https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-supporters-florida-face-masks_n_5ef3daa7c5b643f5b22edf0d

Palm Beach County commissioners were told they would be “punished by God” ahead of their vote to require that face masks be worn in public.

During public comments before the unanimous vote in favor of the mask requirement on Tuesday, a majority of speakers opposed the move, according to local news station WPTV. Some of these speakers, as The Daily Beast reports, denied that masks were effective against spreading COVID-19 and accused officials of playing God, violating the Constitution and threatening freedom and lives by imposing the measure.

One speaker threatened to perform a citizen’s arrests on the officials for going “against the freedom of choice.”

“Every single one of you that’s obeying the devil’s laws are going to be arrested. And you are going to be arrested for crimes against humanity,” the woman declared.

“Every single one of you has a smirk behind that little mask, but every single one of you are going to get punished by God. You cannot escape God ... not even with the mask or 6 feet.”

The woman touched on several other theories, including a suggestion that the public officials could be part of a “deep state” of rogue officials.

Why are these people not protesting the requirement to wear clothes in public ?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2020 09:15PM by Dave the Atheist.

Exactly. Why aren't they in a rage about the shirt and shoe requirement in some places or the overall expectation to wear pants in public?

I swear, wanting no one to wear masks has gone from being a political statement to being a low IQ statement.

It should have simply been seen as a temporary concern for public health. It could have been presented consistently that way from all leadership, but no, they had to endanger and divide us. Any face barrier and distance is better than none in a respiratory pandemic situation. How unfortunate people picked this of all things to make some kind of stand about their rights.

Exactly! I was told I just needed to wear a mask to go shopping. That was wrong. Everyone else was wearing clothes, too.

Oh lol, you bad! Two points :)

The only good thing to come of Covid IMHO is that they canceled the Portland Naked Bike Ride.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2020 09:11PM by Susan I/S.

Naked bike rides are healthy.

+Dave the Atheist:
"Naked bike rides are healthy."

