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Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

theatlantic.com

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Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#111

Post by gamblor956 »

adventured wrote: post #98
brazzy wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except he was right and austerity works even less.

Except he was wrong and well managed austerity does work. When it's actually employed. Cutting government 1%, or holding spending the same, is not austerity. The ideas of Keynes are responsible for the last decade of economic disaster around the planet. Austerity has been proven to work over and over again. Just ask Sweden, they're a proof case that managed austerity works exceptionally well. http://www.bloomberg.com…

I take your "facts" with a heaping pile of salt, considering that Sweden has one of the highest tax rates in the Western world, Latvia's economy is smaller than most U.S. states and is smaller than the economies of NY, LA, Chicago, or Atlanta, and China's government has spent more in the past decade to rev up its economy and keep it going than the rest of the world combined. China spent billions on the Olympic facilities alone, not including the hundreds of billions they spent on other infrastructure projects of the past decade, or the subsidized loans to factories, farms, bio-tech companies, and real estate developers that would generally be considered illegal under various WTO pacts and accords if China was considered a 1st-world nation. (Most major Chinese corporations are government-owned; in some industries, all of the major Chinese corporations are government-owned.) China's recent (within the past 6 months) reduction in government spending has virtually killed it's construction and real estate sectors, and it has a huge debt bubble which is on the verge of collapsing.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#112

Post by brazzy »

wnight wrote: post #109
megablast wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am guessing well managed stimulus would work. This is the no real scotsman problem.

No it's not. What a true austerity program looks like is really straight forward. Spend less than you earn.

That's so simplified as to be meaningless. Spend less where, earn more where?

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#113

Post by paradoja »

tsotha wrote: post #34
eksith wrote: post #2

The labor disparity between senior workers and young ones will lead to a lot more trouble. Irrational people take out their frustrations on the easiest target; irrational young people even more so. I'm not sure if the article's doom and gloom is actually reflected in reality though. Most people are averse to letting society collapse (especially when they've had a history of it standing upright and stable for a long t…

>Spain doesn't "just" need stimulus, it needs well guided and allocated stimulus or it will accomplish nothing. The last thing Spain needs is "stimulus". What they need to do is fix the labor market so it's possible to fire people. When employers can't fire people they only hire as an absolute last resort. That means companies can't exploit growth opportunities as easily and it means employers are unlikely to gamble…

Firing costs in Spain are lower than in Germany: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/spain/firing-cost-weeks-of-w...

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/germany/firing-cost-weeks-of...

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#114

Post by wnight »

brazzy wrote: post #112
wnight wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. What a true austerity program looks like is really straight forward. Spend less than you earn.

That's so simplified as to be meaningless. Spend less where , earn more where ?

Everywhere. Spend less everywhere, in total, than you make.

It might be hard to do, it might not be the right thing to do, but it is not complicated.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#115

Post by ekianjo »

anigbrowl wrote: post #76
ekianjo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

put to work by who? Stimulus has not worked very well for the US after 2008, has it? And Spain does not have trillions of dollars to spend in stimulus anyway. Stop dreaming.

We haven't had that much fiscal stimulus in the US releative to the size of the economy. It's a missed opportunity considering money is basically free right now and T-bills return a fixed coupon (so even if interest rates were 5% in 5 years' time it would have no effect on the cost of servicing debt issued today). The EU has trillions to spend. This is a federal problem, but some countries in Europe don't want to adm…

> that much fiscal stimulus in the US releative to the size of the economy.

I knew this was coming. "The stimulus didnt work because it was not big enough". Always the same excuse coming from Keynesians. "Aspirin did not cure my Cancer because I didnt take enough". Sure, when you attack the wrong causes in the first place you get very poor results, unless you get lucky.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#116

Post by brc »

justincormack wrote: post #94
brc wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Te entire country would be wealthier if they were put to work...doing something productive, in which the investment of their labor were to return future benefits. The problem of most 'stimulus' spending is that this does not happen.

