first: since March US Fed was buying 100% of new bonds and most of the bonds that were not rolled over.
second: can you even read your graph? Do you even understand how bonds work? As prices for coupons fall, the yield automatically goes up, because each bond pays a fixed amount per year, so interest rates rise in complete tandem with prices falling.
So the Fed buys all the outstanding bonds to keep prices from falling further thus creating more inflation (QE).
As to those who buy bonds - who is that? Bill Gross sold off his entire position, and he was the largest private holder.
because again they are working and providing value to an employer.
- and the employer provides the interns value of getting their first employment opportunity, of training them on the job and not charging for the privilege.
In USA the apprentices are very few specifically because the government provided the moral hazard of 'free education' via mortgages, removing incentives from employers to hire apprentices and interns to train those at work, and this is combined with the labor laws, minimum wage, etc., and it kills the very idea of apprenticeship.
News flash: you never get a known quantity when you hire somebody.
- that's not a 'news flash', but it obviously is not clear to you, that if a company hires an intern, they don't expect them to know anything.
As an employer you have chosen to take on certain risks in return for the rewards of being in management or ownership of a company.
- a business owners takes all the losses and all the risks, puts himself through hell to try and get the business running. Government creates all sorts of impediments on the way of businesses, by promoting labor laws and monopolies and wage laws and taxes, which make it exceedingly difficult for anybody to start a new business and to keep doing it after a year is even harder. The business owner doesn't get any money in the first years of work, I know I spent years working double shifts (or what people would call double shifts), working on my own to get things going. You don't get paid. Nobody pays you. You go there on willpower and you have to pay everybody and whatever scraps are left over after you are done paying everybody, goes right back into the business (and taxes have to be paid, and government doesn't let you write all of your expenses against your income, forces you to do 'depreciating', so steals your money before you can even make it and forces you to take loans to pay taxes).
And if you are successful after all of this, the government is standing there with one extended hand and another one holds a gun. But if you lose and don't succeed, it doesn't stand their with a helping hand and money (well, unless you are a preferred monopoly, good for them, bad for society).
So cry me a river about interns, who just happen to come to the company and ask for a job without having any experience and without any marketable skills. They are asking for money? Ha. They must prove they can do anything, forget about paying them, they are lucky they are not asked to pay to be there.
Also, there is a reason I am not doing business in USA any longer, and it's this exact attitude from every politician and everybody basically, let them come up with their own capital and businesses, I prefer to take mine where it's appreciated.
Governments do not have to favor certain monopolies over others, in fact they can be used to destroy monopolies wherever they form, and for a short period of time after the sherman anti-trust act, it actually was used in such a way.
- a laugh. Anti-trust laws were used to destroy trusts not for any reason, other than the trusts were becoming more powerful than the politicians and didn't want to share their wealth with the politicians.
Standard Oil wasn't a monopoly by the time it was broken up and Alcoa Aluminum was an exceedingly efficient business, so nobody could compete on price, which means the market didn't need it to be broken, to give rise to less efficient businesses. However the less efficient businesses got their act together and got the politicians to attack Alcoa, so that less efficient businesses could enter that market using government support. The end result was as always - rising prices on aluminum, which is all government is good for - pushing prices higher.
Business can absolutely and positively be used to remove ALL of your freedoms and reduce you to a slave and you have no choice in the matter. The fact that you do not believe that makes you incredibly niave of the workings of the world, so I'm going to assume you are some sheltered kid who has had life handed to him on a silver platter.
- or maybe I had to participate in taking down a government at one point in time, a kind of government that oppressed its people. But this is/., where assumptions are the basis of all knowledge. ---- Good luck talking to yourself there, by the way.
So that you don't bother replying to me in a pointless back and forth, here are other comments I made on similar topics, whatever you want to say and all rebuttals to whatever you want to say are definitely there.
US lost so much capital (tools/manufacturing capacity) to other nations and it owes so much, and is willing to monetize the debt, that when the crisis actually hits, it will hit US and other Western nations the strongest, and I actually truly believe that those with manufacturing capacity will fair very well, even though they won't get their loans back in any meaningful way. But once they stop subsidizing the welfare states, they'll be able to grow much faster, their currencies will go through the roof and they'll enjoy highest standard of life compared to anybody else on the planet.
Oh, it's easy. You just have to do what USSR did - use the people as slave labor, then you need much less money, as long as you are OK sacrificing large numbers of people...
'American leadership in space will continue for at least the next half-century because we
- aha, keep dreaming.
The US bond crisis is coming, followed immediately by the currency crisis. I bet there will be more pressing needs, like more weapons to start resource wars against multiple countries much before the US will once again be able to go far into space in its new ships, never mind having humans on board there....
You are missing my point, which is that internship is the same as apprenticeship and it should be viewed as an alternative to formal education.
So if I am getting an intern, I am getting a known quantity: somebody without prior experience, and so I am absolutely not going to pay them anything or I may pay them a token amount, something definitely lower than minimum wage.
Now, what is actually funny, is that in USA an intern can work for a company for free, but should he be hired for actual money, then he must be making minimum wage.
I am all for fairness in compensation, so get rid of the minimum wage, and then interns will get SOME compensation, and given that they are again, a known quantity: people without prior work experience (otherwise they wouldn't be interns), then they will be making some very little amount.
But this AFAIC is their ticket into the workplace, which is an alternative for them to going to a University and getting that questionable privilege to pump the money from the federal government loan programs to the universities while learning pretty much nothing that is pertinent to their future job.