==It is only ugly people that do such things. It isn't healthy for my eyes.

~~~~iceman9090

dagny Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I swear, wanting no one to wear masks has gone
> from being a political statement to being a low IQ
> statement.

That reminds me of a meme I saw recently that said "COVID: started out as a pandemic, turned into an IQ test."

Sad, but true.

precisely!

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Why are these people not protesting the
> requirement to wear clothes in pubic ?

Or in public. :)

Thanx. Fixed it. I have an intermittant "L" key. I guess I didn't proof read. *LOL*

I saw a clip of the hearing. In the clip I saw, four different women were ranting about the iniquity of masks, the Deep state, making citizens' arrests, and other complete madness. Was this an organized effort on the part of a particular religious group, or are these people representative of the residents of west Palm Beach?

My wife is from Fort Lauderdale, and we visited her parents there a few times before they moved west because all their kids are in California. Jillian never mentioned West Palm Beach as being a particular hotbed of lunacy, but perhaps she just never though to mention it, or maybe most of the craziness happened since she left.

Here are the CV-19 projections for Florida. Wearing masks (or not) results in two starkly different outcomes:

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/florida

I'm glad all these people railed against public indecency and public nudity laws for their restrictions on our Constitutional right to "freedom of choice" (although I missed that clause the last time I read through it).

What's that? They didn't?

You have to wonder if these are the same people who get upset when women breastfeed in public.

ONLY Women breastfeed in public or anywhere else....


Ja Ja!!!!

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/06/24/mask-mandate-florida-anger-erupts-coronavirus-vpx.cnn



And that is why the United States is the greatest country in the world.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2020 04:41PM by Lot's Wife.

It is all too easy to underestimate human irrationality. Constitutions, laws, civic responsibility, logic: these are a house of cards standing atop the table of human emotion. All you need to do is inadvertently bump the table to see how suddenly the edifice can crumble. You, anybody, were one of the first few here to identify the problem when you started that thread on our increasingly "post-reality" or "post-factual" world.

If we don't stabilize the card table soon, we may learn to our chagrin how quickly civilization can descend into internecine barbarity.

Bearing witness to the end of reality reminds me of books like the "Foundation" series by Issac Asimov or the end of the Ancient World as depicted in "Agora" (2010):

https://youtu.be/f5lTRa_ZJn8


If you like old classic science-fiction, here's the scene in the original "Omega Man" were the zombies destroy what is left of "our" world in Neville's townhouse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2DZtFV8j6g


When I was growing up, I thought that if the darkness came and Civilisation fell, it would be because of nuclear war, not religion.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2020 07:25PM by anybody.

> Bearing witness to the end of reality . . .

That just begs the question: which is reality, the rational or the irrational? Which is the base state in which humans are more comfortable?


----------------
> When I was growing up, I thought that if the
> darkness came and Civilisation fell, it would be
> because of nuclear war, not religion.

Or politics, which is in some senses a species of religion that transforms the irrational impulse into action. That is one of the great tragedies of human history, one that plays out again and again.

You mean like Nazism? Fascism? Stalinism?

Politics are a function of popular moods. If people want a death cult, politics will help them get there.

Exactly.

The question is why did people want that? If we want to bring the insanity to an end, we need to address the problems that gave rise to it.

Thinking one step ahead. . .

"Surely we are dead and only seem to live, we Hellenes, having fallen into misfortune, pretending that a dream is in fact a way of life. Or are we alive while our way of life is dead?"

— Palladas of Alexandria, who witnessed the death of Hypatia and the end of the classical world


I don't know why people desire non-reality. Fear? Pain? I suppose some can't change and would rather destroy what is real to pretend their fantasies are true.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2020 08:02PM by anybody.

Nietzsche would reply that reality is terrifying and that people need their fears assuaged. So they reach for security blankets in the form of religion or political movements.

If he is right, then "civilization" and "democracy" are the exceptions rather than the rule. Rationality is what people engage in when their basic fears are under control, and the focus should be on ensuring those conditions obtain. If they don't, people return to their more "normal" situation of looking for simple faith-based answers to their existential questions.

for openly saying and publishing the fact that the Earth goes round the Sun.

Suppression of the truth can't turn fantasy into reality.

I hope we don't go back to that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2020 11:42PM by anybody.

I doubt it.

But I fear that the worst forms of irrationality are not as arcane as that. The Nazis, again, didn't question the relationship between the earth and the sun.

It was the political, social, and racial impulses that were most destructive. In fact, the combination of such psychological dynamics with modern technology was what made Nazism so horribly virulent.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You mean like Nazism? Fascism? Stalinism?

