Racism didn’t cause this:

Over 40 years ago, Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty and poverty won! Last year we had the highest level of poverty since the 1960′s and racism didn’t cause this:
Census: 1 in 7 Americans lives in poverty

Too many people chasing too few resources driving up the cost of living and driving people into poverty.
(Parallel to the economic description of supply and demand controlling prices.)

The Gold Standard

We went from #1 creditor nation to #1 debtor nation while Reagan was in office. It was probably lend-lease that made us rich. Deuteronomy says to lend but do not borrow. I don’t think we have a solution. If we had free land, homeless people could start a homestead. Space being the last frontier is all pie in the sky.

“Just weights and measures” is all about fair trade and fair competition. What do you mean by fiat money? Money is just the lubricant that makes trade easier. The problem is with shortages making everyone poorer. Divide all land equally… among 6 billion people and each person gets about 4 acres including mountains deserts and frozen tundra. More economic justice helps but it can’t reduce the cost of living which should be zero. The solution will be burn everything up with super volcanoes and give people like-new planets when they are allowed to live

About the Gold Standard: I use to think it was a good idea, but not any longer. Deflation is all bad. I think the federal reserve blew it by making inflation too low. They are trying to keep it at 2% but that collapsed the housing market and deflation on the biggest market. When the advise of leading economist is to not spend money you know that deflation is happening. I saw them on AOL advising people to not invest in houses or education but put them in T-bills. Money will continue to be uninvested in anything but T-bills as long as deflation is happening.

Demand side says it is the quantity of spending. Supply side says it is the quantity of investing. It is not the quantity of either, it is the quality of both. In other words, “waste not, want not”.
Too many farmers invest in too many tractors and have an over supply of food which is what caused the great depression in the first place. In other words, supply side economics is totally bogus and economists don’t know what they are talking about.
People put their life savings in houses and are being trapped by deflation because the Federal Reserve Board doesn’t know how to correctly measure inflation. Houses have become worth less than their mortgages and people are being ruined by this mistake.
Steady inflation does not hurt anybody because everyone knows what to expect as stated in economics text books. However, like I said several years ago, 2 digit inflation is too high for people to like making capital investments. I’m suggesting that 2% is too low because it is measured wrong and shortages are forcing a rising cost of living that is not controlled by what you value money at. Real wages go down when the cost of living goes up no matter what the value of money is. Period.

Deflation is all bad

Richard Hawes I’m on twitter at http://twitter.com/rrllhh My first tweet {When we have deflation, cash is king. The price of everything is going down except the “almighty dollar”. } With a 12.5 month supply on the housing market it is partly happening right now.
When I say that “cash is king”, I mean that no investments will do well except for cash. Deflation gives no incentive for business to invest or for consumers to make major purchases when it is going to be cheaper. Economic activity just goes into a downward spiral until something like a world war “primes the pump”.

The great depression was caused by the tractor putting farmers out of work by huge crop surpluses. This recession is obviously causes by shortages of oil and huge population growths  that keep driving costs of living up and up.  From the looks of things, the situation may be hopeless.

Supply side is bogus. The economy is improved by smart spending and investing and not by how much of that is happening. That in turn improves peoples quality of life.

Lake Disappears into Andes

Wouldn’t a seismograph pick that up?

clipped from science.slashdot.org Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday June 21, @10:16PM from the here-today-gone-tomorrow dept. steveb3210 writes “It seems that what was once a 5-acre glacial lake in the Andes has mysteriously disappeared. ‘In March we patrolled the area and everything was normal,’ Juan Jose Romero from Chile’s National Forestry Corporation, Conaf, said. ‘We went again in May and to our surprise we found that the lake had completely disappeared. All that was left were chunks of ice and an enormous fissure.’” The current theory is that an earthquake opened the ground and allowed the lake to drain. Looks like global warming is off the hook this time around.