Live data from Hacker News

Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

theatlantic.com

71–80 of 120 posts

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#71
post #5

The problem with stimulus spending in a place like Spain is that someone will have to lend them the money to spend. They either have to charge pretty high interest (which exacerbates Spain's already high deficit) or give a discount on the interest, such that it no longer reflects the risk the lender is taking. Most anti-austerity calls seem to suggest the latter, which basically amounts to redistribution from those c…

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…

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.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#72
but if you actually go to spain, it does not look like somalia.

nasty secret - all those unemployed? work anyhow, "black" as we say in austria - unofficial, tax free. 50% youth unemployment? if all that were real, there would be open war. yet bars, stadiums, beaches are full.

the official economy is getting smaller, the unofficial one is growing.

as long as there are illegal immigrants from africa working the fields in spain and not spanish people, the economy is not that bad.

lies, damn lies and statistics.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only works because of the lack of child labor laws and the lack of an advanced economy in which education is required in order to get a well-paying job in countries where extreme poverty is commonplace.

You didn't read parent right: the child will be an adult when the parents are older. The more kids you have, the more likely at least one will be successful enough as an adult to take care of you.

No, I read the parent just fine. The child may be an adult when the parents are older, but that means nothing when the adults are bankrupted trying to give the child an education so that he/she can support the parents, and the child can't work until he's an adult anyway.

Of course the probability will be higher with more children, but the cost of having more children in a developed country far outweighs the benefits.

There's a huge difference in the results when you do it in a developing country and when you do it in Spain.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#74

I don't know why journalists, when writing about economics, invariably pick the least adequate people to be interviewed. Some time ago, there was a feature about unemployment for college graduates in the US... which talked about a woman with a dance degree. Now it's about a fucking cani [1] whose major accomplishment in life is pasting some rubber and metal together, earning 1200 undeserved euros a month. Before that…

What, pray tell, is a "chav"?

A ne'er-do-well. In a tracksuit.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#75
post #5

The problem with stimulus spending in a place like Spain is that someone will have to lend them the money to spend. They either have to charge pretty high interest (which exacerbates Spain's already high deficit) or give a discount on the interest, such that it no longer reflects the risk the lender is taking. Most anti-austerity calls seem to suggest the latter, which basically amounts to redistribution from those c…

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.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#76
post #71

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…

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 admit because they want to cling to the illusion that monetary union can exist indepedently of fiscal union.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany isn't completely innocent here though either, even though it can look like they were frugal during the boom years. From Michael Pettis [1]: The strength of the German economy in recent years has largely to do with its export success. But for Germany to run a large current account surplus – the consequence I would argue of domestic policies aimed at suppressing consumption and subsidizing production – Spain an…

Those who borrow a lot must import a lot. Those who produce more than they consume export what they do not consume. Its simple physics. To produce more than you use is a virtue. Germans are hardly to blame for their virtues. I guess their failure was in lending to those without the means to pay back.

Come on, it's anything but simple physics.

Macroeconomics has nothing to do with "common sense" family finance hygiene or the mind-numbing model you describe.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#78
post #5

The problem with stimulus spending in a place like Spain is that someone will have to lend them the money to spend. They either have to charge pretty high interest (which exacerbates Spain's already high deficit) or give a discount on the interest, such that it no longer reflects the risk the lender is taking. Most anti-austerity calls seem to suggest the latter, which basically amounts to redistribution from those c…

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…

No we have not fogotten him. We should, though because he was wrong. Stimulus doesn't work.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was certainly very convenient for the germans to have some takers for their cheap bonds, but the fact remains that nobody forced the peripheral countries to live beyond their means and to refrain from implementing necessary reforms.

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.

Re: Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

#80
post #7

Long-term unemployment is happening in the US too: http://blogs.cfr.org/kahn/2013/04/17/our-long-term-unemploym... Unemployment in the US is near 15% including U6, or near 23% if using pre-1994 counting methods: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart... (On that subject, I'm looking for work in the north SF bay area, Sonoma/Marin region)

All subjects lead back to the US...
Post reply on HN