Saving doesn't "take money out of circulation"; it lowers consumption. The differences between the two are very important.
Even if consumption is the only thing that matters, an awful lot of consumption is made possible only by debt. How many people can afford to buy a house without a mortgage? How many could buy cars without loans? Even businesses have revolving lines of credit to make short-term obligations like payroll until long-term contracts come in. And "debt" like mortgages, loans, and lines of credit aren't possible without saving - without saving, there'd be no money to lend, and little consumption.
But, consumption is hardly the only thing that matters. Not only is consumption impossible without production, but production is what determines everyone's long-run standard of living. Increasing production - buying new machines, new training, new factories - requires investment. You're not going build a billion-dollar factory by spending every dollar you get as you get it. Even saving is inadequate; sitting on every penny you make for a decade or five means that factory won't get built any time soon.
This is why investment is important. Companies looking to expand can issue bonds or stock, which only works if there's savings available to purchase them. Spending every dollar you make means 1) no way to resist a economic shocks like the housing and financial crises, 2) no credit available to fuel consumption, and 3) no investment available to actually grow production.
Number three is especially important if you don't want unemployment to increase every time someone has children.
Most, if not all of you, will say "That's not fair! I spent wisely and saved accordingly!" Good for you. You don't drive the economy. Those who consume do.
That's not true at all - saving drives the economy just as much as consuming. Without saving, you can't have debt - banks need money before they can loan any out. Credit card companies likewise need a balance to cover everyone's credit limit until they get their end-of-month payment.
Savings also drives investment - no savings, no money to invest. No investment, no economic expansion.
Naturally, you need consumption, too. But dismissing the importance of saving and investment is taking a very short-term economic outlook. Also a very American one; we've had negative personal savings for a long time, which makes shocks like the mortgage crisis even harder to weather.
Funny..a company was just fined a few million for (illegal) human experimentation of their bone anchoring glue which resulted in several deaths, but a spammer that didn't cause any physical harm or death is fined a billion dollars. Let's get some file sharers fined for more than the GDP of several small nations combined too, for good measure.
I hate spammers, but you're telling me that a few million spam messages are worth more than several LIVES and ILLEGAL MEDICAL EXPERIMENTATION ON HUMANS?
Absolutely! They found a practical use for lawyers! A discovery of that magnitude is worth a Nobel or two.
I had a similar problem. It started with neckache and backache when I was sitting for a long time. Then my wrists would hurt when I practiced piano. Then my wrists and shoulders hurt all the time. I ended up seeing a doctor when I lost feeling in my first three digits on each hand. They ended up taking back x-rays; I had a spine that looks more like a "/" than an S. Nerves were getting pinched in my shoulders and my wrists.
So, I went to a chiropractor, and after a couple of months my spine looked normal, and I could actually move my fingers again. With better posture, the tingling/numbness hasn't come back, either. If you haven't already, you might want to go to a doctor or a chiropractor - avoid the ones that try to sell you stuff or that claim a straight spine will cure cancer or whatnot. A lot of regular doctors can do spinal adjustments as well.
I suggest it because I, at least, didn't think that my rapidly decreasing dex modifier had anything to do with my back. But, if you can't do much about your desk or your sitting posture, stand. As long as you aren't hunched over a monitor, it'll be easier on your back, and it'll be easier to keep your wrists raised and your shoulders relaxed.
Dcpromo's command-line version is full-featured, although it'll launch a GUI if you run it without parameters from an explorer session. Selecting a "Server Core" version when installing Windows means you get a completely GUI-less install for everything.
The troll content in my post seems rather weak, so I'll strengthen the titration with a "powershell > bash"
WTF?! Are you telling me you manually number everything in your start menu you could ever possibly want to launch? There is no way you can do something that retarded and call yourself an "advanced user." In XP, you can bind hotkeys to shortcuts. The partial search from the start menu almost always works for me, but I launch more of my programs from the run dialog. (win+r cmd, win+r winword). Windows Explorer has had the Win+E hotkey since the beginning of time,
As for your #1 complaint, open the ABC folder. Search for "ext:txt ABC". I don't get your #3 complaint - you already used the mouse to right-click on the program. Why don't you just move it 20 pixels up and click it again? Personally, I middle-click on the preview tile to close programs.
