Except the rich have to do something with their money, usually putting it in a bank, or investing it, which is used to fund loans to other businesses or individuals, which generates jobs or allows people to get mortgages.
Yet having too much liquidity can lead to massive bubbles, as investors seek advantageous places to put large sums. Speculation can do nasty things like drive up oil prices, much as we saw in 2008, or land prices, such as we saw shortly thereafter.
Bubbles happen where there is too much investment money to play with. Investment houses have an incentive to work the bubbles, as the house holds all the cards. And bubbles have an enormous negative impact on the functioning of the economy as a whole. I see no justifiable reason for increasing the amount of money that rich people have, and many historically backed arguments against doing so -- essentially eviscerating your point above.
Money the government spends on things people wouldn't buy on their own (agricultural subsidies, bank bailouts) create inefficiency in the economy and slow growth.
When things are not quite so corrupt, we have seen the following instead:
Money the government spends on things people wouldn't buy on their own (bridges, basic research) creates efficiency in the economy and generates growth.
The arguments for spreading resources more broadly across a population are much stronger and more numerous than the arguments for concentrating wealth in the hands of a select few. I would not go so far as to be a French Republican (circa the late 1700s), but I would go so far as to describe the recent tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy push as an exceedingly bad idea.
While acoustic levitation is certainly an interesting phenomenon, I wouldn't get too confused about ancient monuments and ancient texts -- basic applied physics is all we need to understand how to move multi-ton blocks of stone with nothing but manpower.
By way of reference, have a look at Wally Wallington's website -- not joking, the guy shows some very convincing demonstrations of how a single human can move 20-ton chunks of concrete (concrete being easier to obtain than stone, but functionally similar).
M. scholtzi is easily differentiated from other species in this genus by the twisted left paramere of the male genitalia, (see Traumatic insemination) the short pronotum and a distinctive dark pattern on the head.
I thought getting your schwartz twisted was a bad thing, but apparently this little feller has capitalized on it to develop a whole range of antisocial hobbies. Who knew.
California is the 3rd most expensive state in the US behind only Hawaii and Alaska. Try moving to somewhere that actually is inexpensive to live. I live in the midwest and it is FAR less expensive.
Sure, the Midwest is quite less expensive. That said, the OP was arguing about the US as an aggregate whole -- which I think is a mistake, as it depends where you are within the US as to how much things cost. Hence why I brought up prices in California.
It's not about population density, it's about profit margins, and what regulators and the competitive environment will allow.
You say that as if you think profit margins and population density are somehow unrelated. While there are highly dense areas, the phone companies have to expend capital to cover the not dense areas too. If you spend the money to improve connections in the high density areas you necessarily are taking it away from the less populated areas.
Except, as has been substantially covered here on Slashdot, the US telecom companies get sizable government subsidies and other public assistance to carry out such work. This muddies the waters and makes the zero-sum argument about high- vs. low-density areas a bit less tenable.
Furthermore there is the issue of return on investment. Presumably with enough cash they could make incredibly reliable connections but would they see a return on that investment in a competitive environment?
I can't speak much to ROI, except to point out that telecom companies elsewhere, some of them in significantly less densely populated countries and facing much more and fiercer competition, still manage to turn a profit.
Population density is by no means the only important factor but it IS important.
I do agree that it is a factor to consider. My issue with the population density argument is with how often it is invoked as some sort of ultimate reason as to why US internet speeds are falling behind the rest of the developed and developing world.
I also feel that the population density is a PERFECTLY valid argument when you compare why our rural areas do not have as fast of speeds as large cities. Someone has to invest in the infrastructure to reach these far out places...
I'm completely with you when it comes to the rural areas. The problem with the density argument is that it would follow that the main US urban corridors (most of the two coasts, and the area around Chicago) should have telecoms on par with the best in the world. Except we don't.
Which is why I said "it depends on where you go".
But I quite disagree with your next point:
...and it's nigh impossible for any company to create a super fast network over all our major cities when can be thousands of miles in between some of them. How far from Tokyo is Hokkaido? Maybe 750 mi? Think of how far LA is from New York. Just saying. rantOff()
I'm not talking about Hokkaido. (The distance is about 520 miles by road. Besides which, you're comparing a huge sparsely populated island province to the densely populated capital prefecture.) *Within* areas of low population density, yes, I can see ways to argue that building out connectivity could be prohibitively expensive. But when you're just talking about going *through* such areas, then if the distance from LA to NY mattered quite so much, we would again have to wonder why Scandinavia enjoys such impressive internet speeds.
The initial comment was about goods. I lumped in services for fun.
