In Praise of Scrooge
Here's a spectacular article illustrating the concept of opportunity cost and the impact of savings vs. consumption: http://www.slate.com/id/2110817/
Scrooge has been called ungenerous. I say that's a bum rap. What could be more generous than keeping your lamps unlit and your plate unfilled, leaving more fuel for others to burn and more food for others to eat? Who is a more benevolent neighbor than the man who employs no servants, freeing them to wait on someone else? [...] In this whole world, there is nobody more generous than the miser—the man who could deplete the world's resources but chooses not to. The only difference between miserliness and philanthropy is that the philanthropist serves a favored few while the miser spreads his largess far and wide.
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Comments :
Is this satire?
Very original take
on an old tale.
I agree about the conservation and keeping the bulbs off, but who in God's name thinks about taxes on Christmas day, besides Scrooge. Maybe if he smiled more and wasn't so curmudgeony from constantly guarding his wealth it would be easier to believe that this type of penny pinching is the true spirit of Christmas.
I have never met anyone so obsessed about taxes. So I hope you get to keep as much as you can this year. That should be the best xmas gift for all of us, if you don't have to share.
oh, and merry christmas:+)
I'm only half stupid
I guess I'm not sure how this works...
So a miser earns or inherits money (I'm assuming the Slate article only deals with the purely first type, since the second or some combination of the two would skew the data too much), and instead of spending it, he doesn't hire people - thereby depriving workers of potential jobs - he doesn't buy stuff - thereby depriving store owners of potential profit - and somehow his lack of contribution becomes an even bigger contribution than that of people who actively throw money into the system?
Sounds suspicious to me. What was the subject of your last post, about lying with numbers....?
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. - Ambrose Bierce
Oh that's not that difficult
The point is that people are exerting their power through the almighty and all-knowing FREE MARKET, rather than though insideous acts like voting for environmental regulation or an estate tax. It is the common Libertarian theme, that the only good power is the free market, which, by definition, makes no errors.
The fact that the economy has rewarded the miser or the inheritor with wealth is the proof and judgement that their actions were wise and benevolent. Regulations and taxes are viewed as a
blasphemousmisguided attempt to chainGodthe free market and interfere with itsdivineelegant nature.Investment, not consumption, drives the economy
It is a common misconception, oft repeated by misinformed journalists, that "throwing money into the system" helps the economy. It doesn't, at least not in the long run. (The short-term impact is debatable.)
In the long run, real economic growth comes from increases in productivity. Those increases in productivity come about because of improved technology, more efficient business practices, and increases in the capital/labor ratio. These things are driven by investment, not by consumption. It is *because* someone deferred consumption that a factory is able to buy a new machine to better automate its production line and increase output with the same number of workers, or produce the same output with fewer workers.
In mathematical terms, investment equals savings, and savings equals income minus consumption. Increased consumption means less savings and less investment. Less investment means income *next* year is lower (because you don't get the payoff from the investment).
Hiring people to dig ditches and fill them does not help the economy. In fact, it hurts the economy, because a scarce resource (labor) is being wasted.
Magic
I would venture that investment, without return, equals loss not savings. If you invest in productivity and nobody buys it then you have just thrown money in a hole.
If I invest in camera equipment and spend $10,000 this year you are saying I am saving money, because I don't have to invest it next year? Then you are offering these wise words, if I sell fewer photographers and have less customers, then I have saved money cause I haven't used my camera equipment. So as a photographer, the fewer customers (consumption) I have, and the more money I spend on equipment (investment) the more money I have saved. Small problem. Without consumption, I have no income to cover the cost of my investment. That is the most backasswards business model I have ever heard of.
Spend money and your are really saving it. And my "savings" is my income. The money came from the same source, me.
It sounds like you are saying the money I spend is the money I save. But I have to have money to spend first, which comes from (consumption) customers.
I don't see in what world this business model works, unless you are trying to cheat on your taxes.
I'm only half stupid
More on investment
Yes -- that would be absolutely correct.
I think there are a few mixups here. The first one is cash vs. accrual accounting. Let's suppose I earn an income of $20000 and spend every last cent of it on buying a $20000 car -- no financing, I pay cash. My income is $20K. What is my consumption?
The answer is *not* $20K. Really what I have done here is purchased a valuable asset that depreciates over time. Over the next, say, 20 years, the value of the car will fall from $20K to zero as it depreciates. Let's suppose the value of the car has fallen to $17K one year later. Then my real consumption was $3K over a year, not $20K.
