What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[4est_4est_Gump]

Morons for posterity...


Is that part of the new tone?



NO WE ARE NOT BETTER OFF!

You still have a job but more poeple than ever simply do not and gave up looking.

THAT is most certainly NOT better off.

Я you a moron for posterity 2?

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Statistics only show what happened in the past, they are not indicative of the future.

Don't open your mouth and prove...

Based on PAST statistics, of which we have little or no comparable statistical data, which was one of the big problems with the housing derivative bubble, Moody's Models, which were based on ZERO data, one cannot call one slight uptick a trend, a pattern or a future probability.

Did they not teach statistics properly in your tech program?

Tell any economist that statistics are not predictive Cap'n. I'm sure they won't laugh too loudly.

Nice ad Hom shot there at the end Hypocrite,. Your typical tactic when backed into a corner.

 

[kbate]

Tell us that we're no better off than we were when he took office.

I promise not to laugh, at least not directly in your face.

Who is better off?

You toss a laugh and I'll toss you a Fed talking QE3.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Tell any economist that statistics are not predictive Cap'n. I'm sure they won't laugh too loudly.

Nice ad Hom shot there at the end Hypocrite,. Your typical tactic when backed into a corner.

Mises.org

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012...rages_individuality_and_interventionists.html
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/dr_krugmans_magic_dogma.html

They won't laugh.

What you are trying to use as statistics, aren't even statistics.

You might try the book "Fool's Gold" which covers the issue as far as housing derivative go and at Mises a quick search will yield several articles pointing out the fallacy of your position as per the Pop Science view of "statistics."

Especially if it was the same "statistics" that predicted 5% unemployment heading into the election.

Phase 1: If I don't don;t turn this around quickly, it's a three-year proposition.
Phase 2: You can't just turn an aircraft carrier around overnight.
Phase 3: It's gonna take more than one term. Maybe more than one President.

The only other time that was true was under FDR and the same damned failed policies of the past, increased government spending, more benefits, more safety net, more taxation...,

Just like Japan's Lost Decade, and yet, you still blindly follow your party line; ignore reality, run around shouting about how things are so much better than they were on the very day that SENATOR Obama took office, because he and his party, which controlled Congress were innocent fucking bystanders in this train wreck...

As far as ad hominem, you started it. You own it.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Who is better off?

You toss a laugh and I'll toss you a Fed talking QE3.

I can tell you who.

U_D still has a job (in the vanguard of the recovery).

His 401K still looks good on paper (thanks to Fed inflation).

U_D's kid is not getting turned down for student loans, and now, his party is whispering about forgiving them...



We know who is doing better and who has little or no compassion for anyone else; remember about how he bragged about firing a guy during the darkest hours of the Obama recovery?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The Trouble with Economic Statistics

"Because they are ill-defined conceptually, many official economic statistics fail to capture what they purport to measure."

In one of the most important and unjustly neglected economics books of the past 50 years, Oskar Morgenstern warned, "We must carefully distinguish between what we think we know and what we really do and can know."[1]

Yet all too often economists avert their eyes, plowing blithely ahead with exquisitely sophisticated econometric analyses of virtually meaningless or inaccurately measured variables. As Michael J. Boskin attests,

Both the economics and statistics professions have become more theoretical and spend less time on the practical issues of sampling, data collection, quality of data, and providing professional rewards in terms of standing in the profession for those who show great skill in finding, developing, or improving data.[2]

One hesitates, then, to blame laypersons for reacting to the drumbeat of media reports of a widening distribution of income during recent decades in the United States. Is this "growing inequality" not a fact? Who really knows? But whether in some purely arithmetic sense it is or not, it would never have been made the basis for public-policy proposals to "correct" the situation if statisticians had not constructed "the distribution of income" in the first place.

It is hard to imagine another statistical artifact better calculated to feed the fires of envy and political rapacity. Such information is unnecessary for the conduct of a just government but well-nigh indispensable for the operation of a predatory one.[3]

http://mises.org/daily/4962


Real, actual economists U_D...

IN CONCLUSION

That economists have passively accepted economic statistics designed and constructed by government bureaucrats ranks among the more shameful aspects of their professional conduct in the 20th century. One wonders, who was using whom?

In the post–World War II era, this intermingling of an ever more intrusive government and an economics profession dedicated to instructing the intruders achieved solid institutionalization. It is now the status quo, with every prospect of remaining so. But the economic statistics joining the two sides of this symbiosis are often ill-defined, inaccurate, and productive of mischief when used in policy making.

