var person = new Person('Bob', 'male'); person.language = 'English';...
person.gender - this is 'male' person.language - this is 'English'. person.toString() - this is 'male English'. person.getName() - this is 'Bob'. --
Of-course you can also just evaluate a string into a class on the fly, few language allow that: eval(' var person = {
name: "Bob",
gender: "male",
toString: function () {
return this.name + " " + this.gender;;
} } ');
person.name - this is 'Bob' person.gender - this is 'male'. person.toString() - this is 'Bob male'.
No inheritance
- well, there is the keyword "inherits" and it does allow an object to be extended and you can use the 'prototype' to have multiple inheritance.
-- I am not saying this language is wonderful, whatever, but saying it is lacking various features, that it clearly has, even though they look different from other languages... it's disingenuous.
As to the question whether this language has anything that others do not, again, how about on the fly reflection via evaluation of strings into objects? When I first saw that over a decade ago, I thought it was a neat concept then, I still think it's a neat concept today.
Imagine a world with no government interference -- with no long private railroads (no eminent domain, no free land parcels out west, no westwards expansion).
- oh, the world where actual property rights are respected you mean?
The world where cost of infrastructure would have been real and not subsidized? So that industries would have to account for the real costs and be as profitable only as the markets let them?
Imagine a world where cars are always slow (no roads mean no cars; no cars mean no roads).
- actually, it would have been the world where cars would go as fast as possible on some roads, while slower on others based on competition. Ever heard of private highways? It would be the world, where people would have to bear real costs of their habits, and more public transport would exist rather than the subsidized unsustainable infrastructure, polluting environment and causing tens of thousands of deaths and starting oil wars and destabilizing entire regions for its addiction to cheap fuel.
Yeah, that would be terrible - fewer wars, fewer deaths, fewer sickness, more efficient public transit, an actual sustainable infrastructure.
Terrible.
Imagine a world with no sewers, and no telephone (telephones are possible only because of telegraphs; telegraphs are only possible because of the railroads).
- Quite an imagination you got there.
Obviously people would just shit right under themselves, rather than allow private businesses compete for the best way to remove sewage.
Clearly (only to you) it would be impossible to develop telegraph and telephone and radio, because people are not interested in long distance communications. Who needs to be able to speak to somebody a few miles away without going there.
But imagine a world with lots smallpox, diptheria, and polio.
- oh, because people like dying from those diseases, so clearly the people (market) would not have competing solutions for the delivery of the vaccines. Vaccination idea, which started at the end of 18 century, clearly, that would not have caught on without the massive government intervention. It must have been the government officials who came up with all the different vaccines and not companies looking for profit.
So companies looking for profit would not be advertising there services, clearly. Yeah, makes so much sense.
A world with short, nasty lives.
- right, because the capitalism and industrial revolution did not reduce child mortality in 19 century by 75%. Because capitalism and industrial revolution did not increase the wealth of US in that century so much, that the standard of living went up more than any time in history before than, allowing people to eat better and safer food (cheaper too), with all that automation and efficiencies in agriculture and such nonsense ideas such as refrigeration, and that same capitalism and industrialization did not cause creation of cities and appearance of the middle class - small businesses and professionals, and did not create the need for more education, due to increased automation and specialization and it did not cause people's education to go up, and as we all know, the more educated people are not living longer, right?
A world with plenty of Victorian virtues like polluted water and air, and childen living and dying in poverty.
- right, because we all know that it is the poor nations, with all sorts of government that actually have solved their pollution and poverty problems, but of-course it is the capitalism and lack of government that caused increase of poverty and increase of pollution, why, all those improvements in efficiencies in energy usage and all those ideas about reuse of energy and materials, it would have never happened in societies that have competition in the markets. No, that's impossible.
Yeah, because obviously there would have been no competition without government intervention (which by the way, only really meant some grant money to some people, to the same people who also worked in the private sector).
Hey, when people vote here, they always vote to decrease income taxes, without a failure. I expect another decrease by half next year as well.
Government exists because the void is always filled with something. Did I say anything about anarchy? No. I said government must have as little power as possible and not to meddle with business and economy and not to print money.
Here is something for you: the Frank, it's around all time record high, somewhere around USD1.14. It used to be maybe 25 cents about 20 years ago.
Anyway, enjoy your regulation and money printing paradise.
You are correct, that following the market crash of 1929 the US stopped printing for a little while and that Hoover was in office.
However the monetary expansion just before the crash was the largest in US history, as USA was propping up UK pound and buying UK debt.
Also do not forget what the Federal reserve did in 1929 right after the crash. The Fed doubled the holdings of government securities, added over $150 million in reserves and discounted $200 million for member banks. They bailed out the wall street, son. You know, like they did in 2008. They stopped the market from restructuring.
What do you think is happening now, past the 2008 crash?
They also expanded money supply by 10% a week, so do not be gullible to think the government stayed out of the 'cure' (to the illness it created itself.)
The Fed lowered the interest rate from 6% to 4.5% in the fall of 2009.
In November of 2009 Hoover starts public works programs. Hoover started with various subsidies 'stimulus packages' to ship building companies.
also in 1929:
Agricultural Marketing Act was passed with $500 million in loans by the Treasury to farms, etc.
FFB lent $150 million to wheat coops and establishes the Farmersâ(TM) National Grain Corporation with $10 million capital.
in 1930 Hoover added 100 million to FFB and he creates the 'Grain Stabilization Corporation'
ALL THIS IS TO KEEP PRICES UP!
The same way they are trying to keep the house prices up today. Any similarities?
What about the overstock? GSC accumulated 65 million bushels of wheat by June 1930. Any similarities to the banks, not liquidating the houses and Freddie/Fannie and FHA today, and Treasury with all the holdings on the books?
Do you know what the real debt of USA Treasury is? Except for everything else, it contains the debt that the Treasury bought from the bailed out banks, think about that.
In November GSC actually bought another 200 million bushels of wheat. Can you believe this shit?
The Treasury lost $300 million by 1931 in wheat and cotton alone.
There were other programs like that - for life stock and grape and who knows what else.
In 1930 they started with the $915 million dollar public works program.
The discount rate was taken down by the Fed from 4.5 to 2%
Any similarities you see to today?
In 1930 they passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff law, raising import tariffs to highest ever. Well, at least in those times the USA actually HAD a production base.
