News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
I somehow suspect that this thing about the wealth effect is total and utter bullshit.
Just like trickle down economics.
What's crazy is the reason people believe in it, is total coincidence.
Bill Clinton thought it was a good idea and republicans just implemented it wrong, and then when he was president the dotcom boom happened and everyone gave credit to Clinton's policy. It stopped being a conversation on if it worked, and became how best to implement it.
Like when Biden did the "child predators" bill, it wasn't harsh punishments that got crime under control, it was the normal effect of banning leaded gasoline 20 years earlier. But we're left with two "tough on crime" options even though that approach just doesn't work.
In both cases it's reminiscent of cargo cults, a good thing happened, so we just repeat what we were doing when it happened and expect the good thing again.
But with how long political careers are and how slow science moves, by the time we can prove it, they've built huge careers off the false assumption they had something to do with it. For them to admit they've been wrong, they have to realize they spent decades doing the wrong thing and while they had good intentions they've been causing harm.
That's a big ask for anyone, but especially for someone whose over 60.
So they ignore all evidence and double down even harder
Interesting that you reference Bill Clinton, because he is actually on record on realizing some stuff he did was the wrong choice. Specifically the idea of treating food as commodities and not a human right. Not that that invalidates your point, just an interesting note.
Clinton was 61 years old in 2008.
Uhhh...
I mean it's good he's admitted to some mistakes.
But I really don't see how African food subsidies applies to domestic economic policy....
Uhhh...
The US drives how the world economy works, and literally bullies other countries into how it wants it to be. We exported "trickle down economics" and other bullshit ideas to the whole world, and Clinton's Presidency had its hands in all of that. The reason we were able to export such policy is because it seemed like it was working domestically and worldwide, so the Clinton administration was driving a lot of what happened in worldwide economics as well as domestic economics because of the same cargo cult.
I really was only pointing out that he managed to make statements about it after 60. I actually think it's easier for these folks to admit it as they get older. See: every US Republican who turns around to criticize the party after they retire from politics.
He just said it was a bad idea to hamstring African food production as a requirement for them getting aid...
That was a terrible decision, and he has admitted that.
But it has zero to do with trickle down economics, and was in no way what he built his career/legacy after.
Like, did you just Google "Bill Clinton apologized" and grabbed the first link that want about blowjobs?
Jesus Christ, dude. I'm not out here fellating Clinton, way to fucking take it personally and make it personal.
I literally agreed with you that his cargo cult allowed his administration to drive economic policy. Are you stupid or just a jerk?
What?
I thought it would have been obvious I was referring to the Monica Lewinsky incident...
But I'm sorry, it's clear I'm not able to communicate to you in a way you understand.
Why don't you be a pussy and block them? Seems you're great at that! Mwahahaha
I'm not confused, I know exactly what you were referring to. You've decided to ignore half of what I said because you think I'm praising Clinton.
Do you usually argue with people that are in general agreement with you?
Who's. Whose is for possessive, like: whose beer is this? It's the guy whose car is outside.
They mean spend on more stocks. Which makes the economy grow. Not spend on goods and services.
The economic models don't include distribution.
Economy is doing fine. Eat your dirt, peasant.
The stock market and bank-bonds are how factories buy more equipment so that peasants can run that equipment (ie: more jobs).
Farms don't run on peasants alone today, they need fertilizers, tractors, combines and other machines. These machines cost money, and the easiest way to raise money for such machines is from the stock market. (IE: sell stock, buy machines, distribute profits from those machines back to the shareholders). Shareholders then buy more stock from more companies, and the cycle grows.
Now maybe its a bit consumerist to be overly focusing on our production + consumption. But there's a good reason people talk about it: its the core of our economic growth strategy. Encouraging the "peasants" to participate in this through 401k plans (tax-advantaged accounts that encourage stock-buying) is one trick we have, albeit flawed but its one of the better plans that we got.
Of all methods for managing food production, capitalist free markets are one of the worst. Farmers must purchase everything to grow the crops, including the seeds and machinery. The machinery for modern farming alone costs $500k when 40 years old, used, and broken. If a large area, say the Midwest, has extremely fertile land capable of growing most crops then farmers will incentivized to purchase the machinery to grow a crop that is profitable in the moment. See the problem yet?
