Good article on our credit-addicted economy

[rantnrave]

10 hours ago, Lurkerbelow said:

They are producing that wealth not us.   If we want to have access to that wealth then we have to give them something of value in return.   To a significant extent that has involved giving them other wealth creating assets, but what happens when we run out of wealth creating assets to give them in return?   It looks to me like we are scraping the bottom of the barrel already.

When they have made enough money from the shoes, they can afford to visit our country, see all our history, castles etc. UK tourism is currently booming.

[zugzwang]

5 hours ago, Si1 said:

Eh? Lattes are just answering a demand that comes from wealth in the first place. It's not like they're made according to govt dictat.

But how many would be made without working tax credits?

[Lurkerbelow]

1 hour ago, rantnrave said:

When they have made enough money from the shoes, they can afford to visit our country, see all our history, castles etc. UK tourism is currently booming.

Look at our balance of payments data.   It strongly suggests they don't do that to the extent required.   That instead they prefer to buy up wealth creating bits of the UK.

[Lurkerbelow]

6 hours ago, Si1 said:

Eh? Lattes are just answering a demand that comes from wealth in the first place. It's not like they're made according to govt dictat.

Come now.  You full well know its not as simple as that.   Do you think there would be so many people buying lattes  if they did not think they were getting rich off of rising asset prices?

[Riedquat]

13 hours ago, Lurkerbelow said:

What matters is the rate of "wealth" creation per person per unit of time.  Latte makers make very little of it.   The person making Airbus aircraft wings makes a lot of it.   So sure we can have lots of people making Lattes but don't expect us to be a prosperous country with high living standards as a result.   This is why wages have gone nowhere since 2008.   Too many makers of "lattes".

That illustrates all sorts of problems IMO (not saying you're wrong, quite the opposite). It illustrates that we've hooked ourselves to wealth creation rather than wealth, with builds in an "always need more" issue. And which do people really want, coffee or planes? It's not so much too many lattes as too much stuff ultimately for the sake of it.

[Riedquat]

9 hours ago, Captain Kirk said:

I'm not saying you are wrong but according to mainstream economics (Alan Greenspan, for example) that is not the case since the sales of shoes still gets added to UK GDP. Labour is just another cost that should be minimised, and what matters is the value added, i.e. sale price - all costs.

Minimise the labour costs and who can afford to buy the shoes? Historically effects that have pushed up the cost of labour (the aftermath of the Black Death being the most obvious example) have resulted in improvements in quality of life for most.

Edited August 22, 2018 by Riedquat

[spyguy]

22 hours ago, cashinmattress said:

So are most 'advanced' western economies... especially Canada.

The bigger problem is the demographic profiles for the same nations.

Nobody is going to be ready for the real crisis starting in about seven years: funding geriatric health care.

I have a few older relatives, mostly females, who've got wallets fat with store cards.

Granny always said... "don't buys things on tick".

Easy fix - dont bust a gut treating oaps.

Until someone cures getting old theres little point spending money on care for 80+

[spyguy]

22 hours ago, hurlerontheditch said:

what does selling coffee(just an example) do to the productivity figures for the country

Lattes are consumption.

[Riedquat]

2 minutes ago, spyguy said:

Lattes are consumption.

Isn't everything produce ultimately for consumption?

[spyguy]

18 minutes ago, Riedquat said:

Isn't everything produce ultimately for consumption?

At the end, some.

[Captain Kirk]

6 hours ago, Si1 said:

Eh? Lattes are just answering a demand that comes from wealth in the first place. It's not like they're made according to govt dictat.

According to Adam Smith, a nation’s wealth is really the stream of goods and services that it creates.

[Si1]

58 minutes ago, Lurkerbelow said:

Come now.  You full well know its not as simple as that.   Do you think there would be so many people buying lattes  if they did not think they were getting rich off of rising asset prices?

True but you could try the same about cars

[kirstieb]

I think (and I don't know too much but it seems sensible) production is what's needed to create wealth, however not cheap shoes and clothes and electronics mainly made from plastic. These are all coming from a finite resource, and the whole basis of growth based, production based economy cannot go on forever for obvious reasons. We should be ploughing everything into renewable energy, recycled based goods. Isn't there going to be a huge market for it at some point. Moving away from oil dependence would have massive benefits won't it?  Ecologically and economically.  I know it's a massive thing to start but it just seems to make sense to me. Then wealth can be created, and sustained.

