On the other issue, valuations are ridiculous (but this time it's different! The Fed! ZIRP!) and I continue to expect that steep drop down to the usual p/e ratio of long term bottoms. All the people babbling about a secular bull forget that secular bears are about as long as the preceding bull, and that we shouldn't expect a real bottom to about 2017, give or take. The rapid ups and downs we've seen since 2000 only confirm this view.



Speaking of things bubbly, have you been checking out the complete collapse in the fracking bubble over the past few months?

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

On the other issue, valuations are ridiculous (but this time it's different! The Fed! ZIRP!) and I continue to expect that steep drop down to the usual p/e ratio of long term bottoms. All the people babbling about a secular bull forget that secular bears are about as long as the preceding bull, and that we shouldn't expect a real bottom to about 2017, give or take. The rapid ups and downs we've seen since 2000 only confirm this view.

The current bull market undoes the truly-horrible bear of 2007-2009 and shows a little growth other than that. The 'smart money' leaves the stock market when "dumb money" that new participants had been using to play slot machines or buy lottery tickets enters the stock market.

Speaking of things bubbly, have you been checking out the complete collapse in the fracking bubble over the past few months?

Oversupply.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

On the other issue, valuations are ridiculous (but this time it's different! The Fed! ZIRP!) and I continue to expect that steep drop down to the usual p/e ratio of long term bottoms. All the people babbling about a secular bull forget that secular bears are about as long as the preceding bull, and that we shouldn't expect a real bottom to about 2017, give or take. The rapid ups and downs we've seen since 2000 only confirm this view.

Actually in Stock Cycles, when I was still working in a Kondratiev framework, I believed the secular bear market would end in 2010-14, so a 2009 end is not that far off.
By 2002 I had incorporated S&H stuff into the analysis and pushed the ending date back to 2018. A few years later I had pushed it back to 2020. Thus when 2007 came I thought there was "time" for business cycle longer than 7 years because the K-winter period had to contain a whole number of business cycles and an 18-year period (based on the 18-year turning length and a 2001 4T start) meant the next business cycle would end with the secular bear market in ca. 2018 and the current business cycle would then end in ca 2010 (consistent with the electoral cycle). WRONG!

Turns out 2001 was not the start of the 4T/K-winter. It was 2008.A 20 year turnings/K-season length suggested two decade-long or three 6-7 year business cycles. We had just had a 7-year business cycle. By 2013 the market had surpassed its 2000 and 2007 peaks and if the three-cycle concept was operative, the business cycle could be ending. Alternatively the business cycle could last 10 years. Whatever I did I was fucked (this is my luck). So I decided, hell why not extend the expansion three more years by selling now. Should put a Democrat in office in 2016 which would confirm 2008 as a critical election (as I predicted). So I sold and this is what seems to be happening,

The very high levels on the index are unprecedented. Of course with only four precedents, we are not talking about a large dataset. This secular bear started with an unprecedented high level on the market. This is why I thought their was more upside in 2007, the market was in the normal range for that point in the cycle. Since the market did NOT rise further I though we had mean-reverted and the rest of the secular bear market would be as routine as the first decade. With the current levels obviously this cycle is now as special (to the upside) as 1929-32 was to the downside. Go figure.

I don't think that we've passed the 2000 levels yet on an inflation adjusted basis yet, and I don't think the bottom went down enough to match the last several long term bottoms in the market, like the early 80s or the early 30s. With profits as shares of GDP, market capitalization to GDP, P/E, P/S, etc, at fucking nosebleed levels while the real economy (income, wages, labor force participation, retail sales, etc.) still looking semi-recessionary, I think the next downturn for the triple peak is going to be a doozy. The impact of the fracking bubble popping (with its effect on junk bonds, corporate capital expenditures, rail traffic, manufacturing, jobs), the rising dollar (impeding multinational earnings), and the slowdowns overseas (again impeding corporate earnings) are really starting to pummel the economy, which should lead us into the next recession reasonably soon. Although when exactly? I dunno. It's been a long expansion, but it could have life a while yet. I would be very surprised if it lasted the 10 years the 90s boom did, otoh, I'm surprised it's lasted as long as it has. It's a goddamn zombie economy.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

I don't think that we've passed the 2000 levels yet on an inflation adjusted basis yet

If we have gone past the 2000 level, then we have barely passed it. An inflation-adjusted treatment of stock market prices suggests that the Dubya-era boom fell short of the peak of the dot.com frenzy. The meltdown began late in 2007.

