You are correct. I would like to add: the basic problem is that ACA doesn't lower health care costs. It also now puts lots of people into these idiotic high deductible plans. Bush did that too there just wasn't as many people complaining because everyone didn't have to switch to a high deductible plan all at the same time - it was gradual. It also now lets the govt spend a bunch on failed federal and state IT projects. So they replaced high insurance company profit with wasteful govt spending we don't as easily notice? All of these guys need a comprehensive audit a year or so from now. How much is/was being spent, to what benefit, and is it any better now than when the (horrible) insurance companies had all the waste? Did the govt bureaucracy just want a cut of the waste? Questions. All we have are questions and shitty expensive health care. The irony is that this is what Obama is clinging to for his legacy.
Several issues.
1) The evidence is not clear, but it seems like the ACE is actually lowering the trajectory of medical costs. There is no other reason they are not rising like they were before. There are lots of experimental policy changes in the law that are designed to do this, and some of those may actually be working.
2) the high deductible plans are actually much better than nothing if you have a catastrophic health care problem, because they have yearly out of pocket caps that are reasonable. Instead of having a 'lifetime cap' (these are now illegal) so the insurance company only pays $100,000 for a $200,000 operation, and nothing else, leaving you bankrupt, these policies ensure that you only pay $6000/yr out of pocket, which means you are far more likely to be able to pay the bills and keep your family from poverty.
3) The money you pay for insurance doesn't go to the government, it still goes to the insurance companies. ACA regulates what the insurance companies can do, expands medicaid, and offers subsidies for people so they can afford the premiums. The website costs are a drop in the bucket of total health care spending.
I wanted single payer. I was angry when they passed this monstrosity without a public option. However, I understand that this is all that could be done. Given history, this is the only path possible. It will make things better for lots of people, some of which you probably know.
I agree with what you are saying. However, it actually, it IS in the interests of the young to buy in. People don't have to suspend their self interests to buy insurance.
There is a cost to risk these people aren't actually factoring in. If only 1 in 100 people have a catastrophic health care problem that takes all their savings and put them hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, the $100/month they pay is certainly worth avoiding that. If you believe in statistics (and not the rhetoric of Koch brother funded conservative groups) you will buy insurance even if you are young and healthy.
SIDENOTE: You will also invest in your retirement, because if you put 10% of your salary into a retirement account, you are far less likely to retire in poverty. When it is time to retire, you will take that money and buy an annuity, which will insure you against running out of money during retirement.
Insurance is your friend. It is a sharing of risk that benefits everybody.
If someone presents me with a well-formed logical argument that proves B (within an axiomatic framework obviously), but I believe A, I change my belief. This is what a rational being does. I don't get emotional about it, I simply adjust my model of reality. If there is no well-fomed logical argument within an axiomatic framework, I either ignore or refute it with a well-formed logical argument based in an axiomatic framework. (Phew, someone should invent a shorter way to say that...)
The sad part of this is that you're absolutely right. The vast majority of the people in the world lack the ability to think critically when it directly confronts a long-held viewpoint.
Sadly, nobody does this, even people who think they are rational. Once an idea gets put into the category of 'defining truth', a belief that is more than just a belief, but insted a sort of badge of membership, then people will defend it to the death, regardless of how they personally feel about it. According to E. O. Wilson's recent book "The Social Conquest of Earth", this is probably a 'group evolution' adaptation for enabling groups of humans to have more coherence. According to him, groups with more internal coherence probably survived better than groups that did not...
So, Dawkins and Krauss were on a fools errand, unless their intent was to get laid by secularist groupies.
Incidentally, Dawkins and Wilson are in a sort of war over group evolution vs the 'selfish gene' theory, which Wilson seems to reject. Wilson's argument demolishes it in the abovementioned book, in my opinion, but I'm not a biologist.
Ambient radiation. Also, supernovae nearby, sterilizing planets again and again. Also, it would take DNA far longer than a few million years to form if it could survive radiation. Also, no galaxies earlier than 500 million years.
However, if it is true, then we are living in 'the big freeze' of that time period. I wonder what will be alive in our 'big freeze'?
if you're not averaging one good paper a year then there's probably something wrong with you as a researcher
That is *exactly* what Peter Higgs is complaining about. His point is that great ideas don't come about once a year - and that if he was 40 years younger he wouldn't get positions because he wouldn't be fulfilling the quota - and thus great ideas are being lost in this treadmill.
