Economy

Everything you say will be used to market against you. 💬

|

Everything you say will be used to market against you. 💬

I get annoyed when every time I post something on the blog through the WordPress Android App my words are sold off and used to market various products to me on the internet. Walmart sends me emails related to products and topics I blog about, Facebook puts those items on the top of my feed, advertisements I see on the internet are related to my blog posts. I mean I guess it’s good that they’re serving relevant ads to me but it’s also kind of creepy to say the least.

Illuminati Dodge Ball – ANDY’S FORUM

|

Illuminati Dodge Ball – ANDY’S FORUM

The system is constantly conjuring up ways to nickel and dime you. Americans have become incredibly naïve, far too trusting of a system which proves over and over on a daily basis that it most definitely cannot be trusted. Conversely we have become far too cynical of the people, who do heroic things every day. We must reverse this dichotomy. Trust the people, do NOT trust the matrix. Be generous to friends, family, the people and the natural world, but learn to be stingy in your dealings with the system. This is another one of those dogmas which must be examined.

‘Normal Is the Problem’ | The Tyee

|

‘Normal Is the Problem’ | The Tyee

Since 1970, an outpouring of normality has just about destroyed the Earth: It has created an abnormal economic machine, blind to energy spending, that doubled the global population and boosted per capita consumption by 45 per cent.

At the same time the so-called value of global economic activity grew by 300 per cent. Meanwhile global trade has exploded like a coronavirus by 900 per cent. To support all this consumption and trade, the extraction of “living materials” from nature has jumped by 200 per cent.

Now here’s just a partial list of the cost of all this exponential normality: Humans have appropriated or altered 70 per cent of the world’s lands with mines, roads, industrial farms, cities and airports. We have engineered more than 75 per cent of the world’s longest rivers. We have filled the ocean with plastics and slaughtered coral reefs. Anyone who calls that kind of behaviour normal is crackers. It’s ecological imperialism, and nothing more than a full-scale assault on the dignity of local life.

Bad Medicine? Federal Debt and Deficits after COVID-19

|

Bad Medicine? Federal Debt and Deficits after COVID-19

In January 2020, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the federal budget deficit (a negative surplus) would total $1.015 trillion in fiscal year (FY) 2020 and $1 trillion in FY 2021.1 Those projections are now obsolete because of the many actions taken by government officials to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. These actions, while designed to prevent a health crisis of an unknown magnitude and duration, have nonetheless helped trigger massive job losses and the shuttering of businesses. A deep recession is likely. The deep recession will further increase the size of the federal budget deficit since lower economic activity will reduce tax revenues and automatically increase certain types of federal expenditures (e.g., unemployment benefits).

This is an interesting article, but when you get to the end, you have to think something missing.

Is the COVID-19 Pandemic a Supply or a Demand Shock? | St. Louis Fed

|

Is the COVID-19 Pandemic a Supply or a Demand Shock? | St. Louis Fed

For this reason, most economists would agree that the pandemic combines aspects of both supply and demand shocks. A supply shock is anything that reduces the economy's capacity to produce goods and services, at given prices. Lockdown measures preventing workers from doing their jobs can be seen as a supply shock. A demand shock, on the other hand, reduces consumers' ability or willingness to purchase goods and services, at given prices. People avoiding restaurants for fear of contagion is an example of a demand shock. Additionally, as service sector workers lose their jobs and income, they stop purchasing all kinds of goods, such as cars and appliances, which can also be thought of as a sectoral demand shock.

Conventional monetary and fiscal policy can offset some types of aggregate demand shocks, but other policies may be more appropriate to counter supply shocks. Understanding whether supply or demand causes a particular shock is therefore very important for policy design. The government doesn't want to stimulate activity in certain service sectors because of concerns about further spreading COVID-19. The government could, however, stimulate sectors that are not part of the lockdown but are subject to aggregate shocks. This means that it is important to understand whether supply or demand shocks or both affect each sector.