BF2S Forums Activists allege widespread cruelty at Tyson's chicken factory

Jay wrote:

The reason you’ve been reading about wages in the news recently is because Keynesian economists are at their wits end. Basically every central bank in the world reads from the same manual when they make policy. Prices falling? Lower interest rates. Prices still not rising? Perform quantitative easing. The idea being that by devaluing your currency, you export your deflation to your trading partners.

Well, all of our trading partners have zero or negative interest rates. They’re all printing money. All of them are doing this because the book says it will jump-start their economy and growth will follow. This is what their economic models say will work.

The problem is that real life is not co-operating. The money that is flowing out of the central banks is not being invested as planned. The low interest rates are being used to fund stock buybacks and corporate takeovers rather than investment in new production. The buybacks enrich shareholders who already have more wealth than growth options, and the takeovers lead to efficiencies and job losses. On top of this, you have companies like Wal-Mart and Amazon who generate their income based on volume sales and low prices.

Krugman went on a rampage against Wal-Mart about their wages to the point that Wal-Mart gave up and gave their low-level employees a raise. Well, instead of raising prices like Krugman really wanted, they squeezed savings from their suppliers and cut a bunch of people at the corporate headquarters in Arkansas.

To understand all this, you have to look at the world through the eyes of a Keynesian economist. To them, all assets should be 100% invested in the economy at all times. Everything is always about GDP growth. All spending is good. You’re going to start reading more articles about cashless societies and negative interest rates at the bank because they view saving as a threat to GDP. Any money sequestered away from the economy is money that isn’t being spent, and money that isn’t being spent isn’t adding to GDP. This is also why they bash gold whenever possible.

The last piece of the puzzle is that consumers have changed in the past ten years. People have become a lot more careful about racking up a ton of debt, especially now that credit cards have spiked from 7% interest rates to 20%+. Millenials aren’t buying houses because the Fed decided keeping the housing bubble inflated was the most important thing it could do because so many baby boomer’s entire net worth and retirement savings is built into their home equity. They’re also not buying houses because easy credit allowed colleges to jack up tuition astronomically and they’re carrying trillions of dollars as a collective.

Our previous growth was fueled by debt. Government debt, private debt, corporate debt. Does this seem sustainable? Because this is the official policy for every government in the world right now because, again, they all read from the same fucking book.

Low wage growth is a symptom of low growth, not a cause, but Keynesian economists are now at the point where they are going to start advocating for “helicopter money” i.e. tax rebate checks and a national living wage and pay increases via fiat a la Cuomo and fast food workers. These opinions will make progressives and leftists swoon, because they’ll think they’ll have won a prize, but it’s just more economic meddling by people who really can’t handle a world that doesn’t conform to their models.

Frankly, we are SUPPOSED to be entering a period of low growth. We have tens of millions of people lining up to retire with nest egg in hand. They’ve got their pension and their social security and their 401k and their overpriced home and they’re ready to go. They’re not taking any risks and they’re certainly not investing in the future anymore. After a lifetime of work the baby boomer generation controls the wealth in this country, not some phantom 1%. Give it 10-15-20 years, the economy will pick up again as they start dying off. I guarantee it.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Eating any meat is cruel, eating any meat is unhealthy, I am vegetarian.

So there.