Morgenstern considered it

necessary that worthless statistics be completely and mercilessly rejected on the ground that it is usually better to say nothing than to give wrong information which — quite apart from its practical, political abuse — in turn misleads hosts of later investigators who are not always able to check the quality of the data processed by earlier investigators.[19]

The advice remains sound, however little it has been or will be heeded. Economics would progress faster if economists asked more hard questions before admitting official data into their analyses.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Ours is truly an Age of Statistics. In a country and an era that worships statistical data as super "scientific," as offering us the keys to all knowledge, a vast supply of data of all shapes and sizes pours forth upon us. Mostly, it pours forth from government.

While private agencies and trade associations do gather and issue some statistics, they are limited to specific wants of specific industries. The vast bulk of statistics is gathered and disseminated by government. The overall statistics of the economy, the popular "gross national product" data that permits every economist to be a soothsayer of business conditions, come from government.

Furthermore, many statistics are by-products of other governmental activities: from the Internal Revenue bureau come tax data, from unemployment insurance departments come estimates of the unemployed, from customs offices come data on foreign trade, from the Federal Reserve flow statistics on banking, and so on. And as new statistical techniques are developed, new divisions of government departments are created to refine and use them.

The burgeoning of government statistics offers several obvious evils to the libertarian. In the first place, it is clear that too many resources are being channeled into statistics-gathering and statistics-production. Given a wholly free market, the amount of labor, land, and capital resources devoted to statistics would dwindle to a small fraction of the present total. It has been estimated that the federal government alone spends over $48,000,000 on statistics, and that statistical work employs the services of over 10,000 full-time civilian employees of the government.[1]

Murray N. Rothbard
http://mises.org/daily/2589/Statistics-Achilles-Heel-of-Government

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

This is a prime example of how important CYA is to some when deciding between it and the truth.

If you consider HOW BAD IT WAS and then apply a little affirmative action and give him due credit for his intentions and keep in mind that he was only trying to be fair...



But dagnabbit! Those evil Republicans stole the 2010 elections against the will of the people, so he's going to have to rule by executive decree now, so he's going to need four more years of signing statements in order to live up to the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner on the bridge of the turning carrier USofKKK....



But in the 2012 landslide, the Democrat Party will get back to its Wrightful place in the sun!

Then, we'll see some real change and hope!

“And guess what this liberal will be all about? This liberal will be all about socializing, uh, uh… would be about basically about taking over the government running all of your companies.”
Maxine Waters

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Everyday you slip further and further off your rocker.

Stand the fuck by if they lose...

I bitched about Bush for six years, and through all that time the Republicans on this board never trashed me the way the Democrats do now that "their guy" is "in charge."

They were angry when Bush was President, but they seem even more angry now that Obama is President.

Maybe it's just disappointment.

Maybe, it's who they really are and have been all along.
A_J, the Wiser

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Hey U_D



*SNICKER*

There have been a few articles and snippets on the Mises Blog about Batman, but most are about the Batman Chronicles issue where German Batman saves Ludwig von Mises's library — this just goes to show that I'm not the only student of Austrian economics who's a recovering comic-book nerd — though there is a short and sweet review of Batman Begins by Joe Salerno and a well-thought, in-depth analysis of The Dark Knight by Jeffrey Tucker. Let this article be the corresponding piece to The Dark Knight Rises.

http://mises.org/daily/6125/Occupy-Gotham
http://archive.mises.org/3133/ludwig-von-mises-and-batman/
http://www.amazon.com/Batman-Chronicles-The-11/dp/B002XRB1VK

One of the remarkable things about this Batman series is the way Hollywood — a bastion of tired, often-rehashed, leftist propaganda — has unwittingly allowed an obscenely wealthy capitalist who lives a decadent bourgeois lifestyle (when not fighting crime) to be the hero! It was noted somewhere that Murray Rothbard was a fan of the James Bond films partly because Bond was unrepentantly bourgeois and knew how to live it up in style. I think Rothbard — who has forgotten more about Austro-libertarianism than I could ever hope to learn in my lifetime — would have liked Christian Bale's portrayal of Bruce Wayne, neither afraid to make large investments nor afraid to be seen driving the ladies around in his European sports cars.

Another thing about Bruce Wayne/Batman is that he's a shining example of what can be accomplished by the private sector. None of Wayne's state-of-the-art technology is sponsored by government grants, though there would be little doubt Wayne Enterprises sells to the government. Nonetheless, Wayne's research is fueled by his own profits, not government grants or subsidies, and with the help of his top man, Lucius Fox, he develops the technology that enables him to be an effective one-man army and fight organized crime that borders on terrorism, while responsibly avoiding the corruption of the military-industrial complex.

