oh and regarding the "free market" mess we have currently, if we let the bad banks and companies fail, then the ones that made prudent lending decisions in spite of the market-competition to make ridiculous option-arm loans to Californians for their $2m houses, would be rewarded and the foolish ones would die off. Instead, we've intervened (thanks Federal Reserve) and kept bad banks alive. If we hadn't intervened, no surviving bank would have done what those that failed did, ever again.
I think they are similar to property. Do you know how difficult it is to produce a blockbuster title? SO much work goes into all that. Or with producing music, same thing. Lots of work. I now have trouble justifying not paying $1 for a song I like...definitely changed in that regard...
Somehow, we get China to stop controlling the value of their currency, and we find more things to sell to them that they want to buy. To get them to buy we have to help out their middle class. Rewarding their middle class for saving so much money would be a great start-- unfortunately the value of it gets eroded away thanks to [government induced] inflation. Stable currency with fair savings interest rates would mean people could start spending, instead of saving it for a medical emergency while the value of it gets inflated away.
I'm not sure where you're getting your economic theory but it's pretty uninformed.
~75% of US debt is domestically owned. China doesn't even hold 10%. more like 7%. They are not "keeping the US economy afloat".
The US would not plunge into a depression if China dumped their dollar holdings. If China dumped their dollar holdings and the value of the US dollar went to the crapper, suddenly the US would become the new country to build everything in. Any exporters that set up shop would instantly garner a profit.
But that's never going to happen; China would be hurt much more than we would be if we were no longer able to buy their products. Their "middle class" you speak of is anything but thanks to the 20-30% savings rates because of the lack of health insurance options and because the government recapitalizes banks by the interest rate spread between savings accounts (for the populace) and the rate banks are allowed to make loans at. Not to mention their foolish over-commitment to developing a manufacturing base and pushing further in that direction even now while US consumption shrinks. In other words, none of this imbalance matters. We're all headed down the crapper together, it's like mutually assured economic destruction. I used to be worried about all this until I learned that nobody's going to do anything; not when there's money to be made playing the status-quo, it's must safer and easier that way.
No, you've got it all wrong, my friend. I recommend finding better sources to educate yourself with-- Michael Pettis is a professor currently teaching economics classes at [one of the top 3 or so universities in China, don't remember which, sorry]; he's probably the best economist, most closely connected with the state of affairs in China, that I know of. If you're interested in this stuff I highly recommend his blog.
Now, I would consider myself fairly conservative. Usually the argument goes "they're taking our jobs!! We need to enact protectionist policies to protect American workers!" Doing this blindly, I have a problem with it-- it doesn't make economic sense. If we are more efficient at producing one good, and they are more efficient at producing something else, then it doesn't make sense for us to waste money trying to produce it ourselves in the States.
However, I cannot economically justify free trade when 1). the trade occurring is uni-directional (IE, we're buying from them and they're not buying anything of ours-- I don't count China's investment in Treasuries as real goods-based Trade [even though financial trade is _technically_ trade]) 2). one of the countries (China) involved in the trade refuses to let their currency's value be determined by the market.
In other words, what we have now is not true "free trade". If it were free trade, China would be buying our products [unfortunately much of our product is now Intellectual Property and it's difficult to enforce consumption of these goods], and China would not be fixing the value of their currency. If they weren't fixing the value of their currency relative to ours, then any trade imbalances would be slowly corrected as it becomes more and more expensive (in dollars) to outsource labor/manufacturing to China.
The Intel guy is mostly right; we just differ on how the imbalance should be corrected. I'd much rather a natural, market-driven return to mean, than a politically dangerous (taxing imports) one.
Why would anyone want a phone that makes phone calls? That's a feature I've never needed in my phones, and further I don't understand why anyone would want their phone to do such a thing.
well shoot, we could at least be scraping up 20,000 barrels a day with the Dutch rigs built for just this thing....but since they're not 100% efficient at removing the oil, someone high up in this administration (guess) said no.
now can we do something about the rest of the awful browser?
Open 20 tabs and the entire thing chugs to a grinding halt as only one (1) of my four (4) processor cores gets maxed out. So much for the "multithreading" everybody says that Firefox. The same list of 20 tabs peg all my cores to 100% for a few seconds and then they're all done rendering, when I'm using Chrome. No thanks Firefox. You guys are ancientsauce.
This is why I want to completely ban lobbying of all forms. There is far too much money to be made as a politician. Remove that incentive, and you'll remove those that want the power; instead you'll have people campaigning that actually want to make a difference.
It would also be good for getting rid of the barrier to entry to politics. How will you get elected if you can't afford a TV ad? How will you afford a TV ad if you don't have lobbyists? And how will you have lobbyists unless you've got a party that can get your votes passed which bring money to the corporation via pork barrel? The answer is, you won't, and that's why we're still stuck with a 2-party solution.
