Fish in Space

For years I’ve been listening to cranks talk about how fiat money is worthless and how we should return to the gold standard. Now, I’m not an economist, and I have only the most rudimentary understanding of economics as a field, but I do understand one simple economic principle: value isn’t inherent in anything, value is imposed by common interest. As I understand it, gold became a value standard in part because of its beauty but also because of its rarity. Aluminum (aluminium for you fans of the mother tongue) was once the province of kings because of its rarity before we learned to pull it out of the very soil. We prize things that are difficult to get, which is the argument goldbugs use to explain why paper, or “fiat” currency is trash. How can paper money be valuable when all we need to do is give ourselves permission to print more of it? That brings us to cryptocurrency. In 2008 someone introduced the idea of a digital currency that requires computer resources to “mine” the comp...

Pick any nation that is not secular or industrialized and compare it to one that is. http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries While you may find exceptions, practically speaking every nation that falls under the categories of both “secular” and “industrialized” will rank higher in terms of human progress. That means not just gross GDP but civil rights, quality of life, opportunities and so forth. Human progress means individuals are free to pursue whatever they feel makes them happy in such a way that they’re not in constant strife with their neighbors. While religion may have been a prominent part of their past it no longer has the power to compel people in these nations to be religious or to behave according to religious values. Religion is a choice, not an obligation. The most respected people in these societies are not those who wear their religion on their sleeve but people who contribute the most to their societies without needing to broadcast their religious affiliation. Religion h...

First, because so many of us seem to have forgotten it, a reminder of what America used to be. For those who have forgotten or never knew, this is what's inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, the gift we put on display to represent what America is supposed to stand for. We were never a nation of nobility ruling over serfs. We were never a nation of priests passing judgment over the laity. This was never supposed to be a club where you had to pay to get in. It was supposed to be a land of refuge where no one could tell you which god to worship or which master to serve. Whether you were poor or rich, brown or white, godly or heathen this was supposed to be a place where you could come to find your own way and not have to conform to anyone else's demands about who you are. Now we've entered an era where all of that has changed. Now we're afraid of newcomers, suspicious of strangers if their skin is brown or they pray to strange gods. If they eat the wrong foods or say the wr...

The public option for health care keeps coming back to haunt us and we have private health insurance to thank for it. Back in 2009 when the Affordable Care Act was passed without a public option it was assumed that the issue was dead for another generation, but naturally we underestimated the obstinence of Republican opposition to any government program that might stand a chance to help people. "Obamacare" works...but only where it's allowed to work. So here we are seven years later right back where we started. Naturally, the right-wing media is freaking out. They're trotting out all the old favorites, accusations of "government overreach" and "socialism" and the like which prompts a discussion about capitalism and government ownership of industry. Sadly, the Soviet Union demonstrated that it is possible to have too much control, but we've seen over and over again here in the US what happens when you don't have enough. Clearly we need t...

Very recently Obama's administration released a four trillion dollar budget proposal for 2016 that for the most part is not going to happen. Don't let the numbers fool you; just because it's a big number doesn't mean it's either irresponsible or unfeasible. Total economic output from the United States in 2014 was close to seventeen trillion dollars with a surprisingly strong fourth quarter growth of five percent , up from prior estimates. What Obama has proposed spends less than a quarter of the nation's wealth on national priorities. Maybe that still seems excessively high to you but there are a lot of things that still need to be addressed with no one but the federal government even considering addressing them. Four of the five of Obama's proposal are things that liberals like me have been waiting impatiently for since he first took office in 2009. So why do I call this a betrayal? Doyle McManus of the LA Times had this to say about the President...

Thank you, Jon Stewart and the Daily Show writers. I apparently needed this hot rage injection. The Daily Show Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes , The Daily Show on Facebook , Daily Show Video Archive

It's been a common talking point over the past twenty years: Americans have a spending problem. We have too little money saved up and too many of us have nothing saved for retirement . Everywhere you look the message is the same: our debt to savings ratio is too high and it's a serious problem. Yes, it is. But why are we having this problem? I find it very curious that when I try to track the changes to the cost of living I get a lot of confusing data. We have easy graphs to track spending for the federal government, graphs on health care and driving and gun violence and just about anything else you could want that's pertinent to our daily lives. But not so much for inflation and prices even from official government sources. It's like they don't want us to know how much we're spending just to meet our daily needs. I live in a nice apartment with one and a half cars (my Lady got her scooter), very little debt (which takes some doing, believe me) and a fe...