€55 billion needed to Run Ireland - €38 billion coming in

[sarahj]

Joseph Stiglitz is good on protectionism - because he was an economist with the IMF he has a lot of up front experience of what happens when vulnerable markets are prized open.

He gives a lot of examples of successful protectionist projects in "Globalism and its Discontents".

Though I don't agree with him on everything, that's a VERY good book.

[20000miles]

Do you really need to be so arrogant?! It is impossible to have a discussion when you refuse to accept that there could be two different interpretations of the same set of events. You think it was despite, I think it was because.

Nobody can prove how these events happened - it's speculation unless you have data to back up your claims and neither of us do.

Two things:

I have noted your interpretation, and I have dismissed it becuase it is simply absurd. Having the government make goods artificially expensive makes a country poorer, not richer. It's absurd to suggest otherwise.

The second point is a methodological one. Neither of us require any data to come to our conclusions. If looking at past data was the way to do it, we would be groping the dark trying to find out what caused this or that. It's a bankrupt doctrine.

[20000miles]

2000miles, I've asked Sarahj this before on another thread and wouldn't mind getting your answer as well, if you please.

What are your first principles from which you have progressed to your current point of view? Did you have any predetermined values before you came to your current conclusions or did your conclusions determine the values you now hold?

Feel free to tell me to b*gger off. Thanks.

I actually started out as a moderate Statist, accepting all the interventionist claims from both ends of the spectrum. After I started to study economics, many of those ideas fell away.

Once I got accustomed to the non-agression principle, the centre of libertarian thought, I decided to take it to its logical conclusion.

That's about it, is that what you were looking for?

[libertarian-right]

This coupled with the bank situation, if anyone that thinks we can sustain this is clearly nuts. If everyone wants to be poor and live in flats and slums with no prospects of jobs or good quality of life, have your inflated wages, public spending, bailing out the banks. And leave it for the generations to come. This is too serious, this will effect our children.

National debt will rise so high that it will be a good few billion a year for interest payments ALONE. We cannot pay for this, slash and burn, simple as. It is for the greater good. We cannot pay for the banks either.

[sarahj]

Two things:

I have noted your interpretation, and I have dismissed it becuase it is simply absurd. Having the government make goods artificially expensive makes a country poorer, not richer. It's absurd to suggest otherwise.

The second point is a methodological one. Neither of us require any data to come to our conclusions. If looking at past data was the way to do it, we would be groping the dark trying to find out what caused this or that. It's a bankrupt doctrine.

Wow - you are SO good at contradicting yourself.

Firstly, straw man alert - I never said ANYTHING about "having the govt make goods artificially expensive". Point it out.

And secondly, YES I KNOW!!! That's why I keep telling you that the USSR was not an example of what I was describing.

I mean, how many times do I have to repeat myself before we can have a constructive discussion?!?!

[sarahj]

This coupled with the bank situation, if anyone that thinks we can sustain this is clearly nuts. If everyone wants to be poor and live in flats and slums with no prospects of jobs or good quality of life, have your inflated wages, public spending, bailing out the banks. And leave it for the generations to come. This is too serious, this will effect our children.

National debt will rise so high that it will be a good few billion a year for interest payments ALONE. We cannot pay for this, slash and burn, simple as. It is for the greater good. We cannot pay for the banks either.

So what do you want to slash and burn?

[Cato]

Wow - you are SO good at contradicting yourself.

Firstly, straw man alert - I never said ANYTHING about "having the govt make goods artificially expensive". Point it out.

And secondly, YES I KNOW!!! That's why I keep telling you that the USSR was not an example of what I was describing.

I mean, how many times do I have to repeat myself before we can have a constructive discussion?!?!

Sarah, I think that he meant that when a government follows a protectionist policy it then makes the goods so protected more expensive for their own citizens than they would have been if free trade in those goods had been allowed.

He was referring to the consequence of protectionism, not to protectionism itself. I don't think that it was meant as a straw man argument.

[libertarian-right]

So what do you want to slash and burn?

Thanks for skipping all my points. What did you not understand? If we do not take any actions and demand that everything remains the same, it wont. Do you know what the IMF would do to this country? Simple question, do you want this and further generations crippled with debt so no one can have a decent quality of life? Harsh decisions have to be made either way.

[feargach]

Wow - you are SO good at contradicting yourself.

Firstly, straw man alert - I never said ANYTHING about "having the govt make goods artificially expensive". Point it out.

And secondly, YES I KNOW!!! That's why I keep telling you that the USSR was not an example of what I was describing.

I mean, how many times do I have to repeat myself before we can have a constructive discussion?!?!

sarahj, 2000miles is a fine guy, but he belongs to a fringe economic school that hasn't been taken seriously by anyone in any policy section anywhere in the world, from Soviet Russia to the USA, for 50 years.

Such exclusion from the mainstream leads such cliques to form opinions similar to conspiracy theories: impossible to verify or disprove, and they have an explanation for everything which cannot be tested.

[sarahj]

Sarah, I think that he meant that when a government follows a protectionist policy it then makes the goods so protected more expensive for their own citizens than they would have been if free trade in those goods had been allowed.

He was referring to the consequence of protectionism, not to protectionism itself. I don't think that it was meant as a straw man argument.

I know but that's not what I advocated so he is misrepresenting me. I don't want the govt to protect particular industries.