Reducing income tax? THEN WHERE IS THE GOVERNMENT GOING TO GET THE MONEY TO BAIL YOU OUT OF DEBT, YOU MORON?
Edit: *puts head in hands* No, we can't "let the banks pay for their mistakes by going under". You know why? Because they're banks. They're not your local deli. They own people's money. When they go under, they TAKE THAT MONEY WITH THEM. So letting banks "go under" means lots and lots of people's money disappears. Like, you know, in 1929? Remember that? That is why the government is bailing out banks. Not because of some vast, nebulous government conspiracy that is devoted to helping the super-rich get richer.
Also: One thing that has never, ever made sense to me is why food prices are not counted in a measure of inflation. Isn't food the one thing that everyone is absolutely guaranteed to buy? So isn't that a better gauge of spending power than, say, extraneous electronics?
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
It all started because people thought it would be a good idea to buy a six-bedroom house in Riverside.
I do not pretend to understand economics. In fact, I am rather famous for my lack of understanding of economics, because I sit there with a highly confused expression on my face whenever the conversation gets past the law of supply and demand*. (It's much like my attempts to play poker -- I have a "great poker face", according to my male friends who think poker night is the best way to while away the winter evenings when it's too cold to walk downtown for the bars, because I look confused no matter what my hand is.) This is, of course, in great contrast to my sister, who is a big important financial somethingorother at some big important financial something, which does something big and important with finances. I console myself with the thought that she probably can't talk about the X-ray crystal structures of SRP proteins at great length.
The point of this is to say, said financial wiz sister has been talking about the current economic crisis, and I have been trying not to look confused and, hopefully, nodding in all the right places. But I also have picked up enough to understand, I think, the very basics of what is going on (and again, it has to do with mass hallucinations).
It's like this: When I was in my senior year of high school, our history teacher, Ms. Converse, did a half-assed job of "teaching" us economics in the three weeks remaining in the school year after we had taken our IB exams. We didn't care about learning it, she didn't care about teaching it, because we had all finished what needed to be done for IB and that was what mattered, but being taught economics was a requirement to get a high school diploma in California, so by God, she taught us economics.
I remember very little of this, because I spent most of that time in the haze of exhaustion that comes after completing the two most grueling academic years of your life (still unmatched, even by a PhD program in the sciences), but I do remember two things: that damn supply and demand graph, and the following conversation:
Ms. Converse, having gone through the barter economy (which I understood) and the specie economy (which I didn't), then told us that we were now in, or at least partly in, a new "credit" economy, where money wasn't "real" (in the sense that it was represented by chickens, or pieces of gold/paper), but rather was, as she put it, "zeros in a computer". She claimed that this then meant, essentially, an infinite supply of money, and a credit economy hence avoided the "crashes" that occasionally occurred in a specie economy, because zeros in a bank could be manipulated in a way hard currency couldn't. To me, this seemed farcical, because to me it seemed that believing that zeros in the bank were money was no different from believing that a piece of printed paper was money, and therefore this new-and-improved "credit economy" was nothing more than a specie economy with a laptop and a blog. So indeed, while having money represented by zeros in a computer promoted lending in much the same way as having a ghetto of Jews (having been forced by increasingly oppressive laws to jobs in usury, the only job Christians wouldn't touch) in your city in the High Middle Ages promoted lending, it in no way prevented a crash because belief still dictated the market. In fact, it might promote it, as if people believed what Ms Converse believed, that is, that the zeros in the computer were actually free money, they would spend above and beyond their worth. And that, while the zeros in the bank may be manipulatable by someone who has a Pentium III processor and a good knowledge of calculus, eventually someone is going to ask where the money actually is.
I said as much to Ms. Converse, at the time, and was told that I obviously didn't understand economics or how the market worked (both true) and I was completely wrong (possibly not true). Since I had been told for at least four years that Ms. Converse knew what she was talking about, I didn't argue.
But it seems to me, now, looking at the current financial crisis, that I was correct on one fundamental thing: eventually, even in a credit economy, someone is going to ask where the money actually is. And then find that it isn't.