, and I don't think the bottom went down enough to match the last several long term bottoms in the market, like the early 80s or the early 30s.

The first year-and-a-half of the economic meltdown of 1929-1932 had about the same effect after about a year and a half as did the whole year-and-a-half meltdown of 2007-2009. My favorite chart suggests that after a year and a half, the economic meltdown of 2007-2009 looked even worse at points. The difference: the institutions of 2009 backed the banks and so did the President and Congress; Hoover failed to back the banks, and the bank runs of 1931 and 1932 practically turned America from a cash economy into a barter economy. When money fails, barter prevails.

With profits as shares of GDP, market capitalization to GDP, P/E, P/S, etc, at ... nosebleed levels while the real economy (income, wages, labor force participation, retail sales, etc.) still looking semi-recessionary, I think the next downturn for the triple peak is going to be a doozy.

It could be. Those indicators suggest a new Gilded Age. The Federal Reserve can push economic activity by supplying corporate investors with practically-free money through the banks. What's wrong with this free money? That the economy no longer depends upon workers and low-level professionals making enough income to have a surplus to save. American capitalism seems to be degenerating into the sort of reality characteristic of early capitalism in which employers crack the whip on workers who get bare sustenance -- just enough for survival.

The impact of the fracking bubble popping (with its effect on junk bonds, corporate capital expenditures, rail traffic, manufacturing, jobs), the rising dollar (impeding multinational earnings), and the slowdowns overseas (again impeding corporate earnings) are really starting to pummel the economy, which should lead us into the next recession reasonably soon. Although when exactly? I dunno. It's been a long expansion, but it could have life a while yet. I would be very surprised if it lasted the 10 years the 90s boom did, otoh, I'm surprised it's lasted as long as it has. It's a goddamn zombie economy.

Cheap energy is good for about everyone other than those in the energy industry. Maybe cheap labor is good for everybody but working people... Of course such suggests a Gilded Age with teeth. Social conditions of the late nineteenth century with perhaps a government responsible only to a few? That was tried in Russia up to 1917, and that did not work well.

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

It's a goddamn zombie economy.

Well I think that qualifies as special.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Well I think that qualifies as special.

Me too. Even pumping cheap money into the system shouldn't keep things afloat forever, but so far ...

Originally Posted by JordanGoodspeed

... It's a goddamn zombie economy.

With "voodoo" economics?

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Me too. Even pumping cheap money into the system shouldn't keep things afloat forever, but so far ...

It worked last 4T also. What exactly was done to put in the bottom in March 1933? The stimulus provided by the early New Deal programs was too small to do the job. What did the heavy lifting was a flood of money creation. FDR took the country off gold and changed the dollar value from $20.67/oz to $35/oz, which amounts to about 69% increase in the effective money supply. The result was an expansion of unprecedented length that left a recessionary economy at its peak. The Dow experienced its largest bull market ever. Sound familiar?

Originally Posted by Mikebert

It worked last 4T also. What exactly was done to put in the bottom in March 1933? The stimulus provided by the early New Deal programs was too small to do the job. What did the heavy lifting was a flood of money creation. FDR took the country off gold and changed the dollar value from $20.67/oz to $35/oz, which amounts to about 69% increase in the effective money supply. The result was an expansion of unprecedented length that left a recessionary economy at its peak. The Dow experienced its largest bull market ever. Sound familiar?

The money creation undid the money contraction of the Hoover meltdown.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

It worked last 4T also. What exactly was done to put in the bottom in March 1933? The stimulus provided by the early New Deal programs was too small to do the job. What did the heavy lifting was a flood of money creation. FDR took the country off gold and changed the dollar value from $20.67/oz to $35/oz, which amounts to about 69% increase in the effective money supply. The result was an expansion of unprecedented length that left a recessionary economy at its peak. The Dow experienced its largest bull market ever. Sound familiar?

Of course we'll never know what would have happened had WWII not occurred, but we lived on that war economy for the first few decades of peace. I don't see expansion of the money supply as nearly that important ... not that it hurt. You need MV. If you want growth and V is stubbornly low, M has to grow or the economy stalls.

