Bitcoin Forum

http://static8.businessinsider.com/image/4e3c4973eab8ea8b2300000a/chart-of-the-day-duration-of-unemployment-aug-2011.jpg

S&P wants us to cut spending.  The politicians want to cut spending (okay they want votes, but they say they want to cut spending).  We need to cut spending.  UNFORTUNATELY when you cut spending you cut jobs.  Looking at that chart, is this really the best time to be cutting?  Damned if we do, damned if we don't. 

Spending for things that we simply do not need, spending to foot the bills of murderous thieves, liars and paper-pushers, spending for vanity and shiny and sugary.  No, we could all use a bit of common sense.  You ain't got nothing if you spent your loot on nothing worth having.

so if this has nothing to do with bitcoins or the bitcoin econemy, why is this chart here?

Um it's the economics section?  And since when does unemployment have nothing to do with the economy? 

If you need another "zomg BTC is falling, Sell sell!" or "get aboard the train, buy! buy!", the speculation section is thataway.

Edit:  I'll edit the title so it's clear what this thread is about.

um.. probly because the unemployment rate of what looks like of the US, has nothing to do with ecomonics of the bitcoin market imo.

The problem in your reasoning is that cutting government spending does not cut jobs, or better said, cutting government spending leads to a reduction of government jobs on the short term but favours creation of jobs in the private sector (productive jobs). On the contrary increasing government spending makes the statistics look good short term but its a disaster middle and long term. The increase of government spending along with not allowing bankruptcies (keeping bad business alive) is what is causing this depression to last so long.

You want jobs? Cut government spending, let bankruptcies happen (no bailouts and no bullshit), basically take the short term bullet and after a bit you will see a real recovery, not this jobless, stock bubbly "recovery".

PS: 100 years ago if a politician spoke about "jobless recovery" the citiznes would have taken him to the pitchfork. Now we just discuss why its happening...

So if none of us had jobs, and no money, it wouldn't impact Bitcoin?  Yeah, you might want to think about that for a while.

Produce.  Make.  Invent.  Solve.  Service.  Trade your excess value for what you need with someone that needs your excess...  Modern "progressive" "conservative" "patriotic" or "liberal" ideas are so far removed from the original meaning of the words as to render them useless as words.  

The majority of American citizens that are unemployed are such for three reasons, roughly.  They have no idea how to live comfortably in the great outdoors by their own means as millions of people did on this continent for 20,000 years before Europe found the damn thing.  They have no idea what their employers value most and so are easily fired or layed-off.  They were never told that going into business for yourself and being your own employer is an act of will, a decision that has nothing to do with paying a lawyer to help you incorporate, paying the town to approve your building permits, paying the State and the Fed more than double what employees pay in withheld varieties of rape...none of those mean anything other than tactical details. Being a business owner is more a point of view than anything else, and that point of view has been forcibly stolen from us.

Bankrupt companies do not hire people.  If we cut government jobs and let the private sector go bankrupt, what's left?  I understand what you're saying, our current path is unsustainable.  Eventually we will have to pay the piper.  It's just not as easy as let everything go to shit and then pick up the pieces afterward.  The risk that it turns systemic is rather high.

No, it wouldn't because someone somewhere will be mining for bitcoins. What you're talking about is improbible. This still doesn't belong in this section of the forums -.-

How do you mine with no money?  How do you pay for your mining equipment?  Your electricity? 

There's 50 other threads in this forum that talk about economics in general.  If you don't think it belongs here, I suggest you start reporting all of them.

Labor gets cheaper and the companies that aren't bankrupt hire the people looking for work. Now that also requires that regulations that increase the cost of labor to be repealed.

Exactly why you need to let them go bankrupt instead of propping them up, so other or new companies can occupy their places. But as long as bankrupt companies are using resources because they are being artificially proped up (bailouts, stimulous, ultra-low interest rates) there wont be a change and the capital structure will stay distorted and weak, because other or new companies can not take their place.


There is some true to this, specially in (and I believe only related to) the banking system. The banking system is a government created oligopolly and the government has regulated the amount and type of leverage they can achive. This has lead to a unsustainable situation. If we allow the market to correct it through the natural method (bankruptcy) the correction would be very quick, but also very brutal, with a lot of people loosing their savings, etc... I dont think this would be true in any other sector, IMO only the banking sector needs some kind of special solution. There are two sensible options.

