economics - where to begin?

I know very little about economics and the history thereof, but here's a question... has any socialist or even capitalist country ever had state-run banks? How'd that go?

I thought of this randomly while thinking about how I hate every fucking bank in Canada and how they're all the worst option ever, and then I thought "if they're going to rip me off they could at least use it to give me more healthcare, instead of filling some rich fux pockets!"

and to repeat: "I know very little about economics and the history thereof"

Why are you asking a bunch of non-experts? Clearly you should ask an economist. Just don't trust him/her to tell you everything since they've probably never experienced the economy.

Uhh... I don't know how I'm supposed to respond to that. Other than that I don't know any economists.

It was a joke. The ADD thread in one post.

I got the tone, I just wasn't clear on the tone (couldn't tell if it was "LOL" or "STFU WILL")

I got the reference, I just wasn't clear on the tone (couldn't tell if it was "LOL" or "STFU WILL")

Lots of countries have state-run banks, including India and China.

LOL

I try to cut back on the smileys lest I'm mistaken for Ned.

I would highly recommend Naked Economics to anyone who (like me) knows absolutely nothing about the subject. It was a very good primer. I feel like I'm at least 5% knowledgable about the subject now.

any secondary school (um, fifteen year olds) book on macroeconomics should be fine for an overview

I don't remember ever studying economics in HS. I feel robbed.

okay

^^^^ Useless.

-- Deric W. Haircare, you are a stupid fucked-up piece of shit and ought to be banned. There's not a post of yours I've read that added anything to the conversation, you got no data, no information, I don't even know who you are or where you're from, and you're not even funny. On top of that you can't even amage to post a WDYLL photo proving that you have cleavage and a cute smile. You're worthless. The posters you criticize might have their fair share of predictable faults, but at least none of them is being a complete and utter fucking dullard.

Thank god I've got two things keeping me on this board.

o noes they're stuck to the computer?

Economics and verbal beatdowns?

cock like a stallion and an iron will

OUI, I have to carry around an air compressor for the hydraulics I built to keep my cock up. Monster cock gets in the way sometimes.

(shellac reference. Or is it? *GIANT WINK*)

Do you have to pump the compressor? I imagine you sitting in a meeting with a little pump in your pocket, and it's totally quiet at one end of the table, and then everyone looks around when they hear "phew phew phew" and you look around too just to act like it's not you. Right? Right?

Hahaha, yeah. This damn wang also means I have to pay for two seats on a plane, one for me, and one for my epic uncut moleskine curled up all like a butterfly proboscis but sitting there with the air compressor lest a change in temperature or an attractive passenger or a fond memory or any fool thing makes BONERB. THEN, fuck, I gotta support the thing, and I get all lightheaded from sudden blood flow out of my upper body (ps my heart is like the size and speed of two humping chihuahuas).

Abbott that story really scared me. Tuck me in?

Shit I don't know where my head is forget that last part.

I don't have any happy stories.

I'm sort of imagining a baby alien with titanium teeth. Very impressive.

I took an economics class in high school and got an A, but only because I was good at memorizing the terms and basic principles and because all the quizzes were multiple-choice. Otherwise, economics is something that I just cannot wrap my head around. Like, I was a pretty good history student, too, until we got around to anything that involved tariffs and then I was like, "Durrrr, what?"

My high school econ class was taught by a football coach who looked like a really solemn Ken doll. The main things I remember:

1. He had us write a one-page reply every class to an inspirational quote on the board, the kind coaches like. He didn't like any of my replies, so eventually I just started writing about other inspirational quotes. "Wow, 'a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.' That's really true. You're finally beginning to catch on to this class."

2. Playing "Communist Monopoly," where we were given random, equal amounts of property squares and had to move pieces around the board paying people, not trading anything. Then at the end of the game (kind of randomly truncated), we had to evenly divide our winnings. "And that's how Communism works! As you can see, it's tedious and boring."

As far as books abt econ, I liked The Undercover Economist. Of course, since it came out after Freakanomics, the jacket has all this stuff like "just like Freakanomics!" But unlike Freakanomics, you actually learn about theory/principles/ideas of economics, and not just a bunch of "how can we connect gallons of strawberry ice cream purchased with how Kennedy started the space program?"

