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Un-rigging the US economy?

Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel Prize winning Amercian economist) recently published this article in Scientific American. Just read it today:

The American Economy Is Rigged - Scientific American

It's long, but with a read IMO.

Question is -- how might we best "un-rig" our economy?

Meah.. Well. Karl Marx actually identified the PROBLEM rather well. It was the solution that proved as bad as the disease if not worse.

This writer has it backwards.

He's cherry picked his examples - yes we do have a problem - with the agenda in front of the research.

Ex: Only one Toyota dealer in a town and people HAVE to patronize them for repairs? It's only a G-damned ToyOdour, not a Saturn five! WTF does he think Carquest, Advance Auto, Rockauto, Harbour Freight and others are living off the back of?

There's more, but I didn't see the point in wasting any more time on THIS guy.
Nice if we found someone who did his homework before he built the agenda.

There really are things in dire need of a fix. Confusing what they are with the means or the miscreants to wish a pre-set outcome is not a lot of help.

Nobel prize winning? WTF does that mean these days anyway? ISTR they gave Barack Obama a Nobel prize for something or other. Did he even do anything anyone much remembers? Will the same lot give TRUMP a "Nobel"? Who is fooling whom, there?

3/4 CW
 
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What his Noble work was about...
Information asymmetry and non Pareto Efficiencies.

Not just some idealog.
Quick wiki for those that want to know something without doing math and reading and understanding decades of learning.

Joseph Stiglitz - Wikipedia

Try not to conflate 19th century theories and boogie men with moder evidenced based analysis. Implying that some how improving efficiency and oppurtunity in an economy is means pitchforks and grey apartment towers is a false dichotomy.
 
The "homework" part might be Thomas Piketty.

Regardless.. it's too shallow. Can't even blame wingnuts for sloth.

But there you have it. PART of our problem is EVERYBODY is looking for instant-gratification, even if it is instant-gratification platform to criticize the other "side".

Who wants to dig-in and - for example - assess what percentage of the economy is going off-radar as it did with Spain?

The "little people" get a f**king, they go around the "big people" rather than waste time in fights they can't see carrying the pain of even attempting to contest.

How many private jet aircraft can one man eat at a single sitting at table anyway? And why should I care if Bill Gates eats peacock tongues and shits in a solid gold toilet so long as I have a clean toilet that JFW and steak now and then that I CAN eat?

The "economists' are only looking at their brand of scorecards. The "real" game goes on around them using different metrics.

Ever see anybody carry-off a zillion acres of farmland to heaven with them? Or try to evict squatters?

No need of armed revolutions. Folks just invent new rules and go around the fossils.

You've crack up in mirth you had any idea what 20 through 35 year-olds are doing in China!

"Central Government? Yes. I think we still have one. Have they DONE anything we should be paying attention to? "Scuse me - got a customer on the line . . we can discuss.. what was it? some other day?"

Starting new businesses, chasing-up opportunities and by the hundreds of millions of players.

"Politics?" You may as well try to get the folks running the bulls at Pamplona to stop for a sound bite interview on the psychology behind medieval Spanish anti-Semitic Poetry (knew a guy as did his doctoral Thesis on exactly that, BTW)

:D
 
Regardless.. it's too shallow. . . .

:D

Not sure that even Scientific American readers would be up for a more in depth look at where the US economy is headed. Five graphs might be enough . . .

Personally, I found the contrasts with both the US as it used to be and other countries interesting.

Least satisfying bit is that Stiglitz promises a "what we can do about it" and comes up a bit short. Take the $$$ out of politics, better fund education, keep financial interests from screwing people, that's about it.
 
Pareto distribution.

10% of the population are responsible for 90% of the production.

Equal outcomes from equal opportunity is an "inhuman" expectation.

The suggested solutions are quite sophomoric.

What will it take?

Stop rewarding "actors" such fame and renumeration.
Reward local control (In my small town, the "Toy-oda" shop owner that overcharged would be publicly ostracized at town meeting every year until out of business!)
 
Pareto distribution.

10% of the population are responsible for 90% of the production.

Equal outcomes from equal opportunity is an "inhuman" expectation.

The suggested solutions are quite sophomoric.

What will it take?

Stop rewarding "actors" such fame and renumeration.
Reward local control (In my small town, the "Toy-oda" shop owner that overcharged would be publicly ostracized at town meeting every year until out of business!)
Reward local control...that’s a laugh.
Nothing is locally controlled except the school board.
The rest is ren by external economic forces outside your control...unless you are Amish.
 
Pareto distribution.

10% of the population are responsible for 90% of the production. . . .

Pareto was 20/80, but I'd actually agree that some people are far more productive and innovative -- adding real value through their efforts. No complaints there.

For example, in this list Forbes 4 218 one might argue that #1 through #10 have added real value (and become the nation's wealthiest as a result). Names we recognize.

I'm not so sure about #11, 12, 13, 18, 22, 23, 25, 28, 32, 32, 34, 36, 34, 38, 40 . . . etc. You know what products they invented, diseases they cured, food they put on tables, manufacturing processes they pioneered?
 
