Quote:
Originally Posted by FulorianC  How fucking stupid are you if you think inflation doesn't affect the US aside from imports? |
Inflation (these days more often "core inflation") matters domestically: shit you buy and live on gets more expensive. As mentioned, this is currently 2.2%, when the fed considered 2% as their target rate. With the housing trouble, that target rate may have had to be adjusted anyway, we'll know more when next year's target rate is known. Either way, 0.2% more inflation is well within normal and hardly incoming doom.
When Ron Paul says inflation (or currency devaluation) is 10%, he's talking about the exchange rate to some unnamed currency - maybe the Euro. The "cost" of a lower dollar there is entirely more expensive imports, which is countered by an increase in exports and ideally more tourism. (anti-terror measures and current unfavorable opinion towards the US hurts that somewhat) A low dollar on the exchange market doesn't cost jobs, in fact it's more likely to create them as the US will become more attractive to foreign investors.
The whole debt issue is then again a third issue that is connected to the international exchange rate, but not so much inflation. That it could mean trouble in the future and probably isn't the best thing is true, but it doesn't cost jobs today and it doesn't screw the average worker. The average blue collar worker has some debt and inflation helps him with that.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by chaos It isn't about plebian vs patrician, it's reality vs academia. |
Well, the 'academic' ideas of the enlightenment lead to the American and French revolutions, so at least for a while people did care. Empiricism - the philosophy that only that which can be perceived and experienced, or be deduced from that, exists - had to take hold first and founded the scientific process that has become natural today.
I'm not saying every stoned college-kid with some "deep" insight is on to something, but philosophy should have some place in every home. I think most people have an idea what they want the role of government to be - it may not be formalized, but it doesn't have to be. People have different views on a lot of things and that's fine, as long as they gave it some thought. But simply regurgitating what someone said on TV is like going back to those dark times when following king and church was the only thing people knew.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Rousseau It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living. |
Maybe he was on to something, even if probably fewer people heard of him than of Voltaire
