So in political debate I keep hearing almost every day either a variation of 'hurr socialism good' or 'hurr socialism bad'.
I, however, am a complete brainlet when it comes to economy and I want to change that (and be able to formulate my own opinions).
What economy textbooks would you recommend?
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Adolf Hitler - Mein Kampf
Basic Economics - Thomas Sowell
On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation - David Ricardo
This. Also get audiobook, because reading straight economic books can be nearly impossible to motivate yourself to do unless you're legitimately interested. All of this shit we're dealing with here is fundamentally boring as hell, hence pink wojaks.
You belong here>>>>/pol
Socialism as it exists in Europe and America today is extremely short sighted and emotional rather than rational. They are all deeply in debt due to the social programs they can't pay for. Europe gloats about how much better they have it than in America but only get that luxury because big brother America does most of the defense in the world
its simple:
u like socialism if you are:
weak,poor, minority,illegal,woman,faggot.
u hate socialism if you are:
strong,rich,white, native, man, common sense
i just saved you years of reading through plenty of BS. these are the battle lines and they will never change.
Only correct answer you will receive.
Economics is not political. People who do not understand economics make it political.
This is why I'm asking about it, I had no idea where to start and I sure as fuck don't want to end up like this guy
This video from 2011 of Peter Schiff is probably rhe best video on youtube, when I watched this I realized everything I learned in college was complete bullshit.
youtube.com
He goes out to Occupy Wall Street and holds up a sign "I am the 1%, lets talk."
Not only is it the most informative economic thing ive ever seen, but it is also the most entertaining video I have seen with all the riffraff arguing with him with all the bullshit the media and govt have fed them with.
I'm strong, middle, minority, native, man, common sense
"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." - Thomas Sowell
This.
Socialism arose in the Democratic West as a way of politicians one-upping their opponents and promising more free shit, disregarding how it would be paid for or whether or not it was actually good for their constituents.
There needs to be a thin layer of social support but the kind of shit that is given out for free these days is fucking ridiculous, it's literally impossible to starve to death in America now unless you are too retarded to get an EBT card.
Read Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Cashflow Quadrant by Kiyosaki and the Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. I'd recommend another 50 or so books on finance after that but it'll give you the basic idea about how society functions. Basically, society exists:
A) To protect capitalists:
-- 1) Nobody is born into being a capitalist, literally anybody can become one
B) To make sure 80%+ of the population are wageslaves:
-- 1) You are brainwashed by school and media that you must waste time and money on going to school and getting a job
-- 2) They don't censor the information that you can become a capitalist but they supress it via constant worker drone propaganda
-- 3) The wageslave is further enslaved by convincing the wageslave to scale up his spending everytime he receives a tiny increase in his wage
-- 4) EVERY wageslave job pays little in comparison to being a capitalist... even doctors and lawyers can't begin to compete.
The idea, that in the information age, that you CHOOSE to be poor everyday... is such a brutal redpill that it drives the wageslave crazy into foaming at the mouth tirades about how selfmade millionaires were either secretly born with money or were extremely lucky... the learned helplessness installed by the system is such a powerful chain on their psyche that most people refuse freedom (because they can't fathom it) even when given the option.
Read Bastiat
What a load of bullshit.
Just looked the guy up and it is a nigger. Congrats, you are retarded.
That nigger is probably the most based human in ameirca. NYT best selling economics author, syndiacated columnist for years, and a fellow at stanford.
>doesn't want to end up like him
that's the end of road 1 of 3
the end of road 2 of 3 is becoming an apologist for the inferior elements of society and the world itself
the end of road 3 of 3 is to align yourself with those inferior elements and collectively work to overthrow the old system and institute a new system
If you entertain any doubts as to the validity of my thoughts then read the above again and do some critical thinking.
"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it." - Thomas Sowell
"The old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to be among his 'basic rights." -' Thomas Sowell
The quote is shit. Typical pandering to republican trumptards. How is the wall coming along?
so you can add that all up, giving each a +/- like + + + - - .... and you'l likely end up right-wing but not extreme right wing
Just by the way you speak, and somehow respect a nigger... literally any nigger, proves:
You're not going to make it.
I'm sorry.
"The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state." - Thomas Sowell
"The word 'racism' is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything - and demanding evidence makes you a 'racist." -Thomas Sowell
Hes a nigger who hates victimhood niggers. See?