Don't get me wrong, I am against minimum wage just as much as I am against income/payroll/corporate/SS/Medicare taxes, etc. So it's a consistent view point.
There is one major problem that makes everything you just said dead wrong
- good start, with a nice general, overall blanket statement.
By amassing large amounts of capital, corporations have far more power over your life than any business possibly could.
- you likely mean to say 'government' there, not business, right?
Here is why the above statement is false: no business can force me to pay them and no business has the ultimate authority to end my freedoms and to end my life, thus that statement is ridiculous on its face.
As to corporations amassing capital - in government regulated world you do have that happening, as government prefers certain monopolies and makes sure they amass more than they ever could in the free market, where any business, that could be that profitable, would immediately face various levels of competition, with start ups doing their own things to get a cut of that nice juicy pie.
The point is that in free market without government regulations, anybody is free to start their own competing business without having to face government, which works for the largest monopolies, protecting them from competition and giving them the unfair advantages, from special tax breaks, which then do not apply to startups, to simply subsidies - money and regulations, that strongly enforce that monopoly in that industry.
Any business that reaches even ten or twenty percent of a market share, or a market is dominated by a few large businesses with no serious competition
- you are pulling various numbers out of your rear.
Suffices it to say that even in todays world, where the government involvement is minimal, we see severe competition, driving costs down and quality and offerings up.
and barriers to entry are high (which they always are, just on the need for physical capital to produce goods and services),
- of-course barriers to entry are high in today's world, which has governments completely destroying people's ability to save capital to start their own business, by taxing them, by destroying the currency via printing (inflation), by subsidizing large monopolies, because governments prefer monopolies, they have all that extra cash to kick around and kick back to the politicians.
In absence of government destroying the market, there would be plenty of credit available for good ideas, not for consumer credit, which government promotes, but for producer credit, which government destroys. Also with government not being as huge as it is, it could be paid by minimum sales taxes on vices and excise taxes, and gov't wouldn't have to be getting into all this debt, which is stealing credit from production and putting it into government bonds.
the corporations and companies can employ monopolistic and monopsonistic policies to control every aspect of your life.
- this is the case today, when companies do enjoy various monopoly statuses, provided and protected for them by governments. This is not the case when government stays out of business and does not destroy the competition.
. Maybe not as directly as some communist countries do, but they can force you to spend 20 hours a day working for jack shit, in fact, at EVERY SINGLE POINT
- more weird numbers pulled out of your rear.
Here is a bunch of REAL numbers:
In USA the federal income tax is 35%. State income taxes vary from 0 to maybe 7% Then there is SS tax, which applies to the first 100K or so. Then there is Medicare tax, which is near 3% on all earnings. Then there are payroll taxes Then there are various sales taxes Then there are property taxes Then there are transaction taxes There are taxes on things you gift to others, there are taxes on your entire wealth when you die. There are municipal taxes, all sorts of things.
I read the comments here, the passionate communist circletimessquare has posted a number of highly moderated replies, so I understand the local sentiment.
Here is the other side of this equation:
Most people who go to the universities are wasting their time and paying arm and leg for the privilege, and since most people who go there don't want to give up an arm and a leg right away, they get the government approved mortgages instead so that they can have the privilege of being stuck with that mortgage until they do lose an arm and a leg, and they still are in no better position to land a well paying , satisfying job.
So if INSTEAD of going to university the students went to become interns, that would make actual sense. Training on a job and not paying for it? Where is the question?
You see, university education is inflated, just like housing prices and US bonds are. To differentiate yourself from the rest, you have to get masters and even more than that today. But in reality, people who go there, they get their mortgage (without the house), and they take humanities.
So these "sociologists" later understand they can't get a job, so they move on into law, getting into more debt in the process.
What most people really should do is never to go to any university but instead they should try to get internship right after high school. In 4 years, when their "highly edumacated" counterparts will be coming out of their universities, these interns would have had 4 years of on-the-job training, paying NOTHING for the privilege and likely in that time period they would have already landed a job that was paying them, even if they took the first 1-2 internships for free.
Internship is an excellent SUBSTITUTE for college, but you have to understand that, and you have to understand that in reality to get yourself differentiated from the pack you really need to think outside of the box the government has placed you into.
Government, (regardless of what communists like circletimessquare tell you), are the evil incarnate intrinsically. But since the vacuum will not stay vacuum forever, the government must be created and maintained in extremely limited capacity, so it cannot hurt the society (as it always does) by growing and destroying the economy and creating poverty in the process.
So called "solutions" to poverty, that governments profess, are in reality their way of staying in power and indeed stealing ever more power by offering those, who do not understand the world around them (the voting majority) to sacrifice those, who actually truly increase the wealth of the society - business creators.
Yes, business creators, those who wake up one day and start their own business, find the money, find the idea, get excited, hire somebody for help (and maybe get an intern as well), and begin the insanely difficult task of trying invent a way to make profit by providing the society with new goods/services and providing the society with new wealth and jobs. These people contribute much more than their 'fair share' before they pay any taxes. If they succeed, it's not because of any government help. If they succeed though, the government wants to come and claim its cut.
If they lose and do not succeed, there will be no government there, standing offering help with all the losses. (Of-course there is a huge exception, as government has shown time and again, that it will protect its preferred monopolies in all industries, to the detriment of economy and society, and will bail them out without regard for the economy and society, so that's another way governments are evil.)
Back to the topic here:
If you are a university student already, and you are doing intern work for no pay - then it maybe counterproductive, because you have already lost.
