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[campfireweekend]

Are the deficits funded by debt? If they are, they don't matter at all in the long run. Look at Britain for that. Kills the landed gentry but doesn't affect anyone else.

Of course, in the long run, we're all dead.

If our counter factual is literally "look at the UK or Japan. Their economies haven't been destroyed because of the latter's 200% GDP to debt ratio," then wow. Because that statement does not tell us literally anything about how those deficits effect growth, or any other variable in the economy.

 

[Coriolanus]

In particular, conscious deficits normally don't work because the amount of time it takes to firstly realize how bad the recession is and that monetary policy is not sufficient, then plan e.g. infrastructure spending, then get it passed through parliament, then get most of the money spent on the wages of the people involved, and then have those people spend their wages is like 2-3 years. Unless you're talking something 2008-like in scale, most recessions don't even last 2-3 years and you just end up overheating the recovery into a bubble. Any deficits that should be run are only really going to work if they're automatic responses - the obvious one being unemployment benefits. As unemployment rises, the number of people receiving benefits goes up, so the deficit increases, and this happens at the same time as the economy is getting worse because it is automatically triggered by unemployment. The most effective means of combating recession fiscally is actually just a very strong welfare system, and not conscious fiscal management. Obviously there are exceptions, but as a general rule that's how it should work.

Is usually given as the reason why the 2008 crisis impacted brazil so little (compared to previous global crises), along with the prez at the time cockblocking some banking shenanigans

does run into a "but why did europe crash, tho" problem.

 

[campfireweekend]

I don't disagree that deficits do matter. We already had this discussion between us, mate.



I'm big on lying through your teeth to voters in order to get shit done.

Worked for Reagan

Oh, LOL. That's refreshingly earnest. As long as we're cool on the deficits mattering bit.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Are the deficits funded by debt? If they are, they don't matter at all in the long run. Look at Britain for that. Kills the landed gentry but doesn't affect anyone else.

Of course, in the long run, we're all dead.

Unless you want to take away the independence of the central bank or severely change the mandate, deficits will always be funded by debt. And that does matter. If you're talking about the frankly enormous debt Britain built up during the Napoleonic wars (which is the largest debt to GDP ratio that has ever been accrued then paid back without at least a partial default), that did have obvious impacts - in any given year, roughly 20% of Britain's government spending was on debt repayment in an era when taxes where not in the slightest bit progressive and the debtholders were largely the new moneyed classes. It did kill the aristocrats as well, yes - but it also imposed a large burden on the rural poor, and an even larger burden on Britain's colonial subjects. Saying it "doesn't affect anyone else" is pretty demeaning in light of e.g. the consciously engineered famines in India.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Is usually given as the reason why the 2008 crisis impacted brazil so little (compared to previous global crises), along with the prez at the time cockblocking some banking shenanigans

does run into a "but why did europe crash, tho" problem.

Because of the Euro.

 

[shinra-bansho]

Setting aside that I don't really know whether to put any stock in Google Trends results, it's probably worth noting you get different results from the specific search term than from selecting the actual person.

i.e. https://www.google.com/trends/explo.../m/02mjmr&date=today 12-m&cmpt=q&tz=Etc/GMT+5

 

[Coriolanus]

Yknow when you look down and realize that there a hole of not insignificant size near your crotch in your jeans, and start wondering how long that thing has been in there?

Man, i liked this pair of pants.

Because of the Euro.

Hmhm. Was quite the beauty how they managed to blame the welfare state instead.

 

[campfireweekend]

Is usually given as the reason why the 2008 crisis impacted brazil so little (compared to previous global crises), along with the prez at the time cockblocking some banking shenanigans

does run into a "but why did europe crash, tho" problem.

Really bad monetary policy.

They fucking raised rates during a recession.

Bad move.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Hmhm. Was quite the beauty how they managed to blame the welfare state instead.

Welcome to the establishment.