If that's not a recipe for a crash, I don't know what is.
*I understand the barter system really well -- I have three chickens, you have a pair of shoes. You would like roast chicken for dinner, I would like to be able to walk without my toes sticking out of my shoes. We trade. End of deal. It's the transition to a monetary economy I don't get -- money is a mass hallucination where everyone agrees that they will all pretend that this piece of stamped gold (or this piece of printed paper) will be worth what it says it is, even though it has no intrinsic value in and of itself. The economists tell me that this is a good thing, because if you can convince people that a piece of stamped gold is actually worth MORE than it was, say, five days ago, you have actually created money without, say, having to go through the effort of raising another chicken. To which I reply, yes, but say your arch enemy decides to convince people that the piece of stamped gold is now worth less than it was five days ago (by, say, invading Belgium), then you've managed to LOSE money without, as it were, having your chicken eaten by foxes. And at the end of the day a roast chicken is a good meal in your belly, whereas a piece of stamped gold is merely the promise of a future meal in your belly, and reliant on finding a chicken farmer who shares the same hallucination you do about that particular stamp on a piece of gold. And then I am told that I am "remarkably unsophisticated" and have a view of economics that works only in "undeveloped rural economies", which is undoubtedly true (since I don't raise chickens and I highly doubt you do either), but which is also the only view of economics that makes any sense to me.
The point of this is to say, said financial wiz sister has been talking about the current economic crisis, and I have been trying not to look confused and, hopefully, nodding in all the right places. But I also have picked up enough to understand, I think, the very basics of what is going on (and again, it has to do with mass hallucinations).
It's like this: When I was in my senior year of high school, our history teacher, Ms. Converse, did a half-assed job of "teaching" us economics in the three weeks remaining in the school year after we had taken our IB exams. We didn't care about learning it, she didn't care about teaching it, because we had all finished what needed to be done for IB and that was what mattered, but being taught economics was a requirement to get a high school diploma in California, so by God, she taught us economics.
I remember very little of this, because I spent most of that time in the haze of exhaustion that comes after completing the two most grueling academic years of your life (still unmatched, even by a PhD program in the sciences), but I do remember two things: that damn supply and demand graph, and the following conversation:
Ms. Converse, having gone through the barter economy (which I understood) and the specie economy (which I didn't), then told us that we were now in, or at least partly in, a new "credit" economy, where money wasn't "real" (in the sense that it was represented by chickens, or pieces of gold/paper), but rather was, as she put it, "zeros in a computer". She claimed that this then meant, essentially, an infinite supply of money, and a credit economy hence avoided the "crashes" that occasionally occurred in a specie economy, because zeros in a bank could be manipulated in a way hard currency couldn't. To me, this seemed farcical, because to me it seemed that believing that zeros in the bank were money was no different from believing that a piece of printed paper was money, and therefore this new-and-improved "credit economy" was nothing more than a specie economy with a laptop and a blog. So indeed, while having money represented by zeros in a computer promoted lending in much the same way as having a ghetto of Jews (having been forced by increasingly oppressive laws to jobs in usury, the only job Christians wouldn't touch) in your city in the High Middle Ages promoted lending, it in no way prevented a crash because belief still dictated the market. In fact, it might promote it, as if people believed what Ms Converse believed, that is, that the zeros in the computer were actually free money, they would spend above and beyond their worth. And that, while the zeros in the bank may be manipulatable by someone who has a Pentium III processor and a good knowledge of calculus, eventually someone is going to ask where the money actually is.
I said as much to Ms. Converse, at the time, and was told that I obviously didn't understand economics or how the market worked (both true) and I was completely wrong (possibly not true). Since I had been told for at least four years that Ms. Converse knew what she was talking about, I didn't argue.
But it seems to me, now, looking at the current financial crisis, that I was correct on one fundamental thing: eventually, even in a credit economy, someone is going to ask where the money actually is. And then find that it isn't.
If that's not a recipe for a crash, I don't know what is.