If you decide to do unpaid internship instead of going to a university - you have your head in the right place, as opposed to those, who have their heads up their asses, you are thinking.
- well, because in history of humanity there was never a government that didn't become evil or wasn't evil from the start? Because government provides people with ability to gather power over people, businesses and resources without too much effort? Because a place that provides such an ability is a magnet for people who want the power over people, businesses and resources? Because government power is used to control people's lives, tax people's work, mis-allocate resources? Because over time regardless of the government structure it eventually leads to huge government apparatus living in itself for itself, feeding off the productive part of the economy?
Because government even though 'non-profit' is highly profitable for politicians and others, who get near the cake.
Because government has the power to set winners and losers in the economy by taxes and subsidies and regulations and laws.
Because anything that government does is an expression of government force, based on its ability to hurt you, rather than expression of market forces, which require 2 parties to come to an agreement.
Because government corrupts the very society by offering all sorts of impossible in the long run 'solutions', which cannot be supported economically in the long run, but look very lucrative to the majority of voters in the short run.
Because government punishes the productive part of the economy, by sacrificing it to its desire for power, since it basically directs the desires of the majority of the society to get things for free, things they didn't work for and to get those things, somebody must pay, and those are the people, who are in fact producers in the economy.
Because eventually governments spending and power grows beyond ability of the host society to maintain it, and then, government being what it is and corrupting the voters the way it does, destroys not only the economic ability to maintain this spending, but the very fabric of the economic stability - currency itself, by monetizing the insatiable thirst for debt, which is then used to 'pay' for all of the spending, which the voters are corrupted into believing is absolutely necessary and even indeed are their right.
--
The point is that government is a force outside of the rest of the market, and while the rest of the market is basically about 2 parties coming to an agreement over costs or value, etc., government does not have such silly limitations - it can impose its will upon the society, upon the economy, etc., regardless of any real economic outcomes and only based on the expedient desires to get more power and to stay in power further and indeed, to increase the power into infinity.
So yes, I cannot view the government in any other light but as the ultimate evil, and this conflicts with my understanding that the power vacuum will be filled with something, and this something better be set on purpose and be controlled than be something random.
The US Constitution was trying to impose the control upon the power of the government, but obviously there is perfect way to control it, and that's why governments always reset once they reach certain level of 'evil', and new governments are established.
It would be better if people understood these simple realities sooner rather than later.
Sounds great in theory. In reality, that isn't what happened. Access to these things was provided by the free market where it was deemed profitable to the utility company. It wasn't until governments stepped in and subsidized and forced through regulations that access to things like electricity and running water came to certain parts of the population.
- nonsense.
There is such a concept as 'early adoption', and it's a very normal process, which means that as technology comes into existence it is very expensive and only the most interested individuals and likely those with most funding can afford it.
However as the time goes on, there is more and more supply of the product of ever increasing quality/decreasing cost in normal market conditions, because as something is profitable in high-end markets, it is much more profitable in lower end markets, simply because in lower end markets there is so much more demand, there are that many more people to be served.
Government does not need to step in to mandate that cell phones must be made cheaper and government does not need to subsidize TV manufacturing in order to give the poor TVs, the market does this perfectly well, and it does the same thing with every other good, only interrupted when government steps into the arena and starts clipping competition and collecting racket money.
It's not perfect. Read a history book. A large chunk of modern regulation was implemented in response to specific "actually it really happened" failures of the free market. You can rhapsodize all you want about how perfect free markets are. But we've tried them, and they consistently prove worse than regulated markets
- nonsense.
Capitalism is the most perfect system for wealth generation and distribution that people have invented (so far at least). There is nothing that advances technology and decreases costs and disseminates wealth quicker than desire of people to profit from greater market penetration than the competition.
Considering that on its face, free market advocacy sounds an awful lot like "I'm a selfish prick that only want to gain the benefits of society without being expected to return anything except what I generously choose"
- no, the selfish ones are busy taking what others have earned and 'redistributing' it the way they believe is correct via coercive force of government power.
free market failures and actors behaving in manners detrimental to markets DESPITE regulations prohibiting these behaviors, you are profoundly unconvincing with your fact free, theoretical arguments.
- there is no failure in free market.
Free market always works in the same exact manner, it does not fail.
If you think that failures of the economy expressed through 2008 crash for example are free market failures, then you are blinder than a bat. Free market was providing a solution to the problem created by the government involvement, the solution was the necessary bust, which would restructure the debt and free up the resources mis-allocated by the government, and instead of taking the bitter medicine, provided by the free market, which would have swiftly cured the problem, the Keynesian shamans have decided they will instead continue the sickness by giving the ailing economy a huge dose of pain killers, dulling the pain but worsening the situation further.
Anything you believe is a 'free market failure', is in reality your failure to understand what actually is failing.
as the book EConned by Yves Smith and the film Inside Job by Ferguson have demonstrated, the 'study of ecnomics' is somewhat corrupt and lacking in the rigor that one might find, say, in the field of, say, art history.
- yes, and more than that.
The modern era 'economists', are loudspeakers for government propaganda, providing an excuse for the very thing that government wants to do anyway - counterfeit money.
desirable to provide certain basic necessities to our fellow human beings whether they have "earned" them in the free market or not.
- that's all fine and dandy, but you are putting the word 'right' into it, while there is no such thing. If you do charity, this is totally your decision, good for you. However forcing everybody to give up their work for charity is a fine tuned form of slavery.
