Countdown to Extinction: The 2016 Presidential Election

[Rinaldo]

What is this supposed to prove, other than that democracy is alive and well in Poland? That the government is wrong? I can post videos of equally numerous supporters and sympathizers of PiS marching in support of the newly elected government. Would you accept that as a prove that the government is right?

All I'm saying is that Poles are divided and many feel their democracy is threatened. That's not 'western reporting', that's reality.

[kishnevi]

Yes, and in some cases you have to wonder how on earth a particular position became associated with one end of the spectrum. Gay marriage, for example, still gets thrown around in Australia as a left/right issue despite the fact that in New Zealand and the UK it's been a leader from the right-hand side of the spectrum that has introduced gay marriage.

And why the hell does disbelief in climate change become a right-wing position? This is actually one of the issues that brings to the forefront this whole notion of leftist conspiracies. The only reason I can think of for assigning belief in climate change to the left side of politics is that scientists tell us it's a global problem that needs global solutions.

No, it's because leftist politicians are the ones pushing it, despite  the fact that 1) the evidence that global warming is caused by human activity is far less conclusive than proponents of the idea claim (in part because we don't know a lot of things about how earth's climate change is driven by non human causes) and 2) there is no real evidence that the earth growing warmer is harmful to humans or to the environment in general.  Earth has been much warmer than it is now, some of those warm times in relatively recent history, with no demonstrable harm to the geosphere (and no possibility of human actions causing it to be warmer).  In fact, there is a substantial argument to be made that a warmer earth is better for humans (in large part because of it allows more areas to be used to grow food).

It does not help that a few (non US) officials have said from time to time that it's a great opportunity to force the First World to stop growing economically and give more subsidies to the Third World.  Apparently Third World pollution does not hurt the globe as badly as First World pollution.

Plus the Left likes to claim any climate change skeptic is deluded or paid off by the Koch Brothers, while ignoring funding of their side from some of the standard financial supporters of the Left like Soros.

[Florestan]

Indeed, and why I dont support Florestans (to me) pretty naive view that major issues should be decided by referendum.

Poor naive Swiss, literally breathing referendums.

Yes, I do think and believe that when it comes to major issues people should have the last word. It is not for Merkel and the EU bureaucracy that nobody anywhere ever elected to decide what Poland, Hungary and Romania --- or France, Spain and Denmark, for that matter --- should do in questions which regards the protection of the national territory, the security of their citizens and the preservation of their religious and cultural identity. The EU bureaucracy is not even capable of securing Brussels and is constantly pushing their multicultural agenda despite its obvious and tragic failure yet they pretend that they know best what is to be done for the security of the whole Europe: precisely to push it harder everywhere, even, or especially, where popular sentiment is firmly against it.

So I understand very well why the EU elites are afraid of national referendums : they might strike a deadly blow to their liberal-cosmopolitan agenda* and question their very existence and privileges.

*(which is questioned or downright ejected by an ever-increasing number of citizens, from Lisbon to Bucharest and from Stockholm to Athens --- but hey, they are just uneducated and unenlightened bigots, as opposed to the EU bureaucracy which is a beacon of wisdom and foresightedness...)

It's look to me like the Poles are currently milking as much as they can from the benefits of being an EU member without delivering on their obligations. They probably should be kicked out

Oh, please! I know what´s going on in Romania and I have serious reasons to believe it is not that much different in Poland: Austrian OMV in control of all oil resources of the country; another Austrian company deforestating the mountains big time; Italian and US companies building highways at three times the price and the time in their countries; IKEA making huge profits and paying risible taxes and shaneful wages, just like many more Western Europe big corporations and companies; a host of Western Europe big banks making equally huge profits and having onerous credit conditions; small businesses and small farmers ruined, big corporations thriving etc, etc, etc --- go tell all those I just mentioned that Romania or Poland (the two largest Eastern European markets) should be kicked out of EU.

And btw: when it comes to discouraging Russia from attacking Poland or Romania or the Baltic States militarily, NATO is the first and foremost deterrent. God help us if our protection depended first and foremost on EU.

[Florestan]

All I'm saying is that Poles are divided and many feel their democracy is threatened.

As Charles Crawford remarked in one of the articles I linked to above, that can be said about pretty much any country in Western Europe as well --- and by itself it constitutes no proof that this is so.

[drogulus]

I see.  Sorta like belief in MMT. 