The fact that the pace has increased is true in most professions, probably due to better communication. In the early 60s, you got information after months and months, from stogy journals that reviewed papers for a year. Now, you read new info on somebody's blog the day after they have the idea. The environment is different, so the pace of production is probably different.
The reason why progress has been so slow is because there is no one single disease, "cancer." Instead we have a few thousand different diseases which we collectively call cancer. Many of them look extremely similar, even to professional oncologists. First we have to identify all of these different cancers, and then we have to discover effective treatments against them. Some cancers will have common weaknesses; many (most?) do not.
There's a reason why cancer is called "the Emperor of Maladies". Cancer is probably the hardest scientific problem the human race has ever wrestled with. It makes the moon shot and the internet look like pikers by comparison.
Cancer is hard, and every day we don't have a cure more people are going to die in horrible ways. The first part makes us want to give up on cancer research, or to say that it's too hard, or to say that we haven't made any progress... but the second part will always keep us coming back to do more research and make another attempt.
My dream is that cancer might be cured in 100 years. I think it's a dream worth working for.
We treat these thousands of cancers essentially the same way. We cut them out if we can, apply radiation to kill any escaping cells, and then we kill all cells that are multiplying very rapidly anywhere in the body for a while with chemotherapy. That is what every cancer patient can expect. It is only if that doesn't work that the patient will apply for some trial.
Stories like the ones above are offering a hope that molecular biology can 'cure cancer'. If you look at it from a molecular biology point of view, there are, as you say, thousands of types of cancer, all caused by a different sequence of mutations in the patient's DNA. Each of these will probably require a different molecular biology solution. However, now, and for the forseeable future, most patients don't get their cancers sequenced, and their oncologists wouldn't know what to do with the results if they did. Doctors use what they've learned in med school, which is 'apply the three steps, repeat as necessary, hope for the best, offer pain management when/if all else fails'.
The Iranians supposedly hijacked a 'real' military drone by faking GPS signals.
If you know where the drone is going, you just overpower the GPS signal. Military drones probably have some redundancy built into an encrypted channel (GPS is, after all, a military system) but I don't think Amazon is going to have that capability. They could use redundancy by video, ala google car, I suppose, particularly if they are covering a fairly small geographic area. They would want that anyway, since GPS drifts around. Don't want the package delivered in the pool. They could also use both GPS and the russian system in many places.
Another possibility would be a LORAN type system, broadcast from their facilities. It might only serve as a check, and allow the drones to return if GPS went completely dark. If GPS goes dark, however, I think we have bigger problems than getting our drones back.
There are people who provide nothing to society raking in millions by manipulating a system that they actively alter and maintain to improve their own position. It's not a level playing field, it's a specialized game manipulated to keep only those people who know the rules at the top.
The stock market is far better than it was before the 30s. Those guys would play legal scams on investors to fleece them, corner markets, etc. I am not worried about how much the stock market guys make. Believe it or not, they are providing a service. I'm worried about their sheer stupidity. They build structures that can't be supported, and pile everybody onto them. They appear to be blind to the structural weakness they've built in. Then, when a little shake causes everything to come crashing down, they panic like turkeys on thanksgiving and destroy confidence. That makes everybody draw back in fear, which prevents spending and causes anticipatory layoffs, which decreases demand for products, which causes more layoffs, which decreases demand, which... Feedback loop. Death spiral. This has happened twice in the last 15 years.
But don't let that fool you into thinking that the root cause of the problem isn't the massive imbalance of wealth and power in American and around the world.
The massive imbalance of wealth and power is an effect, not a cause. The effect is basically caused by too many workers who are paid too little. Too little spending depresses demand, which gets us into trouble. The FED lowers interest rates to try to overcome this. That makes inflation decrease. Congress lowers taxes to try to overcome this. Inflation and taxes are the only things that keeps the rich in line. The solution, painful as it will be, is to raise the minimum wage to $30/hr (make the private sector finance the recovery). It will kill small business, generate inflation, and initially increase unemployment, but, eventually, demand will come back, which will reverse the entire terrible cycle. The other way is to just start giving more people money, by decreasing the retirement age to 55 (make the government finance the recovery). That might do it too, and would have the added benefit of decreasing structural unemployment. Unfortunately, raising taxes won't help, because the government already has more than enough money for everything it needs to do. It would just pay down its debt, and people are currently paying the government to store their money as t-bills, so that would be a net loss. We have too much liquidity already, and it isn't doing anything useful.
