Without inflation the a majority of people would become destiute, as interest rates would slowly accumulate all the money with the wealthy. Growth would stagnate (by definition) and prices would deflate.
Oddly enough, the people of Zimbabwe don't seem to be too happy to have a big helping of inflation to increase their wealth.
Neither did the people of Weimar Germany.
Don't recall a lot of people happy with inflation in the USA in the late '70s either....
You're right, collapsing the entire global economy would have been far better than making some low-interest loans that we're mostly getting back.
I see this mentioned fairly frequently. But when I check the Treasury's Historical Debt Outstanding page, the numbers I see for the debt increase are pretty much consistent with the deficits reported for the last few years.
Which deficits included the Stimulus, the Bailouts, that sort of thing.
In other words, the government's own websites support the idea that those "low interest loans" are NOT, in fact, mostly being repaid.
Note, for those who are interested, that the National Debt has increased 50% over the last three years....
The powers that be want Assange captured and made an example of.
Then they're not going about it correctly.
When all is said and done, the Swedish prosecutor wants to question Assange. Which is pretty much normal in any criminal investigation.
Alas, Assange is not to be found. So he/she asks the Court to order him hauled in for questioning whenever and wherever he is found. Which is also pretty much normal in any criminal investigation.
It's just awfully suspicious, especially since the first time they went after him for this another prosecutor stepped in and had the matter dropped.
Of course, it's also possible that the prosecutor who had the matter dropped was the one with political motivations. Wonder why he's not busy telling his junior prosecutors to drop this now?
In any case, noone is going to have a clue what the truth is till Assange turns himself in for questioning. Fleeing to another country tends to make one look more guilty rather than less, but answering questions with a lawyer present (which is the key here - don't talk to police or prosecutor without your lawyer present, guilty or innocent) won't do much to make you look more guilty unless, well, you're guilty....
They didn't fit the age limit back when the were doing things. Armstrong was in the late 30's when he set foot on the Moon. Astronauts tend to be older than you might think.
My property goes to my heirs at my death. My body is my property.
Slavery is illegal. No-one else can own your body except you.
Has nothing to do with slavery - the body is just a big pile of meat, the property of the heirs (assuming no controlling laws to the contrary), and it's not the government's business to sneak in and steal bits and pieces.
Alternately, taking the religious view, it's important what becomes of a body after death, and it's still not the government's business to sneak in and steal bits and pieces.
She didn't want the money for HER college. She asked that a donation be made to the Columbia School of Journalism.
If you think copyright law should be different in regards to recipes
Copyright law IS different in regards to recipes - they can't be copyrighted.
That said, what was lifted wasn't a recipe, but an article discussing the history of apple pie, which happened to include two archaic recipes for apple pie as illustrations of the changes.
Note, for the record, that the lady who you suspect jumped the gun discovered that her article had been used without her permission did so when a friend contacted her to congratulate her on getting her article published.
Note further that checking Cooks Source on the web showed that virtually every article in the magazine was lifted from some other source without permission.
what would a Mars colony be able to sell at a profit?
Water to asteroid colonies, lunar colonies, space stations. It's cheaper (slower, but cheaper) to move H2O from Mars to Earth orbit than to move it from Earth surface to Earth orbit.
If one is to assume that both TFA and the parent post are correct, then one must assume that either:
A) England and the UK as a whole have substantially different life expectancies (unlikely),
B) someone in the USA has a significantly higher chance of dying young than someone in England/UK (rather more likely)
or
C) There is a difference in how the two countries handle infant mortality statistics (no opinions on likelihood, though I have read that the USA classifies some things as "infant deaths" that some (and I emphasize "some", not necessarily the UK) other countries count as "dead at birth" (and therefore not part of life expectancy statistics since it was never "alive")).
The "fscking close to water" joke dates back to that era, if not to an earlier one.
Earlier. It was used in WW2. It may have been used still earlier.
When it wasn't used was the 19th century, when Budweiser and such were made by immigrant Germans, and it was really pretty damn good. Enough so that it was winning international awards.
Sad where it's gone since then - I blame Prohibition, myself.
In short, I think you're overestimating the extent to which the Republican Party stands as a monolithic whole, and underestimating the extent to which the Democratic Party does the same.