NYSE was hit with exchange controls - no more shorts were allowed - this was by Hoover himself:) So markets were NOT allowed to correct.
In 1930 employment fell by 16%, manufacturing fell by 20%.
Government pushed expenses up from 14.3% GPP to 18.2% in 1930.
1931: the crisis also hit Europe: bank of England.
Government pushed expenses up from 18.2% to 24.3% in 1931.
Bacon-Davis act was passed, maximum daily working hours were set at 8, minimum wage was enforced for public works projects, unemployment went higher.
1931: National Credit Corporation is established and banks are bailed out with another $153 million.
1932: sales taxes on gas, bank checks, bond transfers, phone, telegraph, radio messages and other stuff were introduced.
Income taxes were raised from 1.5%-5% to 4%-8%, corporate tax was raised from 12 to 14%, gift tax of 33.3% was instated.
Government spending went up from 24.3% of GPP in 1931 to 28.9% in 1932
1932: Congress establishes Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), with $500 million reserve and debt allowances up to $1.5 billion.
In the first 5 months, RFC loans out $1 billion of loans, 60% of the money went to the banks and 20% to rail roads.
In 1932, RFC is allowed to loan another 1.8 billion.
NOW FDR comes into the office.
So now starts the first unemployment relief authority, etc. Glass-Steagal act is passed to offset the damage of FDIC.
1932, the Fed increases reserves by $660 million to $2.51 billion.
One of the few places actually, and yes, it is much freer in terms of personal freedoms and taxes than USA is.
As to your logical fallacy, of 'taking me seriously' rather than looking at the message, I already noticed it, but I am sure you are unfamiliar with the concept.
Without government intervention there wouldn't be an Internet, and thus, no Zuckerberg. I find your ideas intriguing...
- not true. Without government the Internet would have been anyway, just like telegraph was and telephone was and radio was and TV was.
The TCP/IP was basically a rip off from the telephone switch board ideas, so nothing impossible. Besides, the computer networks existed prior to TCP/IP, they were small, within walls of one building, but they did exist. More interesting is the question: what would have been if government stayed out of the telecommunications altogether and did not proclaim monopolies 'strategic to national interests', such as they did with AT&T.
Of course it has no price--it ceases to function as currency. You don't need to have one king hoarding for this to happen. A cadre of royals is sufficient. That's what's happening in this country. A cadre has hoarded more and more dollars, and paid fewer taxes on them.
- dollars are not gold, that's first.
Secondly, before 1913 dollars were gold and people did NOT pay income taxes, the poor poor government managed somehow with all those alcohol and excise taxes.
Thirdly, the gold is always money, regardless of where it is stored - kings coffers or anywhere else.
Inflation is the government's attempt to replace lost tax revenue. It's a regressive tax.
- it's not 'lost' tax revenue, if it was never collected before, it's the kind of revenue that is collected without acknowledging the need for paying for the programs with actual taxes, because people love their free cheese, bread and circuses, but ask them to pay for it and you may not be elected.
I know it's absolutely galling to conservatives to suggest that money is anything more than a reward for hard work justly beloning entirely to those who have obtained it lawfully; and certainly it is in part. At the margins though, money is a moat, a barrier to entry, a multiplier of power.
- money is a store of value, unit of accounting and means of exchange.
Everything else is irrelevant, as people do not want money, they want THINGS they buy with the money.
Money in itself is meaningless, maybe Communists should think about what they actually want - things or money.
Without progressive taxation, wealth concentrates in the hands of the few, the economy polarizes, and we are back to monarchy.
- wealth is created by those, who earn more, because they are the ones who actually build businesses and they are the people, who make it possible for society to have the benefit of all those products, that the businesses provide.
Secondary to it is the fact that people work for those businesses.
An average 'rich person' is much more deserving of his money than an average 9-5 person, as the average 'rich' person provides many jobs that are 9-5 to various interchangeable people and the average 'rich' person provides the society with the actual fruits of the work of the business - products and services, which are the end result of the work and are the reason that the person becomes rich.
The epithet "Robber-barron" applied to 19th century industrialists was not too far off the mark.
- thank your government for that one, without the government intervention there wouldn't have been robber barons.
I have noticed though that you haven't moved there. Or to any other of your social utopias. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that they're utter shit holes with life expectancies that make the dark ages look advanced.
- bzzzzzzzt. Wrong. I am in one of the 'utopias' and no longer in North America, though I spent 16 years in Canada and USA. What else have you noticed?
Somalia is actually doing better now, after the civil war, that was brought upon by its former Communist government, so I am CONVINCED that Somalia is better in terms of future growth than the USA.
However if you want to compare the affairs of USA to somebody in the similar situation, you should really take a look at Zimbabwe or Argentina or former USSR.
I don't know what it is you think I 'push' in terms of fear, but don't you think that I am also providing the view to the 'other' side of the equation, and maybe, just maybe, some people, who never really thought about things this way could benefit from the insight?
Because if you hold real money and not fiat, you are not susceptible to the inflation.
Because if you understand what is happening to US economy, you can invest abroad into real businesses, that pay dividends, that actually have real growth potential, because they are real producers?
Because the young people, who are going to be stuck having to subsidize the millions of unemployed and 'retired' on SS and Medicare/Medicaid may just start learning other languages, because honestly, there is no reason to stay and be slave to that system, which actually enslaves them.
There is no recovery, there is no production, so there is no economy. There is no way to repay any of the principal of the debts, even servicing the interest will become really hard past 2016. There is no way to save with insane 0% interest in US dollars, so there is no reason to hold on to those US properties and since the investments are no longer possible due to destruction of savings, there will be fewer and fewer jobs and in real terms there will be huge decline in values of US properties going further, while the debts will pile up ever higher as US Fed monetizes debts of all parties, from the federal government, to States, to municipalities, to businesses that are still there.
When was the last time you bought a pair of socks that are made in USA?
But if you see this as only 'fear mongering', then my comments are really useless for you. But where there is one side, there is always another - if the US dollar is falling and there is no bottom underneath it, search for other ways to save.
If the US properties are going to be destroyed in real terms, get rid of them.
Learn new languages, familiarize yourself with foreign markets. Diversify your savings and make sure you and your savings are mobile. But maybe this is not a good strategy for you, if you think this is just fear talking. I think this is a good opportunity actually.
