economics
Wonder economics
by Jerry Bannon
Yesterday I saw some projections on television of United States historic debt/GDP ratios. Intrigued, I decided to do some web research of just what this multi-trillion dollar budget/deficit might have upon the future. What I found was far from reassuring. Did anyone had a valid idea of what all this all meant?
First, things look much different depending upon whether you put your ratios in dollars or in percentages. Things look much better in percentages because you divide everything by 100, which has a tendency to level out the graphs.
Then it really gets complicated because you find out that all the reports are generated by people with vested interests to promote a specific economic worldview. Hence conservative economists state that the current deficits are binding our children with debts they cannot hope to repay. The more liberal spin is that these deficits are basically inconsequential when we look at long term future liabilities related to future entitlements.
There are gems of truth in it all; it is just that all the findings get buried in the noise of the rhetoric. So both sides are really trying to raise or suppress the fears of specific interest groups that pay their bills. Which verifies the effects of the natural law of the stasis of present reality over an unknown future.
In similar light, leadership from each side promotes the findings to foster their present economic self-interest and the noise again increases accompanied with an increased probability of chaos or entropy. What this does is to increase the certainty that we always overestimate the best and underestimate the worst. This all dependent upon our primary presuppositions.
What all these numbers quantify, is that numbers are incapable of imagination. Imagination is the one quality of the human personality that has allowed for the rise of all human civilization. In short, the imaginative rule and prosper, the unimaginative are eliminated from the gene pool.
Read More...
Yesterday I saw some projections on television of United States historic debt/GDP ratios. Intrigued, I decided to do some web research of just what this multi-trillion dollar budget/deficit might have upon the future. What I found was far from reassuring. Did anyone had a valid idea of what all this all meant?
First, things look much different depending upon whether you put your ratios in dollars or in percentages. Things look much better in percentages because you divide everything by 100, which has a tendency to level out the graphs.
Then it really gets complicated because you find out that all the reports are generated by people with vested interests to promote a specific economic worldview. Hence conservative economists state that the current deficits are binding our children with debts they cannot hope to repay. The more liberal spin is that these deficits are basically inconsequential when we look at long term future liabilities related to future entitlements.
There are gems of truth in it all; it is just that all the findings get buried in the noise of the rhetoric. So both sides are really trying to raise or suppress the fears of specific interest groups that pay their bills. Which verifies the effects of the natural law of the stasis of present reality over an unknown future.
In similar light, leadership from each side promotes the findings to foster their present economic self-interest and the noise again increases accompanied with an increased probability of chaos or entropy. What this does is to increase the certainty that we always overestimate the best and underestimate the worst. This all dependent upon our primary presuppositions.
What all these numbers quantify, is that numbers are incapable of imagination. Imagination is the one quality of the human personality that has allowed for the rise of all human civilization. In short, the imaginative rule and prosper, the unimaginative are eliminated from the gene pool.
Read More...
Stupendous Debt & the demise of enlightenment supremacy
04/February/2009 08:01 Filed in: Weekly
Column
The oldest tale in The Book is about a couple that
made the wrong choice. That choice was between the
perceived understanding of present security
compared to the uncertainty of passing time. This
choice was precipitated by another created being,
who had made a similar choice and now was seeking
company for his loneliness.
Following along in that Book of myths we find a time when people thought that they could find eternal happiness by developing mechanisms by which through their intelligence and wisdom they could have it all. The reason given in The Book for that failure was the confusion of languages. I suppose people got so engrossed in doing things their own way, they failed to communicate.
Some may say this was a religious phenomenon, true, for I once heard a leader in the secular Christian TV community using this Book discussion to promote his idea, which if his followers all worked together, they could do what Babylon failed to accomplish. Now if that isn’t a concept rooted in the demise of enlightenment thinking, I have not heard a better.
Finishing up with our brief survey of The Book we find in the last compendium a similar story where in the Babylon of that time, the people of all lands ceased to buy all the things the great leaders of the world provided, for a variety of allegorical reasons. The interesting thing about this Babylon was that the normal ordinary folks were not sad to see the whole thing collapse even though it meant more personal hardship.
There is a whole lot of other wisdom in The Book that is probably applicable to our day and age, but it is just a book, and as we know books are filled with words, just words. To think that words have transcendent meaning to convey something called Absolute Truth is just fiction, maybe interesting fiction, but nothing more. After all reality beyond the concept of man’s own understanding just does not happen in our enlightened age.
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Following along in that Book of myths we find a time when people thought that they could find eternal happiness by developing mechanisms by which through their intelligence and wisdom they could have it all. The reason given in The Book for that failure was the confusion of languages. I suppose people got so engrossed in doing things their own way, they failed to communicate.
Some may say this was a religious phenomenon, true, for I once heard a leader in the secular Christian TV community using this Book discussion to promote his idea, which if his followers all worked together, they could do what Babylon failed to accomplish. Now if that isn’t a concept rooted in the demise of enlightenment thinking, I have not heard a better.
Finishing up with our brief survey of The Book we find in the last compendium a similar story where in the Babylon of that time, the people of all lands ceased to buy all the things the great leaders of the world provided, for a variety of allegorical reasons. The interesting thing about this Babylon was that the normal ordinary folks were not sad to see the whole thing collapse even though it meant more personal hardship.
There is a whole lot of other wisdom in The Book that is probably applicable to our day and age, but it is just a book, and as we know books are filled with words, just words. To think that words have transcendent meaning to convey something called Absolute Truth is just fiction, maybe interesting fiction, but nothing more. After all reality beyond the concept of man’s own understanding just does not happen in our enlightened age.
Read More...