So it begins: Boeing Announces Big Layoffs in Defense Division

Especially if they're making those under-used driving machines; no national interest in being able to produce those domestically in the second largest country in a freaking hemisphere.

 

indeed. you know we are "four years closer to a nuclear iran".

 

Could buy 91 Boeing Super Hornets this year instead of 29 F-35s while keeping the R&D going. Or kill the damn thing and get 137 Hornets. Cutting 10% here and there on a busted program is prolonging the suffering.

 

Defense spending creates jobs. So does spending of all kind. Unless you can present a mathematical expression of the elevated elasticity of labour demand or elevated fiscal multipliers for defense spending vs. non-defense governmental spending, then you haven't won me over.

That was just for chuckles for the resident tax cut obsessed right-wingers, and a reference point for the next piece.

(yes I am quoting Barro and Bain Capital, but sigh, points must be made)

Studies seem to indicate that defense spending has a lower multiplier than other forms of spending.

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/barro/files/Barro+Redlick+paper+_2_.pdf

Also, to your point about the auto industry---

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/business/27auto.html?pagewanted=all

Auto Industry Feels the Pain of Tight Credit

http://www.oecd.org/economy/economicoutlookanalysisandforecasts/44089863.pdf

 

Scoreboard. Brah.

 

I heard a noise. Sounds like a rat scratching at the sheetrock in the ceiling of a pad I had 40+ years ago. Sounds like a rat who's trying to crawl out of The Hole of Utter Humiliation. Good luck with that, rat. Watch out for the cheese, whoever you are.

I hope the paycheck was worth every penny to you.

 

Good. Defense spending (and all other government spending) is always bad. "Hey, let's take some scarce resources and blow them up. That will help the economy!"

Also, down with corporatism.

Spoiler

Not a fan of mathematical economics. I've yet to hear a good reason to accept the positivist methodology used by Keynesians, Monetarists, etc. As a man once said in a rare moment of clarity: "Too large a proportion of recent "mathematical" economics are mere concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful symbols."

Schumpeter's takedown of Ricardo can apply as well: "[Ricardo] cut that general [economic] system to pieces, bundled up as large parts of it as possible, and put them in cold storage – so that as many things as possible should be frozen and ‘given.’ He then piled one simplifying assumption upon another until, having really settled everything by these assumptions, he was left with only a few aggregative variables between which, given these assumptions, he set up simple one-way relations so that, in the end, the desired results emerged as tautologies. For example, a famous Ricardian theory is that profits ‘depend upon’ the price of wheat. And under his implicit assumptions.… this is not only true, but undeniably, even trivially so. Profits could not possibly depend upon anything else, since everything else is ‘given,’ that is, frozen.… The habit of applying results of this character to the solution of practical problems we shall call the Ricardian Vice."

 

Solution: Start a war in Iran, Bush-style. Money for corporations, paid for by the people.

Wakes up... Coffee....Fuzzy rabbit flip flops on... Grabs laptop..
Ok, come on baby, gimme just one thing I can blame Obama for.....jackpot! Thank you http://www.rightbias.com/!


Sour grapes for another 4 years. "So it begins". Poor guy, I almost feel sorry for you.

 

This is great news for Mitt Romney.

 

Besides, since when did you want jobs produced from the government teat? Maybe these laid off workers can go start companies making products the market wants without government intervention.

 

spaceghost,

do you understand how many jobs and how many industries were affected by the auto bailout. its not just union gm jobs. next time don't speak in codes and just come out and say what you mean.

obama will save blah blah blah jobs for blah blah blah blah votes but won't sae blah blah blah jobs. it will be a lot easier to have a discussion when you are being honest

 

Anecdotal evidence alert:

A buddy of mine works in Boeing's commercial side, but says that the defense side has something on the order of 5 entire layers management where everyone has the title "Vice President," and they all somehow report to each other in the most bizarre, convoluted, inefficient management structure ever conceived.

Even if what he says is only half true, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Boeing's trying to trim the fat to remain competitive.

 

isn't boeing losing in the us commercial jet market to airbus

 

Nobody said the companies were smart. It was their own damned fault the failed. Personally I'd like to see Chrysler gone.

The auto industry needs more competition (yes I know I just said I wanted one of the competitors gone).

 

I bet this gives him a HUGE bounce in the polls.

 

Because they can predict directions, never mind actual precise outcomes, better than gut feel and "deductive reasoning"?

People who think human behavior and action is this great complex engine that can't be broken down in some ways haven't caught up with chaos theory and the use of computing.

 

See: Bernanke and housing bubble.

Yeah, and this is where modern economics teaching really fails people. You clearly don't have any idea what it is you're arguing against.

There really needs to be a course on logic in all universities. And with degrees in economics there should also be classes on the history of economic thought. That economics was once considered part of human sciences and how and why it became entirely positivistic is unknown to the vast majority. (And, further, that the "debates" had today over economic issues were worked on in great detail long ago, and that we can learn a lot by looking to some dead economists - but this part I'm sure you know.) Hayek's The Counter-Revolution of Science might be a good start for you. (And, btw, people who have read Hayek are more than familiar with chaos theory. Come on, bro.)

But if you really want to learn something, I would suggest Googling Methodenstreit to read about the methodological debate between the Historical School and the Austrian School. Then Joseph Schumpeter's A History of Economic Analysis will be a very informative read, if somewhat unorganized due to his dying before it was published. J.B. Say also did a lot on methodology. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics could also be useful.

On and on and blah blah blah "the not nothings itself" therefore positivism is self-refuting.

But using my econometric models I predict you will do none of this... so maybe those models work after all.

 

Not sure I understand your Exxon comment? No, I'm sure I don't understand.

As far as the union thing goes, I have seen three different manufacturing plants with union workers go on strike. All three have closed the doors permanently.

 

It's interesting to me how obedient all us are to the capitalist dictum that profit is always the highest motive. In cases like this, where others decry employees who choose to unionize, or workers who aren't viewed as necessary, or the government refusing funding, we never seem to mention the fact that a company worth billions of dollars can actually take in a tiny bit less profit to solve the issue.

Isn't it strange that most of us seem to look at everything except that?

It reminds me of my favorite saying: The fish have no word for water.