OMG: I don't know if I even want to stifle my "Communist Monopoly" laughter and be a pedant about it, but he could have gone much further: I think technically the teacher would control all the hotels, place them however he wanted, and you would have to keep your piece in one spot, getting paid in small, periodic increments. (If you wanted to move to another, more prosperous square, you would have to fill out various forms and submit them to the teacher, requesting permission.)

Also in capitalist monopoly there should technically be one player who doesn't get $200 for passing go, unemployment being a fixed structural feature of the economy that prevents inflation from damaging the other players' earnings. (Also you'd have to be locked up for a week and playing for sandwiches and bottled water.)

In Capitalist Monopoly, of course, two out of nine players get a long head-start during which they buy up most of the properties and then make up a bunch of arcane rules you can't follow

has larry gonick not written a book about this?

I only realized recently that the various pieces are meant to represent wealth / poverty that way! They were just too pussy about capitalism to actually start the sports car out with more cash than the thimble.

I never thought of it that way - but wait, so the town car is the capitalist, the thimble is the laborer/craftsman, the wheelbarrow is the farmer, the dog is the, uh, running dog?

wheelbarrow 4 life

I am listening to some Teaching Company lectures on Economics right now, and it is mostly filling in some gaps in my Econ 101 understanding, and it is generally going well, but the lecture on the trade balance made my head spin.

-- Deric W. Haircare, you are a stupid fucked-up piece of shit and ought to be banned. There's not a post of yours I've read that added anything to the conversation, you got no data, no information, I don't even know who you are or where you're from, and you're not even funny. On top of that you can't even amage to post a WDYLL photo proving that you have cleavage and a cute smile. You're worthless. The posters you criticize might have their fair share of predictable faults, but at least none of them is being a complete and utter fucking dullard.

Oh, are you referring to all 30 or so posts I've made on this board? I have no idea what could've possibly inspired this much bile, but you can seriously go fuck yourself straight to death.

ugh, Macroeconomics in HS was brutal. We had a real teacher, but he got all his lesson plans and videos from some 'winger free market group and refused to teach anything but.

x-post

And if you'd like to point out examples of whatever the fuck straw man bullshit you're even talking about, that'd be great.

Macroeconomics is fun. I'm currently taking a Macro class for my M.B.A. degree. It's not as bad as I expected.

(from way upthread)

Inflation/Deflation exist because money has no intrinsic value, even gold. Money is only worth what people are able to give you for it. This is evidenced by the prices people will charge for things. The natural tendency is for people to try and increase prices but this only serves to reduce the value of money because the value to a person of, say, a loaf of bread remains pretty much the same...

I think I'm getting this, except why is it natural that businesses will gradually charge higher and higher prices over time (thus causing inflation in the long run)? Does this have to do with the increasing money supply?

"because people are greedy bastards"

http://www.mospaw.com/monopoly/token-iron.jpg IRON OUT INEQUALITY http://www.mospaw.com/monopoly/token-iron.jpg

WTF is the cannon supposed to represent? Unbridled phallic agression?

Having not studied economics much formally, I'd venture a guess that businesses are probably likely to raise prices for legit reasons but then not drop them down again (as much) unless they really need to. Like I wouldn't be surprised that if the coffee price goes up 10%, Starbucks would raise its prices accordingly, but then if coffee went back down to where it was, Starbucks would either keep prices the same or drop them less than proportionally. Just a hunch.

<i>I think I'm getting this, except why is it natural that businesses will gradually charge higher and higher prices over time (thus causing inflation in the long run)? Does this have to do with the increasing money supply?</i>

The general idea these days is that economies have cycles, and they grow towards full capacity. As they do this, it becomes harder and harder for companies to keep their good workers, because their labour is more in demand. So the companies have to pay the workers more. This has two effects:
1. People have more money, so are willing to spend more money on stuff
2. (Some) companies have higher costs, and so must raise their prices to avoid closing down.

You can substitute labour for dudes who make factories, gold, oil, whatever. Eventually someone stops buying stuff (or central banks who are concerned with inflation put up interest rates, which makes you have to pay more on your mortgage and gives you less money to spend on DVDs, and also discourages business from investing in things and making bigger factories), and the economy slows down and goes into the recession phase. Rinse and repeat.

I didn't read the whole thread so someone has probably already said this.

fuck u lack of html

Also after you have read the economics books aimed at people who have no idea about economics (the undercover economist etc) and you want a bit more detail, the best textbook author by far is Greg Mankiw.