Access to sanitation, electricity, education, communications, all sorts of things have been added to the list as the wealth of society has increased
- well, obviously. As the free market economy increases the overall wealth of society, there isn't even a way to separate the poorer from the infrastructure that is built around them, so clearly the will be enjoying all those fine things, just like the rest of the society, though probably with somewhat less comfort. Again, this is wealth, and when it is increased by the free market, everybody gets to enjoy some form of it.
And frankly, there are solid arguments that this sort of thing actually benefits society as a whole more so than the free market's obsession with the bottom line does.
- wrong.
This sort of thing does not benefit the society as much as profit does, but it is a pretty good indicator of the overall wealth of the society.
Profit motive is what creates the wealth. Dissipating wealth through charity of your own is your own prerogative, but dissipating wealth through the so called 'charity', forced by the government is just as much a mis-allocation of resources, as when government pays x10 the original cost of some software, like in this story. It's waste, mis-allocation of resources, destruction of wealth, but probably most importantly destruction of personal freedoms.
Give some evidence for this claim - all the most successful economies are regulated
- economies that are most successful were and are regulated the least.
Truly successful economies are those, that have lowest barriers to entry, highest levels of competition, stable or even appreciating currency, rather than government created inflation, maximum business freedoms, so that the entrepreneur is not stopped in his tracks by red tape, no (or very low) taxes on work, so no income, payroll taxes, very little in terms of forced charity.
Examples? Why there are plenty. That's the kind of society that created the modern standard of living in USA itself, because that's the kind of society that USA was in 19 century, when its dollar was appreciating in value, there were no income taxes, there was no business regulations for the most part, there were low barriers to entry, since government maintained a very small number of monopolies, unlike it does today, by having monopolies in every industry.
Irrelevant even if true. Markets and wealth are tools, not end goals.
- it's very relevant, as people have never invented any tools that were better at wealth generation than free market capitalism.
You sound like a guy with a hammer fetish that keeps shouting at everyone that wants to use the occasional screw, "because it's obvious that all that spiral motion of screwing is inefficient compared to the straight in pounding of a nail".
- the media in this case is the message.
The economy depends on real middle class, and real middle class is not what they tell you it is. Real middle class is startups, small business owners, professionals, who work for themselves.
Real middle class provides the majority of production capacity, and your idea of economy destroys that very engine, by creating top heavy monopolistic economy, which dictates everything from government down to the people, stifles real innovation, mis-allocates every bit of real credit, destroys currency, puts enough red tape around any activity, that it is not only hard to cut throug
That's when you use the loudest loudspeaker that there is (tweeter in this case,) and send a picture of an erection to various females, hoping for... well, something.
Facebook will be launching a new in-browser toilet application. 'The product has been built on a toilet and will include a desktop component. Itâ(TM)s not clear to me whether that means it will just work if a user has a toilet already, or if additional work will need to be done in the house even if the user already uses a toilet. But itâ(TM)s clear that thereâ(TM)s very deep integration between the products, and from the userâ(TM)s perspective, the product will be an in-browser experience.
- I actually work on a business that is useful for the customers and that I like. It may make me a schmuck, not to be a simple thief, but at least it doesn't make me a turd, the kind that you seem to be.
Micronecta scholtzi are freshwater insects measuring just 2mm that are common across Europe.... On average, the songs of M. scholtzi reached 78.9 decibels, comparable to a passing freight train.... "If you scale the sound level they produce against their body size, Micronecta scholtzi are the loudest animals on Earth," said Dr Windmill.... To produce the intense sound, the water boatmen "stridulate" by rubbing a ridge on their penis across the ridged surface of their abdomen.... "Males try to compete to have access to females and then try to produce a song as loud as possible potentially scrambling the song of competitors."... What makes M. scholtzi extraordinary is that the area they use to create sound only measures about 50 micrometres across, roughly the width of a human hair....
Yet another core mantra of the pro-market types that is taken on faith that ignores real world examples that contradict this. This simply isn't true - only PROFITABLE market needs will even theoretically meet a supply.
- well, hello.
I have a need for somebody to come over and scratch my ass all day so that I don't have to do it and I want them also to cook my food and give me BJs, but I only have $2 that I am willing to spend on it.
Well? Any takers?
--
So that's your point? That there are desires that cannot be satisfied for insufficient funding?
But let's go further in your fine analysis.
Sane societies recognize that economically disadvantaged markets (AKA poor people) have a right to certain basic necessities.
- There are no such thing as 'rights' to get things out of society that you want just because you happened not to be able to buy them on your own.
Actual sane societies recognize, that free market economy works much better to increase overall wealth of the entire society, so that the poverty levels are decreased (though there will always be poorer and wealthier people, that's inevitable, but wealth generated by a productive free market economy raises standard of living for everybody, including the relatively poorer ones.)
Anyway, I am sure you have a wonderful rebuttal stuck somewhere there, don't be shy.
Slashdot Mirror
first: since March US Fed was buying 100% of new bonds and most of the bonds that were not rolled over.
second: can you even read your graph? Do you even understand how bonds work? As prices for coupons fall, the yield automatically goes up, because each bond pays a fixed amount per year, so interest rates rise in complete tandem with prices falling.
So the Fed buys all the outstanding bonds to keep prices from falling further thus creating more inflation (QE).
As to those who buy bonds - who is that? Bill Gross sold off his entire position, and he was the largest private holder.
be my guest.
Actually I don't trust any government to enforce laws or to do military protection of the borders either, so don't worry, there will be no tears shed.
