Comments on: “believe the data”

By: Avatar and Academics | Reflexivity

Avatar and Academics | Reflexivity — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:57:18 +0000

[...] SEMP suggests the furor is evidence of addiction, an intriguing hypothesis that reminds me of how I interpreted the panic of the monied class in the early days of the financial [...]

By: Steph

Steph — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 09:31:01 +0000

My apologies for the break in solid dialogic turn-taking, I've been tossing a few quick comments in this discussion of economics so as not to lose these contributions. Here's an op-ed that includes figures of the real incomes of plumbers in Ohio, and a bit of historical contextualization about forty years of Republican party strategy and income/inflation 2000-2007. I am thinking that Obama's economic proposals look better and better: a return, albeit under a changed macroeconomy, to some of the structural basics that enabled the steady household income increases of the fifties and sixties. Concurrently, as Manimal suggests, we have to figure out better ways of balancing our incomes/wealth with that of workers the world over. Is anyone already familiar with the international implications of Obama's economic proposals? A related blogpost includes thoughts on a discussion over lunch with the CEO of a major financial services company.

By: Steph

Steph — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 09:13:41 +0000

By: Steph

Steph — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:45:23 +0000

I’m impressed by this statement from David Brooks as he continues Thinking About Obama:
“It’s not willpower or self-discipline he shows as much as an organized unconscious.”
We definitely need to organize our collective unconscious, and the more individuals operating from this basis the greater our chances of making wiser (more comprehensive) decisions than we have in the past.

By: manimal347

manimal347 — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:15:33 +0000

You’ve raised some great points. In reference to your comments on the Hadron Collector, I agree that US policy is often shaped by first describing what we want to do, then figuring out how to accomplish it, instead of looking at historical trends and choosing a solution, however ideologically inconvienent, that seems to fit the years of economic data we’ve accumulated. This is due to the polarizing of the US, something I partially attribute to symbols coming to BE the objects they denote. Hence why everyone loves “democracy,” and “freedom,” hates “terrorism” and “greed,” but can never seem to agree on how to define these abstract concepts. They’re just thinks that invoke rage or fuzzy warmth, but almost because of the words and what associations we mentally leap to, as opposed to concrete (or amorphous) definitions that lie behind them. The outcome of this is circular hilarity like “terrorism is bad because it’s terrorism” and “freedom is good because we all love to be free.” I think you know who I speak of, but in truth, it affects us all.
As for coming out of the Great Depression, I’m still confused what to think, but my marginal knowledge of economics tells me to make a comparison. There’s the idea that if workers make too little, an economy will stagnate, because they can’t afford to but the factory’s output in full, causing a recession. In the depression, as we know, people were maxed out on layaway and store credit; sound familiar? Like then, we have no more to borrow on; no more cash ready to sop up factory output and keep the economy expanding. At the same time, like in the years preceding the depression, massive fortunes were made by shuffling paper- paper that eventually because wildly divorced from the property that backed it. This is even more so today with head-spinning investment games run by companies like AIG. Eventually, the market corrects itself, and people lose money. Housing was just one part of this adjustment of paper to capital, and indeed came to signify the contraction of the economy as a whole.
As for long-term stability? You did note the fifties and sixties were years of booming economies, no? They were also years of quickly rising salaries; everyone did better, even the marginally employed. That means they had more money to buy things, further creating more jobs, expanding the economy, and hopefully, recieving even better compensation based upon expanding profits. In the seventies, stagflation set in because workers wages kept declining and thus less was consumed. I think it works as an anecdote for the belief that the wealth of the rich still depends upon the status of a Nation (or these days, world’s) poor. Something to think about; we love to extract the maximum value from every worker, ala China, but we also need worker as consumer to buy what they make.

By: Steph

Steph — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:20:46 +0000

Thanks to a UMass Communication Department professor for sharing another scholarly article. In "Old Wine in a New Bottle: Subprime Mortgage Crisis-Causes and Consequences," Michael Mah-Hui Lim details that it is the ". . . financial strategies based on market innovations that have heightened, not reduced, systemic risks and financial instability [which] led to the crisis. In addition, the underlying structural causes of the crisis are located in the loose monetary policies of central banks, deregulation, and excess liquidity in financial markets . . ."

By: Steph

Steph — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 07:04:36 +0000

Here's another article with a broad yet specific historical sweep: A little problem with capitalism.

By: Steph

Steph — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 06:59:02 +0000

Grin, yes, I meant softer as a science in comparison to the science of physics, but your point is well-taken: the economic policies of our day range from the unkind to the violent.
The challenge of softer sciences is the fact of greater latitude for interpretation. In physics, the boundaries of an experiment are pretty well-fixed, and the definitions of the variables just about immutable. In economics, people draw the lines in all kinds of different ways, coming up with results and findings that do not apply across variation. If we’re going to have meaningful dialogue about priorities in economic policy, some agreements have to be made about which boundaries (particular fields of investment, for instance) are going to be used, and which factors (whose lifetime savings and/or profit, for instance) are going to be used as the standard of measurement.

By: Tumbleweed

Tumbleweed — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:13:52 +0000

Watch the metaphors: soft economics? Only cuddly and kind for CEO’s…