So far, we have the monetary expansion. We can't seem to find the will to imploy the fiscal side. I don't know if it's fear of failure or the corrupting influence of wealth on the political system. It should be easy to justify a huge infrastructure build-out but we don't.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Of course we'll never know what would have happened had WWII not occurred, but we lived on that war economy for the first few decades of peace. I don't see expansion of the money supply as nearly that important ... not that it hurt. You need MV. If you want growth and V is stubbornly low, M has to grow or the economy stalls.

So far, we have the monetary expansion. We can't seem to find the will to imploy the fiscal side. I don't know if it's fear of failure or the corrupting influence of wealth on the political system. It should be easy to justify a huge infrastructure build-out but we don't.

It's just Republicans/Tea Party. They oppose any government spending. The people voted them in, so we can't do anything about it until they vote them out.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Of course we'll never know what would have happened had WWII not occurred, but we lived on that war economy for the first few decades of peace. I don't see expansion of the money supply as nearly that important ... not that it hurt. You need MV. If you want growth and V is stubbornly low, M has to grow or the economy stalls.

So far, we have the monetary expansion. We can't seem to find the will to imploy the fiscal side. I don't know if it's fear of failure or the corrupting influence of wealth on the political system. It should be easy to justify a huge infrastructure build-out but we don't.

It's a result of the 0.1% wanting 0 inflation, if not deflation, and their ability to easily manipulate the vast majority of people, along the entire political spectrum, that are completely, if not willfully, ignorant of how our monetary system actually works.

At least today, you can discern the 0.1% mouthpieces (you'll never hear from the actual 0.1% directly) from the vast sheeple. The ones in the loop now never relate federal debt/deficits to inflation - that dog don't hunt no more except with clueless gold bugs watching too much Glen Beck. The manipulators now just rely on the decades-instilled brainwashing result of Pavlov bleating by the vast mass of sheeple of "deficits bad" based on the stunningly ignorant notion that federal debt is somehow, someway akin to personal, household, business, state/local govt or any other debt held by a non-monetary sovereign entity.

It would be hilarious except for the great harm it continues to do to this country - including giving the GOP t-baggers the aura of Very Serious People and having something to run on - now that they completely flopped on gay marriage .

1992-2012 results (where to start the discussion):



The archaic red for Democrats and blue for Republicans is in place.

Deep red -- Democrats win every Presidential race.
Medium red -- Democrats win all but one Presidential race.
White -- always went with the winner
Pale blue -- went for the winner in all but one election, but in that exception went for the Republican
Yellow -- twice Democratic, but seeming to now drift Democratic
Green -- twice Democratic but seeming to drift Republican (Missouri in a light shade because Obama was close in 2008, others deep green)
Medium blue -- Republicans win all but one Presidential race.
Deep blue --Republicans win every Presidential race.

... This is where we reasonably start. Any information from before 1992 is irrelevant to current reality. Anyone who predicts that a state in deep (or even medium) red or deep (or even medium) blue is going to vote differently from how it has voted in the last six elections has some explaining to do. How California or Texas voted in 1976 or earlier no longer matters. States in pale shades or white can be understood as swing states in anything near a 50-50 election.

No state is in pink, so by this 'reasonable swing states' are

CO FL MO NV OH VA

If you see something out of recent norms happening in Arizona or Iowa, then you can add those. I would be tempted to replace MO with NC based on 2012.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

It's just Republicans/Tea Party. They oppose any government spending. The people voted them in, so we can't do anything about it until they vote them out.

Yes, that's what they preach. The real question is why. Even the rich get richer when the economy is booming, so why not start one?

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

1992-2012 results (where to start the discussion):



The archaic red for Democrats and blue for Republicans is in place.

Deep red -- Democrats win every Presidential race.
Medium red -- Democrats win all but one Presidential race.
White -- always went with the winner
Pale blue -- went for the winner in all election, but in that exception went for the Republican
Yellow -- twice Democratic, but seeming to now drift Democratic
Green -- twice Democratic but seeming to drift Republican (Missouri in a light shade because Obama was close in 2008, others deep green)
Medium blue -- Republicans win all but one Presidential race.
Deep blue --Republicans win every Presidential race.

