TheDemonBuer

How fucking ironic is that.

putting central bank independence at risk and could backfire and ultimately push up interest rates and inflation.

Inflation, then interest rates get pushed up. But the chances of interest rate hikes goes down considerably if the federal reserve board becomes overall dovish. Right now the board is split. Powell doesn't make the decision on rates himself, the board votes.

The Fed has an inflation target of 2%, but that target is arbitrary. It's not really based on anything. Some board members seem fine with a 3% inflation rate, or maybe even higher. Lower interest rates are better for people who own assets, ie wealthy people, because that can help push up asset prices. But inflation is bad for consumers.

Think of high house prices: good for house owners because that's an asset for them and the higher the price of the asset goes, the wealthier they are. But if you're someone who doesn't own a house, the higher the prices go, the harder it is to acquire that asset for yourself.

The stock market is similar. Stocks are expensive right now. That's great for people who bought those stocks at much lower prices, but not so great for people who want to start investing in stocks now.

If prices come down, deflation, that would be good for buyers, but it would be bad for people who already own. If prices go up, inflation, that's good for people who own, but not good for buyers.

Has that ever worked?

Sanctions sure as hell don't, unless by "work" you mean hurt innocent people.

IMO you can add an extra zero to the decimal places to make it 300 million.

Sounds good to me.

More and more I'm thinking we really need a wealth tax. Not because the government needs the money - the government literally makes their own money, they can create as much of it as they want - but because I think a cap on wealth is necessary for social cohesion. Plus, once people get over a certain level of wealth, the chances of it seriously negatively affecting them psychologically seem to go up considerably. Many, if not most, billionaires are just weird, creepy, disturbed wackos. I don't think it's good for them or for society.

I certainly wouldn't be opposed to capping individual wealth at $999 million. Another option might be to set the maximum at a percentage of GDP, maybe something like 0.01% of GDP. I think that would put the cap at just over $3 billion. That's still an astronomical amount of money, and there would still be billionaires but not the mega, stupid billionaires.

The resulting findings indicate that same-sex behavior is more common when animals need social cohesion to deal with harsh environmental conditions, when they’re at high risk of being eaten or when competition for resources is more intense. It’s also more common in social groups with strict hierarchies, where sex could help individuals manage competition, build alliances and avoid intergroup aggression.

Interesting.

Like, all you really need to build a settlement is water, electricity and a source of carbon.

That's not all you need. You also need breathable air and surface pressure that isn't going to make your eyes pop out of your skull. You need protection from too high levels of radiation.

You're not living on the surface of Mars. That environment is not survivable. If you're going to Mars, you're living underground or in enclosed habitats. You can do that here. Go get a little bit of land here on Earth and build a self sustaining enclosed habitat and live in it. It would be a lot easier and cheaper.

Yeah, space. That's always the solution. But if expanding into less and less hospitable environments was the next frontier of continued economic growth, why aren't investors scrambling to build out Antarctica or the bottom of the ocean?

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding at the heart of many countries' energy policies. Many countries believe that continued economic growth will require an increasing amount of energy. That is absolutely true. More growth will require more energy. However, the misunderstanding is the almost subconscious belief that energy = oil and gas. It's as if many world leaders believe that there are no energy sources available to humanity outside of some relatively rare fossil hydrocarbon deposits. To many, oil and gas is energy and energy is oil and gas. It makes sense why people who think this way believe the choice the world faces is between continued growth or reducing fossil use, as if we must choose one or the other. The fact is, it is possible to grow while reducing fossil fuel use. Between renewables and nuclear power, we can produce enough energy to power a growing global economy.

That being said, infinite growth does require infinite energy. If the global economy continues to grow, at some point we will need all the fossil energy resources, as well as all renewable energy and all the nuclear energy. But we'll boil our atmosphere just from latent heat before we can use all the energy. At some point, wealthy countries are going to have to decide when enough is enough. We simply cannot grow forever on a finite planet. It's not physically possible. But in the meantime, developing countries especially can and should continue to grow, and they absolutely can do that without increasing global fossil fuel demand. But that's largely up to the wealthy countries.

YOU don't give a fuck what people believe. You. Science has nothing to do with it. Science isn't a person, it doesn't have the capacity for indifference. Science is a method, a process, a set of tools. Science isn't a gotcha to your political or ideological opponents. If you want to say that you don't care what people believe, fine (that's still cringe) but leave science out of it.

Yeah stuff like this is cringe.

Science isn't a culture or a belief system, nor is it a substitute for those things. Science isn't an aesthetic or a political or group ideology.

I'm embarrassed pretty much every day.