PeakTrader.com

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MP: We hear all the time about "corporate greed," but not so much about "consumer greed," which is never illustrated more profoundly than on Black Friday, when greedy consumers engage in some pretty extreme shopping behavior.

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PeakTrader said...

Yes, we also hear about declining real wages.

Yet, we don't hear about government creating inflation.

Firms tend to produce more output with fewer inputs, while government tends to increase both the cost of production and the cost of living.

Firms tend to create deflation and create capital, while government tends to create inflation and destroy capital.

Yet, some actually blame the private sector for declining real wages, perhaps because the private sector sometimes creates too much capital (i.e. profit), instead of creating enough deflation, while they completely ignore the inflation and capital destruction by government.

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PeakTrader said...

We need to reduce risk for the rich. So, they can create more jobs and more goods to help the poor.

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Hydra said...

PT: after we "give" all this protection, how long should we wait for results?

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PeakTrader said...

Hydra, it's not about "protection," it's about cost, i.e. unnecessary costs.

When the rich are slowed or stopped from becoming richer, then the poor are slowed or stopped from becoming richer.

The poor need hard-working, risk-taking entrepreneurs:

Venezuela's economy
Oil leak
The Economist
Feb 24th 2011

Since 2008 China has lent Venezuela $12 billion and is being repaid in oil shipments.

The president’s hostility to business has devastated the rest of the economy. He has nationalised hundreds of companies and trumped up charges against their owners, causing much of Venezuela’s private sector to shut up shop and flee.

As a result, the country has seen vast capital flight, and must import many goods that it used to produce. Non-oil exports have ground to a halt: petroleum now accounts for 92% of its dollar intake.

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By the Numbers | What's Next Venezuela?
Oct 7, 2011

When Hugo Chávez Frías took office in February 1999, he promised Venezuelans equality, opportunity, and prosperity.

Twelve years later, the rich are still rich and the poor are poorer as they face higher food prices, persistent blackouts, and a shrinking economy with the highest inflation in the Americas and soaring unemployment.

After returning from a visit to Venezuela in April 2010, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin boasted that he had sold President Hugo Chávez another $5 billion in weapons – a huge sum for a Latin American country that is deep in recession and busy rationing its water, electricity and hard currency.

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http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=28997633&postID=2126328628632844289

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PeakTrader said...

The article excerpt below suggests for about a thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire, world GDP was stagnant (i.e. in the Dark Ages).

We should be thankful for much higher living standards today:

"The material standard of living in the United States from 1820 to 1998:

Over this period of 178 years real GDP per capita increased 21.7 fold, or an average of 1.73 percent per year.

Although the evidence available to estimate GDP directly is meager, this rate of increase was probably many times higher than experienced during the colonial period.

This conclusion is justified by considering the implications of extrapolating the level observed in 1820 ($1,257) backward in time at the growth rate measured since 1820 (1.73 percent).

Under this supposition, real per capita GDP would have doubled every forty years (halved every forty years going backward in time) and so by the mid 1700s there would have been insufficient income to support life.

Because the cheapest diet able to sustain good health would have cost nearly $500 per year."