As for alt-tab... If you need to switch between two or four Windows, and alt-tabbing is "too slow", hit win-tab and click on the window you want. Or use the winkey+number shortcuts to switch to that program on your taskbar - they're shipping your linkkey program with Windows, so be happy.
So, if XP works for you, great. Keep it, save $100, and enjoy manually indexing your start menu with sequential numbers. Otherwise, don't get so hung up on "NEW SOFTWARE HAS MINOR DIFFERENCES TEN YEAR OLD SOFTWARE."
Why are you "no longer sure" you want mutual funds? If your complaint is the Common Man(tm) doesn't have low-latency supercomputers, you better give your money to someone who does. Or find a mattress with good yield.
What you're talking about is what an economist would call "fiscal policy" - how much the government spends or taxes. In the short run, the government can increase the money supply by spending a ton of money; this in turn increases the demand for goods and services, and we see a nice little economic bubble. Each dollar spent in this way tends to have more than $1 economic effect; this is called the Keynesian Multiplier. Taxation has the opposite effect.
Of course, that's all in the short-run. But, governments are best at short-run thinking. In the long run, governments tend to rely on monetary policy, which means having their central banks (the Fed) keep interest rates at a certain level. Low interest rates means easy credit and economic expansion (at risk of inflation), and high interest rates mean tight credit and less expansion.
But as it is, in the UK, the United States, and elsewhere, banks create money, and decide who to loan it to. Governments have no other choice but to levy taxes on the economy.
Governments have "no other choice" than taxes? Governments control fiscal and monetary policy. They directly control how much banks can lend, and manage the effects of that lending. Some examples:
Governments can set reserve requirements - a minimum amount that banks must keep in their vaults. You can't loan out money that you're required to sit on; this reduces the money supply and increases interest rates.
Governments directly increase the money supply by printing currency. This lowers interest rates in the short run.
Governments can increase or decrease the money supply by buying or selling in the securities market, affecting interest rates appropriately.
Notice how none of the above involve taxation.
Whatever happened to that bill to 'Audit the Federal Reserve" (which is owned by private member banks)?
The Federal Reserve is not "owned" by member banks. Its board of governors is appointed by the President. Seven of them sit on the FOMC with five representatives of private banks. The bill to "audit" the Fed died because it was a bad idea.
Whatever you think about the Fed, at least its profits are returned to the U.S. Treasury now.
The Federal Reserve controls the amount of money in circulation by buying and selling government debt. By selling treasury bonds, the Fed takes money from their purchasers in exchange. The Fed sits on that money, effectively taking it out of circulation, and increasing interest rates.
The opposite action is buying government debt. Money the Fed was sitting on is now in circulation, increasing the money supply and lowering interest rates. The money swapped back and forth isn't "profit", and any in excess of what's needed to control interest rates has always been remitted to the treasury.
As for any calls to "reform" the financial system, I prefer my crackpots more in the vein of Dr. Ron Paul, as opposed to some guy with a Wordpress blog. YMMV.
You whine that any money saved will go "straight to the pockets of the executives." But, the way I see it, self-checkouts have three benefits:
They're faster; there's less waiting in line.
Your eggs and light bulbs will no longer be crushed by groceries that have no business being set atop eggs and light bulbs.
Their presence means fewer people waiting in line to flirt up the cashier (tempered, admittedly, by a reduced number of cashiers on some shifts.)
So, what does it matter of the grocer's overhead went down $30 an hour or if Chairman Bob had to mortgage his house and sell his daughter into prostitution? You get those benefits either way, and the prices you pay will have little to do with whether or not they offer automated checkouts.
Case in point: The Woodman's near my house has automated checkouts; the Cub Foods seven tenths of a mile down the road does not. However, Cub Foods manages to charge $5.50 for $3.50 pizzas, $6 for $3 light bulbs, $2 for a dozen eggs instead of $1, sells stale sushi for the same price as fresh, and charges for a single onion what will buy me a dozen at the neighboring gas station.
And, contrary to/. groupthink, Cub's screwing their customers on price doesn't make them a bastion of Quality and Worker's Rights. They don't pay their workers any better, they don't employ any more of them, and their produce is mediocre.
