not going to happen. Cutting a trillion in federal spending would cut 7% from the GDP.
And even if we were willing to undertake a 7% hit to GDP, where would the trillion come from? It turns out that much of the US deficit is now structural meaning it sits in the “mandatory” column as opposed to the “discretionary” column. To help frame the predicament, I’ll note that Obama recently proposed a three-year freeze on all non-defense discretionary budget spending which – drum roll please – constitutes only $447 billion out of a $3.5 trillion budget.
In other words, finding a trillion is simply out of the question if the only part of the budget that can be controlled right now because it is both discretionary and politically viable in an election year, is only $447 billion. You can’t squeeze blood from a stone and you can't save a trillion from a budget of less than half a trillion. And that’s only part of the problem.
One path to getting the deficit to 3% from its current 10% of GDP is to cut spending. However, this path carries the seeds of its own failure. Government spending is a big part of GDP so cutting spending shrinks the GDP. The more spending is cut the more GDP shrinks which makes the deficit ratio less favorable. Adding insult to injury, government revenues expand and shrink in proportion to GDP so cutting spending actually leads to reduced revenues which leads to higher deficits which lead to more cutting which results in an endless spiral into the dumpster.
The other path consists of elevated government borrowing and spending done with the hope that eventually GDP climbs up over time thereby reducing the deficit to GDP ratio. The US sees this as the only viable option but Europe has figured out that this path too has its own ‘end-game’ which is the eventual collapse of sovereign debt and the high likelihood of associated political and social chaos.
Neither option is really attractive at this point, which is the definition of a predicament.
My final analysis is that because we have such political animals as Summers driving the ship of state the US will tell the G20 it agrees to the plan but will not honor those words. At least not during this election year. And probably not next year either because it will be inconvenient then too for some reason or another. And probably not ever unless forced by external circumstances because the political class in the US seems unable to confront the idea that limits apply.
And so the US, and its ever compliant side-kick Japan, will continue to spend wildly even as Europe dutifully wrestles with the new reality. At first it will seem like the US is the place to invest because its ‘growth prospects’ will appear stronger but someday, and not too terribly far in the future, it will dawn on the financial markets that the US is a hopeless basket case saturated with debts that cannot ever be paid back under current terms. This is already true, but for some reason financial markets seem ignorant of this reality. Someday there will be a sudden revolt in the Treasury markets, a new equilibrium will be found, and vast quantities of wealth and our national standards of living will disappear seemingly overnight.
And that’s only if those other two E’s don’t thunder out of the chute and into the arena for all to see. Then all bets are off.
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Elitist academic types tell me that the world population over time can be reasonably modeled by a function that predicts the population of yeast over time in a petri dish.
"Sooner or later, whether its bacteria in a Petri dish, mice in the pantry, or humans on a globe, growth stops."
The yeast population grows ~exponentially, hits an inflection point, and then begins to decay. Evidently, the same inflection point for the world population happened 6 to 8 years ago. Whether or not my unreferenced recollections hold up, the implications for future supply and demand are vast, and depend on when the inflection point occurs/has occurred.
I get a sense that ZH readers recognize our unique point in history. Space and resources are running out, and we want to preserve as much as possible for harder times. When the Ponzi Death Star collapses, we want to hold our gold bullion above the ashes, and celebrate with the other forward-thinking yeasties on our glorious asymptote to thermodynamic equilibrium. When entropy wins, everybody fails, not just the G20. They're just speeding up the inevitable process of human destruction.
Entropy bitchez!
capitalism is unsustainable
If you took all the loot and spread it around to all the humans the sociopaths would still have it at the end of the game.
The only problem is there no user-friendly way to reset the system and make the sociopaths start the game over again.
true but capitalism masquerades as Laissez faire which is sustainable.
No one knows the limits of human growth. And we don't need to know. Never mind the top-down Malthusian eugenic windmill tilting. What is at issue at the G20 is the extent to which debt can continue to be grown. Conflating government spending and private investment, if sincere, is just stupid. The deflationist alarm claque are not concerned that austerity, ie., reigning in government spending, will cause the economy to fail. Their true fear is that reducing the state's insertion into matters economic will cause the free economy to grow, and to that extent expose the scam that is force-fed fiat money debt dependence.
Failed eugenicist thinking. In his mind zero population growth will solve the lack-of-jobs problem. And then what? The politicians are free to spend away? More jibberish about the earth needing to cut back on population anyway, so might as well...
