4 ms·

With all the mandated economic inefficiency increases, I don't know how / if any growth is happening? Why should we want it to?

ArkyBeagle 11y ago
Because otherwise debt doesn't make any sense and people hoard cash. Then the general economy slows.
- daodedickinson 11y ago
  I'm not sure debt makes sense to many people today. A friend of mine was well into at least 5 figures of debt for pre-law and law schooling. He told me he wasn't worried about such a huge debt because he could just declare bankruptcy (this is premeditated theft). I told him that student loan debt isn't allowed to be discharged by bankruptcy. This was news to the legal scholar. I got into the #1 ranked (by US News and World Report) graduate school in my major. I decided I did not want $180,000 of debt. My parents thought I should go and, in a mistake, I accepted their offer to pay for the first semester so I could try it. The quality of instruction was a bizarre joke. The buildings were beautiful but the equipment students were allowed to access was so out of date as to be useless, so I had to procure my own. Many things that were free or cheaper at cheaper schools were more expensive. One professor flat out told us that he did not read the papers he assigned us to write. As long as we sent him an email with a Word doc attached, we got full credit (and no feedback). What was of very high quality? A few famous professors, but mostly the other students, who had also come because of that advertisement in US News and World Report. One of my fellow students was heavily involved in the local Occupy group. He is full-on and consciously Cloward-Piven. With no intention of ever paying back his six figures in loans (if he had the money, he might not pay it back because of his principles, and the lack of sufficiently fearsome use of force) he lives off of taxpayer money and channels it into activism against the interests of those taxpayers forced to let him suckle. What's was his real, stated, conscious plan for dealing with his student loan debt? To get Elizabeth Warren elected president. He believed she would discharge it all in a Ecclesiazusaen jubilee and thereby further fuck over people like me who were price responsive and avoided debt, attending less prestigious institutions that already have to deal with unmerited and statistically documented discrimination. I don't know what he's doing now that Warren isn't running. Probably supporting Sanders. And probably supporting loan forgiveness, but also, simultaneously, and outrageously, continuing to support these loan programs because it redistributes wealth to his favorites. His university program provided no information about student outcomes in terms of employment or income. If the school even cared to gather the information, it was kept secret. My parents' retirement plan is to never retire. They had some savings, but, after the stock market crash, the Affordable Care Act has tripled the cost of their insurance. I am worried about ever getting a job with the Masters in CS I am pursuing at a school I can afford with savings from the three years I worked after leaving that disaster of a school after the single semester trial. I am so worried about helping my parents, who have paid for other peoples' kids to go to more prestigious schools even as the government seems to be taking no steps against school prestige discrimination. Sorry for blabbering on.
littletimmy 11y ago
Without growth, inequality will become a lot less tolerable. The economy must grow or collapse.
- daodedickinson 11y ago
  On the whole, this may be true but there are available diverse methods of making inequality more tolerable, many rather independent of growth. If growth soothes covetousness, it is only in a way subject to hedonic treadmill effects. But, education, meditation, medication, censorship and many other tactics could lessen such effects in ways not necessarily subject to diminishing returns. For example, one can look at these photos in many different ways: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/income-inequality-los-angeles-jeffrey-milstein_55c0c7d7e4b0b23e3ce3f8a4?utm_hp_ref=income-inequality&kvcommref=mostpopular http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/income-inequality-los-an... From such a distance, a trailer like the one I was born in does not seem much smaller than a mansion. None of this was around in the year 1491. If I had the only building, say, a trailer, in the state of Wyoming, and then someone builds a mansion that I can see, it does NOT necessarily follow that I suffer more. Besides, never forget, growth is always what creates inequality in the first place. Before the seeds sprout, bean plants are of equal height, and it is nigh impossible to keep them equal in height, although with sophisticated bioengineering or grafting techniques it may be possible. Cognitive processes, possibly exacerbated by the consumption of deleterious media, can induce suffering in humans at any level of wealth; many are brought to deepest anguish because they cannot live forever, they can believe that "reality is broken" because they maladapt their motivation systems to video games (I'm talking about me here), etc. Income is becoming more and more equal; some people are upset because this is happening across national borders and think they deserve more pay for the same work because of their birthplace, but I think this is ultimately untenable—it is natural that we are in anguish because our cost-of-living is higher, but it is getting harder and harder to starve. Once we have our daily bread, toleration of life is somewhat up to us. I think the starkest problem with inequality is the often subconscious worry about attracting a mate, even in those with no intention of procreation. Perhaps this downward pressure on birth rates is unavoidable as carrying capacity is met or exceeded. As for the fear that the economy must grow or collapse, many economies have shrunk before. Surely, I must admit one could define collapse so as to make "The economy must grow or collapse" a true statement.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago

