01-07-2017, 02:34 PM
(01-03-2017, 04:16 PM)Mikebert Wrote:(01-03-2017, 03:57 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(01-03-2017, 02:07 PM)Mikebert Wrote: I first look at innovation wave/leading sector stuff in the 1990's. Back then I saw the K-peaks in 1864, 1920 and 1981 and the period of strong growth afterward 4.7% (1866-73) 4.8% (1921-29) and 4.4% (1982-89) as the same points of time in the K-cycle. These periods were followed by downturns and then a period of very strong growth afterward: 8.9% (1877-81) and 9.4% (1933-37). Both of these periods occurred during growth phase of cluster of leading sectors, or "new economy" as Harry Dent puts it. The previous growth phases ended in 1888 and 1937 for the industrial and mass-market economy, respectively and the current one was forecasted to end in 2007. Based on this concept I anticipated strong growth in the late 1990's, not as strong as in 1877-81 or 1933-37, since these were coming off economic lows, but still stronger than what was saw in the 1980's. Didn't happen, growth over 1996-2000 was the same as in the 1980's.
This was all before generations. In 2000-1 I added the idea of generations to my thinking and concluded that the K-cycle was longer today than its historic 50-60 year length. Based on a correlation between the start of K-winter and the 4T in 1929, I took the apparent 2001 start of the 4T as evidence that K-winter began in 2000. This makes the economic boom over the 1982-2000 bull market cycle equivalent to the 1861-81 and 1921-29 bull markets, for which growth averaged 4.9% and 4.8%, respectively. Growth over the 1982-2000 bull averaged only 3.7%, a bit less but not way out of line.
But that wasn't right. We now think 2008 is a 4T start and I did confirm that 2008 was a 1929-equivalent economic event. So this means the analog to 1921-29 is now 1982-2007 for which average growth was only 3.2% due to poor growth of 2.7% over the 2001-2007 expansion. In other words during the growth phase of the information economy growth was strongest in the 1980's before the internet, when PCs and floppy disks were cutting edge. The addition of much more capable machines, capable hard drives, and the internet (which changed everything so said the stock market boosters in the nineties bubble) gave us slightly slower growth. Then after 2000, broadband, B2B and social media, brought us even slower growth. Adding smart phones since 2007 and a lot more social media hasn't helped--growth over 2009-15 was even slower at 2.2%. These leading sectors aren't powering growth like they used to. If what you say is true about all this huge spending on IT infrastructure creating growth, then it would show up in the numbers.
Why do you think the k cycle and the generational cycle have to be aligned?
I don't anymore. Back in the 1990's and early 2000's it looked promising. There was a correspondence between turnings 1929-1946, 1946-1964, 1964-1984 and 1984- and K-cycle seasons 1929-1946, 1946-1966, 1966-1982, 1982-2008. It was driven by the correspondence between the 1980's and the 1920's in economic and political terms, and the 1990's and the 1920's in new innovation/new economy terms. Roy Neuberger, who shorted Radio at its peak in '29, still active a nearly 100 in the late nineties noted the similarity between the late 1920's and the current times. So yeah I thought there was a connection 10-20 years ago. Now? Not so much.
I thought the "Is Connecticut the Best State in which to Live?" thread of potential interest. I could not bring back everything, and whether I knew what the "Law of Large Numbers" really was wasn;t that important.
Neither was much of the nasty stuff that I left out. I had limited time in which to revive anything,. so I had to be selective.
If someone has a problem with what I had to say about the states on statistical levels on politics, living standards, and education -- tough luck. How well one lives depends upon many things, including formal education, avoiding teen sex, staying clean of street drugs, abstaining from crime, and not using tobacco. Ethnicity? Although it was a statistical disadvantage to be black anywhere, it was statistically more of a disadvantage to be white in West Virginia than to be black in Maryland, which may demonstrate not to much that people of West Virginia were schmucks, but instead that the government in West Virginia had not well met certain basic needs well.
I introduced the concept of statewide credit scores as a way to deflate the effects of high real estate prices (in effect, one can live better on $25K a year in Mississippi than on $40K in parts of California and Greater New York because of the difference in real estate prices between rural America and the megalopolises) but I still found patterns that showed the Mountain and Deep South terribly disadvantaged. I also found a correlation between smoking and poor credit scores. Add to that -- someone with good habits will fare better in a state with a lesser rating of quality of life, and that someone taking bad habits from a state with a lesser rating in quality of life to a state with a higher quality of life (like being a high-school drop-out and a chain-smoker) will do little good.
As large as the USA is in geographic scope, I might have expected that costs of living would in part reflect winter costs of heating and clothing. Even so, Minnesota did better in statewide credit scores than Mississippi. I came to the conclusion that if someone who has a fresh teachers certificate granted in a place equidistant between job offers in Minnesota and Mississippi, then go to Minnesota because the schools are likely to be better funded.
Politics? I had little good to say about the Republican Party, but I noticed that if I made adjustments for the cost of living, Nebraska and Utah did well enough. Those two states spend their public funds well. Of course, Utah residents are the lightest smokers, by far, in America... so Utah doesn't have to spend as much on public health to cover people with smoking-related ailments. I noticed that Texas did far better than most other states in the Deep and Mountain South -- probably because Texans do not smoke as much, and because many of the poor in Texas are Mexican-Americans who have yet to assimilate the anti-intellectualism characteristic of white and black people on the whole in the Mountain and Deep South.
I had little good to say about my own state Michigan. After it voted for Demagogue Don, I have even less good to say of it, but that was before I did the thread 'necromancy'. Michigan is beginning to look more like a state in the Mountain South -- West Virginia with lakes instead of hills. Michigan over-invested in highways early to facilitate the power of the automobile industry that it depended upon for jobs and high incomes. Michigan has a bigger agricultural base than does West Virginia, but in parallel the automobile and coal industries went into relative decline while the state politicians failed to make the appropriate adjustments. Michigan was less partisan than West Virginia, so Democrats and Republicans both got culpability for the bad economic consequences. West Virginia was more Democratic, and Democratic politicians got caught with the consequences of their incompetence and inattention. West Virginia should have put more funds into roads, schools, and public health in the good times... and didn't.
That is a fair warning to any state that relies heavily upon one industry for above-average incomes. Thus if high technology falters in California, there will be bad consequences for California. Texas might want to hedge upon oil with solar power (example: Dallas is almost as sunny as Phoenix) in the event that the oil fields go dry.
But in reviving that thread I had to rush, and rush jobs usually have their faults. I am not like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in composition, being able to write quickly while writing scores with no mistakes.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.