So, the middle class are to blame for their debt load. I guess that is true. However, when you think your house is worth 15 times your yearly income, and its dollar value is rising faster than the money you make from your two household jobs, it makes that debt seem like nothing. Until the crash. Median debt in the US was $70k in 2010, as opposed to $50k in 2000. Most of that is real estate loans. Total debt has been going down since 2009, for obvious reasons. More Info.
Americans have ALWAYS consumed too much. That is what drives our economy. Larry Sommers gave a talk at the IMF recently where he made the claim that we only consume enough to have full employment during bubbles. Otherwise, we are in 'secular stagnation', meaning, basically, not enough demand to employ everybody. He is right, and other economists have been saying this for years. Given the current economy, we need MORE consumption, not less.
Unless we can give up the dream of full employment, and migrate to some sort of post-scarcity economy, we are doomed to these binge-purge cycles, and everybody wanting a new IPhone and Xbox One. If only they weren't so damned cool.
The reason that wages are stagnant is that there is too little demand in the economy. That lets employers make what they need to make with fewer people. The number of people in the workforce is what drives up wages. The CEOs in the 90s weren't "good guys". They were the same assholes. They just couldn't get their work done with the number of people they had, so they had to hire, which made wages increase.
Nobody knows what to do about demand. Congress is hopelessly gridlocked, so no help there. The FED is doing everything it can, and it isn't really working. So, wages are going to stay depressed for a while. Look at Japan, their wages have been depressed since the 90s. They are spiking now due to new recent monetary policy, which is basically doing what the Keynesians have been saying to do for the last 15 years, but that their common sense told them not to do. We are in the same boat right now, we think low taxes, saving and low inflation is good. It is good (very good) for the rich. Not so much for the rest of us.
I don't really get the whole demand problem thing. If there is no demand what is the problem do we want people consuming for the sake of it?
The demand issue is what causes recessions. People get scared, and stop buying, for whatever reason (say the stock market crashes). That makes demand for goods and services go down. That makes businesses have excess production, so they lay off workers to balance things out. That makes fewer workers who can buy the goods, which causes even more business layoffs. It becomes a feedback loop.
The solution, according to Keynes, was for the government to give people money, somehow. In the 30s, they did it with infrastructure projects, but it doesn't really matter. The point is to break the downwards feedback loop, to increase demand, so business begin to hire. Keynes said that a government should borrow as much as it can to do this. The theory states that the GDP will increase, so debt/GDP will actually go down even if real debt goes up. debt/GDP is the number that matters.
The business cycle guys don't believe this. They think that business cycles can be controlled by controlling interest rates. Lower rates equals more economic activity, which causes businesses to hire.
The problem with the business cycle guys' story is that, even at a zero interest rate (which we've had for 5 years now) the economy isn't being stimulated sufficiently to decrease unemployment. Much of the unemployment decrease in the last 5 years has come from people leaving the workforce.
People are also worried about accumulation of debt.
So, there is a controversy about what to do. The FED believes that keeping interest rates low is the way to go, so they buy lots of treasuries. That doesn't seem to be doing what they want, which is to stimulate employment numbers. So, they keep doing it. And doing it. And doing it.
Sure increasing demand will make the numbers look better, companies will earn more, and produce more, GDP will go up. But aren't we just producing stuff nobody really needs.
If demand is low, good unless that demand is low because people are starving and can't afford to live, but maybe that is wealth distribution problem since we also have obese people.
Must we constantly be trying to consume and produce more, for no good reason?
I agree with all of this, but I can't really see an alternative to what they are doing, given the tools they have. Gridlock makes it hard to do anything reasonable in congress, so the FED is the only tool available.
People need to look at a log graph of the NASDAQ It is silly to think that something that happened 13 years ago is the same in absolute terms. 4000 is just a number, after all.
Honestly, you're just like everyone else looking for work. You can either put in the graft and find the job you want by spending MONTHS looking for it, or you can drift from job to unemployment to job as and when something comes up that "suits" you.
Actually, he is not like everybody else. He knows things most of the resumes you see will never figure out. The real problem is one of hierarchy. It is hard for a young manager to manage an older person, particularly a remote older person. They just don't take the manager seriously. They go off and do what they 'know' is right, rather than what the manager thinks they should do. Some managers can handle this, and use it to their advantage, but most just can't, and so just silently select younger workers, even if they are less qualified.
