Normalcy Bias?

[Burke]

"The normalcy bias, or normality bias, refers to a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred then it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation."

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias#section_3

What reason is there to think that things here will go any way but down economically?

Which do you regard as most probable?

1. America's economy recovering from the present severe downturn as it has done in the past?

or,

2. A severe economic collapse followed by a permanent decrease in the standard of living of Americans?

What reasons can you give for optimism, if any?

Or are most Americans in a state of normalcy bias?

Blythly walking toward a cliff with no appreciation of it whatsoever?

[ChartsandGrafs]

It looks to me like the global ham farmers are orchestrating a staggered, soft-landing economic collapse, as opposed to an instantaneous, "walking off the cliff" collapse. While the instantaneous collapse would likely provide greater opportunities for them to re-engineer society ("never let a crisis go to waste"), it's incredibly risky and would probably wake too many people up to the reality of the global ham scam. I'm not convinced they are willing to take that big a risk yet. Then again, maybe they are, judging by the Himmlerian NDAA and the rapid militarization of domestic police forces.

[GatorRade]

I have the same questions about climate change, Burke.

But for the economy, I guess I have a perspective that differentiates what we might call the real economy from the fictitious economy. The real economy includes tangible goods. Cars. Clothes. Heart surgeries. Ipods. The fictitious economy includes asset valuations. Stocks. Inflation. Debt. etc. Now this isn't to say that inflation isn't important (it certainly can change a saving person's real economic standing), but that wealth is produced by the real economy. After an economic crash, will we still have the knowledge and power to produce cheap and high tech cars? Yes. Ipods? Yes. Houses? Yes. Were their some wealth transfers and Mal-investments? Yes. Inefficient, but not totally destructive. Destroying our factories and blueprints would be totally disastrous.

I've tried to answer this question for you in a variety of ways now, Burke, so let me know how this one lands.

[Burke]

Was the Great Depression real or fictitious?

There is only one economy. People are either producing and trading or they are not.

And didn't some Norwegians just come out with another study that blows you out of the water, or very nearly so?

[GatorRade]

I actually disagree with this concept of "one economy", preferring the Austrian perspective, which sees the "economy" as a group of millions of somewhat independent exchanges.

But I do find it interesting that there can be 100s of studies published each year that you ignore, but suddenly one blows me out of the water. If we are going to be parsimonious here, I think we follow the market, which isn't yet telling us we are in for a fall.

PS I do believe that malinvestments can lead to undesirable outcomes, as I intimated in the previous post. I am just trying to give you some peace of mind, through perspective. Look at the great depression and compare it to the great recession. I think we would all much rather experience the great recession, even though both were very serious downturns of the "economy". Why do you think that is?

[Burke]

I was rejecting your "real" and "fictitious" dichotomy with my "one economy" comment, but even so, an "economy" is a system in which there are many exchanges.

There are billions of people who think there is life after death, which is a consensus that I reject also. I've made my judgment on AGW for many reasons which I have explained.

I might add that the supposed threat of AGW IS possibly the prevailing view among most today, and you are the one "suffering" from it.

Just drinking the leftie Kool-Aid and thinking that it's "science."