In a libertarian society, people overwhelmingly would spend w/in their means. If resources dwindle and become more expensive, people would, by free choice, limit the number of children they bring into the world in order to live within their means. If there hadn't been so much political mismanagement for so long, we'd be much closer to being able to live on other planets.
The perfect society is so easy to create.
Too bad we have to drag along all of those god damned humans to screw it up.
Biggest loser at G20: Japan. As the only country not to sign on, they point out their perilous situation. Biggest liar at G20: Obama. After Geitner selling continued spending for the last 2 weeks, Obama signs on to this agreement he has no intention of keeping.
They are going to QE and expand fed balance sheet and dump dollars like mad men or watch M3 collapse into 1/20th it's size.
The underground banksters envisioned that when fiat currency and sovereign debt became under serious threat, Europe would be on our side to monetize in unison in order to rip-off the emerging markets. As we all know, the underground banksters were not prepared for a German-led, European-wide austerity mentality. The USA is on its own to fight debt with more debt. But it cannot win this without Europe. The only alternative is DISTRACTION larger than 9/11. The USA will turn a blind-eye to nuclear proliferation. This will be the ignition and catalyst of the next project of our Military Industrial Complex.
JMeli
You are dead wrong. No European country is running a SURPLUS... they're all running deficits, pulling demand forward and therefore stimulating their economies. The only debate here is how much they pull. US 10%, Germany 3%. More, European banks are in a FUBAR state... what did your responsible German "austerity"-driven stimulating powerhouse do about it? Nothing... just like us. Isn't it clear as daylight that we're all playing the same game?
Quantum, did you at least study quantum physics before choosing the name? If you knew something about deficits, you would not have responded as such. Deficits do not pull demand forward. They are a drag on long term growth. Europe can "do us in" by not monetizing in the coming decade. The US Banksters and Keynesian fools need them to monetize with us together.
funny, streaming below video in background while reading this. 7% growth rate a year doubles your population/debt/energy consumption, whatever, in 10 years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFyOw9IgtjY&NR=1
The original fallacy is in Plato's analysis of love in The Symposium. This is the western philosophical basis for the separateness of humanity from the infinite. Humans are not separate and somehow linked differently to a divine entity, but are part of the inifinite like all else. The point of life is not to strive for immortality as Plato says, because there is no immortality. We are all immortal. When we die, our molecules do not disappear to heaven or hell. Everyone who has ever lived and died is a part of this world.
Because we are not separate there is no point to the hierarchical structure of striving and need that keeps the plebs infighting amongst themselves . . . and there is no infinite supply of growth (underlying the borrow to fund more growth fallacy whose ultimate underlying premises is that humans are seperate from the infinite). Humans are confined to the host planet and cannot reach any other habitable satellite. If we want to survive then we reject the notions of infinite growth and constant striving, and start thinking how best to live together within our means and with only the finite resources that we have access to.
This is not to say that competition is bad. Competition can be good. However, western notions of capitalism and competition need to be put within the framework of humans as a part of the real world - the world we actually live in, not the one where one or more dieties/god(s) will magically plug up the hole in the Gulf of Mexico or clean up the nuclear waste at Chernobyl, or magic enough plants and clean water to feed an infinitely expanding populace.
Capitalism and competition within a real world framework would mean the end of central banking, the end of consumption based living, and the beginning of the way forward.
I agree GoldmanSux. The economically-illiterate Obama Administration STILL thinks that giving a corpse (US economy) a blood transfusion (stimulus) will somehow revive it.
Any 'Distraction' the US tries to initiate now (ie, an Israel/US Iran strike) will result in severe global blow back. After the 'weapons of financial mass destruction' MBS, CDO debacle (sorry, my bad, 'financial engineering') I think we are reaching a global tipping point vis a vis the US. The world, more interested in upgrading their respective economies than some neocon, offense as defense, global chess game (which by the way is tiresome, SO WW2 in thinking, and VERY dangerous). The US will be perceived as a desperate 'wounded animal'. Something that needs to be comforted AND avoided. The blow back would not be quick, coordinated or smooth, but it would be inevitable...
Robert, no-one said anything about invading another country.
Go through the mental journey of what nuclear fission attack on a US city would do to world trade, your ability to buy your child a different color Iphone and your ability to buy more LCD tv's.
