Correct. I will (and am) look for other places to make money, other products, other lines of business. Increased costs discourage that.
::sigh::
Try to dissaciate yourself from your own MICRO situation for a second.
The actual one or the one where you and your little friend tell me I'm lying?
We're talking about the MACRO economy. If AGGREGATE demand does not increase, AGGREGATE employment will not increase.
That is a basic concept, but only as a building block for other economic ideas. Forcing aggregate demand has never worked and the economy is not static. Innovation and greater efficiency is what's needed, not just convincing people to buy more stuff from companies the government picks. Aggregate demand is in fact increasing overall simply because there are more people alive today than there ever have before, but not all sectors are on the rise. Aggregate demand for Pontiac Firebirds is not increasing. Aggregate demand for $40,000 electric cars is not increasing. Aggregate demand for housing is not increasing.
We are in a period of change where it's hard to tell what sectors can sustain long term growth which is why any measures to stimulate demand will fail.
Even if you find a niche to make more money because you can make a better mousetrap than somebody else, the OVERALL economy will go nowhere.
True, but if a few hundred of us can do it that will deliver overall economic growth. The key is to foster innovation, not try to manage who gets to try stuff with someone else's money, and not to try use the government to pick the winners and losers.
The core problem is not your inability to invest. If there's ******* profit to be made, investment will be made. if not by you personally, then by someone else, like me.
There is a profit to be made replacing small suburban area bus routes with taxicabs and vouchers. Wanna invest?
There's no lack of capital out there friend. The problem is that the masses can't afford to buy the output capacity of industry. Demand is stuck at a less than full employment equilibrium. The market WILL NOT self-correct.
Demand for existing output capacity of existing industry is stuck and innovators have fewer and fewer incentives to take risks. Notice I said innovators, not investors. The market will self-correct that and if the government would figure out a way to stop meddling while still providing proper oversight things would improve quickly. The current model just isn't working and the professional economist contingent has meandered too far away from the basics.
A side note here, which economists predicted the huge economic growth of the 1990s in 1995? The reason I ask is because I remember Bob Dole getting laughed at in the campaign for suggesting that the economy could grow 15-20% over the next 4 years.
I think we're on the cusp of another breakthrough like that, but it won't happen with the 1950-1990 model of industrial production. Let China have it, they need it. The current demand for iPhones doesn't support $60K for a production worker.