alexw

Epic post. The problem is the ideological fanatics that live and die by their ideology no matter the consequences of their beliefs when played out. He lives in a world of takers and makers, producers and scroungers. He'd happily wreck everything just so long as his system of ideology was imposed. Your reply illustrates that point excellently.

I'm curious I'd like to know the start-date for when two wrongs actually did make one of them a "right"

The luddite theory sounds great in theory but when you actually look at what has happened and is happening it all falls apart. People were initially employed wholesale in the extractive industries - the primary sector. Technology and productivity came along and the numbers working in it shrank many-fold. That then enabled expansion of the manufacturing sector. But then technology, mechanization and robots came along and the numbers employed in manufacturing also shrank. That led to the tertiary and quaternary sector dominated economies of the 90's and 2000's. The tertiary sector being services and quaternary sector being intellectual activities such as education. But now those final two sectors are being mechanized and computerized also. That leads to the fundamental flaw in the anti-luddite argument - there are no higher sectors left for workers to move into.

Agreed. Less taxes on income more taxes on wealth. It's ironic then that we have such high taxes on income and insignificant on wealth, due to the political rights insistance that we don't tax wealth.

Inflation and a million more pensioners who need health treatment, state pensions, care, home help. etc.

Except that's nonsense. They can try and make it themselves... until germany holds/forces down its wages until it's goods become cheaper within the PIIGS nations than they can make it themselves. At which point the laws of capitalism kick in. Note this is exactly what germany has been doing for more than a decade. Also you keep on with the myth that germany's trade surplus has something to do with how "good" they are at making things. That is completely irrelevant. All making things does is give them an income. It is 100% a choice that germany made on what they do with that income. They could for example (they didn't) pay it out as wages to their own people. That would of course have meant no or next to nil trade surplus. Instead their elites held back the living standards of average germans to run a trade surplus and enrich themselves, in the process ruining the economies of most of europe.

Investment up to what your economy can absorb and put to use = good. Above this = extremely bad. It is a leading cause if not the cause of bubbles. And yes all the problems of the developed world are due to economic imbalances. One of those imbalances, a major one, are the trade imbalances between nations. China was running a massive surplus vs the US up until 2008 hitting a record high of ~10%. That led through recycling of those surpluses to the US real estate bubble. The same thing happened in the PIIGS vs germany/china. You also put the blame 100% on the PIIGS and give germany a free ride - another example of your cognitive desonance. It takes two to tango. The PIIGS are trying to rebalance, but german actions are making that extremely difficult for them to do. They need to export more to rebalance but if their largest nearest neighbour deliberately and intentionally retards its consumption, then it should be obvious that that rebalancing will be much harder to achieve than would otherwise be the case. So why do you think this is a good thing? Why do you think germany preventing (or at least making it much more difficult) for the PIIGS to rebalance is something germany should be congratulated on, rather than punished?

Ahh yes this clearly explains why Germany is running a trade surplus of ~7% per year....... All Greece needs to do is raise it's retirement age and Germany's surplus will magically fall by 1% per extra year Greeks work. Now why didn't I think of this before....

The question though is there truly competition in healthcare in these "other" nations? This is the raison d'etre for private involvement in healthcare. Can the average person for example, if they break their leg, quickly and easily choose between 3-4 different hospitals or providers. Ditto the same for cancer care. Can the average citizen knowledgably choose the best provider/doctor who will give them the best outcome at a particular price point? My own experiences from living in the USA are 100% the exact opposite of this.

If it looks nice and is presented well it must be good "service" right? Like you I'd much rather have the money spent where it improves patient treatment rather than on providing a nice shiny personal room.

Except it was running a large trade surplus even prior to 2008. Every year of the 2000's it had a large trade surplus. Moreover paying your workers more does not result in recession as you claim. If this were the case the UK would have been in recession for the last 30 years. There are some changes in employment but they are small and more than counterbalanced by higher overall wages. What does in fact happen is change where consumption takes place. Consumption would have happened inside germany rather than in the PIIGS. Employment in production type industries would have fallen and risen in industries that cater to consumers. Overall their would have been a much better internal economic balance. And yes germany is now in a house price boom. But what else would you expect if it runs large surpluses but can nolonger launder those surpluses into other nations deficits? The money has now got no choice but to go somewhere inside germany, and since its not going into german wages its going into german asset prices instead. From the tone of your post you seem to fall into the classic cognitive dissonance of savings/surpluses = good, debt/deficits = bad. This could not be farther from the truth. What matters is economic balance.

