We’ve never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So, what I think what is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize, might slow consumption spending a bit. I don’t think it’s going to drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though.
Historically, the United States has had a wonderful energy policy. We're blessed with a diversity of resources. We have oil. We have gas. We have coal. We have nuclear. And renewables. And as a result, one of our biggest competitive advantages has been affordable energy. You need a strong economy and you need affordable energy to fuel that economy.
Jobs will come back when the economy recovers, but they will never be the same.
We've suffered a "Ponzification" of the economy in recent years, as bubbles have built up and then burst, and each time we act as though it's the first time.
Employ every economy consistent with thoroughness, accuracy and reliability.
In a consumer society, expectations dare not plateau, because a growing economy depends on rising expectations... The more we let our level of contentment be determined by outside factors-a new car, fashionable clothes, a prestigious career, social status-the more we relinquish control over our own happiness.
Roughly two billion people participate in the money economy, with less than half of those living in the wealthy countries of the developed world. These affluent 800 million, however, account for more than 75 percent of the world's energy and resource consumption, and also create the bulk of its industrial, toxic, and consumer waste.
The money economy thus leaves a large ecological footprint, defined as the amount of land and resources required to meet a typical consumer's needs. For example, with only about 4% of the world's population, the United States, the largest money economy, consumes in excess of one-quarter of the world's energy and materials and generates in excess of 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
To me, an economy that sees the life of a community or a place as expendable, and reckons its value only in terms of money, is not acceptable because it is not realistic. I am thinking as I believe we must think if we wish to discuss the best uses of people, places, and things, and if we wish to give affection some standing in our thoughts.
We must surely appear to the world as exactly what we are: a nation that organizes its economy around consuming twice as much oil as it produces, and around the profligate wastefulness of the wars and campaigns required to defend such consumption. In recent years we have defined our national interest largely in terms of the oil fields and pipelines we need to procure fuel.
I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. "Buy a car," it says, "and be free. Buy a boat and be free." Is this not the raw material of bad dreams? Or is it maybe the very nightmare itself?
Many Christians, though keenly sensitive to the dangers of greed and discontent that come with an economy of continually increasing consumption, nevertheless feel that it is worth risking if only it can end man's physical miseries. The trouble is that it can't. In a finite world, continually increasing consumption is just not possible.
Overpopulation is the problem of the third and fourth World; over-consumption is the problem of the West. The average American child this year will consume as much of the world's resources as twenty children born in India. Deliberate and calculated waste is the central aspect of the American economy. We over-eat, over-buy, and over-built, spewing out our toxic wastes upon the earth and into the air.
The answers to the human problems of ecology are to be found in economy. And the answers to the problems of economy are to be found in culture and character. To fail to see this is to go on dividing the world falsely between guilty producers and innocent consumers.
The economy is still substantially that of the fur trade, still based on the same general kinds of commercial items: technology, weapons, ornaments, novelties, and drugs. The one great difference is that by now the revolution has deprived the mass of consumers of any independent access to the staples of life: clothing, shelter, food, even water. Air access remains the only necessity that the average user can still get for himself, and the revolution has imposed a heavy tax on that by way of pollution. Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat.
The reality is that our economy now consists of driving 250 million vehicles around the suburbs and malls and eating fried chicken. We don't manufacture much. We just burn up ever scarcer petroleum in the ever-expanding suburbs built with mortgage money lent to people who haven't a clue.
The foundation is being laid for the emergence of both wind and solar cells as cornerstones of the new energy economy. World wind generating capacity grew from 7,600 megawatts in 1997 to 9,600 in 1998, an expansion of 26 percent. At a national level, Germany led the way, adding 790 megawatts of capacity, followed by Spain with 380 megawatts, and the United States with 226 megawatts. In the past, U.S. wind generating capacity was concentrated in California, but in 1998, wind farms began generating electricity in Minnesota, Oregon, and Wyoming, broadening the new industry's geographical base.
No matter how advanced our economy might be, no matter how sophisticated our equipment becomes, for the foreseeable future we will still depend on fossil fuels.
I do think there will be winners and losers in the 21st century economy.
I believe that there are barriers, educational barriers, cultural barriers, societal barriers, that are keeping people from accessing the promise of a vibrant free enterprise economy.
There'll be some savings from preventing double dipping by public servants which are currently able to access not one but two fully tax payer funded schemes and of course there will be out paid parental leave levy. So all up not only is this an important economic reform, an important reform to have to grow our economy more strongly, it also will leave the budget better off which will help us fix the mess that Labor has created with the budget.
I trace the inequality to a particular set of decisions that we took when we lowered the tax rate from 91% down to very low levels at the top, where we stripped away regulations. So the result of that was not a more dynamic economy, but a more unequal society. We tried the experiment of trickle-down. A third of a century later, we can say fairly definitively that it was a failure.
I think that is the fight that we have to wage if we're to save the middle class. And I do have doubts about whether Hillary Clinton or whether any Republican candidate out there is prepared to take on the big money interests who control so much of our economy and as a result of Citizens United, our political process as well.
The American economy is driven by small business. And there's nothing basically to create incentives for small businesses. We've done no tax reform. They're the highest-taxed group in the country. And corporations can go anywhere they want and do whatever they want. Small businesses have to stay.
In fact, in Parliament, I pointed out that Australians on average incomes would move into the second highest tax bracket in the next couple of years. That is going to slow down the Australian economy. It's bad for households.
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