These Libertarians would have you blame government for the fact that government is corrupted by corporations!
- yes. It is the fact that a business will always try to find the easiest route to make money.
If the easiest route is to lobby the government, than that's what it will do. In absence of that, the companies must compete for customers, as the government will not be there supplying the customers to them via various laws/subsidies/taxes/regulations.
What do you think is better for a customer, more or less competition among the businesses that supply him with products/services? The mere presence of government force, which makes the economy its business, which prints money, which sets interest rates, which creates regulations (and yes, regulations include minimum wage, pollution controls, subsidies, taxes/tax breaks, everything), the mere presence of such a government around is an open invitation not to compete on the market, but instead to compete in the halls of high government offices. Why do you want that?
As to minimum wage, etc. - those should not exist.
Very few people actually work at minimum wage, but there are millions of unemployed people who could find jobs if there were no regulations such as that one and there was no money printing.
Do you know what minimum wage really does? It only does one thing: removes certain types of jobs, that cannot be profitable at whatever the rate, that the minimum wage is set at. The losers? People who cannot get the products/services that such jobs would provide. People who cannot find their first job and are stuck jobless. Society, as it has people who are unproductive and are not working and seek government support.
--
Do you know who the real enemy is? It is not "Libertarians", who are against minimum wage.
It is the government, which on one hand sets the minimum wage and on the other prints money, so that the money loses value.
Do you know what the minimum wage was before 1970s? $1.50. Do you know what that bought? 6 gallons of gas, or 1.5 ounces of silver. Do you know how much you need to make today to buy that? Do you know why the prices are going up in dollars?
Do you understand that in real money - gold/silver, the prices for gas are lowest in history of USA? 10 cents per gallon of gas (well, if the dime is silver and minted prior to 1968).
--
As to oil prices - do not let the government to set the tone, it is not the speculators or oil companies who are to blame. It is not even the increase in global demand or instability in the Middle East.
It is money printing only.
It is not the increase of demand, because the market responds to the increase of demand by increasing of the supply.
It is not the speculators because the speculators enter hot markets and on each bet there are 2 parties - for and against (and speculators provide liquidity to have smoother price curves in fact).
It is not oil companies, as Exxon only makes 2 cents per gallon in USA (and government makes 48 cents per gallon, plus whatever corporate and personal taxes that are taken from Exxon itself and its workers).
I am not sure, but it does look a bit similar, doesn't it? As the chair of the Fed slowly takes his pants down and bends everybody, who holds dollar denominated assets over and has his way with them without even a hint of lubrication.
Government loves to blame everybody else for the inflation the government is causing by printing money.
Speculators enter markets that are hot, they do not create these markets. The markets for commodities become hot because of all the money that the government prints.
The real culprit - Federal reserve of USA as well as other national banks, which peg their currencies to the US dollar (what a joke of a 'reserve' that is.)
Sure, speculators can increase volatility in the market, but they also do at least 4 other things that are actually important:
1. They are taking other sides of the bet, they provide liquidity, which means in many cases they actually slow down the jerking movement of prices.
2. They are creating clear signals to the market what is hot, so market can respond by doing what is necessary to provide more of that product/service.
3. By shorting, the speculators bring attention to what is dangerous, what is likely to go down, so market can move resources out of that product/service.
4. Speculators are NOT all on ONE side of the trade. That's why it is NONSENSE that speculators are the CAUSE of prices going up. As many speculators are on one side of the trade, as there are on the other.
--
The actual REASON for the prices going up is the increased demand and this literally means MORE CASH that is in the system. Money = demand. When the central bank prints money, it increases the demand.
Think about it this way: if the market has 100 participants, each one has 10 dollars, then prices for things cannot actually exceed 10 dollars. If each participant has 1000 dollars, then prices cannot exceed 1000 dollars. But prices will rise to the top limit, of what people have on them to spend, this is basic stuff, it's like a law. However when the money is provided by government for free (think 0% interest rates, when the actual inflation is definitely over 9%), then there is all this high demand based on the money that is really not even earned.
Stop the money flow from the government printers and you will in fact cap the prices on commodities, products, etc.
Can you fathom this simple idea?
-- As to the prices of oil and gas being record high, I am bringing another thing to your attention:
Prices for the gas are in fact record low.
I repeat: the prices for gas have NEVER been lower than they are today.
One gallon of gas can be bought with 10 US cents. Of-course the 10 US cents must be real money, minted prior to 1968 out of silver.
That's right - if you actually had real Constitutional money, and not this worthless fiat paper, that the Fed is printing, you'd have prices for gas be around 10 cents right now, and the actual lowest price recorded was 25 cents back than, so in fact today there is DEFLATION in terms of commodities but inflation in terms of fiat money, which is my point - if you have real money, you are doing OK.
I am a bit tired of making the same point, that it is government taxes and subsidies that destroy the economy, but this is the correct story for it and your comment is a good way to enter the discussion.
Infrastructure suffers due to government involvement. Imagine if there was no FDR, the recession of 1929 could go the route of the recession of 1921 and there would be no public projects and no Great Depression (which is not going to seem so great once the current one really hits with the debt and currency crisis). Imagine the federal government did not build the highway system, did not tax the airlines and did not destroy profitable private rail while laying down the roads.
There would be no subsidies to the auto industry in form of the roads, there would be much fewer people relying on personal cars for transportation. Trains and air travel would dominate and within cities there would be healthy market for profitable private transportation as well.
There would be no suburban sprawl. People would drive to work for 2 hours, they wouldn't waste those 2 hours on the road. There would be many fewer accidents and deaths and much less illness associated with sedentary life style. People and places would be within walking distance, the infrastructure would be actually sustainable without government subsidies.
The oil would not be needed in such enormous quantities. There would be much less possibility of a housing crisis, and the newly built areas would have to also build the necessary infrastructure for easy public access via rail/air/bus/etc/cab/etc.
There would be much less need for oil, so foreign policy could be much more relaxed and there could be much fewer conflicts with and within the oil rich nations.
The pollution could be much lower than it is today.
There are all these obvious benefits to NOT having government in doing business and designing and building the infrastructure if only the government could let go of the money and power that these projects bring with themselves..... but they cannot.
