The Very Last Notes from the Right-Wing

I'm Joeverkill, and I quit.

I have better things to do with my time than argue on the internet with a mental patient with poor grammar who can't do simple division.

Analyst, Minotauromachy, Rupert Murder: we've had some good back-and-forth on some important issues. For that I thank you guys. I also thank anyone who's read this blog.

It's been real, guys.

Random Retard, it brings me great pleasure to know that you will die, starving, unsatisfied, and alone.

Sowing Discontent with a Garnishing of Panic

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259

It's apocalyptic, but it doesn't sound implausible. The facts are true; why can't the conclusion be?

Beginner's Economics

I think in times like this we should all refresh ourselves of tried-and-true, uncontroversial economic principles which make the core of modern economic theory. I can't find good sources to cite, and don't want to delve into JSTOR or anything actually entailing a degree of effort, so someone point me out some good sources if it becomes apparent.

There exist (at least) three indisputable sectors:

The primary sector, comprising the procurement of "raw materials"-- mining, agriculture, oil drilling, etc. This is a sector generally highly-dependent on immediate location and environment, for obvious reasons.

The secondary sector, comprising general "production"-- heavy industry such as construction, oil refining, steelworks, etc and light industry such as manufacturing electronics, clothes and other consumer goods. This is less dependent on the environment in which it is based

The tertiary sector pretty much is everything else-- retail, services and information/knowledge. Some people split these up into further sectors, others lump them together. This is generally the end of the production line (unless you count recycling, reuse etc as part of a production-consumption cycle).

They're called primary, secondary and tertiary because the tertiary entails the secondary and the secondary entails the primary.

The largest sector of the US economy is retail. Granted, the US has lots of agriculture, lots of mining, lots of construction, but percentage-wise, retail is king. Wal-Mart is the fourth-largest employer in the world, beaten only by public institutions. Granted, Wal-Mart is integrated to a point, but its target product is retail sales.

When people haven't got money to buy things, the retail business suffers. When the retail business suffers, they cut costs. The #1 biggest expense of any business, any businessman will tell you, is personnel. People get laid off. Profits will not drop much if there are 2 people working the till at the supermarket as opposed to 6: If you really want your groceries, you'll wait in the queue like everyone else, or just go to another supermarket where you'll have to wait anyway.

Except that, when the average American most likely works in retail than any other sector, what if he got laid off? He's not going to be buying any retail products.

See the correlation?

Necessary products of primary and secondary industry such as paving roads, repairing bridges, replacing trains, do not suffer as much-- unless your country is as fucked as the US. There is NOT always a demand for plasma-screen TVs-- compared to tarmac or refined petroleum.

Chevrolets and Fords are made in Mexico. Most every consumer products is made in China. High-end products are made in Japan (Your Infiniti), Germany (VW-- though ones in America are made in Mexico now too), France, Korea etc.

Retail in the US is comprised of mainly selling products made in another country for a profit-- thus, a certain portion of the US's wealth nevertheless leaves the US. The amount of money in China at the moment (albeit not in the hands of the common man) is staggering.

Moving on to the non-material tertiary sector, your computer game was likely developed in India. Your graphics card was engineered in Japan. Your energy-efficient washing machine was tested in a German laboratory. Your anti-depressants were likely designed (and manufactured) in Taiwan.

Most of your products are NOT American. They are not necessarily purely foreign, but they are definitely not 100% corn-fed American. When I see something "Made in America" that statement is conspicuous for a reason-- because it's so strange to see.

The service-oriented parts of the tertiary sector which are more necessary like healthcare and education have been neglected. If you disagree that American schools could be vastly improved, you were a sheltered upper-class suburban winner of the class lottery. If you disagree that the healthcare system is inefficient, what about when the US spends more on healthcare both privately and publicly than any other nation? If a country like Finland spent that much on healthcare per capita there'd be more doctors and hospital beds than people to utilise them, and people would be getting radiotherapy for kicks.

On the other side, what about all the useless jobs that are going the way of the dinosaur because they're too expensive?-- the longer waits on hold for a telephone representative of Bank of America, no one to bag your groceries, no one paid to say "Good Morning" when you walk into your yuppie Whole Foods.

The only jobs uniquely American are in our much-loved financial sector. Yes, the shark who processed your second mortgage lives in the same Bushville as you do.

