4 ms·

How Secular Stagnation Came to Smurf Village

45 points by jeffreyrogers 12y ago

jstclair 12y ago
If you're not familiar with the author, Dan Davies, he's been a contributor at Crooked Timber (http://crookedtimber.org http://crookedtimber.org). A great intro would be his choose-your-own-adventure intro to the Greek financial crisis from 2012 (http://crookedtimber.org/2012/02/16/so-what-would-your-plan-for-greece-be/ http://crookedtimber.org/2012/02/16/so-what-would-your-plan-...). Paul Krugman called this post from 2004 one of the great blog posts of our era: https://dsquareddigest.wordpress.com/2004/05/27/108573518762776451/ https://dsquareddigest.wordpress.com/2004/05/27/108573518762...
jfoutz 12y ago
I wonder what "put it under the mattress" even means anymore. Inflation seems like an obvious way to push money to ever more risky investment, but that comes with plenty of other problems. Maybe limiting the supply of Treasury bills would somehow make that money find a better return. Limiting "risk free" structures is the only way alternative i can think of.
Robadob 12y ago
Unrelated observation of the webpage, but the header/nav overlaps the scroll bar in chrome. I've tried messing with the css and I've no idea how this is achieved. http://imgur.com/fr8a035 http://imgur.com/fr8a035 Only other web browser available on this pc is IE, and the header doesn't even appear in that.
- ptx 12y ago
  They stuffed the entire page into a div (#col2) that fills the screen and is scrollable; the header is outside that div. So that scrollbar is not the normal page scrollbar, but a scrollbar for one part of the page.
krupt 12y ago
what the fuck is this website doing to scroll? It feels like my mouse wheel is in molasses. The article looked interesting enough to read but that behaviour is invasive enough that my eyeballs are going elsewhere.
- codemac 12y ago
  See my comment above, this sets the body { font-size 1px; }, and that's what Firefox is using to determine how fast to scroll.
codemac 12y ago
Same stupid scrolling problem in Firefox many sites have. This bookstrap.css sets the body font-size to 1px!: https://i.imgur.com/UtVrJKy.png https://i.imgur.com/UtVrJKy.png
- fsk 12y ago
  Oh thx, I thought my mousewheel had broken!
- ktsmith 12y ago
  The JS file also floods the console with crap.
kra34 12y ago
I suspect that the money piling up should have been leaking out in the form of increased wages; however, that does not seem to be happening anywhere or least not fast enough to keep the historical economy, Smurf or other, functional.
dmolony 12y ago
Seems be circular stagnation, not secular.

45 points by jeffreyrogers 12y ago

If you're not familiar with the author, Dan Davies, he's been a contributor at Crooked Timber (http://crookedtimber.org http://crookedtimber.org). A great intro would be his choose-your-own-adventure intro to the Greek financial crisis from 2012 (http://crookedtimber.org/2012/02/16/so-what-would-your-plan-for-greece-be/ http://crookedtimber.org/2012/02/16/so-what-would-your-plan-...). Paul Krugman called this post from 2004 one of the great blog posts of our era: https://dsquareddigest.wordpress.com/2004/05/27/108573518762776451/ https://dsquareddigest.wordpress.com/2004/05/27/108573518762...

jfoutz 12y ago

I wonder what "put it under the mattress" even means anymore. Inflation seems like an obvious way to push money to ever more risky investment, but that comes with plenty of other problems. Maybe limiting the supply of Treasury bills would somehow make that money find a better return. Limiting "risk free" structures is the only way alternative i can think of.

Robadob 12y ago

Unrelated observation of the webpage, but the header/nav overlaps the scroll bar in chrome. I've tried messing with the css and I've no idea how this is achieved. http://imgur.com/fr8a035 http://imgur.com/fr8a035 Only other web browser available on this pc is IE, and the header doesn't even appear in that.

ptx 12y ago
They stuffed the entire page into a div (#col2) that fills the screen and is scrollable; the header is outside that div. So that scrollbar is not the normal page scrollbar, but a scrollbar for one part of the page.

krupt 12y ago

what the fuck is this website doing to scroll? It feels like my mouse wheel is in molasses. The article looked interesting enough to read but that behaviour is invasive enough that my eyeballs are going elsewhere.

codemac 12y ago
See my comment above, this sets the body { font-size 1px; }, and that's what Firefox is using to determine how fast to scroll.

codemac 12y ago

Same stupid scrolling problem in Firefox many sites have. This bookstrap.css sets the body font-size to 1px!: https://i.imgur.com/UtVrJKy.png https://i.imgur.com/UtVrJKy.png

fsk 12y ago
Oh thx, I thought my mousewheel had broken!
ktsmith 12y ago
The JS file also floods the console with crap.

kra34 12y ago

I suspect that the money piling up should have been leaking out in the form of increased wages; however, that does not seem to be happening anywhere or least not fast enough to keep the historical economy, Smurf or other, functional.

dmolony 12y ago

Seems be circular stagnation, not secular.