I saw mention here (and elsewhere) recently that we should remember how stable Germany was and how quickly Nazism flourished. Scary.

I used to think we humans learned from history and progressed towards improvement.

Then I grew up. :/

> I saw mention here (and elsewhere) recently that
> we should remember how stable Germany was and how
> quickly Nazism flourished. Scary.

It may well have been me who brought up that topic. I almost did it in response to Anybody (I'm capitalizing her name now) above but decided against it because the story is a little more complicated.

Germany was the most educated, most industrialized, and arguably the most cultured country in the world in the 1900s. But then WW1 intervened. Thereafter the country was less secure, less stable. There was the revolution in 1918, then a communist rebellion that was suppressed by right-wing thugs. In 1923 the government opted for hyperinflation rather than paying France full reparations. So Germany was no longer as successful a state as it had been before.

From 1924 onward, however, Germany made considerable strides and enjoyed several years of stability and international integration. The Great Depression ended that, especially after the collapse of an internationally important Austrian bank in 1931 (IIRC). Within 18 months the depression and deflation had discredited the recently more successful government and led to Hitler's rise to power in 1932 and his assumption of preeminence in 1933. In retrospect, it's important to note that the depression was more destabilizing than the hyperinflation of a decade earlier.

I belabor the comparison because what happened to the world in 2007-2009 was a huge deflationary shock and according to multiple definitions a depression. The result--lost homes, lost retirements, the inability to help one's children even as the ultra-wealthy grow wealthier, and rage--resemble in important ways what happened to Europe during the Great Depression. When people lose faith in their system and their leaders, they turn their fury on institutions and engage in behavior that is frankly self-destructive.


-------------------
> I used to think we humans learned from history and
> progressed towards improvement.

In my view the only fields in which humans have evinced real progress are science and technology. Art and music and literature are no better now than in the past, even the distant past, and there is scant evidence of moral progress.

Perspective was used in the ancient world to some extent but not much in what survives (mostly frescoes). The lyre and organ (hydrualis) and reed instruments were known to the ancients, but trumpets were natural and valveless.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2020 09:22PM by anybody.

Agreed.

Obviously if we go back 50,000 years there has been progress in other fields than science. But I'm not sure you can separate that from science, for it was science and engineering that raised living standards, spread knowledge and art, etc. Without the Agricultural Revolution, to take an extreme example, there would have been no Bach, no Rembrandt, no Shakespeare.

But the point I wanted to emphasize was that moral progress is a lot less easy to see than that based in technology and, if you want, technique.

Agreed.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Germany was the most educated, most
> industrialized, and arguably the most cultured
> country in the world in the 1900s. But then WW1
> intervened. Thereafter the country was less
> secure, less stable. There was the revolution in
> 1918, then a communist rebellion that was
> suppressed by right-wing thugs. In 1923 the
> government opted for hyperinflation rather than
> paying France full reparations. So Germany was no
> longer as successful a state as it had been
> before.
>
> From 1924 onward, however, Germany made
> considerable strides and enjoyed several years of
> stability and international integration. The
> Great Depression ended that, especially after the
> collapse of an internationally important Austrian
> bank in 1931 (IIRC). Within 18 months the
> depression and deflation had discredited the
> recently more successful government and led to
> Hitler's rise to power in 1932 and his assumption
> of preeminence in 1933. In retrospect, it's
> important to note that the depression was more
> destabilizing than the hyperinflation of a decade
> earlier.
>
> I belabor the comparison because what happened to
> the world in 2007-2009 was a huge deflationary
> shock and according to multiple definitions a
> depression. The result--lost homes, lost
> retirements, the inability to help one's children
> even as the ultra-wealthy grow wealthier, and
> rage--resemble in important ways what happened to
> Europe during the Great Depression. When people
> lose faith in their system and their leaders, they
> turn their fury on institutions and engage in
> behavior that is frankly self-destructive.
>
>
> -------------------
> > I used to think we humans learned from history
> and
> > progressed towards improvement.
>
> In my view the only fields in which humans have
> evinced real progress are science and technology.
> Art and music and literature are no better now
> than in the past, even the distant past, and there
> is scant evidence of moral progress.

Agreed.

+Lot's Wife:
"In 1923 the government opted for hyperinflation rather than paying France full reparations."

==And I have no idea what that means. Perhaps if we can cut the mumbo-jumbo and explain in clear terms what hyperinflation is and what this has to do with France.

In anycase, you are talking about economics, which some dub it as voodoo-economics.

Right now, the problem is that there is a medical issue. It is being recommended to wear masks and people are calling the experts devil worshipers. Why are they doing that?