1. What sweden did in the 90's. Its a government managed bankruptcy process. The government takes care of the banks for a while, so it can guarantee the deposits, but (and this is very important) completely wipes out the shareholders and the debtors. Both groups gave their money to a badly managed company so they deserve to loose their money. After a while, the government sells the banks to the private sector to recover part of the price of saving the banks. The BIG difference to what it is being done now, is that now we are rescuing the banks, including the shareholders and the debtors. The present "solution" is insane, its pure robbery by the plutocracy.

2. End the monpolly on money by removing legal tender laws, allowing to pay taxes in any currency, etc... By doing this you allow competing currencies and a competing financial system around these new currencies. This would allow for new investment to happen, that is now blocked because the banking system is bankrupt. Also, as the USD loses marketshare it would devaluate making the USD denominated debt easier to pay helping to solve the debt crisis much quicker.

I preffer the second solution as its better long term (the first solution does not change the present monetary system), but given what we have now the first solution would be very welcome. You can imagine we wont get any of both, we will keep saving the plutocrats through taxes and inflation, and will suffer stagflation for years until all the debt is wipped out and the capital structure has recover.

You've got it spot-on: the current course is 1. Sadly, the second is rapidly decreasing in probability of occurring anytime during the next couple of years. I think most politicians will move even further away from that, actually.

The problem is the debt. If all debt were forgiven tomorrow, this coiled mess of insolvency would be free to begin anew; of course we all know that's an unrealistic impossibility.

The problem with the first solution, that's currently being pursued by western nations, is that the entire financial structure is completely unstable. It's a confidence game - our illustrious "leaders" are simply hoping to keep the system and its established status quo limping along until the next big thing comes along to save them. They have no way of contributing to any advancement because they largely do not even understand the problem and won't until it's far too late. You think unemployment is bad now?

The two realistic results are:

1. Intranational/Civil war(s) resulting from genuine austerity measures and efforts to implement true reform, involving militaries turned inward as with Syria (http://en.rian.ru/world/20110807/165610985.html) (though probably not as outwardly brutal in western countries).

2. International/Global war as nations either attempt to secure needed resources (energy, food) that are rapidly becoming hotly contested or protect them from other predatory nations.

So far, it's looking like 2 is more probable for the developed world. Few areas of the planet will be spared the coming insanity as the old guard is gripped by its death throes.

A taste of rising domestic issues: www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/rise-of-the-mob-wisconsin-fairgoers-attacked-violently-beaten_08052011 (http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/rise-of-the-mob-wisconsin-fairgoers-attacked-violently-beaten_08052011)

abandon, get back when it gets better
title: crossing the ocean
https://laudyms.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/us-sinking-ship.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_of9ue2vob2g/SwIfzzqDMUI/AAAAAAAALGU/Ou5kCa7Gr7c/s1600/demc-rats+from+sinking+ship.JPG

Cut spending now and you'll have a disaster. Wait for the system to collapse, and you'll have an enormous catastrophe.

thats really stupid.  of course it does.

+1

i'm a big follower of Calculated Risk.  here's one of his graphs that puts things into perspective.

https://i.imgur.com/HU102.jpg

emotionally this sounds correct.  but unfortunately we live in a system that is allowing large, corrupt dinosaur-institutions such as Citibank, BAC, JPM, GS, MS to feed off the rest of the productive economy.  we are slowly being turned into debt slaves to prop up these bad actors.  the facilitators have been Wall St and the captured politicians.  unfortunately it will take a disaster to wipe these punks off the map.  i myself am ready for this (i think) and want it to happen so we as a nation can get back to honest work.  i also think that most Americans would be better off

a good argument for this is the depression of 1921 which took a short 2 yrs to complete itself b/c the gov't and the Fed got OUT OF THE WAY.

Folks find ways.. look at me for example. I have no job because of a back injury and all I get are food stamps every month but I can still afford to mine. True, it's cpu mining and the equipment is older so it generates hashes slower, but it's still mining and I don't pay for electricity either. Your rants about unemployment equaling no mining is null.