The highway system gives the government huge leverage against States and municipalities, allows them to dictate their local policies and politics. There are all these oil and other companies that come to the government with all this money... No way a politician could ever resist.
--
As to all this nonsense about oil making huge profits and 'not paying fair share' - lets see. Per Exxon site:
Less than 3 percent of ExxonMobilâ(TM)s earnings are from U.S. gasoline sales ExxonMobilâ(TM)s earnings are from operations in more than 100 countries around the world. The part of the business that refines and sells gasoline and diesel in the United States represents less than 3 percent â" or 3 cents on the dollar â" of our total earnings. For every gallon of gasoline, diesel or finished products we manufactured and sold in the United States in the last three months of 2010, we earned a little more than 2 cents per gallon. Thatâ(TM)s not a typo. Two cents.
So on their US business, Exxon makes 2 cents per gallon. Do you know how much the government of USA makes on each gallon? 48 cents. NO WAY a government would give up such a lucrative racket, and all it took was to build a bunch of public unsustainable subsidized highways with all these other perks - like leverage against States, and all of this is done by taxing somebody else via direct taxes as well as indirect inflation tax, which hits anybody actually owning / earning US dollars, as with every new printed dollar, the value of all dollars go down. That's why it was important for the US government to get off the gold standard, they could not print it.
But did the public really get something good for it? Well, clearly, somebody got s
News flash: Old laws can be changed and superseded by new laws. It was not long ago that sodomy was a punishable offense.
- yeah, clearly, having the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank defining the dollar as "whatever it buys" rather than actually defining it as a measure of weight of gold/silver, as it was defined when people cared about such nonsense as their money, and having sodomy as punishable offense.... yeah, those are the same things, you got me.
Why would you want your currency to depend on the value of a commodity?
- gold is money, not just any commodity. But I would rather use anything as money than any fiat currency (and I do, I only use fiat currency to get back into real money and when I need to run a transaction that only accepts so called 'legal tender').
By the way, if you didn't notice, gold was always going up once the dollar became just a piece of paper, printed at the whim of a politician. Why would you want your money to deteriorate in value all the time? What, you don't like having savings? You don't like prices going down, you only want prices to go up as you are taxed upon your entire holdings that are denominated in fiat?
If a big gold mine is discovered, the contents of your bank account shrink.
- welcome to the age of the printer. Do you know that they can print until they run out of trees (and also out of cotton and plastic now?) They don't even have to discover a mine of something to print. Pretty illogical to complain about a possible mine discovery (and they do discover mines all the time) and the fact that money doesn't have to be even printed anymore, as Bernanke said, he just 'adds zeros to the account', but don't take my word for it, how about a humorous perspective?
If there's no more gold in the world, there's no way for nominal wealth to increase as productiveness increases, so you get deflation
- yes, deflation. Terrible terrible deflation. Prices falling. Awful thing. Things costing less in a year, than they cost a year before. Just impossible to live in that situation, especially if you are not that rich. Totally impossible. Well, impossible, unless you are USA 19 century that is. When deflation was actually the state of affairs while the economy was growing. Yes, the new businesses were appearing, new products coming into the market, new services, new wealth, but golly, what a shame, things didn't rise in price and instead they fell in price.
Awful.
Terrible.
Of-course thank government for saving you from this disaster. Government with its awesome powers to take a silver dime minted prior to year 1968 and make sure that the dime goes up in nominal price to about $4, while a gallon of gas also going up to about that price. What a shame that would be, to have that money to buy this gas. Terrible shame, it would be just the cheapest gas ever in US history in that money. Government to the rescue.
Of-course government also came to the rescue of a minimum wage worker, who was only getting USD1.50/hour before 1970s, and for that miserly amount he could buy what, about 6 gallons of gas then? Or he could maintain a family even without debt on that money. Well, government inflation took care of that nonsense. Now that same minimum wage workers get an astounding 7.50 or so? That's amazing, that's almost 2 gallons of oil, and of-course, since the minimum wage worker never paid any taxes (and even got some money back), his actual salary today would have to be over USD60/hour to compare to that of the minimum wage worker who worked prior to 1970s.
But yeah, we have to fear the deflation. Horrible horrible deflation, because one most important concern is that the government must be able to finance its scams with lots and lots of debt, and deflation would really put a squeeze on that.
Inflation, by the way, has been below 3% for almost all of the last 20 years; how much more stable do you need your prices?
- oh, you must be a real genius there. 3% ha? You are quoting the CPI, the core inflation numbers, with all the substitutions and hedonistic adjustments? Yeah, makes sense. Never mind the prices of actual things people buy, let's go by the government numbers.
Slashdot Mirror
just in case... this is /. after all, there is another error there, I should have said
this.name = name;
in the first 'Person' function.
Oh, and with the 'eval' function, you should have the entire contents of that in one line, not split across multiple lines, or use escapes there...
yes, I said I made a syntax error.
I expect another 5 comments about this, but it does not change the fact that there is scope if you do not make the same syntax error as I did.
You are correct, I missed 'var'.
It does not change the fact that there is scope, it only means I made a syntax error.
Javascript doesn't have types to speak of
str = "10" + 2; - becomes "102"
num = 10 + 2; - becomes 12
num = 10 + 2 + "2"; - becomes 14
num = "10" - 3; - becomes 7
num = 10 / "2"; - becomes 5
num = "2" * 4; - becomes 8
num = 35.00;
str = "VALUE IS: " + num; - this becomes "VALUE IS 35".
--
Sure, it's a bit strange, but nothing extraordinary.
---
No scope to speak of
well, it's not true really. In the following example x will have global scope and y will be local to its function:
x=2;
function test() {
y = x + 3;
}
--
no real notion of classes
function Person(name, gender) {
this.gender = gender;
this.language;
this.name;
this.toString = function() {
return '' + this.gender + ' ' + language;
};
}
Person.prototype.getName = function() {
return this.name;
};
var person = new Person('Bob', 'male'); ...
person.language = 'English';
person.gender - this is 'male'
person.language - this is 'English'.
person.toString() - this is 'male English'.
person.getName() - this is 'Bob'.
--
Of-course you can also just evaluate a string into a class on the fly, few language allow that:
eval('
var person = {
name: "Bob",
gender: "male",
toString: function () {
return this.name + " " + this.gender;;
}
}
');
person.name - this is 'Bob'
person.gender - this is 'male'.
person.toString() - this is 'Bob male'.