 

[Diablos]

Holy crap, Bill O'Reilly fighting with Donald Trump. Bill looks like he's about to cry because he can't get him to see his point of view. This is getting so pathetic.

 

[disastermouse]

Unless you want to take away the independence of the central bank or severely change the mandate, deficits will always be funded by debt. And that does matter. If you're talking about the frankly enormous debt Britain built up during the Napoleonic wars (which is the largest debt to GDP ratio that has ever been accrued then paid back without at least a partial default), that did have obvious impacts - in any given year, roughly 20% of Britain's government spending was on debt repayment in an era when taxes where not in the slightest bit progressive and the debtholders were largely the new moneyed classes. It did kill the aristocrats as well, yes - but it also imposed a large burden on the rural poor, and an even larger burden on Britain's colonial subjects. Saying it "doesn't affect anyone else" is pretty demeaning in light of e.g. the consciously engineered famines in India.

You're much more familiar with this, and I stand corrected.

I guess that my point was that debt can be inflated nearly out of existence and it has been.

 

[disastermouse]

If our counter factual is literally "look at the UK or Japan. Their economies haven't been destroyed because of the latter's 200% GDP to debt ratio," then wow. Because that statement does not tell us literally anything about how those deficits effect growth, or any other variable in the economy.

Growth is a dead horse. It's dead (okay, it's dying), but we have to take a serious look at what a 'no-growth' or 'low-growth' economy looks like.

If for no other reason than to keep ourselves from cooking ourselves into extinction.

 

[campfireweekend]

You're much more familiar with this, and I stand corrected.

I guess that my point was that debt can be inflated nearly out of existence and it has been.

This is not an outcome desired by anyone that uses money, so I'm not quite seeing the point of mentioning it?

Also yeah, maybe the ideal should be 2% growth instead of 4. We could even try to better achieve that if we changed the Fed's goal to NGDP tracking!

You should read up a bit more on this stuff man. There are serious problems, and I undertake completely why bernie and trump are compelling, but coming at these problems from ignorance will not solve them, ok?

 

[Makai]

Growth is a dead horse. It's dead (okay, it's dying), but we have to take a serious look at what a 'no-growth' or 'low-growth' economy looks like.

If for no other reason than to keep ourselves from cooking ourselves into extinction.

You know what the impact of alternative energies would be on the economy?

Spoiler

Growth.

 

[OrangeGrayBlue]

Setting aside that I don't really know whether to put any stock in Google Trends results, it's probably worth noting you get different results from the specific search term than from selecting the actual person.

i.e. https://www.google.com/trends/explo.../m/02mjmr&date=today 12-m&cmpt=q&tz=Etc/GMT+5

Selecting a candidate as a "topic" tabulates results related to them in addition to the specific string of text. So any search for Clinton, for instance, would likely be counted in Hillary Rodham Clinton as a "topic", even if that searcher is actually doing a book report on Bill. For that reason, I don't think the "topic" feature would be the most accurate measurement. As you said though, it's unclear how much weight you could really put into google trends.


Here's google's explanation of the topic feature:

When you measure interest in a search topic (Tokyo - Capital of Japan) our algorithms count many different search queries that may relate to the same topic (東京, Токио, Tokyyo, Tokkyo, Japan Capital, etc). When you measure interest in a search query (Toyko - Search term), our systems will count only searches including that string of text ("Tokyo").

 

[Deleted member 231381]

You're much more familiar with this, and I stand corrected.

I guess that my point was that debt can be inflated nearly out of existence and it has been.

It couldn't for Britain's Napoleonic war debt because Britain was first on the silver standard and then on the gold standard. Gold obviously can't be inflated artificially. Inflating debt out of existence is possible but difficult. If people begin to expect inflation in the next period will be higher than it is in this period, then they change their wage expectations now. That means inflation goes up by even more than expected in the next period - you get accelerating inflation. If you don't stop that, it becomes a problem. That's why most central banks have an inflation target that they try to meet - people expect the target, and banks try and meet the target so people don't change expectations.