Yes!
Again, think in accrual terms, not cash terms. You may shell out $10K cash to purchase camera equipment, but really, you have purchased a valuable asset that has resale value. It depreciates over time either due to wear and tear or because it becomes obsolete.
It is a mistake to think that "savings" can only take the form of a bank or brokerage or mutual fund account where you get a monthly statement telling you "you have $ABCD.EF in your account as of Dec. 31." "Savings" can take the form of *any* valuable asset.
Of course some assets depreciate faster than others; it would be unwise to take your savings and use them to purchase oranges and store them in a warehouse. Oranges have a very short shelf life, i.e., they depreciate quickly, and it's hard to redeem them later. But imagine you spent your savings buying rare baseball cards, which, on average, will probably appreciate in value over time, or on rare works of art. Is this a wise move? Maybe -- it could work out well or it could work out poorly (it's hard to say which in advance). But it is still "savings."
Let's say your income is $50K. You spend $40K buying basic necessities that are consumed immediately -- stuff like rent and food. Now you have $10K left.
Option A: stick $10K in a bank account earning 5% interest. 1 year from now this $10K will become $10.5K. 5 years from now it will become $12763. (For simplicity I neglect taxes.)
Option B: spend $10K purchasing camera equipment that has a useful life of 5 years (depreciates $2K per year). But, because it lets you move up in the world of photography, you can now earn an income of $55K instead of $50K over the next 5 years (until it becomes obsolete).
Option A's ROI is 5% -- same as what the bank pays you.
Option B's ROI is, by plugging a few numbers into Excel using the XIRR function, 41% -- by spending $10K today, you generate a cash flow of $25K over the next 5 years.
Clearly option B is a better choice. But either way, you have still "saved" and then "invested" $10K. The way you were able to do this is by consuming $10K less than you produced. The only difference is the ROI.
Sometimes the difference between consumption and investment is less clear-cut -- some spending is actually a mixture of the two. Real estate is a common example: living in a house is an act of consumption, while owning the house is an act of investment. The money you pay on your mortgage is really part consumption and part investment. (You can measure this somewhat imprecisely by seeing what fraction of your mortgage payment goes to principal vs. to interest.)
Likewise, if you buy the camera equipment for fun rather than for profit, then it would become consumption and not investment. If you bought it for *both* fun and profit then it's a mixture of the two.
How to tell the difference? Simple: consumption is undertaken for its own sake, while investment is undertaken for the expectation of (positive) returns down the road. A good investment will not only pay a positive ROI -- it will pay an ROI higher than other investments at the same level of risk. Since you can get 5% risk-free in an FDIC-insured bank account, any investment with an ROI lower than 5% is pretty questionable right now. If you loan money to someone at 3%, for example, that's not "investment"; that's called "charity."
For the economy to grow over the long term we need to consume less than we produce. In fact, because of depreciation, if we consume and produce the same amount, our capital stock will actually shrink each year. Really, to get increases in productivity, we need investment to exceed depreciation by a quantity that is sufficient to more than make up for population growth.
Thank you very much
for this thoughtful response.
Now the rub becomes........ what if I took out a loan to pay for the camera equipment. I would assume that I would want brisker consumption to avoid paying interest.
In the case of the home loan, I am not looking for my home to generate income.
Although it could in the form of loans and equity (and tax write offs).
It still seems backwards to me, that you have to produce more than you consume.I will tell my husband that if he gives me money to spend, he will be actually saving money in accrual terms, and see what he says!
Again thanks for taking the time to post this explanation.......!
Your last paragraph is a stumper. I keep thinking of it in terms of the whole earth. (not sure if it is a valid comparison) The investment in our earth must exceed it's depreciation by a quantity that makes up for what the population is using. If you are looking at the earth as a finite resource, or investment I am concerned that our productivity is causing depreciation at such a brisk rate that we will lose our ability for positive returns. In which case the population growth will automatically decline. Does it become a question of, if the quality of the returns is worth the investment.
I'm only half stupid
I'm loath to respond to such an old thread, but...
It follows from the definitions of the terms: a good cannot be consumed until it is produced first. I cannot eat a loaf of bread until someone makes it. It is impossible for a society to consume more than it produces over the long haul.
(One could object that renewable natural resources violate this rule, but in a very strict sense they don't. Every day we are depleting a massive store of energy called "the sun." The good news is that this store of energy will last billions of years.)
Where does a loan come from? It comes from someone else's savings. Rather than you saving up the money, someone else has saved up the money and is willing to loan it to you.