Note that all those "gutted" bills you spoke of still managed to produce a huge amount of new spending and new mandates. Which suggests strongly that "gutted" may be a bit too strong a word.
Of course, we'll never actually know, since we didn't actually get to look at the proposed legislation before it was passed in order to find out what changes were made. Normally, I go to Thomas.gov and get the text of bills before they even get out of committee. Not this time, though....
The ability to sell as many T-bills as they wish is the rainy day fund. Exhausting the patience of our creditors is the limit.
So, you prefer the inflate the problem out of existence method, I see. Yah, that worked well for Germany after WW1. And it's working well for Zimbabwe right now....
You can't fix it. Life doesn't have a reset switch. You have to correct and watch, correct again, watch. There is no scenario that leads to a magic bullet, problem solved, sit back, put your feet on the desk and have a cigar.
Sounds like your solution is to throw up your hands, say we're fucked and let the train come off the rails in time.
Watching my (theoretical) peers spend their time arguing over who should get the credit/blame for things, without once asking whether they, themselves, are willing to shoulder a chunk of the blame, and help pay to fix things makes me want to do that.
Consider the nature of the problem. Everyone has a solution. All solutions have one thing in common - they don't cut any spending favoured by the creator of the solution, nor do they increase taxes on the creator of the solution. Which, in itself, says that the problem won't be solved.
Oh, sure, something like WW3 sans nukes might do it. Or at least mask the problem with high employment (and high casualties). But that's not an ideal solution.
The other historical alternative was migration away from the problem. But we don't have anyplace "away from the problem" left that is reachable in sufficient numbers to make the problem solvable.
And of course, the final solution to the problem - revolution and mob rule. Which is about as ugly as the Great Big Long War option, but with no civilians out of the "war zone".
Practically, there is no solution. Once the people find out they can vote themselves money out of the public treasury (or the politicos start bribing people with the contents of the public treasury), things start a slide downhill that will only end with a collapse. When that appears over the horizon, you do your best to put things off till after your death and enjoy the show.
Heavily tax oil and invest heavily in renewables, electrifying transportation, and medical research to reduce the cost of expensive conditions (Parkinsons, Alzheimers, Diabetes, etc).
So, tax and spend...that's worked so well in the past. Note that we've been investing in renewables about as heavily as we can recently, short of actually having the government take over energy production in the country. Which might be a good thing, but frankly I'm not too enamoured of the idea of putting control of my electricity in the hands of someone who might see political advantage in turning it off....
Invest now to reduce future costs.
Increase spending, aye.
Social security? Means test it.
Wouldn't save enough to matter. The overwhelming number of social security recipients counted on it as part of their retirement, and factored that in when determining how much to set aside for retirement. Yah, I know - silly of them to assume that a government program would perform as advertised, but there it is.
Note, by the way, that once you start means-testing Social Security, you'll either have everyone sticking their retirement funds somewhere unreachable by the government, or you'll have a sizable chunk of people willing to vote to end SS. Is that really your objective? Because it's not on my list of desirable outcomes....
Increases taxes, but demonstrate the quality of life increases it brings.
I take it you weren't paying attention. You'd have to increase taxes vastly just to break even. We're not talking about "quality of life increases", we're talking debt-reduction increases.
Or were you seriously suggesting we triple income taxes at all levels, just so you'd have some money to spend on quality of life increases? If so, consider having to spend three times as much to Washington every year, but getting 1/3 of it back in "quality of life increases". Then ask yourself - "Would I vote for someone who promised to do that?"
Why not a basic e-ID system (we have several here in Sweden although the most popular is simply called BankID) which is used to login to the voting website/voting machine. When logged in you get to create a new username and password for the actual voting. Your real identity gets marked as "has an id" and the new account is completely disconnected from your regular identity, you can now use the new username+password to cast your vote. This system even opens up the possibility to change your vote before the end of the election period.
And you can be coerced into providing said userid/password combo to someone who wants to either verify or change your vote to suit himself.
The weirder thing is in response they vote in the party that has historically run up the deficit more often.