~~~~iceman9090

Imagine an inflation rate so high that if you were paid in cash in the morning it would be almost worthless by the same evening.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic

As for why the crazies think the virus is a hoax and masks will kill you...

https://theconversation.com/four-experts-investigate-how-the-5g-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-began-139137



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2020 12:13AM by anybody.

No, Iceman, economics is not voodoo and it has never been called such. Voodoo economics was a term applied by George H.W. Bush to Ronald Reagan's particular assertion that if you cut taxes the deficit would turn into a surplus. Bush stopped complaining when he was selected as VP candidate, but if you look at what has happened to the national debt since 1980 he was absolutely right. The supply side nostrum was fools' gold.

There is no mumbo jumbo in what I wrote. It is accepted, even elementary, history. What happened is that when Germany surrendered to the allies in 1918, those allies demanded that the loser pay enormous reparations to them. Since France was to get the biggest chunk of reparations, it was basically a transfer of German income to that country.

The problem was that the reparations bill was enormous, too much for Germany realistically to pay. So after arguing with the allies for a few years, the German government decided to run its economy into the ground so that it couldn't pay France and the UK. It did this by turning on the printing presses so that the value of the mark collapsed. As Anybody pointed out, "A loaf of bread in Berlin that cost around 160 Marks at the end of 1922 cost 200,000,000,000 Marks by late 1923."

The gambit worked. Everyone realized that if Germany's economy collapsed, all of Europe would be in trouble economically and politically. So in 1924 the US and the UK agreed to the "Dawes Plan," which reduced the required reparations considerably. Germany then reimposed fiscal discipline and the crisis ended.

+Lot's Wife:

"What happened is that when Germany surrendered to the allies in 1918, those allies demanded that the loser pay enormous reparations to them."

==Payment in what form? Distilled water? Coal? paper with drawings on it?

"It did this by turning on the printing presses so that the value of the mark collapsed. As Anybody pointed out,"

==So Germany printed more money. Then what did they do? Distribute it to the people?

If you wish, we can chat via email.

~~~~iceman9090

> ==Payment in what form? Distilled water? Coal?
> paper with drawings on it?

132 billion gold marks (meaning German marks backed by gold). In 1921 that was formalized as 2 billion gold marks plus 26% of annual export revenues delivered in gold or in foreign (US, British, French) currency.


------------
> ==So Germany printed more money. Then what did
> they do? Distribute it to the people?

Germany had to make its payments, so it printed money to buy foreign currencies. The extra volume of marks, however, caused the German currency to lose value as the price of Frances, for instance, kept increasing.

The huge volume of new marks in the economy, though, caused prices for everything to rise. Hence the hyperinflation.

+Lot's Wife:
"132 billion gold marks (meaning German marks backed by gold). In 1921 that was formalized as 2 billion gold marks plus 26% of annual export revenues delivered in gold or in foreign (US, British, French) currency."

==France wanted to be payed with gold? So why not pay them. It is just a metal and there isn't much that it can be used for in 1921. These days, gold is mostly used to coat electrical contacts since it does not form an oxide layer. It was used as a bonding wire in CPUs.

Other than that, it looks pretty but that is not a use.
It is decoration.

What's the point of digging gold up, purifying it, turning it into bars and putting it into a room with a locked door and guards?
Leave it in the ground. It is safe there.

"Germany had to make its payments, so it printed money to buy foreign currencies. The extra volume of marks, however, caused the German currency to lose value as the price of Frances, for instance, kept increasing.

The huge volume of new marks in the economy, though, caused prices for everything to rise. Hence the hyperinflation."

==Why would printing more money cause its value to go down?

~~~~iceman9090

Come on, seriously? Have you never taken an economics course?

We can't be responsible for Basic Education 101. In this case, Google is your friend.

Try searching for concepts like "economics," "monetary supply," "supply and demand," "gold standard" and "inflation."