Of course, the creditor isn't just going to give up their savings for nothing -- then they would have deferred consumption for nothing in return. They will want their savings back and then some -- payment for not being able to use the savings for a period of time, plus compensation for the risk they have taken on (the risk that you might not pay them back).
To pay the creditor back, you, too, will have to forgo consumption -- produce more than you consume for a period to make those interest and principal payments on your debt.
If no one had forgone consumption, but had instead immediately consumed everything that they produced, you would have been unable to get a loan. Loans only exist because some people are willing to consume less now in the hope of greater consumption later.
When you take out a loan, as long as you pay it back and don't default on it, you do not get to violate the rule that consumption cannot exceed production. A loan might enable you to consume more than you produce *today*... at the cost of having to consume *less* than you produce over the loan repayment period.
Yes, precisely.
That's not necessarily an accurate way to look at things. Yes, there is a fixed and finite stock of certain resources -- for example, there is exactly so much copper on the planet (well, up until we start mining it from other planets).
But it's not just how much you have... it's how you use it.
The value of a 1-pound lump of copper metal is low -- whatever the price of copper happens to be today.
The value of 1 pound of copper shaped into some sort of copper tubing used in an industrial application is many times higher than the copper itself.
And 1 pound of copper can create trillions of tiny copper wires less than a micron wide on a computer chip.
That's basically the difference right there between man and the rest of the animal kingdom -- we are able to use our brains to come up with radically innovative ways to use those fixed natural resources, creating wealth out of nothingness.
Most natural resources have extremely little value in and of themselves. Oil was just a bunch of annoying sticky junk in the ground until someone figured out that you could burn it as a fuel. Most metals didn't even exist until someone figured out how to extract them from ore (which, to the untrained eye, is no different than any other piece of rock).
Don't be loathe!
I appreciate your input.
Yes I see that man's imagination and creativity has put our natural resources to good use, and has the potential to innovate......... yet sometimes these innovations are not all to the good.
Once a profit is turned, company leaders are loathe to change their ways, even if their ways are proven to be hazardous to human health or the planet. I just think that this push for constant and more growth for higher and higher profits, while defiling our public educations system, and insisting that the US compete with labor costs of every poor person in the world, is going to self destruct.
I think capitalism should be moral not morally bankrupt.
All these complex financial equations some of what I see going on is pretty shady. Like Hedge Funds. Or how to turn an obscene amount of profit, without regulation or conscience.
Even though you may loathe any kind of regulation....... things like hedge funds are the result, and they aren't serving their shareholders or their investers, but the managers are getting richer than sin.
There has to be some balance on the worshipping profits without taxation or regulation as God.
I'm only half stupid
On hedge funds
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/17/AR200612...
More here: http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070101faessay86107/sbastian-mallaby/hand...
Oh and just curious
what do you think about the designation of the polar bear as an endangered species?
Interesting it is. There was even mention of global warming in the declaration.
Bush Sec Treasury (whose name has totally slipped my mind), is a huge gung ho environmentalist. Hopefully he can help China with their pollution. The economic realities of needing clean water and clean air should be obvious in a global economy.
I'm only half stupid
Threatened, not endangered
I don't have any specific strong opinions about global warming, not being an expert on climate science. My position is consistent, however: insofar as global warming exists, is manmade, is caused by CO2 emissions, and is harmful, the right solution is a carbon tax counterbalanced by a corresponding reduction in income taxes.
The size of the carbon tax would be determined by an assessment of just how harmful CO2 emissions are. The estimates I've seen suggest that it would be the equivalent of about a 50-cent gas tax, IIRC. (Of course more than just gasoline would be taxed.)
Investment opportunities
in alternative energy sources seems an attractive alternative.
I'm only half stupid
Mr. Lord
Here is an article you will surely enjoy! Another interesting take on economics and history.
Show Me the Money, Honey
Chan Akya, writing for the Asia Times, goes down the list, from social order, the oldest profession, religion, and civilizations, describing in each case how it is economics that has been the driving force for change throughout history.
I am not sure how he relates this to the black markets, drugs, the sale of nuclear secrets, arms trade and back door oil sales, offshore tax shelters, the bribing of dictators.....or in other words, the other driving economic forces of our times.
Do you always get the best deal for your money if you operate outside the law?
I'm only half stupid
You got Scrooge wrong
Of course he changed and became a liberal after discovering how stupid his ways were, but you were discussing how he was before that.