You have lost my interest long ago, when you moved the topic from the ideas to personalities, and it's not an interesting discussion to have.
so, what's the conspiracy here? The inflation via printing or is it the bond bubble?
because again they are working and providing value to an employer.
- and the employer provides the interns value of getting their first employment opportunity, of training them on the job and not charging for the privilege.
In USA the apprentices are very few specifically because the government provided the moral hazard of 'free education' via mortgages, removing incentives from employers to hire apprentices and interns to train those at work, and this is combined with the labor laws, minimum wage, etc., and it kills the very idea of apprenticeship.
News flash: you never get a known quantity when you hire somebody.
- that's not a 'news flash', but it obviously is not clear to you, that if a company hires an intern, they don't expect them to know anything.
As an employer you have chosen to take on certain risks in return for the rewards of being in management or ownership of a company.
- a business owners takes all the losses and all the risks, puts himself through hell to try and get the business running. Government creates all sorts of impediments on the way of businesses, by promoting labor laws and monopolies and wage laws and taxes, which make it exceedingly difficult for anybody to start a new business and to keep doing it after a year is even harder. The business owner doesn't get any money in the first years of work, I know I spent years working double shifts (or what people would call double shifts), working on my own to get things going. You don't get paid. Nobody pays you. You go there on willpower and you have to pay everybody and whatever scraps are left over after you are done paying everybody, goes right back into the business (and taxes have to be paid, and government doesn't let you write all of your expenses against your income, forces you to do 'depreciating', so steals your money before you can even make it and forces you to take loans to pay taxes).
And if you are successful after all of this, the government is standing there with one extended hand and another one holds a gun. But if you lose and don't succeed, it doesn't stand their with a helping hand and money (well, unless you are a preferred monopoly, good for them, bad for society).
So cry me a river about interns, who just happen to come to the company and ask for a job without having any experience and without any marketable skills. They are asking for money? Ha. They must prove they can do anything, forget about paying them, they are lucky they are not asked to pay to be there.
Also, there is a reason I am not doing business in USA any longer, and it's this exact attitude from every politician and everybody basically, let them come up with their own capital and businesses, I prefer to take mine where it's appreciated.
Governments do not have to favor certain monopolies over others, in fact they can be used to destroy monopolies wherever they form, and for a short period of time after the sherman anti-trust act, it actually was used in such a way.
- a laugh. Anti-trust laws were used to destroy trusts not for any reason, other than the trusts were becoming more powerful than the politicians and didn't want to share their wealth with the politicians.
Standard Oil wasn't a monopoly by the time it was broken up and Alcoa Aluminum was an exceedingly efficient business, so nobody could compete on price, which means the market didn't need it to be broken, to give rise to less efficient businesses. However the less efficient businesses got their act together and got the politicians to attack Alcoa, so that less efficient businesses could enter that market using government support. The end result was as always - rising prices on aluminum, which is all government is good for - pushing prices higher.
Business can absolutely and positively be used to remove ALL of your freedoms and reduce you to a slave and you have no choice in the matter. The fact that you do not believe that makes you incredibly niave of the workings of the world, so I'm going to assume you are some sheltered kid who has had life handed to him on a silver platter.
- or maybe I had to participate in taking down a government at one point in time, a kind of government that oppressed its people. But this is /., where assumptions are the basis of all knowledge.
----
Good luck talking to yourself there, by the way.
So that you don't bother replying to me in a pointless back and forth, here are other comments I made on similar topics, whatever you want to say and all rebuttals to whatever you want to say are definitely there.
So that you don't bother replying to me in a pointless back and forth, here are other comments I made on similar topics, so whatever you
Wishful thinking.
US lost so much capital (tools/manufacturing capacity) to other nations and it owes so much, and is willing to monetize the debt, that when the crisis actually hits, it will hit US and other Western nations the strongest, and I actually truly believe that those with manufacturing capacity will fair very well, even though they won't get their loans back in any meaningful way. But once they stop subsidizing the welfare states, they'll be able to grow much faster, their currencies will go through the roof and they'll enjoy highest standard of life compared to anybody else on the planet.
Oh, it's easy. You just have to do what USSR did - use the people as slave labor, then you need much less money, as long as you are OK sacrificing large numbers of people...
'American leadership in space will continue for at least the next half-century because we
- aha, keep dreaming.
The US bond crisis is coming, followed immediately by the currency crisis. I bet there will be more pressing needs, like more weapons to start resource wars against multiple countries much before the US will once again be able to go far into space in its new ships, never mind having humans on board there....
oh, my life's goal is crushed. This is just terrible.
You are missing my point, which is that internship is the same as apprenticeship and it should be viewed as an alternative to formal education.
So if I am getting an intern, I am getting a known quantity: somebody without prior experience, and so I am absolutely not going to pay them anything or I may pay them a token amount, something definitely lower than minimum wage.
Now, what is actually funny, is that in USA an intern can work for a company for free, but should he be hired for actual money, then he must be making minimum wage.
I am all for fairness in compensation, so get rid of the minimum wage, and then interns will get SOME compensation, and given that they are again, a known quantity: people without prior work experience (otherwise they wouldn't be interns), then they will be making some very little amount.
But this AFAIC is their ticket into the workplace, which is an alternative for them to going to a University and getting that questionable privilege to pump the money from the federal government loan programs to the universities while learning pretty much nothing that is pertinent to their future job.
Don't get me wrong, I am against minimum wage just as much as I am against income/payroll/corporate/SS/Medicare taxes, etc. So it's a consistent view point.
