Sure, the swine flu didn't send revenue skyrocketing, but it was some nice extra bacon that far exceeded what most companies would have gotten for just the seasonal flu. For instance, AstraZeneca's pandemic sales were more than 2.5 times that of its seasonal FluMist vaccine; Glaxo[SmithKlein] quadrupled the revenue seen for its seasonal vaccines Fluarix and FluLaval.
There's definitely a correlation between flu scares and sales of flu vaccine, as every source I looked at specifically mentioned swine flu as a driver of vaccination recommendations.
My take: There's a real problem here, but it's blown way out of proportion. The flu vaccine manufacturers have every reason in the world to make it sound like "We're all gonna die! Panic! Get vaccinated right away!" when what actually happens is that the people who die tend to be elderly or otherwise already sick, while healthy adults fight it off pretty easily. And those same manufacturers are major advertisers on television networks, so they could very easily say to their sales rep at the network "You know, we'd really like to see more coverage of the flu problem. Here's some information about it to get you started."
Not a grand conspiracy, just this business model: 1. Find a problem 2. Figure out a solution to this problem. 3. Help news organizations convince the general public that this problem presents a lethal threat. 4. Sell the solution. 5. Profit!
People are remembering how previous, highly publicised breakouts turned out to be minor. At least globally.
People are also remembering how influenza epidemic scares drive up sales of flu vaccines, which I'm sure is something the manufacturers and retailers of those vaccines really hate and is entirely coincidental.
One of the parties stated flat-out that they would refuse to support any budget compromise offered by anyone else (including the independents, not just the other party), and proposed no compromises of their own. I think it's safe to say that this party is to blame.
One of the odd parts about wealth is that because the top 0.001% are fabulously wealthy compared to the top 0.1%, and the top 0.1% are fabulously wealthy compared to the top 1%, and the top 1% are fabulously wealthy compared to the the top 5%, people who are actually very rich perceive themselves as average. As sibling posters pointed out, you're in the richest 3% of America, and making 4 times what the average family makes. You probably worked hard to get there, and did a bunch of smart things like did well in school, got a good job, married wisely (or not at all) - congratulations and well done.
My basic standard is that you're rich if any of these are true: 1. You could retire on what you have now and have more than $50K annually to spend (which means at least $500K in assets, probably much more). 2. You have at least one full-time servant (that means you have an extra $25K or so annually to spend on making someone else do what normal people do themselves, like cleaning or watching the kids). 3. You have more than two homes that you fully own (again, that indicates a bunch of assets, and usually some leisure time that most people don't have). 4. You can buy a car without thinking hard about the price.
That's why I always say "That will take approximately 270 hours of development work" rather than "That will take 2 months". Then you write down how your time is actually spent, and can document that after 2 months you've actually only had 20 hours to devote to whatever it was, so it's no surprise that you're a long way from finished.
The thing is, the art of management in IT is often perceived as being maximizing the amount of hours worked (in the demonstrably mistaken belief that this means these programmers are getting more done), so companies try to ensure they get more programmers in the first group and no programmers in the second group.
Yes, I'm limiting "terrorist" to those who commit acts of terrorism. Genital cutting and honor killing are abhorrent (at least to me), but aren't acts of terrorism. My suspicion is that you're using the word "terrorism" to mean "things Muslims do that Westerners don't like", which isn't supposed to be an accurate definition, and is certainly not scientific.
One of the other lessons Iran learned from that "axis of evil" declaration: - If you have nukes aimed at important US allies, like North Korea does, the US will probably leave you alone. - If you don't have nukes, and have valuable resources like oil, the US may falsely claim you are trying to get nukes and invade your country.
Completely rational response: Do everything you can to acquire nukes and aim them at the nearest and most important US ally.
In other words, the Iraq War pretty much demands that the Iranian government become a nuclear threat to Tel Aviv. Which is why they're trying to do just that.
Not every Muslim prays for "death to the infidels", not even if they attend the same mosque.