Great post.  I think your first solution is most plausible.  However, with the spiderweb of credit default swaps, I don't know if an orderly wipeout can be achieved. 

how many quadrillion of CDS do we have?  and don't tell me net net its much smaller and therefore insignificant.  Jim Rickards disputes this argument quite nicely.

It can't. Even before the debt ceiling was raised, it was impossible for the US to pay down the debt without both massive cuts in services and increases in revenue from taxation. Now, it's so far beyond the point of no return that the problems will accelerate. We have yet to approach terminal velocity.

The rest of the developed world isn't far behind, as the goal of the US is to make sure that it brings everyone down with it. With every nation at the bottom of the barrel, the US will lose less dominance than if it were to fall by itself. This will soon turn into a free-for-all; every nation for itself.


According to the BIS (http://www.bis.org/statistics/derstats.htm), approximately USD$600 trillion worth of derivatives. Prior to their recent revision of these numbers, that was more than double - USD$1.4 quadrillion. Governments and the banking system are in the process of monetizing these instruments in the hopes of revaluing the global economy before it catastrophically deflates.

Great chart, just showed how high our productivity is: No need to get new worker for 40 weeks or more. Maybe cut some more during this period

i've decided you're a shill plant.  you promote the status quo at every opportunity.  you've not changed my mind one bit.  in fact, thank you for extending my favorite threads in the Economics section to view my opinions and outlook.

Serious?  :D I am always enjoyed reading your threads anyway :)

I'm not speculating, more an investor and hope the economy will find a way out of this mess, but first I have to list all the facts

for you to look at that Employment Recession chart and cheer that it is somehow evidence that all is good and we need more of that is beyond me.  as if this is supposed to be a positive when all the evidence indicates its a negative.  i mean the whole world is up in arms about whats happening b/c of the status quo and you're happy about it.

Well, I'm happy because I think I found the fact that really match my theory: we do not need more people to work.

As my other post indicated, from 10 years ago I have been asking this question around all the economic forums: "If robots are used widely, will almost everyone lose their job?" And even today there are few can give a systematic approach to this problem

I heard in one of the minority economy theories, they think high jobless rate is a natual part of mordern society, so it is not a problem as long as social wellfare system is strong enough. I don't recall the name of that guy...

well we agree to disagree.  i think the large inflationary ramp we've had since 1971 when going off the gold std for good has contributed to massive population increases based on debt.  yes we've had more technological improvements which has helped compensate for this but we've hit the ceiling.  masses of ppl are now being left behind and the unemployment rate and labor non par rates are net negative indicators IMO.

Like logansryche in #22 pointed out, you can live a basic life with food stamps and other necessities and still mining BTCs ;D

Of course many people have raised their living standard and it will be painful for them to move to a lower living standard, and their sense of identity also get hurt

So I think the social wellfare level should be increased, not decreased like what the government is doing now. With an increased social wellfare, people feel safe and have money to raise their living standard, and high unemployment is not a problem anymore, but just a sign that the society is very rich so that many people do not need to work

It just feel so strange that we have enough technology but still not able to fullfill everyone's need because of the limitation of today's monetary system

It will be painful indeed. Many will grow angry and resentful, resorting to violence because they do not understand what's happening - the effects will spill over to those whose living standards have not taken a substantial hit. It's a dangerous cascade effect.

What automation, methods and technologies currently exist that will allow for sustaining such a large population? Where will the resources necessary for welfare come from? Why should people be supported at the expense of others? What you advocate is forced servitude without a sufficient system in place to facilitate that without human slavery. Robots still cannot do much. Be patient; don't propose additional suffering in the meantime.

New technologies and techniques open new fields of employment to be filled by those leaving declining fields (horse-drawn carriage makers gave way to automobile manufacturing; employees likewise shifted). High unemployment is a sign of stagnation, regardless of whether a society is rich or not.

High levels of employment are not necessarily good. I shall explain.