There is one major problem that makes everything you just said dead wrong
- good start, with a nice general, overall blanket statement.
By amassing large amounts of capital, corporations have far more power over your life than any business possibly could.
- you likely mean to say 'government' there, not business, right?
Here is why the above statement is false: no business can force me to pay them and no business has the ultimate authority to end my freedoms and to end my life, thus that statement is ridiculous on its face.
As to corporations amassing capital - in government regulated world you do have that happening, as government prefers certain monopolies and makes sure they amass more than they ever could in the free market, where any business, that could be that profitable, would immediately face various levels of competition, with start ups doing their own things to get a cut of that nice juicy pie.
The point is that in free market without government regulations, anybody is free to start their own competing business without having to face government, which works for the largest monopolies, protecting them from competition and giving them the unfair advantages, from special tax breaks, which then do not apply to startups, to simply subsidies - money and regulations, that strongly enforce that monopoly in that industry.
Any business that reaches even ten or twenty percent of a market share, or a market is dominated by a few large businesses with no serious competition
- you are pulling various numbers out of your rear.
Suffices it to say that even in todays world, where the government involvement is minimal, we see severe competition, driving costs down and quality and offerings up.
and barriers to entry are high (which they always are, just on the need for physical capital to produce goods and services),
- of-course barriers to entry are high in today's world, which has governments completely destroying people's ability to save capital to start their own business, by taxing them, by destroying the currency via printing (inflation), by subsidizing large monopolies, because governments prefer monopolies, they have all that extra cash to kick around and kick back to the politicians.
In absence of government destroying the market, there would be plenty of credit available for good ideas, not for consumer credit, which government promotes, but for producer credit, which government destroys. Also with government not being as huge as it is, it could be paid by minimum sales taxes on vices and excise taxes, and gov't wouldn't have to be getting into all this debt, which is stealing credit from production and putting it into government bonds.
the corporations and companies can employ monopolistic and monopsonistic policies to control every aspect of your life.
- this is the case today, when companies do enjoy various monopoly statuses, provided and protected for them by governments. This is not the case when government stays out of business and does not destroy the competition.
. Maybe not as directly as some communist countries do, but they can force you to spend 20 hours a day working for jack shit, in fact, at EVERY SINGLE POINT
- more weird numbers pulled out of your rear.
Here is a bunch of REAL numbers:
In USA the federal income tax is 35%.
State income taxes vary from 0 to maybe 7%
Then there is SS tax, which applies to the first 100K or so.
Then there is Medicare tax, which is near 3% on all earnings.
Then there are payroll taxes
Then there are various sales taxes
Then there are property taxes
Then there are transaction taxes
There are taxes on things you gift to others, there are taxes on your entire wealth when you die.
There are municipal taxes, all sorts of things.
These taxes easily go over
I read the comments here, the passionate communist circletimessquare has posted a number of highly moderated replies, so I understand the local sentiment.
Here is the other side of this equation:
Most people who go to the universities are wasting their time and paying arm and leg for the privilege, and since most people who go there don't want to give up an arm and a leg right away, they get the government approved mortgages instead so that they can have the privilege of being stuck with that mortgage until they do lose an arm and a leg, and they still are in no better position to land a well paying , satisfying job.
So if INSTEAD of going to university the students went to become interns, that would make actual sense. Training on a job and not paying for it? Where is the question?
You see, university education is inflated, just like housing prices and US bonds are. To differentiate yourself from the rest, you have to get masters and even more than that today. But in reality, people who go there, they get their mortgage (without the house), and they take humanities.
So these "sociologists" later understand they can't get a job, so they move on into law, getting into more debt in the process.
What most people really should do is never to go to any university but instead they should try to get internship right after high school. In 4 years, when their "highly edumacated" counterparts will be coming out of their universities, these interns would have had 4 years of on-the-job training, paying NOTHING for the privilege and likely in that time period they would have already landed a job that was paying them, even if they took the first 1-2 internships for free.
Internship is an excellent SUBSTITUTE for college, but you have to understand that, and you have to understand that in reality to get yourself differentiated from the pack you really need to think outside of the box the government has placed you into.
Government, (regardless of what communists like circletimessquare tell you), are the evil incarnate intrinsically. But since the vacuum will not stay vacuum forever, the government must be created and maintained in extremely limited capacity, so it cannot hurt the society (as it always does) by growing and destroying the economy and creating poverty in the process.
So called "solutions" to poverty, that governments profess, are in reality their way of staying in power and indeed stealing ever more power by offering those, who do not understand the world around them (the voting majority) to sacrifice those, who actually truly increase the wealth of the society - business creators.
Yes, business creators, those who wake up one day and start their own business, find the money, find the idea, get excited, hire somebody for help (and maybe get an intern as well), and begin the insanely difficult task of trying invent a way to make profit by providing the society with new goods/services and providing the society with new wealth and jobs. These people contribute much more than their 'fair share' before they pay any taxes. If they succeed, it's not because of any government help. If they succeed though, the government wants to come and claim its cut.
If they lose and do not succeed, there will be no government there, standing offering help with all the losses. (Of-course there is a huge exception, as government has shown time and again, that it will protect its preferred monopolies in all industries, to the detriment of economy and society, and will bail them out without regard for the economy and society, so that's another way governments are evil.)
Back to the topic here:
If you are a university student already, and you are doing intern work for no pay - then it maybe counterproductive, because you have already lost.