Now, it's true you can inflate the real value of debt downwards. But it's not an easy process, and has other consequences. Say you pick 10% as the level you want to keep stable. Sure, you can now run a 10% deficit and not have the real value of debt increase. But at the same time, the savings of every single person with savings is ticking down in real terms by 10% each year. It's not free of consequences, it overwhelmingly hurts savers. This has consequences - people prioritize consumption, investment falls, and your long-run GDP falls because you have less capital and less R&D.

Now, there's debate over what the precise level of inflation should be. I'm partial to a nominal GDP target, which basically says the the central bank should try and make sure that nominal GDP rises by the same amount every year. Given nominal GDP / inflation rate = real GDP, if you have a decrease in real GDP, you obviously need to increase the inflation rate. It's by a predictable amount (determined by the formula), so people always knows what to expect, but it remains variable. Say that you want a 5% nominal GDP growth year on year. That'd cause a central bank to have targeted 7.6% inflation in 2008, sure. But that's a one-off. This year, inflation would only have been 2%; so if your deficit exceeded 2%, it'd still be rising in real terms.

So it's not a one-off easy strategy. It's really slow, and if the interest payment exceeds the inflation for that year, then your debt still isn't shrinking, even in real terms. You can use it to run very small deficits almost indefinitely and remain at constant debt, or you can run neutral budgets and have your debt decrease, but it doesn't really allow you to run whooper deficits in perpetuity.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

I mean, I think this is all basically irrelevant re: this specific election because there aren't any appointments for the Federal Reserve coming up until the 2020 presidential term, so I don't really care about it, but it's important as a more general concept.

 

[disastermouse]

This is not an outcome desired by anyone that uses money, so I'm not quite seeing the point of mentioning it?

Also yeah, maybe the ideal should be 2% growth instead of 4. We could even try to better achieve that if we changed the Fed's goal to NGDP tracking!

You should read up a bit more on this stuff man. There are serious problems, and I undertake completely why bernie and trump are compelling, but coming at these problems from ignorance will not solve them, ok?

I'm not speaking economically here, because economics gets blasted into little bits by strange waves of political strangeness.

I was being facetious when I said that debt could be inflation-ed away, BTW.

 

[disastermouse]

You know what the impact of alternative energies would be on the economy?

Spoiler

Growth.

Alternative energy doesn't solve the problem, unfortunately. It's short term. That is, nothing is getting destroyed with alternative energy, and so replacement of energy generation doesn't foster growth the way that burning fossil fuels does. Sure, the economy gets a boost when these technologies get built up, but then they just run, with a minimal amount of maintenance.

Oil consumption is like food consumption: it constantly needs replacing. Alternative energy means the rate of replacement is more along the lines of the rate of replacement of household appliances. That's a huge difference.

 

[Makai]

Alternative energy doesn't solve the problem, unfortunately. It's short term. That is, nothing is getting destroyed with alternative energy, and so replacement of energy generation doesn't foster growth the way that burning fossil fuels does. Sure, the economy gets a boost when these technologies get built up, but then they just run, with a minimal amount of maintenance.

Oil consumption is like food consumption: it constantly needs replacing. Alternative energy means the rate of replacement is more along the lines of the rate of replacement of household appliances. That's a huge difference.

So? Did you watch Zeitgeist or something?

 

[disastermouse]

So? Did you watch Zeitgeist or something?

No, I'm just saying that without the constant consumption of a resource, alternative energy won't fuel growth in the same way as fossil fuels do. You aren't consuming a commodity.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Or in economic terms, oil is scarce, alternative energy is not.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Final NBC/WSJ/Marist Iowa poll (D)
Clinton 48%
Sanders 45%
Undecided 4%
O'Malley 3%

Margin of error ±4.7%

No change from earlier in the month, consistent with most of the other polls. Mixed landline/cell sample, random digit dialling. Predicted turnout 141,000 (ever so slightly above 2004, much lower than 2008).