No inheritance
- well, there is the keyword "inherits" and it does allow an object to be extended and you can use the 'prototype' to have multiple inheritance.
--
I am not saying this language is wonderful, whatever, but saying it is lacking various features, that it clearly has, even though they look different from other languages... it's disingenuous.
As to the question whether this language has anything that others do not, again, how about on the fly reflection via evaluation of strings into objects? When I first saw that over a decade ago, I thought it was a neat concept then, I still think it's a neat concept today.
as per the usual procedure, the powers that be, in form of the brainwashed population made sure, that the real information about economic situation is hidden away from the eyes of the public.
Imagine a world with no government interference -- with no long private railroads (no eminent domain, no free land parcels out west, no westwards expansion).
- oh, the world where actual property rights are respected you mean?
The world where cost of infrastructure would have been real and not subsidized? So that industries would have to account for the real costs and be as profitable only as the markets let them?
Imagine a world where cars are always slow (no roads mean no cars; no cars mean no roads).
- actually, it would have been the world where cars would go as fast as possible on some roads, while slower on others based on competition. Ever heard of private highways? It would be the world, where people would have to bear real costs of their habits, and more public transport would exist rather than the subsidized unsustainable infrastructure, polluting environment and causing tens of thousands of deaths and starting oil wars and destabilizing entire regions for its addiction to cheap fuel.
Yeah, that would be terrible - fewer wars, fewer deaths, fewer sickness, more efficient public transit, an actual sustainable infrastructure.
Terrible.
Imagine a world with no sewers, and no telephone (telephones are possible only because of telegraphs; telegraphs are only possible because of the railroads).
- Quite an imagination you got there.
Obviously people would just shit right under themselves, rather than allow private businesses compete for the best way to remove sewage.
Clearly (only to you) it would be impossible to develop telegraph and telephone and radio, because people are not interested in long distance communications. Who needs to be able to speak to somebody a few miles away without going there.
But imagine a world with lots smallpox, diptheria, and polio.
- oh, because people like dying from those diseases, so clearly the people (market) would not have competing solutions for the delivery of the vaccines. Vaccination idea, which started at the end of 18 century, clearly, that would not have caught on without the massive government intervention. It must have been the government officials who came up with all the different vaccines and not companies looking for profit.
So companies looking for profit would not be advertising there services, clearly. Yeah, makes so much sense.
A world with short, nasty lives.
- right, because the capitalism and industrial revolution did not reduce child mortality in 19 century by 75%. Because capitalism and industrial revolution did not increase the wealth of US in that century so much, that the standard of living went up more than any time in history before than, allowing people to eat better and safer food (cheaper too), with all that automation and efficiencies in agriculture and such nonsense ideas such as refrigeration, and that same capitalism and industrialization did not cause creation of cities and appearance of the middle class - small businesses and professionals, and did not create the need for more education, due to increased automation and specialization and it did not cause people's education to go up, and as we all know, the more educated people are not living longer, right?
A world with plenty of Victorian virtues like polluted water and air, and childen living and dying in poverty.
- right, because we all know that it is the poor nations, with all sorts of government that actually have solved their pollution and poverty problems, but of-course it is the capitalism and lack of government that caused increase of poverty and increase of pollution, why, all those improvements in efficiencies in energy usage and all those ideas about reuse of energy and materials, it would have never happened in societies that have competition in the markets. No, that's impossible.
Yeah, because obviously there would have been no competition without government intervention (which by the way, only really meant some grant money to some people, to the same people who also worked in the private sector).
Amount of shortsightedness is staggering.
Hey, when people vote here, they always vote to decrease income taxes, without a failure. I expect another decrease by half next year as well.
Government exists because the void is always filled with something. Did I say anything about anarchy? No. I said government must have as little power as possible and not to meddle with business and economy and not to print money.
Here is something for you: the Frank, it's around all time record high, somewhere around USD1.14. It used to be maybe 25 cents about 20 years ago.
Anyway, enjoy your regulation and money printing paradise.
Oh, when I said "2009" talking about Hoover :), I should have proof read it, but it's 1929.
You are correct, that following the market crash of 1929 the US stopped printing for a little while and that Hoover was in office.
However the monetary expansion just before the crash was the largest in US history, as USA was propping up UK pound and buying UK debt.
Also do not forget what the Federal reserve did in 1929 right after the crash. The Fed doubled the holdings of government securities, added over $150 million in reserves and discounted $200 million for member banks. They bailed out the wall street, son. You know, like they did in 2008. They stopped the market from restructuring.
What do you think is happening now, past the 2008 crash?
They also expanded money supply by 10% a week, so do not be gullible to think the government stayed out of the 'cure' (to the illness it created itself.)
The Fed lowered the interest rate from 6% to 4.5% in the fall of 2009.
In November of 2009 Hoover starts public works programs.
Hoover started with various subsidies 'stimulus packages' to ship building companies.
also in 1929:
Agricultural Marketing Act was passed with $500 million in loans by the Treasury to farms, etc.
FFB lent $150 million to wheat coops and establishes the Farmersâ(TM) National Grain Corporation with $10 million capital.
in 1930 Hoover added 100 million to FFB and he creates the 'Grain Stabilization Corporation'
ALL THIS IS TO KEEP PRICES UP!
The same way they are trying to keep the house prices up today. Any similarities?
What about the overstock? GSC accumulated 65 million bushels of wheat by June 1930. Any similarities to the banks, not liquidating the houses and Freddie/Fannie and FHA today, and Treasury with all the holdings on the books?
Do you know what the real debt of USA Treasury is? Except for everything else, it contains the debt that the Treasury bought from the bailed out banks, think about that.
In November GSC actually bought another 200 million bushels of wheat. Can you believe this shit?
The Treasury lost $300 million by 1931 in wheat and cotton alone.
There were other programs like that - for life stock and grape and who knows what else.
In 1930 they started with the $915 million dollar public works program.
The discount rate was taken down by the Fed from 4.5 to 2%
Any similarities you see to today?
In 1930 they passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff law, raising import tariffs to highest ever. Well, at least in those times the USA actually HAD a production base.
NYSE was hit with exchange controls - no more shorts were allowed - this was by Hoover himself :) So markets were NOT allowed to correct.