....ohh Lets not forget about an instant 35% unemployment rate, a global dollar crash, oil spiking to 1000 pb and global trade coming to a screeching halt.
JM
The "growth" that the state cheers is merely senseless activity. The Keynsians cheer movement - no matter what that movement is. The GDP cultists love it when people drive around vast state-created highways for hours every day. Even though most of that activity is pure waste, it's considered "good" and termed a function of "economic growth."
By the same measure, if we all bought huge amounts of gasoline and burned it in a bonfire, it would be magnificent for GDP. It's a complete nonsense metric.
True economic growth is actually economic contraction - a more efficient use of resources per unit of energy.
It's time to re-orient the popular understanding of economics.
Keynsianism is a form of economic warfare against both domestic and foreign populations. GDP is more like bodycount than a genuine measure of prosperity and human progress. In the past, GDP was used - and still is - as a dick-measuring competition between the US and its Communist competitors.
Lest we forget, the USSR posted impressive GDP numbers up until its collapse.
Excellent point about the so-called value of GDP that can never be emphasized enough.
GDP as a measure of "production" is a farce --- it is really just a measure of consumption, which could be and (until lately) has been drawn from future production. But I think that merry-go-round is coming to a stop, with many of the riders about to go tumbling.
There is no production that is not consumption.
All human activities are consumption. They are labelled to distinguish between each of them.
Saving, production etc... as human activities are all consumption.
i agree and humorous. apologies concerning my b.s. comment
regarding labor and "it's" wants or wishes, i may have missed a level
of sarcasm or humor or perhaps i have a "sore spot", either way,
apologies. and always enjoy reading the comments.
Borrow?
The "thin-air-portion" created is not meant to ever be extinguished. The whole of the game comes from capturing the phantom 'interest' stream. Nothing is ever lent (in most circumstances) and the focus should be on that which counts. The interest capture.
We might as well ask ourselves from where does all this capital originate. The exorbitant privilege runs the show.
principle (does not equal) principle plus interest. the interest
goes to the lender. this is power, the fiat power of leverage, profit. but since
the interest does not exist independently of the credit system there
is a secondary political power created and exploitable to seize assets
which were collateralized. credit quality and quantity. this is why prosperity,
political contentment?,
requires growth. without growth the p does not equal p + I reality kicks in
and insolvency and illiquidity rule the roost, exposing the entire looting
operation for what it is, a scam to fleece sheeple and then eat the weak.
hence the prayer for growth and embrace of insanity and a general
state of confusion and entertainment. my guess, resulting in magical
lying, not really "thinking".
ps. 2013 means blow your budgets out till then, but only for the
second and maybe third round of qe for the financial and related sectors,
i read it backwards. ?
Thumbs up, sir!
++++ Catullus 19:43
Re GetReal 21:38: The economically-illiterate Obama Administration STILL thinks that giving a corpse (US economy) a blood transfusion (stimulus) will somehow revive it:
I wonder if they really believe in what they are doing or they just act stupid cause they're A) buying votes and B) Goldman et al tells them to do so because more govt debt means more and more business for the boyz.
Make that a significant portion of the citizens of the U. S. and I'll buy into the argument!
The worm she is turning...
THE WORM TURNS - "Someone previously downtrodden gets his revenge; an unfavorable situation is reversed. The saying represents an evolution of the old proverb, 'Tread on a worm and it will turn.' The meaning was that even the most humble creature tries to counteract rough treatment. Shakespeare picked up the thought in Henry VI, Part 3, where Lord Clifford urges the king against 'lenity and harmful pity, saying:
To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?
Not to the beast that would usurp their den.
The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,
And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.'"
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/22/messages/97.html
PM's charts are showing a break to the upside. Platinum and silver especially. Now who's currentsea is strong? All currentseas appear to be capitulating, also. Oh but a weaker currentsea means to better exports. Right, like exports of the currentsea itself. And what if no one wants the export even if it is running thin? Just monetize it! Monetize it then!
Heh heh.
I don't think the G20 accomplished anything other than a bunch of handshaking and a vacation on the taxpayers.
Paul Krugman is on board with the "Third Depression":
"We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28krugman.html?src=twt&twt=Nyt...
And Jim Rickards
"The New Depression and the Fed’s illusion":http://dailycaller.com/2010/02/01/the-new-depression-and-the-feds-illusion/
Wait...I have to agree with Krugman now?!
