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Pyrrhic Victory

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Re: Pyrrhic Victory

#51

Post by Invictus0 »

I have a lot of problems with this post.

* Photos of boarded up storefronts are used to imply that these stores are out of business. They're not, the reason they're boarded up is because of BLM rioters.

* Photos are not good evidence of real estate availability. No data is used or sought.

* I don't accept the handwavy notion that people leaving the city will automatically tank pension funds. The closure of the Chinese restaurant in the city is the opening of the Chinese restaurant in the suburbs. People still want to be near stores and restaurants and they can get that without being in the city.

* Even less do I accept the notion that everything we as a society undertake should ultimately benefit pension funds. This is a euphemism to get people to believe that corporate interests are your interests. The average American is not invested in the market and the people that are invested should have been made aware that market returns are not guaranteed.

I do agree that we are seeing an emergency in the Fed's debt spending. Future historians will probably look at the Coronavirus meltdown as the Gavrilo Princip moment that exposed the house of cards.

Re: Pyrrhic Victory

#52

Post by luckylion »

tclancy wrote: post #46
RobertoG wrote: post #24

"That policy will work for as long as the rest of the world continues to accept US dollars as something other than pieces of funny green paper…" What a nonsense. Like if the USA is the only one doing it. Everybody is doing it and at the same time. I hope this help some people to dispel this myths about the "public debt" and living to the grandchildren expense. What markets are covering this public debt when everybody…

I think you missed the point. If the current administration, or possibly some other dumb one in the future, undermines US credibility where other countries unpeg from the dollar, we are going to turn into a shithole country pretty quickly.

"Credibility" as in "military credibility", I hope you mean. It's really not about "we're cool, really", it's about "we can annihilate any target on earth within the hour".

Re: Pyrrhic Victory

#53

Post by RobertoG »

chrisco255 wrote: post #9
roenxi wrote: post #3

Two parts of this short and powerful piece really leapt out at me: > all under the auspices of a hard line Republican administration > Washington under any administration will have no choice but to bail out all the state and local agencies and every insolvent pension scheme wholesale There are underlying problems being forced to the surface by COVID that go deeper than political parties. Somewhere between the 1970s a…

Well yeah I think even I bought into it at some point. The line would go "as long as our debt to GDP ratio stays relatively steady, we'll be ok"...but what happens if another great depression happens and the growth dips 10-15% and flat lines from there? Then your debt will grow faster than your GDP and eventually it will crush the economy. All the uncomfortable conversations about complex trade-offs and budget cuts h…

The public debt is just the accumulate of past deficits. If the Fed is owning the debt you are paying interest to yourself. The only risk is inflation and this is not something to be worried at the moment.

MMT is only a description of how the systems work. But if by "test it", you mean that the Central Bank is backing the public debt, Japan have been doing for, at least, twenty years.

Re: Pyrrhic Victory

#54

Post by RobertoG »

averros wrote: post #16
roenxi wrote: post #3

Two parts of this short and powerful piece really leapt out at me: > all under the auspices of a hard line Republican administration > Washington under any administration will have no choice but to bail out all the state and local agencies and every insolvent pension scheme wholesale There are underlying problems being forced to the surface by COVID that go deeper than political parties. Somewhere between the 1970s a…

Economy is NOT a social construct, fabricated or not. Economic laws are direct consequences of physical laws (i.e. scarcity is the result of Fermi statistics which makes material things to take space and of the no-cloning theorem which means the material things cannot just pop into existence because somebody wished them), or otherwise rather tautological mathematical statements (for example the first welfare theorem…

I don't think you are prevented by force to print your own money, you just are prevented of printing dollars.

Re: Pyrrhic Victory

#55

Post by JackFr »

crocal wrote: post #30
averros wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economy is NOT a social construct, fabricated or not. Economic laws are direct consequences of physical laws (i.e. scarcity is the result of Fermi statistics which makes material things to take space and of the no-cloning theorem which means the material things cannot just pop into existence because somebody wished them), or otherwise rather tautological mathematical statements (for example the first welfare theorem…

I have to disagree. Economy is the interface between producers and consumers of resources. It’s big time a social construct, and therefore the subject of political action. Importantly, the idea that state intervention is bad for the economy as a universal rule is simply wrong. In the long run, history clearly teaches that mixed economy work (e.g. a la Keynes), while laissez-faire (e.g. a la Friedman) or centralized e…

Jeff Bezos became a billionaire by making the lives of Amazon’s customers better. Sam Walton did more to improve the lot of poor families than most government programs.

(Those guys at least built something. Why does no one complain about America’s grandpa Warren Buffett. He just shuffled around money, plays with warrants and options (while telling others not to) and makes a couple hundred million by going to Congress and talking his book. )

Re: Pyrrhic Victory

#56

Post by noetic_techy »

Sorry but I don't really buy it. The density that was the urban center will likely be dispersed. It will take some time and be painful, but the market will correct and shift.

Keep in mind that when level 4-5 self driving vehicles finally do arrive, studies have shown that people will tolerate much longer commutes, especially if they can work, sleep, or just relax in their car. That will push urban sprawl even further out and reduce city population density also.

Re: Pyrrhic Victory

#57

Post by JPKab »

orbifold wrote: post #33

It is interesting how different countries and cultures deal with the same challenge. Streets were pretty empty and shops were closed for maybe a month here in Germany. Now (almost) everything is open again, the streets are full. Unemployment rose somewhat but not catastrophically. The images and videos we get from the US feel apocalyptical in contrast.

Media in USA is primarily concentrated in New York City. It was hit HARD. The rest of the US wasn't.

The numbers demonstrate this. The pictures and essays from New York based journalists say something different.

Also, it's an election year, and that politicized decisions on reopening.

Here in Colorado, mostly business as usual, but kids are miserable because camps and pools are closed.

Re: Pyrrhic Victory

#58

Post by dx87 »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #22

Looking at those pictures from Norway I'm struck by how different our countries actions have been during this crisis. Here hardly anything is boarded up (even business that have failed or gone online-only just have an A4 notice in the window explaining the situation and apologizing for the lack of service), and even when things were at their worst there were still people in the streets, a lot of shops, offices, and i…

I live in a blue collar town near Baltimore, Maryland, and I didn't see anything shut down where I live. Even non-essential businesses, like a local board game store, quickly adapted to curbside pickup. If it wasn't for signs saying "face masks required", "keep 6 feet apart", and "drive-through only", I'd barely know there was a pandemic going on.

Re: Pyrrhic Victory

#59

Post by andromeduck »

kasey_junk wrote: post #34
the_pwner224 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The boarding up is because of the looting and rioting. Before that they were just closed as they would 'normally' close.

That was true in my neighborhood in Chicago but I’m not sure it was in San Francisco (where these pictures were taken). I remember seeing board ups there very early in the shutdown.

It's true in SF as well. There were a few businesses boarded up when SIP started but most of the boarding happened after union square and a few other streets were looted around end of may. In june we went from something like 5-10% boarded up to the 30-60% now depending on district.

Even a lot of grocery stores are boarded up now, and quite a number of convenience stores like CVS stopped operating in half their locations and where operating, with reduced hours.

Re: Pyrrhic Victory

#60

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

mberning wrote: post #29
Marazan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flat? there is literally a second peak on the daily case count chart and a 3rd peak is forming. Deaths have been dropping but are now flattening off and primed to rise.

Deaths have clearly peaked and are going down. Cases could be increasing due to increased and/or improved testing.

I keep hearing that, but I don't see any testing numbers there, do you? Aggregates, yes, but not a per day measure.
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