As a disenfranchised republican (but definitely not a democrat), I simply want a return to sound finance. Cut government and government spending, and then cut taxes, in that order. There are no parties to vote for which cater to these ideals. Either a libertarian or true conservative would be a great start. At our current rate of spending we'll have $18T of national debt before Obama's FIRST term is up.
regarding what happens with California, either 1). Obama or the Fed bails them out (it would look bad on the US for a state to default on their bonds) or 2). they _have_ to cut spending and taxes. I much prefer #2, and so would all the businesses that are fleeing the state.
3 Semi's long. I drove past one in transit at a weigh station. They don't look nearly as ridiculous when they're a mile in the distance. Right up next to it I completely understood-- "oh, THIS is why we don't implement these."
Move to Thorium nuclear reactors and be done with it. Bonus: we can give the thorium tech to Iran. Drawback-- the nuclear waste reprocessing lobbyists.
:( unfortunately as our economy heads even further down the crapper, can you guess who will be the haves and who will be the have nots?
It's those most connected to government...
I think cellulose based ethanol is a great start. What are the hard figures on that? How much would it cost / gallon for cellulose ethanol fuel, without government subsidies?
Yes. The lionshare of Europe's ability to socialize itself came from deferred defense costs due to having the US as their umbrella defender during the Cold War era. Shitty. And how stupid we are.
C//
Wow that is a very good point, and phrased excellently. I am going to write that down.
Yes, everybody usually opposes us until...they need us, then they whine and clamor about how the US is sitting all tidy by itself and never helping anybody out, those stupid fat Americans should come save us from our liberal politicians that didn't spend anything on self defense.
Slashdot Mirror
oh and regarding the "free market" mess we have currently, if we let the bad banks and companies fail, then the ones that made prudent lending decisions in spite of the market-competition to make ridiculous option-arm loans to Californians for their $2m houses, would be rewarded and the foolish ones would die off. Instead, we've intervened (thanks Federal Reserve) and kept bad banks alive. If we hadn't intervened, no surviving bank would have done what those that failed did, ever again.
that's an interesting idea. I don't see how you could actually enforce it.
I think they are similar to property. Do you know how difficult it is to produce a blockbuster title? SO much work goes into all that. Or with producing music, same thing. Lots of work. I now have trouble justifying not paying $1 for a song I like...definitely changed in that regard...
Exactly.
Somehow, we get China to stop controlling the value of their currency, and we find more things to sell to them that they want to buy. To get them to buy we have to help out their middle class. Rewarding their middle class for saving so much money would be a great start-- unfortunately the value of it gets eroded away thanks to [government induced] inflation. Stable currency with fair savings interest rates would mean people could start spending, instead of saving it for a medical emergency while the value of it gets inflated away.
In other words, it's not going to happen.
I'm not sure where you're getting your economic theory but it's pretty uninformed.
~75% of US debt is domestically owned. China doesn't even hold 10%. more like 7%. They are not "keeping the US economy afloat".
The US would not plunge into a depression if China dumped their dollar holdings. If China dumped their dollar holdings and the value of the US dollar went to the crapper, suddenly the US would become the new country to build everything in. Any exporters that set up shop would instantly garner a profit.
But that's never going to happen; China would be hurt much more than we would be if we were no longer able to buy their products. Their "middle class" you speak of is anything but thanks to the 20-30% savings rates because of the lack of health insurance options and because the government recapitalizes banks by the interest rate spread between savings accounts (for the populace) and the rate banks are allowed to make loans at. Not to mention their foolish over-commitment to developing a manufacturing base and pushing further in that direction even now while US consumption shrinks.
In other words, none of this imbalance matters. We're all headed down the crapper together, it's like mutually assured economic destruction. I used to be worried about all this until I learned that nobody's going to do anything; not when there's money to be made playing the status-quo, it's must safer and easier that way.
No, you've got it all wrong, my friend. I recommend finding better sources to educate yourself with-- Michael Pettis is a professor currently teaching economics classes at [one of the top 3 or so universities in China, don't remember which, sorry]; he's probably the best economist, most closely connected with the state of affairs in China, that I know of. If you're interested in this stuff I highly recommend his blog.
Well, 75% of our debt is domestically owned, China holds $1T, and a lot of fabs are in Malaysia.
But to be honest, I didn't RTFA.
Now, I would consider myself fairly conservative. Usually the argument goes "they're taking our jobs!! We need to enact protectionist policies to protect American workers!"
Doing this blindly, I have a problem with it-- it doesn't make economic sense. If we are more efficient at producing one good, and they are more efficient at producing something else, then it doesn't make sense for us to waste money trying to produce it ourselves in the States.
