"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
m...
In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:



But embedded within the profits for me, Bill Gates and Michael Dell as
well
as the enhanced productivity (mostly!) of the businesses that
computerized,
there was a hidden cost: people were losing their jobs. Many of them
were
mind-numbingly menial, but they paid the bills. Tokyo Power is using
humans
to clean up Fukushima, not robots. Apparently the robots are not well
suited for the task and are too valuable to risk. So there will always
be
jobs for humans, just not very good ones.

But it has always been thus. The Industrial Revolution did exactly
the same thing. There is continual change. I mean you don't subsidize
buggy whip makers any more to keep people working do you? One of the
US's problems is that we hit the great bulge in productivity improvement
at exactly the time we had hoards of people to employ (baby boomers).
Jobs go down, people looking for jobs go up, and pay descends. Add to
that an educational system (from K forward) that still hasn't adapted to
the new reality, and societal changes that in many areas tend to actual
work against the changes, and then the general screwing around with
things in the Congress and Legislature, and we have what we have.

It would be nice to find a better way to move forward. Unemployment
payments should never go to someone who's not still getting up every day and
going *somewhere* - whether it's job retraining, job searching or
public/community service work. Study after study shows just staying home
and cashing unemployment checks after losing your job is damaging in a
number of ways. The government has a strong vested interest in having as
many people as possible working and off unemployment.


It's easy to fall into the trap of believing "it's all the fault of
people
that don't think like I do." As we've noted before, some of the biggest
money problems we have were heartily bi-partisan. I don't know how we
change a reactive government to a proactive one or even if that's
possible.

Since many of the "heartily bipartisan" measures added to the mess
by screwing around with things they don't understand, I am not sure I
really WANT a proactive government.

I sort of agree but with the government being like a huge supertanker a
small course correction early on is a lot easier to accomplish than a sudden
turn to avert a crisis. We're facing a number of long term problems. I
think Malthus had the right idea at the wrong time and that we may never be
able to support the 20 or 50 billion people that our world might eventually
hold. The simple math of that equation (resources divided by people) means
that our standard of living is going to keep falling as countries like
India, China and Brazil experience a rise in prosperity. That has the
potential to create some serious social chaos. I lived through the Watts
and DC riots and can only imagine what true privation will bring. That's
not so far off, either, because so many people depend on food stamps and
other handouts to survive. If (or perhaps when) we reach the point where
there's just no more money to pay those benefits, those riots will make
Watts look like a block party. I don't believe our representatives believe
things will ever get that bad, which is why I think they will. )-:

And that took around 30 years and numerous administrations to do
its
worst. As I mentioned in another thread, I was Ft. Lauderdale a few
years ago and the REALTORS were complaining that there was too much
business and they wished things would settle down and take a breath.
When you have a money-hungry bunch like the Realtors saying it is too
overheated, you know you have a problem (g).

It's just amazing how many indicators there were in hindsight that the
bubble was so massive. Again, it was a stream of causes all flowing
into
one raging river. Easy money, securitization, warm body mortgages,
"Flip
This House" TV shows promising quick riches and dozens of other
pressures
pushing prices up into the stratosphere where many of them are still
stuck.
Now add to that the government actually helping prolong the mess under
the
mistaken assumption you can somehow keep people in houses they never
would
have been able to afford in any long term sense.

Heck it wasn't in hindsight be any means. Our FL realtors, when you
have places in FL, NV and elsewhere selling for $400,000 when the
trailer and "Coming Soon" sign are the only things on the site, going
for $500,000 when ground is broken and $750,000 upon completion the
signs are there. Add to that, it not unusual to see people buying 4-5
condos in the same project and the seeds of destruction are obvious.

I think I've mentioned how once while driving in the Californian desert I
saw a burned out shack on cinder blocks miles away from humanity. On the
side, in black spray paint were scrawled the words: "Fixer Upper - $200K.
Underneath in red paint was the word "Sold!" So, yes, some of the signs of
the madness were quite obvious but quite honestly it just seemed that it was
the way of the world. Real estate prices were always going to go up because
God had stopped making land a while back. It turns out that RE demand is
more flexible than people thought, as is now evidenced by battalions of kids
in their 20's and 30's moving back in with mom and dad.