FWIW, the last time I shopped at WalMart, they charged more per ounce for a 24-pack of Coke than a 6-pack. But, the Fast Lane (tm) managed to charge me for four 6-packs without any glitches.
Is it so hard to fathom that to produce certain things properly actually has a cost? And if someone else comes around selling for less than that, that maybe they're the "bad guys"?
That's certainly one theory. A reasonable person would think, "If I had a competitor that's been able to charge less than me on every product for more than 50 years, maybe I'm doing something wrong."
I wonder if you even have a point to make with your milk farmers; everyone and their dog knows they work hard. You don't milk several hundred head of cattle thrice daily for shits and grins. The hours suck; you wake up before dawn and work until it's dark. The margins on milk have nothing to do with farmers being anything other than "honest hard-working people." It also has nothing to do with WalMart's CEOs spooking cows at night, or secretly controlling the network through which everyone from Morning Glory to my grandfather sells milk.
Instead, it has everything to do with milk being a "commodity"; I suggest you read the Wikipedia article on the subject. It's freely traded on a commodities market, where anyone who cares to can buy or sell milk. You can take a look at the price milk's been trading at here. What WalMart would like to pay for milk is irrelevant.
Unless you think WalMart through sheer technological brilliance discovered how to commoditize milk 50 years ago, I'd look elsewhere for why margins on raw milk are low. I'd suspect it has something to do with how many gallons of milk are produced and how many gallons people drink.
It's hard to control a free man who is innocent of any wrongdoing. He'll just tell you to fuck off. But if you make that free man a criminal, even if he doesn't know it yet, you've got him by the balls.
I need to get a grip on the bigger picture? None of the things you say are in any way, shape, or form, bad. Except perhaps for anyone who was hoping to retire a millionaire stocking shelves.
You say four supermarket chains control 80% of grocery sales - so what? There are definite economies of sale in selling groceries. I'd worry about one abusing monopoly powers, but you say they've been viciously cutting prices. That's how it's supposed to work. The opposite situation is one Standard Oil of grocerydom.
I'm sorry that WalMart doesn't have a butcher. Maybe they'll expand into meatpacking. In the meantime, I guess you'll just have to go to a butcher's, like you always have. In the meantime, I don't need someone with "years of experience" to help me pick out potato chips.
they bully suppliers into lower and lower prices, that damages their efficiencies and business.
I think you need to look up the definition of "efficiency."
WalMart exists because ShopKo, Target, Kohl's, J.C. Penny's, Sears Roebuck, Toys "R" Us, etc. had ridiculous markups. These were all large companies leveraging their size to extract higher margins than they'd in anything resembling a competitive market. WalMart's been growing since they were called "Walton's Five and Dime" simply because they didn't gouge consumers.
Are you really shocked that a retail store is expanding their inventory? Is it a crime to stock more than five different kinds of potato chips or something? Are you surprised that a greeter gets paid minimum wage? What makes a WalMart cashier better than a cashier anywhere else? Or better than a fry chef? Or better than a stock boy? Any place I worked up through graduation paid minimum wage, and working most anywhere beats working in food service.
So why all the outrage? Anyone else forcing all their competitors to compete would be a hero. I hope they start their own music label while they're at it. Maybe in their spare time they can write an operating system.
That's similar to what my workplace does. You're not really expected to test your own code - it's assumed that if you're handing it to a QAer that all the use cases you could think of are working. Instead, you get at least one round of "programmer QA" where another developer on your team examines your code for correctness and efficiency before handing it off to QA proper.
The QA folks do mostly UI and workflow testing; they're fairly technical, but they're not coders. If they manage to break anything, you get your code back to fix and the process starts from step one.
That seems to work pretty well - you're not testing your own code, but trying to break your coworker's code before QA gets a chance to.
But, how to make testing your own code interesting? I'm not sure about that - there's not much you can do to make unit tests interesting. But people finding your UI baffling suggests a lack of design. Have you ever done a mock-up and demoed it to end-user victims? They make us at least find other developers before we start throwing around hWnds.
In a free market, anyone can be the wolf. Not just anyone can start a regional monopoly telco. I don't think "free market" has anything to do with internet access in America.
Slashdot Mirror
Saving doesn't "take money out of circulation"; it lowers consumption. The differences between the two are very important.
