Lil Economic Problem

[sixthcutuan]

lol.. this thread is ridiculous.. this country is gonna collapse and that country is gonna collapse.. LOL.. what a bunch of loons.

There are incredibly smart people in power who will make sure things run smoothly as possible.. dont forget rome was still functioning pretty well even after the collapse of the roman empire.. while italy may not be as prosperous as USA, they still have a very good quality of life, some would argue even better than USA. which has HUGE amounts of poverty.

Rome has been going for more than 2000 years and will still be a major prosperous european capital for a long time

You have to realise this, in my opinion this is the first event of it's kind. Back in Roman times it was definitely not a globalised economy. From the introduction of speculation and the fact that you can immediately play with your currencies and shares on your computer, a crash can happen really fast. Back in the ol' days of the Roman empire the majority of the economy was run off hard goods, material goods. These day's its run off speculation and because of this it doesn't matter how "well" a country is doing it matters how "well" it is being perceived to be by the public.

Saying something hasn't happened before and therefore it will never happen is a strange logic.

Not every country is in a complete mess. There are many that will weather the storm much better than other eurozone members.

Poland, Germany, France, the UK , Switzerland, Norway and Finland are a few that come to mind immediately. They have much stronger systems than say Greece or Italy who are rather corrupt and spendy.

Whether people want to admit it , the US is in a much better position than the EU as a whole, our problems aren't as much from a society of corruption, just a few political groups. If we can evict a decent % of politicians we can get everything fixed. I have much better hope living in the US than I would in many European countries, as they will see a bloodbath soon.

Canada of course looks down on most other countries, as they're practically the king of the hill right now. Conservative economic policies and great natural resources make them one of the best economic powers in my mind.

As for China, I'm not a big fan, they can't feed themselves and a significant amount of their country is still agrarian. The Chinese government is extremely racist, treating western Providences like peons and eastern ones much better. This will eventually boil over if something doesn't happen. Furthermore with some radicalization of certain religious/ethnic groups in the west, it could lead to very bad problems 5-20 years down the road.

Very true. There is most definitely a North / South divide in mainland Europe with the North tending to be the wealthier side and the South being the poorer areas. The US is currently in a better situation than the EU however as we all know, neither market can survive without the other one. I would argue the point about corruption however. You would be correct in saying some european countries are corrupt, Italy is the perfect example. However in my person opinion and according to the corruption index (Google it), the USA is far more corrupt than most of the EU countries. Perhaps related to the hilarious oximoron that the US loves being "a two-party democracy".

 

[lukep]

There are incredibly smart people in power who will make sure things run smoothly as possible...

Methinks you give our overlords too much credit!

If they were so incredibly smart, why would they allow the technological innovation to happen that is causing our huge unemployment rates, the Arab Spring, the fall of the the soviet union, peer-to-peer sharing and all of the anonymous things we can do with that, and a hundred other examples of removing their control?

Our overlords are certainly greedy, but if they were really smart then at some point between 1950 and 1990 they would have stopped, absolutely completely squashed the inventions of the microprocessor and the internet, and all research in that area.

If they were "incredibly smart" they certainly would have done far more to inhibit those technologies, which are absolutely FATAL to their control over us.

This is Proof Positive that our overlords are mere men, and that they can bleed. And you know what they say, if it bleeds, it can be killed.

By 2020, it will be obvious that they are dying.

 

[sixthcutuan]

Methinks you give our overlords too much credit!

If they were so incredibly smart, why would they allow the technological innovation to happen that is causing our huge unemployment rates, the Arab Spring, the fall of the the soviet union, peer-to-peer sharing and all of the anonymous things we can do with that, and a hundred other examples of removing their control?

Our overlords are certainly greedy, but if they were really smart then at some point between 1950 and 1990 they would have stopped, absolutely completely squashed the inventions of the microprocessor and the internet, and all research in that area.

If they were "incredibly smart" they certainly would have done far more to inhibit those technologies, which are absolutely FATAL to their control over us.

This is Proof Positive that our overlords are mere men, and that they can bleed. And you know what they say, if it bleeds, it can be killed.

By 2020, it will be obvious that they are dying.

People like to believe that there is a greater being. It often comforts them even if it is a conspiracy because they know that it is all "in control". Take many conspiracies, superstitions, religion (No personal attack - all IMO). Usually shows a cynical + unstable person. True fact.

 

[REIMktg]

Methinks you give our overlords too much credit!

If they were so incredibly smart, why would they allow the technological innovation to happen that is causing our huge unemployment rates, the Arab Spring, the fall of the the soviet union, peer-to-peer sharing and all of the anonymous things we can do with that, and a hundred other examples of removing their control?

Our overlords are certainly greedy, but if they were really smart then at some point between 1950 and 1990 they would have stopped, absolutely completely squashed the inventions of the microprocessor and the internet, and all research in that area.

If they were "incredibly smart" they certainly would have done far more to inhibit those technologies, which are absolutely FATAL to their control over us.

This is Proof Positive that our overlords are mere men, and that they can bleed. And you know what they say, if it bleeds, it can be killed.

By 2020, it will be obvious that they are dying.