Having not studied economics much formally, I'd venture a guess that businesses are probably likely to raise prices for legit reasons but then not drop them down again (as much) unless they really need to. Like I wouldn't be surprised that if the coffee price goes up 10%, Starbucks would raise its prices accordingly, but then if coffee went back down to where it was, Starbucks would either keep prices the same or drop them less than proportionally. Just a hunch.

This is called sticky prices. Oil/petrol in particular has this effect. Pricing in perfect competition should not be sticky.

it's one of my true regrets in this life, that i decided to change my undergrad major from poli sci/economics to poli sci/english. of course, that my economics grads weren't all that hot had something to do with that decision ;__;

and oh yeah, micro/macro weren't all that brutal as classes -- at least not the intro level classes. the intermediate micro/macro classes (i.e., the stuff that econ majors had to take at my school) were a bit more quant-oriented than the intro stuff, but the math wasn't all that bad (though one had to take calculus in order to be able to take intermediate micro/macro in the 1st place).

the REAL bitch of a class for econ majors was econometrics -- that was the shit that made me drop economics as a major.

Economics is equally bad when it tries too hard to be a science and when it tries too hard to be a liberal art

quite often it's a separate company that does the financing and so yeah the company selling the product is paying a cut to the financing company. in australia, afterpay is one of the biggest buy now pay later financing companies and they're actually allowed to prevent retailers charging the customer more to use afterpay (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-07/buy-now-pay-later-players-wont-be-asked-to-pass-on-retailer-fees/12956250)

I assume the following:

they charge more, or they charge some sort of fee for using the service
they charge for missed payments, making the whole endeavor worthwhile

I assume they're also have a vested interest in the buyer maybe missing a couple payments, which will make the interest-free part null & void... and also warrant a hefty late fee or something.

What about "make no payments for 48 months!!"?
And then four years later you have to start paying for a used mattress.

jinx

so does that make me a sucker for not taking advantage of it?

I suppose this really depends on your own utility function. Personally I am averse to "taking advantage" of 0% financing as I prefer the certainty of the up front cost. Keeping track of payments and direct debits for me would be a negative burden that would outweigh any potential benefit (at least in the era of low interest rates on deposits, and where I am lucky enough to have met my immediate needs, and have a cash surplus).

I guess the analysis of this will fall somewhere within intertemporal choice theory - and if we are inclined to accept a much higher prices of goods with 0% financing there could be a number of explanations (e.g. a significant intertemporal discount rate, imperfect information, imperfect processing power etc.?).

In so far as the financing cost being baked into the price, perhaps instead this could be viewed it as a method of price segmentation? On the assumption there is a correlation between the price elasticities of consumers and their likeliness to use financing.

Sketching it out let's say you have two groups of consumers for a given good -

(1) price elastic consumers who are less likely to invoke 0% financing options for a number of potential reasons (e.g. differing utility functions, or vanity, or perhaps just inexperience with such financing options because they have not needed to use such options in the past); and

(2) price inelastic consumers (who are potentially more experienced with 0% financing or their circumstance dictates that they must use it to get what they are after).

Let's say a profit maximising producer makes a supply to the market at price X in the case of no financing.

And in the case of financing being used the producer's price is effectively (X-B) - where B is the cost they pay to a third party (Payl8r for example) for taking the risks of the financing side. But by doing so this allows the producer to sell to type 2 consumers that they would otherwise miss out on, presumably without dramatically decreasing the full price X income from the type 1 consumers? Something to chew on.

Definitely interested in reading more on this type of stuff.

I suppose there is a parallel in price segmentation in the fact that if you search for them you can find discount codes for many websites, but not everyone searches for them

and we definitely shouldn't discount the additional time cost to the consumer signing up to financing or searching for discounts

I wasn't thinking of it in terms of stealth price differentiation, but it makes sense.

