The quantity theory of money is trivially shown to be nonsense just by considering what happens to savings (i.e. nothing). You need to up your analysis if you want to truly understand.
It is possible that curves are not linear. That is, it is possible that doing 1 of a thing is good, while doing 1000000 of a thing is bad. Your argument is the same as "you say you need water to survive? But what happens if you're trapped in a giant fish tank with no air pocket?" It is not a good argument.
You're absolutely right - human sentiment is always linear. If somebody likes eating pizza, they love being forcefed pizza 24/7 until their stomach explodes.
You've made accusations but have not brought arguments to support that my take on EU leaders and elites being the ones fucking us, our CoL and purchasing power, is wrong.
And savings absolutely did eventually get obliterated by excessive Covid money printing, what are you on about?
I've not made any accusations, nor do I think that the elites are not to blame. I said that "money printing" is not the problem here. The reason it's not the problem is because the quantity of money simply reflects savings. By focussing on "money printing", you're missing the actual problems. Arguably, that's the point, since the elite tend to do well when money is considered a scarce commodity.
Sure, spending might cause inflationary effects, but that's orthogonal to quantity (flows not stocks), but then economics is the science of confusing stocks with flows.
In my house we discuss a macro feature of children as being "school-shaped". If Terence Tao wasn't school-shaped, would he have been as successful? The counter-point to that is to ponder how many children fail to achieve a similar level of success because they don't fit into the school system so are left by the wayside.
That's a specific school problem. I think being school-shaped is not about being bored, but more about being willing to do tasks on a schedule and can learn a lot of material through a lecture style.
Agreed. But generally it very much depends on the school and the effort of those in and around it. Terrence was very fortunate to have parents who supported him and likely lobbied for his unconventional high school/primary school split education, and equally fortunate that his schools were able and willing to accommodate him.
Where I grew up there wasn't any way to deal with those of us who did better. If you did worse there were all sorts of programs, they would move you to a separate small class so you could get extra help and stuff like that.
My problem was everything was too easy. I was bored. I would get reprimanded for not working because they gave us an hour worth of work, I finished it in 10 minutes and then did other stuff. I basically didn't have to study for anything, I just showed up and got Bs. If I put in 10% effort I got As. And all I ever got for it was yelled at for having done everything they asked me to do too fast.
So I started sitting in the back of the classroom minding my own business and trying not to be noticed. I'm convinced my life would have been very different if I hadn't been completely jaded from most of my teachers basically punishing me for being better than the rest. By my mid teens I didn't give a shit, I was happy coasting along doing better than the rest just by showing up.
My choices were my own and I'm doing pretty well now. Got my shit together in my late 20s and got a CS degree. Best decision I ever made. But I can't help but think I could have ended up on a path like this much earlier if my teachers actually supported me rather than treating me like a problem.
> But I can't help but think I could have ended up on a path like this much earlier if my teachers actually supported me rather than treating me like a problem.
It's interesting you raise your teachers / organized schooling when Tao's parents were cited earlier in the thread for providing him materials.
Where do you see mothers and fathers stepping in (or not!) with children of greater ability?
My parents did provide me with materials. They were happy to buy me books and stuff.
But school is where I spent most my time and did most of my learning. My single father had enough to deal with, working full time alongside being a farmer. He isn't exactly an academic. He did what he could. The school system failed me massively. Both in not supporting nor encouraging my exceptional performance, and in ignoring my bullies even when they walked in on it and when I told them about it.
Is this true when adjusting for vehicle age? The average age of an EV is quite a bit lower than the average age of an ICE vehicle, and I assume there is at least some correlation between a vehicle's age and how likely it is to explode (based on degradation, type of use, type of owner, etc.).
Neither EVs nor ICE cars spontaneously combust unless there's a design flaw. Even when this happens it tends to be very rare, but the Chevy Bolt fires for example were fixed with a recall. Similarly a Ford recall last year fixed a problem where fuel injectors could leak and cause an engine fire.
EVs and ICE cars can both catch on fire in a bad enough accident, but this is true regardless of the age of the vehicle, and tends to be more sudden and violent with gasoline explosions vs battery fires.
That's an interesting parallel. I suspect the point is that entering all relationships with the expectation that all men are pigs carries certain benefits, but then it also likely has costs, such as an inability to form truly deep connections.
Many societies are deeply partiarchal and misogynistic. Men can mistreat their wives with impunity. So is the solution to eschew men? Not if your somehow healthy existence is predicated on having a male companion.
Still there might be private spaces to speak frankly about such a state of affairs.
I'm strongly of the opinion that we're seeing the consequence of 40 years of neoliberalism in which there's no longer any political objective of actually improving things for normal people, just hoping the private sector will sort things out.
Its certainly a symptom. With corporate financing of elections in the post Nixon years, neoliberalism has run amok and led to the disaster we are in. What I worry about is that only about 50% of the country has a passport. Half the country have never seen how other places are run and now 40+ years later a large percentage of the country wouldn't even remember how things used to be. They just think this is how every place runs.
The movie Fahrenheit 11/9 builds up understanding of the theory using specific case studies on the behavior you describe. They also discuss efforts to try and fight back. It is a recommended watch for anyone interested in understanding the underlying reasons for how we ended up where we are now. I can't believe the film is now eight years old yet feels like it was produced right now. Some of the people who were high school kids in the movie graduated college and are now even running for congress to try to fight back against neoliberalism! :O
By racking up debt of epic proportions, with no return on investment in sight.
All the while going into a demographic death spiral. Partly cause by the draconian 1-child policy, which attempted to fix the pronatalist policies of Mao.
"debt"? You mean the balancing item from money creation? Question: To which bank does the government owe the liabilities created when it creates the money? (clue: the government owns it).
Nothing is really stopping other countries from doing the same, to be honest. People are just scared to give legitimacy to what China has done for their citizens in a very short amount of time, because that would be against their own beliefs and morals.
I'm not saying China is the best and whatever, just saying they've proven every "China is about to fall" headline that has been circulating around for the past 15 years. Maybe we should learn some things from them.
Debt is not fundamentally bad. But the financing has to be justified by positive return, be it in the service itself that makes money back to pay off the debt, or as a public good, returns in the form societal benefit as a result of the service.
When you have massive buildups with no hope of returns, it's a a bad financial decision and the public carries the debt burden.
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