I always see his exact photo when i see this posted. Im pretty convinced that this isnt actually how kids are dressed, otherwise the photo would once in a while be changed up
A small amount is good. Deflation makes it so not spending money is more beneficial. The longer you wait to spend the more the money is worth. This causes fewer products and services to be purchased, which pays for wages. Inflation makes the opposite true. The longer you wait to spend your money the less it’s worth. It encourages spending, not saving. Inflation that outstrips increases to pay is obviously very bad though.
Currency isn’t worth a shit cause it ain’t money. Money should be out of all stable saving of value. Gold is money, precious metals are money, diamonds are money. Currencies are worthless shit created to infinity by banks and hold together by enforcement of governments which are deep in debt to those bank so cannot do a fucking shit about that. All of our tax money goes straight to banks.
Having worked at a bank for a year I can certainly say, banks need the federal government just as much as the federal government needs the banks. The federal government (as well as state governments) frequently use banks as a low cost, low risk way to increase access to capital for those that need it, as well as of course controlling interest rates to then control the speed that the economy grows or shrinks
A well-regulated private banking industry allows the competing interests of a government and a private company to compliment eachother in ways that really only become apparent from directly working in the industry. The government provides grants and subsidies to allow small banks to provide access to capital that might not otherwise exist, competition with other banks forces banks to provide better services to customers and government regulations prevent banks from taking too much risk or doing too much harm, plus a strong government safetynet protecting bank customers from failure all come together to provide a surprisingly good system. I’m not saying private banks are perfect nor that its the best system one could dream up, but in a society that relies on capitalism as a method to limit access to resources, a well regulated private banking industry with strong competition (which we actually largely have!) is really good for consumers
Remember that shareholder primacy assures the banks will pressure the government to deregulate, eventually capturing regulatory departments, as has happened in the US (if not the whole developed world).
Marx explains this in Das Kapital even when there was a notion of social responsibility. But after Dodge v. Ford Motor Company in 1919, it was established by judicial ruling that publicly owned companies have interests in direct opposition to the public, and should not be allowed to influence government, which is meant to serve the interests of the public (and only the public).
Even in 1919, plutocrats had already been dismantling US democracy towards oligarchy. It had failed just as the Soviet Union was trying its hand at ur-communism (and being sabotaged by Wilson).
Gold is not money. Gold is something that some people value but has no value in itself. It’s useful in small quantities for electronics, but other than that it just looks pretty. It has almost no utility. If an apocalypse happens and society fails, gold won’t be worth anything. If people need food, water, shelter to survive, they won’t accept your gold for payment. They can’t eat that. Booze may be a good item that will retain value well, but gold will not.
Precious metals are commodities, money is used to exchange commodities. Using a commodity as money is obsolete. I get that youre mad at the feds but that’s a systemic problem, not moneys fault. Its like getting mad at biotech for the practices of Bayer.
These commodities are not inherently valuable, the labour required to extract them is what gives them valuable.
Yeah of course, you can always trick people into believing something has value when it doesn’t. But as long as you know where value comes from, no one can trick you into buying a Pokemon card.
Currency is a very useful tool to gauge the worth of dissimilar items used for trading. It’s a trait known as fungibility. Without it, we’re in full barter mode. The barter system is… deeply flawed for one reason. If you don’t have anything the seller wants, you’re SOL. You wanna buy food, but don’t have gold, silver, or a skill that the food vendor needs? Well, you’re going to be hungry. Abstracting value to a useless piece of paper that denotes a value, and is enforced by the power of the land (a government) means that paper can buy food, shelter, comforts, whatever you need. It’s an objectively better system.
Just luxury spending and underperforming investments. Essential spending can’t be deferred, and worthwhile investments will outpace any natural rate of deflation. Forced inflation drives conspicuous consumption and malinvestment, but in doing so it increases monetary velocity, which helps bankers and tax collectors extract higher rent from the economy.
This is something you can think about from a micro economic level! think of your next big dollar purchase. Maybe its a car, or a TV or a computer or a kayak. Whatever it is, you probably have to save up to buy it, you probably spend a lot of time researching and thinking about which one to buy, and you wait for a good time to buy. If you know that simply waiting another few months means you can get it for cheaper, would you? If the answer is yes, then that’s how deflation would effect every luxury and other non-necessity purchase
Note that a critical part of that equation is that wages are included in the inflationary trend.