All the polls are becoming really consistent now in terms of what happens at any given level of turnout and there's not much movement in the race; almost all the differences come from turnout projections.

I will say this one has a strange regional subsample with Sanders dominating the rural areas and Clinton winning the cities, but hey, huge MoEs in samples that small. Everything else looks normal.

 

[User 406]

This persecution complex is just too much. Bill Gates is in the tank for Hillary!

Sanders camp suspicious of Microsoft’s influence in Iowa Caucus

The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is raising questions about the involvement of Microsoft in the Iowa Caucuses, now just five days away, and has built a independent system to check the official results.

For the first time this year, Microsoft partnered with the Iowa Democratic and Republican Parties to provide a technology platform with which the parties will run their caucuses. The software giant created separate mobile apps for each party, which officials at hundreds of caucuses across the state will use to report out results from individual precincts to party headquarters for tabulation.

The arrangement has aroused the suspicions of aides to Sanders, whose regularly warns that corporate power and the billionaire class are trying to hijack democracy. Pete D’Alessandro, who is running the Iowa portion of Sanders’ campaign, questioned the motives of the major multinational corporation in an interview with MSNBC: “You’d have to ask yourself why they’d want to give something like that away for free.”

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/sanders-campaign-suspicious-corporate-influence-iowa-caucus

John McAfee, chief technologist for Sanders' campaign, said that the use of "mind control software" from a large company like Microsoft is "a telltale sign of cyber warfare" and, "they're coming through the water pipes, don't drink anything or use the shower."

 

[disastermouse]

Final NBC/WSJ/Marist Iowa poll (D)
Clinton 48%
Sanders 45%
Undecided 4%
O'Malley 3%

Margin of error ±4.7%

No change from earlier in the month, consistent with most of the other polls. Mixed landline/cell sample, random digit dialling. Predicted turnout 141,000 (ever so slightly above 2004, much lower than 2008).

All the polls are becoming really consistent now in terms of what happens at any given level of turnout and there's not much movement in the race; almost all the differences come from turnout projections.

I will say this one has a strange regional subsample with Sanders dominating the rural areas and Clinton winning the cities, but hey, huge MoEs in samples that small. Everything else looks normal.

Yeah, but that smacks of under-reporting, doesn't it? Sanders should not be winning the rural areas.

 

[sc0la]

Holy crap, Bill O'Reilly fighting with Donald Trump. Bill looks like he's about to cry because he can't get him to see his point of view. This is getting so pathetic.

Blowhard meets Blowharder. Blowharder used obstinance. It's super effective!

 

[disastermouse]

John McAfee, chief technologist for Sanders' campaign, said that the use of "mind control software" from a large company like Microsoft is "a telltale sign of cyber warfare" and, "they're coming through the water pipes, don't drink anything or use the shower."

Your hyperbole game is strong. Concern about strong corporate influences isn't the same as wholesale paranoia.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Final NBC/WSJ/Marist Iowa poll (R)

Trump 32%
Cruz 25%
Rubio 18%
Carson 8%
Others [not within M.o.E. of 10%] 14%
Undecided 3%

Margin of error ±4.7%

Pretty notable because Marist is also forecasting really low turnout on the Republican side too. Given Trump is winning this poll and by more than the margin of error, I'm 95% confident Trump will win Iowa.

 

[Makai]

No, I'm just saying that without the constant consumption of a resource, alternative energy won't fuel growth in the same way as fossil fuels do.

We're replacing an entire industry with another and everything that relies on it. GDP will increase.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Yeah, but that smacks of under-reporting, doesn't it? Sanders should not be winning the rural areas.

Enormous margins of error, any given subsample will be 10% minimum (not done the maths but kinda obvious). No point in thinking about it too much.