I am a programmer, and I've worked for lots of big name companies, as well as startups. When I send resumes out, they are always ignored. In fact, they have been ignored since I was 40, 18 years ago, despite having stellar qualifications, projects, education, references, etc. I suspect the recruiters toss them before sending them on to hiring managers because they are used to having older workers rejected. Nobody talks about it, because they will get sued. The only way I can get a job these days is to call one of my friends, who can vouch for me. As they age out, this becomes more difficult.
If you are a tech worker, save more for retirement than you think you will need. You will need it, and sooner than you think. In fact, this is true for everybody. Nobody saves enough. You won't get rich, and you'll end up working at walmart if you don't do this. Save 20%, every year. Consider it a tax for your future. Don't trust the idiots your work hires to manage the 401K. Watch out for hidden (and not so hidden) fees in the mutual funds you pick (more than 50 basis points/yr is nearly always not worth it.) Buy index bond and stock funds exclusively. (ok, sorry about that. sore point)
Modded 5 for random speculation.... Good old Slashdot. TFA says exactly where the power goes: the car's electronics don't sleep when the car is off.
It seems that the "sleep mode" in the original Model S software--the basis for the owner's manual statements--had caused so many glitches in other car functions that it had been disabled. With sleep mode missing from the current v4.2 software, he said, I could expect to lose about 8-10 miles of range per day when unplugged.
No big mysteries here. Room for complaint that this issue hasn't been resolved quickly, though.
Just like my TV, and every other bit of electronics in my house. Nothing turns off anymore when you tell it to. Soft buttons and all. I think my sony TV uses 5W when it is off, so it can listen for the remote.
The War on the Internet is as much about creating an environment of fear that will justify increased spending, as it is cracking down on the young smart kids who are the real threat to the corporate para-State.
So it's fairly likely that the FBI/NSA and their legal or criminal subcontractors are heavily involved in any dramatic security-related event. The fact that government websites are targeted makes no difference. Simple little false flags that keep the pressure up on legislators.
It's easy to mock all this but the threat to our digital lifestyle is real and serious. We're a few years away from a fully regulated Internet where if you don't conform -- by running approved hardware, approved software, approved monitoring -- you simply won't get access, period. Clipper chip, remember that?
And the only way to convince the mass of "who cares?" public are a series of dramatic, dangerous, unacceptable attacks on websites, infrastructure, transport, etc.
If you consider who stands to gain from this sort of control, it becomes apparent that any alleged 'war on the internet', if it exists, is likely to fail. I've been using what became the internet before it was called the internet (usenet and arpanet, from UC in 1982, arpanet at BBN in 83 and beyond). Folks have been ranting about the internet going to the dogs since the thing started. (Remember folks putting 'terrorist' keywords into their usenet posts to foil the NSA?) The sky hasn't yet fallen. I realize that the fact that the sky has not fallen isn't argument against the possibility that it will, but really? "corporate para-state"? "The threat to our digital lifestyle"? Even "Clipper Chip?". Sigh... John Boehner likes his porn (well, gay porn) as much as you do. Nobody is going to cut it off. I believe your digital lifestyle is safe.
shifts costs to the utility? What costs? A second meter base (which the customer has to pay for anyway) and a second meter? The second meter can't possibly cost $4.90/mo to maintain, over the typical life-time of a system.
My solar panels turn the utility company into a large battery. Actually, more like a bank, where I can deposit money when I have extra, and draw from the deposit when I need it. So, having a tax for this service seems appropriate. If everybody has solar panels, the utility can provide that service using the tax.
If you have your own batteries, or perhaps a neighborhood battery pool, then you can cut yourself off from the grid, and avoid the tax. You also no longer have the redundancy provided by the grid, so the small tax actually becomes a sort of insurance payment.
Sadly, my controller doesn't allow me to do anything but use the grid as a bank/battery. If the grid goes down, so does my solar generation. This was described to me as a safety for workers, so I don't partially power a segment that the utilities think is down. Seems reasonable to me.