In fact, we can make this statement much stronger: There are about 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. There are estimated to be no more than about 10,000 Muslim terrorists in the world. So what you can actually say is that about 99.9% of Muslims do not in any way support terrorism (assuming that for every terrorist there about 1000 other people that support their actions). The Al Qaida types are a tiny minority.
To be clear, I'm talking about those that blow up civilians, not those that support what they see as wars against dictators and other oppressive powers, such as the people supporting the Syrian rebellion.
Because there the ones that came to mind of smart judges who have done different things in office than they were expected to do by the politicians who nominated them. If you have some judges thought to be pro-choice who changed their mind, feel free to list them.
David Souter, for example, was vilified by the Republican Party for his vote on Griswold v Connecticut. John Roberts has gotten raked over the coals in Republican circles for his vote on the Affordable Care Act.
That mental clarity is why he'll never get nominated. Presidents aren't looking for sharp judicial minds, they're looking for reliable votes on whatever the successor case to Roe v Wade will be.
The sharp judicial minds have this annoying habit of thinking for themselves and coming to conclusions that are significantly different from the politicians who put them on the court. Some examples of this: David Souter, John Paul Stevens, John Roberts. What most politicians actually want is another Clarence Thomas.
The AIG executives pal around with the executives from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley. Of course they have sociopathic chutzpah - this is the group of people who committed 11-figure frauds, got a giant bailout from the US taxpayer, and then worked hard in Washington to ensure that the agencies and regulations proposed to prevent that from recurring either didn't exist, had no funding, etc.
In other words, these are criminals who are upset at the police for catching them, and their solution is to just make sure there aren't any police or that they own the judges.
1)(a) thou shalt not override the free-will of another, or (b) thru inaction, allow a third party to override the free will of another
My free will is to punch you in the face. According to your own rule 1(a), no one else is supposed to interfere with me exercising that free will. But getting punched in the face is interfering with your free will, so by rule 1(b), then bystanders are required to prevent me from punching you. Which means that nobody can follow your first rule. Does not compute.
- All war crimes committed by citizens of the United States (possibly as part of their role in the government, e.g. Dick Cheney) must be investigated and if appropriate brought to trial. - Bank frauds (e.g. Goldman Sachs' misrepresentation of investments, robosigning) must be investigated, and those responsible must be put in jail. - Companies that skimp on safety compliance that ends up killing people (e.g. Massey Energy, West Fertilizer) must have the officers responsible tried for criminally negligent homicide. - Employers who steal wages from employees must have the officers responsible tried for theft.
Worse, however, is that if a third party does get a toehold, the main result is has on an election is to takes vote away from the major party that it's most similar to-- the "spoiler" effect.
The effect of third parties, typically, is that the threat of the third party candidate forces the major party candidate they're most resembling to adopt policies of the third party. For instance, the Democrats started acting rather socialist in the 1930's and 1940's because the Socialist Party candidacies were pulling enough votes that the Democrats had to be worrying about losing to the Republicans even if they were closer to the majority opinion.
I know you're being silly, but the real reason is that the vast majority of the world's cultures (much of the US included) see violence as something that women do only when protecting their kids.
This has lots of other implications, such as the significant number of people who believe that men can't be raped by women or be victims of domestic violence.
The negative effects you describe do exist however, but as symptoms of an overall adjustment of the whole economy to a system of fixed money, not as a cyclical phenomena. Once the economy adjusts it starts moving around the equilibrium point, and growth resumes. But a natural growth at a slow, sustainable rate, not this system of fast growth followed by a recession followed by fast growth followed by a recession... we have now.
Assuming you are treating the gold standard as "fixed money" (it's the closest we've come to that), that demonstrably does not lead to economic stability. Banking panics were as common if not more common than they are now, and frequently had devastating effects on the economy. For example, during the late 19th century, there were crashes and following recessions in 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893 (this one was particularly bad), and 1896.
The one thing that makes LinkedIn not quite as bad as Facebook is that what's public on LinkedIn is exactly what you want to be public: Your professional accomplishments.
