All government laws are ultimately enforced by violence or threat of violence, often referred to as "at gunpoint".
No voluntary, honest, harmless transaction between mentally competent adults should be prohibited by law.
No single person has the right to point a gun at me and say "you must pay him at least $15.00 an hour." A group does not gain new rights by adding members, so no group, howsoever formed, even if it calls itself a government, has the right to point a gun at me and say "you must pay him at least $15.00 an hour."
Minimum wages laws are a moral obscenity, and have no place in a civil society.
The economy is goods changing hands, and services being performed, for considerations, usually with money as an intermediary. That you think money motion is the economy disqualifies you from economic discussions.
No, he's not saying that there is an upper limit beyond which a minimum wage becomes harmful, he's saying that the entire rationale behind a minimum wage is bogus.
Money kept in local banks is generally goes 3 ways: local house loans, local business loans, and federal government bonds (mandated by law). Big banks, like BOA, is where most of the funny business occurs. Big business seldom needs bank loans for long term capital, they have access to money sources like stock offerings and commercial bonds.
Easy home brewing of mind-degrading drugs is the drug cartels' worst nightmare. Cartels disappear almost overnight as US citizens can brew drugs at far below the cartel cost of production.
Supply and demand. Fracking petroleum increased supply, so price falls. Economics can't predict discoveries, and can only give good guesses that at certain prices levels previously uneconomic supplies would slowly come to market, driving down prices.
That bit sounds easy, but there are lots of things going on in the world, and they interact. Some long term trends can be predicted by honest, intelligent, and informed economists, but many things are outside of good prediction. What these good economists can do is point out that certain types of government policy will tend to cause what types of results.
First, you have to define inflation. Classical economics defines inflation as any increase in the money supply. It would not be unreasonable to modify that to read that inflation is an increase in the money supply beyond the increase in population. Modern misinformation says that something like the cost of living index is inflation.
Note that the CPI, for example, is a measure requiring much calculation and subject to political pressure, which is a strong argument for not using it.
For money to be a store of value, the rate of inflation must be very close to zero. This is more important than any illusory economy boosting that comes from large amounts of inflation, and inflation always creates political pressure for more and faster inflation. However, the damage caused by negative inflation probably exceeds the damage caused by an equal amount of positive inflation.
My judgement is that the target value for inflation, strictly enforced, should be that the money supply should increase between 0% and 0.5% faster than the population.
The federal government is continuing to make more and more regulations to inhibit business activity. Two obvious examples are Obama's threat to destroy the coal industry and opposition to the pipeline from Canada. When a business can't be sure it won't be regulated out of business or have its profits stolen, it tends not to invest in new production, no matter how easy it is to borrow money to finance growth. There will be no recovery until Obama is out of office and it is known that his replacement is much better.
The stock market is demonstrably not a zero sum system. It represents, roughly, the ownership of all production of goods and services. It increases in proportion to the population multiplied by average purchases (i.e. the GDP), both of which have been increasing over time.
People make stuff and do things to improve their lives. That activity is mostly in the context of investor-owned corporations, which is reflected, long term, in stock prices.
Amtrak ridership is 30 million per year (wikipedia). That's 82,000 per day, a pitifully small number for a nationwide service. Contrast that with three commuter rail lines operating out of NYC, each of which carries three times the traffic of Amtrak in the whole country..
Do you have any idea what the coefficient of friction of steel on steel is, and how much lower it is if there's a little grease on the rails? How are you going to handle driveways and garages? Switches aren't cheap, and you'd need them every 50 feet in suburbs. Farm equipment? Are you going to lay down rails on roads that currently have so little traffic that it doesn't pay to have them paved, or plowed when it snows? How do you handle parking in cities and at shopping malls?
With an owner-driven car, drive one place to buy clothes (put them in the car), several more miles to buy books (put them in the car), still more miles to buy a shovel and a hedge trimmer (put them in the car), then yet more to buy groceries (put them in the car and drive home). You going to do that on public transport? (Don't give me any garbage about how everyone should live in cities -- what a drab, sad world that would be.)
Self-driving cars add cameras (cheap), processors (cheap), and actuators (motors and solenoids, moderate cost). The tough part is the software, but that's a one time expense.
Subways already run at a loss. Lower fares will mean greater losses, made up through the inefficient mechanism of taxes. (Alternately, the losses won't be made up, and to make payroll, repair workers will be fired and schedules cut. Eventually, deferred maintenance results in fatalities.) Increased taxes raise the cost of living, causing less disposable income. Furthermore, increased taxes mean any job gains will be in government, and government jobs are inherently antiproductive.
A device in the cockpit to tell the pilot where to go, so as to minimize sonic boom impact? This is a one-time job, map out good regions to fly through, done.
The Clintons have been engaging in criminal activity for at least 35 years. Look at the Whitewater scandal. Both of them are corrupt to the core, and Hillary has the additional bonus of being a nasty person.
The Obama administration is monstrously dishonest; no federal investigation during his administration can be relied on.
Slashdot Mirror
All government laws are ultimately enforced by violence or threat of violence, often referred to as "at gunpoint".
No voluntary, honest, harmless transaction between mentally competent adults should be prohibited by law.
No single person has the right to point a gun at me and say "you must pay him at least $15.00 an hour." A group does not gain new rights by adding members, so no group, howsoever formed, even if it calls itself a government, has the right to point a gun at me and say "you must pay him at least $15.00 an hour."
