Your blog sucks.

Except for war, of course.

A trollerific thread, two actually, in the Business tab? What's the idea, Fark? If you're hungry for clicks, this isn't a particularly efficient method.

Wendy's Chili: Your blog sucks.

Wendy's Chili: Your blog sucks.

Which part, the cited material or the report from the Europe Central Bank? I can never tell if you liberals can actually read or not.

What part of his information was sucky?

I think you've mixed up the cause and effect.

kxs401: I think you've mixed up the cause and effect.

The report mentions your supposed cause/effect. You should probably read it, but that requires effort.

MyRandomName: kxs401: I think you've mixed up the cause and effect.

The report mentions your supposed cause/effect. You should probably read it, but that requires effort.

Well, I'm glad to see not all the trolls/retards were purged. Carry on, common man!

/Why is it that the only liberty Republicans seem to be for these days is the liberty to starve to death?
//I know, the law forbids the rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges

Wyrdbrthr: MyRandomName: kxs401: I think you've mixed up the cause and effect.

The report mentions your supposed cause/effect. You should probably read it, but that requires effort.

I'm going with: "your blog sucks because you named it international liberty." Seriously, do these people have a buzzword dartboard that they use while blindfolded and drunk? Also, cutting and pasting a huge chunk from an scholarly article doesn't actually actually make your own two-sentence blog the same as an academic journal.

I love that this moron thinks he can goad me into reading his rambling by implying I'm unwilling to put forth effort. Yeah, I have a limited amount of time in my life, and I'm unwilling to waste any of it listening to idiots insist that the sky is green, or evolution isn't real, or that gay marriage will destroyed the country. That makes me smart, not stupid.

MyRandomName: Wendy's Chili: Your blog sucks.

Which part, the cited material or the report from the Europe Central Bank? I can never tell if you liberals can actually read or not.

What part of his information was sucky?

The whole thing. The first half of the cited portion contains absolutely zero facts, following that was a mention of the meaningless criteria they used to get whatever findings they were looking for (funny that they only included countries with vast infrastructure paid for by the government and only looked at the time period after most of that infrastucture was built [in the US anyhow]), then they go straight to vague "conclusions", and end with sociopsychological assumptions to explain the cause.

MyRandomName: kxs401: I think you've mixed up the cause and effect.

The report mentions your supposed cause/effect. You should probably read it, but that requires effort.

Then you should have linked to the study instead of your sucky blog.

It's called Austerity. Ask Japan and Greece how well that goes.

There's a reason the greatest libertarian book was a work of fiction.

MyRandomName: kxs401: I think you've mixed up the cause and effect.

The report mentions your supposed cause/effect. You should probably read it, but that requires effort.

Also, the whole exercise was retarded.

Even if they establish which is the cause and which is the effect (which is not even touched upon in your sucky blog), the study (as described in your sucky blog) doesn't seem to discriminate between different types of spending. I guess taking a nuanced look at policy requires effort.

In before something something Somalia something something...

James!: The report dude-bro is citing is talking about government consumption which makes sense, resources bought and used by the government aren't altered or resold in any way. It can consume, but it does not produce or at the very least it does not produce for a profit.

Except, you know, the exact same thing could be said about consumers.

So the best thing for an economy is for everyone to stop consuming altogether? I didn't know libertarians were minimalists.

I love the report's "Non-technical summary":

we make use of recent panel data techniques that allow for the possibility of heterogeneous dynamic
adjustment around the long-run equilibrium relationship as well as heterogeneous
unobserved parameters and cross-sectional dependence; vi) we also deal with potentially
relevant endogeneity issues;

Beautiful writing. Hemingway would weep at its simplicity.

This article conflicts with the view of my favorite political party, thus I will ignore it.

James!: That's interesting. The ECB study the author cites begins it's abstract thusly: We construct a growth model with an explicit government role, where more government resources reduce the optimal level of private consumption and of output per worker.

Seems like a pattern.

Pffft. If there's one institution you can trust to know how growth is generated, it's the ECB. Just ask the Greeks, Spaniards, Portugese, Irish, Italians, French, Lithuanians....

James!: Yeah, but as a consumer I also produce.

Except your production isn't considered part of your consumption side of GDP. No economist could give a rat's ass what you do with your microwave oven once you've bought it UNLESS you're running, say, an Applebee's in which case the accountants will consider that microwave a business asset. The buck has to stop somewhere or the argument becomes disingenuously circular and the data goes to shiat.