    It's more important to understand it. I don't waste my time "believing in" it. It sums up what's known to be true, not a theory so much as a handbook that corrects common errors.  I can see why people at the believer pole of the spectrum don't much care for it. Other people who care about accurate descriptions of function see the point, which is not to be blinded by beliefs.

[Florestan]

Indeed

Indeed?? I vividly remember you not being at all a fan of primaries or the Electoral Ciollege. What made you change your mind overnight?

It's much better to have a well balanced system with much transparency, little corruption, a free press and the real option of replacing politicians that don't perform both in the long and the short run. Which seem to be exactly the opposite direction in which Poland currently is heading.

Which is actually exactly what happened in Poland: corrupt, unperforming and unpopular politicians were replaced after free elections. Yet instead of rejoicing about democracy being served you cry "Danger!"

As for free press, it was exactly the former PO government which feared it, as shown by the frequent and flagrant violations of its freedom --- all well documented in numerous articles in the free Polish press, some of which were translated and offered to the public by the equally free Romanian press. Why the Norwegian press seem to have ignored them I will not venture to speculate.

The people's will is not always a good thing.

And just who is entitled to decide, and on what grounds, when it is good and when it is not?

[Todd]

It sums up what's known to be true

Written like a true believer.

[drogulus]

     Only a true believer would think there is no knowledge, just opinion. I think otherwise. In the process of understanding money and economics, something that interested me, and became increasingly important for investor reasons, I investigated. What type of framework to adopt was the problem. I needed something more fact of the matter than the usual liberal/conservative beliefism. I found MMT, and learned how it wasn't a theory, but the culmination of a winnowing of theory through the filter of experience. The profession doesn't take kindly to the facts first approach, the enemy of opinionism. Economists tend to stick close to their early education, so when they learn that a money system gets its money from taxing the people that get their money from the selfsame money system, well, no wonder they never believe anything true again. How could they with a household view of the whole system?

     An interesting point about the eternal war between liberals and conservatives is that where they disagree most strongly they are largely right, and where they tend to agree they are largely wrong.

[Rinaldo]

No, it's because leftist politicians are the ones pushing it, despite  the fact that 1) the evidence that global warming is caused by human activity is far less conclusive than proponents of the idea claim (in part because we don't know a lot of things about how earth's climate change is driven by non human causes)

Have you checked the scientific consensus recently?

2) there is no real evidence that the earth growing warmer is harmful to humans or to the environment in general.

Not sure if the people of Maldives would agree. Also..

[Todd]

I found MMT, and learned how it wasn't a theory, but the culmination of a winnowing of theory through the filter of experience.

That's not what MMT is (the 'T' gives it away), but clearly you've deluded yourself.  Keep on keepin' on.

[Todd]

Not sure if the people of Maldives would agree. Also..

Long-term (ie, >25 years) real estate investment advice: do not invest in the Maldives or Florida coastal real estate.  Southeastern Georgia (USA) looks good, though.

[kishnevi]

Have you checked the scientific consensus recently?

Not sure if the people of Maldives would agree. Also..

I did not say global warming is not happening.  I think it is.  The weather in Florida (where I live) has changed in ways that accord with it.

The two points to remember
1)The effects of warming are not really known, and the threats of disaster are based on speculation.  Warm earth actually seems to be beneficial.   Sea level rise, etc. are pure speculation, and the research is on both sides of that precise point rather weak.
2). The earth has been much warmer in the past, with both coral and polar bears surviving quite well.  These warm periods were all by natural causes, and scientists do not have a firm idea of what factors were involved.  Since they do not understand the natural causes,  it is impossible for them to know what influence human activity has on climate.  Anyone who says otherwise is departing from the facts, no matter how many scientific credentials they have.

Notice how many of the cites in that Wikipedia article hedge...they say it is "highly likely" etc.   The recent ones also ignore the fact that at the moment climate is not moving in either direction.  The last few years have seen a relative standstill. The other statements are merely proving that science is not immune to corruption and go-with-the-flow.  But notice how often the argument for government action is made by the recipients of government funding.  A couple of decades ago, the fad was that Earth was cooling too much:   the same "solution" of government control was advocated then, in some instances by the same people yelling about warming now.

In truth, the medieval period was warm compared to now, followed by a much colder period that lasted into the 1700s, when it started to warm up.  This happened to coincide with the start of the Industrial Age-- but was not caused by it.  We are now approaching the warmth of the medieval era, but not all the way (Greenland had agriculture then), and there is no reliable data on how much warmer we will get.  IOW,  Mother Nature is doing her cyclical thing, and science does not really know much about it.  I don't own beachfront property:  too expensive.