I think you give the powers that be too little credit. If they didn't want you to have the internet - they would not have let you have it.

By the time we see technology, like all the tracking stuff in the movie Enemy of The State (1998) for example, it is all old news tech from 25 years earlier.

I am certain they have everything on you that you think is secret, that is how the gov't works. The day they want to shut you up, they show up, show you your file, and you shut up. That's why there are so many unenforced laws - to control the people they want to control, to apply the law when they feel like it.

You think the govt couldn't track your peer to peer crap in 2 seconds?
You think technology is responsible for unemployment?

 

[lukep]

I think you give the powers that be too little credit.
I am certain they have everything on you that you think is secret, that is how the gov't works. The day they want to shut you up, they show up, show you your file, and you shut up.

BWAHAHAHA!

Do you know how many hard drives that would take to store all that data on 400,000,000 US Citizens, much less the rest of the world? We're not talking about a single page of text here... Let's see, they'd need:

• All government known Data,
• Phone taps,
• Emails,
• Websites made,
• Blog posts made,
• Home movies,
• High school yearbooks,
• Test results,
• Copies of all reports written in schools,
• Medical records,
• Social media entries like all tweets and facebook likes,
• Appearances on traffic cams,
• Public cams,
• Web cams in general,
• etc... etc....

They'd need multiple Terrabytes per the average middle-aged citizen!

Forget the cost of all those googlebytes of data storage...

They'd have to have a Data storage facitilty that could be seen from orbit, employ a few small towns to run, and would vastly eclipse anything and everything else put together that they can keep secret.

It' be like building the great wall of China here on earth somewhere without anyone knowing about it.

That's the only way for them to have "everything" on me and anyone else that isn't already on their terrorist list.

Still "certain" about all of that? :banana_sml:

You think the govt couldn't track your peer to peer crap in 2 seconds?

I believe that their one or two top hotshots could trace someone through a TOR network if given incredible resources and forewarning. It's simply not practical to do so though, so no.

You think technology is responsible for unemployment?

OF COURSE HURRR DURRRR!

It's so blatantly obvious no one even denies it!

Look, Moore's law has been right on target since the mid 1970's, when it was modified to read "Double the number of Transistors every 18 months."

The number of transistors in a CPU is basically the amount of power it has. If anything doubles in power every 18 months, then it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that any problem that thing can solve is about to be solved.

Two such problems that CPUs can solve:

1. Robotics. (More processing power means computers can design better bots.)
2. AI. (More processing power means that computers will be able to think more and more like a human. They can even get much smarter than any of us!)

Meanwhile, Human employees have so many problems it's incredible!

• They're moody.
• They get sick.
• They want time off for a large variety of reasons.
• They want promotions.
• They want to be treated fairly.
• They want to form unions.
• They want to not be sexually or racially descriminated against, and will sue YOU if they feel they are.
• Worst of all, they want PAYCHECKS.

So, with all of these robots becoming better & smarter than the existing human workforces (both software robots and physical assembly line worker robots) why in the world would we, as business owners, ever want to employ a stupid human to work for us anymore?

Mark my words; the ONLY thing that could stop a complete collapse of all the 1st-world countries' job markets by 2020 will be aggressive action against tech manufacturers...

& I don't think we're going to see Obama shut down Intel & Google, do you?

So wave goodbye to every job on the planet. The crash is coming.

 

[Jake1125]

People like to believe that there is a greater being. It often comforts them even if it is a conspiracy because they know that it is all "in control". Take many conspiracies, superstitions, religion (No personal attack - all IMO). Usually shows a cynical + unstable person. True fact.

Most people realize there is something larger than themselves, controlling everything. Only a few people realize it is me.

 

[REIMktg]

BWAHAHAHA!

Do you know how many hard drives that would take to store all that data on 400,000,000 US Citizens, much less the rest of the world? We're not talking about a single page of text here... Let's see, they'd need:

• All government known Data,
• Phone taps,
• Emails,
• Websites made,
• Blog posts made,
• Home movies,
• High school yearbooks,
• Test results,
• Copies of all reports written in schools,
• Medical records,
• Social media entries like all tweets and facebook likes,
• Appearances on traffic cams,
• Public cams,
• Web cams in general,
• etc... etc....

They'd need multiple Terrabytes per the average middle-aged citizen!

Forget the cost of all those googlebytes of data storage...

They'd have to have a Data storage facitilty that could be seen from orbit, employ a few small towns to run, and would vastly eclipse anything and everything else put together that they can keep secret.

It' be like building the great wall of China here on earth somewhere without anyone knowing about it.

That's the only way for them to have "everything" on me and anyone else that isn't already on their terrorist list.

Still "certain" about all of that? :banana_sml:


I believe that their one or two top hotshots could trace someone through a TOR network if given incredible resources and forewarning. It's simply not practical to do so though, so no.


OF COURSE HURRR DURRRR!

It's so blatantly obvious no one even denies it!

Look, Moore's law has been right on target since the mid 1970's, when it was modified to read "Double the number of Transistors every 18 months."

The number of transistors in a CPU is basically the amount of power it has. If anything doubles in power every 18 months, then it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that any problem that thing can solve is about to be solved.