As with most bubbles, the idea that all trees grow to the sky
becomes the overriding concept and people get greedy. This followed
pretty much the same path as every bubble from tulips forward.
I was saved by using Tobias' Managing Your Money back in the
day. One of the upgrades came with the book Extraordinary Popular
Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, written by British journalist
Charles Mackay. Should be required reading from 5th grade forward every
couple years or when renewing any remotely finance-related license
(grin).

I'll look for it. I don't know when I first learned of the "tulip bubble"
hundreds of years ago in Holland, but the story makes clear that speculation
and frenzy go hand in hand. I think my first real experience with runaway
demand was bugging my poor folks to get me a Polaroid Swinger ("Get the
Swinger, Polaroid Swinger, it's more than a camera, it's almost alive, it's
only nineteen dollars and ninety five, swing it up, take the shot . . .").
They scoured the universe and ended up paying more than list price for the
one they found for me. The things parents do for their kids.

It's why I bristle when someone suggests "It's all because of the CRA"
or
somesuch cause. It took a lot of our best people an enormous amount of
time
and effort to cause a real estate crash of that magnitude. China's
facing a
similar run-up. It will be interesting to see if their form of
governance
does any better at "correcting" the basic nature of human beings.

I think it might, more related to the fact that we are still living
with it. Let the memories fade, let the Chinese Experts get enough
research behind them so they can say they Know How to Avoid The Pitfalls
*THIS* time and they will get their turn.

Ho, ho, ho - are they ever going to get their turn in the barrel. As much
as they appear to control their population, the current "Arab Spring" shows
that when it's time for revolution, it's like a really bad case of diarrhea.
Ain't no stopping it. What I am most curious about is how organized labor
will evolve in China. There will come a time when they will face union
trouble and I doubt they will handle it appropriately. They're already well
along in the "farms to city" movement that we experienced nearly 100 years
ago. Interesting times await us all. India is not far behind and has been
particularly successful in eating our IT lunch. Outsourcing is so
well-known that there's an eponymous TV sitcom.


Congresses shouldn't put in their nose where they don't understand the
consequences.

What are you, an anarchist? (-" How could Congress operate if they
understood the long-term consequences of their actions?

Hell I'd settle for understanding the inevitable consequences of their
action.

My experience with the modeling of possible post-nuke scenarios tells me
that it's probably impossible to understand the totality of the
consequences, especially in the US. Things morph so quickly that the
further out you look, the more wildly inaccurate your projections will be.
Short of a time machine to actually go forward and look (reminds me of a
great Simpson's episode with raining donuts) something will always appear
that throws a monkey wrench in the predictions.

What the country needs is a new industry to create a new economic niche that
depends on brains not cheap labor. Something that can generate good jobs,
too. Google worked for a while, but I think its impact, along with Ebay and
Amazon, is largely "in place" and not likely to produce a surge. Which
could produce a bubble. Which means spec bubbles will live as long as
capitalism does.

I had hoped solar energy was that industry that would fuel lots of new
growth, but apparently not. The worst part about focusing on high speed rail
was a) it was already done and b) we are not a train nation. In solar, we
could have at least funded labs to find better materials and given jobs to
researchers. This gets back to the issue of long term forecasts. One
things for sure, solar is getting less efficient in one vector, and the
longer we delay the worse it gets. The sky is getting slightly darker year
by year. It's not very much but it's measurable. If I were forced to give
*someone* billions of dollars to jazz the economy:

1) Banks
2) Federal workforce
3) Various bailouts
4) Solar energy research

I would choose #4. The big problem now is actual v. theoretical efficiency
but chasing that goal is not as glam as putting a man on the moon or cloning
a dog. The sunlight that falls on an average lot is impressive. Right now
we harness a tiny percent of that radiation which means there's lot of room
for improvement. The Germans are solaring up like crazy and they survived
the Great Recession better than most. To paraphrase yet another movie "I'll
have what they're having."

--
Bobby G.