... This is where we reasonably start. Any information from before 1992 is irrelevant to current reality. Anyone who predicts that a state in deep (or even medium) red or deep (or even medium) blue is going to vote differently from how it has voted in the last six elections has some explaining to do. How California or Texas voted in 1976 or earlier no longer matters. States in pale shades or white can be understood as swing states in anything near a 50-50 election.

No state is in pink, so by this 'reasonable swing states' are

CO FL MO NV OH VA

If you see something out of recent norms happening in Arizona or Iowa, then you can add those. I would be tempted to replace MO with NC based on 2012.

Good map, thanks.

If we assume that NM, IA and NH (plus the somewhat iffy WI) stay Democratic, which is likely but not certain, that is 257 votes. NM seems most likely now to stay Democratic among those three. Not exactly a wall, but if VA also goes Democratic, that's 270.

Swing states look to be CO FL NC NV OH VA by my reckoning. The Democrat needs just VA, the Republican needs all six.

The wild card is if Republicans, who now control most states, change the electoral college counting method so that votes are awarded by congressional district or proportionately, then the Democrats will need to win more of the swing states to win.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Yes, that's what they preach. The real question is why. Even the rich get richer when the economy is booming, so why not start one?

When the economy crashes the super-rich still have cash with which they can buy assets that the ruined middle class and the near-rich of good times sell in desperation -- real estate, antiques, precious metals, jewels, and of course securities. It's the phenomenon of the fire sale without the fire. The super-rich can almost always out-wait any would-be bottom-feeders other than themselves.

At their worst in many countries in the past, it is not enough for the super-rich to gain; they want everything, which includes people will endure any impoverishment and brutal management just to survive.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Of course we'll never know what would have happened had WWII not occurred, but we lived on that war economy for the first few decades of peace. I don't see expansion of the money supply as nearly that important ... not that it hurt. You need MV. If you want growth and V is stubbornly low, M has to grow or the economy stalls.

The American economy was clearly in recovery, with some undeniable expansion in consumer spending in the late 1930s. Purchases of automobiles, appliances, furniture, and radios (the latter then still expensive) were stronger than in the late 1920s. America had some significant expenditures on superhighways in the late 1930s and the very early 1940s, predecessors of the Interstate Highway system. What had not recovered was securities prices. There were already portents of the coming 1T that America seemed headed for before the Pearl Harbor Attack.

So far, we have the monetary expansion. We can't seem to find the will to employ the fiscal side. I don't know if it's fear of failure or the corrupting influence of wealth on the political system. It should be easy to justify a huge infrastructure build-out but we don't.

In 1931, about a year and a half into the economic meltdown that followed the 1929 peak of speculative activity, President Hoover did nothing to rescue the financial system from the destructive series of bank runs that turned a meltdown similar to the 2007-2009 into a calamity that began the Great Depression. In 2009 the federal deposit insurance of bank balances prevented bank runs that would have destroyed the corrupt financial system of America. The Receivership Socialism that began in late 2008 under Dubya got some reinforcement -- and the Obama Administration ended up rescuing entities that would stab him in the back politically by sponsoring the political successes of Movement Conservatism in 2010 and 2014.

The difference this time is that the rich got rescued first, and with their rescue came the semi-fascist ideology typical of rapacious elites. The Great Depression solved the political problem of plutocratic oligarchy by gutting the power of 'economic royalists'. The 'economic royalists' reign supreme today. That makes all the difference in American politics. But the monetary expansion, the only tool available to President Obama after 2010, is still in effect.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Of course we'll never know what would have happened had WWII not occurred, but we lived on that war economy for the first few decades of peace. I don't see expansion of the money supply as nearly that important ... not that it hurt. You need MV. If you want growth and V is stubbornly low, M has to grow or the economy stalls.

So far, we have the monetary expansion. We can't seem to find the will to employ the fiscal side. I don't know if it's fear of failure or the corrupting influence of wealth on the political system. It should be easy to justify a huge infrastructure build-out but we don't.

The monetary expansion put in the bottom in March 1933 and was a partial solution to the problem. Fiscal stimulus in 1940 and after was the rest of the solution. Same thing now. Monetary expansion and a half-assed stimulus was the partial solution this time. The rest of the solution, if it happens, is yet to happen.