There is ofc more to the world than food but I'm using just food production as a demand for a simplified example. If more food is grown everyone gets enough food, otherwise there is not enough food. So regardless of the economy the thing that matters to peoples quality of life is that enough food is grown not that everyone is employed or has enough money, if everyone has less money and there is the same amount of food then the food distribution should be about the same. If less people are employed but the same ammount of food is produced thats good, even if it makes it difficult financially, for example how to justify paying people who arn't working.

Tecnoligical redundancy has become particually relevent recently, seems to be usually overlooked but is very important. I think the big unimployment spike in this recession might be to do with it.

As I see it there is a chain of events in time that goes something like this:

*distant past*

1. Nearly everyone employed.

2. Water pipes replace carrying water. Combine Harvesters replace farmers. Eventually miners stop being relevent and that can be automated. ATM's replace tellers. Google, Wolfram Alpha, Excell etc... replace a load of stuff. etc... This is still going on, there are some real hurdles due to for example people not wanting to design themselves out of a job, even programmers!

3. Loads of pointless wasting time jobs to employ people, or people just don't get current tech and make things unbelievably obsifcated.

4. The Recession part of the economic cycle comes around and many of the waste of time jobs are dropped because they just cost money.

5. Loads of unemployment, however the part of that unemployment thats as a result of tecnoligical redundancy is good thing.

*present*

I think the graph in this threads starting post lends weight to this idea.

Should be now be insisting people get back to work? Or should be insisting things start getting done? ofc sometimes thease are related, like when people are needed to do things, but not always! High employment is the wrong goal.

I think the important places to improve right now are that software\hardware isn't compatible and modular enough, nearly all the work we do on software is duplicate, perhaps 99%, when do you ever program something totally new, it's just thats the things arn't designed well the view that code should run quickly as opposed to be well abstracted to people working competivly and not wanting to share, to just the bases of code and sepratly running programs themself, none of it was designed with today in mind. One of the other biggest sticking points is transport, it's verry inefficient, we need a system like the in the "Resource Based Economy", we are still on bucket and villege well with too much stuff, metaphorically we need pipes.

Very interesting graph, thanks for sharing it.

JEEZ LOUISE!!!!!! Everyone is talking about how crappy the job market is.  Noone is talking about making money by making stuff themselves and selling it to other people that make stuff.  Do you have no idea WHY we had (past tense)  the largest and healthiest economy in the world??????  Make it yourself.

In theory, I have a deskjob.  In reality, aside from the problems I solve for my clients, I eat vegetables I planted in the Spring, I make tools out of wood, stones, and metal that I find when I'm not doing my "job".  I pay attention to what grows on the side of the roads I drive down, in case I need them later.  Civilization is all well and good until you realize that it was invented by slavers and thugs.  Very, very clever thugs.  Shut your TV off, its a form of control.  If you are afraid of current economic trends, remember that you were born naked and snotty.  Bad form when trying to wear an impressive tie to a meeting of course, but all those other suits were born naked and shitting themselves.  We get so distracted from what is real that we cower in fear before paper gods.  Be a man, be a woman; paper dolls are entertaining.  Not monsters.
Unless we let them be.

Sure, I'm stealing from the community when I snag some raspberries or woundwort from a vacant lot.  I'm damaging the environment when I turn a fallen tree into a serviceable bowl, I'm certainly seditious by jay walking outside of the prescribed pedestrian walkways....I was under the impression that bitcoinery was appealing to independent minds.  A rare and unspeakably valuable commodity those are.

"If more food is grown everyone gets enough food, otherwise there is not enough food"  Arrant nonsense.  Here in the U.S. we intentionally poison the edible "weeds" that sprout in our lawns because it is unseemly to live off of what grows for free.  Lawns, however, are very important for some reason.  There is always food enough for everyone, we have not been teaching our children to identify it properly.  And so they starve.

What weeds are edible? Seriously, if it tastes good I'll let my lawn grow to look shitty for some free food

Why not? Indeed, it would be systemic. That's what needs to happen. There are and would still be deep pools of capital that would be employed as failed businesses get restructured or acquired for pennies on the dollar. Sure, you'd get some duration of absolute dislocation (huge bid/ask spreads on virtually everything), but once the shock wore off, people with cash would have a field day picking up cheap assets and businesses, and things would ultimately turn around quicker than what's happening now (and which will continue to play out for years/decades).