"The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive." - Thomas Sowell
"The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling." - Thomas Sowell
I enjoy a good nigger joke as much as the next man, but Thomas Sowell is based
both sides of the argument have their own merits. Both are heavily romanticized. Both depends on a god-like entity looking out for the common good against its own interest, despite being stronger and smarter
they're two sides of the same coin catered for different types of people
as all things, hold no prejudice and learn all you can from either side as you strive for the golden mean
"It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it." - Thomas Sowell
"There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?" - Thomas Sowell
capitalism and socialism and communism is a matter of scale it's neither good or bad.
"Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late." - Thomas Sowell
All niggers are worthless. There is no redemption... sorry.
"If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism." -Thomas Sowell
Fact
"Few professors would dare to publish research or teach a course debunking the claims made in various ethnic, gender, or other 'studies' courses". -Thomas Sowell
>mfw fp and bp are the same p
Today I see it as nothing less than the hand of providence, that fate decreed I should be born at Brannau an Inn
most of the replies in this thread are going to be recommending right wing economic resources due to the demographics who visit this board. if you would like an accessible primer on left wing economics, david harvey is a good resource. i would find a PDF of Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason (or one of his other recent books... A Brief History of Neoliberalism is good as a historic primer).
Capitalism has created the most prosperous societies in human history
Socialism has created the most miserable and regressive societies in human history
Thats bullshit.
True free maarket capitalism economics is a gold standard to give value to the currency
market set interest rates
and zero income taxes.
who the fuck goes onto a finance and business board and start unironically shilling Communism. Are you retarded?
Yeah but we only had capitalsim in the 19th and early 20th century
Read Austrian School Economics. They don't teach that in school, yet most business / investment professionals follow it to some degree
Isn't this basically the same argument commies bring up all the time, tho?
assuming you're American so here's a pro tip: when Americans refer to "socialism" with regards to bernie sanders etc. they are really talking about social democracy, a political philosophy already employed to varying extents for decades by all the western european nations, not actual communism.
That because those investment professionals analyze business, which is literally something you don’t need to study economics for. One is nations, the other is reducing cost of capital. I can assure you that no successful macro fund follows the Austrian school. It’s literally stock pickers for whom it doesn’t matter either way.
I am actually an economist. Everything you were recommended here is either political literature or just utter crap. What you want to read is Mankiw’s Principle of Economics (both macro and micro). Depending on how much free time you have, it will probably take you a couple of month, but after that you will actually understand what the economists are talking about. If you just want to feel good and be cool on Jow Forums, read Sowell’s book.
reading these materials is invaluable, communism isn't contagious. you do realise it's possible to read and even find merit in say, marx's analysis of capitalism, and not be a communist?
sounds about right
okay you're right, a bunch of neets focusing all their energy on hyping chainlink in hopes that it "moons" is a symptom of a healthy society.
Rofl, little not a single book about what OP asked about. These are finance books for people who don’t do finance.
Economists arent even a real thing. You guys are keynesians, its the equivalent of being a voodoo with doctor.
Honestly what do economists do? All they do is analyze the past.
I agree, economists are Keynesians to a degree. Anybody with a basic understanding of the matter and not in the business of selling gold or some ultra-defensive mutual funds that perform like shit over time is a Keynesian, because nobody argues that fiscal and monetary stimulus is a useful tool for a government to have. Even Friedman whose TV shows somehow made him an anti-Keynesian never disagreed with this idea.
As to what economists do, it really depends. It’s a very wide discipline in terms of career choices. You literally have everything from wealth-preservation macro funds to rates trading desks at bulge bracket banks to building well in Africa. It’s not all wishy washy. You can test it very quickly by running a macro fund without a single economists and seeing what happens.
In one sentence you knock selling gold....
and in another you talk about wealth preservation...when gold is actual wealth preservation. Gold is real money and real savings.
Besides, you really shouldn’t watch Peter Schiff for anything other than comedy. I like him as a character, but he is completely off on so many topics. My favorite one is his claim that the US being in more debt and the US being in an economic boom somehow contradicts the other. This is the sort of stuff you don’t even need to do Econ for. Like let’s just voluntarily refuse all this free credit we are getting that we can spend on just about anything we like, because… reasons? The size of the US economy and its creditworthiness is precisely why we have all this debt. A nation like China would kill to be able to sell their bonds to the whole world at those rates.