They spent the last ten years building houses no one wants now and creating a property bubble. It wasn't deficit spending it was just excess borrowing. Sure it created jobs for a bit but then they went away just leaving a lot of debt. Somehow you need to actually build a sustainable economy.

No argument from me, private borrowing to spend on unproductive assets is just as bad as public borrowing to dig holes in the ground and fill,them in again.

The key is productive work- work that people are willing to pay for without incentives or coercion.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#117

Post by fixxer »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #110
fixxxxer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was any part of the above comment offensive? I'm a little perplexed as to why I've been (I assume) banned... I personally don't find my observation about Ireland's large population of pale children particularly offensive. I happen to be pale and half-Irish myself (mom from Cork), as well as married to a pale Irish girl. As for statistics to back up my claim that Ireland is a good bet relative to the remaining PIIGS,…

Was any part of the above comment offensive? Yes, in the sense that no matter what you post, if there's any substance to your point at all, someone will be offended by it. Don't sweat it. (You're not hellbanned as of this post, if that's what you're wondering.)

I somehow got an IP ban. That was annoying.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#118

Post by tptacek »

ekianjo wrote: post #115
anigbrowl wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven't had that much fiscal stimulus in the US releative to the size of the economy. It's a missed opportunity considering money is basically free right now and T-bills return a fixed coupon (so even if interest rates were 5% in 5 years' time it would have no effect on the cost of servicing debt issued today). The EU has trillions to spend. This is a federal problem, but some countries in Europe don't want to adm…

> that much fiscal stimulus in the US releative to the size of the economy. I knew this was coming. "The stimulus didnt work because it was not big enough". Always the same excuse coming from Keynesians. "Aspirin did not cure my Cancer because I didnt take enough". Sure, when you attack the wrong causes in the first place you get very poor results, unless you get lucky.

This is a comment that literally says nothing.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#119

Post by loumf »

brc wrote: post #75
jorgeortiz85 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have we totally forgotten Keynes? My spending is your income. The resources of an economy (in this case, many of Spain's workers) are lying idle. The entire country would be wealthier if they were put to work. Further, I don't know what you mean by "easy living", but Spain was more fiscally responsible than even Germany before the crisis. Spain's deficits are not the result of irresponsible borrowing and spending (as…

Te entire country would be wealthier if they were put to work...doing something productive, in which the investment of their labor were to return future benefits. The problem of most 'stimulus' spending is that this does not happen.

We got out of the great depression by turning labor into bombs and destroying the results of productivity. And by hiring people to kill people.

It really can't get more unproductive than that.

Sure, I'm all for doing something productive -- that's icing on the cake. I'm not for using it as an excuse to do nothing.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#120

Post by touristtam »

tomjen3 wrote: post #79
gyardley wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor did anyone force countries like Germany to share a common currency with them. I've never really gotten why one country would want to share only a currency with another country, while leaving their social and economic policies independent. But now that that's happened, the combination gets to stand or fall as a whole.

Germany struck a deal with the big counties after the liberation of east Germany that allowed them to reunited. The common currency was meant as a way to tie Germany to the rest of europe and prevent them for going Nazi again. Germany agreed because reunification had been a dream for decades.

... the liberation of east Germany ....

You will find that "collapse of the East German state (DDR) after the wall was brought down" is more inline with history.

... and prevent them for going Nazi again ..... ?

Sorry but this is wrong on at least two level:

1. Nazism is a political movement (regardless of your political inclination). And thus not directly impacted by having a currency or another. 2. Nazism is way too present, still, in the memories for it to make a come back in Germany as a legitimate political endeavour.

The creation and adoption of the Euro currency was a natural political continuation of the ECSC (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Communi...) and extension of the European Union. Now yes the initial intend is to prevent future Pan European war through economical cooperation, but not solely to prevent Germany "to go Nazi again" (despite the comment one can read about French President Mitterrand and British Prime Minister Thatcher regarding the future of Germany in Europe, neither of which should be regarded as anything but power hungry political leaders).

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