Yes it is pretty ironic - and funny. If you criticize people for having taken on too much debt, then you are implicitly saying that there are also people out there who are hoarding money substantially in excess of their needs. So when are those who criticize the indebted going to also criticize the saver-hoarders? There is a lot of cognitive dissonance and schizophrenia on this subject.

Except we don't. We spend far less as a percentage of GDP on healthcare as compared to similar nations. 15-25% less.

But this is nonsense. The reason germany has a trade surplus is because it's workers wages have been repressed, not because it sells stuff abroad. All that selling goods abroad does is to allow germans to consume more of what others make, and thus increase their own peoples standard of living. But because of wage repression this has not happened. This is clearly visible if you look at the rate of consumption growth in germany. Under the DMark german consumption grew at 2.6% a year which is about what you'd expect for a modern western economy (growing at 2-3% per year). By contrast under the euro it grew 0.8% a year. The idea that it's running a trade surplus because it's producing what others want is pure nonsense. It's a political choice made by the elites, nothing else.

This is the sort of nonsense I would expect from the daily mail not from HPCers. The quality of the goods a nation produces has absolutely nothing to do with whether it runs a trade surplus or deficit. Rather that surplus/deficit arises solely from the how the economy is organized and whether it is biased to run surpluses or deficits. If a nation produces high quality goods that are desired around the world that simply allows it to buy more of what other nations produce to raise its own peoples standard of living. Whether that be french wine or more holidays in spain. Or if it desires to do so it can instead reduce the amount of time it's people need to spend working, while keeping their standard of living constant. But none of these things have happened. Not because the german people could not find things to buy but because german wages have been repressed. This was not natural but a political choice. Thus germany's surpluses are also not natural but the result of political choices. To state as the original poster did that this is an attempt to punish success is asinine. He clearly has little/no understanding of how trade surpluses and deficits work and has made a knee-jerk post based on his pre-concieved ideas and notions.

Sure why not. What else do you think you should be nationalized?

Allowing banks to go bust does not work (that's what historical precident has shown anyway). You simply get the greed driven psychopaths making out like bandits then blowing the bank up. Since they've already earned their fortune and never need to work again, it becomes obvious that having the bank thereafter fail is no deterent to their actions. If you want banks to be "safe" you need a mix of regulation, separating out investment, business, and household banking, and making the senior execs in all those banking sectors be the first port of call for capital (after shareholders) in the event of any financial losses.

Problem is he probably thinks everyone really does love him deep deep down. Thats how narcissists operate. But you do have to hand it to him he's the one man loathed by both the left and right. To unite those factions so utterly in one thing/belief is quite an acomplishment. He should, as Orsino said, be burning in hell. It almost makes you want to become a devout christian so that you can believe he will.

Are you trying to infer that the rest of us blokes here spend innordinate amounts of our free time wearing women's bra's and knickers? (psst I believe masked tulip does, just look at his avartar!)

You do realize I am not talking just about the last decade? That this has held true for over 100 years? Plot real GDP per capita which is proxy measure for technological progress, since it is technology that enables people to produce more....and we get more or less a straight line....

No one likes the magic money tree of other peoples money taken away. I mean it's their god given right to have assets that are the result of prior generations efforts, gifted to them on the cheap.

And it was completely predictable..... Real wages shrinking for the majority meaning lower spending power, shrinking QE which is currently supporting consumption, and an economy that is 70% based on consumption. What did the s*** for brains economists think would be the end result? We will see exactly the same thing happen in the UK, especially when the monies flowing into the economy from out of the housing bubble starts to decline.

2/3 of new household formation in the UK results internally, 1/3 is due to immigration. So stopping immigration would help, but having building grinding to a halt which is effectively what UKIP want, would cause much much more of a housing deficit than stopping immigration would prevent.

What people are saying in terms of UKIP supporters being on average boomers and retirees, less educated, etc, are all based on known data. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2572187/The-secrets-ballot-box-Tories-earn-Labour-voters-rent-home-Lib-Dems-better-educated-Ukip-voters-white-retired.html If that doesn't suit your beliefs, then, well, tough, it's still the truth.