You say that globalisation means that American corporations own the industry in many of these "cheap" countries and so the wealth flows back into the American economy. Yeah, I can really see how the money from Mr Seven-Figure Income Executive's new Murcielago bought at Beverly Hills Lamborghini helps me prosper. Oh, and all that corporate wealth generated? It's likely stored in a low-tax haven like Barbados, Liechtenstein or the Isle of Man: Not a penny of it will ever come into contact with the US economy.

The US's current "high" unemployment rate of 5.7% pales in comparison to stereotypical France 7.5% (2007). But you know what? France has a higher-rate of multiple-income households than the USA, meaning more people register for unemployment: You're only "unemployed" if:

a) you're looking for work, and
b) you can claim unemployment benefits/status.

It's also impossible to buy a television at 2am in France from a 24-hour Wal-Mart/Costco/Cheapo Imperium hypermarket. You can't eat a three-course meal at 2am at Denny's/Fat Joe's/Cottaging Diner. There's no poor sod to bag your groceries for your fat ass for minimum wage. In fact, in the UK, for example, instead of your late-night Blockbuster, there are little ATM-like machines that dispense videos past regular business hours when the shop itself closes. In France in 2000, no one could force you to work over 35 hours per week, and any time after that was overtime. Virtually all shops close at 5-5:30pm.

If the USA adopted such strict labour laws and reduced its "luxury" services to the level of France, unemployment would explode FAR beyond France's 7.5%. What would happen if every single 24-hour Wal-Mart in the USA was forced to only operate from 9 to 5? It would lay off over half its workforce, which would be over a million people. That's one company out of legions.

For the US to have worker's protection approaching that of other first-world countries, the US would have imploded upon implementation as opposed to sinking (un)gracefully into world recession.

As more people lose their jobs, the economy continues to go down and the dollar weakens. The raw materials used from other foreign countries become more expensive, our China-made goods become more expensive, and Wal-Mart's sales continue to plummet, forcing them to lay off yet more people. The economy is on a one-way trip to Hell.

When you become unemployed and have a nervous breakdown, you won't be able to afford your fancy Ativan made in a foreign country because the USA hasn't even got any sort of state-funded universal healthcare. So Biovail Pharmecuticals and every other medical company will suffer too. Who knows? Maybe the US will regress into a bona fide undeveloped country, without things like sanitation and hospital treatment!

So many unemployed leaves a great workforce to be exploited! ...but, wait, where's the money for enterprise? Oh yeah that's right-- both we and our government are drowning in debt. Foreign investment? Why invest in unskilled American labour when you can do business in e.g. Turkey, Chile, China or India for 1/20 the cost? Skilled, high-end labour? That's too expensive for what it offers compared to e.g. Finland or Denmark where there are untapped legions of skilled workers doing jobs under their education level. Forget about places like Taiwan or South Korea which combine the best of both worlds. Would I rather pay a nanotech engineer $150,000/yr with private healthcare benefits and nominal corporate taxation in the US, or €36,000 (~$50,000)/yr without a bloated private benefits package albeit with slightly more taxation in Finland? You do the maths-- if your education was good enough to give it to you, that is. The US is the only developed third-world country-- too expensive for cheap work, too stupid for brilliant innovation. Too privatised too withstand recession, but already developed, precluding expansion.

The only way out of this hole is to either schmooze our way even deeper into the red or nationalise. Yep, it's time for the New New Deal, friends. Deficit spending and speculation really worked well. Cheers.

You know who else had low unemployment? The Soviet Union-- at a spectacular 0%. We'll forget that they didn't play by the rules of mainstream economics (of course the US follows economic principles-- what, are you crazy? [Quiet! don't scare off the investors])

However, unlike the USA, there was no inflation (as virtually all prices were regulated, of course). They also railroaded themselves into being a powerhouse of research and innovation without the benefits of a free market, nearly beating us to the moon with a fraction of the money we had. They also had universal healthcare, more hospital beds per capita than any other nation and free education at all levels. There were more doctorates per capita in the USSR than in the USA. The US has the biggest economy of the world and still can't accomplish that.

America's employment miracle is because America is full of shit, unnecessary jobs which are all going away anyway. In North Korea, people serve as traffic signals-- doesn't mean it's efficient. Of course, if Americans were used as traffic signals, they'd have been laid off by now.

If you still believe in trickle-down economics in 2008, you've got a hole in your head where your brain should be.

I'm Random Retard, and this has been notes from the anti-right.