Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 October 20

= October 20 =

EU competences (II)
Can somebody help along with this issue?--Neufund (talk) 14:11, 20 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Looking at the history of that template, these sentences were not initially formatted as quotes; the quote marks were added in this edit. You could ask Ssolbergj why, but from what I can see online these quotes are from our own article, not from the treaties. (The use of cannot and can in two of the quotes is very unlegal language, so a Wikipedian is a much more likely author anyway). HenryFlower 10:16, 21 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Well, in this case, let's just ask Ssolbergj then.--Neufund (talk) 18:07, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
 * As can be seen from his contributions, I guess he is not very active recently. What would you recommend as for the template in question? Regards--Neufund (talk) 16:01, 22 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Your definition of "not very active" is rather different from mine, but ... anyway. I think the "quotes" are fair summaries of what the treaties say; I'd take a minimal approach and just remove the quote marks. HenryFlower 16:42, 22 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you once more for your suggestion! Now that I've implemented it, what do you think about the current version?--Neufund (talk) 20:03, 22 October 2018 (UTC)


 * The right-hand side is fine, I think; in the two left hand columns, I don't think the added "in"s make sense: the when provided for... and in areas where clauses already serve the same function of identifying the areas. The entries in each column then just list those areas. HenryFlower 20:42, 22 October 2018 (UTC)


 * What about this?--Neufund (talk) 12:38, 24 October 2018 (UTC)

Are recessions an unavoidable phenomena?
People talk about recessions as if they are real, sometimes unavoidable, naturally occurring phenomena, a bit like a hurricane or earthquake or what have you; from time to time they will hit. However the entire global capitalist system strikes be as being one giant and elaborate game of Monopoly, which we are all forced to play, every day. Some might prefer a game of chess or scrabble now and then, but the capitalist game is so all encompassing that it keeps most of us enslaved for the majority of our lives, desperately trying to obtain "freedom" from the shackles of it. Indeed people have even gone as far as killing themselves or others for "money", yet money is an artificial concept which only exists in the collective minds of man, has no basis in reality, and can be created out of thin air! Why kill yourself or others, over something which doesn't exist? I realise that economies can be tinkered with, using fiscal and monetary policies with the aim of keep economies "chugging alone", and the same tools can also be deployed with the aim of adjusting returns on savings, the cost of borrowing, and the rate at which capital depreciates, but even fiscal and monetary tools are sometimes not enough to prevent "recessions". If you accept that economies are just artificially created systems then aren't recessions just a flaw in the design or a bug in the system which could be ironed out? Why can't economies, if we have to have them, just keep progressing at a steady rate without the sometimes painful pullbacks we experience from time to time? In the evolution of economics, have systems around the world generally gotten better at reducing the frequency or extremities of their cyclicality? If you turn on Bloomberg TV, every day you will hear some analyst saying we're "early cycle" or "late cycle". Why can't we avoid these cycles and just keep moving forward (economically)?! What do I mean by "moving forward?", maybe having more money in our pocket which goes less far year on year :p While some people do turn their backs on the capitalist system completely and go live in the woods somewhere, the system makes this very difficult for most of us to do, but I guess for those that do achieve that, in answer to my heading, yes recessions an avoidable phenomena for them. But besides opting out? Uhooep (talk) 20:22, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
 * We don't answer requests for opinions, predictions or debate. Jahoe (talk) 00:10, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
 * More of an essay than a question. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:16, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
 * comment I think the crux of my question is quite clear. Artificial system, apparently the best we have come up with to date etc, but still cyclical, resulting in periods of recession. Can the latter ever be ironed out? Is it an unavoidable drawback of all value based systems? Have systems around the world generally gotten better at reducing the frequency or extremities of their cyclicality over time? Uhooep (talk) 03:25, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Uhooep -- sometimes commodities-price-driven recessions are pretty unavoidable, at least within a country whose main export commodity has decreased significantly in price on the international market (or within a country where a vital imported commodity has increased significantly in price). However, I don't see anything very "inevitable" about depressions driven by manipulations internal to the financial system, or the crashing of an irresponsible speculative bubble. When Andrew Mellon said his now-famous quote "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate", he was assuming that it would be inevitable that there would be a severe depression, and wasn't thinking about the fact that people would see factories that were shut down--despite the fact that some wanted to work there and others wanted to buy things that the factory made--and start wondering whether finance capitalism was the best system, if such unproductive closures were "inevitable" under finance capitalism... AnonMoos (talk) 06:09, 21 October 2018 (UTC)


