How Significant Is Investment Within An Economy?

Paul Denlinger's answer on Quora:

In the US there are many opinions about exactly what is investment, but I will try to give some examples. 

In a developing economy with undeveloped infrastructure, it is very important. Basically, investment is the money spent which will create jobs and add to the country's GNP (gross national product). I am most familiar with China, and when China opened up for reforms in 1978, the country was, for all practical purposes, bankrupt. Fortunately, many ethnic Chinese business people from Hong Kong and Taiwan invested in factories to make light goods for export. In the beginning this was not much, but as workers saved more money, they were gradually able to buy more for themselves and their families. This led to a virtuous cycle and over 30 years, the standard of living for almost all Chinese has dramatically increased. 

The opposite of investment is consumerism, where money is spent, but does not add value for anyone, or increase GNP. The classic example for mindless consumerism is the US. This is because not only have people spent money to buy things which don't add value, they have actually borrowed money to do it. This adds to the costs of money because they need to pay interest for the use of the money. No wonder the US middle class (or what is left of it) is in such a pickle!

In the US's case, investment involves spending money on those things which will enhance the US's competitiveness in the global economy. If you look at it in those terms, spending on foreign wars, a grossly over-expensive and broken healthcare system which coddles the healthcare providers and insurance companies at the cost of most Americans doesn't make sense. The list goes on and on. Every time I look at the spending choices Americans make on the individual, city, county, state, and national level, I just end up shaking my head. 

Another way of defining investment is "What will add to the value of a person, city, county, state or nation over a period of time?" Frequently this means deferring immediate pleasure, but realizing the added value later. The biggest enemy of investment is time because in a democratic society, people want results NOW. Most good investment decisions don't realize high returns immediately. An example: if Warren Buffett had to listen to his investors in his early years, most likely he would not have made the high returns he is now famous for. This is a basic failing of most democracies.

To get back to answering this question, investment is absolutely essential to an economy, regardless what stage of development it is at, esp if it is going to be competitive on an ongoing basis. Many western govts, with the help of investment banks, have gone deeply into debt in order to win voters, but have ended up cutting needed investment for their own economies. 

Now, they are waking up and paying the price. This cost comes in the form of money paid over to the investment banks in the form of interest; this is money which rightly should go to future generations so that the economy can become more competitive in a global economy. 

What a mess!

Naomi Klein & Noura Erakat On Anti Semitism

It's always a disappointment to me that many Arabs are original Semites. This makes the vast majority of Israelis who are descended from 8th Century Khazar converts to Judaism pseudo Semites

War & Technology Porn

I think Wired do an enthusiastic yet unaspirational job of technology reporting. Unexpectedly, the last four weeks in a row , I've been blown away by The New Scientist's front cover stories telling a different narrative that is more faithful to the true scientist which is one of humility. How much we don't know, what science can't tell us, what we are unlikely to ever discover and this weeks story on the multiverse which I think is one of the few times we can use the word profound without risk of hyperbole. 

Many people are overwhelmed by ideas of an infinite number of universes, and prefer not to think about science's claim of, for example, the existence of another universe where one is a double hand amputee victim, and thus unable to search the internet using a traditional mouse as you are now invariably doing. 

The idea of this specific timeline uncoiling among an infinite number of potential and actual timelines is only cosmically coherent if the notion of free will and decision making is the precursor to a timeline branching off into another electromagnetic or holographic universe. 

Put another way you're living in Grand Theft Auto Gaza-Strip and the video effects are very realistic.

You can thank the creator for that or if that's a problem, thank yourself by learning a little about Pandeism whereby we are co-creating reality in a momentarily disappearing collision of the past and the future, that we call the present.

I find it revolting to see Science's inability to pause and reflect, and do a little balancing of the books. A quick tally of the numbers of hungry, sick and impoverished people on the planet over the course of the scientific century tells me the Higgs boson will be understood more quickly than how to feed people. 

That's a shit stain on 20th century materialist science's pretension of progress, and no better dramatised by people who think discussing their latest oblong of I ME MINE Appleness is any more interesting to me than  being collared by a watch lover and given a lecture as to it's features and benefits. I just don't care about your tech. It's an illusion that will only hit home when the penny drops that technology can't be eaten but rice can. Taking an interest in where suffering can be alleviated is human. Not gazing into a screen of distraction.

Recently I've started taking offence to the war-porn blogs that are populated by psychopathy. These writers and commenters are jerking off to killing machines yet as soon as I point out that those assault vehicles/drones helicopters/iphone geotrackers would do a terrific job of picking off the residents of Boca Ratone or Key West the hypocritical rage and offence is extraordinary. I got banned yesterday from commenting on one war porn blog by Raymond Pritchett of Information Dissemination. He wrote

@charlesfrith not funny. Joking about killing Americans is not acceptable behavior. You have been banned.

He deleted that tweet later, but I want to make it clear to him. I only use obvious satire about killing Americans, but the killing business you pimp off is larger than the next 17 countries in the world. It is paid for by impoverished but frugal Asian savers through loans that are extorted with obvious military threats of retaliation and lastly but most importantly the U.S. weapons you stroke in your mind, kill real and innocent people day in and day out.

I ask you Raymond Pratchett

Is it really my satire that is unacceptable or is it the charade of goodness you call the American Way? The reality you are really jerking off to every time your priapism for war porn takes over you, and your readers, was in the Huffington Post yesterday (picture below), and I left a much more sober comment there because unlike you, I honour the soldiers by thinking about ways to keep them out of war. Not fetishising their killing.