 

[Coriolanus]

John McAfee, chief technologist for Sanders' campaign, said that the use of "mind control software" from a large company like Microsoft is "a telltale sign of cyber warfare" and, "they're coming through the water pipes, don't drink anything or use the shower."

I dream of being at least 1/10 the man that person is. Except for the "possibly a murderer" part.

Your hyperbole game is strong. Concern about strong corporate influences isn't the same as wholesale paranoia.

He was having a giggle.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

I'm pretty confident in putting money on Trump for the nomination. I think he is severely undervalued right now. I'd go so far as saying I'm more confident Trump will win than Clinton will (obviously they're both huge favourites), which the betting market does not reflect at all. Iowa is one of his worst states, it'd be like Clinton leading in Vermont (or... New Hampshire).

 

[disastermouse]

We're replacing an entire industry with another and everything that relies on it. GDP will increase.

But you're not producing a commodity that needs constant replacing. That is, there's no destruction that needs constant replenishment.

GDP will increase in the short term. After that, the rate of replacement will equate to infrastructure replacement, not consumable commodity replacement, which is much, much faster.

Are you being intentionally dense here? I don't see how you can't see that the building of an apparatus for collecting energy will be much, much less economically intensive than the mining, refining, and consumption of fossil fuels is.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

But you're not producing a commodity that needs constant replacing. That is, there's no destruction that needs constant replenishment.

GDP will increase in the short term. After that, the rate of replacement will equate to infrastructure replacement, not consumable commodity replacement, which is much, much faster.

Are you being intentionally dense here? I don't see how you can't see that the building of an apparatus for collecting energy will be much, much less economically intensive than the mining, refining, and consumption of fossil fuels is.

But this has knock-on consequences. When energy is much cheaper to produce because the only expenditure is on capital maintenance unlike the huge effort and resources that are spent on oil, then all of the goods that need energy to be produced become cheaper because their costs have gone down, which is like... every good.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

One other slightly odd thing about the Marist poll is the project turnout by gender. They reckon 40% of attendees will be men, 60% women - even in 2008 it was only 43-57 and it seems very unlikely it would have that ratio if turnout was at 2004 levels. Reweighting for 43-57 gives Sanders 46, Clinton 47.5, reweighting for 45-55 gives Sanders 46.5, Clinton 47. Doesn't make a huge amount of difference but I don't think that the gender ratio will actually hit 40:60, seems deeply unlikely.

 

[shinra-bansho]

So, I think it was discussed earlier, but the amount of importance placed on IA and NH due to their scheduling is all sorts of ridiculous.

Just looking at the Marist NH numbers for instance Sanders 20 pt lead would translate into about 4 delegates more? Trump will end up with about 6 or 7 more than the other three that would get in delegates?

Piddly numbers that wouldn't matter if not for the schedule.

 

[disastermouse]

But this has knock-on consequences. When energy is much cheaper to produce because the only expenditure is on capital maintenance unlike the huge effort and resources that are spent on oil, then all of the goods that need energy to be produced become cheaper because their costs have gone down, which is like... every good.

Oh yeah! It is very good! I'm not arguing against alternative energy, I'm saying that with the loss of a system of natural destruction, the growth that capital requires will take a hit because there's only so much consumption that people can do to make up the deficit.

He was arguing that alternative energy could replace fossil fuels as a source of capital investment.

 

[Gotchaye]

But you're not producing a commodity that needs constant replacing. That is, there's no destruction that needs constant replenishment.

GDP will increase in the short term. After that, the rate of replacement will equate to infrastructure replacement, not consumable commodity replacement, which is much, much faster.

Are you being intentionally dense here? I don't see how you can't see that the building of an apparatus for collecting energy will be much, much less economically intensive than the mining, refining, and consumption of fossil fuels is.