Scrooge only was miserly in his treatment of others, If you will recall his servants were the ones who would pick his bones by stealing everything after he died as shown by the "Future Ghost"and it is also noted that the quality of his stuff was quite good.
But the Article you cite misses that point, to screw up another. Scrooge & Marley were money lenders, but they were not a free market competitive financial source. Having no real competition they loaned the money at the interest they chose, if they chose at all.
On a more general case, such great wealth lowers neither interest nor prices, but drives a Depression Era economy where no one can sell much because no one can afford much, except a very few who don't need much.
Most Banana Republics have been such horrific places for precisely those same reasons.
Thom Hartman shows this in great detail in his book, though expecting you to buy and read it would be too much. So a much easier way to get the ideas in less detail is found in a speech he gave here.
The Self Made Man is just not admitting where he got all the parts.
No one is exempt from the Law of Demand
Even if there is only one provider of a good or service -- a true monopoly -- that does not imply that they can set whatever price they want and make an unlimited amount of money. They are still subject to the Law of Demand: all other things being equal, the higher the price of a good, the less quantity will be demanded. And at some sufficiently high price, the quantity demanded will fall to zero.
A profit-maximizing monopolist faces a tradeoff between higher prices/higher margins/lower quantities and lower prices/lower margins/higher quantities. The exact profit-maximizing price will depend on a variety of factors.
This is no less true for lending. At an interest rate of zero, demand for credit will be extremely high (effectively infinite -- I would happily borrow a trillion dollars at 0% interest if anyone would let me). At an interest rate of 10%, it will be much lower. At an interest rate of 100%, it will be lower still. At an interest rate of 1000%, it will be lower still.
In fact, for lending at extremely high interest rates, another factor kicks in: adverse selection. One of the primary reasons that a (rational) person would take a loan at an extremely high interest rate is that they have no intention of paying it back. By charging too high an interest rate, you drive away good lenders and attract bad lenders, and drive up your default rate. Because your defaults are too high you have to jack up your interest rates even higher, but then that drives away even *more* good lenders and increases defaults even further... and so on. (In such a market it is possible that no matter how high you set your rates, it is still impossible to make a profit!)
And I can't speak for that particular historical time period, but today, lending is an *extremely* competitive industry. There are thousands of lenders out there all trying to undercut each other in the search for a few bucks. Credit spreads are extremely narrow. Banks cannot make very much money borrowing at 5.3% in the commercial paper market and loaning at 6% in the mortgage market, particularly when you take into account defaults and administrative costs. In fact the situation is unsustainably unprofitable for lenders -- either short-term rates need to fall, or long-term rates need to rise.
that particular historical time period
Scrooge and Marley had the power of the state to behave like the Mafia, because if you did not pay, they could throw you in debtors prison. As a result every, and any, debt, placed not only everything you owned, but your freedom itself, at mortgage.
A monopolist selling unnecessary goods, has to make those volume trade offs, Scrooge and Marley had merely to wait like a shark near a school of fish and watch for any sign of weakness and desperation.
I guess that is why they are called loan sharks.
With the new bankruptcy rules, we are likely to see a lot of weakness and desperation at the next business downturn, and a feeding frenzy.
S&M's business style is not so far off.
The Self Made Man is just not admitting where he got all the parts.
There is a difference
between "keeping your lamps unlit" because you do not want to waste resources and keeping the lights off to save money.
Also, Scrooge inflicted his miserly ways on Bob Cratchet, making him freeze in order to save money on coal. And Scrooge's pathetic wages and lack of a health plan nearly cost Tiny Tim his life.
qui tacet consentire
I'm sorry, what is the difference?
I'm not seeing any difference. Because money is just a medium of exchange that represents goods and services, saving money is the same thing as saving resources. Spending money extravagantly and inefficiently is the same thing as wasting resources extravagantly and inefficiently.
The only difference I can see is that it's less obvious that you are being wasteful, because there are layers of indirection between your spending of the money and the waste of resources downstream in the economy.
If one company can make a product for $10 and another can make the same product for $15, then by buying the $15 product, you are very literally sponsoring $5 of economic waste -- throwing scarce resources down the drain with nothing to show for it.
The difference would be motivation.
A person who turns off lights to save money may well leave them on if convinced that doing so saves money in some manner. They have no intention to save resources they are simply cheap.
It's the difference between a person who becomes a doctor because they want to help and a person who becomes a doctor to get rich. The latter are, by and large, terrible doctors.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Why do I care about their motivation?