However, I cannot economically justify free trade when
1). the trade occurring is uni-directional (IE, we're buying from them and they're not buying anything of ours-- I don't count China's investment in Treasuries as real goods-based Trade [even though financial trade is _technically_ trade])
2). one of the countries (China) involved in the trade refuses to let their currency's value be determined by the market.
In other words, what we have now is not true "free trade". If it were free trade, China would be buying our products [unfortunately much of our product is now Intellectual Property and it's difficult to enforce consumption of these goods], and China would not be fixing the value of their currency. If they weren't fixing the value of their currency relative to ours, then any trade imbalances would be slowly corrected as it becomes more and more expensive (in dollars) to outsource labor/manufacturing to China.
The Intel guy is mostly right; we just differ on how the imbalance should be corrected. I'd much rather a natural, market-driven return to mean, than a politically dangerous (taxing imports) one.
make the nozzle wider and flanged and LOWER it down on top of it, is what I'm saying
Why would anyone want a phone that makes phone calls? That's a feature I've never needed in my phones, and further I don't understand why anyone would want their phone to do such a thing.
what if they just lowered a pipe on top of, around this one?
well shoot, we could at least be scraping up 20,000 barrels a day with the Dutch rigs built for just this thing....but since they're not 100% efficient at removing the oil, someone high up in this administration (guess) said no.
now can we do something about the rest of the awful browser?
Open 20 tabs and the entire thing chugs to a grinding halt as only one (1) of my four (4) processor cores gets maxed out. So much for the "multithreading" everybody says that Firefox.
The same list of 20 tabs peg all my cores to 100% for a few seconds and then they're all done rendering, when I'm using Chrome. No thanks Firefox. You guys are ancientsauce.
This is why I want to completely ban lobbying of all forms. There is far too much money to be made as a politician. Remove that incentive, and you'll remove those that want the power; instead you'll have people campaigning that actually want to make a difference.
It would also be good for getting rid of the barrier to entry to politics. How will you get elected if you can't afford a TV ad? How will you afford a TV ad if you don't have lobbyists? And how will you have lobbyists unless you've got a party that can get your votes passed which bring money to the corporation via pork barrel? The answer is, you won't, and that's why we're still stuck with a 2-party solution.
As a disenfranchised republican (but definitely not a democrat), I simply want a return to sound finance. Cut government and government spending, and then cut taxes, in that order. There are no parties to vote for which cater to these ideals. Either a libertarian or true conservative would be a great start. At our current rate of spending we'll have $18T of national debt before Obama's FIRST term is up.
regarding what happens with California, either 1). Obama or the Fed bails them out (it would look bad on the US for a state to default on their bonds) or 2). they _have_ to cut spending and taxes. I much prefer #2, and so would all the businesses that are fleeing the state.
3 Semi's long. I drove past one in transit at a weigh station. They don't look nearly as ridiculous when they're a mile in the distance. Right up next to it I completely understood-- "oh, THIS is why we don't implement these."
Move to Thorium nuclear reactors and be done with it. Bonus: we can give the thorium tech to Iran. Drawback-- the nuclear waste reprocessing lobbyists.
Got fuel injection? That's controlled by a computer.
good thing it's surrounded by a Faraday cage.
that sounds ridiculously great. Doesn't it not pollute?
:(
unfortunately as our economy heads even further down the crapper, can you guess who will be the haves and who will be the have nots?
It's those most connected to government...
I think cellulose based ethanol is a great start. What are the hard figures on that? How much would it cost / gallon for cellulose ethanol fuel, without government subsidies?
Yes. The lionshare of Europe's ability to socialize itself came from deferred defense costs due to having the US as their umbrella defender during the Cold War era. Shitty. And how stupid we are.
C//
Wow that is a very good point, and phrased excellently. I am going to write that down.
lol. You are right, it was not negative. But the 2nd derivative was!
you know I got 38.8mpg after driving through some mountains in Wyoming in my Scion tC.
Back to highway on "normal" gas and it's down to about 28.
Yes, everybody usually opposes us until...they need us, then they whine and clamor about how the US is sitting all tidy by itself and never helping anybody out, those stupid fat Americans should come save us from our liberal politicians that didn't spend anything on self defense.
As a European, I ask myself: What the fuck is a mile? Is that some UK and/or USA thing?
I think most Europeans would be talking about liters per 10 or 100 km.
As an American, I ask myself, "lol wut is a Euro"?
nothing is replacing the corn based ethanol, here let me introduce you to my lobbyist friend.
90-10 gasoline-ethanol mix produces about 93% of the energy of pure gasoline
In other words, the last 10% only gives you 3% more power?