ye gawds by martingale (2.00 / 0) #22 Mon Feb 26, 2007 at 04:48:23 AM EST
Now, again, you're denying any increase in wealth increases employment, which means you deny that any of the money saved goes to spending or investment. Instead you say it all becomes tied up in real estate or inflation.
Huh? I realize you're looking for straws, but where do I say that? I don't:
That's an exceedingly complicated question. It might also end up tied in real estate, it might end up nowhere due to inflation, etc. It all depends how you account for things.
So in trying to catch me being inconsistent, you're now saying that I think all money ends up in inflation or real estate. There's no other options? Remember, you were asking me why I think your simple wealth => jobs implication is false.
If you're saying wealth creation does not create jobs, where do you think the money goes?
I've given you some cases when it's false, what more do you need? You're the one who's insisting they aren't right because neither one alone explains everything. That's good debating tactic, but meaningless as I'm not the one claiming great things from wealth, you are.

Now what is inflation? It's the raising of prices. You're arguing that lowering of prices has no benefit because... it raises prices. That's not a "complex accounting problem", that's an absurdity.
Again you're claiming things I did not say. Where did I say there's no benefit to lowering prices? You still seem to misunderstand the exceedingly simple tactic I'm using: pointing out counterexamples. Obviously, I'm going to be choosing examples which go against your claims. There would be no point in picking an example which supports your claims. Yet that doesn't mean those counterexamples exhaust the possibilities. The world is complex, you're shooting yourself in the foot by simplifying too much.

Which leaves your other explanation: all the money becomes "tied in real estate". Now it's possible to buy real estate and not derive any benefit from it. You could choose not to rent it out, not to run a business for it, not to live in it and save rent (the rent saved going back into spending and investment again). That's a pretty stupid thing to do though. Yet you're now arguing that all the money saved from globalization goes into there. That's another absurdity.
See above.

I'm getting a strong impression that don't even have a minimal grasp on the basics of what you're trying to talk about.
Either that, or somebody isn't clear on the rules of logic.

You're making the same some-for-all error yet again. All I need to make the case for trade to create jobs is that the increase in the number of haircuts demanded leads to some level of increase in the number of hairdressing jobs.
Why don't you then. Tomorrow I'm off to have my hair cut. Show that leads to an extra hairdressing job.

in the number of hairdressing jobs. You're coming up with reasons why the increase might be a lesser increase than in an absolutely perfect market.
No, I'm coming up with reasons why your claim that the supply and and demand curve argument increases jobs. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. The world is not that simple.

However, the argument you're trying to make, which no Neoclassical nor Keynesian nor Marxian economist would agree with, is that these little bits of friction somehow absolutely cancel out any increase in the number of hairdressers. Yet you can't explain why.
Jumping to a simple but wrong conclusion yet again. Where am I claiming that friction absolutely cancels out job creation? I am certainly claiming that it happens. Do you understand that my counterexample is about the short term, and that longterm equilibria are mostly meaningless when a system is prone to radical political changes and other unmodeled forces? Are you even aware of the difference between the timescale of equilibrium (=long) and friction (=short), and that this kind of analysis can't allow external factors to stirr things up in between? Oops, that's another classical, and oh so unrealistic (says I), economic assumption: equilibrium analysis yields correct conclusions.

Now, onto the science argument. [...] This is the opposite of the case. Economic data is constantly being created and recorded. An economist can start a new study collecting any kind of new data he chooses to collect. An astronomer has no control over what the sky does.
Heh, if I chain you in front of a television that plays MTV all day every day, you'll be exposed to a lot of data too. So what? It's of no value if you want to watch the history channel.

Merely collecting data is not what a controlled experiment is. Economists start studies all the time, and they do so in highly uncontrolled conditions, while trusting that statistics and long term equilibria ("econometrics") will compensate for the underlying flaws. And lo and behold, they justify all this by making more assumptions on how people supposedly behave!

There's simply no comparison with hard science.

Furthermore, governments are constantly making economic decisions, based on economics. These consist of experiments: changing the economy according to theories.
Great! Do you truly believe that, say, New Labour has made any decision at all in the last ten years that would qualify as disinterested peer reviewed economic experimentation? Heh, I agree that they've changed the economy according to theories all right, I just wouldn't call them scientific theories.

An astronomer can look at different parts of the sky, but he cannot change it. Nor can he collect arbitrary data from new stars that appear, though an economist can get new data all the time.
I suspect that you don't understand what devising an experiment (step 1) and collecting data (step 2) means.
--
$E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
[ Parent ]

You're still ducking the some/all issue by R Mutt (2.00 / 0) #23 Wed Feb 28, 2007 at 03:45:36 PM EST
You seem to be trying to attack a statement I'm not making: that every single penny of wealth created in an economy must go to increasing employment.

That's not necessary. All that's necessary is some of the wealth created goes to create jobs.

You haven't come up with any counterexamples to that at all! The best you can do is come up with an example of why the increase may be slightly slower than in an ideal case. Even so, jobs are still created by trade.

Similarly, you're trying to argue that created wealth somehow does not go to spending or investment. You haven't given any examples to that except inflation and property. The inflation example simply doesn't make any sense since we're talking wealth not simply money: more hair is being cut, more coal mined, more steel refined in the trade case to the no-trade case; so with no more money being printed it doesn't make sense that inflation would be increased. In that case we're talking deflation not inflation: same amount of money to buy more stuff means lower prices, not higher.

The only example that might make any sense at all is the idea that created wealth goes to unproductive property, that is not used for anything. But even that falls apart against the some/all issue. If any wealth goes elsewhere, then the central point is correct and increased wealth creates some jobs.

Your lone example is not a counter-example. If there is any mixture of where the wealth goes: even if 99.9% of wealth goes to buy unproductive property and 0.1% going to spending or investment, then some jobs are created. For your argument to work, exactly 100% needs to go there.

You need to show that absolutely no created wealth goes to spending or investment for your argument to work; and obviously enough, you can't.

Merely collecting data is not what a controlled experiment is. Economists start studies all the time, and they do so in highly uncontrolled conditions, while trusting that statistics and long term equilibria ("econometrics") will compensate for the underlying flaws. And lo and behold, they justify all this by making more assumptions on how people supposedly behave!
...
I suspect that you don't understand what devising an experiment (step 1) and collecting data (step 2) means.
Now, long back in the depths of time, I did do a Physics degree, and while I specialized elsewhere in my final year, I did do a fair bit of astrophysics. And absolutely: I don't understand what your conception of a "controlled experiment" is in relation to it. Astronomers and astrophysicists do an awful lot of modelling, and an awful lot of observation... but virtually no experimentation.

As far as I can see, you've pulled the notion of controlled experimental astrophysics straight out of your arse to try to justify your beliefs.

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