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You can't spend your way out of a recession

You can't spend your way out of a recession


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And your argument against it is a bit deceiving. First off, we don't even know if streets would be owned or grids (like areas owned instead of strips). Secondly, with the technology we have in electronic transponders, we don't need toll booths. You can drive right by a "booth" without even having to slow down.

But what streets would be you be paying for? Major highways are one thing, but secondary roads and streets? You'd need a transponder on every block to decide which road was valuable and who was using it. And what do you do if it loses money? Close it?

It just won't work.
 
But what streets would be you be paying for? Major highways are one thing, but secondary roads and streets? You'd need a transponder on every block to decide which road was valuable and who was using it. And what do you do if it loses money? Close it?

It just won't work.

It wouldn't be up to me. It would be up to the companies that own the roads. Yes, close a road if it's losing money. Otherwise it's a waste of money.

This is just pure speculation, but I would assume that local businesses would gladly pay the full cost of local roads but that highways would be paid for by users.
 
It wouldn't be up to me. It would be up to the companies that own the roads. Yes, close a road if it's losing money. Otherwise it's a waste of money.

Do you think about these things before you post them?

What if your street doesn't have enough traffic to make money, could the company just close it? How will you get around?
 
It wouldn't be up to me. It would be up to the companies that own the roads. Yes, close a road if it's losing money. Otherwise it's a waste of money.

This is just pure speculation, but I would assume that local businesses would gladly pay the full cost of local roads but that highways would be paid for by users.

Oh! Me. Me. Me..... I have a question:mrgreen: Actually more than one.

What is to become of this closed road? Does it get repossessed by bank? If so, how does a bank liquidate an "unprofitable" road? In the event that they want to auction off the land, do they have to sell it an unimaginable loss due to the increased transactional cost to demolish it and turn it into something else?

I am not sure if you have been involved in building roads or bridges, but those pricks are expensive and time consuming to build. Not only that, given the stabilization requirements to maintain a level surface (sheet piles that are driven 50+ feet into the ground, multi layered surfaces), to turn a safe road into something else would be much more expensive and time consuming than building it.

Care to address this?
 
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And what if an unprofitable road that links two profitable ones, owned by someone else, is closed? What if the road is the only way in and out?
 
And what if an unprofitable road that links two profitable ones, owned by someone else, is closed? What if the road is the only way in and out?
Then people would be using it to get to the other roads, and it wouldn't be unprofitable...:doh
 
Do you think about these things before you post them?

What if your street doesn't have enough traffic to make money, could the company just close it? How will you get around?
You're the only poster on this site that gets into these aimless inane topics. You make a mountain out of a mole hill. Here you are again trying to prove that socialism works great.
 
Then people would be using it to get to the other roads, and it wouldn't be unprofitable...:doh

Not necessarily. What if the only way to make these roads profitable was to jam them with traffic? What if too many roads were competing to get to a certain place, so some were closed, and the rest were jammed? And what if poor management or financial troubles of a parent company caused a road to close?
 
You're the only poster on this site that gets into these aimless inane topics. You make a mountain out of a mole hill.

You want to know why I'm the only one? Because everyone else can see that the idea of privatizing roads (save a few major highways and turnpikes) is complete, total lunacy. I'm the only one entertained enough to taunt you with it.

Reality. Try it some time.
 
Completely disagree. In fact, spending is the ONLY way to get out of a recession. A recession is pretty much defined by the lack of spending.

Ask yourself one simple question: If YOU were unemployed and had no income, would YOU max out every credit card and every other source of credit you have and spend it like crazy? Would that get YOU out of a recession?

Now go sing, "...Another day older and deeper in debt...":rofl
 
Ask yourself one simple question: If YOU were unemployed and had no income, would YOU max out every credit card and every other source of credit you have and spend it like crazy? Would that get YOU out of a recession?

Now go sing, "...Another day older and deeper in debt...":rofl

actually, that would be the wise course of action if you were then putting those funds to productive use. if they were spent to operate a business enterprise which could be expected to become a net revenue generator.
spending those borrowed funds up front to enable the business to prosper makes sense

but i look forward to your explaining why that is incorrect
 
Ask yourself one simple question: If YOU were unemployed and had no income, would YOU max out every credit card and every other source of credit you have and spend it like crazy? Would that get YOU out of a recession?