+good grief:
I'm not seeing the logic behind it and I am questioning the system for that reason. That's why I am asking.


~~~~iceman9090



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2020 03:27PM by iceman9090.

It's a soft, pretty useless metal for most non-ornamental purposes. It didn't have much industrial use until electricity was discovered.

So why to humans covet it?

It's rare, shiny, inert, and hard to get.

That's why humans use it as a medium of exchange.

Nowadays, monetary policy and the money supply is determined by a central bank in each country and no longer backed by gold as it's no longer practical to so in modern times.

The value of money from one country to the next fluctuates and is determined by market forces. How well do you trust euros? What faith do you have in Swiss francs? How much do you think a Japanese yen or British pound is worth? That's how it works.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2020 03:53PM by anybody.

+anybody:
"That's why humans use it as a medium of exchange."

==What if one country has a gold mine and another does not? In other words, one country and their people have money and another does not. There is an equality problem here.

It is none sense and it is important for me to talk about and point at none sense.

"The value of money from one country to the next fluctuates and is determined by market forces. How well do you trust euros? What faith do you have in Swiss francs? How much do you think a Japanese yen or British pound is worth? That's how it works."

==Trust? How is trust calculated?
But there is something bizarre that is happening. Companies moved from the USA to China, Mexico, Hong Kong (when it had English rulers), South Korea, India, etc. Then, they spend money on boats to bring it across huge oceans to sell in the USA. This makes it more profitable for them. Is it because the value of the money in China and such lower compared to the USA $?

How could the value of petrol, gold, silver, platinum, palladium change on a daily basis? Who decides that it should change?

~~~~iceman9090

https://www.thebalance.com/how-do-exchange-rates-work-3306084

https://www.thebalance.com/foreign-exchange-market-3306088


The foreign exchange market is a global online network where traders buy and sell currencies. It has no physical location and operates 24 hours a day from 5 p.m. EST on Sunday until 4 p.m. EST on Friday because currencies are in high demand. It sets the exchange rates for currencies with floating rates.

The Forex market has an estimated turnover of $6.6 trillion a day.1 It is the largest and most liquid financial market in the world. Demand and supply determine the differences in exchange rates, which in turn, determine traders’ profits.

This global market has two tiers. The first is the interbank market. It's where the biggest banks exchange currencies with each other. Even though it only has a few members, the trades are enormous. As a result, it dictates currency values.

The second tier is the over-the-counter market. That's where companies and individuals trade. OTC has become very popular since there are now many companies that offer online trading platforms. New traders, starting with limited capital, need to know more about forex trading. It’s risky because the forex industry is not highly regulated and provides substantial leverage.

The biggest geographic OTC trading center is in the United Kingdom. London dominates the market. A currency’s quoted price is usually London’s market price. As of April 2019, U.K.’s forex trading amounted to 43.1% of total global trading. This makes London the most important forex trading center1 in the world.

Foreign exchange trading is a contract between two parties. There are three types of trades. The spot market is for the currency price at the time of the trade. The forward market is an agreement to exchange currencies at an agreed-upon price on a future date.

A swap trade involves both. Dealers buy a currency at today's price on the spot market and sell the same amount in the forward market. This way, they have just limited their risk in the future. No matter how much the currency falls, they will not lose more than the forward price. Meanwhile, they can invest the currency they bought on the spot market.
Interbank Market

The interbank market is a network of banks that trade currencies with each other. Each has a currency trading desk called a dealing desk. They are in contact with each other continuously. That process makes sure exchange rates are uniform around the world.

The minimum trade is 1 million of the currency being traded. Most trades are much larger, between 10 million and 100 million in value. As a result, exchange rates are dictated by the interbank market.

The interbank market includes the three trades mentioned above. Banks also engage in the SWIFT3 market. It allows them to transfer foreign exchange to each other. SWIFT stands for Society for World-Wide Interbank Financial Telecommunications.

Banks trade to create profit for themselves and their clients. When they trade for themselves, it's called proprietary trading. Their customers include governments, sovereign wealth funds, large corporations, hedge funds, and wealthy individuals.