By contrast, Facebook wants you to give up information that's regularly stuff I'd want to be kept private, such as the names of all my ex's and exactly what I did with each of them.
For another, most economists around are convinced... that deflation is evil.
Those egghead economists have several good reasons to think that deflation is a problem: 1. It strongly encourages everyone to stuff their money in the mattress rather than spend it. This may seem like a great idea, but without people buying stuff, nobody is needed to make stuff, which means people lose their jobs, so they buy even less, and so on.
2. It means that anyone who is saving is more likely to stuff the money in the mattress than they are to invest it. For example, if cash is gaining value at 1.5% a year, you're less likely to take the risk on an investment with 4% return than you will if cash is losing value at 1.5% a year. Which again causes people to lose their jobs, so they buy less, so others lose their jobs, so they buy less, and so on.
3. Bank lending would grind to a halt, for two reasons: First, banks have to add the deflation into the interest rates of any loans, to account for their opportunity cost compared to just keeping onto the money. Second, borrowers know that they have to repay the loan using progressively more and more valuable dollars, and are rightly concerned that this is a really bad idea.
4. Behavioral research suggests that wages and prices do not deflate as they should - workers have a strong resistance to taking what appears to be wage cuts every year, and businesses have a strong resistance to showing what appears to be lower profits on the same product.
5. People, businesses, and governments who are currently borrowing money get crushed, because their debt becomes progressively more pricey to pay off. That's exactly the problem that was motivating the bimetalism movement back in the 1890's, after the dollar was in deflation for about 2 decades.
It's not just equations: There are several historical examples of deflation, and many of the theorized problems with deflation have in fact turned up.
Slashdot Mirror
Motley Fool:
Sure, the swine flu didn't send revenue skyrocketing, but it was some nice extra bacon that far exceeded what most companies would have gotten for just the seasonal flu. For instance, AstraZeneca's pandemic sales were more than 2.5 times that of its seasonal FluMist vaccine; Glaxo[SmithKlein] quadrupled the revenue seen for its seasonal vaccines Fluarix and FluLaval.
There's definitely a correlation between flu scares and sales of flu vaccine, as every source I looked at specifically mentioned swine flu as a driver of vaccination recommendations.
My take: There's a real problem here, but it's blown way out of proportion. The flu vaccine manufacturers have every reason in the world to make it sound like "We're all gonna die! Panic! Get vaccinated right away!" when what actually happens is that the people who die tend to be elderly or otherwise already sick, while healthy adults fight it off pretty easily. And those same manufacturers are major advertisers on television networks, so they could very easily say to their sales rep at the network "You know, we'd really like to see more coverage of the flu problem. Here's some information about it to get you started."
Not a grand conspiracy, just this business model:
1. Find a problem
2. Figure out a solution to this problem.
3. Help news organizations convince the general public that this problem presents a lethal threat.
4. Sell the solution.
5. Profit!
People are remembering how previous, highly publicised breakouts turned out to be minor. At least globally.
People are also remembering how influenza epidemic scares drive up sales of flu vaccines, which I'm sure is something the manufacturers and retailers of those vaccines really hate and is entirely coincidental.
One of the parties stated flat-out that they would refuse to support any budget compromise offered by anyone else (including the independents, not just the other party), and proposed no compromises of their own. I think it's safe to say that this party is to blame.
One of the odd parts about wealth is that because the top 0.001% are fabulously wealthy compared to the top 0.1%, and the top 0.1% are fabulously wealthy compared to the top 1%, and the top 1% are fabulously wealthy compared to the the top 5%, people who are actually very rich perceive themselves as average. As sibling posters pointed out, you're in the richest 3% of America, and making 4 times what the average family makes. You probably worked hard to get there, and did a bunch of smart things like did well in school, got a good job, married wisely (or not at all) - congratulations and well done.
My basic standard is that you're rich if any of these are true:
1. You could retire on what you have now and have more than $50K annually to spend (which means at least $500K in assets, probably much more).