Now economic inequality peaked last secular cycle in about 1910 give or take a decade. Capital productivity, defined as the amount of per capital output produced per unit of capital ran at about 40 constant dollars for 1871-1907 and 1940-2000. Between 1907 and 1940 it fell to lower valued reaching the low 20's at the depth of the depression. The massive stimulus in 1940 and after apparently ended low capital productivity and jump-started the economy so that the effect lasted for 55 years after the war ended.

Since 2000 capital productivity has again started to fall, from around 40, reaching the low 30's at the depth of the Great Recession. Economic inequality has yet to put in a peak. By gut feeling? We are in the early phases of a cycle reversal, but the fiscal stimulus you are looking for could be 20 years away.

I have been working through Peter Turchin's American cycle analysis. I am disappointed with his treatment of the reversals that lead to falling inequality. He invokes the Price equation, but does not use it. He provides no model for the 1910 trend reversal, giving instead a verbal explanation that I find inadequate. My juxtaposition of the capital efficiency and economic inequality trends simply reflects a synchroneity I found intriguing. I have no theory or math model that involves these two things.

Turchin’s reference to the Price equation (used to model the rise of a trait in a population by evolution) would put the process in the realm of cultural evolution (concepts I would like to employ) but he provides not details on how to proceed. Turchin’s idea is that elite concern about popular unrest led to the policies that led to the trend change. I don’t see any evidence that actual elites in history behaved this way. The standard approach was military repression, which in the US was not even tried.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

When the economy crashes the super-rich still have cash with which they can buy assets that the ruined middle class and the near-rich of good times sell in desperation -- real estate, antiques, precious metals, jewels, and of course securities. It's the phenomenon of the fire sale without the fire. The super-rich can almost always out-wait any would-be bottom-feeders other than themselves.

At their worst in many countries in the past, it is not enough for the super-rich to gain; they want everything, which includes people will endure any impoverishment and brutal management just to survive.

Of course, they also have to live in a society that is crumbling, and one that can go violent if the many are dispossessed and desperate. Why are a few more trinkets -- even valuable trinkets -- important enough to risk anyone's personal security, especially for those with so much already?

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The monetary expansion put in the bottom in March 1933 and was a partial solution to the problem. Fiscal stimulus in 1940 and after was the rest of the solution. Same thing now. Monetary expansion and a half-assed stimulus was the partial solution this time. The rest of the solution, if it happens, is yet to happen.

Now economic inequality peaked last secular cycle in about 1910 give or take a decade. Capital productivity, defined as the amount of per capital output produced per unit of capital ran at about 40 constant dollars for 1871-1907 and 1940-2000. Between 1907 and 1940 it fell to lower valued reaching the low 20's at the depth of the depression. The massive stimulus in 1940 and after apparently ended low capital productivity and jump-started the economy so that the effect lasted for 55 years after the war ended.

Since 2000 capital productivity has again started to fall, from around 40, reaching the low 30's at the depth of the Great Recession. Economic inequality has yet to put in a peak. By gut feeling? We are in the early phases of a cycle reversal, but the fiscal stimulus you are looking for could be 20 years away.

I have been working through Peter Turchin's American cycle analysis. I am disappointed with his treatment of the reversals that lead to falling inequality. He invokes the Price equation, but does not use it. He provides no model for the 1910 trend reversal, giving instead a verbal explanation that I find inadequate. My juxtaposition of the capital efficiency and economic inequality trends simply reflects a synchroneity I found intriguing. I have no theory or math model that involves these two things.

Turchin’s reference to the Price equation (used to model the rise of a trait in a population by evolution) would put the process in the realm of cultural evolution (concepts I would like to employ) but he provides not details on how to proceed. Turchin’s idea is that elite concern about popular unrest led to the policies that led to the trend change. I don’t see any evidence that actual elites in history behaved this way. The standard approach was military repression, which in the US was not even tried.

The issue that bothers me most is not something history can tell us much about. We are reaching a point where productivity is so high, that the inherent balance in the economy has started to warp. We're already demand limited, and this may be not just permanent but growing in intensity. How do we deal with that? I don't see a neo-Luddite movement whisking us back to the days of handmade goods, unless you consider artisan goods the wave of the future. So there will be an adjustment ... or several.