Because otherwise debt doesn't make any sense and people hoard cash. Then the general economy slows.

daodedickinson 11y ago
I'm not sure debt makes sense to many people today. A friend of mine was well into at least 5 figures of debt for pre-law and law schooling. He told me he wasn't worried about such a huge debt because he could just declare bankruptcy (this is premeditated theft). I told him that student loan debt isn't allowed to be discharged by bankruptcy. This was news to the legal scholar. I got into the #1 ranked (by US News and World Report) graduate school in my major. I decided I did not want $180,000 of debt. My parents thought I should go and, in a mistake, I accepted their offer to pay for the first semester so I could try it. The quality of instruction was a bizarre joke. The buildings were beautiful but the equipment students were allowed to access was so out of date as to be useless, so I had to procure my own. Many things that were free or cheaper at cheaper schools were more expensive. One professor flat out told us that he did not read the papers he assigned us to write. As long as we sent him an email with a Word doc attached, we got full credit (and no feedback). What was of very high quality? A few famous professors, but mostly the other students, who had also come because of that advertisement in US News and World Report. One of my fellow students was heavily involved in the local Occupy group. He is full-on and consciously Cloward-Piven. With no intention of ever paying back his six figures in loans (if he had the money, he might not pay it back because of his principles, and the lack of sufficiently fearsome use of force) he lives off of taxpayer money and channels it into activism against the interests of those taxpayers forced to let him suckle. What's was his real, stated, conscious plan for dealing with his student loan debt? To get Elizabeth Warren elected president. He believed she would discharge it all in a Ecclesiazusaen jubilee and thereby further fuck over people like me who were price responsive and avoided debt, attending less prestigious institutions that already have to deal with unmerited and statistically documented discrimination. I don't know what he's doing now that Warren isn't running. Probably supporting Sanders. And probably supporting loan forgiveness, but also, simultaneously, and outrageously, continuing to support these loan programs because it redistributes wealth to his favorites. His university program provided no information about student outcomes in terms of employment or income. If the school even cared to gather the information, it was kept secret. My parents' retirement plan is to never retire. They had some savings, but, after the stock market crash, the Affordable Care Act has tripled the cost of their insurance. I am worried about ever getting a job with the Masters in CS I am pursuing at a school I can afford with savings from the three years I worked after leaving that disaster of a school after the single semester trial. I am so worried about helping my parents, who have paid for other peoples' kids to go to more prestigious schools even as the government seems to be taking no steps against school prestige discrimination. Sorry for blabbering on.

littletimmy 11y ago

Without growth, inequality will become a lot less tolerable. The economy must grow or collapse.

daodedickinson 11y ago
On the whole, this may be true but there are available diverse methods of making inequality more tolerable, many rather independent of growth. If growth soothes covetousness, it is only in a way subject to hedonic treadmill effects. But, education, meditation, medication, censorship and many other tactics could lessen such effects in ways not necessarily subject to diminishing returns. For example, one can look at these photos in many different ways: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/income-inequality-los-angeles-jeffrey-milstein_55c0c7d7e4b0b23e3ce3f8a4?utm_hp_ref=income-inequality&kvcommref=mostpopular http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/income-inequality-los-an... From such a distance, a trailer like the one I was born in does not seem much smaller than a mansion. None of this was around in the year 1491. If I had the only building, say, a trailer, in the state of Wyoming, and then someone builds a mansion that I can see, it does NOT necessarily follow that I suffer more. Besides, never forget, growth is always what creates inequality in the first place. Before the seeds sprout, bean plants are of equal height, and it is nigh impossible to keep them equal in height, although with sophisticated bioengineering or grafting techniques it may be possible. Cognitive processes, possibly exacerbated by the consumption of deleterious media, can induce suffering in humans at any level of wealth; many are brought to deepest anguish because they cannot live forever, they can believe that "reality is broken" because they maladapt their motivation systems to video games (I'm talking about me here), etc. Income is becoming more and more equal; some people are upset because this is happening across national borders and think they deserve more pay for the same work because of their birthplace, but I think this is ultimately untenable—it is natural that we are in anguish because our cost-of-living is higher, but it is getting harder and harder to starve. Once we have our daily bread, toleration of life is somewhat up to us. I think the starkest problem with inequality is the often subconscious worry about attracting a mate, even in those with no intention of procreation. Perhaps this downward pressure on birth rates is unavoidable as carrying capacity is met or exceeded. As for the fear that the economy must grow or collapse, many economies have shrunk before. Surely, I must admit one could define collapse so as to make "The economy must grow or collapse" a true statement.