Record Stretch of 7.5%+ Unemployment Continues

[ns2]

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/54-mont ... -continues

I tend to think Obamanomics has a lot to do with this mostly due to the uncertainties of Obamacare and other regulatory interventions. I also think it will get worse if he proceeds down the path of trying to save the planet from climate change which seems to be high on his agenda in what's left of his presidency.

[Benko]

Agreed.  Skipping any discussion of O, having:

1. continued unemployment +

2. "global warming fix" e.g. war on coal +

3. "immigration reform" (e.g. house passes something and it goes into comittee it comes out like senate version). 

The results on the US economy for the short to medium term seem bleak.  ANyone disagree?

[moda0306]

I disagree.

While we have some structural problems, most of our unemployment problem is a result of inadequate demand in a monetized economy. Our problem isn't the capability for great productivity, but the fact that we are staring at each other in an exonomic Mexican standoff. 

But that's just my take.

[ns2]

3. "immigration reform" (e.g. house passes something and it goes into comittee it comes out like senate version). 

Forgot about that one, but if it passes we can't blame it on Obama. It will be a bi-partisan effort.

[ns2]

While we have some structural problems, most of our unemployment problem is a result of inadequate demand in a monetized economy.

So what would you do to stimulate demand?

[moda0306]

While we have some structural problems, most of our unemployment problem is a result of inadequate demand in a monetized economy.

So what would you do to stimulate demand?

Probably some more ballsy infrastructure projects and a payroll tax holiday until domestic balance sheets are in a better spot.

[Pointedstick]

I disagree.

While we have some structural problems, most of our unemployment problem is a result of inadequate demand in a monetized economy. Our problem isn't the capability for great productivity, but the fact that we are staring at each other in an exonomic Mexican standoff. 

But that's just my take.

I further disagree!   Wage growth has been stagnating for 30 years. I don't think you can say that that's just prolonged lack of liquidity causing low levels of economic Mexican standoffs, the present one simply being the biggest one reflecting an even larger lack of money. Something more fundamental seems to be happening. Whether it's the rich grabbing more of the pie for themselves, regulatory burdens on business intensifying, bubbles in health care, housing, and college reaching a breaking point, robots rendering bigger of the low end of the economic totem pole obsolete, or whatever. To me it's implausible that none of these things are happening and we're just chronically low on money.

[doodle]

Capitalism is breaking down....we are entering into a new paradigm. This is going to be a drawn out process that unfolds over multiple generations in which nothing seems to work quite right.

Why is capitalism breaking down? Because the symbiotic relationship between capital and labor is being severed. This has been going on for 30 years, but we have managed to keep things going through ever increasing private debt levels. We have hit the breaking point in terms of increasing private credit demand and so the jig is up. Its been an amazing 250 or so years, but a shift is coming.

[moda0306]

PS,

There is simultaneously a structural issue going on that revolves around wage stagnation and distribution if wealth. This is a more complex issue. It's not going to be helped, but further hurt, but depriving the economy of what it needs from a monetary standpoint.  It's not just the liquidity of our balance sheets, but the existence of enough net financial assets to begin with.

Some very smart, responsible, productive people bought houses for WAY too much in 2003-2007. This wasn't some issue of just rampant idiocy, but the same groupthink and recency bias that's led bad decisions and immoral decisions for centuries.  It's a problem, but not to some unique level.  We are an insanely productive country. What's holding us back is not the capacity to produce.

[Mark Leavy]

"Property is theft. Nobody 'owns' anything. When you die, it all stays here."

- George Carlin

I'm a huge fan of George Carlin, but this quote continues to bother me.

My whippet understands personal property.  He thinks I'm all that and more, but if I grab his chicken leg when he's not expecting it, he snaps and growls and chases me down.  When he steals my burger patties or beef jerky, he absolutely knows that he is stealing.  He sneaks up on me and runs like hell after leaping and snatching them out of my hand.  I snap and growl at him but I can't catch him.

[doodle]

"Property is theft. Nobody 'owns' anything. When you die, it all stays here."

- George Carlin

I'm a huge fan of George Carlin, but this quote continues to bother me.

My whippet understands personal property.  He thinks I'm all that and more, but if I grab his chicken leg when he's not expecting it, he snaps and growls and chases me down.  When he steals my burger patties or beef jerky, he absolutely knows that he is stealing.  He sneaks up on me and runs like hell after leaping and snatching them out of my hand.  I snap and growl at him but I can't catch him.

I think the quote more refers to that type of property (land and resources) that you did nothing to create. But, I guess you could extend that even further. I wonder if the chicken thought that its leg belonged to it? Or whether the cow thought it owned its own flesh? Funny how its property suddenly has become yours through the theft of its life.