Well, no. If you look at history, you notice that during the past half century, the Republicans have controlled the purse-strings for about 12 years. During those 12 years, the National Debt increased by a bit less than 100%. During the remaining 38 years, it increased by about 2300%....
Or didn't you know that the Congress controls the purse-strings, not the President?
even if it's just baby steps like canceling orders for fighter jets we don't need.
Ahh, but we DO need them. Our military, for a very long time now, has depended on technological superiority. We can't afford to depend on 40 year old designs to maintain technological superiority, which is what Gates is doing.
He'd have been better off cutting out some of the more antiquated stuff in our arsenal - like all those Eagles and Falcons we're still flying....
and the military which Republicans just cannot get enough of.
Note, for the record, that if the Military Budget were reduced to ZERO tomorrow, the Deficit would still be nearly $1 trillion per year.
Fact is, we're barely taking in enough in taxes to pay Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and interest on the debt.
With current tax revenues, we'd have to shut down basically the ENTIRE Federal Government (other than Congress, the President, and the Offices that manage SS/Medicare/Medicaid in order to balance the budget.
Note that in order to increase tax revenues to erase the deficit, we'd have to increase ALL tax rates by about 60%. Yes, your taxes, mine, everyone's. Not just the "rich".
Note also that if we raised taxes to 100% on the "rich", we'd not have enough to zero the deficit.
Face it, we've been living beyond our means for almost 60 years (the last time the National Debt decreased was in 1951, when my father was still a boy).
And there are NO simple solutions. Cut the Military budget? Sure. Cut ALL Federal spending but SS/Medicare/Medicaid? Sure. Raise ALL taxes? Sure. Collectively, that might erase our deficit (without letting us actually reduce our debt).
Alas, our economy couldn't handle the tax increases required, and the country wouldn't tolerate the spending cuts.
Could very well be. Let's see...how big was it, really?
Let's assume that the $1.2 billion number bandied about in September was accurate, and that it amounted to 1/3 of all campaign spending this cycle.
That would mean a total expenditure of $3.6 billion. US population? 308 million
So, this incredibly high campaign spending amounted to about $12 per person. Say, about what we'd spend going out to a movie?
Somehow, I can't get too worked up by the idea that we'd collectively spend that much electing the people who can do things like "healthcare reform" (aka Obamacare), which has already raised my family's health insurance premiums by about 20%. Though, as an alternative, I guess we could just plan on paying the fine once that becomes active - $2000 per year.
Note that I'm not necessarily opposed to "healthcare reform". But spending $12 a head to influence the people who can, on a whim, cost me $1000+ per year forever seems a bargain.
Awhile back you would see things like the republicans would propose a 4% increase in spending on school lunch programs then the democrats would propose a 7% increase and say the republicans wanted to cut spending 3% (I think that was during Regan's term in office so the numbers are from memory and likely lack precision).
Nah, that was the first year of Republican control of the House in Clinton's Presidency.
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Oddly enough, the people of Zimbabwe don't seem to be too happy to have a big helping of inflation to increase their wealth.
Neither did the people of Weimar Germany.
Don't recall a lot of people happy with inflation in the USA in the late '70s either....
I see this mentioned fairly frequently. But when I check the Treasury's Historical Debt Outstanding page, the numbers I see for the debt increase are pretty much consistent with the deficits reported for the last few years.
Which deficits included the Stimulus, the Bailouts, that sort of thing.
In other words, the government's own websites support the idea that those "low interest loans" are NOT, in fact, mostly being repaid.
Note, for those who are interested, that the National Debt has increased 50% over the last three years....
Then they're not going about it correctly.
When all is said and done, the Swedish prosecutor wants to question Assange. Which is pretty much normal in any criminal investigation.
Alas, Assange is not to be found. So he/she asks the Court to order him hauled in for questioning whenever and wherever he is found. Which is also pretty much normal in any criminal investigation.
Of course, it's also possible that the prosecutor who had the matter dropped was the one with political motivations. Wonder why he's not busy telling his junior prosecutors to drop this now?
In any case, noone is going to have a clue what the truth is till Assange turns himself in for questioning. Fleeing to another country tends to make one look more guilty rather than less, but answering questions with a lawyer present (which is the key here - don't talk to police or prosecutor without your lawyer present, guilty or innocent) won't do much to make you look more guilty unless, well, you're guilty....