[kishnevi]

That's not what MMT is (the 'T' gives it away), but clearly you've deluded yourself.  Keep on keepin' on.

I lost track....What is MMT?

[Todd]

I lost track....What is MMT?

Modern Monetary Theory.  Basically, the government of a monetarily sovereign nation like the US can print an unlimited amount of money to buy central government debt to purchase whatever central governments purchase, without negative consequences.  A lefty wet-dream.

[kishnevi]

Modern Monetary Theory.  Basically, the government of a monetarily sovereign nation like the US can print an unlimited amount of money to buy central government debt to purchase whatever central governments purchase, without negative consequences.  A lefty wet-dream.

I get it.  A never ending Ponzi scheme.

[drogulus]

I get it.  A never ending Ponzi scheme.

      The description of how the government spends money into existence should not be confused with what is called Fed "printing". The money sovereign spends to add money to the private sector, taxes to remove excess and sells bonds for safe savings instruments. A central tenet of Post Keynesians including MMTers is that the government must spend in order to tax. It never taxes in order to spend. It can't "get" or have dollars, it only spends or taxes them. As a matter of precedence it must add before it removes. As for spending more than it taxes, it had better or there wouldn't be enough dollars as savings removes them. Saved dollars are replaced, and that replacement of national financial savings is called the national debt. Some people want to "fix" national savings by eliminating the liabilities that record them. They want to tax the savings/debt away. Most of these people are probably too far gone for MMT.

     It's a Ponzi scheme when a currency user acts like a currency issuer. That's bad. But when a currency issuer acts like a currency user, that's worse. The whole economy is victimized by the "run out of dollars" myth.

     We wouldn't have a debt limit law if there was some kind of economic limit on sovereign debt in its own money. We have such laws because, oh, something like "the government of a monetarily sovereign nation like the US can print an unlimited amount of money to buy central government debt to purchase whatever central governments purchase, without negative consequences."

     Because what MMT says is functionally accurate,(for MMTers, this is a big thing), the outlandishly bogus debt limit is needed. There'd be no point otherwise.

     If anyone is interested in simple but accurate descriptions you can read:

     Modern Monetary Theory (MMT): How Fiat Money Works

[Madiel]

2) there is no real evidence that the earth growing warmer is harmful to humans or to the environment in general.  Earth has been much warmer than it is now, some of those warm times in relatively recent history, with no demonstrable harm to the geosphere (and no possibility of human actions causing it to be warmer).  In fact, there is a substantial argument to be made that a warmer earth is better for humans (in large part because of it allows more areas to be used to grow food).

This is a politics thread, not a science thread, but suffice to say I find this an utterly clueless remark. It's not merely the temperature, but the rate at which it changes.

Because various animal and plant species (ones that have got to where they are without human intervention) are not going to be able to up and migrate to the appropriate climate area when their current location is no longer suitable. The notion that humans might be able to exploit new foodbowls is all very well so long as you have no concept of how important ecology and biodiversity are, and think everything's just fine so long as human beings have 50-odd species to live off.

The only people who say the science is not settled are people who don't want it to be settled. Meanwhile, actual scientists tell us that the key points of the science are settled, and now they're just filling out the details.

But people don't like change, and will find any possible excuse not to change their behaviour and to explain that it's perfectly fine for them to continue dumping copious amounts of gaseous waste into the atmosphere. Of course, once upon a time people thought nothing of dumping their liquid waste into rivers and their solid waste into the street. Until some crazy scientists somewhere declared that this was killing the fish and creating a public health risk in the cities.

[The new erato]

The only people who say the science is not settled are people who don't want it to be settled. Meanwhile, actual scientists tell us that the key points of the science are settled, and now they're just filling out the details.

Quoted for truth.

[Florestan]

actual scientists tell us that the key points of the science are settled, and now they're just filling out the details.

That´s exactly what physicists were confidently telling people just few years before Max Planck came up with the quantum theory and blew their settled physics up. 

[Madiel]

 

Okay, fine then. Pumping millions of tonnes of gases into the atmosphere has no effect whatsoever. Not only are they invisible, they're completely inert and have no physical or chemical properties of interest or relevance. They might as well not exist.

Also, you can eat as many calories as you want with no impact on your weight and I can show you how to spend all the money you want without draining your bank account.