Minimum wages laws are a moral obscenity, and have no place in a civil society.
The economy is goods changing hands, and services being performed, for considerations, usually with money as an intermediary. That you think money motion is the economy disqualifies you from economic discussions.
No, he's not saying that there is an upper limit beyond which a minimum wage becomes harmful, he's saying that the entire rationale behind a minimum wage is bogus.
No oil wells in Haiti. Nor much in the line of tech industries, or a good workforce.
I've been cutting my own hair for 47 years.
That sentence is incoherent.
You have just committed the logical fallacy of false dichotomy. The missing alternative is to pay them nothing for doing nothing.
Wrong. You can't consume what hasn't been produced. Production comes first; production is fundamental.
Money kept in local banks is generally goes 3 ways: local house loans, local business loans, and federal government bonds (mandated by law). Big banks, like BOA, is where most of the funny business occurs. Big business seldom needs bank loans for long term capital, they have access to money sources like stock offerings and commercial bonds.
Too bad your post and your sig contradict.
The senate is a bastion of corruption now. The important factor is to whom the senators must answer.
Easy home brewing of mind-degrading drugs is the drug cartels' worst nightmare. Cartels disappear almost overnight as US citizens can brew drugs at far below the cartel cost of production.
Yes, I'm sure the Crips and Bloods, and the south of the border cartels, are just full of Republicans.
Supply and demand. Fracking petroleum increased supply, so price falls. Economics can't predict discoveries, and can only give good guesses that at certain prices levels previously uneconomic supplies would slowly come to market, driving down prices.
That bit sounds easy, but there are lots of things going on in the world, and they interact. Some long term trends can be predicted by honest, intelligent, and informed economists, but many things are outside of good prediction. What these good economists can do is point out that certain types of government policy will tend to cause what types of results.
First, you have to define inflation. Classical economics defines inflation as any increase in the money supply. It would not be unreasonable to modify that to read that inflation is an increase in the money supply beyond the increase in population. Modern misinformation says that something like the cost of living index is inflation. Note that the CPI, for example, is a measure requiring much calculation and subject to political pressure, which is a strong argument for not using it.
For money to be a store of value, the rate of inflation must be very close to zero. This is more important than any illusory economy boosting that comes from large amounts of inflation, and inflation always creates political pressure for more and faster inflation. However, the damage caused by negative inflation probably exceeds the damage caused by an equal amount of positive inflation.
My judgement is that the target value for inflation, strictly enforced, should be that the money supply should increase between 0% and 0.5% faster than the population.
55% of Americans are invested in stocks. Are you saying that 55% of Americans are rich?
The federal government is continuing to make more and more regulations to inhibit business activity. Two obvious examples are Obama's threat to destroy the coal industry and opposition to the pipeline from Canada. When a business can't be sure it won't be regulated out of business or have its profits stolen, it tends not to invest in new production, no matter how easy it is to borrow money to finance growth. There will be no recovery until Obama is out of office and it is known that his replacement is much better.
The stock market is demonstrably not a zero sum system. It represents, roughly, the ownership of all production of goods and services. It increases in proportion to the population multiplied by average purchases (i.e. the GDP), both of which have been increasing over time.
People make stuff and do things to improve their lives. That activity is mostly in the context of investor-owned corporations, which is reflected, long term, in stock prices.
Amtrak ridership is 30 million per year (wikipedia). That's 82,000 per day, a pitifully small number for a nationwide service. Contrast that with three commuter rail lines operating out of NYC, each of which carries three times the traffic of Amtrak in the whole country..
You've hit the nail on the head. Congrats.
Amtrak, with a variety of administrators, has been trying and failing to not lose money for 44 years. What makes you think it's ever going to change?
It looks like you'd send people to prison if they failed, on government command, to turn lead into gold.
Do you have any idea what the coefficient of friction of steel on steel is, and how much lower it is if there's a little grease on the rails? How are you going to handle driveways and garages? Switches aren't cheap, and you'd need them every 50 feet in suburbs. Farm equipment? Are you going to lay down rails on roads that currently have so little traffic that it doesn't pay to have them paved, or plowed when it snows? How do you handle parking in cities and at shopping malls?
With an owner-driven car, drive one place to buy clothes (put them in the car), several more miles to buy books (put them in the car), still more miles to buy a shovel and a hedge trimmer (put them in the car), then yet more to buy groceries (put them in the car and drive home). You going to do that on public transport? (Don't give me any garbage about how everyone should live in cities -- what a drab, sad world that would be.)
Self-driving cars add cameras (cheap), processors (cheap), and actuators (motors and solenoids, moderate cost). The tough part is the software, but that's a one time expense.
Subways already run at a loss. Lower fares will mean greater losses, made up through the inefficient mechanism of taxes. (Alternately, the losses won't be made up, and to make payroll, repair workers will be fired and schedules cut. Eventually, deferred maintenance results in fatalities.) Increased taxes raise the cost of living, causing less disposable income. Furthermore, increased taxes mean any job gains will be in government, and government jobs are inherently antiproductive.
A device in the cockpit to tell the pilot where to go, so as to minimize sonic boom impact? This is a one-time job, map out good regions to fly through, done.
The Clintons have been engaging in criminal activity for at least 35 years. Look at the Whitewater scandal. Both of them are corrupt to the core, and Hillary has the additional bonus of being a nasty person.
The Obama administration is monstrously dishonest; no federal investigation during his administration can be relied on.
What part of "they both deleted recorded communications" do you not understand?