It's not like we're making the oil or coal or natural gas. We dig the coal out of the ground and burn it to make turbines go. We've got a harvesting mechanism - lots of shovels - and a turbine. A windmill is a harvesting mechanism - huge blades - and a turbine. A windmill is simpler in some ways and more complicated in others, but it's not obvious to me that it takes a lot less work to get energy out of just because we can't run out of wind but can in principle run out of coal. Windmill blades are a lot more expensive to maintain than shovels. I mean, a big part of the problem with nonrenewables is just that we don't act like they're nonrenewable.

Edit: Sure, hopefully long-term we can get energy that's not just cleaner but also cheaper out of wind and solar or whatever, but right now and probably for a while to come the cost of most renewable energy is going to be greater than the cost of energy from fossil fuels (ignoring any concerns about pollution). This isn't a good thing, but it seems to me that if you did try to switch the US over to wind power to the greatest extent possible you'd still have a pretty big energy sector on an ongoing basis.

 

[Makai]

Joe Scarborough pointing out that NBC was banned because of questions asked by CNBC. Asking RNC why Fox wasn't banned after the questions asked in first debate.

 

[Black Republican]

Mark Murray ‏@mmurraypolitics 2h2 hours ago
NBC/WSJ/Marist poll of SC (D)
Clinton 64%
Sanders 27%
O'Malley 2%

NBC/WSJ/Marist poll of NH (R)
Trump 31%
Cruz 12%
Rubio 11%
Kasich 11%
Bush 8%
Christie 7%

Mark Murray ‏@mmurraypolitics 2h2 hours ago
NBC/WSJ/Marist poll of NH (D)
Sanders 57%
Clinton 38%
O'Malley 2%

Was Sanders 50%, Clinton 46% earlier this month

blow outs

 

[Plinko]

So, I think it was discussed earlier, but the amount of importance placed on IA and NH due to their scheduling is all sorts of ridiculous.

Just looking at the Marist NH numbers for instance Sanders 20 pt lead would translate into about 4 delegates more? Trump will end up with about 6 or 7 more than the other three that would get in delegates?

Piddly numbers that wouldn't matter if not for the schedule.

Agreed. I've been saying this for months. People keep acting as if Iowa and NH basically determine the race, but it isn't true at all.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

So, I think it was discussed earlier, but the amount of importance placed on IA and NH due to their scheduling is all sorts of ridiculous.

Just looking at the Marist NH numbers for instance Sanders 20 pt lead would translate into about 4 delegates more? Trump will end up with about 6 or 7 more than the other three that would get in delegates?

Piddly numbers that wouldn't matter if not for the schedule.

On those Marist numbers, Trump would get 10 NH delegates, Cruz 4, Kasich and Rubio 3, so yeah, not exactly in itself impressive. Sanders would get 14 NH delegates, Clinton 10. In Iowa, you can't tell on the Republican side because of the straw poll, but on the Dem side on the Marist numbers, Clinton would get either 23-22 or 22-23 depending on whether she won Iowa's third congressional district or not.

So yeah, no world-shaking.

 

[Plinko]

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 1h1 hour ago

Wow, two candidates called last night and said they want to go to my event tonight at Drake University.

Hmm...interesting.

 

[Makai]

Agreed. I've been saying this for months. People keep acting as if Iowa and NH basically determine the race, but it isn't true at all.

I mean, it matters if Cruz gets third place in Iowa.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

I mean, it matters if Cruz gets third place in Iowa.

Only from a media perspective - delegateswise, it wouldn't make much difference if it was e.g. Trump 30%, Rubio 23%, Cruz 22%.

 

[Makai]

Snow forecast
90% chance of precipitation
1-3 inches
40mph gusts

 

[theprodigy]

fucking establishment weather

 

[User 463088]

fucking establishment weather

I haven't slept in 29 hours, and I legitimately just laughed so hard at this I managed to emotionally scar 3 of my cats.

 

[HylianTom]

fucking establishment weather

Ok, this one got me. 😂

 

[RustyNails]

Holy crap, Bill O'Reilly fighting with Donald Trump. Bill looks like he's about to cry because he can't get him to see his point of view. This is getting so pathetic.