The Cause of the Kondratieff Cycle (reloaded)

In the 1920s Nikolai Kondratieff reported a cycle in prices that averaged 54 years. There are depressions and booms in this cycle which is also connected to wars and the birth rate. Ray Tomes proposes an explanation for the cause of this cycle also sometimes called the K-wave or long wave cycle.

The darn phone rang before I finished ... such is life. This is a reload as somehow the sound went bad on the original.

For more information see http://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/kondratieffcause.html

There is an interdisciplinary cycles discussion forum open to all people to search and read, and people can join to participate, at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyclesi/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• nikolai
• kondratieff
• cycle
• cycles
• wave
• economics
• demographics
• cause
• depressions
• booms
• 53
• 54
• year
• wobbly
• universe
• prices

[FortNikitaBullion]

But people have children at much less predictable ages now; some have kids at 15, some at 45. Will this affect how the cycle works nowadays? May it dampen it somewhat?

[artynz]

@FortNikitaBullion The bumps in the population distribution are maintained at the average age of childbearing spacing. Interestingly, it seems that variations in age of parents at childbirth are strongly influenced by the cycle also.

[Alucardthedeadone]

seems like when an action is made it makes a reacation which is also an acation in its self which would cause a new reaction.

[artynz]

@Alucardthedeadone Yep - that is how the entire universe works. :-)

[DebtJunkie]

Hi Ray

Greetings from England.

I've enjoyed your videos on economic cycles. Any chance you can do a few more, in particular do you have a view on how Britain is in relation to its historical cycles?

Thank you + Cheers

Debt Junkie

[artynz]

@DebtJunkie ... ahhh I am overdue to do some more videos. I have been working on a new cycles analysis package and collecting a lot of data, which will produce a lot of new results in future. Hopefully some time soon ...

[solojam]

kwave is 80 years about the length of avg human life

[diligentdavey]

The opposite, of course, is worse for both a couple and a nation. And, with all advanced economies (except Israel) being in sub-replacement mode in their birthrates, explains WHY we are in an economic depression NOW!

[diligentdavey]

Getting married, settling down, having children, especially a lot of children, is a sacrificial thing, of submitting one's self to the good of others. It also is much better for retirement. Having more children to take care of one in their old age, is better than having fewer, whether for a couple or for a nation.

[diligentdavey]

Self-centered-ness, and a flight to "live for the moment" (or, in other words, 'Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die' - or, there is no God, and hence no judgement after this life, so since we only live once, let's live it up!) mentality grew and prevailed ever more in the lives of ever more individuals.

[diligentdavey]

The secularism of the 1920's, too, with the flappers, flauntingly ignoring the prohibition of drinking alcoholic beverages, combined with widespread fornication, contributed, apparently, to a decrease in marriage and hoiusehold formation.

[diligentdavey]

But, this is very unlikely to happen. Because women give birth for various reasons, all mostly personal. There is little 'esprit du corps' to do something as involving as having children for the good of the many.

[diligentdavey]

Following the crash, birth rates decline even further.

I think that the 'baby boom' following WWII (though, historically, the number of births was not extraordinary), is what in large part got us out of the Great Depression!

Hence, the answer to today's financial crisis would be to encourage another "birth quake"!

[diligentdavey]

He surmised, based on a HUGE decline in birthrates not during the 1930's, but in the decade before, that the birth rate decline itself was likely the major cause of the great depression. He pointed out how by 1926, demand for housing began to decline. And early in 1929, the demand for housing (in the US) dropped precipitously (like a rock)! Then, of course, in October of that year, you had the stock market crash (Black Tuesday).

[diligentdavey]

Ray,

I would agree that birth rates go down during an economic depression. However, in reading a paper written in 1978 by Clarence L. Barber, then an economist at the University of Manitoba (Canada), wrote a paper titled "On the Origins of the Great Depression."

[fightington]

if you're talking about a 2000 year period, people didn't live as long as today, so hypothesis fail