agree.....it still amazes me to this day that people don't wake up and realize that inflation is "government theft" you had 100 dollars today....next year with 6% inflation next year you have $94
idiots run around looking at their 401k's and their "property values" thinking they are rich but its really.....no you idiot the government stole from you and you are too stupid to realize.
That’s a very strange way of thinking about money. Money is valuable but only in the context of an economy. Your example is true only if the economy didn’t grow that year. You could make the opposite example. You have 100 dollars today and 100 dollars tomorrow but the economy shrinks a 6%, what is the real value of your money?
A most interesting way would be see money as infrastructure. In order the economy to work you need money. In order to it work properly you need the proper quantity of money. Of course we can disagree in what is the proper quantity.
What way should one think of it, if you concede the fact that the "new" money printed doesn't get equally distributed to all the individuals based on their proportion of ownership of the previous total of money supply?
I.e. if there is 1000 floating around, and 2 individuals in the population. Then if the government prints an extra 100, it needs to give 50 to each individual (not 100 to the one, but not the other). Probably not logistically feasible with a large population, but that way you can at least say it's not "theft".
>"Should I spend it today, tomorrow or in 10 years?"
Whenever the "future" benefit does not outweigh the "current" benefit of said money. People do it now with the interest rates the other way around, why would it be any different with deflation? I.e. they spend now, or they invest now, or they invest in financial instruments now that will beat "inflation".
Both sides of inflation/deflation affect peoples' actions based on their time preference of money[1].
[1] Economists correct me on my usage of that term, if I'm wrong.
Guess it depends on where you live/what you are looking at.
Having just gone through a recent home buying exercise in mid-west I always reverted to bing maps for a "birds eye view" as they had 4 directions of shots from their plane camera while google just had satellite then went into some kind of rendered/extruded view which was kinda eh.
Now if I compare that to our office in SF then google better than bing for zooming in.
that's what I was thinking, I often throw a frame onto the left or right monitor.....having a single monitor would mean I'm adjusting positions all the time?
We as citizens of the world should also be allowed on the same terms to keep government communications on record as well.
As soon as government emails (eg like sony emails this week) start appearing in public and torrented in a "never to be private again" format then I think politicians may choose at such time to vote that perhaps keeping emails/phone calls/meta data on record indefinitely....isn't a good idea.
Maybe it has already happened but somewhat privately?
It should be easy for the spooks to apply pressure, perhaps indirectly via lobbyists, based on known personal or familial communications to anyone in Congress or the Senate.
Thus Sec 309 gets passed.
This seems a far fetched conspiracy fantasy until you realise it has already happened many times before: Hoover, Nixon, etc
I'd imagine a patriotic spook could be confused that they are just doing the right thing by their country.
Apathy wins at the end of the day. People get periodically interested but then move on with their busy lives. We've kind of got disinterested and moved on from Snowden. Plenty of other things in the world to worry about. The security apparatus wins by being relentless.
Sec 309 is a good example of such a lack of vigilance from a disinterested community.
When something "goes wrong" with one of these satellites and wipes out the latest CIA satellite etc or wipes out a pay tv satellite....who is liable and to what ends?
The cheaper it is to launch, the easier it is to clean up orbital debris. The risk from debris in orbit isn't from too many satellites, space is pretty damned empty, the risk comes from thousands upon thousands of fragments, some of them created intentionally. Moreover, as it gets cheaper to launch satellites it also becomes more and more possible to add extra weight to them, to put in backup systems which deorbit the satellites if they become inoperable.
idiots run around looking at their 401k's and their "property values" thinking they are rich but its really.....no you idiot the government stole from you and you are too stupid to realize.