US, Japan & Euroland Governments Incapable of Solving Problems
A few comment by Biderman.
The biggest problem the developed world is facing is that the governments and banking institutions that got us into the present mess are not capable of solving the problems they themselves created. Not even with new leadership.
Why? Not enough income growth and too much government spending. That is obvious looking at the combined income statements and balance sheets for the United States, Euroland and Japan. The bottom line is that the combined take home pay, whether taxed or not, of everyone in the United States, Europe and Japan is not sufficient to generate enough taxes to pay all current government expenditures. Let me repeat that, the developed worlds take home pay is not sufficient to generate enough taxes to pay for current government spending.
Video below
Trends in U.S. Military Spending
A few interesting facts and charts on US military spending by Dinah Walker.
|
Full reading here.
Spending Problem? Paul Ryan is the Spending Problem
Guest post by Azizonomics.
Paul Ryan talks like a small government conservative:
Too much government inevitably leads to bad government. When government grows too much and extends beyond its limits, it usually does things poorly.
And the WSJ is pumping up Ryan as an antidote to the growth of government:
Ryan represents the GOP’s new generation of reformers. More than any other politician, the House Budget Chairman has defined those stakes well as a generational choice about the role of government and whether America will once again become a growth economy or sink into interest-group dominated decline.
But Ryan himself has been responsible for a lot of that government growth. He loyally voted for all the big government programs George W. Bush ensconced into law — Medicare Part D, often described as the largest expansion of the welfare state since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society; the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA; the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the PATRIOT Act and the NDAA; the TARP bailout of Wall Street; the bailout of General Motors. So long as it was debt-fuelled spending authorised by a Republican (and during the Bush years, there was an awful lot of debt-fuelled spending authorised by Republicans) Ryan was out voting for it.
GDP = C + I + G + (X – M) and the Illusion of Wealth
By World Complex.
A few weeks ago we discussed the growth of the “virtual” economy. The argument was that metal consumption (in particular copper and zinc) grew in accordance with global GDP until the mid ’70′s, after which metal consumption grew markedly more slowly than did global GDP. Our thesis was that global GDP (the “official” economy) has at least partially increased by management of perceptions and addition of a lot of economic “activity” which does not increase wealth.
It has troubled me in the past that I could file lawsuits against present and past associates, who in turn might file suits against me. In the very best scenario all that would happen is a redistribution of existing wealth, yet all the legal fees would be additive to GDP. Yet no wealth would be created (except from the lawyers’ perspective) and a great deal would be lost. It has always seemed to me that economic activity of this type forms a component of GDP the magnitude of which is unknown.
Latest comments