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Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

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Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#61

Post by johnvanommen »

ahartmetz wrote: post #41
johnvanommen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author writes for Jacobin. Of course it’s promoting Communism.

Stop the hyperbole. Jacobin is more like social democrat (what most nominally social democrat parties used to do, but aren't doing anymore). That's about two significant notches less communist than communism.

> Jacobin is more like social democrat

”The goal of socialism is Communism.” - Lenin

It’s always sold as “a little bit of socialism.”

Every country, every time in history.

The author of this transparent propaganda is a student in a college. When I was his age, I was a socialist too. It’s just youth and inexperience.

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#62

Post by mono442 »

ahartmetz wrote: post #37
mono442 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crisis was largely artificially engineered because Germans believed that Southern Europeans were "lazy" and needed to be made an example of. The ECB could have brought government bond yields down from the beginning and most of the problems could have been avoided.

Did anyone say lazy? I think the attitude was more like "irresponsible": Taking on debt with no hope of paying it off.

Money is debt. It can't be ever paid off, it has to constantly increase. Just look at the us public and private debt. It almost always only increases.

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#63

Post by mono442 »

WarmWash wrote: post #30
amazingamazing wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that you cannot force someone to hire anyone at a given wage what is the solution? At best all you can say is that if you decide to hire, it cannot be lower than some minimum, but often this results in no job at all.

The actual problem in the US is housing costs, but most people are around social media knowledge level in this area, and just blame the first thing in front of them. Raising wages will do nothing to ease housing costs, which eat the largest chunk of everyone's pay.

It's not even that bad in the US. Houses are still more affordable than in Europe or Canada.

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#64

Post by polotics »

rayiner wrote: post #40
ahartmetz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did anyone say lazy? I think the attitude was more like "irresponsible": Taking on debt with no hope of paying it off.

And are the Germans wrong?

Yes the Germans were wrong. Artificially low interest rates were won with the switch to the Euro, and German and French banks were the lazy careless agents, not the Greek Hotels chain or Italian restaurant taking on the cheap money under the false assumption pushed by same banks that the 2000's would be an era of ever growing prosperity and European integration.

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#65

Post by polotics »

bodiekane wrote: post #47
mono442 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crisis was largely artificially engineered because Germans believed that Southern Europeans were "lazy" and needed to be made an example of. The ECB could have brought government bond yields down from the beginning and most of the problems could have been avoided.

That populist narrative was popular on social media, but the truth is the exact opposite. Germany had relatively reasonable debt and government spending relative to taxes. Italy had entirely dysfunctional spending and Greece was essentially a house of cards built on fraud. Without the Eurozone, Greece would have faced bankruptcy and/or hyperinflation, but instead they got bailed out by the rest of the EU. Check out M…

classic generalization: no one I know blames all Germans, but they do blame specific banks and even individuals who profiteered and allowed the conditions for the crash to develop

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#66

Post by alistairSH »

cwbuilds wrote: post #57
alistairSH wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, OECD is saying the mean disposable income is the US is almost the same as median household income. Either some of the numbers are wrong, or your (OECD’s) use of mean is misleading… the mean of Bezos’ and my disposable incomes is a very large and mostly useless figure.

They're completely different metrics. If you want to compare median income: UK - $49,500 ( https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal... ) US - $83,750 ( https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N ) I'm struggling to understand what you're trying to prove other than that you don't understand statistics.

Point is the median person earns about the same as the mean disposable income. So the mean disposable income isn’t telling us too much about the quality of life, or financial state, of a typical American. From what I’m seeing, it’s just reflective of our increasing income disparity.

Taken to an absurd degree… the mean of my income and Jeff Bezos’ income tells is nothing about my income beyond “much less than Jeff”.

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#67

Post by citadel_melon »

bebe839494 wrote: post #35

Saying country like Norway has open economy without capital controls is just not true. Try to leave that welfare paradise, you are still on hook as tax resident for extra three years after leaving!

Taxes on income is not usually what people mean by capital controls. Usually they’re talking about free flow of capital between currencies.

But even by your unconventional definition, Norwegians have it easy compared to US citizens.

The US demands those renouncing their citizenship to “sell” (a deemed sale) their assets and pay capital gains. If you move abroad without renouncing your citizenship, you still have to pay income tax.

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#68

Post by cwbuilds »

alistairSH wrote: post #66
cwbuilds wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're completely different metrics. If you want to compare median income: UK - $49,500 ( https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal... ) US - $83,750 ( https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N ) I'm struggling to understand what you're trying to prove other than that you don't understand statistics.

Point is the median person earns about the same as the mean disposable income. So the mean disposable income isn’t telling us too much about the quality of life, or financial state, of a typical American. From what I’m seeing, it’s just reflective of our increasing income disparity. Taken to an absurd degree… the mean of my income and Jeff Bezos’ income tells is nothing about my income beyond “much less than Jeff”.

Okay, well the ratio of mean disposable income for the US to the UK is 1.59:1, while the ratio of median income is 1.69:1

So your preferred metric for quality of life actually shows a greater disparity between the two countries..

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#69

Post by michael1999 »

amazingamazing wrote: post #46
michael1999 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "often" is not borne out by actual econometric studies. The actual rate of minimum wage that produces dead-weight loss is much higher than most minimum wages in the USA. In any market, there is wide range of possible clearing prices with cost of production as a floor, and marginal value as a ceiling. Which price the market settles on is often a function of bargaining power as much as productivity. Minimum wage r…

Hmm? Outsourcing is the clear counter example. Or do you think it is a coincidence that no outsourced job is more expensive than hiring Americans.

I don't see how that is relevant. I am not aware of any outsourced job where the American alternative would cost anything near the minimum wage. The overhead of outsourcing and supervision would dwarf the raw basic labour cost of the $7.25 federal minimum.

I don't dispute that it would be easy to raise the minimum wage high enough to destroy jobs. But I do dispute that the current minimum wage is "often" high enough to do that.

https://www.indeed.com/career/call-center-representative/sal...

Re: Who the welfare state protects shapes a country’s financial openness

#70

Post by fsckboy »

ahartmetz wrote: post #41
johnvanommen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author writes for Jacobin. Of course it’s promoting Communism.

Stop the hyperbole. Jacobin is more like social democrat (what most nominally social democrat parties used to do, but aren't doing anymore). That's about two significant notches less communist than communism.

>Jacobin is more like social democrat

they always tell you who they really are: look up les jacobins in the French revolution.

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