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cost of interest depends on the rate of interest and the amount of debt we owe how much has gdp grown for every 1 of gdp in 1946 by the end of 2021 we had about 100 of gdp the graph uses nominal gdpa data the 1946 value was 227 535 billion in the 75 years from 1946 and 2021 gdp increased about 100x debt increased about 250x is there some reason debt had to increase so much faster than gdp well yeah policy debt increased so fast because of policy other than that no reason i can think of policy the growth of debt is a presumably unintended consequence of policy at the federal reserve they change interest rates all the time and they are always ready and able and very often willing to lend more money in congress they tweak things to make more credit available and they tweak things to encourage us to borrow these policies work for every dollar of debt we had in 1946 we had almost 250 of debt in 2021 debt grows rapidly if you ever wonder why we have so much debt these days the answer is that our policies make it happen they certainly do not prevent it you know what policymakers forgot they forgot to invent some policies to get us to pay down our debt at a faster rate debt grows rapidly because of policy and debt is paid back slowly because of policy neglect the result is that our accumulated debt has grown to an insanely high level it is all the fault of policy a simple mistake they encourage borrowing and the use of credit so that debt grows rapidly but they do not also encourage the accelerated repayment of debt and so debt accumulates to unnaturally high levels that is the cost of policy or the cost i should say of ill considered policy and that is the source of our economic troubles at january 19 2023 1 comment email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest saturday january 14 2023 we must do better i oppose the decline of civilization this means for example that i support environmental protection because we need civilization more than we need oil but civilization depends on oil you say it does but civilization can change and it might have to change to survive i don t have the whole analysis worked out but this is how it seems to me civilization cannot survive if the environment goes to shit opposing the decline of civilization i also oppose things like the universal state and the volkerwanderung which arnold j toynbee identified as late stage phenomena in the life of a civilization and part of the decline opposing the universal state means that i naturally oppose the development of the european union nafta and free trade pacts generally and i oppose imposing such developments upon society these developments are anyway driven by the economic needs of the powerful those of great wealth who want even more and are supported among the rest of us by those who have accepted the sales pitch that says the universal state will improve the economy that sales pitch is nonsense economic problems require economic solutions not political solutions opposing the volkerwanderung means i am naturally uncomfortable with the ever increasing border crossings along the southern us border the dark age which over civilized people insist on calling the early middle ages is identified by toynbee as an interregnum or heroic age he writes again the roman empire s fall was followed by a kind of interregnum between the disappearance of the hellenic and the emergence of the western society this interregnum is filled with the activities of two institutions the christian church established within and surviving the roman empire and a number of ephemeral successor states arising on the former territory of the empire out of the so called volkerwanderung of the barbarians from the no man s land beyond the imperial frontiers ephemeral successor states arose after the fall of rome out of the volkerwanderung of the barbarians before during and after the fall such successor states will arise again unless we stop our own decline and fall i have to oppose immigration which is the word we use though volkerwanderung would be more apt because it is a sign of the approaching fall of civilization but of course stopping the immigration won t stop the decline we have to fix the problem that causes problems like this immigration and i want to emphasize that this view has nothing to do with race or racism i think economic conditions are worse on the other side of our southern border than they are on our side and i think the difference in economic conditions drives the migration but conditions on our side of the border are not good either and this is the more pressing problem one which underlies the immigration problem for we cannot afford to fix the immigration problem and yet we cannot afford not to fix it the immigration problem cannot be solved by welcoming immigrants we know that didn t work in ancient rome it cannot be solved by building a wall because the problem which continues to grow originates on the other side and it cannot be solved by making conditions better on the other side of the border because we cannot afford to do that that is the only solution though to make conditions better on the other side of the border i don t think very many people want to be foreigners i think they d prefer to live in their own home land as i do but i think conditions must be so bad for them at home that they have no choice but to come to america where conditions are better the most successful thing we do to discourage immigration is that we continue to let our own economic conditions deteriorate we must do better at january 14 2023 1 comment email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday january 12 2023 grotesque cnn business your take home pay is the difference between your gross pay and what you get paid after taxes are taken out your take home pay is the difference between your gross pay and what you get paid after taxes are taken out at january 12 2023 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest tuesday january 10 2023 trapped by policy we are trapped by policy that encourages the accumulation of debt until policy is changed we will be unable to reduce debt except for brief periods as with federal debt in the latter 1990s and household debt for just four years after the financial crisis at january 10 2023 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday january 9 2023 too much fertilizer is bad for the crop with my previous post in mind you don t need a reason like exhaustion of the soil to get financialization going in our case we began with too little finance decades ago debt was below its optimum level so expanding finance turned out to be a good thing and so policymakers adopted the principle that expansion of finance is a good thing that put us on the road to ruin policymakers forgot that the effects of debt are non linear the effects are good when debt is low and harmful when debt is high policymakers went with the linear view that the expansion of finance is always good they were wrong and we are paying for it now debt is like fertilizer a little is better than none and just the right amount is better yet but too much makes things worse it s not that hard to figure out unless maybe you are a policymaker at january 09 2023 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest sunday january 8 2023 slower is not good enough first three brief excerpts on exhaustion of the