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct. I would like to add: the basic problem is that ACA doesn't lower health care costs. It also now puts lots of people into these idiotic high deductible plans. Bush did that too there just wasn't as many people complaining because everyone didn't have to switch to a high deductible plan all at the same time - it was gradual. It also now lets the govt spend a bunch on failed federal and state IT projects. So they replaced high insurance company profit with wasteful govt spending we don't as easily notice? All of these guys need a comprehensive audit a year or so from now. How much is/was being spent, to what benefit, and is it any better now than when the (horrible) insurance companies had all the waste? Did the govt bureaucracy just want a cut of the waste? Questions. All we have are questions and shitty expensive health care. The irony is that this is what Obama is clinging to for his legacy.
Several issues.
1) The evidence is not clear, but it seems like the ACE is actually lowering the trajectory of medical costs. There is no other reason they are not rising like they were before. There are lots of experimental policy changes in the law that are designed to do this, and some of those may actually be working.
2) the high deductible plans are actually much better than nothing if you have a catastrophic health care problem, because they have yearly out of pocket caps that are reasonable. Instead of having a 'lifetime cap' (these are now illegal) so the insurance company only pays $100,000 for a $200,000 operation, and nothing else, leaving you bankrupt, these policies ensure that you only pay $6000/yr out of pocket, which means you are far more likely to be able to pay the bills and keep your family from poverty.
3) The money you pay for insurance doesn't go to the government, it still goes to the insurance companies. ACA regulates what the insurance companies can do, expands medicaid, and offers subsidies for people so they can afford the premiums. The website costs are a drop in the bucket of total health care spending.
I wanted single payer. I was angry when they passed this monstrosity without a public option. However, I understand that this is all that could be done. Given history, this is the only path possible. It will make things better for lots of people, some of which you probably know.
I agree with what you are saying. However, it actually, it IS in the interests of the young to buy in. People don't have to suspend their self interests to buy insurance.
There is a cost to risk these people aren't actually factoring in. If only 1 in 100 people have a catastrophic health care problem that takes all their savings and put them hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, the $100/month they pay is certainly worth avoiding that. If you believe in statistics (and not the rhetoric of Koch brother funded conservative groups) you will buy insurance even if you are young and healthy.
SIDENOTE: You will also invest in your retirement, because if you put 10% of your salary into a retirement account, you are far less likely to retire in poverty. When it is time to retire, you will take that money and buy an annuity, which will insure you against running out of money during retirement.
Insurance is your friend. It is a sharing of risk that benefits everybody.
If someone presents me with a well-formed logical argument that proves B (within an axiomatic framework obviously), but I believe A, I change my belief. This is what a rational being does. I don't get emotional about it, I simply adjust my model of reality. If there is no well-fomed logical argument within an axiomatic framework, I either ignore or refute it with a well-formed logical argument based in an axiomatic framework. (Phew, someone should invent a shorter way to say that...) The sad part of this is that you're absolutely right. The vast majority of the people in the world lack the ability to think critically when it directly confronts a long-held viewpoint.
Sadly, nobody does this, even people who think they are rational. Once an idea gets put into the category of 'defining truth', a belief that is more than just a belief, but insted a sort of badge of membership, then people will defend it to the death, regardless of how they personally feel about it. According to E. O. Wilson's recent book "The Social Conquest of Earth", this is probably a 'group evolution' adaptation for enabling groups of humans to have more coherence. According to him, groups with more internal coherence probably survived better than groups that did not...
So, Dawkins and Krauss were on a fools errand, unless their intent was to get laid by secularist groupies.
Incidentally, Dawkins and Wilson are in a sort of war over group evolution vs the 'selfish gene' theory, which Wilson seems to reject. Wilson's argument demolishes it in the abovementioned book, in my opinion, but I'm not a biologist.
13% of the federal budget is defense. 4.88% GDP predicted in 2014.
Money allocated to space research is 17 billion, like 0.1% GDP, so defense costs about 50x as much.
I got the numbers here
You don't. But they'll still the best tool for a lot of space activities both from capability and cost standpoints.
If only they weren't so soft and squishy!
Ambient radiation. Also, supernovae nearby, sterilizing planets again and again. Also, it would take DNA far longer than a few million years to form if it could survive radiation. Also, no galaxies earlier than 500 million years.
However, if it is true, then we are living in 'the big freeze' of that time period. I wonder what will be alive in our 'big freeze'?
It makes sense with both.
Almost everything you say is valid, but:
if you're not averaging one good paper a year then there's probably something wrong with you as a researcher
That is *exactly* what Peter Higgs is complaining about. His point is that great ideas don't come about once a year - and that if he was 40 years younger he wouldn't get positions because he wouldn't be fulfilling the quota - and thus great ideas are being lost in this treadmill.
