the economy

[tommysize1]

ive never studied economics or anything but from what ive gathered from watching the news its sole purpose seems to be to grow.
why do people always want it to grow?
why cant we just stabilise it?

we consume more than we create.
so surely continued growth is a bad thing?

[Ashley11]

Well economic growth is all about GDP.

So if you have an increase in GDP, you are increasing the total value of the services and products you provide/ create in your country. The greater value you have the more you can sell to other countries or the greater worth in assets your country has which is what makes a country wealthy

i don't see how you think economic growth is bad for a country?

[tommysize1]

aren't financial services britains greatest industry?
i dont see that as being of the same worth as manufacturing tangible things ourselves.
importing cheap crap from china and then selling it for 60% more cant last forever.

....surely there must be a maximum limit to our growth?
....is it possible for all countries economies to grow? or do some have to fail so others can grow?

i just think that someday were gonna run out of natural resources. so it seems to me while humans 'grow', the planets resources dwindle.
i read before from some biologist that demand for oil will outweigh availability by like 2030 unless some massive reserve is found..

so stabilising sounds like a sensible idea to me.

feel free to tell me im an idiot. im quite hard to offend

[Ashley11]

Well growth isn't really about use of natural resourse, its about wealth

you can create something thats very valuable out of not much resources with a lot of expertise, like electronic stuff
you also get low value stuff that takes a large amount of raw materials so economic growth doesn't really vary with raw resource useage if you know what i mean?

i dont really know about the UK that much but in Canada we rely a lot on the service sector as well as our natural resources

Natural resources as we know them today will of course deplete and not that long a time.
But we use them mainly for energy. As humans 'grow' as you put it, more and more natural resources become available for use i think. i mean ages ago we oil was any use to us. only a while ago wind wasn't either but now we can kind of create energy from it. When oil becomes way too expensive i believe that wind and water energy will be made more efficient and replace the natural resources we use today

and further in the future we could theoretically use hydrogen from the abundant reserves of water we have on Earth and create massive amounts of energy or even ages and ages in the future the theoretical energy you could get from anti matter and stuff i dont know about much

but my point is i dont think running out of an energy supply is man's main worry. as technology develops more and more natural resources become available to us.

wow, that was a lot of typing, ud have been an idiot to read all that lmao, well am going to get something to eat and make my birthday party plans for tomorrow night

[tommysize1]

yeah that makes sense to me.
improved technology is the way forward.

i guess that makes GM crops an eventual necessity.

ok thanks & have a happy birthday!

[Ashley11]

yes

a real quick example-
China 2010 GDP- $100
Canada 2010 GDP- $100

China 2011- They produce 10 000 plastic tables
Canada 2011- They produce 1 000 fancy ass laptops.

in 2011 Canada's growth would be bigger than China's yet China would use more natural resources

and thanks, not long now

[Forger]

You two should just move in together!!

[tommysize1]

those 1000 laptops might of taken a rarer resource than the plastic tables.

heres something i just found:
By Kristi Essick The Industry Standard Magazine Issue Date: Jun 11 2001The demand for cell phones and computer chips is helping fuel a bloody civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The offer turned up a few weeks ago on an Internet bulletin board called the Embassy Network. Among the postings about Dutch work visas and Italian pen pals lurked a surprisingly blunt proposal: "How much do you want to offer per kilogram? Please find me at least 100,000 U.S. dollars and I will deliver immediately."The substance for sale wasn't cocaine or top-grade opium. It was an ore called Columbite-tantalite - coltan for short - one of the world's most sought-after materials. Refine coltan and you get a highly heat-resistant metal powder called tantalum. It sells for $100 a pound, and it's becoming increasingly vital to modern life. For the high-tech industry, tantalum is magic dust, a key component in everything from mobile phones made by Nokia (NOK) and Ericsson and computer chips from Intel (INTC) to Sony (SNE) stereos and VCRs.

oh so now your canadian laptops are killing people!

to find whole article search: mobile phone depleting african resource

[Ashley11]

[QUOTE=tommysize1;65838]those 1000 laptops might of taken a rarer resource than the plastic tables.

heres something i just found:
By Kristi Essick The Industry Standard Magazine Issue Date: Jun 11 2001The demand for cell phones and computer chips is helping fuel a bloody civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The offer turned up a few weeks ago on an Internet bulletin board called the Embassy Network. Among the postings about Dutch work visas and Italian pen pals lurked a surprisingly blunt proposal: "How much do you want to offer per kilogram? Please find me at least 100,000 U.S. dollars and I will deliver immediately."The substance for sale wasn't cocaine or top-grade opium. It was an ore called Columbite-tantalite - coltan for short - one of the world's most sought-after materials. Refine coltan and you get a highly heat-resistant metal powder called tantalum. It sells for $100 a pound, and it's becoming increasingly vital to modern life. For the high-tech industry, tantalum is magic dust, a key component in everything from mobile phones made by Nokia (NOK) and Ericsson and computer chips from Intel (INTC) to Sony (SNE) stereos and VCRs.

oh so now your canadian laptops are killing people!

to find whole article search: mobile phone depleting african resource[/QUOTE]

why don't you just say i win lmao. i like to win. and i thought it was the US and UK that liked to have the wars lol. If it's in Africa aren't they happy to sell it?

[tommysize1]

for someone to prosper it takes another to shovel sh1t is all im sayin...that and also I WIN!

too many seperate factions in africa. they got a history of europe looting their resources in exchange for power.
then they abuse the power and they loot their fellow africans.

i dunno
everyone wants too much....myself included