Thursday, December 20, 2018

Why 50 Million Chinese Homes are Empty

This is a crazy world!

Building millions homes that are not needed is a waste of resources, but it's good for the Chinese GDP, so it seems.

As a result of the Chinese Government's past policy of one child per family, there are now far more men than women in China. If a Chinese man wants a chance to get married he will need to own a home, but owning two or three is even better, so there is a massive demand for more houses.

The speculators are hoping that one day millions of people will migrate from the countryside into to the cites looking for work in the new economy, but millions of the homes are very badly built, and the housing bubble looks like it might burst soon.


19 comments:

Noah Way said...

A large portion of US housing is vacant, but for entirely different reasons.

Andrew Anderson said...

Does a JG necessarily care about waste either?

No, it doesn't. Instead a JG* focuses on wages instead of income (e.g. a Citizen's Dividend) - with the former potentially wasting the recipient's time while the latter allows the recipient to spend his time as he chooses, including volunteering for government work.

*Job Guarantee

Kaivey said...

I do appreciate your point of view, Andrew. It's interesting!

Kevin.

Andrew Anderson said...

Thanks for the opportunity to share and refine it, Kaivey, Tom, Mike and the others.

Iron sharpens iron; so one man sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17 NASB

Kaivey said...

Yes, Andrew, you're on the right, but I like much of what you say. It's good to find common ground. I like the American Conservative and the Unz Review too.

Kevin.

Andrew Anderson said...

I am NOT on the Right or a Conservative; I'm radical compared to those folks. Nor am I a Progressive since I detest privileges for the banks, nor a socialist since I detest busy-bodies and needless authority over others.

I'm simply a believer in equal protection under the law and a just economy as laid out in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, and the Golden Rule.

Calgacus said...

Does a JG necessarily care about waste either?

No, it doesn't. Instead a JG* focuses on wages instead of income (e.g. a Citizen's Dividend) - with the former potentially wasting the recipient's time while the latter allows the recipient to spend his time as he chooses, including volunteering for government work.


Backwards. Basic income, citizen's dividend is just another idea for the perfect tyranny - about the recipient drones (sycophants of the true tyrant, the planner) wasting other people's time, limiting their choice, lowering the wages of working people, getting on their backs more and more. And if the citizen's dividend recipient wants to get a job, so they can have something more than the rapidly-inflating-to-nothing citizen's dividend - well no. F**k him or her for not saying the plan is perfect.

Notice also the word "dividend" - something paid to the wealthy for doing nothing. The image is that everyone can be the wealthy top dog ordering the servants to do something. But no "citizen" ever actually doing anything. A four year old can see the joke there.

People who don't see the logical necessity of a JG are still quite trapped in a neoclassical fantasy that imagines that other people will magically have the jobs they want - if only their hobbyhorse ideas were only instituted. And that inflation will magically not occur. (People will not bid up or jack up prices, no. That would mean other people have free will!)

The main thing is that THE PLAN must be top-down with no decision at all from the lesser people. Only the omniscient-in-his-own-mind busybody: Andrew Anderson, EKH, the capitalist etc is allowed to have any choice at all. Not the lesser people, who are just robots in their PLAN.

A JG focuses on personal freedom and choice. It is a real job offer for a real job. The worker can take it or leave it. It is designed to be a living wage, so the leaving will usually be to get a better job. And both the worker and the government are part of the planning, have important decision-making input. Both the worker and the government make decisions and have to carry them out.

including volunteering for government work.

The slavery solution. But it can't be government work for pay. No, never. Because that would reveal the truth. It is always government work, one way or another. (Galbraith's Myth of the Two Sectors.) "Private sector" is just a particular type of public sector.

Andrew Anderson said...

including volunteering for government work. aa

The slavery solution. Calgacus

So truly volunteer work is now "slavery." Thus elevating Calgacus to a perfect example of "JG Derangement Syndrome."

I've never seen a more perfect example of deranged fanaticism than Calgacus except maybe Bob Roddis.

No wonder people detest and are terrified of the Left.

Andrew Anderson said...

Meanwhile, the JG wage-slavery proponents continue to support, nay, would ADD to the privileges of the government-privileged usury cartel - thus further enslaving the population to the cartel itself and to the rich, the most so-called "credit worthy".

Hypocrites!

Calgacus said...

Sure, let people do volunteer work. But why can't they get paid work? How can they have time and ability to volunteer if they can't support themselves? Why do you hate people having jobs they want to do, and others want them to do, so much?

I wouldn't have made that snark except for the many times that you have airily asserted that your plans will magically make everything better. And if people want to work, they can just do it for free. What if someone wants money and can't get it? What is your solution? What is he to do?

People generally have to work for money. That is why money is valuable.

I've never seen a more perfect example of deranged fanaticism than Calgacus

Yup. I'm a deranged fanatic for arguments that make sense. For consistency. For looking at the consequences and not just the well-meaning intent. For looking at history and experience.

Also for trying to examine and engage what the other guy is saying. You just reject the JG period, with no argument, with refutations coming from your own ideas that others don't accept or from ad hoc wild leaps of logic. Your ideas have been given far more respect here than the respect you show others' ideas. If you want justice, show it to others. You and EKH and others owe MNE. Not the other way.

You put words in others mouths. Nobody really opposes your plans and ideas. I don't. I just think they don't do much, they're a distraction to or secondary to the real problems.

You're calling jobs "wage-slavery". The worker is the slave, the employer is the master.
Fine. But do it consistently.

For suddenly, when somebody gets his Citizen's Dividend money and uses it to pay other people for working for him, there is no slavery at all. The Citizen is not the master, the people he pays with this money to obey his whims are not his slaves. Yeah, right.