Rents? Sure, I had a ~800 sq ft place a short walking distance from Saginomiya Station (one of the express stops) on the Tôbu line for ~$1,500 / mo. ~1,000 sq ft in San Carlos right after that went for ~$1,800, but the rails were much more expensive, much less convenient, and traffic on 101 was so fun that 12 miles one way could take about an hour. Bicycling would often get your there faster, except drivers were not very kind to bikers, and the roads weren't really set up for it either (no proper bike lanes on El Camino Real, no other good north-south thoroughfare).
Does anybody on Slashdot actually travel? Prices in general of most goods are _way_ cheaper in the US than in Europe or Japan (I haven't been to South Korea). US taxes are relatively low. Why do I care if a cell phone bill is a few hundred bucks a year more?
And then people miss the point that cell infrastructure scales both with population and with physical area. Someone has to pay for that.
I think it depends on where you go, and what goods you're looking at. I lived in Tokyo for three years. Moved back to the US, to California, and naively expected the cost of living to be lower.
It wasn't.
What was more galling, not only was I paying more living in CA, but the quality of the goods and services purchased was generally lower.
A random sample list:
Eggs - cheaper in Tokyo, and fresher there too.
Dry cleaning - cheaper in Tokyo.
Prepared ready-to-eat foods (a.k.a. chûshoku in Japanese, a bit like a carry-out buffet) - hard to find in the US outside of grocery stores, but generally tastier, more varied, and cheaper in Tokyo. Great for anyone living on their own, or in a household where no one has time to cook.
Telecoms - both cell and internet service were *way* cheaper, with *way* better coverage and data speeds. I could place a phone call on the Ôedo line, the newest and deepest subway line in Tokyo, but I would drop out of service while driving on US 101 from Mountain View north past Google's massive campus. Yay, AT&T.:-P
And would people *please* give the population density argument a rest? It's a red herring. The San Francisco Bay Area is quite densely populated and is supposedly the center of the US high-tech industry - and yet cell coverage is kinda crappy, and internet service is much more expensive and much slower than anything you get in Japan (unless you're out in the boonies). It's not about population density, it's about profit margins, and what regulators and the competitive environment will allow.
I.e., the Navajo they used was itself encoded, albeit not very strongly, so things like "abreast" in the plaintext English worked out to "ant breast" (pure gibberish) in the Navajo.
Why? Because they haven't gotten Firefox working all that well yet. They're 10 years behind on some bugs. Hopefully somebody organizing realizes that they need to try to do one thing well, at least first, before trying to do a bunch of other stuff half-assed.
Can't remember where I ran across this, but it suits:
Always remember, intentions aside, two half-asseds make an ass-whole.
Conan the Barbarian and most of the characters of discworld would disapprove. If you're going to die, do it AWESOMELY.
Cohen the Barbarian would probably be much more upset about you messing up his name, and for my money, dying on your own terms and in a method of your own choosing IS dying awesomely. I applaud you, Sir Terry
While we're at it, his full name is/was Genghiz Cohen the Barbarian (to wrap up as many simultaneous puns as possible), and he didn't exactly whimper off into that good night either. (Read The Last Hero if you don't know what I'm talking about.)
Thank you Alex for contributing your perspective. Too many on the northern side of the border here forget that US policy decisions affect far more than just the US -- and that a lot of the international impact is negative. Folks up here would not put up with your situation, and if they were more acutely aware of your situation, they might just get off their duffs and demand that something change for the better.
Thanks! Adrian Lopez's comment posted moments before yours mentions the Incorporation Doctrine as the specific conceptual framework under which this occurs. In this light, TFA makes me wonder if Tennessee legislators labor under some misapprehension that this doesn't apply to them? Dunno. Suffice it to say, I'm baffled by attempts like this to legislate narrow moralities.
Yah, thanks! Adrian Lopez's comment from moments before yours mentions that case indirectly by way of the Incorporation Doctrine. Days like this I'm reminded of what I like best about Slashdot -- learning stuff.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Except the rich have to do something with their money, usually putting it in a bank, or investing it, which is used to fund loans to other businesses or individuals, which generates jobs or allows people to get mortgages.
Yet having too much liquidity can lead to massive bubbles, as investors seek advantageous places to put large sums. Speculation can do nasty things like drive up oil prices, much as we saw in 2008, or land prices, such as we saw shortly thereafter.
Bubbles happen where there is too much investment money to play with. Investment houses have an incentive to work the bubbles, as the house holds all the cards. And bubbles have an enormous negative impact on the functioning of the economy as a whole. I see no justifiable reason for increasing the amount of money that rich people have, and many historically backed arguments against doing so -- essentially eviscerating your point above.