Haven't been through it all yet, but the first several minutes seem reasonable enough to me.

Please, do not attribute any of the ideas to me. I just viewed the video and found some of it significant.

And I'm not saying which parts are valid! I'll leave that to Gordon and Miguel, they claim to have the scoop on everyone's motives and sentiments.
 
I Agree Leftist crap.

Here is an interesting addition to the issues.
The Failure of Liberal Politics - YouTube

A rather difficult presentation, but hey! People are all different!

note the theme at minute 18-1/2

The failure of market ideology is every where...as for the failure of liberalism...I suggest you remember that the founding of this nation was a liberal revolution.
The creation of workers as something besides slaves or serfs was liberal.
The simple idea women were people IS liberal.
The idea that things like roads need not have tolls at every county line is liberal.

The failure of liberal politics...what a laugh.
With out liberalism we'd all still be living in iron age europe eating shit water.
 
Pareto distribution.

10% of the population are responsible for 90% of the production.

Equal outcomes from equal opportunity is an "inhuman" expectation.

The suggested solutions are quite sophomoric.

What will it take?

Stop rewarding "actors" such fame and renumeration.
Reward local control (In my small town, the "Toy-oda" shop owner that overcharged would be publicly ostracized at town meeting every year until out of business!)

Psst...
Stiglitz was talking about Pareto EFFICIENCY, a different topic.
 
Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel Prize winning Amercian economist) recently published this article ...
Obummer could have made him Treasury but did not :(

Question is -- how might we best "un-rig" our economy?
You can't. That's why the end of the article was so weak. Cancer cells cannot be trained to behave. You can use chemical poisons, x-rays, the knife, the guillotine, tumbrels and knitting needles but the only cure for cancer is to kill the bad cells.

But it ain't gonna happen because what did you see ? Moonlight machine screams "left wing shithead !" without even reading the article. I know he didn't read the article because there is not a single left-wing word in the problem description. Stiglitz' solutions are alas not going to happen and probably would not change anything - more education when the banksters own everything ain't gonna change shit - but his writing and his politics are anything but left wing. Interesting that three people own as much as 50% of the US population. Wow.

But let's not allow fact to bother our pretty little heads ...

What happens to cancer victims who don't kill the bad cells ? That's where the US is going.

Kind of amazing. Even twenty years ago I would not have believed this.
 
But let's not allow fact to bother our pretty little heads ...

What happens to cancer victims who don't kill the bad cells ? That's where the US is going.

Kind of amazing. Even twenty years ago I would not have believed this.

Most of the sheep don't even know they are being herded. Otherwise the voter turnout would be quite different as would the candidates they support.
 
Not sure that even Scientific American readers would be up for a more in depth look at where the US economy is headed. Five graphs might be enough . . .

Personally, I found the contrasts with both the US as it used to be and other countries interesting.

Least satisfying bit is that Stiglitz promises a "what we can do about it" and comes up a bit short. Take the $$$ out of politics, better fund education, keep financial interests from screwing people, that's about it.

There is a great deal LESS "contrast", real world, that you might be aware of.

Thing is, humans have NEVER had an existence where milk and honey just flowed from a tap and were delivered to Joe Average by topless waitresses.

What "the rich" might get up to - or get off on - is mostly just a curiosity for the readers of sensationalist tabloids.

The rest of us have always had to scratch for a meal. We find a way to do that. Any generation. Any nation. What those nano-percenters OWN is out here in OUR world as the land we lease to farm, the buildings we rent space in, the fleets of leased aircraft carrying OUR bums-on-seats, the telecoms networks we use, the containership fleets as bring and take away our goods and produce, etc...

In other words, their "wealth" has to work for a living even if they, personally no longer SEEM to do.

And most of them actually DO work rather hard at managing it. Or even giving it away.

To the guy behind a desk or behind the wheel of a tractor, it matters little if he is paying rent to a Government, a co-op, or a richbastard. If the rent is too onerous, he goes and does some other thing.

Whether he was born a genius or no, his entire generation came out of the womb with a very high statistical chance of having a functioning brain.

Only a few of those get outright-switched OFF. The rest are actively seeking to make their way in life.

As they do. Graphs and theories of far less interest than what's for supper.

"Helpless Sheep, headed for slaughter"? Are we really?

Or maybe just independent folks with a "good enough" level of self-sufficiency, each in their own way, to not actually HAVE to much give a damn what the latest instalment of ephemeral fools and parasites are yammering on about, any given week?

The rich have more money. No shit, Sherlock? That might even be why we CALL them "rich", yah?

Joe Average has far the higher head-count of functioning brains, capable hands, and square-area of the Earth under his long-striding, ever mobile, and now and then ass-kicking boots. Or high-heeled sneakers.

We are the customers of those "richbastards" businesses and sources of wealth. And the customer calls the shots.

Just whom is it, again, as should be worried?

No revolution required.

Obstacles are easier to go AROUND than under, over... or through. As we do. For multiple millennia. Already. And still-yet-again tomorrow. If not? Then Tuesday next. Count-the-fuck on that, 'coz it has one seriously long track-record. Any clan. Any continent.
 








 
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