2004-2014 price inflation, LeMonde infographics

[Did67]

A reading of boeotian:

a) everything that is essential for a "healthy" life (energy, health, education, food ...) is increasing ...

b) all that is "futile" if not useful (beyond addictive consumption, supposed to fill an abysmal existential void), decrease ...

After that, are you surprised that people, who find it more and more difficult to live well and who are more and more tempted to "compensate" with addictions, are unhappy!

It must be like a kind of "pincer"!

[Ahmed]

I am not at all sure that "the debt is forcing nations to lower their operating costs."

The austerity policies celebrated by propaganda are difficult to justify since, in any case, the drafts drawn on imaginary future profits will never be honored.
One possible explanation, albeit of dubious rationality (but, in this field it is rather appropriate!), Would be that a rigorous budgetary policy would strengthen the credibility (in both senses of the word!) Vis-à-vis donors ...

It would therefore be the opposite: states are forced to appear as good managers in order to increase their debt level ...

[sen-no-sen]

I am not at all sure that "the debt is forcing nations to lower their operating costs."
(...)
One possible explanation, albeit of dubious rationality (but, in this field it is rather appropriate!), Would be that a rigorous budgetary policy would strengthen the credibility (in both senses of the word!) Vis-à-vis donors ...

It would therefore be the opposite: the states are forced to appear as good managers in order to increase their level of debt ...

Except that "good manager" is synonymous with reduced operating costs!
An indebted country must prove its "good will" (sic) to make sacrifices, usually by privatizing
key sectors of the economy, creditors therefore "invite" the creditor countries to reduce operating costs, hence the freezing of civil servants' index points, the reduction in the workforce of public services, the increase in age to access retirement etc ...

[Ahmed]

You are right to put quotes to "good manager", I hesitated to do so because its ironic connotation seemed obvious to me in the context of my sentence.
But I was wrong, because an ambiguity remained for unsophisticated minds ...

[Ahmed]

The apparent paradox of austerity policies is that by acting on the two possible levers; increase in taxes and decrease in public expenditure, they tend to reduce the base of its revenues.
Let me explain: taxes are levies on activities that produce surplus value, either when they are formed or subsequently; when the proceeds of these taxes are used to finance collective facilities or infrastructure (material or not), then this levy generates value creation (as was the case after the Second World War), this is obviously not not the case when it is used to repay a debt; its impact can be summed up by a neologism: stagflation; stagnation of the economy (less investment *, purchasing power at half mast **) and rampant inflation (increased charges passed on).
The reduction in public spending limits redistribution and therefore increases inequality, it also impacts the overall wage bill and therefore, ultimately, GDP (not to mention the human aspects, since I voluntarily limit myself to purely economic considerations), therefore the indirect state tax receipts.

What, obviously, is not lacking in salt is that it is by undermining the conditions for a possible repayment (?) That the possibilities of obtaining new credits are created, which alone will allow us to continue to be illuded ...

* The allocation of a greater mass of capital to the states, as the stagnation of the formation of surplus value are not so worrying, insofar as, unlike the post-war period, the possibilities of Profitable investments are at half mast: from this point of view, there is no competition between the state and private investors.
** Contrary to what JL Mélenchon maintains, the opposite policy, a recovery through consumption would also be illusory, since it would result in an increase in inflation: more generally, the so-called Keynesian policies, so effective in their time, have become inoperative at the present stage.

[sen-no-sen]

What, obviously, is not lacking in salt is that it is by undermining the conditions for a possible repayment (?) That the possibilities of obtaining new credits are created, which alone will allow us to continue to be illuded ...

It is a simple demonstration of the application of "exponentialism" operating within each system.
Any system tends irreparably towards the maximization of its influence, the credit system does not escape this infernal mechanism, growth by debt then debt by growth and so on ... except that this logic ends up abutting the physical limits that underlie the system, whether social, economic or ecological, ending in a collapse ...

[Ahmed]

Yes, exponentialism is at the heart of this very particular system, or at least its expansion ...
This is its purpose: to make an initial capital increase by the incorporation of living labor *; as soon as this condition is no longer met (by the eviction of workers resulting from the rise in productivity), the only solution is to add to the so-called "real" economy, a source of fictitious capital.
I must specify, and this is important, that the fictitious capital, although of a different origin from the real capital, behaves in all respects like the latter (except that its lifespan is limited).
In reality, it has another real-fictitious attribute, it is its anchoring in a living work situated in a hypothetical future.
Because of the link between these two forms of capital, it is necessary for the development of financial products that there is a hope of repayment: this is what explains why the states submit to the wishes of their creditors, unable to are to envisage the exit from a system of which it only endeavors to delay the collapse (by endeavoring to contract new loans to replace those coming to maturity).