[Riedquat]

12 minutes ago, kirstieb said:

I think (and I don't know too much but it seems sensible) production is what's needed to create wealth, however not cheap shoes and clothes and electronics mainly made from plastic. These are all coming from a finite resource, and the whole basis of growth based, production based economy cannot go on forever for obvious reasons. We should be ploughing everything into renewable energy, recycled based goods. Isn't there going to be a huge market for it at some point. Moving away from oil dependence would have massive benefits won't it?  Ecologically and economically.  I know it's a massive thing to start but it just seems to make sense to me. Then wealth can be created, and sustained.

Not particularly, that's really about trying to find other ways of keeping the same plates of ever-increasing production and consumption spinning. The problem isn't oil, the problem is a system that utterly relies on more and more people wanting more and more. Oil usage just happens to more easily enable that than the alternatives.

[Captain Kirk]

52 minutes ago, Riedquat said:

Not particularly, that's really about trying to find other ways of keeping the same plates of ever-increasing production and consumption spinning. The problem isn't oil, the problem is a system that utterly relies on more and more people wanting more and more. Oil usage just happens to more easily enable that than the alternatives.

It's human nature to always want more. There will always be enough for every man's needs, but there will be never enough for one man's greed as Ghandi said. I can relate to that a as a collector, but not when it comes to housing and other human essentials.

No one really wants oil, just the energy it provides. Oil is limited and limiting, so I think renewables is the key to future wealth.

[cashinmattress]

7 hours ago, spyguy said:

Easy fix - dont bust a gut treating oaps.

Until someone cures getting old theres little point spending money on care for 80+

Easy fix? What?

What kind of dystopian society script are you taking your notes from?

Shall we apply your 'remedy' to the terminally ill as well? How about those with chronic and debilitating lifelong illnesses?

Further, geriatric care applies to folk a lot younger than 80 and this will apply to the boomer generation mass exodus from the workforce who will be fully into retirement age entitlement by ~2025.

[Riedquat]

40 minutes ago, Captain Kirk said:

It's human nature to always want more. There will always be enough for every man's needs, but there will be never enough for one man's greed as Ghandi said. I can relate to that a as a collector, but not when it comes to housing and other human essentials.

No one really wants oil, just the energy it provides. Oil is limited and limiting, so I think renewables is the key to future wealth.

It's not addressing the problem though. Human nature evolved when there was precious little to go around so always wanting more, and thus trying to get it, resulted in just about getting enough if you were lucky. That great big lump of greasy meat was exactly what you needed to survive. Roll on a few thousand years and letting yourself be controlled by the same instincts leave you fat, ill, and probably not very happy. Perpetuating that, constantly more when we've already got more than enough (distribution issues notwithstanding) is wasteful and ultimately unsatisfying. If you always want more no matter how much you've got then might as well not bother with it., particularly when it gets in the way of things that give less immediate but more fundamental satisfaction (e.g. the difference between eating the greasy takeaway and going for a run).

Oil is just part of a means to that end (although it also helps us maintain a reliable supply of what we actually need). It might be limited but it's not meaningfully limiting.

[spyguy]

19 minutes ago, cashinmattress said:

Easy fix? What?

What kind of dystopian society script are you taking your notes from?

Shall we apply your 'remedy' to the terminally ill as well? How about those with chronic and debilitating lifelong illnesses?

Further, geriatric care applies to folk a lot younger than 80 and this will apply to the boomer generation mass exodus from the workforce who will be fully into retirement age entitlement by ~2025.

The 1970s 1980s.

[spyguy]

23 minutes ago, cashinmattress said:

Easy fix? What?

What kind of dystopian society script are you taking your notes from?

Shall we apply your 'remedy' to the terminally ill as well? How about those with chronic and debilitating lifelong illnesses?

Further, geriatric care applies to folk a lot younger than 80 and this will apply to the boomer generation mass exodus from the workforce who will be fully into retirement age entitlement by ~2025.

I should add the uk has NICE to determine costs/benefits tradeoff.

A brief look at cost and life extendence for major procedures at 85+ shows its useless.