Even if consumption is the only thing that matters, an awful lot of consumption is made possible only by debt. How many people can afford to buy a house without a mortgage? How many could buy cars without loans? Even businesses have revolving lines of credit to make short-term obligations like payroll until long-term contracts come in. And "debt" like mortgages, loans, and lines of credit aren't possible without saving - without saving, there'd be no money to lend, and little consumption.
But, consumption is hardly the only thing that matters. Not only is consumption impossible without production, but production is what determines everyone's long-run standard of living. Increasing production - buying new machines, new training, new factories - requires investment. You're not going build a billion-dollar factory by spending every dollar you get as you get it. Even saving is inadequate; sitting on every penny you make for a decade or five means that factory won't get built any time soon.
This is why investment is important. Companies looking to expand can issue bonds or stock, which only works if there's savings available to purchase them. Spending every dollar you make means 1) no way to resist a economic shocks like the housing and financial crises, 2) no credit available to fuel consumption, and 3) no investment available to actually grow production.
Number three is especially important if you don't want unemployment to increase every time someone has children.
Most, if not all of you, will say "That's not fair! I spent wisely and saved accordingly!" Good for you. You don't drive the economy. Those who consume do.
That's not true at all - saving drives the economy just as much as consuming. Without saving, you can't have debt - banks need money before they can loan any out. Credit card companies likewise need a balance to cover everyone's credit limit until they get their end-of-month payment.
Savings also drives investment - no savings, no money to invest. No investment, no economic expansion.
Naturally, you need consumption, too. But dismissing the importance of saving and investment is taking a very short-term economic outlook. Also a very American one; we've had negative personal savings for a long time, which makes shocks like the mortgage crisis even harder to weather.
Funny..a company was just fined a few million for (illegal) human experimentation of their bone anchoring glue which resulted in several deaths, but a spammer that didn't cause any physical harm or death is fined a billion dollars. Let's get some file sharers fined for more than the GDP of several small nations combined too, for good measure. I hate spammers, but you're telling me that a few million spam messages are worth more than several LIVES and ILLEGAL MEDICAL EXPERIMENTATION ON HUMANS?
Absolutely! They found a practical use for lawyers! A discovery of that magnitude is worth a Nobel or two.
I had a similar problem. It started with neckache and backache when I was sitting for a long time. Then my wrists would hurt when I practiced piano. Then my wrists and shoulders hurt all the time. I ended up seeing a doctor when I lost feeling in my first three digits on each hand. They ended up taking back x-rays; I had a spine that looks more like a "/" than an S. Nerves were getting pinched in my shoulders and my wrists.
So, I went to a chiropractor, and after a couple of months my spine looked normal, and I could actually move my fingers again. With better posture, the tingling/numbness hasn't come back, either. If you haven't already, you might want to go to a doctor or a chiropractor - avoid the ones that try to sell you stuff or that claim a straight spine will cure cancer or whatnot. A lot of regular doctors can do spinal adjustments as well.
I suggest it because I, at least, didn't think that my rapidly decreasing dex modifier had anything to do with my back. But, if you can't do much about your desk or your sitting posture, stand. As long as you aren't hunched over a monitor, it'll be easier on your back, and it'll be easier to keep your wrists raised and your shoulders relaxed.
Dcpromo's command-line version is full-featured, although it'll launch a GUI if you run it without parameters from an explorer session. Selecting a "Server Core" version when installing Windows means you get a completely GUI-less install for everything.
The troll content in my post seems rather weak, so I'll strengthen the titration with a "powershell > bash"
WTF?! Are you telling me you manually number everything in your start menu you could ever possibly want to launch? There is no way you can do something that retarded and call yourself an "advanced user." In XP, you can bind hotkeys to shortcuts. The partial search from the start menu almost always works for me, but I launch more of my programs from the run dialog. (win+r cmd, win+r winword). Windows Explorer has had the Win+E hotkey since the beginning of time,
As for your #1 complaint, open the ABC folder. Search for "ext:txt ABC". I don't get your #3 complaint - you already used the mouse to right-click on the program. Why don't you just move it 20 pixels up and click it again? Personally, I middle-click on the preview tile to close programs.
As for alt-tab... If you need to switch between two or four Windows, and alt-tabbing is "too slow", hit win-tab and click on the window you want. Or use the winkey+number shortcuts to switch to that program on your taskbar - they're shipping your linkkey program with Windows, so be happy.