[Libertarian666]

"Property is theft. Nobody 'owns' anything. When you die, it all stays here."

- George Carlin

I'm a huge fan of George Carlin, but this quote continues to bother me.

My whippet understands personal property.  He thinks I'm all that and more, but if I grab his chicken leg when he's not expecting it, he snaps and growls and chases me down.  When he steals my burger patties or beef jerky, he absolutely knows that he is stealing.  He sneaks up on me and runs like hell after leaping and snatching them out of my hand.  I snap and growl at him but I can't catch him.

I think the quote more refers to that type of property (land and resources) that you did nothing to create. But, I guess you could extend that even further. I wonder if the chicken thought that its leg belonged to it? Or whether the cow thought it owned its own flesh? Funny how its property suddenly has become yours through the theft of its life.

Yes, that is an interesting thought.

By the way, did you know that there are even humans who think they own their own lives and everything they produce through their own efforts, rather than being the property of the government?

They're called "libertarians".

[moda0306]

All achievement on earth is a result of a mix of your own skills, talents and efforts, and a bunch of natural resources that give us something to work with.

The former is a natural extension of an individual (though are often a result of education provided to you freely), but the latter is decidedly not.

[Pointedstick]

All achievement on earth is a result of a mix of your own skills, talents and efforts, and a bunch of natural resources that give us something to work with.

The former is a natural extension of an individual (though are often a result of education provided to you freely), but the latter is decidedly not.

Don't a bunch of your skills and talents come from the attentions of your parents and the culture you're raised in? I mean, why stop there? You mention education--often free--what about the safety we have that enables us to think and innovate rather than worrying about protecting ourselves all the time? What about the freely-available air that we breathe? Really if you want to go down this road we're 99.9% external processes and conditions that facilitate us. In the end I think you have to draw an arbitrary line somewhere to get away from this sort of absurdist position.

You have to admit that there's something deeply psychologically natural about the concept of property for humans. Even in illiterate human societies with no official codes of law, there has always been *some* kind of concept of property, and I'm talking about land too. Go into a society with loose or seemingly nonexistent real estate ownership customs and see what happens if you try to walk through someone's farmland, pick his crops, or hitch your horse in front of their front door.

[Libertarian666]

All achievement on earth is a result of a mix of your own skills, talents and efforts, and a bunch of natural resources that give us something to work with.

The former is a natural extension of an individual (though are often a result of education provided to you freely), but the latter is decidedly not.

My parents and I paid for my education, at least the part that was voluntary (college).

Q. What's the difference between a grade school inmate and a prison inmate?
A. The former doesn't get time off for good behavior.

As for natural resources, there are basically two options that I'm aware of:

1. They are "owned by everyone", which means "owned by some people with guns called 'government'",  or

2. They are owned by people or voluntarily formed groups of people who either
a. first located them and appropriated them from the state of nature, or
b. purchased them from others by voluntary transactions with those others

I prefer 2, and I can't see any benefit to 1.

[moda0306]

All achievement on earth is a result of a mix of your own skills, talents and efforts, and a bunch of natural resources that give us something to work with.

The former is a natural extension of an individual (though are often a result of education provided to you freely), but the latter is decidedly not.

Don't a bunch of your skills and talents come from the attentions of your parents and the culture you're raised in? I mean, why stop there? You mention education--often free--what about the safety we have that enables us to think and innovate rather than worrying about protecting ourselves all the time? What about the freely-available air that we breathe? Really if you want to go down this road we're 99.9% external processes and conditions that facilitate us. In the end I think you have to draw an arbitrary line somewhere to get away from this sort of absurdist position.

You have to admit that there's something deeply psychologically natural about the concept of property for humans. Even in illiterate human societies with no official codes of law, there has always been *some* kind of concept of property, and I'm talking about land too. Go into a society with loose or seemingly nonexistent real estate ownership customs and see what happens if you try to walk through someone's farmland, pick his crops, or hitch your horse in front of their front door.

PS,

Yes, many skills come from your parents and howy you were raised... however, skills are often also provided to individuals freely via public education.

And I think maybe it would serve us well to define "natural."  Humans, and all animals, have certain "natural" innate desires.  Not the least of which, for males of a species, would be to dominate and impregnate a female of their species to impregnate her, whether she's willing or not, and to fight other men to the death, if need be, to do so.  Also, any animal desires protecting territory it "naturally" deems to be its own.