[Captain Kirk]

2 hours ago, Riedquat said:

It's not addressing the problem though. Human nature evolved when there was precious little to go around so always wanting more, and thus trying to get it, resulted in just about getting enough if you were lucky. That great big lump of greasy meat was exactly what you needed to survive. Roll on a few thousand years and letting yourself be controlled by the same instincts leave you fat, ill, and probably not very happy. Perpetuating that, constantly more when we've already got more than enough (distribution issues notwithstanding) is wasteful and ultimately unsatisfying. If you always want more no matter how much you've got then might as well not bother with it., particularly when it gets in the way of things that give less immediate but more fundamental satisfaction (e.g. the difference between eating the greasy takeaway and going for a run).

Oil is just part of a means to that end (although it also helps us maintain a reliable supply of what we actually need). It might be limited but it's not meaningfully limiting.

I agree, half the world are starving and the other half is obese. This is one of the many challenges of the our times.

At some point it will take the energy of a barrel of oil to produce a barrel of oil (because it gets harder to get to), so either we need an alternative or we need to reduce our energy consumption.

[Voice of Doom]

6 hours ago, Riedquat said:

It's not addressing the problem though. Human nature evolved when there was precious little to go around so always wanting more, and thus trying to get it, resulted in just about getting enough if you were lucky. That great big lump of greasy meat was exactly what you needed to survive. Roll on a few thousand years and letting yourself be controlled by the same instincts leave you fat, ill, and probably not very happy. Perpetuating that, constantly more when we've already got more than enough (distribution issues notwithstanding) is wasteful and ultimately unsatisfying. If you always want more no matter how much you've got then might as well not bother with it., particularly when it gets in the way of things that give less immediate but more fundamental satisfaction (e.g. the difference between eating the greasy takeaway and going for a run).

Oil is just part of a means to that end (although it also helps us maintain a reliable supply of what we actually need). It might be limited but it's not meaningfully limiting.

I agree that evolutionary biology should have more influence on our understanding of where we are now economically. As well as the insistent desire for more that comes from our ancestral days it should also include our innate altruism (which paradoxically came from selfishness i.e. it ultimately benefits us.)

If Homo Economicus had a Facebook status, it should say: it's complicated.

[Peter Hun]

On 20/08/2018 at 23:21, hurlerontheditch said:

It’s been a subject of water cooler talk for a while. “What do we actually produce of value in this country anymore ?” Selling lattes to each other doesn’t add value 

Unicorns on sunny uplands

[winkie]

On 21/08/2018 at 11:31, Riedquat said:

Lattes are something produced, just as much as widgets are. The widget manufacturer might be making widgets for the coffee machines.

A bigger problem than producing things is being tied to an economic system which relies on producing things for the sake of producing things and thus falls apart if people are satisfied with the things they've already got.

Coffee, eating out, DIY etc.. Would we prefer others to service our needs or is there more room or a preference to help ourselves, do more for ourselves because it better when we can or people we know can and do? Good point if more people say to themselves they are satisfied with what they have that must be the greatest fear..... You don't have to need it and the kids don't want it..... 

What if so much can now or will be made from growing asset prices more will no longer have to work for others?...... Only those who do not hold property, stocks, knowledge, or friends in high places will do the work for others.... The rent payers? Thoughts.... 

[Riedquat]

9 hours ago, Voice of Doom said:

I agree that evolutionary biology should have more influence on our understanding of where we are now economically. As well as the insistent desire for more that comes from our ancestral days it should also include our innate altruism (which paradoxically came from selfishness i.e. it ultimately benefits us.)

If Homo Economicus had a Facebook status, it should say: it's complicated.

I've often pondered on the altruism aspect, and whether it is ultimately selfish or not. It certainly can be - doing good makes you feel good, so you can put a selfish slant on it that way (feels like a rather bleak way of looking at the world, but it makes sense). That said there are altruistic acts that don't benefit the person doing them in any way - people have from time to time given their lives for them, knowing what they were getting in to.

[Riedquat]

2 hours ago, winkie said:

Coffee, eating out, DIY etc.. Would we prefer others to service our needs or is there more room or a preference to help ourselves, do more for ourselves because it better when we can or people we know can and do?

The immediate desire usually seems to get what you want with the least effort. That also goes back to our early survival history, when people needed to save their energy, although that does beg the question as to why exerting energy can leave you feeling good too - maybe it helped us get out and do things when we needed to.

I find there's always more satisfaction in doing things for myself, or a group of people doing something for themselves, or pushing that up to whatever scale you want (one of the reasons I find the push for automation pretty abhorrent). We've got the ways and means to strike a decent balance but it requires concious decision-making and willpower to do so.