They didn't fit the age limit back when the were doing things. Armstrong was in the late 30's when he set foot on the Moon. Astronauts tend to be older than you might think.
Has nothing to do with slavery - the body is just a big pile of meat, the property of the heirs (assuming no controlling laws to the contrary), and it's not the government's business to sneak in and steal bits and pieces.
Alternately, taking the religious view, it's important what becomes of a body after death, and it's still not the government's business to sneak in and steal bits and pieces.
FIN means the same thing to editors...
She didn't want the money for HER college. She asked that a donation be made to the Columbia School of Journalism.
Copyright law IS different in regards to recipes - they can't be copyrighted.
That said, what was lifted wasn't a recipe, but an article discussing the history of apple pie, which happened to include two archaic recipes for apple pie as illustrations of the changes.
Note, for the record, that the lady who you suspect jumped the gun discovered that her article had been used without her permission did so when a friend contacted her to congratulate her on getting her article published.
Note further that checking Cooks Source on the web showed that virtually every article in the magazine was lifted from some other source without permission.
Do note that key word:
Plus, of course, that other key word "considering".
Neither of those keywords give me a warm fuzzy about this....
Water to asteroid colonies, lunar colonies, space stations. It's cheaper (slower, but cheaper) to move H2O from Mars to Earth orbit than to move it from Earth surface to Earth orbit.
If one is to assume that both TFA and the parent post are correct, then one must assume that either:
A) England and the UK as a whole have substantially different life expectancies (unlikely),
B) someone in the USA has a significantly higher chance of dying young than someone in England/UK (rather more likely)
or
C) There is a difference in how the two countries handle infant mortality statistics (no opinions on likelihood, though I have read that the USA classifies some things as "infant deaths" that some (and I emphasize "some", not necessarily the UK) other countries count as "dead at birth" (and therefore not part of life expectancy statistics since it was never "alive")).
Earlier. It was used in WW2. It may have been used still earlier.
When it wasn't used was the 19th century, when Budweiser and such were made by immigrant Germans, and it was really pretty damn good. Enough so that it was winning international awards.
Sad where it's gone since then - I blame Prohibition, myself.
It was established at some point that you can't beam through shields, so beaming a nuke into an enemy ship only works if its shields are down.
And at that point, you've pretty much won the fight anyway.
Unless, of course, you're not used to thinking three dimensionally....
It scares me to think that our rockets might be designed by someone who can't spell "hire". Attention to detail....
In short, I think you're overestimating the extent to which the Republican Party stands as a monolithic whole, and underestimating the extent to which the Democratic Party does the same.
Note that all those "gutted" bills you spoke of still managed to produce a huge amount of new spending and new mandates. Which suggests strongly that "gutted" may be a bit too strong a word.
Of course, we'll never actually know, since we didn't actually get to look at the proposed legislation before it was passed in order to find out what changes were made. Normally, I go to Thomas.gov and get the text of bills before they even get out of committee. Not this time, though....
So, you prefer the inflate the problem out of existence method, I see. Yah, that worked well for Germany after WW1. And it's working well for Zimbabwe right now....
Watching my (theoretical) peers spend their time arguing over who should get the credit/blame for things, without once asking whether they, themselves, are willing to shoulder a chunk of the blame, and help pay to fix things makes me want to do that.
Consider the nature of the problem. Everyone has a solution. All solutions have one thing in common - they don't cut any spending favoured by the creator of the solution, nor do they increase taxes on the creator of the solution. Which, in itself, says that the problem won't be solved.
Oh, sure, something like WW3 sans nukes might do it. Or at least mask the problem with high employment (and high casualties). But that's not an ideal solution.
The other historical alternative was migration away from the problem. But we don't have anyplace "away from the problem" left that is reachable in sufficient numbers to make the problem solvable.
And of course, the final solution to the problem - revolution and mob rule. Which is about as ugly as the Great Big Long War option, but with no civilians out of the "war zone".
Practically, there is no solution. Once the people find out they can vote themselves money out of the public treasury (or the politicos start bribing people with the contents of the public treasury), things start a slide downhill that will only end with a collapse. When that appears over the horizon, you do your best to put things off till after your death and enjoy the show.