When I say "natural," I'm starting from a position of indiidual sovereignty (doesn't really exist in nature... ask a deer if they think the wolf respects their individual sovereignty), and what a natural extension of that would be.  I see that it would be ridiculous to try to detatch an individuals "soul" from their physical body, so I see a "natural" connection to that physical entity.  Also, most of the skills one develops is "naturally" connected to their sovereign self.  I could even see claiming some small amount of dwelling as being "natural."  However, owning 400 acres of farmland, or 3 miles of beach-front property?  This is a social structure that has some benefits (as does public highways or sewers), but it's not inherantly naturally connected to a sovereign individual.  It requires someone carrying a gun to claim something that's not theirs.

I guess we could talk about "natural" traits in terms of what animalistic instincts we may have, but I thought the whole idea of establishing "rights" was to separate us from our animal instincts.  Therefore, we would probably do well for ourselves to start with this idea of individual sovereignty.

I think private property is a great social engineering tool, but it's not nearly as much based in individual sovereignty as some would maintain.

[moda0306]

All achievement on earth is a result of a mix of your own skills, talents and efforts, and a bunch of natural resources that give us something to work with.

The former is a natural extension of an individual (though are often a result of education provided to you freely), but the latter is decidedly not.

My parents and I paid for my education, at least the part that was voluntary (college).

Q. What's the difference between a grade school inmate and a prison inmate?
A. The former doesn't get time off for good behavior.

As for natural resources, there are basically two options that I'm aware of:

1. They are "owned by everyone", which means "owned by some people with guns called 'government'",  or

2. They are owned by people or voluntarily formed groups of people who either
a. first located them and appropriated them from the state of nature, or
b. purchased them from others by voluntary transactions with those others

I prefer 2, and I can't see any benefit to 1.

That was nice that you had someone to help raise you as a sovereign individual and pay for your education.  I had the same luck.

To your other points, I have a few questions:

- Do you see all property in the United States as essentially "owned by the government?"  Or closer to your other society?

If the former, do you own a car?  A home?  A 401(k)?  Do you not see these as being owned by you in some way?  Do you not voluntarily stay in the U.S. and continue to accumulate wealth within a tax structure that you've had years to understand? 

- What does "first located them and appoprated them from the state of nature" mean?

I'm assuming you mean find it, ignore the Indians around you, and start farming it in a completely unnatural activity called agriculture?  Sounds overly convenient and arbitrary to me.

[clacy]

I'll be the first to admit that I'm an Obama hater and I do think he and his policies have exacerbated the problem,........ but there is something far more structural going on here, IMO.

I think the big problems leading to high unemployment and even higher underemployment are:

A- Demographic changes

B- Globalization

[Libertarian666]

All achievement on earth is a result of a mix of your own skills, talents and efforts, and a bunch of natural resources that give us something to work with.

The former is a natural extension of an individual (though are often a result of education provided to you freely), but the latter is decidedly not.

My parents and I paid for my education, at least the part that was voluntary (college).

Q. What's the difference between a grade school inmate and a prison inmate?
A. The former doesn't get time off for good behavior.

As for natural resources, there are basically two options that I'm aware of:

1. They are "owned by everyone", which means "owned by some people with guns called 'government'",  or

2. They are owned by people or voluntarily formed groups of people who either
a. first located them and appropriated them from the state of nature, or
b. purchased them from others by voluntary transactions with those others

I prefer 2, and I can't see any benefit to 1.

That was nice that you had someone to help raise you as a sovereign individual and pay for your education.  I had the same luck.

To your other points, I have a few questions:

- Do you see all property in the United States as essentially "owned by the government?"  Or closer to your other society?

Essentially owned by the government.

If the former, do you own a car?  A home?  A 401(k)?  Do you not see these as being owned by you in some way?  Do you not voluntarily stay in the U.S. and continue to accumulate wealth within a tax structure that you've had years to understand? 

I "own" those things so long as the government allows me to do so. They can take them away at any time, for any or no reason, without my being able to do anything about it. Thus, they are the actual owners of those things.

As for staying in the US, I don't have the option of moving somewhere I would like better. And even if I were able to do so in the future, the US government would still insist on their right to force me to report to them on my assets, income, and so on, unless and until I was able to arrange a different citizenship and drop my US citizenship.

In other words, they own me.

- What does "first located them and appropriated them from the state of nature" mean?

I'm assuming you mean find it, ignore the Indians around you, and start farming it in a completely unnatural activity called agriculture?  Sounds overly convenient and arbitrary to me.

Almost everything on Earth already has an owner at the present time. The possibility of locating and appropriating new resources applied in the past and may apply in the future in the case of space travel. I was including it for completeness.

[MediumTex]

Without property rights, nothing would ever be created, built, invented or discovered, other than whatever the hobbyists of the world happen to stumble across in their garages.

Clearly we don't take property with us when we die, but the creative effort that benefits us all flows from basic expectations about property rights.