You clearly have very little knowledge of economics.

Go read some basic descriptions of Keynesian theory. There are some on this thread.

Ironically, though, alot of unemployed people are doing just that, and for some of them it's the wise thing to do. But that's another story.
 
Ask yourself one simple question: If YOU were unemployed and had no income, would YOU max out every credit card and every other source of credit you have and spend it like crazy? Would that get YOU out of a recession?

Now go sing, "...Another day older and deeper in debt...":rofl

Why should the government neccessarily operate the same as a private citizen. Apples and oranges, really.
 
The "haves" should be spending, it helps the "have less" or "have none" parts of the economy. I think it was during the Reagan administration that the term "trickle down" was first used. IT works, maybe not well, but it works. Money should be in circulation to be most effective....
 
The "haves" should be spending, it helps the "have less" or "have none" parts of the economy. I think it was during the Reagan administration that the term "trickle down" was first used. IT works, maybe not well, but it works. Money should be in circulation to be most effective....

And the government spending money puts it into circulation. If they pay me to build a bridge, and I spend that money to buy a burger, that's money in circulation.
 
And the government spending money puts it into circulation. If they pay me to build a bridge, and I spend that money to buy a burger, that's money in circulation.

And then when you're done building the pointless bridge, you get laid off because you're useless and wasting government money and they only hired you so they could say they were "stimulating" something anyways. Then you don't have much money from anyone, government or otherwise, to spend, and we're back to where we started. Excess government spending just delays the inevitable, while at the same time reducing productivity by taking potential jobs from the private sector without needing the cost calculating that private sector employers need.
 
And then when you're done building the pointless bridge, you get laid off because you're useless and wasting government money and they only hired you so they could say they were "stimulating" something anyways.

No, you get a job because you spent the money you made, enabling other businesses to thrive, creating new jobs, etc.

Then you don't have much money from anyone, government or otherwise, to spend, and we're back to where we started. Excess government spending just delays the inevitable, while at the same time reducing productivity by taking potential jobs from the private sector without needing the cost calculating that private sector employers need.

You realize that the private sector built that bridge, right?
 
No, you get a job because you spent the money you made, enabling other businesses to thrive, creating new jobs, etc.

That doesn't really change my point.


You realize that the private sector built that bridge, right?

Erm, no, not in this hypothetical scenario.
 
It depends on where the money is coming from. If it's from an increase in the money supply, then there is no way you can spend your way out of a recession because nominal variables (money) have no long run impact on real variables (unemployment, real GDP).
 
That doesn't really change my point.

Yes, it does, completely.

Erm, no, not in this hypothetical scenario.

Government employees never build bridges, even hypothetical ones. The government contracts out to private construction firms.
 
It depends on where the money is coming from. If it's from an increase in the money supply, then there is no way you can spend your way out of a recession because nominal variables (money) have no long run impact on real variables (unemployment, real GDP).

That's the first intelligent objection I've seen on this thread.
 
Keynesianism, depending on how well its done, can range from just fufilling Bastiat's broken window fallacy to just pushing problems further down the road. It all comes down from robbing Paul to pay Peter.

While there are obvious needs and wants that virtually all of have like police upholding law and order, the economy is simply too diverse and quickly changing for a single entity like the government to take a massive role in without screwing up. Corrections allow the market to do away with doesn't work and replace it with what does. Big government usually keeps the status quo whether it is helpful or not.
 
Keynesianism, depending on how well its done, can range from just fufilling Bastiat's broken window fallacy to just pushing problems further down the road. It all comes down from robbing Paul to pay Peter.

Not if you produce growth and get people working again. You don't have to rob Peter, he get's back to work and pays taxes again.
 
Not if you produce growth and get people working again. You don't have to rob Peter, he get's back to work and pays taxes again.

Where did the money to pay him come from originally?
 
Where did the money to pay him come from originally?

The government. So he get's back to work, and his spending gets other people back to work, and so on, and the economy is rolling again, and they all pay more taxes and pay back the money that was spent in the first place.
 
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