If so -- even better! If leaving the lights on actually saves money, then leaving them on *is* an efficient use of resources. For example: if a store spends $1000 in electricity to light its parking lot at night, but by doing so they save $10000 on cleaning up vandalism damages and from other criminal destruction of property, this is a net savings of both money and resources.
I'm not sure why I care what their motivation is -- I care what the results are.
A frugal person may have many possible motivations for their lack of desire to spend money. But in the end, the result is the same: spending less money is the equivalent of conserving scarce resources.
If I buy the 2.5 pounds of oatmeal for $3 rather than the 2.5 pounds of filet mignon for $50, I have saved a large amount of scarce resources.
OK, but now you are positing a difference not only in the motivation but also in the results. Now I *do* care.
I don't care what thoughts are going through my doctor's head as long as the result is the same. As soon as the result is *not* the same, I care.
here's why...
Uh, no, that doesn't follow. Let's say that I offer to pay you twice your increase in electrical bill if you'll agree to leave every light and appliance turned on for a solid year. You save money, sure (because I expend it). Are any resources saved? Absolutely not.
Sure, but it is only by knowing their motivation that you are able to predict results ahead of time- which is what policy is all about. Nobody needs policy for the past they need it for the future which means understanding how tomorrow will be different than today. A large population of money hoarders who keep their lights off today will behave differently tomorrow than a large group of ecologically conscious people, even if they too leave their lights off today.
I really don't see that that is so. Consider buying a book made of recycled paper; it costs a bit more money and yet costs less in terms of resources.
That's my point: a difference in motivation will eventually lead to a difference in results even if at a given moment the two seem identical. Both doctors go to school. Both study hard. Both get their degree and get licensed. And then suddely they split. If you examine the motivations you not only know why afterwards but could predict it ahead of time.
I came. I saw. I posted.
Veni, Vidi, Bitchy.
Prices and costs
Right, this would be an act of waste on your part to make such an offer. It would also be an act of waste (but a rational one) on my part to take advantage of it.
The reality, however, is that such opportunities to personally profit from your own waste are pretty darn rare, and to the extent that they exist, they are largely trivial in scope.
For example: my employer offers free coffee at work, while I have to pay 25 cents at the vending machine for Diet Dr. Pepper. I can 'profit' by drinking coffee rather than Diet Dr. Pepper, even though (based on looking at the special coffee bags that they buy) I strongly suspect that it costs them more for the coffee. Let's say the coffee bags cost them 50 cents each, the vending machines sell the cans at zero profit, and I drink 4 of either beverage per work day. Then by switching I save $1/day, while I cost my employer $2/day, or a total "waste" of $1/day if I am indifferent between the two beverages. If I work roughly 230 days per year we are talking about $230/year wasted. All I can say to that is: "whoop diddly." This expense is negligible in the big scheme of things, and if it ever became a problem, they could always just switch to cheaper coffee. Of course I actually prefer Diet Dr. Pepper and am willing to pay the 25 cents, so the entire example is moot.
As long as people behave mostly rationally, there will be few opportunities to profit from waste, and those that do exist and aren't trivial in scope will quickly be discovered and eliminated, simply because too many people will take advantage of them and the loopholes will be closed.
That is... unless you actually *are* willing to make me that offer to pay me double my utility bills. No? I thought not. :)
Are you sure?
If recycled materials cost more than newly made materials, that seems like pretty compelling evidence that recycled materials actually cost *MORE* in terms of resources *broadly defined*.
It costs resources to gather up the old paper and drive it to the recycling plant. It costs resources to reprocess the paper to create the new recycled paper. It costs resources to build the recycling plants. Etc.
I'm sure you will come back and object: "But no, we did the math, and it turns out that even if you take all that stuff into account, it costs 23% (or whatever) less energy to make the recycled paper than to create new paper!"
But if so, why the heck is it more expensive? All other things being equal, if it takes 23% less energy, it would be *less* expensive, not more. So clearly all other things are not equal.
Recycling must cost more in terms of *some* input factor, or else it would be cheaper. For example, recycling might take more labor, or it might be more capital-intensive. Labor and capital, too, are scarce resources. And if the energy savings amount to less monetarily than the increased labor and capital expenses, then recycling *IS* wasteful.
You are saving scarce resource X... but you are wasting even more of scarce resource Y! Not a good tradeoff.