I've never heard an argument against property rights that didn't come down to the desire to take something from someone and not have it simply be called theft.  No one ever argues that private property should simply be made available to everyone; rather, they are usually arguing that someone else should own a portion of the current property owners' property.  That's not an argument against property rights, that's an argument for theft.

[moda0306]

MT,

What if it isn't the current property "owner's" in the first place?  Is it still called theft?

And there are people that reject property anywhere near its current form. They're called anarchists.

Lastly, if your best argument for property rights is that "nothing would get created," then That's just a social engineering argument no different than "if we didn't have a government nothing would get created." 

Private property is a social construct.  A phenomenal one, IMO, but it's not one built on individual sovereignty.

[Pointedstick]

Lastly, if your best argument for property rights is that "nothing would get created," then That's just a social engineering argument no different than "if we didn't have a government nothing would get created." 

Private property is a social construct.  A phenomenal one, IMO, but it's not one built on individual sovereignty.

We're a social species. I'm not sure how labeling something a social construct de-legitimizes it in any way. Social construct though it may be, private property happens to be a fairly universal one that nearly every human species has created and recognized in some capacity. I mean, way more historical societies have recognized some form of property ownership than have recognized the right of free expression, women's right to control their reproduction, or a right to carry weapons.

I would say that something about the concept of property ownership seems very deeply imprinted in the human psyche.

[doodle]

Without property rights, nothing would ever be created, built, invented or discovered, other than whatever the hobbyists of the world happen to stumble across in their garages.

Clearly we don't take property with us when we die, but the creative effort that benefits us all flows from basic expectations about property rights.

I've never heard an argument against property rights that didn't come down to the desire to take something from someone and not have it simply be called theft.  No one ever argues that private property should simply be made available to everyone; rather, they are usually arguing that someone else should own a portion of the current property owners' property.  That's not an argument against property rights, that's an argument for theft.

The basic problem I see is that humans are trying to apply the manmade conceptual framework of "property" to a natural reality where such a concept doesnt exist. When this human created concept functions in harmony with circumstances, things work okay. When it doesnt function harmoniously or gets out of sync with circumstances, there is friction.

I tend to think that the idea of "property" is a bit of a flawed concept that negates the underlying symbiotic relationship of everything in this universe. Nature doesnt seem to work on this concept of property. The rain waters the plants and the sun gives them energy to grow and yet there is no economic transaction there. The rain doesnt bill the plants for its "work" or assert owernership over its transformation of hydrogen and oxygen into "wetness". In turn, the plants dont bill the animals for the food they provide. In fact, the plants benefit mutually from the animals eating them because this process either pollinates them in the case of bees, or spreads their seeds encapsulated in a fertile dung heap.

Maybe the concept of property is necessary for our society to function, but we shouldnt be surprised when the disconnect between our concepts and reality leads to a bumpy ride.

[doodle]

You might argue that the concept of property exists within other animal species as well. I think the essential difference though is that with animals, there is no concept of "property rights". If an animal is going to assert claim over something, they must actively defend it. This immeditely limits the scope of what they can lay claim to. Among humans, a wealthy man can purchase a ton of land and just let it lie fallow resting on the protection that the rest of us provide to him through our socially supported military and police force. A single man therefore can amass a great deal more property than the natural order would permit him only because he can rely on social institutions to protect it for him. The irony is that if this man is a libertarian, he will berate the existence of those institutions that allowed him to amass such great wealth to begin with.

[Pointedstick]

Maybe the concept of property is necessary for our society to function, but we shouldnt be surprised when the disconnect between our concepts and reality leads to a bumpy ride.

I think you hit the nail on the head. But like it or not, a few thousand years ago, the human race moved decidedly out of sync with nature by inventing agriculture, building stationary dwellings, domesticating animals, practicing metallurgy, and so on and so forth. You personally may have fantasies about being a propertyless hunter-gatherer neolithic tribesman, but most people do not, and that means that those most people require some kind of framework for property rights in order to function within a civilizational human social unit.

We have many models for property, all with negative consequences. Putting it all under the control of a central authority (communism) leads to poverty, stagnation, resource wastage, and environmental destruction.

Putting much of it under private authority (mixed economy capitalism) produces much prosperity and wealth, but does not appear to do a lot to reduce the ecological consequences seen in a communist property arrangement.

Specifically attempting to reduce the ecological consequences by putting more of it under a central authority with ecological goals (eco-socialism) harms the productive aspects.

We have never tried putting it all under private authority (private society anarchism) so we don't really know what that would look like. So that's a risk too.

In the end, we have to pick our poison. Being part of a civilization means defining and enforcing property in some way, and I think it behooves us to do so in a way that's conducive to our own happiness. Now you can always opt out of civilization, but then you don't get the benefit of participating in this forum.