Constitutional economics is what made this country great. Not the stuff you are talking about.
Do you think the Federal Reserve should be in control of the money supply?
Look and point and this fat American retard. All wealthy European countries are in a surplus. UK has the worst social programs and is the only relevant country in a deficit. Debt is an anglo problem.
The second part is true, thanks to your military boot-licking and healthcare industry dick riding you have enabled a prosperous few decades for us. Never change
/thread
Left vs right just boils down to strong/responsible vs weak/irresponsible.
The weak and irresponsible have had it good for a very, very long time, possibly longer than they've ever had it so good in all of human history, but civilization itself is now at the brink and it is time for the grownups to take over.
Basically, when people are poor, have health problems, live in tiny apartments etc, live paycheck to paycheck, they say socialism is good.
And when they do good, feel rich, make some money etc, they say its bad.
Herp derp, and its all so hypocritical and tiresome.
Some particularly conniving fucks, also say that other people shouldn't be part of the market, or try to take their stuff based on race/religion/birth location. This is actually socialism too but they think themselves as "special". In reality they have the same morality with any thief but like to dress it up by blaming the victim.
And some other clever folks have actually noticed that great individual freedoms usually leads to good stuff. They are correct, but I think they dont fully take into account the effects of generational accumulation, and especially in regards to land. I personally think that "capitalists" and the "free market" are find and correct in everything EXCEPT land ownership, where the geolibertarians identified the problem and is fucking the entire world (especially the west) up.
There also exist some weird stuff in the world with weird effects. Copyrights for example are essentially government protection from preventing someone else from doing your crap cheaper after he figures out how you did it. Who ever defined that as "capitalistic"? As such, things like drug prices etc can end up subject to "copyright accumulation" as well. This might fuck us some day too.
To sum up. All the extremes are bad and the truth is somewhere in the middle. But in reality most people want to play football teams and "win".
If you didn't already know who Thomas Sowell is then you are the retard. Jesus Christ I share a board with you brainlets
Yeah, that’s why you should listen to fewer Peter Schiff podcasts. Not being an asshole to you or anything, but he’s literally the truther of investing. Gold by itself is really bad at preserving wealth. If you bought gold in 1980, you would be losing purchasing power all the way until 2000 and only during the peak of 2011 would you recover your loss. That’s 31 years of losses. Even if you bought somewhere at the middle of the appreciation in 1985, you’d still be sitting on losses until the financial crisis. Same thing with late 1930s. You’d only regain the PPP by mid-1970s.
Gold is useful as a minor position to hedge against other assets because of its weak correlation with equities and bonds. It’s trash by itself. You would be much better off just holding bonds or even immovables most of the time.
Money doesn't fall out of the sky. Why should individual people have to foot the bill for anyone else for literally any reason?
You broke your ankle and didn't plan ahead in life? That's called natural selection
Piece of garbage. And i've read it 15 years ago. I hate leftists, but compared to a guy like Friedrich Hegel, Spinoza, or greek philosophers, Hitler is unironically a complete retard.
Based as fuck
>The only way to understand economics is through empirically destitute mathematical models
kys charlatan
Fuck off, Europoor. And never forget, you exist only because I pay taxes.
Everybody with even a faintest idea of what they are talking about thinks so.
I have no strong opinion about Constitutional Economics. Sounds like another attempt to pass politics as economics. There are too many fringe schools to keep track of them all.
pls discuss your opinion on reversion to the mean
that is, the efficient market hypothesis meaning the average rate of return to balance out at 7%
do you believe that the market and everything that makes it (individuals, firms), over the long-term, always reverts to 7%
or is it possible for some, over the very long-term (so that statistical outliers become smoothed out) to consistently be one of those outliers, that is to outperform the market rate of 7%? warren buffet certainly seems to be in this camp
All right, faggot. Why don’t you start a macro fund then or just put your money where your fucking mouth is and start investing into rates. Please post results so we could all laugh at your broke ass going even more broke. Go on, faggot, do hate money or something?
what do you think about this chart?
Are you trolling? Constitutional economics is sound money, market set interest rates, and 0% income taxes.