Jeffrey Tucker was correct to note that the mob's extensive operations and violence (as well as law enforcement often turning a blind eye) are fueled by prohibition — that is, government intervention — much the way Prohibition fueled the gang wars and the rise of organized crime in the 1920s. The utopian idea held by leftists and neoconservatives alike that people can be legislated into healthy, responsible behavior is responsible for the damages caused by neo-Prohibition — the war on drugs — fueling not only organized crime but also the chaotic drug war/civil war that has left 55,000 dead in Mexico.

The Dark Knight featured a number of private-sector innovations, including a new Batmobile from which Batman is able to eject with an emergency motorcycle. The writers and producers of The Dark Knight Rises outdid themselves imagining the type of free-market ingenuity that brought a flying Batmobile chopper to outdo armored paramilitary vehicles used by looters. Tucker may just have to update his Jetsons book! I can guarantee everyone, while this technology may or may not be in the works by the defense contractors and private military companies, it never would have been dreamed up for the Soviet army or the Chinese PLA during the Cold War. As a matter of fact, the majority of times the Eastern bloc — with near-nonexistent civil liberties and planned economies ever controlled by the centralized grip of the Communist Party — made any great leaps in military technology was when they shot down a CIA spy plane and salvaged the wreckage for ideas.

But it's easy to pick on the commies; the defense contractors in the real-world private sector deserve to have light shed on their greed and laziness. These contractors might be closer to the development of such remarkable technology as seen in Batman or the James Bond films if they weren't busy lobbying to lengthen the Afghan war (now extended until 2024) and to expand the United States' military presence around the world, nursing off of endless government contracts and continuing to produce the same old military weapons and equipment while the government gravy train keeps on rolling. While government contracts are effective in cutting costs and spending through eliminating bureaucracy in production of goods and services via the private sector, they are a double-edged sword in the way firms often rely on government for continued business and government contracts for particular goods and services transformed into Keynesian-style welfare programs. This is what brings big business to lobby in Washington DC, polluting the free market with unbalanced legislation and corrupting republican democracy.

 

[rosco rathbone]

The Dark Knight Is No Capitalist

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

One thing all the villains in this trilogy seem to have in common is the desire for chaos and disorder. What Ra's al Ghul, the Joker, and Bane share — in their own twisted ways — is the desire to see Gotham City burn and descend into anarchy and chaos, even if they themselves must catalyze the process. While I'm philosophically far less inclined to anarchy than I am to localized, limited constitutional government, the anarchy the villains try to create in the Batman trilogy in no way resembles the anarcho-capitalist society envisioned by many libertarians. The chaos sought by these villains more closely resembles the inevitable chaos of anarcho-communism in a failed state, where harmony never occurred and the proletarians can neither plan effectively nor produce nor cooperate — thus they resort to looting and fighting over dwindling resources.

The image I saw during the segment where the mercenaries and convicts take over Gotham City reminded me of the Russian Revolution but combined with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Vanguarded by Bane's mercenaries and the released prison convicts, common people allow themselves to become ravenous mobs. They seize and detain all wealthy people, confiscating (wildly and destructively looting) their property and then subjecting them to show trials in which the defendants' guilt "has already been established." These show trials, reminiscent both of the Jacobin-led show trials of the French Revolution as well as Lenin's show trials of the kulaks, are given the euphemism of "sentencing hearings" (led by the vengeful Scarecrow) in which the already-guilty defendant can choose death or exile (which will surely result in death).

Throughout all of this the looters arrest some, shoot others, and loot the property of them all in the name of "the people of Gotham City," even though the self-appointed warlord Bane never intends to share real power (much like Lenin and Stalin). The heroes, on the other hand, are the industrialists — the Hank Reardens, Dagny Taggarts, and Midas Mulligans — who use their minds, their superior technology, and their unbreakable spirits to defeat the looters and save the lives of the innocent (though many don't deserve it).

Libertarian philosophy stresses a supreme importance in the respect of life, liberty, and private property (or the pursuit thereof) for every individual, whereas Marx's end stage of history — envisioned to be spontaneous order and harmony in the form of communism after the final abolition of the state — can result only from the total abolition of private property and the dissolution of the bourgeoisie. The destruction of the latter comes in two forms: one is the conversion of all people into proletarians and the other is the physical destruction of "the most fanatical bearers of counter-revolution" during the socialist stage of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (see documentary film The Soviet Story for more on revolutionary genocide). Bane sets to bring about the next phase of Western civilization by completely destroying the old (with a nuclear weapon).

Ra's al Ghul and his secret society — believing that every great civilization is doomed eventually to fall — not only believe in the inevitability of Gotham City's collapse into chaos; they believe that they must be the catalyst to seal Gotham's fate. This is no far cry from Marx's warped take on Hegel's dialectic, reinvented by the former as dialectical materialism — the belief that humanity advances in historical stages by opposition and struggle — and even more Marxist in the belief that they, the revolutionary vanguard, must launch the final struggle.