So, if XP works for you, great. Keep it, save $100, and enjoy manually indexing your start menu with sequential numbers. Otherwise, don't get so hung up on "NEW SOFTWARE HAS MINOR DIFFERENCES TEN YEAR OLD SOFTWARE."
Why are you "no longer sure" you want mutual funds? If your complaint is the Common Man(tm) doesn't have low-latency supercomputers, you better give your money to someone who does. Or find a mattress with good yield.
My dyslexic? I don't have a dyslexic. "Dyslexic" is not even a noun.
Sure it is - "Dyslexics of the world, untie!"
Are you saying the 3D movies will have... deleted footage?!
Maybe the new editions of episodes 1-3 won't suck?
I heard the 3D release will give Jar-Jar's tired character more depth.
That shouldn't have wires. You're doing it wrong!
What you're talking about is what an economist would call "fiscal policy" - how much the government spends or taxes. In the short run, the government can increase the money supply by spending a ton of money; this in turn increases the demand for goods and services, and we see a nice little economic bubble. Each dollar spent in this way tends to have more than $1 economic effect; this is called the Keynesian Multiplier. Taxation has the opposite effect.
Of course, that's all in the short-run. But, governments are best at short-run thinking. In the long run, governments tend to rely on monetary policy, which means having their central banks (the Fed) keep interest rates at a certain level. Low interest rates means easy credit and economic expansion (at risk of inflation), and high interest rates mean tight credit and less expansion.
But as it is, in the UK, the United States, and elsewhere, banks create money, and decide who to loan it to. Governments have no other choice but to levy taxes on the economy.
Governments have "no other choice" than taxes? Governments control fiscal and monetary policy. They directly control how much banks can lend, and manage the effects of that lending. Some examples:
Notice how none of the above involve taxation.
Whatever happened to that bill to 'Audit the Federal Reserve" (which is owned by private member banks)?
The Federal Reserve is not "owned" by member banks. Its board of governors is appointed by the President. Seven of them sit on the FOMC with five representatives of private banks. The bill to "audit" the Fed died because it was a bad idea.
Whatever you think about the Fed, at least its profits are returned to the U.S. Treasury now.
The Federal Reserve controls the amount of money in circulation by buying and selling government debt. By selling treasury bonds, the Fed takes money from their purchasers in exchange. The Fed sits on that money, effectively taking it out of circulation, and increasing interest rates.
The opposite action is buying government debt. Money the Fed was sitting on is now in circulation, increasing the money supply and lowering interest rates. The money swapped back and forth isn't "profit", and any in excess of what's needed to control interest rates has always been remitted to the treasury.
As for any calls to "reform" the financial system, I prefer my crackpots more in the vein of Dr. Ron Paul, as opposed to some guy with a Wordpress blog. YMMV.
You whine that any money saved will go "straight to the pockets of the executives." But, the way I see it, self-checkouts have three benefits:
So, what does it matter of the grocer's overhead went down $30 an hour or if Chairman Bob had to mortgage his house and sell his daughter into prostitution? You get those benefits either way, and the prices you pay will have little to do with whether or not they offer automated checkouts.
Case in point: The Woodman's near my house has automated checkouts; the Cub Foods seven tenths of a mile down the road does not. However, Cub Foods manages to charge $5.50 for $3.50 pizzas, $6 for $3 light bulbs, $2 for a dozen eggs instead of $1, sells stale sushi for the same price as fresh, and charges for a single onion what will buy me a dozen at the neighboring gas station.
And, contrary to /. groupthink, Cub's screwing their customers on price doesn't make them a bastion of Quality and Worker's Rights. They don't pay their workers any better, they don't employ any more of them, and their produce is mediocre.
FWIW, the last time I shopped at WalMart, they charged more per ounce for a 24-pack of Coke than a 6-pack. But, the Fast Lane (tm) managed to charge me for four 6-packs without any glitches.
Don't be a bitch. Those are the exact same conclusions he came to, and that's exactly what he did.
Remember, this is Intel. He's spot-on.
Really? You "could care less"?
I always read that as a threat. "I could care less... so don't push me!"
