I've used both, and live in Germany at the moment.
The UK NHS is about 10% of salary, the German insurance is about 14% of salary.
Having said that, the German system is definitely superior in quality. No waiting lists, better facilities etc.
There is a fundamental problem with both the UK and German systems though. They are percentages of salary. Credit increases at a far faster pace than salaries, (typically 9% vs 2%) it means that both systems experience funding crises periodically.
1. They want to provide a device which does this, and the software competes. There are several FritzBoxes which fill different niches, and AVM occasionally bring out new ones with specific features. They are actually quite cool little Linux boxes, lots of hacks for them. 2. Support costs.
Pratchett wrote that during the boom, pre crash and pre the coming sovereign debt crises. I wonder if he'll still think it's as neat and tidy in a couple of years.
It's the DEBT, Stupid.
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There is only 1 unit of credit, and it is destroyed when the debt is paid.
If you look further up the thread, you'll see that there is 55 (or 52 depending on who you ask) trillion dollars worth of debt in the USA and only 14 trillion dollars of credit. The debt cannot be paid. As you pay it off, the credit is destroyed. It would cause massive deflation to even attempt to pay.
This is one of the reasons the criticism of gold or bitcoins as deflationary is laughable. Our existing monetary system would be mind bendingly deflationary without constant injections of monetary inflation (bailouts, interest rate cuts, Fed POMOs etc.).
Put another way; crash is the default mode of operation.
My example points out that the debt has no relationship to the real stuff, or to the production of stuff.
The debt has to be paid whether the money exists to pay it or not. It is purely a monetary phenomenon. Maths. You could work as hard as you liked, you could circulate that 1 unit of credit round the economy as fast as you want but would still be unable to pay the interest on the debt at the bank.
This is true of the debts of nations, they cannot be paid. You can inflate your way out, or you can default. Those are the options. "Growth" is just inflation.
They increase interest rates during booming time to slow down the amount of loans being issued. When banks aren't issuing enough loans, the Fed lowers the rates to encourage lending.
Do you have evidence that this is actually what they do in practice? I suggest you take a look at historical interest rates over the longer term. If they actually did this in practice, the Dow/S&P etc would not have grown exponentially for 40 years. Interest rates have been declining with an exponential decay.
That's a BIG bubble.
In practice, what the Fed attempts to do is to maintain "growth", that is growth in credit creation. i.e. inflation. It is necessary to do so because the debt has interest attached and the growth in credit is required to pay the interest on the debt. So we get bigger loans and bigger debts, all growing exponentially.
There will be even greater cycles of boom and bust just like the US experienced before it got off the gold standard.
Really? What the gold standard did was anchor the currency. It prevented the infinite exponential growth in credit and debt. When credit expanded too much, it hit the limit on the amount of gold available and there was a bust. What we have now is a... large... bubble, the biggest ever created. What you get during the busts rather than a full on depression without a hard currency is stagflation. Lots of inflation but also high unemployment, less real stuff being produced. Sure, the numbers are getting bigger.
We have to get to 100 trillion dollars of debt and 28 trillion dollars of credit in the next 7 years in order to keep the credit growth going the way it has been historically.
We've seen the net effects. Boom when the credit is being created followed by bust when it is not. Credit creation and destruction is not steady state.
You are confusing real things with money, and physical money at that. You can't use 1 unit of credit to pay off 2 units of debt.
Glassier goes to the bank. Borrows 1 unit of credit at 5% interest. Bank creates 1 unit of credit and 1 unit of debt.
Glassier spends unit of credit at the pub, etc etc. eventually the credit makes it's way back through the economy to the Glassier.
Glassier goes to the bank to pay his debt.
Banker says 1.05 units of credit please. Glassier pays 1 unit leaving a debt of 0.05 units, Glassier cannot pay, so he defaults on the rest and loses his house.
Since a % of these credits must be backed by real assets, there is an effective limit to the money in circulation (even if that limit is way higher than paper currency).
What is a house worth?
Yesterday it was worth 375,000 dollars. Today it was sold for 225,000 dollars. Tomorrow it is worth 1 million dollars.
The price of the house has changed, though the house itself has not changed. This doesn't limit the money in circulation, the house could be sold for a trillion dollars, and I assume at some point it will happen.
There is a limit to the total credit but it is related to the fractional reserve and the money multiplier and has nothing to do with real things.
Repaying the debt allows the credit to loan that money again.
Oh I see, you don't understand how credit is created.
You need to read up on Fractional Reserve Banking. Banks do not loan out depositors money. They use depositors money as reserve and create new money which they loan out.
Slashdot Mirror
All the money is in rent seeking. America is now a nation of rent seekers where the parasites are the ones making the money, not the producers.
That is, attempting to make money off of the work of others. Patents, lawyers, bankers, stock traders etc.
Why would anyone become a productive scientist or engineer when they can become a rent seeking banker or lawyer? Your society is corrupt.
Yes.
Except it is the American people who are paying for it.
You are maintaining an empire.
HTH.
Subject says it all.
Subscribers are leaving in droves. A year or two and it will totally implode.
Ecosystems are driven by exponential processes, change is always "catastrophic".
It is a type of fish, red in colour. Often smoked.
The devil is in the detail.
What constitutes as contributing to the statistics?
That it will be child pornography?
Competitors, political dissidents, sites who pay to block opponents etc. Sounds like a fabulous opportunity to me.
14 trillion is an estimate of M3.
55 trillion is the total debt within the US.