In 1930 employment fell by 16%, manufacturing fell by 20%.
Government pushed expenses up from 14.3% GPP to 18.2% in 1930.
1931: the crisis also hit Europe: bank of England.
Government pushed expenses up from 18.2% to 24.3% in 1931.
Bacon-Davis act was passed, maximum daily working hours were set at 8, minimum wage was enforced for public works projects, unemployment went higher.
1931: National Credit Corporation is established and banks are bailed out with another $153 million.
1932: sales taxes on gas, bank checks, bond transfers, phone, telegraph, radio messages and other stuff were introduced.
Income taxes were raised from 1.5%-5% to 4%-8%, corporate tax was raised from 12 to 14%, gift tax of 33.3% was instated.
Government spending went up from 24.3% of GPP in 1931 to 28.9% in 1932
1932: Congress establishes Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), with $500 million reserve and debt allowances up to $1.5 billion.
In the first 5 months, RFC loans out $1 billion of loans, 60% of the money went to the banks and 20% to rail roads.
In 1932, RFC is allowed to loan another 1.8 billion.
NOW FDR comes into the office.
So now starts the first unemployment relief authority, etc.
Glass-Steagal act is passed to offset the damage of FDIC.
1932, the Fed increases reserves by $660 million to $2.51 billion.
etc.
etc.
etc.
etc.
Tell me more about the Great Depression, please.
Hey, are you Ben Bernankey by any chance? :)
Because when Ron Paul asked him about definition of the dollar, he said: it's whatever dollar buys.
Which is very funny, coming from a Fed chairman, because he really should know from the coinage act of 1972:
The dollar is supposed to be a unit of weight of gold or silver
$1= 371 4/16 grain (24.1 g) pure or 416 grain (27.0 g) standard silver.
$10 = 247 4/8 grain (16.0 g) pure or 270 grain (17.5 g) standard gold.
But anyway, you keep printing there, Ben, it helps the asset values.
One of the few places actually, and yes, it is much freer in terms of personal freedoms and taxes than USA is.
As to your logical fallacy, of 'taking me seriously' rather than looking at the message, I already noticed it, but I am sure you are unfamiliar with the concept.
Without government intervention there wouldn't be an Internet, and thus, no Zuckerberg. I find your ideas intriguing...
- not true. Without government the Internet would have been anyway, just like telegraph was and telephone was and radio was and TV was.
The TCP/IP was basically a rip off from the telephone switch board ideas, so nothing impossible. Besides, the computer networks existed prior to TCP/IP, they were small, within walls of one building, but they did exist. More interesting is the question: what would have been if government stayed out of the telecommunications altogether and did not proclaim monopolies 'strategic to national interests', such as they did with AT&T.
Lucerne, my friend. A decentralized system, bent on reducing income taxes year to year. Something USA should have been.
Of course it has no price--it ceases to function as currency. You don't need to have one king hoarding for this to happen. A cadre of royals is sufficient. That's what's happening in this country. A cadre has hoarded more and more dollars, and paid fewer taxes on them.
- dollars are not gold, that's first.
Secondly, before 1913 dollars were gold and people did NOT pay income taxes, the poor poor government managed somehow with all those alcohol and excise taxes.
Thirdly, the gold is always money, regardless of where it is stored - kings coffers or anywhere else.
Inflation is the government's attempt to replace lost tax revenue. It's a regressive tax.
- it's not 'lost' tax revenue, if it was never collected before, it's the kind of revenue that is collected without acknowledging the need for paying for the programs with actual taxes, because people love their free cheese, bread and circuses, but ask them to pay for it and you may not be elected.
I know it's absolutely galling to conservatives to suggest that money is anything more than a reward for hard work justly beloning entirely to those who have obtained it lawfully; and certainly it is in part. At the margins though, money is a moat, a barrier to entry, a multiplier of power.
- money is a store of value, unit of accounting and means of exchange.
Everything else is irrelevant, as people do not want money, they want THINGS they buy with the money.
Money in itself is meaningless, maybe Communists should think about what they actually want - things or money.
Without progressive taxation, wealth concentrates in the hands of the few, the economy polarizes, and we are back to monarchy.
- wealth is created by those, who earn more, because they are the ones who actually build businesses and they are the people, who make it possible for society to have the benefit of all those products, that the businesses provide.
Secondary to it is the fact that people work for those businesses.
An average 'rich person' is much more deserving of his money than an average 9-5 person, as the average 'rich' person provides many jobs that are 9-5 to various interchangeable people and the average 'rich' person provides the society with the actual fruits of the work of the business - products and services, which are the end result of the work and are the reason that the person becomes rich.
The epithet "Robber-barron" applied to 19th century industrialists was not too far off the mark.
- thank your government for that one, without the government intervention there wouldn't have been robber barons.
I have noticed though that you haven't moved there. Or to any other of your social utopias. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that they're utter shit holes with life expectancies that make the dark ages look advanced.
- bzzzzzzzt. Wrong. I am in one of the 'utopias' and no longer in North America, though I spent 16 years in Canada and USA. What else have you noticed?
Maybe you should be more specific, when you are asking for something.
Here is a little something from last October, when I posted THOSE numbers:
October 1 2010
Gold: new high
Silver: new 30 year high
Gold stocks hit 52 week high
Oil: strong day and strong week
Dollar: dropped 13 percent from peak 3 months ago
September is done, media says: this is best September in 71 years. Dow gained 7.7%, SMP gained 8.8%.
However this month of September.
CRB Index (commodities): gained 8.7% - beat DOW and just under SMP
Soy beans: up 9.5% - beat SMP
Copper: up 10% - beat SMP
Rice: up 10% - beat SMP
Oil: up 11% - beat SMP
Corn: up 12% - beat SMP
Silver: up 13% - beat SMP
Frozen concentrated orange juice: up 13% - beat SMP
Cotton: up 17.5% - beat SMP
Sugar: up 19.3% - beat SMP
Currencies:
Swiss Frank: up 4.6%
Euro: up 7%
Australian Dollar: up 9% - beat SMP
---
Did anything change from back then, to today?
Nope. Same trends, same thing happening.
Somalia is actually doing better now, after the civil war, that was brought upon by its former Communist government, so I am CONVINCED that Somalia is better in terms of future growth than the USA.