*I understand the barter system really well -- I have three chickens, you have a pair of shoes. You would like roast chicken for dinner, I would like to be able to walk without my toes sticking out of my shoes. We trade. End of deal. It's the transition to a monetary economy I don't get -- money is a mass hallucination where everyone agrees that they will all pretend that this piece of stamped gold (or this piece of printed paper) will be worth what it says it is, even though it has no intrinsic value in and of itself. The economists tell me that this is a good thing, because if you can convince people that a piece of stamped gold is actually worth MORE than it was, say, five days ago, you have actually created money without, say, having to go through the effort of raising another chicken. To which I reply, yes, but say your arch enemy decides to convince people that the piece of stamped gold is now worth less than it was five days ago (by, say, invading Belgium), then you've managed to LOSE money without, as it were, having your chicken eaten by foxes. And at the end of the day a roast chicken is a good meal in your belly, whereas a piece of stamped gold is merely the promise of a future meal in your belly, and reliant on finding a chicken farmer who shares the same hallucination you do about that particular stamp on a piece of gold. And then I am told that I am "remarkably unsophisticated" and have a view of economics that works only in "undeveloped rural economies", which is undoubtedly true (since I don't raise chickens and I highly doubt you do either), but which is also the only view of economics that makes any sense to me.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Sound the trumpets! Let the bells ring out!
My sister got engaged! Which is totally awesome, the more so because I can now start calling David "my future brother-in-law" without adding "except they're not actually engaged yet", as I've been having to do. Apparently he proposed on top of the Filbert Steps, which is pretty awesome in a very San Fransisco way.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
I measure time in terms of audio books listened to.
So effing tired it's difficult to think beyond that, but I have managed to get things done. Lab work proceeds, which is just about all one can expect from lab work, and I may have something approaching data. Yesterday during the two-hour break I had while my Northern was transferring I walked down to Dawn Treader Books and picked up several volumes of poetry, which can count as my parents' birthday present to me. I got a volume of Keats, an Anthology of Poetry from the English Renaissance which contains Donne and a bunch of others but no Shakespeare (apparently they think you can get your damn Shakespeare from somewhere else, if you want it that badly), and, best of all, an extremely old and beat up Collected Verse of Rudyard Kipling. Not only do I love Kipling (which I think makes me unsophisticated, but screw the people who decide these things; they probably think I should like Frost and Walt fucking Whitman), but the book is so battered it is completely unreadable, which means I have to rebind it. How spectacular! A nicely rebound book of Kipling's verse will make me a very happy bibliophile.
In football news, Schalke made it through to the quarter-finals on penalties. I don't quite know how to feel about this -- on the one hand I am glad that there is one Bundesliga representative proving that German football is worth something on the European stage, but on the other had I hate Schalke with an intensity bordering on loathing. So I hate that the representative of German football is the one team in Germany that I hate, and I hate that I have to -- and I have to -- support them, and I hate that this will make their incredibly obnoxious fan base just that much more incredibly obnoxious. And of course it's highly likely that the only representative of Serie A will be Roma, because it will really take a pure, Athens-style miracle to send Inter through, but that's of less concern because I have no loyalty to Serie A as a whole, as I have to the Bundesliga. So I do not have to support the one Italian team left in the CL as I have to support the one German team left.
And, of course, there is still little adorable Arsenal.
In football news, Schalke made it through to the quarter-finals on penalties. I don't quite know how to feel about this -- on the one hand I am glad that there is one Bundesliga representative proving that German football is worth something on the European stage, but on the other had I hate Schalke with an intensity bordering on loathing. So I hate that the representative of German football is the one team in Germany that I hate, and I hate that I have to -- and I have to -- support them, and I hate that this will make their incredibly obnoxious fan base just that much more incredibly obnoxious. And of course it's highly likely that the only representative of Serie A will be Roma, because it will really take a pure, Athens-style miracle to send Inter through, but that's of less concern because I have no loyalty to Serie A as a whole, as I have to the Bundesliga. So I do not have to support the one Italian team left in the CL as I have to support the one German team left.
And, of course, there is still little adorable Arsenal.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
So, we lost.