Here are the 10 biggest players in the foreign exchange market, according to Euromoney's 2018 FX Survey:

Bank Market Share
JP Morgan Chase 12.13%
UBS 8.25%
XTX Markets 7.36%
Bank of America Merrill Lynch 6.20%
Citi 6.16%
HSBC 5.58%
Goldman Sachs 5.53%
Deutsche Bank 5.41%
Standard Chartered 4.49%
State Street 4.37%
Retail Market

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange was the first to offer currency trading. It launched the International Monetary Market in 1971. Other trading platforms include OANDA, Forex Capital Markets LLC, and Forex.com.

The retail market has more traders than the Interbank Market. But the total dollar amount traded is less. The retail market doesn't influence exchange rates as much.
Role of Central Banks

Central banks don't regularly trade currencies in foreign exchange markets. But they have a significant influence. Central banks hold billions in foreign exchange reserves. Japan holds around $1.2 trillion, mostly in U.S. dollars. Japanese companies receive dollars in payment for exports. They exchange them for yen to pay their workers.

Japan, like other central banks, could trade yen for dollars in the forex market5 when it wants the value to fall. That makes Japanese exports cheaper. Japan prefers to use methods that are more indirect though, such as raising or lowering interest rates to affect the yen's value.

For example, in 2014, the Federal Reserve announced it would raise interest rates in 2015. That sent the dollar's value up 15%, creating an asset bubble.
Manipulation Scandal

In 2014, Citigroup, Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, and The Royal Bank of Scotland pled guilty to illegal manipulation6 of currency prices. Here's how they did it.

Traders at the banks would collaborate in online chat rooms. One trader would agree to build a huge position in a currency, then unload it at 4 p.m. London Time each day. That's when the WM/Reuters fix price is set. That price is based on all the trades taking place in one minute. By selling a currency during that minute, the trader could lower the fix price. That's the price used to calculate benchmarks in mutual funds. Traders at the other banks would also profit because they knew what the fix price would be.

These traders also lied to their clients about currency prices. One Barclays trader explained it as the “worst price I can put on this where the customer’s decision to trade with me or give me future business doesn’t change.”
History

For the past 300 years, there has been some form of a foreign exchange market. For most of U.S. history, the only currency traders were multinational corporations that did business in many countries. They used forex markets to hedge their exposure to overseas currencies. They could do so because the U.S. dollar was fixed to the price of gold. According to the gold price history, gold was the only metal the United States used to back up the value of the nation’s paper currency.

The foreign exchange market didn't take off until 1973. That's when President Nixon completely untied the value of the dollar to the price of an ounce of gold. The so-called gold standard kept the dollar at a stable value of 1/35 of an ounce of gold. The history of the gold standard explains why gold was chosen to back up the dollar.

Once Nixon abolished the gold standard, the dollar's value quickly plummeted. The dollar index was established to give companies the ability to hedge this risk. Someone created the U.S. Dollar Index to give them a tradeable platform. Soon, banks, hedge funds, and some speculative traders entered the market. They were more interested in chasing profit than in hedging risks.
The Bottom Line

The Forex market buys and sells currencies. By doing so, it determines one currency’s value against another, on a daily basis. It operates on two levels: interbank and over-the-counter. The interbank market trades in enormous volumes. So, they dictate foreign exchange rates.

The largest OTC center is in London. Since U.K. trading forms almost half of the global forex trading bulk, the United Kingdom holds the most dominant and influential forex trading center in the world.

Although central banks don’t regularly trade currencies, they can significantly influence forex rates. These banks hold several billion in foreign exchange reserves.

In 2014, a group of banks colluded to illegally manipulate currencies. As the forex market is largely unregulated, it made this scandal possible. At least six banks, including Citigroup, JP Morgan, and Barclays, were fined almost $6 billion7 in total after the crackdown.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/28/2020 08:02PM by anybody.

Thank you, anybody. Sometimes I lack the patience. . .

Although the “printing press go brrrrrr” phenomenon is kind of unprecedented, so is the world’s productive capacity. Scarcity in earlier times was a real thing. Now scarcity is contrived to keep old systems functioning. If the old system breaks, it’s not necessarily taking us with it. We will just find a different means of distribution.

