Ben Young

The Unsustainable Lie of Inflation

I've never understood how a tautology could be useful in science even if completely true:

the fit survive =
the survivors survive =
water is water


On Nov 10 09:01 AM GotLife wrote:

> Paco said:
>
> "Intelligent Design – This is how a bunch of envious Christians respond
> to a concept as cool as Natural Selection. I’m still wondering what
> they’re going to come up with in response to The Big Bang. Maybe
> Provident Ejaculation? Whatever it is, I’m sure it will sound positively
> scientific and rational. I can’t wait."
>
> Correction to your error. Natural selection is not evolution. Many
> examples of natural selection exist in the near term. Also, how does
> your reference of "envious Christians" differ from Goebbels propaganda
> against Jews, homosexuals and communists?

Dollar's Purchasing Power Annihilated - The Chart They Don't Want You to See

ummm - those greedy elderly gave birth to you. They gave you every technology you use. They wiped your rear ends when you didn't know how to go to the bathroom. They sent you to college when they could have blown the money on themselves. They paid their taxes. You will be elderly sooner than you think.


On May 11 07:17 PM sabre_jenn wrote:

> The elderly in this country have created a ponzi scheme that would
> make Bernie Madoff blush: Social Security
>
> For all the complaints that today's children aren't good at math--
> I have to wonder about the baby boomers making the accusation.<br/>
>
> Social security, even using government accounting "standards" that
> no private company could get away with, is trillions of dollars in
> deficit. There is no way today's children will even get their money
> back in real terms -- it is mathematically impossible.
>
> Greedy, selfish elderly have bled the system almost dry. There is
> very little left to meet the onslaught of the baby boomers.
>
> Comments like archman's explain why we have yet another completely
> stupid man as President. Bush and Obama are idiots -- but they
> unfortunately represent the populace (like archman) all to well<br/>

Dollar's Purchasing Power Annihilated - The Chart They Don't Want You to See

I remember these times too. All my friends were either in Vietnam, returned from Vietnam, afraid they were going to be forced to go to Vietnam or deciding to take a nice vacation to Canada. We had just finished massive burnings of cities over race hatreds and real prejudice. I remember personally wondering for two days if the riots would reach my home and family.

I remember cities where if you could breathe the air, you knew it was killing you and if you went to a restaurant or flew on a plane, the smoke was inescapable.

I remember pressing the brakes going down a steep hill in our Pontiac, and experiencing total loss of brakes because the brake hose ruptured and there was no backup brake circuit like cars have now. THAT was a fun crash...no air bags, no engineered deformable front end...only the seat belts which had recently been mandated save my life.

We waited over an hour to get help because there were no such things as cell phones...and when we got to the hospital, compared to today's technology it was utterly medieval.

I also remember persecution of religious minorities. If you weren't Catholic, Baptist, white or Protestant you could get seriously beat up. Very seriously.

The police could do pretty much anything they wanted.

Women got no respect. Men and women died 15 years younger than today.

If you go back 76 years to 1933, most of the country had no telephones, electricity, indoor plumbing...there was no TV, no birth control (mostly illegal) other than ugly back alley stuff. Massive numbers of children were still orphaned because their mothers died in childbirth after having too many children. Large numbers of men had been mutilated physically and emotionally by World War 1. It was an ugly and brutish time.

Yes, if you look only at money, gold has kept its purchasing power...but to say that inflation is the only metric by which to judge progress is just a bit too one dimensional for my taste.

This is not to say that I have a problem with TD. I think his stuff is top notch.

On May 09 09:44 AM Bill S. Friend wrote:

>
> If you happen to be old enough to remember 1971, How many people
> do you know that do not have it much better now than then
>
> I happen to be old enough, it didnt take two incomes for the average
> household to survive, and society had alot less ills. Nobody knew
> what a latchkey kid or a crackbaby was, now they run our government.
>