Money the government spends on things people wouldn't buy on their own (agricultural subsidies, bank bailouts) create inefficiency in the economy and slow growth.
When things are not quite so corrupt, we have seen the following instead:
Money the government spends on things people wouldn't buy on their own (bridges, basic research) creates efficiency in the economy and generates growth.
The arguments for spreading resources more broadly across a population are much stronger and more numerous than the arguments for concentrating wealth in the hands of a select few. I would not go so far as to be a French Republican (circa the late 1700s), but I would go so far as to describe the recent tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy push as an exceedingly bad idea.
Cheers,
"Queue" the idiots who can spell, but wind up using the wrong homophone.
(NB: I include myself in the lineup here.)
While acoustic levitation is certainly an interesting phenomenon, I wouldn't get too confused about ancient monuments and ancient texts -- basic applied physics is all we need to understand how to move multi-ton blocks of stone with nothing but manpower.
By way of reference, have a look at Wally Wallington's website -- not joking, the guy shows some very convincing demonstrations of how a single human can move 20-ton chunks of concrete (concrete being easier to obtain than stone, but functionally similar).
Cheers,
I found that the bug's Wikipedia page contains the following disturbing gem (bolding mine):
M. scholtzi is easily differentiated from other species in this genus by the twisted left paramere of the male genitalia, (see Traumatic insemination ) the short pronotum and a distinctive dark pattern on the head.
I thought getting your schwartz twisted was a bad thing, but apparently this little feller has capitalized on it to develop a whole range of antisocial hobbies. Who knew.
Cheers,
What a dick.
What a knob.
What a todger.
What a ...
Cheers,
California is the 3rd most expensive state in the US behind only Hawaii and Alaska. Try moving to somewhere that actually is inexpensive to live. I live in the midwest and it is FAR less expensive.
Sure, the Midwest is quite less expensive. That said, the OP was arguing about the US as an aggregate whole -- which I think is a mistake, as it depends where you are within the US as to how much things cost. Hence why I brought up prices in California.
It's not about population density, it's about profit margins, and what regulators and the competitive environment will allow.
You say that as if you think profit margins and population density are somehow unrelated. While there are highly dense areas, the phone companies have to expend capital to cover the not dense areas too. If you spend the money to improve connections in the high density areas you necessarily are taking it away from the less populated areas.
Except, as has been substantially covered here on Slashdot, the US telecom companies get sizable government subsidies and other public assistance to carry out such work. This muddies the waters and makes the zero-sum argument about high- vs. low-density areas a bit less tenable.
Furthermore there is the issue of return on investment. Presumably with enough cash they could make incredibly reliable connections but would they see a return on that investment in a competitive environment?
I can't speak much to ROI, except to point out that telecom companies elsewhere, some of them in significantly less densely populated countries and facing much more and fiercer competition, still manage to turn a profit.
Population density is by no means the only important factor but it IS important.
I do agree that it is a factor to consider. My issue with the population density argument is with how often it is invoked as some sort of ultimate reason as to why US internet speeds are falling behind the rest of the developed and developing world.
Cheers,
I also feel that the population density is a PERFECTLY valid argument when you compare why our rural areas do not have as fast of speeds as large cities. Someone has to invest in the infrastructure to reach these far out places...
I'm completely with you when it comes to the rural areas. The problem with the density argument is that it would follow that the main US urban corridors (most of the two coasts, and the area around Chicago) should have telecoms on par with the best in the world. Except we don't.
Which is why I said "it depends on where you go".
But I quite disagree with your next point:
...and it's nigh impossible for any company to create a super fast network over all our major cities when can be thousands of miles in between some of them. How far from Tokyo is Hokkaido? Maybe 750 mi? Think of how far LA is from New York. Just saying. rantOff()
I'm not talking about Hokkaido. (The distance is about 520 miles by road. Besides which, you're comparing a huge sparsely populated island province to the densely populated capital prefecture.) *Within* areas of low population density, yes, I can see ways to argue that building out connectivity could be prohibitively expensive. But when you're just talking about going *through* such areas, then if the distance from LA to NY mattered quite so much, we would again have to wonder why Scandinavia enjoys such impressive internet speeds.
Cheers,
The initial comment was about goods. I lumped in services for fun.
Rents? Sure, I had a ~800 sq ft place a short walking distance from Saginomiya Station (one of the express stops) on the Tôbu line for ~$1,500 / mo. ~1,000 sq ft in San Carlos right after that went for ~$1,800, but the rails were much more expensive, much less convenient, and traffic on 101 was so fun that 12 miles one way could take about an hour. Bicycling would often get your there faster, except drivers were not very kind to bikers, and the roads weren't really set up for it either (no proper bike lanes on El Camino Real, no other good north-south thoroughfare).