I've always said slave/master is a very enlightening vocabulary. You can either have classes of the masters and of the slaves determined at birth, say. Or you can have everybody being sometimes the master, sometimes the slave - and let people choose which as much as possible. I prefer the second, the full employment/free labor/JG/ cooperate & play nice with others way.

Basic Income / Citizen's Dividend airheadism says everybody can be the master and push around his throng of slaves with his money and everything will be cool because there will be no slaves because everybody is the master.

People high on pot and acid usually think more clearly than that.

Andrew Anderson said...

Basic Income / Citizen's Dividend airheadism says everybody can be the master and push around his throng of slaves with his money and everything will be cool because there will be no slaves because everybody is the master. Calgacus

Ever hear of robots and AI?

So your "solutions" are obsolete or soon will be.

Nor have I ever implied that a Citizen's Dividend would eliminate the desirability of working for one's self or others to further increase one's income, to socialize, etc. but it should, as automation increases, eliminate the involuntary nature of such work.

Andrew Anderson said...

Not that a Citizen's Dividend is not fully justified as the ONLY ethical way to create fiat apart from deficit spending for the general welfare.

Calgacus said...

Basic Income / Citizen's Dividend airheadism says everybody can be the master and push around his throng of slaves with his money and everything will be cool because there will be no slaves because everybody is the master. Calgacus

Ever hear of robots and AI?

So your "solutions" are obsolete or soon will be.


Ever hear of the word "irrelevant"? Anything to dodge issues, to think fuzzily and magically, to never admit that Basic Income / Citizen's Dividend is a repulsive joke.
( Thanks for selecting that passage, I do like it myself; I think it hits home against airheadism. )

What do robots have to do with it?

By comparing the robots to human workers earning wages, you seem to think that people will have to pay for the Robot Labor of the Future. If they are mere machines, without intelligence, then why pay them wages? Do you pay money to your toaster or refrigerator every time you use it?

You really think that if the robots are under control of Robots Megacorp and not the government, not the public, not free, then Nice Megacorp won't charge you an arm and a leg for them? So the Citizens get their Citizens Pittance and work like dogs to pay for the robots from the Robot Megacorp Cartel.

The robots are a tool to oppress humans then. That's how capitalism has been working since Marx described this. Showed that Robot / AI techno-utopianism is what has been obsolete, not soon, but for a century+ already. Same old, same old. Meet the new robot, same as the old robot.

"Master" or "Slave" ==> Human being. MMT talks about a world with human beings in it. As long as there are human beings and human societies MMT, the JG and ideas which will develop from it are relevant. They are correct ethical thinking. You just showed your ideas are about treating people as robots, apply to a world without any humans in it. Neither logical nor ethical, to the extent they can be separated.

A Citizen's Dividend is the generally the least ethical and most pointless and illogical way of creating money. The state should create money for purposes, get real value for its money, just as the value of its money should be driven by it giving real value to citizens - taxes and fees for real things, scarce things, genuine purposes. (Like land taxes, some sin taxes, income taxes, fees for some "luxury" government services)

Andrew Anderson said...

What do robots have to do with it? Calgacus

How stupid and tyrannical will a JG appear when the absolute NEED for human labor has been abolished by automation and AI? In the not too distant future?

Otoh, a focus on justice will never become obsolete.

And otooh, would you have talent like this wasted for 40 hours a week just to earn a living?

Calgacus said...

How stupid and tyrannical will a JG appear when the absolute NEED for human labor has been abolished by automation and AI? In the not too distant future?

Don't hold your breath. This "not to distant future" is never going to come. If the robots can do everything humans can, then they are humans, and deserve a living wage and ... a Job Guarantee.

But sure, abolish the JG when there is no need for human labor- because then there is no reason for money. The money part - which you seem to want to keep even then, because of your confused understanding of money and economics - is the tyrannical part, not the JG job OFFER. A JG is justice, restitution for the existence of money.

You do not focus on justice. MMT & the JG does.

I saw Isaac Stern with my best friend and my wife to be about 40 years ago. We were about ten feet away on stage at the Brooklyn Museum. Pretty sure he got paid for that and other gigs.

Andrew Anderson said...

I'm pretty sure you support continued and even increased (ala Warren Mosler) government privileges for the banks, Calgacus, so what good are your moral prescriptions anyway?

Except to indicate maniacal hypocrisy?

Not impressed.

Andrew Anderson said...

So are you or are you not a bank toadie, Calgacus?

Andrew Anderson said...

and deserve a living wage and ... a Job Guarantee. Calgacus

Actually, a living INCOME and the guaranteed ability TO WORK, not to be a wage slave.

I've never seen such fervent advocacy for obvious injustice.

Calgacus said...

Actually, a living INCOME and the guaranteed ability TO WORK, not to be a wage slave.

Sigh. A contradiction in terms. The living INCOME is constituted by the work of others. Look, if someone receives a dollar or a potato or whatever, somebody else has to give it to them. Do you disagree? Your INCOME = somebody else's wage slavery WORK.

People want to be able to work and be part of society, get the fruit of others work in return for their work. They may not be able to fix their toilets when they break down. MMT has a solution. What is yours? It seems to rely on neoclassical/Austrian fairy tale magic that people will always have the money to pay the plumber.

MMT is not toadying to banks. I am saying let Andrew Anderson run the banking system. But without a job guarantee - with Andrew Anderson's fervent opposition to it, the country would become a living hell for the poor.

Would you believe that a JG is good and for justice, not opposed to it; would you take a second look at the JG if Jesus told you it was right?
This is very serious question.