But other than that explicit detail, that’s spot on. Ultimately money is a “trick” we use to influence our productive behavior. So a slightly creeping number works best to make the “money” move instead of sit still, and the whole point of the mathematical model is that the things need to move around.
This is just plain wrong. The majority of people don’t get to “decide” to spend/save, they live paycheck to paycheck. The people that can make that decision are actually incentivized to NOT spend but to “invest” (aka loan) because interest rates are higher, and thus get better returns.
Inflation is really a wealth transfer from the poorest to the wealthy since wages don’t keep up with inflation.
Now you can figure out why deflation is considered a bad thing by mainstream media.
Most of the time most wages do keep up with inflation. Minimum wage should in a reasonable country as well. Also, most people can totally defer spending some money. Not for food and rent and other necessities, but for other things, like getting your car fixed or things like that that can be pushed off for later.
True, yeah. Rent inflation is making things real bad. The past little while almost no wages have kept up with regular inflation even. Generally though, most wages have kept up with both, but recently in particular things have gotten fucked.
With all of the credit balances being carried, I question the whole “people will just wait instead of spending because it will be more financially advantageous”. I’m also not so sure we really need an economic system that encourages and depends on increased consumption. It would be nice if we had a system that could handle inflation, stagnation, and deflation without imploding on itself.
To me, the biggest factor is that it means debt burdens get lighter over time, assuming you are at least covering interest (if not then interest will outpace inflation, though even the growing debt will be cheaper over time vs what it would be without inflation). Oh, also assuming wages match inflation, which is the other big factor. Your employer can save money over time just by being stingy with raises.
Learn your history dumb fuck. You don’t have to believe me. You still haven’t answered what’s to gain by pissing tax payers money away to a failed eastern bloc state that formerly peddled weapons to our enemies.
The price of food is increasing at around double the rate that everything else is. This indicates food prices are the driver of inflation.
What could be the cause of this? Is there any disruptions in the food supply somewhere in the world? Like for example a staple food like grain? What’s causing this disruption?
Inflation makes debt worth less. Generally the working class buys homes and cars by borrowing money.
Of course banks will charge more interest to compensate for this so a high amount of inflation isn’t good. Deflation is bad because the banks are going to continue charging interest even while the value of the debt principle is increasing.
So ideally you want a small amount of inflation so there’s some wiggle room before dipping into deflation territory.
There’s too much inflation so central banks have to raise interest rates which makes people less likely to borrow money which shrinks the money supply. This is how inflation is controlled, but also not a good situation as it can lead to a recession. So it’s a delicate balancing act.
Economics is called the dismal science for a reason. Nothing is intrinsically “good” there’s a cost to everything. And no socialism isn’t some cheat code that allows people to escape the dismal realities of economics. Best you can ever do is balance things well enough that everyone can have a decent life.
Inflation reduces the value of money at the bank: the money saved as well as the money borrowed.
In an ideal world, wages are indexed on inflation (way of calculating inflation in this context can be discussed), and inflation is kept above present targets levels (central banks try to keep it at 2% these days).
That makes your debts easier to reimburse, and limits returns on savings. Have you ever noticed that people who keep talking about the “value of work” actually push for low wages and no or low taxes on capital gains, so actually wants the capital to make more money than work?
A low inflation allows big money to hoard more and more. Higher inflation means money that’s not actively contributing to the economy will lose its value over time, and that’s exactly what you, at the bottom of the ladder, want (and considering top of the ladder is hundreds of billions of $, ever 6 figures employees are bottom of the ladder).
Too high inflation leads to an uncontrolled spiral. Deflation is also very bad (no investment will ever happen if your money just appreciate by doing nothing). But the 2% target is not to protect you. It’s made for money to make more money.
But about the link between wages and inflation: what we have today is a situation where we let cost of life dramatically outpace wage growth. So where did the inflation come from? Profits! That needs to be rebalanced.
