Raise the Hammer

JonC >> For reference, my North Korea example was tongue in cheek. Military expenditures being so high, that the remainder of government spending has to be low. Wasted joke.

So are you admitting that the current North Korean economy has nothing in common with the U.S. economy between 1950-1969?

>> Why blame Rae and not Mulroney?

I have already acknowledged that Chretien (a Liberal), did a better job than Mulroney. Will you acknowledge that Harris did a better job than Rae?

>> Economic events are set into advance years and decades in advance. I know you don't get "things" but that's how it is.

So then the people blaming Bush II and Harper for the poor showing in the economy are also wrong? Should we actually be blaming Chretien and Clinton (they were both in control a decade ago). Furthermore, instead of blaming our local politicians for what is happening today, should we have to wait a decade before we say anything? I mean, how do we know if what they're doing is bad or not, if as you say, it takes decades to find out.

>> When you compare the 90s to this decade, you are completely clueless that the wealth of the 90s and the early part of this year was created due to deregulation leading to inflated values.

First of all, the growth I am referring to is real output (GDP), not stock market values or home prices. In the nineties, real output increased much faster than today. GDP refers to the overall goods and services produced in the country. What you are talking about are rising asset values based on an expansion of the money supply, two different things, do you understand the difference?

>> Comparing your hare-brained ideas (or any ideas about social sciences) to physics is idiotic.

This is what you said >> You can only grasp two maybe three variables at a time, I get it, but just give up that you ever have any hope of understanding statistics let alone economics.

How many variables can you grasp at one time? Furthermore, what is the optimal level of variables one should grasp at one time? Is it 5, 20, 1,000,000? How many variables did Bob Rae, or Barack Obama grasp when they made their spending decisions? Barack Obama had been in office about 35 days when he allowed congress to write his budget, was that a good idea? Was enough time given for the massive computer and statistical calculations to be done on every single spending proposal? How do you think the statistics accounted for a study on pig manure?

>> Hard sciences are verifiable and can be reduced to simple phenomena. Social phenomena (and economics is a social phenomena) can't.

So if economics can't be reduced to simple phenomena, they why are you so sure I am wrong? At most you should say my ideas are a possibility, but that no one knows for sure. Or how about tax rates? How do you know that lowering them will reduce revenue? I mean if these things can't be verified, then you have no facts to back up the argument against lowering them, right?