The fact that the pace has increased is true in most professions, probably due to better communication. In the early 60s, you got information after months and months, from stogy journals that reviewed papers for a year. Now, you read new info on somebody's blog the day after they have the idea. The environment is different, so the pace of production is probably different.
The reason why progress has been so slow is because there is no one single disease, "cancer." Instead we have a few thousand different diseases which we collectively call cancer. Many of them look extremely similar, even to professional oncologists. First we have to identify all of these different cancers, and then we have to discover effective treatments against them. Some cancers will have common weaknesses; many (most?) do not.
There's a reason why cancer is called "the Emperor of Maladies". Cancer is probably the hardest scientific problem the human race has ever wrestled with. It makes the moon shot and the internet look like pikers by comparison.
Cancer is hard, and every day we don't have a cure more people are going to die in horrible ways. The first part makes us want to give up on cancer research, or to say that it's too hard, or to say that we haven't made any progress... but the second part will always keep us coming back to do more research and make another attempt.
My dream is that cancer might be cured in 100 years. I think it's a dream worth working for.
We treat these thousands of cancers essentially the same way. We cut them out if we can, apply radiation to kill any escaping cells, and then we kill all cells that are multiplying very rapidly anywhere in the body for a while with chemotherapy. That is what every cancer patient can expect. It is only if that doesn't work that the patient will apply for some trial.
Stories like the ones above are offering a hope that molecular biology can 'cure cancer'. If you look at it from a molecular biology point of view, there are, as you say, thousands of types of cancer, all caused by a different sequence of mutations in the patient's DNA. Each of these will probably require a different molecular biology solution. However, now, and for the forseeable future, most patients don't get their cancers sequenced, and their oncologists wouldn't know what to do with the results if they did. Doctors use what they've learned in med school, which is 'apply the three steps, repeat as necessary, hope for the best, offer pain management when/if all else fails'.
The Iranians supposedly hijacked a 'real' military drone by faking GPS signals.
If you know where the drone is going, you just overpower the GPS signal. Military drones probably have some redundancy built into an encrypted channel (GPS is, after all, a military system) but I don't think Amazon is going to have that capability. They could use redundancy by video, ala google car, I suppose, particularly if they are covering a fairly small geographic area. They would want that anyway, since GPS drifts around. Don't want the package delivered in the pool. They could also use both GPS and the russian system in many places.
Another possibility would be a LORAN type system, broadcast from their facilities. It might only serve as a check, and allow the drones to return if GPS went completely dark. If GPS goes dark, however, I think we have bigger problems than getting our drones back.
There are people who provide nothing to society raking in millions by manipulating a system that they actively alter and maintain to improve their own position. It's not a level playing field, it's a specialized game manipulated to keep only those people who know the rules at the top.
The stock market is far better than it was before the 30s. Those guys would play legal scams on investors to fleece them, corner markets, etc. I am not worried about how much the stock market guys make. Believe it or not, they are providing a service. I'm worried about their sheer stupidity. They build structures that can't be supported, and pile everybody onto them. They appear to be blind to the structural weakness they've built in. Then, when a little shake causes everything to come crashing down, they panic like turkeys on thanksgiving and destroy confidence. That makes everybody draw back in fear, which prevents spending and causes anticipatory layoffs, which decreases demand for products, which causes more layoffs, which decreases demand, which... Feedback loop. Death spiral. This has happened twice in the last 15 years.
But don't let that fool you into thinking that the root cause of the problem isn't the massive imbalance of wealth and power in American and around the world.
The massive imbalance of wealth and power is an effect, not a cause. The effect is basically caused by too many workers who are paid too little. Too little spending depresses demand, which gets us into trouble. The FED lowers interest rates to try to overcome this. That makes inflation decrease. Congress lowers taxes to try to overcome this. Inflation and taxes are the only things that keeps the rich in line. The solution, painful as it will be, is to raise the minimum wage to $30/hr (make the private sector finance the recovery). It will kill small business, generate inflation, and initially increase unemployment, but, eventually, demand will come back, which will reverse the entire terrible cycle. The other way is to just start giving more people money, by decreasing the retirement age to 55 (make the government finance the recovery). That might do it too, and would have the added benefit of decreasing structural unemployment. Unfortunately, raising taxes won't help, because the government already has more than enough money for everything it needs to do. It would just pay down its debt, and people are currently paying the government to store their money as t-bills, so that would be a net loss. We have too much liquidity already, and it isn't doing anything useful.