I assume the following:

they charge more, or they charge some sort of fee for using the service
they charge for missed payments, making the whole endeavor worthwhile

i don't think its the price discrimination thing. cause it's the same price to buy on layaway at 0 interest. its actually cheaper cause you could lend the money in the interim and make the interest. interest rates are low and no one would realistically do that for retail purchases, but still

fizzles is otm here:

the obvious benefit is that they will sell more because more people can afford it on a per month basis. even without factoring in fees it’s worth the margin hit.

the buy-now-pay-later service gets fees from the retailer directly, about 5% per sale according to this. that's where the bulk of the money comes from. the article says fees are a minority of the revenues. is it worth it for the retailer? they still get 95% from each sale. so if the price stays the same, they lose 5% on people who would've purchased anyway, and gain 95% on people who wouldn't have purchased without buy-now-pay-later. so as long as there is 1 person who was induced to buy by buy-now-pay-later for ever 20 who buy-now-pay-later'd but would've purchased anyway, it's worth it for them

retailers may be raising prices in response to this; it is a positive demand shock. i doubt by very much, but i could be wrong

1209 to 2019

The Bank of England governor says that cryptocurrency investors should be prepared to lose all their money 🤡 pic.twitter.com/OgNk143iIC

— Aleksandra Huk (@HukAleksandra) May 8, 2021

Wow can’t believe the standard of living of your average £1/year laborer has declined so much in the last 800 years

???????

That graph is 100% accurate and completely useless as a means of understanding economics, finance or money.

Yeah, a lot of crypto supporters think low inflation is a bad thing.

I haven't read the book this is reviewing, so the review may be deeply unfair, but I agree with the review's argument that much of what gets criticised in 'economics' is really just 'the right'. https://t.co/C9qi7XqrIx

— Lafargue (@Lafargue) May 20, 2022

https://www.epi.org/anti-racist-policy-research/disparities-chartbook/#laborcharts

I note that this thread on economics already existed.

https://thebaffler.com/latest/extravagances-of-neoliberalism-kunkel

Only understood it in bits, don't know if I get supply-side economics.

if i’m not mistaken, her point about supply-side economics was that there was a sort of rhetorical sleight of hand beginning in the ‘70s and ‘80s among conservative economists and the politicians who cited them. when it comes to the state’s budget, whether you increase expenditures (social programs) or reduce revenues (from taxes), the effect is functionally the same on the budget (i.e., “spending”). but social programs get cast as wasteful and “expensive,” whereas tax incentives (which disproportionately help corporations and the rich) are politically feasible from the standpoint of right-wing policymakers.

sorry, i think i spoke to soon -- that's just one of her points. i've just gotten to the part where she's delineating the difference b/w Virginia school neoliberalism and supply-side economics. will maybe report back. but overall i've really enjoyed this article, thanks for sharing

On the flip side, a world of socialized finance would cut out the middle men that currently make public investment so laborious: instead of coaxing private actors and asset managers into investment projects with tax expenditures and instead of forcing “users” to subsidize their returns into the far future, public investment projects would revert as far as possible to direct government spending sustained by a progressive tax system and an accommodative central bank. We cannot avoid the tax issue, as Modern Monetary Theory sometimes does, because we need to actually eliminate tax subsidies to private investment. This would allow us to accelerate urgent projects such as renewable energy transition that are currently failing not because they are too expensive but because they are too cheap and provide too few opportunities for private profit making and rent extraction.

!

re: her discussion of supply side, i wish she had elaborated on the "floating dollar" as it relates to global markets and how that effects US public spending and domestic economic policy more generally. it gets particularly interesting an as explanation for why the US spends extravagantly in some domains but must adhere to austerity in others.

i think this is quite a separate point from what i had understood "supply side" to mean, i.e. a technique or theory within neoliberalism that seeks to achieve a certain kind of austerity through tax cuts and "promoting the free market"

Yeah it furthered my understanding of neolib somewhat where there is cash for defence spend but not, say, education. I focused on the political outcomes, so got something out of it.

re: her discussion of supply side, i wish she had elaborated on the "floating dollar" as it relates to global markets

i think this is quite a separate point from what i had understood "supply side" to mean, i.e. a technique or theory within neoliberalism that seeks to achieve a certain kind of austerity through tax cuts and "promoting the free market"

The other day I attended a city hearing where the other item on the agenda had to do with affordable housing and the government people were basically saying that tax credits were essential to the developers doing the building of the housing…

Link I foubd through Bluesky #resistance.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/billionaires-should-not-exist

Anyway this is fine and all but I don't think millionaires should exist either. The whole notion of concentrating wealth in different scales and then doing a merry dance on the tax system, which creates its own system of loopholes and another bureaucracy to close them and catch cheats...it all seems v tiresome to me.