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Published 7 years ago by AdelleChattre with 14 Comments
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  • Appaloosa (edited 7 years ago)
    +4

    "While handsomely produced, at nearly eight hundred pages it weighs as much as a small dog."

    This passes the weight test for a Kindle enabled read.

    When I was about 16, I had a job after school in a mailroom, and most of the workers there were going to college and working part time. I remember this one guy, Larry Farell, as we sat around the sorting table exhorting this very stance, that we had reached our technological zenith as it related to the growth rate of progress. Of course we all said he was nuts, we had just gotten 8 track tapes in our cars for God's sakes. What do you mean the end of progress?! I distinctly remember him citing the Apollo project as being the highest pinnacle we would reach. This was 1973

    I can't help but put in my own personal feeling about the abandonment of the gold standard by Nixon to pay for an unbudgeted war. If you look at the money supply after that, it skyrockets with printed paper and debases the currency. We exported inflation overseas for 40 years, didn't need to have higher wages because of it. That game is now over.

    • spaceghoti
      +4

      I can't help but put in my own personal feeling about the abandonment of the gold standard by Nixon to pay for an unbudgeted war. If you look at the money supply after that, it skyrockets with printed paper and debases the currency. We exported inflation overseas for 40 years, didn't need to have higher wages because of it. That game is now over.

      We left the gold standard long before Nixon because it was creating more problems than it was solving. It was a bad idea in 1932 and it's a bad idea today.

      • Appaloosa
        +2

        Let's not anchor anything on anything right?

        • spaceghoti
          +3

          Yes, that's exactly what I said. :\

          • Appaloosa
            +2

            It is not a silly thing to say that I fear for our future then, not rhetorical at all anymore.

            • spaceghoti
              +4

              Hyperinflation, right? The silent killer that will get us in our sleep? I've been hearing that it's six months to five years away since about 1982. I know fiscal conservatives have been predicting it since FDR.

            • Appaloosa
              +2
              @spaceghoti -

              No, that would be the obvious bogeyman, but you knew that already.

            • spaceghoti
              +3
              @Appaloosa -

              Actually, I didn't. Most goldbugs I meet tend to predict that unless we return to the gold standard soon then hyperinflation will kill us in our sleep. If you have a different rationale, I'm listening.

            • Appaloosa
              +2
              @spaceghoti -

              I would say you could anchor value to carbon and stick to a "standard", but that is not what the monetary system, value system is based on anymore. If you want to pick gold or Unobtanium, pick it and stick to it, don't change it to whatever manipulative trader of nonsense says something is worth.

            • spaceghoti
              +5
              @Appaloosa -

              Can the current system be gamed? Yes it can. Is the current system more prone to cyclical boom-and-bust periods? No it is not. As I've already sourced, rejecting a commodity standard has stabilized our economies so that governments are locked into economic policy contrary to what conditions require. You really don't want to have to raise interest rates during a recession or lower them during a boom, but that's precisely what happened while we were on the gold standard and it helped turn a recession into depression. What's more it kept happening regularly, wiping out the savings of the poor and middle class.

              Since leaving the gold standard we've experienced recessions but they've been moderated by fiscal policy. The only time we experience big economic crashes is when we're governed by fiscal conservatives who insist we must keep our hands off and let the market correct itself. That's when the problems are most likely to bloom out of control and hurt the most people.

              If safeguarding our citizens' interests is wrong then I don't want to be right. But there's a reason why the gold standard option is a fringe movement among economists.

            • Appaloosa (edited 7 years ago)
              +2
              @spaceghoti -

              I see, so value is relative to whatever is valued at the time, such as now. That value is what, may I ask, stability? I might add that some may think the current policies have wiped out the poor and middle class, but that's just what some fringe people might be reading.

            • Appaloosa
              +2
              @spaceghoti -

              Oh dear, the famous CPI index

        • Appaloosa
          +3

          And while we are all defending that pretend banking/political/economic reality world we all enjoy today, please do expound on that Utopian health care program you have reams of sites to post to on the success to help us all understand.

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