191–200 of 202 posts
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Thats a good point. Wouldn't the logical conclusion to that point be that it is a mistake to think that a businesses purpose is to create jobs (as opposed to value)?
Of course. Hiring people is only done in the service of creating value.
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You are missing the piece that all conservative economists miss: access to the medium of exchange. It doesn't matter how well you identify the customer, satisfy their desires and add net value for all parties involved: if that customer doesn't have a job that gives them cash to buy your product the economy grinds to a halt. It can be summed up by the famous if possibly apocryphal line by Ford: "I pay my employees eno…
You are missing the piece that most amateur liberal economists miss: money is only a valid medium of exchange as long as it represents real value. When you forcibly redistribute too much of it, you aren't helping people buy things and "stimulate the economy" except maybe over the very short term. You're just destroying that value that it would otherwise represent.
When the masses have no currency, in effect, that's signaling to the economy that their needs are of no value. Therefore, businesses that solve the masses' problems gain no economic value from it, and will not generate real value.
So currency has no intrinsic value, but it does signal to the economy which needs are more valuable. And currently, one of the claims is that the middle class and poor's needs are valued so low, that it is creating economic stagnation, and there's little incentive to solve their problems.
The response is eloquent, but I think it sidesteps the point that concerns me and many others. Yes, for the reasons stated, this talk is not the right one to be highlighted on Ted.com. It's not censorship, it's a valid editorial decision. But I think the real point is this quote from the NJ article: "But even if the talk was rated a home run, we couldn't release it, because it would be unquestionably regarded as out…
If you read the transcript, you get the distinct sense that what you're listening to isn't intellectual discovery based on empirical data. It reads like a speech from a political candidate. It truly is not TED worthy, and this is from someone who fully believes every word that man uttered. TED is about sharing knowledge. Raw, unbiased, unignorable knowledge. Talks that are based entirely on anecdote and talking point…
Maybe i'll have to go back and actually watch the speech now. Funny, though, how this fellow, if he did feel slighted by TED and sought to get his speech publicized, is now getting all this attention ... Seems he's the beneficiary of a lot of interest at TED's expense.
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Some quick pie based economics. Marketing only increases the amount of pie you get when compared to no marketing at all, it doesn't increase the amount of pie available to get however. The problem is not in grabbing more pie than everyone else, the problem is a shortage of pie being made available because certain people collect pies as a hobby and they are doing rather well these days and have fantastic new methods t…
And what do they do with the 'pies' they collect?
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> 'Increasing demand' is itself a supplier-directed activity; it's one of the primary functions of marketing. It seems baffling to consider this from a political/macroeconomic perspective; how would you increase demand but through marketing activity...? You assume here that demand is possible, it just needs to be created through marketing. I get that that's what marketing does -- I really do. I read a great article r…
> We're talking about an economic environment in which people don't have enough money to spend. And the solution to that -- and, it seems, your solution as well -- seems to be to give more incentives to the people who do have money to spend. If they don't have enough money to spend, what's with all of the money that's circulating every day? What's with the (admittedly contrived) metric of GDP indicating that there's…
For anyone who really has no idea what Gormo is expressing opposition to here but is truly open to at least understanding "the other side" -- might I suggest borrowing a copy of Ameritopia[1] by Mark Levin from the library? Mr. Levin attempts to go through some of the philosophical history of the debate between those advocating top-down "Utopian" solutions vs those advocating bottom-up "Individualistic" solutions.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Ameritopia-Unmaking-Mark-R-Levin/dp/14...
It can be a little dry and the author never apologizes or backs away from which side of the debate he believes is right; but he does make a solid attempt to get at the root of this whole contention.
All this talk of taxing the rich and the various wars on women, college loan recipients, etc... is really just a distraction or at best a side-effect of the real issue of the Individual vs the State.
I watched the video after reading TED's response, and I'm skeptical of some of their claims, but I can also see why they didn't initially choose to publish it on their site. The video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBx2Y5HhplI Since it's short, I'll go over it point-by-point. 1. "It is astounding how significantly one idea can shape a society and its policies. Consider this one: if taxes on the rich go up, job…
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As an aside: are mortgages even a good thing? They seem to create their own market. I.e. if there are no mortgages, people buy what they can afford and housing prices remain low. If there are mortgages, suddenly house prices skyrocket since buyers can afford vastly higher prices, making mortgages a requirement for owning a home. A good position to be in if you're a bank; now you get a big slice of all action.
I'm undecided on that one. The theory of course is that it makes it possible for a family which can't quite make the up-front cost for a home to still buy a home, which consequently helps keep rents reasonable, which helps poorer classes get by. But there are also the unintended consequences: people buy things they can't actually afford, like you said, and people begin to qualify for buying homes as investment vehicl…
But does it actually have that effect? Once everyone is using mortgages, everyone is back in the same place as before mortgages.
To put it more concretely: before mortgages, houses might average around $100K because the average person simply cannot afford any higher. Once mortgages arrive, houses might spike to $300K, because your average person can afford that mortgage. So while the example family might not have been able to afford the $100K house because they had $80K, a mortgage won't help because now houses are around $300K.
So I don't quite grasp how this would affect rents. That seems to be an orthogonal issue.
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I don't think its fair to describe that as a fundamental error. Rather, your explanation while OK as far as it goes is overly simplistic. Yes, its the real value not the currency that we are after, but you also have to take into account secondary effects like 'aggregate demand'. Perhaps that's an ideological bent of yours or perhaps just omission? Either way, the process of creating 'real value' on both sides cannot…
Money in bank accounts is not idle. It is loaned out - and nobody is going to borrow unless they have plans to spend it. (As eloquently put by Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life".)
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Business lives in a community of people , a State. We, as the People, can decide the rules. Economy has no rules outside the square we create. So, there's no such thing as Economy per se. You have to remember that the reason a group of people doesn't go out and take what they want is that there is a State, there are laws, there is a monopoly of legitimate force (the police): all of this can survive only if there is a…
I'm guessing you are from a part of the world that is/was recently totalitarian. The community of people is far, far more than the State. Cultural/religious norms shape the State and the rules. If corruption is tolerated, for example, it doesn't matter what the official State rules are. Furthermore, economics are baked in to human nature. Indeed, gender differences are a kind of specialization of labor. Economic acti…
Well, if you think fishing and hunting are economy, go with that.