From 1945 to the early 80’s (before the €), France and some other countries minmum wages were indexed on inflation. If doing so would instantly crash an economy, we would have noticed…
And the beautiful irony is that in their mission to secure an increased IPO valuation they merely reduced it substantially. Gonna need some more popcorn as we watch them burn it to the ground
One of our cats came from a household where she was very neglected and a toddler used to "play with her" and pulled her hair out and such.
She was very wary of our newborn (understandable). Our baby is 10 days old now and has gotten a little greasy hair, butnwe can't bathe him because his belly button has a little inflammation, so we're careful. Today, our cat started to groom his hair out of nowhere. She just walked up to the baby and started licking the more greasy looking strands. So sweet!
Like "I'm terrified of you, but we can't have you walking around like that"
I’ve got no particular love for Biden beyond him being better than the alternative (although he’s made some pretty strong pro-union moves lately). I just haven’t heard of this stuff.
Biden has been collecting checks from and acting on behalf of corporations and executive side industry lobbies his entire career and strongarmed Congress into violating the rights of and defanging railway workers by passing a bill ending their strike.
although he’s made some pretty strong pro-union moves lately
No he hasn’t. People more pro union than him that he hired at the advice of other people more pro union than him (and the people that work for them)have.
Don’t be like the establishment media by giving him the credit that Lauren McFerran and the rest of the NLRB have earned.
“I don’t understand how cabinet positions work, and I don’t know how to use Google” is all you needed to write.
Also there’s this:
“We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.
Imagine pretending that the IBEW speaks for all railworkers because they and one other of the dozen unions involved accepted a crappy deal and has a leader who loves kissing neoliberal ass.
The labor historians tried to stop the government from making a huge mistake BEFORE it happened because that’s usually the best time to stop things from happening. They did not change their opinion after the mistake was made in spite of their warnings.
That your one Biden bootlicker opinion happened after that doesn’t make it more valid than that of hundreds of experts any more than me being born after Napoleon makes me more skilled at battlefield strategy than him.
PS: if you care so much, why are you still pretending that IBEW was the only union involved rather than one out of a dozen?
You’re changing my argument to a ridiculous one that’s easier to attack. That’s the definition of a strawman. Might want to stop being a cocksure idiot.
Again, I never said that. You’re pretending that i did because it’s easier to attack than what I’m actually saying. A more textbook strawman doesn’t exist.
Again with the fucking projection and pretending that one asskissing union leader is more important than hundreds of labor historians and the 10 unions who AREN’T happy with having the government take away their hard won rights and their most effective bargaining tool.
You are overplaying it though. I am active in my union and in the organized labor movement more broadly here in the PNW. The railway strike left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths, but there’s also a recognition among leadership that the administration didn’t have any great options if they didn’t want to further tank the economy and cause even more inflation with potentially worse long-term results for everyone.
On the flipside he has appointed by far the most pro union NLRB in history, so this is kind of a case of letting the good be the enemy of the perfect.
He forced a contract after taking away the power to strike. The contract he forced was in the favor of the rail owners while taking power away from labor.
Shortly afterwards the disaster in East Palestine happened and lots of people were justifiably pissed at the Biden admin for their part. It was only after East Palestine that the admin started working to get rail workers some of the demands they were originally asking for.
They got 4 days sick leave, which is breadcrumbs, but the Biden admin and mainstream media are attempting to sell it as a huge win for labor. The truth of the matter is if Biden was truly pro labor and was attempting to mitigate the economic impact of a strike from “essential workers” he could have just as easily forced a contract in labour’s favor from the start. Everything else is cover for that fact, don’t get it twisted.
Cool. Everything you say is true, but I’m just telling you that you’re wrong if you think that organized labor is or should be somehow against the Biden Administration.
The reality is that he has appointed the most pro-union and labor-friendly NLRB in modern history.
I’m actually a bit disgusted with people like you who think you know how it is down at our local union halls.
You are the elitist motherfuckers who tell us what we should and shouldn’t do or believe in.
If we look at the history of the labor movement, victories happen when we are organized outside of the two political parties and force their hand. The same thing happened with civil rights and women’s rights. It’s only by taking an antagonistic approach that has both strong demands and sharp criticism of failures that the needle can be moved.
When you make excuses for Democrats and give them cover for their failings, they have no reason to go further next time.
