Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-20-2016, 02:07 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: What if both supply-side (stimulate production by making it more lucrative to ownership and management through tax cuts on their high incomes) and demand-side (enticing people to buy more stuff) economics are obsolete?  The only possible growth in teh demand for material objects comes as the result of population growth, itself a suspect objective.

Your what ifs look awfully broad and permanent to me.  I am willing to say that this is not the correct time for supply side.  I would point at the availability of funds for investment and large division of wealth as evidence for it.  You don't need to make more funds for investment available if there is already and oversupply of funds for investment.  This is not the same as saying that supply side is obsolete, that it is inconceivable that a time will ever come again some decades or centuries down stream when supply side might be beneficial.

I'd agree that a permanent policy of population growth as stimulus is apt to become bad policy as resources become more scarce.  It might already be a bad policy.  I sometimes wistfully daydream about a set of values where people seek out a satisfying life that doesn't require large expenditures of energy and other resources.  As an example, I once flew a trainer airplane in a dogfight against another such plane and found it a very interesting and exciting adrenalin sport.  Cool.  Fun.  One is definitely on the edge of information and sensory overload.  Will we someday have and want every teen age kid having a personal airplane so he can go up and dogfight?  Probably not.  Table tennis is another sport that requires far less resources.  Why can't people be satisfied with table tennis?

In short I'm much more ready to talk about whether an economic approach is working now rather than talk about if it is inconceivable that it will never work again.  My crystal ball just isn't that good.