Simply put, I am saying that the best way for individuals to make tradeoffs about how to best to conserve scarce resources is to take advantage of the signal the market system happily provides us: prices. (After all, that is why prices exist in the first place! All that a price is is a signal about the relative economic values of two goods or services.)
Now, you may disagree with the relative prices that the market system puts on two resources -- you may think that the price of electricity "should" be higher than it is. But why? Why are you smarter than the thousands of commodity traders at the Chicago Merc who obsess about these things day-in and day-out? And if you're so much smarter than them... why don't you put your money where your mouth is? If you really do have brilliant insights about what the relative prices of two commodities *should* be, then you can literally make a killing on the futures market. And please do! By correcting incorrect commodity prices on the futures market, you would be doing everyone a huge favor.
In reality, I think you will find that it is hard to make a killing trading commodity futures. Most of us *don't* have any special insight into how expensive pork bellies should be in comparison to bushels of corn, or what the price of oil will be 1 year from now -- no more than we do about whether the stock market will go up or down tomorrow.
Now, there is a second objection you may make, which *is* valid: prices do not accurately reflect costs because of externalities, subsidies, and so on. For example, there is an environmental externality from burning coal to produce electicity. Or, maybe the Forest Service is artificially depressing the price of new paper by selling logging rights in national forests at artificially low prices.
Well, these problems are fixable, and I am completely in favor of fixing them. For example, I would be perfectly happy to see us adopt a carbon tax that was made revenue-neutral through income tax cuts. And regarding logging rights, we should set their price via auction rather than by legislative or executive decree -- the same way we already do for radio spectrum rights.
Of course, one of the biggest distortions of all is our tax code. For example, the income tax creates an up to 35% distortion in favor of paying workers untaxed fringe benefits (e.g. the aforementioned free coffee) rather than taxable cash. If you are serious about attacking these economic distortions, as I am, then the tax code is a good place to start.
Oddly enough, that is exactly the point of the article I linked to. The article's point is that the current tax code, because it taxes both the "savings" and the "consumption" portions of our income, encourages profligacy and waste.
Results
Actually focusing on results puts a whole new world on standard "conservative" logic. Prices are pushed in ways that maximize profit, and only very rarely, if ever, reflect costs.
The only costs that have anything to do with prices are those imposed by those with the power to do so. A monopolist like Microsoft, or MalWart, may encourage and assist (as they did) the reduction in profitability for others, by creating enough competition to limit prices charged by others, and thus maximize their own volume. But even in that extreme case, "captains of industry" naturally arise, and in this case are pushing costs on to their workforce.
And as many markets are conquered by pirates calling themselves entrepreneurs, then those Ceo's (note not necessarily the investors) own that particular government outright, and don't even pretend that their actions benefit others.
In case after case the profitability looks very good for the pirate, but he leaves for others a cratered empty landscape, where those "others" had spent the generations of hard work necessary to create a land of milk and honey, that everyone had been benefiting from.
And then he calls them loafs and layabouts because they are now so poor.
It is not a matter of choices of the poor, or even the formerly middle class, the Gang Of Pirates have been at work for years, subverting a block here a block there.
Spending tremendous amounts on research that is more dependent of funding than on merit for its results, all as an investment that has paid off handsomely for the GOP, even as it has brought ruin on everyone else. And this is only a facet of the processes they have poured money into.
The results of course are still not all in, while profitability from that investment is fast needing a log scale rather than a percent scale to measure it, the costs are long past such need, heading towards bankruptcy of all Life on the planet.
The Self Made Man is just not admitting where he got all the parts.
The increased deficiet
and cutting taxes.
Instead of paying to play, we are borrowing so much money that the value of the dollars has lost 10%, and the UAE has decided to convert some of its dollars to euros......
UAE to Sell Dollars for Euros
Debt, consumption, growth, spending, investment, whatever you want to call it....... would you rather invest money with someone that was debt free, or invest money with someone that owed gobs of money to nefarious nations with dictators that might not have the US interests at heart.
I so love going to Sears and seeing that Craftsman has sold out to Pakistan for a *cheaply* made line of clothing with the Craftsman label sewn in.
I guess if it's cheap you have to buy more cause it wears out faster. That must be good for the market. So the less well built something is the more potential we as consumers have to support the very poorest of the poor in other countries. What a deal.
I'm only half stupid
And it never ceases to amaze me
how few people realize that they are not wealthy enough to buy cheap crap over, and over again as it falls apart as soon as the warranty expires. Not even mentioning all the crap that people don't need, but buy it anyhow because it's cheap.
Sic semper tyrannis