Is it so hard to fathom that to produce certain things properly actually has a cost? And if someone else comes around selling for less than that, that maybe they're the "bad guys"?
That's certainly one theory. A reasonable person would think, "If I had a competitor that's been able to charge less than me on every product for more than 50 years, maybe I'm doing something wrong."
I wonder if you even have a point to make with your milk farmers; everyone and their dog knows they work hard. You don't milk several hundred head of cattle thrice daily for shits and grins. The hours suck; you wake up before dawn and work until it's dark. The margins on milk have nothing to do with farmers being anything other than "honest hard-working people." It also has nothing to do with WalMart's CEOs spooking cows at night, or secretly controlling the network through which everyone from Morning Glory to my grandfather sells milk.
Instead, it has everything to do with milk being a "commodity"; I suggest you read the Wikipedia article on the subject. It's freely traded on a commodities market, where anyone who cares to can buy or sell milk. You can take a look at the price milk's been trading at here. What WalMart would like to pay for milk is irrelevant.
Unless you think WalMart through sheer technological brilliance discovered how to commoditize milk 50 years ago, I'd look elsewhere for why margins on raw milk are low. I'd suspect it has something to do with how many gallons of milk are produced and how many gallons people drink.
It's hard to control a free man who is innocent of any wrongdoing. He'll just tell you to fuck off. But if you make that free man a criminal, even if he doesn't know it yet, you've got him by the balls.
I think you just paraphrased Ayn Rand.
I need to get a grip on the bigger picture? None of the things you say are in any way, shape, or form, bad. Except perhaps for anyone who was hoping to retire a millionaire stocking shelves.
You say four supermarket chains control 80% of grocery sales - so what? There are definite economies of sale in selling groceries. I'd worry about one abusing monopoly powers, but you say they've been viciously cutting prices. That's how it's supposed to work. The opposite situation is one Standard Oil of grocerydom.
I'm sorry that WalMart doesn't have a butcher. Maybe they'll expand into meatpacking. In the meantime, I guess you'll just have to go to a butcher's, like you always have. In the meantime, I don't need someone with "years of experience" to help me pick out potato chips.
they bully suppliers into lower and lower prices, that damages their efficiencies and business.
I think you need to look up the definition of "efficiency."
WalMart exists because ShopKo, Target, Kohl's, J.C. Penny's, Sears Roebuck, Toys "R" Us, etc. had ridiculous markups. These were all large companies leveraging their size to extract higher margins than they'd in anything resembling a competitive market. WalMart's been growing since they were called "Walton's Five and Dime" simply because they didn't gouge consumers.
Are you really shocked that a retail store is expanding their inventory? Is it a crime to stock more than five different kinds of potato chips or something? Are you surprised that a greeter gets paid minimum wage? What makes a WalMart cashier better than a cashier anywhere else? Or better than a fry chef? Or better than a stock boy? Any place I worked up through graduation paid minimum wage, and working most anywhere beats working in food service.
So why all the outrage? Anyone else forcing all their competitors to compete would be a hero. I hope they start their own music label while they're at it. Maybe in their spare time they can write an operating system.
Oh no! Duct tape, electrical tape or pink duct tape on the built in webcam! Problem solved!
How so? You can't lynch the administrators if the duct tape's on the laptop.
That's similar to what my workplace does. You're not really expected to test your own code - it's assumed that if you're handing it to a QAer that all the use cases you could think of are working. Instead, you get at least one round of "programmer QA" where another developer on your team examines your code for correctness and efficiency before handing it off to QA proper.
The QA folks do mostly UI and workflow testing; they're fairly technical, but they're not coders. If they manage to break anything, you get your code back to fix and the process starts from step one.
That seems to work pretty well - you're not testing your own code, but trying to break your coworker's code before QA gets a chance to.
But, how to make testing your own code interesting? I'm not sure about that - there's not much you can do to make unit tests interesting. But people finding your UI baffling suggests a lack of design. Have you ever done a mock-up and demoed it to end-user victims? They make us at least find other developers before we start throwing around hWnds.
and there is no government intervention, the existing wolves will have put barriers to entry in place
If there are barriers to entry, it's by definition not a free market.
In a free market, anyone can be the wolf. Not just anyone can start a regional monopoly telco. I don't think "free market" has anything to do with internet access in America.