While the Joker is a fascinating character because he personifies pure evil, he represents real people in this world who seize opportunities to spread chaos and violence simply for the nihilistic joy of witnessing disorder and destruction. Picture the Unabomber becoming one of those uneducated young leftists who advocate for anarchy and an end to government without actually knowing what the heck they're talking about, and voila! We have the Joker.

And he was a darling of government, a subsidized beautiful mind that turned on his keepers, maybe he felt alienated in a don't keep score sort of world...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The Dark Knight Is No Capitalist

He's a Libertarian, he saved the Mises Library, that means he's a Capitalist.

 

[rosco rathbone]

He's a Libertarian, he saved the Mises Library, that means he's a Capitalist.

Sup AJ.

I read this yesterday, and said "Hey, I've been saying this for years", and thought of you.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/07/introducing-pre-constitutional-conservatism.html

As Andrew Koppelman put it, they “read the Constitution as if the Antifederalists had won.”

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

We all get there by different paths.

I was a Liberal (new-age) and Mises was a Socialist...

I discovered Austrian economics by accident, and learned more about it gradually over many years. In the late 1960s, when I was just beginning my career as a professor of economics at the University of Washington, I stumbled across Hayek's 1945 article "The Use of Knowledge in Society." I liked it very much, used it in my teaching, and cited it in my writing, even though at first I did not truly understand how its argument differed significantly from basic neoclassical microeconomics and the "economics of information" I had previously absorbed from the writings of George Stigler and other Chicagoans.

Not long afterward, having acquired an appreciation of Hayek's work, I read The Constitution of Liberty, which impressed me greatly by the scope and depth of its scholarship. By that time, owing to graduate education at Johns Hopkins, I had already come to understand the beneficial working of the price system, but I had not yet broken free of neoclassical welfare economics, with its various blackboard models of "market failure."

Hayek led me to Mises, whose treatise Human Action I read in the late 1970s. This book had a profound effect on my thinking as an economist. Hayek, at least as I then understood him, had not challenged my positivist conception of the scientific underpinnings of economics. Mises, however, shook these foundations of my thinking, and I pondered Mises's epistemological formulations for years before I really understood them. The idea that anything can be simultaneously (a) apodictically certain a priori and (b) empirically meaningful and true was difficult for me to assimilate intellectually, though eventually I succeeded in doing so.

From Mises's Human Action, I went on to read not only much more by him and Hayek, but also many works by other Austrians, including Rothbard (who influenced my thinking about politics and history more than he influenced my thinking about economics), Kirzner, and Garrison.

Robert Higgs (actual economist)
http://mises.org/daily/5614/Why-Austrian-Interview-with-Higgs

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Sup AJ.

I read this yesterday, and said "Hey, I've been saying this for years", and thought of you.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/07/introducing-pre-constitutional-conservatism.html

Just enjoying the heat and the joys of constant watering...

I believe all taxes should be collected at the point of sale.



Government is there only to preserve the market and provide for defense after all...

 

[rosco rathbone]

Government is there only to preserve the market

No market w/o government.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Merc likes to rely on the fraudulent CPI as the true measure of inflation. It's merely a tool designed by the Fed to conceal true inflation. They omit food and energy costs as too erratic to accurately measure inflation. Truth is they are an accurate measure as they are tied directly to the value of the Dollar. They like to deny inflation at it's most apparent manifestation. Inflation is the all important tool for managing, taxing, and fleecing the American people. The welfare state cannot exist without inflation.

Yeah, I've noticed that. He's ruthlessly cherry-picking all the time now in order to show us the silver lining in the storm cloud; so is U_D in his infrequent visits to the site of the crash...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

No market w/o government.

We traded at the tribal level if you want to call Somalia a government...




Hell, the first trade was meat for pussy.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Merc likes to rely on the fraudulent CPI as the true measure of inflation. It's merely a tool designed by the Fed to conceal true inflation. They omit food and energy costs as too erratic to accurately measure inflation. Truth is they are an accurate measure as they are tied directly to the value of the Dollar. They like to deny inflation at it's most apparent manifestation. Inflation is the all important tool for managing, taxing, and fleecing the American people. The welfare state cannot exist without inflation.

The Vettebigot criticizes Merc for using government statistics, instead of Fox News-approved sources like he uses. Derp.

 

[unregistered]

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

When UD is able to get out, he works the site with a massive metal detector as evidence of economic recovery is harder and harder to come across.

Did that Batman crap bite him on the ass or what?



Dat dere's some funny shit, I don't care who you are.