rdmcandie wrote:
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You do realize that consumer demand does not drive employment, right? Businesses do not look at aggregate demand and decide that there's too little for them to make a new product, or invest in some new venture. They do those things as a means of competing for existing demand. Aggregate demand as a whole has very very very little to do with business decisions or employment decisions. Future profit/cost estimates do.
So I assume the Auto Industry Collapse had nothing to do with people not buying cars.
You failed to understand what I meant by "total aggregate demand". What this means is that businesses do not look at the total amount of consumption dollars in the economy and make decisions. They certainly do look at specific demand for their own products, but that's part of the "future profit/cost estimates".
The reason this matters is that the argument the left is using is that if we hand out foodstamps, this will increase total demand in the economy (because people will spend the foodstamps), and this will somehow magically make intel (or any other non-food related business) decide to hire more workers in the US. Certainly, you can artificially increase demand for a specific product, but if the cost of this is profits in other sectors, then the net effect is negative.
Which is what I've been saying all along.
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My current employer went from making over 1 million frames for 7 years straight, to laying off nearly its full workforce, to making less than half that amount, and still have not reached pre Auto Industry bed sh*tting levels of employment.
Yup. And no amount of handing out welfare checks or extending unemployment will change that, will it?
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But ya that has nothing to do with people not buying cars it is clearly companies diversifying their options.
Again, that's not what I said. I am debunking the theory that by increasing demand dollars *anywhere* in the economy, you can improve the economy *everywhere*. It simply doesn't work. Hell, it should be obvious that this wont work. Yet some continue to pursue this economic theory anyway. Why you ask? Because it's not really about making the economy "better", but about putting the government more in control of the economy we have. But they can't get you to vote for them by saying "We're going to make everyone more poor in order to ensure that government is where everyone turns for food and shelter instead of the free market". So they sell you on the idea that if government intervenes, it can magically make the economy work better.
It doesn't work. It has never worked. All it does is destroy the parts of the economy the government doesn't control and force everyone into the parts of the economy that it does. The ultimate goal is to make you vote for your goods and services instead of work for them in a free labor market. Once you realize this, the pattern of behavior makes perfect sense.