 * P.S. Here's an interesting Washington Post article: "Yes, it could happen again: The flaws of American capitalism invite cycles of booms and busts" -- AnonMoos (talk) 08:58, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Given the historically unprecedented reductions in poverty (measure it however you wish: caloric intake, access to clean water, literacy, child/mother mortality; whatever) since the concept of GDP hit its 20th birthday (or so: 1950s), one might be tempted to ask, “''Well, if you don’t like the greatest increase in standards of living for the largest share of mankind of any time in human history, go ahead and suggest a better way. But, please don’t be like just about every one who ever tried it ... and kill off slices of the population through stupidity or evil.''” DOR (HK) (talk) 06:28, 21 October 2018 (UTC)


 * In the United States, the incomes of non-wealthy people and families have been basically stagnant for the last 40 years. Due to technological progress, we have ever-fancier gadgets, but on the other hand, education requirements for good-paying jobs have been growing stricter, while the rising costs of higher education have far outpaced the general inflation rate.  The rising costs of healthcare have also far outpaced the general inflation rate.  One person's income used to be able to sustain a family in a middle-class lifestyle, but unless you're bordering on being rich, nowadays it often takes two people's incomes to sustain a family in a middle-class lifestyle.  The high household indebtedness before the financial crisis 10 years ago had a lot to do with families going into debt to try to sustain a middle-class lifestyle.
 * There seems to have been a fairly narrow window in the 1950s and 1960s when the workings of capitalism fairly naturally had the effect of spreading wealth in Western Europe and the U.S. In the 19th century, the workings of capitalism often created poverty and wretchedness, while in the last 40 years or more, capitalism only results in spreading wealth if government policies require this.  (In the United States, great majority of the wealth created over the last 40 years has been captured by the rich and corporations...) AnonMoos (talk) 08:58, 22 October 2018 (UTC)


 * AnonMoos, Back in the day (1950s), a single white male could earn enough to support a family. Black, Brown or Asian? Forget about it. Women? Stay at home, “Mommy.” Welcome to our country club, but, no Jews or Catholics, please. Memo: if you artificially shrink the workforce, those who are still available will have a nice time. Just don’t pay any attention to those “other” people!DOR (HK) (talk) 16:22, 25 October 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure how that's directly relevant to the question. Since the 1950s, opportunities have opened to a significant number of educated and highly-motivated black people which were open to only a tiny few (such as Ralph Bunche) in the 1950s -- but now both black and white families often have to have two incomes to maintain a middle-class lifestyle.  In the 1950s, black people didn't often have the jobs which enabled a married man to support a middle-class lifestyle for his whole family based on his sole employment, but many blacks did then often have jobs which enabled a married man with just a high-school diploma (or even less education) to support his whole working-class family based on his sole employment.  The subsequent disappearance of most of those relatively well-paying low educational requirement jobs is another thing which has helped polarize rich and poor in U.S. society (it's hard to see it as any kind of economic advancement). AnonMoos (talk) 09:08, 26 October 2018 (UTC)


 * 'Under this government, Britain will not return to the boom and bust of the past' (Gordon Brown, November 1999).
 * 'Prime Minister Gordon Brown has admitted he was wrong to claim that he had "put an end to boom and bust" in the British economy' (November 2008).
 * Alansplodge (talk) 14:06, 21 October 2018 (UTC)