soil from rome s fall reconsidered the soil of italy did not get exhausted over night it was a long process and many were its stages if the farmer is borrowing to meet the exigencies of a so called bad year his distress is temporary and he is likely to square himself during the next good year but if his distress is due to the progressive deterioration of his farm he will be unable to extricate himself such indebtedness is hopeless the increasing weight of accumulated interest on the loan and the decreasing productivity of the land seal the fate of the landowner the fundamental trouble could not be cured in italy labor could not support life i recently ran across a paper on financialization at researchgate christopher witko s the politics of financialization in the united states 1949 2005 interesting that it goes back to 1949 studies like this usually start around 1980 well after the policy change that got the whole thing started just going by the abstract here it reads in part financial activity has become increasingly important in affluent economies in recent decades because this financialization distributes costs and benefits unevenly across groups politics and policy likely affect the process an analysis of the united states from 1949 2005 shows that when unions are stronger and when the democratic party is in power and is more reliant on the support of working class voters financialization is slower in contrast when the financial industry is more highly mobilized into politics financialization is faster i ll have to get the paper so i can see where witko takes the idea but from the abstract it sounds like professor witko is saying we can use policy to make financialization proceed less rapidly if we so desire slower i think that would be like choosing slow painful death over quick painful death the only way slower would be beneficial is if we use the extra time as no civilization has done before to stop financialization dead in its tracks reverse its progress and assure that financialization would get smaller and less powerful with each passing day that would have to happen soon before financialization once again reaches its logical conclusion for if we let financialization continue fast or slow it will lead inexorably to the fall of civilization and the next dark age the pain of that decline has already begun in the paper on rome quoted above economist vladimir simkhovitch reviewed surviving works of ancient roman writers calling those works the testimony of the eyewitnesses fourteen pages later he summarized his findings it seems to me that the progressive exhaustion of roman soil is judging by all the sources at our disposal completely established as i recall i was introduced to the exhaustion of the soil idea once in passing years ago in econ 101 the idea was dismissed as ridiculous without explanation i approached the simkhovitch paper with a preconceived notion rather than an open mind but looking again now at the summary of his findings i no longer think simkhovitch was arguing that exhaustion of the soil caused the fall of rome he judges by all the sources at his disposal yes but those sources are the ancient writings that happened to survive the value of his evidence is roughly equivalent to that of relics like the sacred shopping list of saint leibowitz i m not criticizing simkhovitch s essay i loved it but i have come to think he was making a point unrelated to exhaustion of the soil any problem that caused the unrelenting increase of debt in rome would have caused the fall of rome look again at this sentence that i quoted above the increasing weight of accumulated interest on the loan and the decreasing productivity of the land seal the fate of the landowner decreasing productivity of the land created the accumulated interest problem but it wasn t only the soil that sealed the fate of rome as simkhovitch tells the story exhaustion of the soil led to increasing indebtedness until labor could not support life then growing poverty led to extreme concentration of land ownership and ultimately to the fall of rome the story of increasing indebtedness is easy to believe in this day and age today we don t suffer from exhaustion of the soil however we do increasingly have the labor cannot support life problem and we do have the increasing weight of accumulated interest on our debt so we appear to be moving toward the fall of rome scenario again and this i think may have been the concern simkhovitch wanted to convey a hundred odd years ago our troubles today could be explained by exhaustion of the soil leading to growing financial cost as in the simkhovitch paper except that exhaustion of the soil is clearly not the problem today our troubles could be explained by saying that people like me are worthless spendthrifts who never save a dime people who do nothing with their lives but accumulate debt well yeah but that is a superficial view that sees the result and calls it the cause and that view doesn t explain why the number of spendthrifts and the size of our debt have been persistently increasing for half a century now i need a better explanation it could be explained by the fact that the increase in borrowing always outpaces the repayment of debt without pointing a finger at people like me hey we do what we have to do to survive but our world is shaped by economic policy if the weight of accumulated interest on our debt is so heavy that labor is failing to support life then maybe the problem lies with economic policy the problem lies with policy that promotes the use of credit and the accumulation of private sector debt it would be an easy problem to fix if enough people were focused on it oh and policy as cause also explains the persistent increase in debt and in the number of spendthrifts like me btw i d rather be poor than superficial in ancient rome they thought the farmland was exhausted maybe it was but it was financialization that killed them we can see today that financialization the relentless growth of debt was the reason labor could not support life in ancient rome maybe we can also see that financialization will kill us too unless we stop it in its tracks the problem is not in our soil nor in our character but in the growing cost of finance in rome financialization became a problem perhaps because of soil exhaustion in our time we have exactly the same problem excessive financial cost simply because policy promotes it policy promotes credit use policy promotes the growth of debt policy promotes financialization in all its forms policy is the problem slowing financialization is not enough we have to stop it dead reverse the process and make sure that financialization and financial cost decline for decades then we can put our feet up and smoke a at january 08 2023 no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest sunday january 1 2023 militarism ruralism and irrationality carroll quigley the evolution of civilizations p 276 the ionian culture that was adopted as their own by the greek speaking world and put on like a garment by the latin speaking world was never the culture of the whole mediterranean basin because it was the culture of the literate upper classes only these were the slaveowning minority who knew how to read and write who had leisure and who used that leisure to read homer plato cicero and virgil the great mass of the inhabitants of the mediterranean world did not share this culture...