However if you want to compare the affairs of USA to somebody in the similar situation, you should really take a look at Zimbabwe or Argentina or former USSR.
I don't know what it is you think I 'push' in terms of fear, but don't you think that I am also providing the view to the 'other' side of the equation, and maybe, just maybe, some people, who never really thought about things this way could benefit from the insight?
Because if you hold real money and not fiat, you are not susceptible to the inflation.
Because if you understand what is happening to US economy, you can invest abroad into real businesses, that pay dividends, that actually have real growth potential, because they are real producers?
Because the young people, who are going to be stuck having to subsidize the millions of unemployed and 'retired' on SS and Medicare/Medicaid may just start learning other languages, because honestly, there is no reason to stay and be slave to that system, which actually enslaves them.
There is no recovery, there is no production, so there is no economy. There is no way to repay any of the principal of the debts, even servicing the interest will become really hard past 2016. There is no way to save with insane 0% interest in US dollars, so there is no reason to hold on to those US properties and since the investments are no longer possible due to destruction of savings, there will be fewer and fewer jobs and in real terms there will be huge decline in values of US properties going further, while the debts will pile up ever higher as US Fed monetizes debts of all parties, from the federal government, to States, to municipalities, to businesses that are still there.
When was the last time you bought a pair of socks that are made in USA?
But if you see this as only 'fear mongering', then my comments are really useless for you. But where there is one side, there is always another - if the US dollar is falling and there is no bottom underneath it, search for other ways to save.
If the US properties are going to be destroyed in real terms, get rid of them.
Learn new languages, familiarize yourself with foreign markets. Diversify your savings and make sure you and your savings are mobile. But maybe this is not a good strategy for you, if you think this is just fear talking. I think this is a good opportunity actually.
These Libertarians would have you blame government for the fact that government is corrupted by corporations!
- yes. It is the fact that a business will always try to find the easiest route to make money.
If the easiest route is to lobby the government, than that's what it will do. In absence of that, the companies must compete for customers, as the government will not be there supplying the customers to them via various laws/subsidies/taxes/regulations.
What do you think is better for a customer, more or less competition among the businesses that supply him with products/services? The mere presence of government force, which makes the economy its business, which prints money, which sets interest rates, which creates regulations (and yes, regulations include minimum wage, pollution controls, subsidies, taxes/tax breaks, everything), the mere presence of such a government around is an open invitation not to compete on the market, but instead to compete in the halls of high government offices. Why do you want that?
As to minimum wage, etc. - those should not exist.
Very few people actually work at minimum wage, but there are millions of unemployed people who could find jobs if there were no regulations such as that one and there was no money printing.
Do you know what minimum wage really does? It only does one thing: removes certain types of jobs, that cannot be profitable at whatever the rate, that the minimum wage is set at. The losers? People who cannot get the products/services that such jobs would provide. People who cannot find their first job and are stuck jobless. Society, as it has people who are unproductive and are not working and seek government support.
--
Do you know who the real enemy is? It is not "Libertarians", who are against minimum wage.
It is the government, which on one hand sets the minimum wage and on the other prints money, so that the money loses value.
Do you know what the minimum wage was before 1970s? $1.50. Do you know what that bought? 6 gallons of gas, or 1.5 ounces of silver. Do you know how much you need to make today to buy that? Do you know why the prices are going up in dollars?
Do you understand that in real money - gold/silver, the prices for gas are lowest in history of USA? 10 cents per gallon of gas (well, if the dime is silver and minted prior to 1968).
--
As to oil prices - do not let the government to set the tone, it is not the speculators or oil companies who are to blame. It is not even the increase in global demand or instability in the Middle East.
It is money printing only.
It is not the increase of demand, because the market responds to the increase of demand by increasing of the supply.
It is not the speculators because the speculators enter hot markets and on each bet there are 2 parties - for and against (and speculators provide liquidity to have smoother price curves in fact).
It is not oil companies, as Exxon only makes 2 cents per gallon in USA (and government makes 48 cents per gallon, plus whatever corporate and personal taxes that are taken from Exxon itself and its workers).
It is the dollars printed by the Fed.
I am not sure, but it does look a bit similar, doesn't it? As the chair of the Fed slowly takes his pants down and bends everybody, who holds dollar denominated assets over and has his way with them without even a hint of lubrication.
Government loves to blame everybody else for the inflation the government is causing by printing money.
Speculators enter markets that are hot, they do not create these markets. The markets for commodities become hot because of all the money that the government prints.
The real culprit - Federal reserve of USA as well as other national banks, which peg their currencies to the US dollar (what a joke of a 'reserve' that is.)
Sure, speculators can increase volatility in the market, but they also do at least 4 other things that are actually important:
1. They are taking other sides of the bet, they provide liquidity, which means in many cases they actually slow down the jerking movement of prices.
2. They are creating clear signals to the market what is hot, so market can respond by doing what is necessary to provide more of that product/service.
3. By shorting, the speculators bring attention to what is dangerous, what is likely to go down, so market can move resources out of that product/service.
4. Speculators are NOT all on ONE side of the trade. That's why it is NONSENSE that speculators are the CAUSE of prices going up. As many speculators are on one side of the trade, as there are on the other.
--
The actual REASON for the prices going up is the increased demand and this literally means MORE CASH that is in the system. Money = demand. When the central bank prints money, it increases the demand.
Think about it this way: if the market has 100 participants, each one has 10 dollars, then prices for things cannot actually exceed 10 dollars. If each participant has 1000 dollars, then prices cannot exceed 1000 dollars. But prices will rise to the top limit, of what people have on them to spend, this is basic stuff, it's like a law. However when the money is provided by government for free (think 0% interest rates, when the actual inflation is definitely over 9%), then there is all this high demand based on the money that is really not even earned.
Stop the money flow from the government printers and you will in fact cap the prices on commodities, products, etc.
Can you fathom this simple idea?
--
As to the prices of oil and gas being record high, I am bringing another thing to your attention:
Prices for the gas are in fact record low.
I repeat: the prices for gas have NEVER been lower than they are today.
One gallon of gas can be bought with 10 US cents. Of-course the 10 US cents must be real money, minted prior to 1968 out of silver.
