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Damage From Sandy? What About Potential Economic Boost?
“America is great at rebounding and it will reinvigorate the economy. When you have committed infrastructure projects by governments, you get this automatic multiplying effect …every dollar is worth $4 to $6, so I think the positive part is going into 2013,” Holmes told CNBC Asia’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday. “We’re going to get a lot of infrastructure spending.”
I propose that the Lernaean Hydra should become our new National Emblem. For every dollar of wealth that's destroyed, four to six more will take their place!
In Greek mythology, the Lernaean Hydra (Ancient Greek: Λερναία Ὕδρα) was an ancient nameless serpent-like chthonic water beast, with reptilian traits (as its name evinces), that possessed many heads — the poets mention more heads than the vase-painters could paint, and for each head cut off it grew two more — and poisonous breath so virulent even her tracks were deadly.
It's the prosperity of wealth destruction. How can we get more of it?
Department of Homeland Security
The Department of Homeland Security has a vital mission: to secure the nation from the many threats we face.
We need a Department of Homeland Insecurity. We desperately need to come up with a new technology that will guide more hurricanes TO our shores and AWAY from the shores of those we compete with. We also need to act quickly before the rest of the world catches wind of our plan.
4 comments:
In all seriousness, there's a reason the word disaster is included in the term natural disaster.
We should not hope for more disasters to somehow miraculously boost our economy over the long-term. That's just crazy talk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
Now, the whole point of Keynesian BS should be to create more efficient economy wealth-wise.
The core problem is people not really understanding what wealth is.
Wealth is simply that which satisfies human needs and wants. Technically, we all could live rather wealthy lives given the cumulative investment in durable wealth that has been going on for 100+ years (here on the US west coast).
Again, technically, all we need to be "prosperous" is to produce at least as much as wealth as we consume.
But our current economy is pretty f'n far from these abstract precepts. I repeat my rant on DeLong's nearly every day, about the trillion-dollar rents EACH in housing and health care that are distorting everything.
Throw in the $600B/yr trade deficit and the $1T+/yr national security "expense" and we're starting to get into serious imbalance territory.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year2013_US.html
Government spending:
$1.1T pensions
$1.1T health care
$0.9T education
$0.9T defense
$1.1T welfare & protection
These line items average out to $1T each, and $1T divided by the 133.5M jobs reported in the latest PAYEMS is $7500 per line timer per job.
Total spending is $6.4T next year, that's $47,940 per job.
WTH? WTF?
And these numbers are going to explode once the baby boom hits 65 en masse, which will be ca 2020.
I made a graph of the general expectation of adding 12M jobs over the next 4 years:
http://i.imgur.com/YPGBG.png
I call it, "Pull the Other One"
Troy,
WTH? WTF?
I get that same feeling every time I chart an economic exponential trend failure on this blog. I never seem to get desensitized nor do I ever seem to run out of material. Go figure. Sigh.
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