I was a member UFCW 3000 for 7 years in my teens and 20s. My father in-law has been a member of IBEW Local 77 his entire career. My wife and I have been dragging our kids to picket lines for local unions striking since their little legs could march, not because we personally had anything to gain, but as an act of solidarity.
We are on the same side, I don’t understand how you can say in one hand that what I say is truthful and then call me an elitist and swear at me. I am not out here trying to convince anyone to vote for Trump instead, I am just trying to be real about how we, as workers that want to increase labor’s political power, can best accomplish our goals.
Only problem with this is that this doesn’t even hurt the ultra rich - every catastrophe is just a new investment opportunity for them. E.g. after Brexit they just moved their money and businesses out of the UK, leaving the poor schlebs who live there to deal with it.
The problem with platforms advertising that they’re free speech platforms is that you’ll get a lot of people who gives no flying fucks about freedom of speech, they care about that specific discourse that got them banned from other platforms, and only a few people who actually care about free speech as a principle.
And that backtracks all the way into
The false dichotomy that freedom of speech is binary (either you have it or you don’t). It’s quantitative - you have more or less of it, never full or empty.
That nasty, robotic tendency of plenty social media users to stick to the words themselves, instead of the underlying concepts. Cue to “ackshyually”. In this case “free speech” makes them think about some random law of some random country, what it allows and what it doesn’t, instead of thinking on the principle itself.
The incorrect belief that only people above you in a hierarchy can lower your freedom of speech, when we do it all the time. (For example: specially stupid users reduce the freedom of speech of the others, as they discourage their participation.)
Once you work around those three, you realise that, in a lot of situations, forbidding a discourse actually increases the freedom of speech of some other group; so sometimes you need to do it to maximise the overall freedom of speech of all parties involved.
In other words, “free speech platform” is not actually “free speech platform,” rather it is a dogwhistle.
Often, but not always. It’s a mistake to immediately assume that it is one (the reason is at #2). Because sometimes it’s just the result of cluelessness over the three things that I listed.
What will decide if Squabbles’ admins are genuinely dogwhistling are their future actions. The dogs will get on the garden; let’s see if they shoo the dogs or give them treats. (I think that there’s some chance that they shoo the dogs, based on “With the exception of racist content, the use of slurs (racial or otherwise), targeted harassment, and incitement of violence”).
I disagree because any and all words and expressions can be used to bring the dogs to the garden. Coupled with your reasoning, this would mean that all words and expressions are always dogwhistles.
Instead I think that it’s better to see a word/expression as a dogwhistle if it’s within a certain context, and that context is mostly available to a hate group but not to outsiders. This has a bunch of consequences*, but in this specific case it means that we’d need to look for further actions and words from Squabbles’ admins to know if it’s a dogwhistle or not.
Or even a lack of actions/words. If transphobic and related content becomes commonplace in their site, and they do nothing against it, I think that their very silence would be already enough to label it as a dogwhistle.
*e.g. it explains why dogwhistles are often found alongside each other, or why they keep changing, or even how they actually work on a discursive level.
so I totally get your point. For example, a therapy group that says, "this is a free speech area" and has 8 members who are all queer, would probably not mean it as a dogwhistle, and in that case, it also probably would not be one. But also, they wouldn't be saying it to anyone other than those 8 members.
The thing is, in this case it legit does not matter the intent, they are saying it on a public chat forum. That makes it a dogwhistle regardless of intentionality, and it will be recognized as such, because if you say that on a public platform on the internet, guess who will hear it.
And now no matter what their intention is, if they didn't want it to be a dogwhistle, it was one, and now their moderation is 10000x as difficult, because look who they've attracted the attention of now - and chased away.
I don’t care about intent either, and I think that you’re right not caring. I think that our major point of disagreement is fairly small - if being a public area already offers enough context to make it a dogwhistle. I think that it’s still in the area where that implicature (“this is a free speech area” +> “rev up those hate discourses”) can be cancelled.
And now no matter what their intention is, if they didn’t want it to be a dogwhistle, it was one, and now their moderation is 10000x as difficult, because look who they’ve attracted the attention of now - and chased away.