*It is Ricardo who first insisted on this phenomenon (A. Smith had already mentioned it), JS Mill, his student took it back in turn, followed by Marx: it is, as often in economics (and other fields) a perfectly counter-intuitive fact. This fact was then disputed by economists who turned to the major macroeconomic balances, without questioning the origin of the creation of value.

[Ahmed]

Sen-no-sen, a peculiarity of the fictitious capital which will not fail to interest you, because it joins your concerns on the anticipation of the future, is its eminently metaphysical character.

Under certain conditions, such as during the first Fordist period (after the 1929 crisis), like the second (after the war) and even during part of the post-Fordist transition (from the 80s), the injection of more in addition to massive fictitious capital resulting from living work not yet realized has succeeded in transforming this promise into reality; it is indeed a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Nothing mysterious about it, however: the profusion of loans at very low interest rates from the Roosevelt government, of Keynesian inspiration (first Fordist period), was going to unlock new activities which required an increasingly massive investment, which companies could not. more, at this stage of development, allow themselves.
In other words, in a certain way, these activities are back-funded themselves from the profits which they will realize later, which JP Dupuy qualifies as boot strapping.
Today the situation is quite different, since the conditions of new productive activities are shrinking like skin and it is the financial industries which are self-valuing in loop to increase a capital which is no longer attached to a living job than more and more ghostly.

[sen-no-sen]

Sen-no-sen, a peculiarity of the fictitious capital which will not fail to interest you, because it joins your concerns on the anticipation of the future, is its eminently metaphysical character.

Under certain conditions, such as during the first Fordist period (after the 1929 crisis), like the second (after the war) and even during part of the post-Fordist transition (from the 80s), the injection of more in addition to massive fictitious capital resulting from living work not yet realized has succeeded in transforming this promise into reality; it is indeed a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Howard Bloom speaks of the "messianic imperative" in economic matters, I think the term is indeed very correct as you indicate.

Today the situation is quite different, since the conditions of new productive activities are shrinking like skin and it is the financial industries which are self-valuing in loop to increase a capital which is no longer attached to a living job than more and more ghostly.

If we follow the current process, it is possible that in about 30 years, there will be no more work (for ... everyone!)
It may seem science fiction, but it takes the way, evidence to support it.
However do not dream, the end of work for men will not be synonymous with vacation ... but death.

[Ahmed]

Concerning the question of work, since its beginnings of capitalism appeared as a dynamic which requisitioned a maximum of labor force, then, as its evolution, this dynamic has constantly reshaped the modalities of work to arrive at it, recently, to oust him gradually from the productive process.

If, as you notice, the employment curve tends towards zero, it is impossible (in the current system) that it reaches it, for the reason that it is the very source of all capitalization.

One can object to this opinion by pointing out that if the capital appreciation currently slowed down, it nevertheless continues. This is perfectly correct, but most of the recovery is now done thanks to the living work located in the future and, therefore, not realized to date.

However, the end of work as a category specifically linked to capitalism would necessarily come with the end of the latter, since it is only a particular mode of relationship between men; obviously this would not mean the disappearance of activity, activity which is the mode of relationship between man and nature which is, unlike work, trans-historical.

I have already mentioned the real effect of fictitious capital, there is also another aspect, also properly metaphysical, which is that the existence of this capital rests solely on the hope of the fulfillment of its potential for valorization. : in the absence of trust, everything collapses instantly. This explains the relentlessness of governments to deceive themselves in order to be able, with the help of new loans, to cover precedents to which are added the sums to be used to cover current operations.

Sen-no-sen, you opposed in a previous message, the sharp drop in consumer goods and, I quote: "... a radical increase in all the strategic areas necessary for life, the real one: real estate, quality food, transport ...
In some areas, real estate has increased by 50% or even 100% in less than 20 years !"

Statistics, no more than classical economists, distinguish between value and price.
The value is that of the living labor incorporated into the commodity, to which is added the cost of operating the working environment, the price can fluctuate sharply up or down around the value.
Let us take the typical case of real estate: it is a durable capital good which depreciates constantly (since it is consumed), albeit slowly; however, this decline in its value can be offset by the rent effect in such proportions that the depreciation of the good is no longer taken into account.
By rent effect, I mean a possibility for a capital to increase without this resulting from the product of living labor, but from a particular situation: location, monopoly, agreement, speculation exclusive contract ...
Example: during the recent subprime crisis in the United States, real estate prices had previously risen progressively well above its real value, only to then collapse well below ...