And for some strange reason I am calm about it. Now, this may be because I'm busy trying to deal with the Side Effects from Hell I've gotten from my new medication (now discontinued) prescribed to treat the gastroparesis, but I get the feeling I'd feel like this anyway. There comes a point where expectation descends to reality, and I've always been a pessimistic bitch. I'll be rooting for Inter now, should they (miracle of all miracles) manage to whup Liverpool's arse come next Tuesday, and that strange twist of fate aside, I'll be cheering on Arsenal. Whom, despite how much I wanted them to lose tonight, I cannot begrudge the win. Not with Cesc's little fox ears up in glee, and Phil's bald, bald Swiss head shinning in the light of victory.
I weep only because this was Paolo's last night in Europe, and it reminds us that we are just that much closer to his Last Night of All. (Which will be, ironically enough, the derby. Oh football, how narrative necessity controls you.)
Monday, March 3, 2008
It's my birthday today
and, as usual, I would have forgotten this had my mother not reminded me on the phone yesterday. I'm pretty sure I haven't bothered to tell anyone around here, so that will at least spare me the awkward pause when I don't know how to reply to "Happy Birthday!". I'm 24, which feels a lot less weird than turning 23 did, although I look askance at the fact that this means in one year I will be 25. Sometimes I think possibly I should set about getting a life before this happens, but whenever I contemplate going about actually doing this, I end up falling asleep. Which is much more enjoyable than getting a life, frankly.
What is the most frightening is realizing that the "age at which I should be planning on having children" has shrunk from ten years to "five to seven". How did that happen? *crawls under desk and whimpers*
Today is Monday, unfortunately, which means my birthday will be spent going to my lab meeting, my TA meeting, and my genetics seminar, and then frantically trying to get all the lab work I need to get done today done in the evening, because I've spent all day in meetings. I hate Mondays. *sigh*
What is the most frightening is realizing that the "age at which I should be planning on having children" has shrunk from ten years to "five to seven". How did that happen? *crawls under desk and whimpers*
Today is Monday, unfortunately, which means my birthday will be spent going to my lab meeting, my TA meeting, and my genetics seminar, and then frantically trying to get all the lab work I need to get done today done in the evening, because I've spent all day in meetings. I hate Mondays. *sigh*
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Two down, nine more to go.
My attempt to take a picture of a two-page spread from Priest with my Mac laptop embedded camera, which currently is the only functioning camera I have.The benefit to Ashley being distracted by Prohibition-era bootleggers, fox-demons, and sword-swinging, shirt-ripping Mediols is not only that we've gotten a whole set of stories about different versions of the stroppy Swede and his Italians, but that I've been given a chance to attempt to catch up with the printing and binding of Book of the Green Field. So today, while keeping half an eye on the Juventus-Fiorentina and Napoli-Inter games (oh Inter, why), I managed to print and fold Tale of the Priest and Tale of the Smith. Of course, Smith still needs all its illumination done, but I am definitely farther along the road to completion, or at least to catching up to where Ashley is with the writing.
Also dropped by Dawn Treader Books, Ann Arbor's best used book store, and picked up two new (for me) books on medieval history: The Making of the Middle Ages by R. W. Southern, and The Evolution of the Medieval World by David Nicholas. I'm sure neither of them contain anything that is not already ably explained in Cantor's Civilization of the Middle Ages, but more books never hurt anyone. (Well, except when I try to get renter's insurance, that is.)
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Still need to vacuum up all the plaster dust
So tell me, oh vaunted readership of which I have none because I haven't yet told anyone this blog exists, is titling this blog after a line from Keats pretentious? Because frankly, I was mostly thinking of my father's well-worn joke: "I want to get a Pekingese!" "Why?" "So I could name it Darien!" *cue groan from any well-read listener, which of course are the only people my father makes this joke to*
...Yeah, my family's kind of weird. But it was either this or a line from Sidney Keyes, and that would probably be more pretentious because he's more obscure. Besides, warpoet.blogspot.com was already taken.