So, tax and spend...that's worked so well in the past. Note that we've been investing in renewables about as heavily as we can recently, short of actually having the government take over energy production in the country. Which might be a good thing, but frankly I'm not too enamoured of the idea of putting control of my electricity in the hands of someone who might see political advantage in turning it off....
Increase spending, aye.
Wouldn't save enough to matter. The overwhelming number of social security recipients counted on it as part of their retirement, and factored that in when determining how much to set aside for retirement. Yah, I know - silly of them to assume that a government program would perform as advertised, but there it is.
Note, by the way, that once you start means-testing Social Security, you'll either have everyone sticking their retirement funds somewhere unreachable by the government, or you'll have a sizable chunk of people willing to vote to end SS. Is that really your objective? Because it's not on my list of desirable outcomes....
I take it you weren't paying attention. You'd have to increase taxes vastly just to break even. We're not talking about "quality of life increases", we're talking debt-reduction increases.
Or were you seriously suggesting we triple income taxes at all levels, just so you'd have some money to spend on quality of life increases? If so, consider having to spend three times as much to Washington every year, but getting 1/3 of it back in "quality of life increases". Then ask yourself - "Would I vote for someone who promised to do that?"
And you can be coerced into providing said userid/password combo to someone who wants to either verify or change your vote to suit himself.
Well, no. If you look at history, you notice that during the past half century, the Republicans have controlled the purse-strings for about 12 years. During those 12 years, the National Debt increased by a bit less than 100%. During the remaining 38 years, it increased by about 2300%....
Or didn't you know that the Congress controls the purse-strings, not the President?
More importantly, he raised taxes, but did NOT cut the debt. National Debt increased by 50% during the senior Bush's term.
Ahh, but we DO need them. Our military, for a very long time now, has depended on technological superiority. We can't afford to depend on 40 year old designs to maintain technological superiority, which is what Gates is doing.
He'd have been better off cutting out some of the more antiquated stuff in our arsenal - like all those Eagles and Falcons we're still flying....
Note, for the record, that if the Military Budget were reduced to ZERO tomorrow, the Deficit would still be nearly $1 trillion per year.
Fact is, we're barely taking in enough in taxes to pay Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and interest on the debt.
With current tax revenues, we'd have to shut down basically the ENTIRE Federal Government (other than Congress, the President, and the Offices that manage SS/Medicare/Medicaid in order to balance the budget.
Note that in order to increase tax revenues to erase the deficit, we'd have to increase ALL tax rates by about 60%. Yes, your taxes, mine, everyone's. Not just the "rich".
Note also that if we raised taxes to 100% on the "rich", we'd not have enough to zero the deficit.
Face it, we've been living beyond our means for almost 60 years (the last time the National Debt decreased was in 1951, when my father was still a boy).
And there are NO simple solutions. Cut the Military budget? Sure. Cut ALL Federal spending but SS/Medicare/Medicaid? Sure. Raise ALL taxes? Sure. Collectively, that might erase our deficit (without letting us actually reduce our debt).
Alas, our economy couldn't handle the tax increases required, and the country wouldn't tolerate the spending cuts.
Your turn - how would YOU fix the problem?
Could very well be. Let's see...how big was it, really?
Let's assume that the $1.2 billion number bandied about in September was accurate, and that it amounted to 1/3 of all campaign spending this cycle.
That would mean a total expenditure of $3.6 billion. US population? 308 million
So, this incredibly high campaign spending amounted to about $12 per person. Say, about what we'd spend going out to a movie?
Somehow, I can't get too worked up by the idea that we'd collectively spend that much electing the people who can do things like "healthcare reform" (aka Obamacare), which has already raised my family's health insurance premiums by about 20%. Though, as an alternative, I guess we could just plan on paying the fine once that becomes active - $2000 per year.
Note that I'm not necessarily opposed to "healthcare reform". But spending $12 a head to influence the people who can, on a whim, cost me $1000+ per year forever seems a bargain.
You seem to assume that the US Government HAS a "rainy day fund". They don't. No more than there is a "Social Security Trust Fund".
Nah, that was the first year of Republican control of the House in Clinton's Presidency.