We would all do well to slow down a little and notice more closely the people in our lives and take time to appreciate the things we do have.
But that would cut into my xbox time, wouldn't it?
So, the middle class are to blame for their debt load. I guess that is true. However, when you think your house is worth 15 times your yearly income, and its dollar value is rising faster than the money you make from your two household jobs, it makes that debt seem like nothing. Until the crash. Median debt in the US was $70k in 2010, as opposed to $50k in 2000. Most of that is real estate loans. Total debt has been going down since 2009, for obvious reasons. More Info.
Americans have ALWAYS consumed too much. That is what drives our economy. Larry Sommers gave a talk at the IMF recently where he made the claim that we only consume enough to have full employment during bubbles. Otherwise, we are in 'secular stagnation', meaning, basically, not enough demand to employ everybody. He is right, and other economists have been saying this for years. Given the current economy, we need MORE consumption, not less.
Unless we can give up the dream of full employment, and migrate to some sort of post-scarcity economy, we are doomed to these binge-purge cycles, and everybody wanting a new IPhone and Xbox One. If only they weren't so damned cool.
The reason that wages are stagnant is that there is too little demand in the economy. That lets employers make what they need to make with fewer people. The number of people in the workforce is what drives up wages. The CEOs in the 90s weren't "good guys". They were the same assholes. They just couldn't get their work done with the number of people they had, so they had to hire, which made wages increase.
Nobody knows what to do about demand. Congress is hopelessly gridlocked, so no help there. The FED is doing everything it can, and it isn't really working. So, wages are going to stay depressed for a while. Look at Japan, their wages have been depressed since the 90s. They are spiking now due to new recent monetary policy, which is basically doing what the Keynesians have been saying to do for the last 15 years, but that their common sense told them not to do. We are in the same boat right now, we think low taxes, saving and low inflation is good. It is good (very good) for the rich. Not so much for the rest of us.
I don't really get the whole demand problem thing. If there is no demand what is the problem do we want people consuming for the sake of it?
The demand issue is what causes recessions. People get scared, and stop buying, for whatever reason (say the stock market crashes). That makes demand for goods and services go down. That makes businesses have excess production, so they lay off workers to balance things out. That makes fewer workers who can buy the goods, which causes even more business layoffs. It becomes a feedback loop.
The solution, according to Keynes, was for the government to give people money, somehow. In the 30s, they did it with infrastructure projects, but it doesn't really matter. The point is to break the downwards feedback loop, to increase demand, so business begin to hire. Keynes said that a government should borrow as much as it can to do this. The theory states that the GDP will increase, so debt/GDP will actually go down even if real debt goes up. debt/GDP is the number that matters.
The business cycle guys don't believe this. They think that business cycles can be controlled by controlling interest rates. Lower rates equals more economic activity, which causes businesses to hire.
The problem with the business cycle guys' story is that, even at a zero interest rate (which we've had for 5 years now) the economy isn't being stimulated sufficiently to decrease unemployment. Much of the unemployment decrease in the last 5 years has come from people leaving the workforce.
People are also worried about accumulation of debt.
So, there is a controversy about what to do. The FED believes that keeping interest rates low is the way to go, so they buy lots of treasuries. That doesn't seem to be doing what they want, which is to stimulate employment numbers. So, they keep doing it. And doing it. And doing it.
Sure increasing demand will make the numbers look better, companies will earn more, and produce more, GDP will go up. But aren't we just producing stuff nobody really needs.
If demand is low, good unless that demand is low because people are starving and can't afford to live, but maybe that is wealth distribution problem since we also have obese people.
Must we constantly be trying to consume and produce more, for no good reason?
I agree with all of this, but I can't really see an alternative to what they are doing, given the tools they have. Gridlock makes it hard to do anything reasonable in congress, so the FED is the only tool available.
People need to look at a log graph of the NASDAQ It is silly to think that something that happened 13 years ago is the same in absolute terms. 4000 is just a number, after all.
Honestly, you're just like everyone else looking for work. You can either put in the graft and find the job you want by spending MONTHS looking for it, or you can drift from job to unemployment to job as and when something comes up that "suits" you.