Cheers,
Bloom County had it spot on back in 1982.
"The earth isn't round, either. Yep! It's shaped like a burrito!"
There's reality, and then there's... somewhere else.
Cheers,
Gah, whatever happened to unordered lists in HTML? Sheesh...
Does anybody on Slashdot actually travel? Prices in general of most goods are _way_ cheaper in the US than in Europe or Japan (I haven't been to South Korea). US taxes are relatively low. Why do I care if a cell phone bill is a few hundred bucks a year more? And then people miss the point that cell infrastructure scales both with population and with physical area. Someone has to pay for that.
I think it depends on where you go, and what goods you're looking at. I lived in Tokyo for three years. Moved back to the US, to California, and naively expected the cost of living to be lower.
It wasn't.
What was more galling, not only was I paying more living in CA, but the quality of the goods and services purchased was generally lower.
A random sample list:
And would people *please* give the population density argument a rest? It's a red herring. The San Francisco Bay Area is quite densely populated and is supposedly the center of the US high-tech industry - and yet cell coverage is kinda crappy, and internet service is much more expensive and much slower than anything you get in Japan (unless you're out in the boonies). It's not about population density, it's about profit margins, and what regulators and the competitive environment will allow.
Cheers,
It certainly seems appropriate for this article.
Diné Bizaad yee Nidaazbaa'ígíí éí doo t'áá diné bizaad chodayoos'iid da ndi, naabeehó bisiláotsooí bizaad chodayoos'iid.
The Navajo Code Talkers didn't use just Navajo, they used military Navajo.
I.e., the Navajo they used was itself encoded, albeit not very strongly, so things like "abreast" in the plaintext English worked out to "ant breast" (pure gibberish) in the Navajo.
Hágoónee / Cheers,
How many major genocides has this century had?
Darfur, for starters. I could probably find more / others, but it's just too depressing.
It's about presenting a plate of crap as an expensive Surf & Turf meal.
I hear they're working on that.
Mm, mm! Gotta get me one of them unko baagaa specials! Probably taste better than most corporate bullshit, anyway...
Cheers,
Why? Because they haven't gotten Firefox working all that well yet. They're 10 years behind on some bugs. Hopefully somebody organizing realizes that they need to try to do one thing well, at least first, before trying to do a bunch of other stuff half-assed.
Can't remember where I ran across this, but it suits:
Always remember, intentions aside, two half-asseds make an ass-whole.
Cheers,
He mea pôrangi tênei.
Solar activity had nothing to do with "The Year Without a Summer". It was the eruption of Tambora that caused that.
Indeed. Tekrat (the GP) is quite confused.
More about Mount Tambora, which blew its top in April 1815 with enough ejecta to darken skies worldwide and reduce agricultural yields.
Cheers,
Conan the Barbarian and most of the characters of discworld would disapprove. If you're going to die, do it AWESOMELY.
Cohen the Barbarian would probably be much more upset about you messing up his name, and for my money, dying on your own terms and in a method of your own choosing IS dying awesomely. I applaud you, Sir Terry
While we're at it, his full name is/was Genghiz Cohen the Barbarian (to wrap up as many simultaneous puns as possible), and he didn't exactly whimper off into that good night either. (Read The Last Hero if you don't know what I'm talking about.)
Cheers,
Oh, the FedRes functions buddy boy. it just functions in ways we never intended it to.
What do you mean, "we"?
Hugs and kisses,
-- Hank Paulson
Thank you Alex for contributing your perspective. Too many on the northern side of the border here forget that US policy decisions affect far more than just the US -- and that a lot of the international impact is negative. Folks up here would not put up with your situation, and if they were more acutely aware of your situation, they might just get off their duffs and demand that something change for the better.
Here's hoping, anyway.
Cheers,
Thanks! Adrian Lopez's comment posted moments before yours mentions the Incorporation Doctrine as the specific conceptual framework under which this occurs. In this light, TFA makes me wonder if Tennessee legislators labor under some misapprehension that this doesn't apply to them? Dunno. Suffice it to say, I'm baffled by attempts like this to legislate narrow moralities.
Cheers,
Yah, thanks! Adrian Lopez's comment from moments before yours mentions that case indirectly by way of the Incorporation Doctrine. Days like this I'm reminded of what I like best about Slashdot -- learning stuff. :)
Cheers,
Cool, thank you! And here is the kicker, with regard to TFA:
Guarantee of freedom of speech
Which brings us back to the question of just what the bejeebus the knuckleheaded state legislators think they're doing...
Cheers,
The animal is called a springbok -- only one "o". Wikipedia article here, more pictures here.
Cheers,