Capital is already capturing the assets in place, and will do its best to control the assets of the future. If production is based on assets rather than labor, how does the economic engine work, when so few profit from that production? Equally important, or more so, how does democracy function in a world of distorted economic power?

I assume we will work our way out of our current doldrums, but I can't see it being more than a temporary reprieve. Unless we divine some viable alternative, 20 or 30 years from now, the crunch has to arrive in earnest.

Demand constriction has always been a matter of wealth and income distribution. When too much of the economy's money is concentrated into too few hands, the economy suffers. The solution has always been to redistribute wealth. The only thing that's changed today versus the 1930s is that the means of redistributing wealth used then, or part of it -- driving up wages -- won't work as well now. By one means or another, we still need to do the same thing: take from those who have too much, and distribute it to the rest of us, who have too little.

What we're going to have to do in order to accomplish that is to decouple income from work in our thinking. It's already decoupled for the rich, who gain their wealth by gaming the system (or inheriting it, increasingly) and not by working. With machines doing more and more of the work, and human labor less and less required, each person's contribution as a consumer becomes more important than his or her contribution as a producer (except through creativity and innovation, which is still required -- for now, at least).

Means to do this probably include a guaranteed income as a right of citizenship. Put that in place, and further debate can be about the size of it. But it's not the case that demand constriction is permanent or intractable, merely because not as much labor is needed as in the past. Think outside the box.

Back to the 2016 election, I don't know if I've observed this on this forum (I've definitely done so elsewhere), but a lot of the conventional wisdom about parties and the presidency isn't likely to be true. We have a rule that's been in place since the Civil War, that the party winning the South loses the White House. Not counting the Crisis-era elections of 1860-1868, there were 15 presidential elections from 1872 to 1928, and the Republicans won 11 of those. Of the four the Democrats won, two were very narrow victories by Grover Cleveland with a loss in between them, and the other two (Woodrow Wilson) happened only because Theodore Roosevelt ran a spoiler third-party campaign in 1912 after he didn't get the GOP nomination. If he hadn't done that, Taft would have been reelected (or, if he'd won the Republican nomination, he'd have won the general election). The Democrats almost always won the South, and almost always lost the presidential election.

The next Crisis changed that by creating a new winning Democratic coalition, but it was unstable in that it still included the South, whose values and goals were incompatible with those of Democrats nationwide. After the Crisis was over, the coalition started to fray, and Southern white voters began to leave the Democratic Party. After the 1960s, the Republicans picked up these voters, giving them lip service only (which is what the Dems had done in prior decades, too), until recently when the Tea Party movement took over the party and pushed it into acting on these values and goals instead of just talking about them.

As a result, the GOP is today where the Democrats were in the last saeculum (prior to its 4T). The main difference is that, as the South urbanizes, that demographic is disappearing. By the end of this 4T, I expect it to be gone as a significant political force.

Anyway, all calculations based on the fact that we've had a two-term Democrat so now it's time for a Republican -- don't count on it. When the roles were reversed, the GOP won many presidential terms straight. That's where we are now once again, but with the party names changed.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Demand constriction has always been a matter of wealth and income distribution. When too much of the economy's money is concentrated into too few hands, the economy suffers. The solution has always been to redistribute wealth. The only thing that's changed today versus the 1930s is that the means of redistributing wealth used then, or part of it -- driving up wages -- won't work as well now. By one means or another, we still need to do the same thing: take from those who have too much, and distribute it to the rest of us, who have too little.

What we're going to have to do in order to accomplish that is to decouple income from work in our thinking. It's already decoupled for the rich, who gain their wealth by gaming the system (or inheriting it, increasingly) and not by working. With machines doing more and more of the work, and human labor less and less required, each person's contribution as a consumer becomes more important than his or her contribution as a producer (except through creativity and innovation, which is still required -- for now, at least).

Means to do this probably include a guaranteed income as a right of citizenship. Put that in place, and further debate can be about the size of it. But it's not the case that demand constriction is permanent or intractable, merely because not as much labor is needed as in the past. Think outside the box.

It's not decoupled for the rich. It's still associated with the rich, the upper middle class and the middle class as well. How does a society continue to grow and advance with an effortless based economy that no longer has any financial initiative?

Originally Posted by TnT

With "voodoo" economics?

Government driven economics, baseless driven economics and effortless entitlement programs is voodoo economics.