James!: The government is paid through taxes

Actually it isn't. The taxes exist (ideally) to influence behavior and sustain demand for currency, although it also is used to drive inequality. Anyway, the government is a currency issuer. It really makes no sense that the government would ever be hungry for dollars when it's the entity that creates them. A corn farmer might want dollars, but it would make no sense that a corn farmer would want to buy ears of corn. The farmer will, however, take back a portion of its own corn for various reasons. The trick is to not under-produce or over-produce corn to keep supply and demand at equilibrium. The government makes money at will, so the trick there is the same. It's complete nonsense to talk about a corn farmer buying corn or a government collecting money for revenue.

For starters, money has to be printed BEFORE it can be issued. It can be no other way. You can't collect taxes if there isn't already money out there. And who issues the money? Where did it come from? The government! To them, your dollars are just pieces of paper with dead white men on them. As a currency issuer the government never really has or doesn't have money. Trying to "conserve" something it can make at will when the market overall is starved for cash is downright stupid. And for what? To balance its books? Control inflation? The government improving its own finances at the expense of the people when the economy is hurting and demand is down? Is that what you'd call good government? Good for whom?

If you start your argument with "The government is paid through taxes", the first step to understanding the government is to admit that everything you think you know about the money supply is wrong, and thus any conclusions you make about it as well. The government isn't paid through taxes any more than a corn farmer would buy corn at a supermarket.

James!: Your supposition is awful.

"The taxes exist (ideally) to influence behavior and sustain demand for currency"

That shiat is dumb.

That's it? That's all you've got?

What a waste of bits.

The title of the blog sounds like some retarded libertarian...i don' tdo libertarian wharragarrbl...but the premise is amusing, since gov't spending increases during recessions due to payouts in benefits and social welfare increases...correlation does not equal causation, libertardian.

James!: Why should I waste my time?

You're asking this on Fark?

The greeks spent more for 50 years and ended up destroying any hope of prosperity. The key is WHAT you spend on and IS it profitable.

The article doesn't really say anything that isn't already known. Spending a lot all of the time is bad for the economy. Even Keynesians know that. In fact, it's a central part of Keynesian theory.

By the way, why 1970? Both the ECB study and the Alesina study used that as the starting point. Why exclude the 50's and 60's, when there was massive peacetime fiscal expansion?

/Probably because it doesn't help their case.

Does subby have a time machine? Part one was written in December of last year, part 2 was written in September, 2010.

struct: Keynesian theory says that growth should be stimulated by spending and tax cuts during a downturn when aggregate demand has collapsed and savings skyrocket to avert skyrocketing unemployment and a deflationary spiral.

It is kind of funny, since it is lost in much of the discussion on Keynesian theory is that it acually supports austerity during the good times.

More to the point of the article, there is little doubt that an ever-growing federal goverment is a problem when discussing a sustainable economic model. We are starting to see some issues with this now as our debt is beginning to grow at levels that will, if left unchecked, become our downfall. Government needs to know when to pull back the spending while maintaining adequate levels of taxation in order to balance the debt load. Currently, we have been shown to be unable to grasp this issue.

Marcus Aurelius: That explains the terrible economy of the 1990's.

When government spending as a percentage of GDP declined.

And as for the war/defense people, click "Home" and look at the top post about how Republican war hawks need to be convinced that the world won't end if we cut military spending.

Arkanaut: I love the report's "Non-technical summary":

we make use of recent panel data techniques that allow for the possibility of heterogeneous dynamic
adjustment around the long-run equilibrium relationship as well as heterogeneous
unobserved parameters and cross-sectional dependence; vi) we also deal with potentially
relevant endogeneity issues;

Beautiful writing. Hemingway would weep at its simplicity.

Read: Well, once you harmonize the various statistical quirks, government spending sucks.

imashark: Arkanaut: I love the report's "Non-technical summary":

we make use of recent panel data techniques that allow for the possibility of heterogeneous dynamic
adjustment around the long-run equilibrium relationship as well as heterogeneous
unobserved parameters and cross-sectional dependence; vi) we also deal with potentially
relevant endogeneity issues;

Beautiful writing. Hemingway would weep at its simplicity.

Read: Well, once you harmonize the various statistical quirks, government spending sucks beyond a certain point and if the government itself is highly corrupt and/or otherwise shiatty.

Also, although the report concluded that there was significant negative correlation between increased government spending and GDP growth, I couldn't find whether it says what the factor was. If a 1% increase in A causes a 0.01% decrease in B 70% of the time, that's still significant, but if A and B are of equal value I'd still rather have A.

/I apologize for being bad at stats.