Click to enlarge.
It's an exponential trend failure two-fer!
Note that the overall trend (in red) is down. Also note that the growth in each expansion is lower than the growth in the expansion before it.
13.7% -> 11.5% -> 8.3%
In my opinion, this does not bode well for blue-collar workers who build offices nor the white-collar workers who work within them.
Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Custom Chart
interesting post on economic simulation . . .
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/28/the-economics-of-video-games/
Troy,
ReplyDeleteEyjólfur Guðmundsson is just that economist. Working for the Icelandic company CCP Games, he oversees the virtual economy of the massively multiplayer video game Eve Online. Within this world, players build their own spaceships and traverse a galaxy of 7,500 star systems. They buy and sell raw materials, creating their own fluctuating markets. They speculate on commodities. They form trade coalitions and banks.
I played Eve Online when it first came out and then played it for years. Great game.
I stopped playing when PvP pretty much became a necessity. As an introvert, I'm more of a PvE type person.
I ran a small corporation in the game. We'd do missions together. It was fun. CCP Games wanted us to take more risks though. They kept pushing and pushing to get us to play in PvP areas. The last attempt caused me to quit. The biggest ships had to stay in PvP space.
It really was like real life in a way. Some central person really wanted me to take more risks and I chose to pass. Been there, done that! Hahaha! ;)
http://i.imgur.com/eG8pI.png
ReplyDeleteshows 2 1/2 years until we get back to the worst of the dotcom recession.
I've got a bad feeling about this decade though.
We're quickly approaching a policy singularity -- the fiscal cliff -- which is impossible to see past.
But knowing what we know now, we're still going to have divided government for the next 2 years.
And those 2 years are 2 years closer to the end of our rope. Dunno how long it is, but our sticky end is approaching.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=bgI
shows $900B/yr in "socialism" tax intake.
vs. $750B in SSA payouts, $550B in Medicare, and $400B in Medicaid.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=bgJ
shows the total of income vs. outgo, and this gap is only going to widen as the baby boom turns 62 and the baby boom echo starts pumping out more and more kids.
2010-2012 was a local minima for US live births, at ~4M. This should actually rise to 4.5M/yr this decade and next.
We probably make enough wealth to actually pay our way on this, but we've got to reverse 30 years of income disparity, and that's not going to happen anytime soon, if ever really.
The alternative future I see coming is a pretty scary place, really. Soylent Green meets Minority Report.
It doesn't have to be this way, but The System really, really doesn't want to fix things, since that would require paying for our mistakes.
re: Eve, I am very much that kind of player, looking for something deep and multiplayer.
ReplyDeleteI've followed Eve dramas more than any other game and they do a lot right, but the design kicking around in my head since the late 80s is closer to the original Langston Empire I guess.
My design dials back on the high tech for less of an Ogg bumrush and more operational-level force allocation and C3I.
Troy,
ReplyDeleteNETREK PROVERBS
Don't kill an ogger who is out of fuel or crippled.
With oil at $90+ and a stagnant economy, welcome to the land of oggers! Sigh.
I don't know where you see those echo boom babies getting high-paying jobs and having 3-4 kids.
ReplyDeleteAnd even relatively high W2 earners are squeezed pretty hard right now, and it's unlikely they'll get more free cash to save/invest in the medium and long terms.
Where is the new wealth to come from to pay for all to come?
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteWhere is the new wealth to come from to pay for all to come?
You tell me and we'll both know. Sigh.