The Fed's entire existence is that of being poltical. You cant possibly have things that fucking backwards.
You are actually the economy parallel of some brainwashed pro-choice activist chanting "my body my choice"
You dont even know how America amassed its wealth in the first place. And it wasnt done with a bunch of kikes manipulating the money supply.
Critique of political economy isn't something you "shill". You don't understand what it is. Better thing for you, read the capital, come back, and then have a discussion.
But i understand that 2000 pages of highly technical content is harder than browsing /biz.
So easier solution, don't give your opinion about something you are clueless about.
The point is the fucking rates are bullshit and manipulated. Great maybe you amass some paper wealth but when the currency hyperinflates you wont have shit.
Your whole education is based on putting the cart before the horse, you are educated in a fraud economic system.
You are the same as a doctor who thinks poisonous antibiotics and poisonous chemo helps people. They are smart in the bullshit theyve learned but what theyve learned is a con.
Yeah, that bit is still taught to undergrads and it’s not really correct. You have different degrees of market efficiency. The best way to look at it is that in an efficient market everything is priced correctly given the publicly available information rather than relative to some underlying properties of the asset. For example, Tesla can be argued to be priced correctly today, but if we find out that there had been accounting fraud it would be clear tomorrow that it was priced incorrectly today. In some illiquid markets like immovables, private equity and partnerships the have much lower efficiency than in something like Forex, which is the most efficient market that exists presently.
The 7% figure is not necessarily correct though. This is historical returns on equity, but nobody knows what the returns will be in the future. If the risk spread widens for whatever reason you will get higher returns, if it shrinks you’ll get lower returns from equities. It really depends on how the economy performs, but absent changes in that and absent changes in spreads, over time you should get the same return.
See this shows how really little you actually know. And I am not saying that in disrespectful way but so you can unlearn the bullshit you think is right.
And please respojnd to my points here...
The dollar value of gold is absolutely irrelevant. Why are you valuing gold in terms of paper dollars? Did gold all of a sudden become valuable when america was born and the dollar was created? In fact it was gold that gave value to the dollar, so why would you be valuing gold in terms of dollars?
The entire point of buying gold is because fiat is a scam and you want money and wealth for when fiat collapses. THATS THE ENTIRE POINT.
A gold ounce just sits there, the dollar price of gold going up isnt the same thing as the dollar price of amazon stock going up, you understand that right?
Doesnt matter what the dollar value of gold is....if the dollar dissapears from planet earth tomorrow my wealth in gold is completely unaffected.
Do you see how wrong you have things?
well meme'd, my good sir :^)
That’s disputable, but more to your point, Americans have begun amassing wealth much faster after the Fed was set up. This is something you could check very easily yourself by looking at the real GDP growth rates. If you are asking why US became the number 1, not participating excessively in world wars certainly helps. We were a distant second before the Brits fucked themselves up in WW1.
kek, I'm crypto rich already and I didn't use a single econometric model to do it. I used my fucking brain.
How does it feel to be a modern raindancer/witchdoctor, pleb? At least you'll get a taste of what it felt like being some dumb clergyman during the peak of the enlightenment when the central bank-based fraud finally collapses.
thx mr economist
Faggot, you don’t need to keep the rates. I am just telling you to start trading them. You can immediately put them into gold after you make those delicious billions by outwitting all those macro faggots with their defunct mathematical models. Stop being a little bitch, do it and post results.
Imagine making such empirically impoverished arguments based on a bunch of stupid memes you were taught to parrot in an indoctrination center.
Oh looks who’s talking. Do you understand what purchasing power is? It has nothing to do with dollars and I never mentioned dollars. It’s how many items your gold can buy, which has fluctuated greatly over the past decades and not always in the direction you’d like to think.
just watch Milton Friedman on Youtube for a TL/DR
start with this: youtu.be
this is also good, but it won't help you much with your socialism vs capitalism dilemma
One thing to remember is that a socialist is not worth even as much as the bullet that you use to shoot him in the head.
Yeah but America was still young. The prosperity of the 1950's was payback for all the free market capitalism in the 19th century.
You don't get it. Gold is wealth. The dollar backed by nothing is not wealth. It's fake wealth that will be hyoerinflated away.