Maybe he is agreeing with you.
Nah he still thinks the solution is to print more money; he just thinks it's only a deflationary depression.
"And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again."
Of course to him the reckless spending that got the world to this point isn't a factor at all so he'd continue down the same path.
I grew up near Krugman (didn't know him) and know the type. Long Island Socialist, parents prob revered FDR, think deficit spending defeated the Depression rather than catching on that victory in WW II The Big One cured what ailed US. He's never met a good intention that he didn't want Big Gov to fix. So he's a useful tool for TPTB who get rich and richer peddling govt debt and all the other products keying off said debt.
My sympathies.
Must have been an awful neighborhood.
Speaking of peddling here is an article about one export that the U.S. is proud of:
Up in Arms - the World's Military Exports"The 2009 Conventional Arms Transfers 2001-2008 report – also known as the Grimmett Report after its author, Richard F. Grimmett – shows that, in that period, the US was the world's top arms exporter, accounting for 41% of total sales. Russia was next with 17%, followed by France (8%), the UK (7%) and Germany (5%)."
Here is something to consider:
"Developing nations driving export market
So who's buying all the firepower? According to SIPRI, China is still the world's largest importer of arms with 9% of total sales from 2005-09, although spending has dropped from $3.5bn to $0.6bn in that time as the country's focus has shifted to transfer agreements and home-grown equipment. China currently accounts for 3% of global arms exports and is looking to become increasingly self-sufficient.
The other burgeoning Asian super power, India, is second on the list with 7% of the total world import sales. Its spending on arms imports has doubled from $1.04bn in 2005 to $2.1bn in 2009, due to the purchase of 82 Sukhoi-30 MKI fighters and T-90 tanks from traditional suppliers in Russia and an A-50 / Phalcon airborne early warning (AEW) system integrated by Israel."
http://www.army-technology.com/features/feature87151/
"In my view Summers is a gigantic liability for this country and the current administration and the sooner he is sent packing the better. Geithner too for that matter." Add that stupid oaf Bernanke to that pool of Summers and Geithner and you have my trio who should be booted out first. But unfortunately Obama does not think so too! Why is it that only people who do not wield power are the ones who can think .. probably they are mutually exclusive..
"In my view Summers is a gigantic liability for this country and the current administration and the sooner he is sent packing the better. Geithner too for that matter." Add that stupid oaf Bernanke to that pool of Summers and Geithner and you have my trio who should be booted out first. But unfortunately Obama does not think so too! Why is it that only people who do not wield power are the ones who can think .. probably they are mutually exclusive..
akak: it took many changes to realize the pervasive pathologies of the 'hood.
How would a stable population solve the issue?
Once again, a commentator who cant pinpoint the issue where it lays.
Lets take a population in the western world and adjust the fecondity rate so it is stable in number.
People live 70 years, start to work at 20 and work 40 years (retire at 60)
This population needs jobs creation, no matter how stable it is.
This guy confuses old style population when parents soon die after their own children are ready to enter the job market.
It cannot work in a western style population.
People having kids by 25 means that when they are 45, their kids are 20 and ready to enter the job market. Still 15 years to work the job they are used to.
Increase in life expectancy is where the needs for jobs start. An increasing population (in the western world of course, elsewhere the factors do not apply) is only an aggravating factor.
There are going to be a lot of failed explanations as people want absolutely to compare human population to yeast. Yeast cells consume their environment each on a similar ratio. This is of course very different from human beings where some consume just enough to maintain their metabolism and others (western way) who consume much, much more.
If you add the false notion of production (that type of consumption) which leads people to duck behind people who produce the most should be kept and people who produce the less should be eliminated, and it is understood the issue can not be solved.
Great article, great comments.
My humble input to the discussion-
We do want new jobs, so we can throw out the unproductive public-sector ones.
We do want new jobs, so a working life can be extended a little to pay for a fair pension.
We do want new jobs, nicer and more challenging than the old jobs; so that our brilliant machines can do the repetitive and simple tasks.
... but we do want to stabilise or reduce world population. And of that, we have no stomach for the choices facing us -Nature is going to have to enforce it on us.
Finally, since when did the US listen to what the rest of the world had to say. There will be no balancing the budget by Washington within the next decade.