The farmers will then be financially forced into continuing to grow that crop, even if it's no longer profitable to do so. The government then needs to provide assistance to these farmers: subsidies, research into utilizing thousands of tons of a single crop, exporting most of the crop grown, etc.
Due to the free market, farmers in the Midwest started growing corn because it was profitable during and after WW2. Now the Midwest grows seas of corn and soybeans, because government subsidies mean that growing any other crop is an extremely risky and very expensive. The market needs to hold for multiple years to pay for the seeds and machinery, because everything about farming is expensive. Rather than take the risk, farmers use the machinery they have to purchase the subsidized crops we don't need because they need money to buy food that was imported rather than grown locally.
There's a few great leap forwards that suggest otherwise. Government mandating farming (or a lack of farming) also leads to problems.
For better or worse, today's farming relies upon very expensive equipment to reach the necessary yields. It doesn't matter what system of government or markets you use, you cannot get around the $Million+ equipment needed for today's farms.
The only question remaining is how do you fund such equipment? Capitalist markets provide us the shareholder + bondholder as two classes of investors. Bonds require a %yield paid ever year, while shareholders are largely content with (realistic) promises of future profits. If shareholders think one kind of crop is better, they will invest their money into different companies or equipment. If one kind of crop (and equipment for that crop) loses value, then shares will drop, shareholders will stop investing, and the shareholders will move on to better profits.
Just a few years ago, I saw shareholders get together to give Elon Musk $5 Billion to build the Nevada Gigafactory. For better or worse, shareholders here in USA are excellent at raising money. Now the decisions of shareholders (ex: trusting Elon Musk) are suspect. But no one can deny the huge efficacy at raising billions of $$$$ at a time with this methodology. https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/tesla-tsla-increases-secondary-public-185506659.html?_fsig=mgd.tScfuG49PuaFrUFmzA--%7EA
Now... shareholders are fucking stupid. That's the problem. But at least there's a lot of shareholders, so some shareholders are going to make the right decisions. And some smart shareholders might be smart enough to invest into the correct things (ex: an underrated crop), leading into greater profits.
Sounds like you're speaking off of ignorance. Farm collectivization has led to some severe famines, but after the collectivization was completed those nations rarely saw food insecurity. China still hasn't had major food insecurity since being collectivized. I think there are ways to prevent that from happening, because it hasn't happened in every country that collectivized the farmland.
Stop trying to force things into terms of monetary exchange, because it doesn't fit for everything. The government can provide the machine, since the US has monetary sovereignty (doesn't owe a lot of debt to other countries) in a fiat currency. This means that as long as the federal government has access to the labor and resources, it can afford to do so by issuing debt to itself and paying it off with the next year's run of fiat currency.
Now, it's impractical and wasteful to manufacture all of the different combine heads for all of the different crops that could be grown by every farmer. Establish a library of sorts where farmers can utilize these machines without cost, and can be repaired without downtime (by using a different one in good repair while the broken one is fixed). Food can then be grown and distributed locally and based on need. This will also reduce overproduction and reduce emissions to transfer food. It also makes every place more resistant to natural disaster and disrupted supply lines.
China imported $104.6 billion in food alone just last year, mostly from the USA.
They're not the example you think they are. They are increasingly reliant upon imports (and USA's capitalist system) for food security.
Now there's plenty of downsides to capitalism. But collecing fucktons of money to fund $Billion ventures is one of the good things that capitalism does exceptionally well. You're arguing against literally Capitalism's greatest strength here. Go poke a hole at all the other problems capitalism causes, you aren't going to make progress on this front.
BTW: China's increasingly grown capitalist themselves, reliant upon huge bonds and stock markets to raise funds like the USA does. The debate is over, capital markets are widespread even in former Soviet Bloc's and former Communist countries. And its been like that for decades.
Please read what I said again. The whole thing. I'm saying that the federal government of US doesn't need to raise any money at all because of modern monetary theory.
The agricultural sector should be subsidised instead of relying on the stock or the futures or commodities market to survive.
And this whole free trade agreement bullshit should stop.
I don't think that is a meaningful metric. The least wealthy 50% should be spending money on necessities like food and housing. If someone without thousands of dollars in discretionary cash said "I'm going to start investing" I'd call them a fucking idiot.