If you decide to do unpaid internship instead of going to a university - you have your head in the right place, as opposed to those, who have their heads up their asses, you are thinking.
As to the other complains, that
Somebody asked me this:
Why does a government must be an evil?
and I replied:
- well, because in history of humanity there was never a government that didn't become evil or wasn't evil from the start? Because government provides people with ability to gather power over people, businesses and resources without too much effort? Because a place that provides such an ability is a magnet for people who want the power over people, businesses and resources? Because government power is used to control people's lives, tax people's work, mis-allocate resources? Because over time regardless of the government structure it eventually leads to huge government apparatus living in itself for itself, feeding off the productive part of the economy?
Because government even though 'non-profit' is highly profitable for politicians and others, who get near the cake.
Because government has the power to set winners and losers in the economy by taxes and subsidies and regulations and laws.
Because anything that government does is an expression of government force, based on its ability to hurt you, rather than expression of market forces, which require 2 parties to come to an agreement.
Because government corrupts the very society by offering all sorts of impossible in the long run 'solutions', which cannot be supported economically in the long run, but look very lucrative to the majority of voters in the short run.
Because government punishes the productive part of the economy, by sacrificing it to its desire for power, since it basically directs the desires of the majority of the society to get things for free, things they didn't work for and to get those things, somebody must pay, and those are the people, who are in fact producers in the economy.
Because eventually governments spending and power grows beyond ability of the host society to maintain it, and then, government being what it is and corrupting the voters the way it does, destroys not only the economic ability to maintain this spending, but the very fabric of the economic stability - currency itself, by monetizing the insatiable thirst for debt, which is then used to 'pay' for all of the spending, which the voters are corrupted into believing is absolutely necessary and even indeed are their right.
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The point is that government is a force outside of the rest of the market, and while the rest of the market is basically about 2 parties coming to an agreement over costs or value, etc., government does not have such silly limitations - it can impose its will upon the society, upon the economy, etc., regardless of any real economic outcomes and only based on the expedient desires to get more power and to stay in power further and indeed, to increase the power into infinity.
So yes, I cannot view the government in any other light but as the ultimate evil, and this conflicts with my understanding that the power vacuum will be filled with something, and this something better be set on purpose and be controlled than be something random.
The US Constitution was trying to impose the control upon the power of the government, but obviously there is perfect way to control it, and that's why governments always reset once they reach certain level of 'evil', and new governments are established.
It would be better if people understood these simple realities sooner rather than later.
Sounds great in theory. In reality, that isn't what happened. Access to these things was provided by the free market where it was deemed profitable to the utility company. It wasn't until governments stepped in and subsidized and forced through regulations that access to things like electricity and running water came to certain parts of the population.
- nonsense.
There is such a concept as 'early adoption', and it's a very normal process, which means that as technology comes into existence it is very expensive and only the most interested individuals and likely those with most funding can afford it.
However as the time goes on, there is more and more supply of the product of ever increasing quality/decreasing cost in normal market conditions, because as something is profitable in high-end markets, it is much more profitable in lower end markets, simply because in lower end markets there is so much more demand, there are that many more people to be served.
Government does not need to step in to mandate that cell phones must be made cheaper and government does not need to subsidize TV manufacturing in order to give the poor TVs, the market does this perfectly well, and it does the same thing with every other good, only interrupted when government steps into the arena and starts clipping competition and collecting racket money.
It's not perfect. Read a history book. A large chunk of modern regulation was implemented in response to specific "actually it really happened" failures of the free market. You can rhapsodize all you want about how perfect free markets are. But we've tried them, and they consistently prove worse than regulated markets
- nonsense.
Capitalism is the most perfect system for wealth generation and distribution that people have invented (so far at least). There is nothing that advances technology and decreases costs and disseminates wealth quicker than desire of people to profit from greater market penetration than the competition.
Considering that on its face, free market advocacy sounds an awful lot like "I'm a selfish prick that only want to gain the benefits of society without being expected to return anything except what I generously choose"
- no, the selfish ones are busy taking what others have earned and 'redistributing' it the way they believe is correct via coercive force of government power.
free market failures and actors behaving in manners detrimental to markets DESPITE regulations prohibiting these behaviors, you are profoundly unconvincing with your fact free, theoretical arguments.
- there is no failure in free market.
Free market always works in the same exact manner, it does not fail.
If you think that failures of the economy expressed through 2008 crash for example are free market failures, then you are blinder than a bat. Free market was providing a solution to the problem created by the government involvement, the solution was the necessary bust, which would restructure the debt and free up the resources mis-allocated by the government, and instead of taking the bitter medicine, provided by the free market, which would have swiftly cured the problem, the Keynesian shamans have decided they will instead continue the sickness by giving the ailing economy a huge dose of pain killers, dulling the pain but worsening the situation further.
Anything you believe is a 'free market failure', is in reality your failure to understand what actually is failing.
as the book EConned by Yves Smith and the film Inside Job by Ferguson have demonstrated, the 'study of ecnomics' is somewhat corrupt and lacking in the rigor that one might find, say, in the field of, say, art history.
- yes, and more than that.
The modern era 'economists', are loudspeakers for government propaganda, providing an excuse for the very thing that government wants to do anyway - counterfeit money.
Here is a good primer on the difference between a mainstream modern "economist", and somebody who understand economics.
Government sanctioned "economist" talks about fairness and feelings.
The guy who understands economics talks about the risk of moral hazard created by the government action.