Two such problems that CPUs can solve:

1. Robotics. (More processing power means computers can design better bots.)
2. AI. (More processing power means that computers will be able to think more and more like a human. They can even get much smarter than any of us!)

Meanwhile, Human employees have so many problems it's incredible!

• They're moody.
• They get sick.
• They want time off for a large variety of reasons.
• They want promotions.
• They want to be treated fairly.
• They want to form unions.
• They want to not be sexually or racially descriminated against, and will sue YOU if they feel they are.
• Worst of all, they want PAYCHECKS.

So, with all of these robots becoming better & smarter than the existing human workforces (both software robots and physical assembly line worker robots) why in the world would we, as business owners, ever want to employ a stupid human to work for us anymore?

Mark my words; the ONLY thing that could stop a complete collapse of all the 1st-world countries' job markets by 2020 will be aggressive action against tech manufacturers...

& I don't think we're going to see Obama shut down Intel & Google, do you?

So wave goodbye to every job on the planet. The crash is coming.

Fine, substitute "everything" with "enough". Also, understand that the Gov't does not need a file on everyone, they just need one on you.

I know you are not that young, I mean a crazy statement like the world will be over in 8 years usually comes from a young person without perspective, but from you, you should know better.

You really think robots will have taken over by 2020?

 

[lukep]

Fine, substitute "everything" with "enough". Also, understand that the Gov't does not need a file on everyone, they just need one on you.

I'm not the one they should be worried about... And they certainly don't know which ones of the 400M ppl will be.

That means they'll need this stuff on everybody.

I know you are not that young, I mean a crazy statement like the world will be over in 8 years usually comes from a young person without perspective, but from you, you should know better.

You really think robots will have taken over by 2020?

My god you had to really stretch the meaning of my words to get to that out of what I said... "The world will be over in 8 years?" Christ!

Were you going for a Guinness world's record or something?

I was talking about JOBS. I don't have one, you don't either, so I believe we'll be just fine through this "apocolypse."

It's those losers on welfare that have a scary time ahead. I really don't know what the .gov is going to do to help them... All I can think would help is an education on how to be your own boss... Which they have NEVER taught before so it's not going to be easy going...

 

[REIMktg]

I'm not the one they should be worried about... And they certainly don't know which ones of the 400M ppl will be.
That means they'll need this stuff on everybody.

Not really. Most people are not worth tracking. It would not be hard to develop an algorithm to track those of concern. In the end it does not matter, if they do not "have the goods" on you they can fabricate it just as easy and send you away or make you shut up. It is so easy it isn't even funny.

My god you had to really stretch the meaning of my words to get to that out of what I said... "The world will be over in 8 years?" Christ!
Were you going for a Guinness world's record or something?
I was talking about JOBS. I don't have one, you don't either, so I believe we'll be just fine through this "apocolypse."
It's those losers on welfare that have a scary time ahead. I really don't know what the .gov is going to do to help them... All I can think would help is an education on how to be your own boss... Which they have NEVER taught before so it's not going to be easy going...

That is actually what I thought you said. After that WTC7 comment in another thread I have been expecting crazy stuff.

The welfare folks will be fine, they will continue to do as they always have done, live off the .gov. I do have concern for the others though - it seems very few know what to do when someone moves their cheese.

I guess that's why I have been focusing on fix/flipping houses at the entry level - ones that couples on minimum wage can afford - they do not even know there is a housing crash and recession/depression.

In the end I suppose it will be the poor and the rich. But the poor in the US do not have it too bad, they have cars, go on vacation, have cable TV, have computers, the internet, and iPhones. Not a bad gig I suppose.

 

[lukep]

The welfare folks will be fine, they will continue to do as they always have done, live off the .gov. I do have concern for the others though...

I do not believe that they'll get the worst of it. Here's why:

The people in the middle losing their jobs are still more qualified for any last-remaining jobs that do exist than the people on the bottom.

That means they're more qualified to receive unemployment benefits too.

What's going to happen by 2020 if nothing changes is that instead of welfare checks being funded by the top 50% of america and handed to the bottom 25%, (I'm estimating) we're going to see the top 25% percent able to pay and the bottom 75% need to be supported!

So if anyone is getting that dough, it's the people who have most recently worked, not the people on unemployment before them.

That means the people you're worried about will receive (smaller) checks, while the people with absolutely no job skills at all will literally have to die of hunger by the ton.

Honestly I'd be surprised if there wasn't a major revolution at this point, but hopefully some bright minds will find a way to turn our problem (technology) into a solution to this joblessness.

I have thought about it for years now though, probably since College, and I have no freaking idea how they're going to do that though. It's a real tough one!

In the end I suppose it will be the poor and the rich. But the poor in the US do not have it too bad, they have cars, go on vacation, have cable TV, have computers, the internet, and iPhones. Not a bad gig I suppose.

Until that day you're right. I won't shed a single tear for the poor american with cable tv and luxury items paid for by his neighbor...

But one day, again I'd say by 2020, there literally will be too few neighbors with money and way too many poor needing those checks. I'm scared as hell of that day, and it's coming too soon.