2. You have at least one full-time servant (that means you have an extra $25K or so annually to spend on making someone else do what normal people do themselves, like cleaning or watching the kids).
3. You have more than two homes that you fully own (again, that indicates a bunch of assets, and usually some leisure time that most people don't have).
4. You can buy a car without thinking hard about the price.
That's why I always say "That will take approximately 270 hours of development work" rather than "That will take 2 months". Then you write down how your time is actually spent, and can document that after 2 months you've actually only had 20 hours to devote to whatever it was, so it's no surprise that you're a long way from finished.
The thing is, the art of management in IT is often perceived as being maximizing the amount of hours worked (in the demonstrably mistaken belief that this means these programmers are getting more done), so companies try to ensure they get more programmers in the first group and no programmers in the second group.
Yes, I'm limiting "terrorist" to those who commit acts of terrorism. Genital cutting and honor killing are abhorrent (at least to me), but aren't acts of terrorism. My suspicion is that you're using the word "terrorism" to mean "things Muslims do that Westerners don't like", which isn't supposed to be an accurate definition, and is certainly not scientific.
One of the other lessons Iran learned from that "axis of evil" declaration:
- If you have nukes aimed at important US allies, like North Korea does, the US will probably leave you alone.
- If you don't have nukes, and have valuable resources like oil, the US may falsely claim you are trying to get nukes and invade your country.
Completely rational response: Do everything you can to acquire nukes and aim them at the nearest and most important US ally.
In other words, the Iraq War pretty much demands that the Iranian government become a nuclear threat to Tel Aviv. Which is why they're trying to do just that.
Not every Muslim prays for "death to the infidels", not even if they attend the same mosque.
In fact, we can make this statement much stronger: There are about 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. There are estimated to be no more than about 10,000 Muslim terrorists in the world. So what you can actually say is that about 99.9% of Muslims do not in any way support terrorism (assuming that for every terrorist there about 1000 other people that support their actions). The Al Qaida types are a tiny minority.
To be clear, I'm talking about those that blow up civilians, not those that support what they see as wars against dictators and other oppressive powers, such as the people supporting the Syrian rebellion.
I was thinking the personnel from this moon base should be organized into two elite moon unit divisions: Moon Unit Alpha and Moon Unit Zappa.
Sorry, wrong citation for Souter. As a sibling post mentioned, the case is actually Planned Parenthood v Casey. Griswold is something different.
Because there the ones that came to mind of smart judges who have done different things in office than they were expected to do by the politicians who nominated them. If you have some judges thought to be pro-choice who changed their mind, feel free to list them.
David Souter, for example, was vilified by the Republican Party for his vote on Griswold v Connecticut. John Roberts has gotten raked over the coals in Republican circles for his vote on the Affordable Care Act.
That mental clarity is why he'll never get nominated. Presidents aren't looking for sharp judicial minds, they're looking for reliable votes on whatever the successor case to Roe v Wade will be.
The sharp judicial minds have this annoying habit of thinking for themselves and coming to conclusions that are significantly different from the politicians who put them on the court. Some examples of this: David Souter, John Paul Stevens, John Roberts. What most politicians actually want is another Clarence Thomas.
The AIG executives pal around with the executives from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley. Of course they have sociopathic chutzpah - this is the group of people who committed 11-figure frauds, got a giant bailout from the US taxpayer, and then worked hard in Washington to ensure that the agencies and regulations proposed to prevent that from recurring either didn't exist, had no funding, etc.
In other words, these are criminals who are upset at the police for catching them, and their solution is to just make sure there aren't any police or that they own the judges.
1)(a) thou shalt not override the free-will of another, or (b) thru inaction, allow a third party to override the free will of another
My free will is to punch you in the face. According to your own rule 1(a), no one else is supposed to interfere with me exercising that free will. But getting punched in the face is interfering with your free will, so by rule 1(b), then bystanders are required to prevent me from punching you. Which means that nobody can follow your first rule. Does not compute.