Guess which one is 'mainstream' and which one is 'fringe'.
desirable to provide certain basic necessities to our fellow human beings whether they have "earned" them in the free market or not.
- that's all fine and dandy, but you are putting the word 'right' into it, while there is no such thing. If you do charity, this is totally your decision, good for you. However forcing everybody to give up their work for charity is a fine tuned form of slavery.
Access to sanitation, electricity, education, communications, all sorts of things have been added to the list as the wealth of society has increased
- well, obviously. As the free market economy increases the overall wealth of society, there isn't even a way to separate the poorer from the infrastructure that is built around them, so clearly the will be enjoying all those fine things, just like the rest of the society, though probably with somewhat less comfort. Again, this is wealth, and when it is increased by the free market, everybody gets to enjoy some form of it.
And frankly, there are solid arguments that this sort of thing actually benefits society as a whole more so than the free market's obsession with the bottom line does.
- wrong.
This sort of thing does not benefit the society as much as profit does, but it is a pretty good indicator of the overall wealth of the society.
Profit motive is what creates the wealth. Dissipating wealth through charity of your own is your own prerogative, but dissipating wealth through the so called 'charity', forced by the government is just as much a mis-allocation of resources, as when government pays x10 the original cost of some software, like in this story. It's waste, mis-allocation of resources, destruction of wealth, but probably most importantly destruction of personal freedoms.
Give some evidence for this claim - all the most successful economies are regulated
- economies that are most successful were and are regulated the least.
Truly successful economies are those, that have lowest barriers to entry, highest levels of competition, stable or even appreciating currency, rather than government created inflation, maximum business freedoms, so that the entrepreneur is not stopped in his tracks by red tape, no (or very low) taxes on work, so no income, payroll taxes, very little in terms of forced charity.
Examples? Why there are plenty. That's the kind of society that created the modern standard of living in USA itself, because that's the kind of society that USA was in 19 century, when its dollar was appreciating in value, there were no income taxes, there was no business regulations for the most part, there were low barriers to entry, since government maintained a very small number of monopolies, unlike it does today, by having monopolies in every industry.
Irrelevant even if true. Markets and wealth are tools, not end goals.
- it's very relevant, as people have never invented any tools that were better at wealth generation than free market capitalism.
You sound like a guy with a hammer fetish that keeps shouting at everyone that wants to use the occasional screw, "because it's obvious that all that spiral motion of screwing is inefficient compared to the straight in pounding of a nail".
- the media in this case is the message.
The economy depends on real middle class, and real middle class is not what they tell you it is. Real middle class is startups, small business owners, professionals, who work for themselves.
Real middle class provides the majority of production capacity, and your idea of economy destroys that very engine, by creating top heavy monopolistic economy, which dictates everything from government down to the people, stifles real innovation, mis-allocates every bit of real credit, destroys currency, puts enough red tape around any activity, that it is not only hard to cut throug
Well, nothing stops you from using it right now, but if you like to read while at it, get a second monitor.
That's when you use the loudest loudspeaker that there is (tweeter in this case,) and send a picture of an erection to various females, hoping for ... well, something.
Facebook will be launching a new in-browser toilet application. 'The product has been built on a toilet and will include a desktop component. Itâ(TM)s not clear to me whether that means it will just work if a user has a toilet already, or if additional work will need to be done in the house even if the user already uses a toilet. But itâ(TM)s clear that thereâ(TM)s very deep integration between the products, and from the userâ(TM)s perspective, the product will be an in-browser experience.
Up from IPO? There were buyers at 122.70, so for somebody it's done 30% from IPO.
What keeps you here, then, schmuck?
- I actually work on a business that is useful for the customers and that I like. It may make me a schmuck, not to be a simple thief, but at least it doesn't make me a turd, the kind that you seem to be.
Micronecta scholtzi are freshwater insects measuring just 2mm that are common across Europe. ... ... ... ... ... ...
On average, the songs of M. scholtzi reached 78.9 decibels, comparable to a passing freight train.
"If you scale the sound level they produce against their body size, Micronecta scholtzi are the loudest animals on Earth," said Dr Windmill.
To produce the intense sound, the water boatmen "stridulate" by rubbing a ridge on their penis across the ridged surface of their abdomen.
"Males try to compete to have access to females and then try to produce a song as loud as possible potentially scrambling the song of competitors."
What makes M. scholtzi extraordinary is that the area they use to create sound only measures about 50 micrometres across, roughly the width of a human hair.
btw, here is the picture of the little bugger.
Yet another core mantra of the pro-market types that is taken on faith that ignores real world examples that contradict this. This simply isn't true - only PROFITABLE market needs will even theoretically meet a supply.
- well, hello.
I have a need for somebody to come over and scratch my ass all day so that I don't have to do it and I want them also to cook my food and give me BJs, but I only have $2 that I am willing to spend on it.
Well? Any takers?
--
So that's your point? That there are desires that cannot be satisfied for insufficient funding?
But let's go further in your fine analysis.
Sane societies recognize that economically disadvantaged markets (AKA poor people) have a right to certain basic necessities.
- There are no such thing as 'rights' to get things out of society that you want just because you happened not to be able to buy them on your own.
Actual sane societies recognize, that free market economy works much better to increase overall wealth of the entire society, so that the poverty levels are decreased (though there will always be poorer and wealthier people, that's inevitable, but wealth generated by a productive free market economy raises standard of living for everybody, including the relatively poorer ones.)
Anyway, I am sure you have a wonderful rebuttal stuck somewhere there, don't be shy.