Tell me... if you earned 100$ in 1980 and kept that 100$ in your wallet for 38 years until today....why is it that that 100$ buys you so much less today than when you earned it in 1980? What's happening?
this video is also good:
Really, how rich are you faggot? You got some massive billions there? Why not? Too fucking dumb to outperform the faggots using economic models. All I see is a little bitch yapping his mouth and going “well I am rich enough already” when push comes to shove.
Once you get redpilled on finance you find out that economic freedom allows the proletariat to become capitalists and rule society. As economic freedom is restricted, ie socialism, then those doors begin to close on wageslaves. Part of me wishes I can close those doors on the unwashed masses in exchange for scraps that I don't even pay (capitalists pay almost no taxes) but I want to allow the opportunity for the few that can break through the propaganda to enjoy my life.
Taxes don't affect me, it's mostly on rubes like the self-employed and kings of wageslaves (doctors, lawyers, high level business drones, etc) so when people say "you just want more capitalism so you can pay less taxes!"... but... I don't pay taxes (for the most part).
Sure... it fluctuated because of the central bank. Yeah if you bought gold and sold you lost purchasing power in dollars but you buy gold for after fiat collapses.
If gold doubles in price this year you didn't make a profit all that happened was the dollar got more worthless
Read based Nassim Taleb and then dunk on all these phony economic shysters
Oh, right, it was all the wealth we somehow didn’t have in the 19th century that we only got after the 1930s. Makes total sense. All that productivity was just hidden away in the American genes, I guess. Makes absolute fucking sense.
Why the hell would you keep your savings in dollars? That’s completely asinine. Like this is some kind of retarded shit that people started repeating after bitcoin became popular. Even goldbugs don’t use this argument. If you had put them into bonds you would have much more than by putting them into gold. With equities you’d have way more. Less with real estate, but still more than with gold. This is not some kind of binary choice between cash and gold. There is no wealth preservation fund that would follow such a ridiculous strategy.
Listen, even Peter Schiff who advertises gold left and right does not advice you to allocate a large portion of your portfolio to gold. The guy runs equity funds like every other normal manager and suggests that you only keep 10% or so gold, which in line with many defensive funds.
It is not about the dollar vs. gold. FFS, there are other assets, sempai.
Also the comment about the central banks is demonstrably incorrect. Gold has been fluctuating much more relative to the price of goods before the FRB was founded. It was appreciating and depreciating like mad during the 19th century that you seem to fantasize so much about.
I mostly agree with you, but personal finance that those books teach don’t really answer OP’s question. He’d still be none the wiser why socialism is shit.
You still arent understanding bro. ONLY GOLD IS SAAVINGS. When your fiat is working for you in the stock market that is NOT SAVINGS.
Yes, of course we are in a system where we have to earn fiat, whether at a job or in the market, but that can and will hyper inflate.
And yes just 10% is fine, because if you have even just 10 ounces of gold and 500 ounces of silver youll be a fucking king after the reset.
But literally NOBODY advocates putting 10% let alone 1% into physical gold. I bet if I interviewed 100 money managers on how theyd invest my money or tell me how to invest...id bet you the over/under is 1 person out of those 100 managers that would even suggest putting even just 1% into physical gold and silver....and Id bet the under.
>It is not about the dollar vs. gold. FFS, there are other assets, sempai.
the dollar is not an asset. Financial assets like stocks are not REAL ASSETS.
You really dont even understand the most BASIC economic shit.
The problem is that LIBERISM is total shit.
Dude, seriously, you went full retard now. The only thing that matters is how much of something of value you have so you can buy things that you actually want. It can be dollars, gold, stocks, lambos, bitcoin, it literally does not matter. The idea of wealth preservation is being able to buy roughly just as much at any point in time. Now dollars are obviously bad for that because they lose value over time. Gold is also bad because it fluctuates too much. You typically need a fairly elaborate combination of assets and derivatives to achieve that goal with any kind of success and the only people who do so are, coincidentally, trained economists. You asked what they can do, this is your answer. If you can provide the same service to UHNWIs by just buying gold and silver for them, you should consider starting a career in this area and retiring after a year or two to the Bahamas where models dressed as anime cartoons will suck you off until you die of diabetes.
I am going to stop now, because this is wasting time even by Jow Forums standards. You literally make one demonstrably incorrect point after another. It’s pretty gay desu.