That's right - if you actually had real Constitutional money, and not this worthless fiat paper, that the Fed is printing, you'd have prices for gas be around 10 cents right now, and the actual lowest price recorded was 25 cents back than, so in fact today there is DEFLATION in terms of commodities but inflation in terms of fiat money, which is my point - if you have real money, you are doing OK.
I am a bit tired of making the same point, that it is government taxes and subsidies that destroy the economy, but this is the correct story for it and your comment is a good way to enter the discussion.
Taxes destroy infrastructure.
Infrastructure suffers due to government involvement. Imagine if there was no FDR, the recession of 1929 could go the route of the recession of 1921 and there would be no public projects and no Great Depression (which is not going to seem so great once the current one really hits with the debt and currency crisis). Imagine the federal government did not build the highway system, did not tax the airlines and did not destroy profitable private rail while laying down the roads.
There would be no subsidies to the auto industry in form of the roads, there would be much fewer people relying on personal cars for transportation. Trains and air travel would dominate and within cities there would be healthy market for profitable private transportation as well.
There would be no suburban sprawl. People would drive to work for 2 hours, they wouldn't waste those 2 hours on the road. There would be many fewer accidents and deaths and much less illness associated with sedentary life style. People and places would be within walking distance, the infrastructure would be actually sustainable without government subsidies.
The oil would not be needed in such enormous quantities. There would be much less possibility of a housing crisis, and the newly built areas would have to also build the necessary infrastructure for easy public access via rail/air/bus/etc/cab/etc.
There would be much less need for oil, so foreign policy could be much more relaxed and there could be much fewer conflicts with and within the oil rich nations.
The pollution could be much lower than it is today.
There are all these obvious benefits to NOT having government in doing business and designing and building the infrastructure if only the government could let go of the money and power that these projects bring with themselves..... but they cannot.
The highway system gives the government huge leverage against States and municipalities, allows them to dictate their local policies and politics. There are all these oil and other companies that come to the government with all this money... No way a politician could ever resist.
--
As to all this nonsense about oil making huge profits and 'not paying fair share' - lets see. Per Exxon site:
Less than 3 percent of ExxonMobilâ(TM)s earnings are from U.S. gasoline sales
ExxonMobilâ(TM)s earnings are from operations in more than 100 countries around the world. The part of the business that refines and sells gasoline and diesel in the United States represents less than 3 percent â" or 3 cents on the dollar â" of our total earnings. For every gallon of gasoline, diesel or finished products we manufactured and sold in the United States in the last three months of 2010, we earned a little more than 2 cents per gallon. Thatâ(TM)s not a typo. Two cents.
So on their US business, Exxon makes 2 cents per gallon. Do you know how much the government of USA makes on each gallon? 48 cents. NO WAY a government would give up such a lucrative racket, and all it took was to build a bunch of public unsustainable subsidized highways with all these other perks - like leverage against States, and all of this is done by taxing somebody else via direct taxes as well as indirect inflation tax, which hits anybody actually owning / earning US dollars, as with every new printed dollar, the value of all dollars go down. That's why it was important for the US government to get off the gold standard, they could not print it.
But did the public really get something good for it? Well, clearly, somebody got s
News flash: Old laws can be changed and superseded by new laws. It was not long ago that sodomy was a punishable offense.
- yeah, clearly, having the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank defining the dollar as "whatever it buys" rather than actually defining it as a measure of weight of gold/silver, as it was defined when people cared about such nonsense as their money, and having sodomy as punishable offense.... yeah, those are the same things, you got me.
Why would you want your currency to depend on the value of a commodity?
- gold is money, not just any commodity. But I would rather use anything as money than any fiat currency (and I do, I only use fiat currency to get back into real money and when I need to run a transaction that only accepts so called 'legal tender').
By the way, if you didn't notice, gold was always going up once the dollar became just a piece of paper, printed at the whim of a politician. Why would you want your money to deteriorate in value all the time? What, you don't like having savings? You don't like prices going down, you only want prices to go up as you are taxed upon your entire holdings that are denominated in fiat?
If a big gold mine is discovered, the contents of your bank account shrink.
- welcome to the age of the printer. Do you know that they can print until they run out of trees (and also out of cotton and plastic now?) They don't even have to discover a mine of something to print. Pretty illogical to complain about a possible mine discovery (and they do discover mines all the time) and the fact that money doesn't have to be even printed anymore, as Bernanke said, he just 'adds zeros to the account', but don't take my word for it, how about a humorous perspective?
If there's no more gold in the world, there's no way for nominal wealth to increase as productiveness increases, so you get deflation
- yes, deflation. Terrible terrible deflation. Prices falling. Awful thing. Things costing less in a year, than they cost a year before. Just impossible to live in that situation, especially if you are not that rich. Totally impossible. Well, impossible, unless you are USA 19 century that is. When deflation was actually the state of affairs while the economy was growing. Yes, the new businesses were appearing, new products coming into the market, new services, new wealth, but golly, what a shame, things didn't rise in price and instead they fell in price.
Awful.
Terrible.
Of-course thank government for saving you from this disaster. Government with its awesome powers to take a silver dime minted prior to year 1968 and make sure that the dime goes up in nominal price to about $4, while a gallon of gas also going up to about that price. What a shame that would be, to have that money to buy this gas. Terrible shame, it would be just the cheapest gas ever in US history in that money. Government to the rescue.
Of-course government also came to the rescue of a minimum wage worker, who was only getting USD1.50/hour before 1970s, and for that miserly amount he could buy what, about 6 gallons of gas then? Or he could maintain a family even without debt on that money. Well, government inflation took care of that nonsense. Now that same minimum wage workers get an astounding 7.50 or so? That's amazing, that's almost 2 gallons of oil, and of-course, since the minimum wage worker never paid any taxes (and even got some money back), his actual salary today would have to be over USD60/hour to compare to that of the minimum wage worker who worked prior to 1970s.
But yeah, we have to fear the deflation. Horrible horrible deflation, because one most important concern is that the government must be able to finance its scams with lots and lots of debt, and deflation would really put a squeeze on that.
Inflation, by the way, has been below 3% for almost all of the last 20 years; how much more stable do you need your prices?
- oh, you must be a real genius there. 3% ha? You are quoting the CPI, the core inflation numbers, with all the substitutions and hedonistic adjustments? Yeah, makes sense. Never mind the prices of actual things people buy, let's go by the government numbers.