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| What is a good about Covid 19 related? |
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| Psi:
--- Quote from: james_s on March 30, 2020, 03:30:06 am ---it should be possible for anyone who makes the right choices to become quite well off, but it should be progressively more difficult to become so wealthy that it snowballs and allows someone to use money to keep acquiring more money without generating any actual value. --- End quote --- Agreed. |
| IDEngineer:
--- Quote from: Marco on March 30, 2020, 02:45:24 am ---There is an infinite capacity to debt, the central bank balance sheet... there is no reason to pay that debt down --- End quote --- This is a convenient fiction that many people repeat despite its being incorrect. My wife, who has a BA Finance Magna cum Laude, often has to correct people on this fallacy, along with its usual companion "Debt is just interest that we owe ourselves, so it's not real/doesn't matter/other excuse". The easiest retort to this error is to ask the following question: "If the debt doesn't matter, why do we bother paying interest on it?" The first followup question is: "If paying interest doesn't matter, why is interest an increasing percentage of the federal budget?" And the next: "So there are zero downsides to simply ceasing payment of interest on the debt?" And the next: "What happens when the interest continues to increase, until it starts squeezing out mandatory and discretionary spending?" The usual knee-jerk response to that last question is "Easy, we just issue fresh debt to pay the interest on the old debt." That's also known as being on the wrong side of compound interest, and that curve is anything but linear... once you cross that threshold it's just a matter of time until the whole things collapses. |
| BravoV:
--- Quote from: blueskull on March 30, 2020, 04:09:42 am ---No can fix bullshit journalism. --- End quote --- +1 From CNN -> Desperate to go home, Indian migrant workers face tough choice amid world's largest lockdown Just ignore the video, read the article and take note on the CNN's reporter speech commenting the video, it is totally very neutral tone. ::) Now, imagine this video is a leaked Chinese police doing that to civilian exactly like that during the lock down in Wuhan. Can you guess what will be the reporter's tone and the writing by CNN ? You don't need to be genius to guess that. :-DD |
| IDEngineer:
--- Quote from: julianhigginson on March 30, 2020, 03:00:54 am ---it's pointing out some very glaring holes in free market capitalism, that's for sure. --- End quote --- Which are (or should be) balanced by proper regulation and oversight. Antitrust, for one. Separation of church and state in the banking industry for another, as we USED to have in the USA thanks to Glass-Stegal until President Clinton signed it away, which is a direct proximate cause of the 2008-2009 financial crisis. Capitalism is not safe without some regulation and oversight, but it's much better than all of the other financial systems that have ever been tried. The fact that it needs (constant) minor tweaking doesn't mean we should wholesale throw it out. |
| IDEngineer:
--- Quote from: Psi on March 30, 2020, 04:02:02 am ---Universal basic income is a difficult thing to get right because it has to take into account a lot of factors. --- End quote --- UBI is a completely stupid idea that cannot and will not work. Why not? The reasons are endless, and some require a little background in finance to dig into, but the easy answers include the following: 1) Every landlord knows their tenants are suddenly receiving an extra $1K per month. What do you suppose will happen to rents? 2) Every employer knows their employees are suddenly receiving an extra $1K per month. "You don't need a raise, you just got a $12K/year raise." In other words, the market will swiftly price that $1K per person into every transaction. There might be a short time where the increase appears to be a net positive, but very quickly the net result on the other side will be no different than before. Then what? Increase UBI to $2K? Same result, until you run out of commas and zeroes to describe dollar amounts and they devalue the dollar to keep numbers managable. Or maybe you want rent, price, and wage controls throughout the economy? Better consult history for how well that has worked in other economies... and say goodbye to any last vestige of "free markets" when the government controls how much you can earn and how much you can spend. EDIT: There's another reason UBI is a fatally flawed concept, one that Engineers especially should appreciate. It's totally open loop. UBI creates a situation where decades of cash obligation can be placed upon the government by any couple who doesn't practice birth control, with absolutely no negative feedback or backpressure of any kind. A wild night by any random couple can burden the taxpayers with $1K per month for 70-90 years. Multiply by the number of people actively seeking casual sex, who aren't careful, who don't care, etc. And the more dependents we get that way, the more dependents THEY create in the same fashion, lather rinse repeat. It's a perfect example of a runaway system. UBI is literally one of the least intelligent concepts to be proposed in a very long time. But it sure sounds good to anyone who loves (what appears to be) a free handout and doesn't think beyond that. |
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