And Summers, Rubin, Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson, Dimon and the Robber Barons? until the sub-standard politicians even understand a single word these guys are telling them, they are untouchable. Do you honestly think Barney, Diddy-Man Dodd, Barry O have any comprehension of what is happening?
Do you honestly think Barney, Diddy-Man Dodd, Barry O have any comprehension of what is happening?
No but I've always hoped the people calling the shots would have some idea of what's going. I think the true power brokers believe that since they've kept everything together for so long that they can keep it going. We don't have economic policy we have institutional inertia, that's what really keeps the US going. Everyone is afraid do things differently and move away for the dollar standard, for now.
I think we're in an age of transition on the verge of moving into a new world with new rules. Unfortunately that will mean the end of our current system, which will probably be accompanied by bedlam and mayhem.
If there´s no growth, there´s no capitalism. Capitalism doesnt work in stagnate economy.
When Broke, Stop Borrowing.
Grow jobs the old fashioned way, hard work, manufacturing, natural resources, Whoaa Nelly, the environment, smelly, noisy, WORK???? You have got to be kidding.
What about Obammy's Aunt in a project in Boston? And the millions like her?
It is going to get ugly.
I am underwater on my mortgage, 2 car payments, day care, drug habit and my Fluff Economy job is OVER, what do I do???????
Oh, Mr, President, I voted for you, won't you please give me a tit job where I can talk like an asshole, tell other people what to do when they rebuild America to reflect the Change?
Yup, it is gonna be a good one.
I want some pills, and POT for my pain, Obamacare, where is my Obamacare?????
Where is my check??? I have been waiting all dam day for my check to come!!!
I just want to stop for a moment and tip my hat to Chris Martenson. He will go down in history as "one of the good guys". No doubt about it.
Those who speak of carrying capacity are right on the money. Otherwise known as K, the threshold. Once the population reaches K it will collapse. Of course, this is based on limited resources. There is plenty of ground and seeds at the moment and therefore food is not an immediate limiting factor and shouldn't be for a long time. Anything related to the economy, technology, money, debt, credit, etc. are not limiting resources, plenty to go around as we can make more. Oil...whatever...we'll find another way of getting around and making things. The resource to keep your eye on is good ol' H20. That is the limiting resource. When there isn't enough fresh water for everyone the population will crash. We don't need to force "stable populations", nature will take care of that herself.
Problem solved. Then we can start over, for those of you who survive.
Economicly speaking, I think freegold is the only way to have stability (FOFOA). Not sure if a gold standard set to a global currency would do it, as I don't have a PhD in Economics, I'll leave that for you wise guys to discuss.
Unfortunately Chris Martensen is also dumb as a doorknob like most of the rest of the economists. Why? He says we have two options.
The third is SWITCHING SYSTEMS.
No need for Austerity CM, just go back to the American Credit System, and make worthless all financial instruments that don't pass the Glass/Steagall standard.
So you don't have to print, and don't have to endure crushing austerity THAT WON'T WORK ANYWAYS.
You cancel what's fraudulent, and switch to a much better American Credit System.
Then on energy, Nuclear and fusion. Not wind/solar. If you think you have a wind/solar future, you don't have a future. If you think oil/gas is your future, you don't have a future. ONLY Nuclear, and later (soon) fusion will suffice. While there might be some other options, these two are the only ones that are either practical, or achieve the goal of energy sustainability. Or you should ask, how many windmills and solar panels will be needed for when the average human all around this world uses 10x as much power as now.
CM's crash course is excellent at understanding the system in which we live, for the most part. The things is, we can SWITCH systems, rending his and most other 'economists' opinions moot (not to mention forward projections).
So he says austerity.
'Hey the boat is headed for the rocks'
AN economist, 'we have to grab the wheel and turn'
The survivor, 'geronimo and I'll need another ipad'.
So another brilliant thinker in CM, being absoloutely clueless about what comes next ABSENT, the parasitical squid based world economy.
I understand the point of thinking we can't change it, but the fact may very well turn out to be that changing is our only hope.
Shame on CM for voicing calls for austerity over reality.
Sounds like him an AEP are on the austerity bandwagon, and are absolute incompetent fools for thinking so.
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/14999
You had me right up to the link for Lyndon LaRouche. That man is a political quack and an economic fraud, and the cult of personality surrounding him makes me want to run fast and run far at the mere mention of his name.