This is very strange.

You say that someone is artificially suppressing supply and that central banks are pumping up their money supplies. Does that make sense? What happens when there is a limited supply of goods and services but the volume of money and credit increases? Too much money chasing too few goods? That's the definition of inflation if not hyperinflation. And yet there is virtually no price inflation.

Surely that indicates that you have the diagnosis backwards. What has happened is that demand, not supply, has collapsed as SIP regulations and fear of the pandemic has undercut spending and produced a huge wave of unemployment. So there is too much productive capacity, too much potential output, too much downward pressure on prices.

Yeah, I’m probably way off on that. My thinking is that punishing stagflation (or far fetched Weimar-like hyperinflation) is something that can be worked around even with half the country out of work due to modern production efficiency. For those who worry about the Fed going insolvent.

Also thanks for triggering anybody’s explanation of the forex market, very educational.

My pleasure, bradley.

Inflation and hyperinflation are indeed controllable. The world has had enough experience with those phenomena to know how to react effectively if painfully.

Stagflation, though, occurs when demand exceeds supply over a long period of time. Demand pushes prices up but because of structural problems supply does not expand. That is the situation in which supply-side economics works: you reduce barriers to investment and output, supply increases and catches up with demand. Then inflation slows.

The world today is in even deeper trouble: demand is chronically below supply, which causes depression and deflation. In those circumstances significant inflation is a very low-probability risk.

>>I belabor the comparison because what happened to the world in 2007-2009 was a huge deflationary shock and according to multiple definitions a depression. The result--lost homes, lost retirements, the inability to help one's children even as the ultra-wealthy grow wealthier...

I just went and checked my financial records, because this is a sore spot for me. There was also the housing bubble of 2005-2006. My salary stalled out during the bubble. It then made a small leap, and stalled out again during the recession and for years afterward. It didn't fully recover until 2013. So that's seven or more years of pain. When I look at my salary today (and my future pension is also based on my salary,) the hit that I took during those years becomes clear.

I have to wonder how much this is true for other workers as well.

Your situation is much better than those of tens of millions of American households.

When the subprime bubble imploded, causing a global catastrophe, huge numbers of people lost their jobs, their retirement savings, and their homes. When middle-aged people are without jobs for two years, they generally never get them back. In short, a middle manager who was fired in 2008 soon faced a choice between a job at McDonalds and no employment at all. Emotional problems borne of those setbacks contributed to the higher rates of suicide among middle-aged people, particularly men who cannot provide for their families, and to more opiod addiction, and both of those phenomena explain why the average lifespan of Americans in recent years has been falling.

So having any job through the last decade and retaining any significant retirement plan is a good outcome, much better than the prospects for tens of millions of others nearing retirement.

Lottie, I get that, but it's just discouraging. It's difficult when I did everything that I was supposed to do in terms of education, training, and time in the job, and still have just enough to cover my bills. I didn't expect to get rich teaching, but neither did I expect to just scrape by.

I bought my home in 2003, a couple of years before the bubble. I was really lucky that it never lost value. I watched as the price of similar homes skyrocketed during the bubble, knowing in my heart that it couldn't last. I knew who the typical buyers in my community were, and that there wasn't any way that they could afford the inflated prices.

Summer, I understand. I feel the same. The way things have played out, people your age down through mine face major challenges. We are caught in the gap between what is and what should be.

I would add, however, that the younger generations will be hit much harder. For we, and the generation immediately above, sustained unsustainable trends through copious borrowing and will die before the bill comes due. I seriously worry that people who are 20 today may have living standards that are far below what we get to enjoy.

(if there is a )God will punish STUPID PEOPLE, but I doubt his name will be on it...


What did Gawd's profits do to warn us to prepare?


what are they saying today about the virus, how to survive?

'where there is no vision the people perish'



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2020 11:18PM by GNPE.

“Bobby Boucher, masks are the Devil!”