- All war crimes committed by citizens of the United States (possibly as part of their role in the government, e.g. Dick Cheney) must be investigated and if appropriate brought to trial.
- Bank frauds (e.g. Goldman Sachs' misrepresentation of investments, robosigning) must be investigated, and those responsible must be put in jail.
- Companies that skimp on safety compliance that ends up killing people (e.g. Massey Energy, West Fertilizer) must have the officers responsible tried for criminally negligent homicide.
- Employers who steal wages from employees must have the officers responsible tried for theft.
You get the idea.
Worse, however, is that if a third party does get a toehold, the main result is has on an election is to takes vote away from the major party that it's most similar to-- the "spoiler" effect.
The effect of third parties, typically, is that the threat of the third party candidate forces the major party candidate they're most resembling to adopt policies of the third party. For instance, the Democrats started acting rather socialist in the 1930's and 1940's because the Socialist Party candidacies were pulling enough votes that the Democrats had to be worrying about losing to the Republicans even if they were closer to the majority opinion.
I'm going to go build my own news site ... with blackjack ... and hookers. In fact, forget the news!
Why is it always MALES??
I know you're being silly, but the real reason is that the vast majority of the world's cultures (much of the US included) see violence as something that women do only when protecting their kids.
This has lots of other implications, such as the significant number of people who believe that men can't be raped by women or be victims of domestic violence.
The negative effects you describe do exist however, but as symptoms of an overall adjustment of the whole economy to a system of fixed money, not as a cyclical phenomena. Once the economy adjusts it starts moving around the equilibrium point, and growth resumes. But a natural growth at a slow, sustainable rate, not this system of fast growth followed by a recession followed by fast growth followed by a recession... we have now.
Assuming you are treating the gold standard as "fixed money" (it's the closest we've come to that), that demonstrably does not lead to economic stability. Banking panics were as common if not more common than they are now, and frequently had devastating effects on the economy. For example, during the late 19th century, there were crashes and following recessions in 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893 (this one was particularly bad), and 1896.
The one thing that makes LinkedIn not quite as bad as Facebook is that what's public on LinkedIn is exactly what you want to be public: Your professional accomplishments.
By contrast, Facebook wants you to give up information that's regularly stuff I'd want to be kept private, such as the names of all my ex's and exactly what I did with each of them.
For another, most economists around are convinced ... that deflation is evil.
Those egghead economists have several good reasons to think that deflation is a problem:
1. It strongly encourages everyone to stuff their money in the mattress rather than spend it. This may seem like a great idea, but without people buying stuff, nobody is needed to make stuff, which means people lose their jobs, so they buy even less, and so on.
2. It means that anyone who is saving is more likely to stuff the money in the mattress than they are to invest it. For example, if cash is gaining value at 1.5% a year, you're less likely to take the risk on an investment with 4% return than you will if cash is losing value at 1.5% a year. Which again causes people to lose their jobs, so they buy less, so others lose their jobs, so they buy less, and so on.
3. Bank lending would grind to a halt, for two reasons: First, banks have to add the deflation into the interest rates of any loans, to account for their opportunity cost compared to just keeping onto the money. Second, borrowers know that they have to repay the loan using progressively more and more valuable dollars, and are rightly concerned that this is a really bad idea.
4. Behavioral research suggests that wages and prices do not deflate as they should - workers have a strong resistance to taking what appears to be wage cuts every year, and businesses have a strong resistance to showing what appears to be lower profits on the same product.
5. People, businesses, and governments who are currently borrowing money get crushed, because their debt becomes progressively more pricey to pay off. That's exactly the problem that was motivating the bimetalism movement back in the 1890's, after the dollar was in deflation for about 2 decades.
It's not just equations: There are several historical examples of deflation, and many of the theorized problems with deflation have in fact turned up.
The regulators requires that money laundering is kept in check.
Unless it's carried out by HSBC, in which case the regulators merely require getting a cut.
Could we get an IP address to test out your theory, please?
On the upside, it makes it now possible for a business to say "Hey (hey), you (you), get offa my cloud!"