They're nuts. It's like pissing in the ocean, just what do they think they'll accomplish? Is there anyone in any government anywhere with a brain?
They do what the money tells them to.
You are not Greece.
Greece is a nation (until they hand over sovereignty in a few days), quite capable of re-implementing it's own currency.
I can already have an e-gold (silver,platinum) debit card.
It automatically converts near the current spot price (minus a fee). The financial authorities have already been all over them.
The greek bondholders (French and German banks) are being bailed out.
I've used both, and live in Germany at the moment.
The UK NHS is about 10% of salary, the German insurance is about 14% of salary.
Having said that, the German system is definitely superior in quality. No waiting lists, better facilities etc.
There is a fundamental problem with both the UK and German systems though. They are percentages of salary. Credit increases at a far faster pace than salaries, (typically 9% vs 2%) it means that both systems experience funding crises periodically.
The most liquid commodity.
1. They want to provide a device which does this, and the software competes. There are several FritzBoxes which fill different niches, and AVM occasionally bring out new ones with specific features. They are actually quite cool little Linux boxes, lots of hacks for them.
2. Support costs.
Pratchett wrote that during the boom, pre crash and pre the coming sovereign debt crises. I wonder if he'll still think it's as neat and tidy in a couple of years.
It's the DEBT, Stupid.
There is only 1 unit of credit, and it is destroyed when the debt is paid.
If you look further up the thread, you'll see that there is 55 (or 52 depending on who you ask) trillion dollars worth of debt in the USA and only 14 trillion dollars of credit. The debt cannot be paid. As you pay it off, the credit is destroyed. It would cause massive deflation to even attempt to pay.
This is one of the reasons the criticism of gold or bitcoins as deflationary is laughable. Our existing monetary system would be mind bendingly deflationary without constant injections of monetary inflation (bailouts, interest rate cuts, Fed POMOs etc.).
Put another way; crash is the default mode of operation.
My example points out that the debt has no relationship to the real stuff, or to the production of stuff.
The debt has to be paid whether the money exists to pay it or not. It is purely a monetary phenomenon. Maths. You could work as hard as you liked, you could circulate that 1 unit of credit round the economy as fast as you want but would still be unable to pay the interest on the debt at the bank.
This is true of the debts of nations, they cannot be paid. You can inflate your way out, or you can default. Those are the options. "Growth" is just inflation.
They increase interest rates during booming time to slow down the amount of loans being issued. When banks aren't issuing enough loans, the Fed lowers the rates to encourage lending.
Do you have evidence that this is actually what they do in practice? I suggest you take a look at historical interest rates over the longer term. If they actually did this in practice, the Dow/S&P etc would not have grown exponentially for 40 years. Interest rates have been declining with an exponential decay.
That's a BIG bubble.
In practice, what the Fed attempts to do is to maintain "growth", that is growth in credit creation. i.e. inflation. It is necessary to do so because the debt has interest attached and the growth in credit is required to pay the interest on the debt. So we get bigger loans and bigger debts, all growing exponentially.
There will be even greater cycles of boom and bust just like the US experienced before it got off the gold standard.
Really? What the gold standard did was anchor the currency. It prevented the infinite exponential growth in credit and debt. When credit expanded too much, it hit the limit on the amount of gold available and there was a bust. What we have now is a... large... bubble, the biggest ever created. What you get during the busts rather than a full on depression without a hard currency is stagflation. Lots of inflation but also high unemployment, less real stuff being produced. Sure, the numbers are getting bigger.
We have to get to 100 trillion dollars of debt and 28 trillion dollars of credit in the next 7 years in order to keep the credit growth going the way it has been historically.
By creating credit you are also creating inflation. How is that different?
In fact it's worse because inherent in the debt is a period of inflation followed by a period of deflation as the money is consumed to pay the debt.
so the net effect is that no money is destroyed.
We've seen the net effects. Boom when the credit is being created followed by bust when it is not. Credit creation and destruction is not steady state.
Example. The Dow over the last 40 years.
Exponential growth, a 30 year boom in credit creation
http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1308532537644&chddm=4053497&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=INDEXDJX:.DJI&ntsp=0
Followed by a bust.
You are confusing real things with money, and physical money at that. You can't use 1 unit of credit to pay off 2 units of debt.
Glassier goes to the bank. Borrows 1 unit of credit at 5% interest.
Bank creates 1 unit of credit and 1 unit of debt.
Glassier spends unit of credit at the pub, etc etc. eventually the credit makes it's way back through the economy to the Glassier.
Glassier goes to the bank to pay his debt.
Banker says 1.05 units of credit please. Glassier pays 1 unit leaving a debt of 0.05 units, Glassier cannot pay, so he defaults on the rest and loses his house.
Since a % of these credits must be backed by real assets, there is an effective limit to the money in circulation (even if that limit is way higher than paper currency).
What is a house worth?
Yesterday it was worth 375,000 dollars.
Today it was sold for 225,000 dollars.
Tomorrow it is worth 1 million dollars.
The price of the house has changed, though the house itself has not changed. This doesn't limit the money in circulation, the house could be sold for a trillion dollars, and I assume at some point it will happen.
There is a limit to the total credit but it is related to the fractional reserve and the money multiplier and has nothing to do with real things.
Repaying the debt allows the credit to loan that money again.
Oh I see, you don't understand how credit is created.
You need to read up on Fractional Reserve Banking. Banks do not loan out depositors money. They use depositors money as reserve and create new money which they loan out.