Actually, he is not like everybody else. He knows things most of the resumes you see will never figure out. The real problem is one of hierarchy. It is hard for a young manager to manage an older person, particularly a remote older person. They just don't take the manager seriously. They go off and do what they 'know' is right, rather than what the manager thinks they should do. Some managers can handle this, and use it to their advantage, but most just can't, and so just silently select younger workers, even if they are less qualified.
I am a programmer, and I've worked for lots of big name companies, as well as startups. When I send resumes out, they are always ignored. In fact, they have been ignored since I was 40, 18 years ago, despite having stellar qualifications, projects, education, references, etc. I suspect the recruiters toss them before sending them on to hiring managers because they are used to having older workers rejected. Nobody talks about it, because they will get sued. The only way I can get a job these days is to call one of my friends, who can vouch for me. As they age out, this becomes more difficult.
If you are a tech worker, save more for retirement than you think you will need. You will need it, and sooner than you think. In fact, this is true for everybody. Nobody saves enough. You won't get rich, and you'll end up working at walmart if you don't do this. Save 20%, every year. Consider it a tax for your future. Don't trust the idiots your work hires to manage the 401K. Watch out for hidden (and not so hidden) fees in the mutual funds you pick (more than 50 basis points/yr is nearly always not worth it.) Buy index bond and stock funds exclusively. (ok, sorry about that. sore point)
Yes. It has to be some kind of counting error, by the look of the graph.
It would be interesting to see the results for different age groups.
There is nothing on which you can't blame climate change.
Except climate change itself.
Seems unlikely they would all get fat in 2003.
Modded 5 for random speculation.... Good old Slashdot. TFA says exactly where the power goes: the car's electronics don't sleep when the car is off.
No big mysteries here. Room for complaint that this issue hasn't been resolved quickly, though.
Just like my TV, and every other bit of electronics in my house. Nothing turns off anymore when you tell it to. Soft buttons and all. I think my sony TV uses 5W when it is off, so it can listen for the remote.
the problem was 'vampire current at night'. Maybe the problem is related to the cool digital clock.
They probably have a memory leak, and are rebooting the car every night to get the memory back.
The War on the Internet is as much about creating an environment of fear that will justify increased spending, as it is cracking down on the young smart kids who are the real threat to the corporate para-State.
So it's fairly likely that the FBI/NSA and their legal or criminal subcontractors are heavily involved in any dramatic security-related event. The fact that government websites are targeted makes no difference. Simple little false flags that keep the pressure up on legislators.
It's easy to mock all this but the threat to our digital lifestyle is real and serious. We're a few years away from a fully regulated Internet where if you don't conform -- by running approved hardware, approved software, approved monitoring -- you simply won't get access, period. Clipper chip, remember that?
And the only way to convince the mass of "who cares?" public are a series of dramatic, dangerous, unacceptable attacks on websites, infrastructure, transport, etc.
If you consider who stands to gain from this sort of control, it becomes apparent that any alleged 'war on the internet', if it exists, is likely to fail. I've been using what became the internet before it was called the internet (usenet and arpanet, from UC in 1982, arpanet at BBN in 83 and beyond). Folks have been ranting about the internet going to the dogs since the thing started. (Remember folks putting 'terrorist' keywords into their usenet posts to foil the NSA?) The sky hasn't yet fallen. I realize that the fact that the sky has not fallen isn't argument against the possibility that it will, but really? "corporate para-state"? "The threat to our digital lifestyle"? Even "Clipper Chip?". Sigh... John Boehner likes his porn (well, gay porn) as much as you do. Nobody is going to cut it off. I believe your digital lifestyle is safe.
shifts costs to the utility? What costs? A second meter base (which the customer has to pay for anyway) and a second meter? The second meter can't possibly cost $4.90/mo to maintain, over the typical life-time of a system.
My solar panels turn the utility company into a large battery. Actually, more like a bank, where I can deposit money when I have extra, and draw from the deposit when I need it. So, having a tax for this service seems appropriate. If everybody has solar panels, the utility can provide that service using the tax.
If you have your own batteries, or perhaps a neighborhood battery pool, then you can cut yourself off from the grid, and avoid the tax. You also no longer have the redundancy provided by the grid, so the small tax actually becomes a sort of insurance payment.
Sadly, my controller doesn't allow me to do anything but use the grid as a bank/battery. If the grid goes down, so does my solar generation. This was described to me as a safety for workers, so I don't partially power a segment that the utilities think is down. Seems reasonable to me.