Yeah - regardless of dogwhistle or not, it was a fucking stupid move. Someone mentioned in the thread that nicknames like “arian1488” are already starting to pop up; if they aren’t looking for this sort of user, they just made expurging them 2000% more difficult.
You can’t keep slaves anymore, but you can own a company and pay your workers an amount that makes it hard for them to pay for basic necessities so they don’t have time for leisure, or organising unions, or finding other jobs. The workers are free to go, of course, but then they’ll fall into financial ruin and not have healthcare.
Nah, most will just say get a better job, you’re not working hard enough etc. Lots of people I speak to tend to frame it as a worker problem rather than a problem with the system. It’s also why lots of people seem to be anti strikes…
Well I did use a qualifier. I know. I was in McDonald’s one day getting a soda and they took forever. A young woman was griping that “it’s those kids! No one wants to work anymore!” I told her for those wages and what was expected, i don’t blame them. I got an angry glare.
Too many people seem to think that chattel slavery is the only thing that counts as slavery, and that even that doesn’t count if a slaver is less horrible to their slaves than other slavers are.
A surprisingly wide range of animals will engage in play behavior
Bumblebees have been shown to love having small beads around for them to roll around and on
Edit: sheer amount of people replying who can't just let the silly birb have fun. Guess what, dogs and cats derive play behaviors from predation too, doesn't mean that play ain't play.
I think you're right, but i also remember learnning that some birds have learned to break nuts open using concrete, which i think is what this bird is trying to do
If I'm not mistaken (resolution doesn't help), this bird is a Siriema. They use this movement to kill their prey (usually reptiles like snakes and lizards, but also frogs and small rodents). It is not playing, it is confused, thinking the ball is food.
It is not playing, it is confused, thinking the ball is food.
I am just picturing some alien biologist studying us
"This human is operating a video game called a FPS. It may seem like he is playing but really his instincts for self defense and attack are just misfiring. It isn't recreational it is just confusion"
I wish one of the bigger industrial countries had the balls to curb the state-like influence of billionaires, by flat out capping the amount of wealth they get to wield. It’s not even that people should not be allowed to be “rich”. But “rich” should mean owning 1-50 millions or so. Not billions.
You should try visiting Scandinavian countries. While being ultra rich isn’t disallowed, it’s so heavily taxed that ultra rich end up providing more for the welfare than any other group.
Not true at all. Sweden has worse wealth equality than the US. Sure we have high income taxes, but basically no wealth or inheritance taxes. The only reason social democracy ever took off in Scandinavia was due to the fear of the nearby Soviet Union. The moment the Soviet Union collapsed all the countries of Scandinavia started dismantling the welfare and privatising.
If we’re not going to abolish money, it should really be entirely illegal for the highest paid person in a company to make more than, say, 15-20 times more than the lowest paid person.
Reliance on the state to make things right is the fatal flaw. The purpose of the state is not to make our life better, it is to protect the powerful from us.
You’re assuming I’m in favor of keeping our existing government intact. I don’t. It was shit from the start, and now it’s entirely unsalvageable.
Even if the government itself was salvageable, the US is far too ideologically divided into sides that cannot and should not be reconciled with each other.
This country cannot and will not hold itself together much longer, and the only potentially viable course of action is to mitigate the harm that is going to happen no matter what by breaking it up in as controlled and peaceful a manner as possible.
Rather than worrying about trying to tax 1 person heaps (they will dodge it anyway)
Why not put in place improved worker protection and pay laws.
Higher minimum wage - say equal to the bottom quartile median house price in the area, mandatory health care even for the lowest paid employees, absolutely no overtime.
They can dodge this by moving manufacturing overseas… But they already did this.
The perfect site for reddit admins would be endless bots posting, commenting and viewing adds while said advertisers are oblivious to the con.
The first two have been going on at some level for years. The last? Well, it will be interesting to see the official reddit app's adoption numbers in the coming months.
Reddit…it was once my respite, and now it is a desert of empty words. The admins betrayed their creed: “Remember the human”. They sold it for the Dollar Almighty. Their humanity is lost…let them succumb to that which they so infinitely prize—the towers they built out of their money.
That won't go well either, in the long run. Advertisers will catch on to how many "people" are viewing their ads without ever clicking on anything and put their funds elsewhere.
i.imgur.com
Top