Today was relatively productive, as I finally got my curtains up. These curtains, I might point out, have been sitting in their Penney's bag on the floor of my living room since I bought them, which about two weeks after I moved into this flat last September. Said installation was a bit tricky as I went to Home Depot to get special heavy duty screws with little springs on them specially designed for hollow plaster walls of the type you find in badly built apartment buildings, only to discover that the drill I own, commonly known as The Cheapest Drill Ever Made, did not have a drill bit large enough to create a hole that could accommodate both the screw and its little spring. And to top it all off, even if I could have made a hole big enough, the actual hollow portion of the wall was too narrow for the spring to, well, spring as it's supposed to, anyway. All in all, futile, so I just used the little plastic protectors that came with the mounting hardware and am hoping for the best. Fortunately my curtains are light.
Also when I was out, I picked up my Mac laptop (which this post is being written on) from the Apple store, as they had informed me it was repaired. Indeed it seems to be, and I am much calmer now that I have portable internet. Really, it was getting bad. Using the common lab computer at work and having to sit at my desk every time I needed a computer at home was resulting in me turning twitchy and irritable (although since that's my normal state of being, I don't think anyone noticed). And I have my financial software back, meaning I can obsessively-compulsively keep daily track of how poor I am. How I've missed that!
In the afternoon Ashley came over and we watched Milan draw, which was painful for all concerned, and talked a lot about Sandro Nesta's hair. Really, when we get together, it always ends up coming back to someone's hair. I'd worry about us, except that hey, we're Milan fans. We're already so far gone there's no use in worrying.
In actual fact, the only lack of productivity today was my lack of appropriate eating (damn it damn it damn it), and my failure to bestir my arse enough to walk across the street and put my Northerns on to wash, so I'm off now to lab (yes, I know it's quarter to ten in the evening), where I can both get the necessary work done and eat the soup that is currently in the lab fridge. And maybe Ashley will have posted the next part of her totally-not-a-bodice-ripper-at-all historical AU when I return. Ciao, as Milan said to their title hopes about four months ago.
...Yeah, my family's kind of weird. But it was either this or a line from Sidney Keyes, and that would probably be more pretentious because he's more obscure. Besides, warpoet.blogspot.com was already taken.
Today was relatively productive, as I finally got my curtains up. These curtains, I might point out, have been sitting in their Penney's bag on the floor of my living room since I bought them, which about two weeks after I moved into this flat last September. Said installation was a bit tricky as I went to Home Depot to get special heavy duty screws with little springs on them specially designed for hollow plaster walls of the type you find in badly built apartment buildings, only to discover that the drill I own, commonly known as The Cheapest Drill Ever Made, did not have a drill bit large enough to create a hole that could accommodate both the screw and its little spring. And to top it all off, even if I could have made a hole big enough, the actual hollow portion of the wall was too narrow for the spring to, well, spring as it's supposed to, anyway. All in all, futile, so I just used the little plastic protectors that came with the mounting hardware and am hoping for the best. Fortunately my curtains are light.
Also when I was out, I picked up my Mac laptop (which this post is being written on) from the Apple store, as they had informed me it was repaired. Indeed it seems to be, and I am much calmer now that I have portable internet. Really, it was getting bad. Using the common lab computer at work and having to sit at my desk every time I needed a computer at home was resulting in me turning twitchy and irritable (although since that's my normal state of being, I don't think anyone noticed). And I have my financial software back, meaning I can obsessively-compulsively keep daily track of how poor I am. How I've missed that!
In the afternoon Ashley came over and we watched Milan draw, which was painful for all concerned, and talked a lot about Sandro Nesta's hair. Really, when we get together, it always ends up coming back to someone's hair. I'd worry about us, except that hey, we're Milan fans. We're already so far gone there's no use in worrying.
In actual fact, the only lack of productivity today was my lack of appropriate eating (damn it damn it damn it), and my failure to bestir my arse enough to walk across the street and put my Northerns on to wash, so I'm off now to lab (yes, I know it's quarter to ten in the evening), where I can both get the necessary work done and eat the soup that is currently in the lab fridge. And maybe Ashley will have posted the next part of her totally-not-a-bodice-ripper-at-all historical AU when I return. Ciao, as Milan said to their title hopes about four months ago.
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