Robert Reich nails it again…
My Retirement in Crypto-Currency?
“In fact, even today coins and banknotes are a rare form of money. The sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion. More than 90 per cent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers. Accordingly, most business transactions are executed by moving electronic data from one computer file to another, without any exchange of physical cash.”
The above quote is from the book Sapiens – A Brief History of Mankind by Yuval Noah Harai.
I started wondering if for some reason electricity generation became an issue then all those 1s and 0s, those bits and bytes in a myriad of computers around the globe would be naught. There goes 35 or 40 years of hard work, saving , investing and retirement dreams. Of course if electric generation went away there would be logarithmically worse problems on the third rock from the sun.
60 trillion dollars worth of money in the world and 50 trillion of that is in digital form… talk about your cyrpto-currency. Have you ever noticed the first 3 letters of this new fad in “money” is C-R-Y said the Curmudgeon channeling his inner Seinfeld.
And so it does not go… I hope.
And here is a country worried about electricity: Winter is coming: The ‘best country in the world’ is planning to ban electric cars amid the energy crisis. Is it time to revisit oil stocks? Here are 3 big plays
Cultural Differences, the US Dollar, Ecuador
I have been visiting with a young lady, Micaela Vallejo, from Ecuador every two weeks for over three years for conversational practice using Spanish. She is a little north of 30. How far I do not remember. She is unmarried, a fact I find remarkable given all she has going for her, but she seems quite content with her status. Micaela lives in Coca, a small town of around 45,000 souls in the northeast corner of Ecuador, close to the border with Colombia. It is located in the Amazonian rain forest at the confluence of two large rivers and a smaller third. According to the web and Micaela Continue reading “Cultural Differences, the US Dollar, Ecuador”
Inflation Happy Dance
“William Meaney, the CEO of Iron Mountain (a data storage and management company with a current market capitalization of $12 billion) told Wall Street analysts in late September, high levels of inflation helped the company increase its margins — and that for that reason he had long been “doing my inflation dance praying for inflation.” A few years before, Meaney explained “I pray for inflation every day I come to work because … our top line is really driven by inflation. … Every point of inflation expands our margins.”
While the rest of us stand in the supermarket aisle gasping for breath at the price of food… among other places and other things.
Shopping Amazon…Bad for the Environment?
I generally agree with Bill Maher, but I find him so self-righteous that at times I find him hard to take.
I find myself between a rock and hard place shopping these days for all things except groceries. In full disclosure (smiley face) Señora takes care of that. I really do not like buying from Amazon because 1) I find Jeff Bezos obnoxious beyond words 2) I do not see Amazon’s business model good for anyone except Jeff Bezos and maybe Amazon shareholders 3) they like many of these big tech companies went over to the dark side long ago.
Where is Luke Skywalker when you need him?
Yet I keep buying from Amazon. When I try to buy locally I generally cannot find what I want. I say locally, most the stores anymore are really part of huge corporations. And these huge corporations continue to eat into many businesses that have traditionally been local mom and pop operations. Have you tried to find an independent barber shop lately?
So then I try to buy online, but not from Amazon. But somehow Amazon always beats everyone else to death price wise. I thought I found a good source for used books that was not Amazon, Abebooks. Guess what. Amazon owns them.
Where is Teddy Roosevelt when you need him?
If you are sensitive to “colorful” language… you might want to avoid Mr. Maher and this video.
After Bezos rode into space on Blue Origin’s maiden voyage, he famously said this in a news conference.
“I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all this.”
To me ears that was one rankest statements of hubris I have ever heard, given Amazon’s reputation for overworking and underpaying employees, given how their business model has changed the American landscape – and not for the better.
And so it should not go.
Robert Reich: Trump’s Stock Buyback Bamboozle
BBC article – How Western Civilization Could Collapse
Here is an article I found worth my time to read. An excerpt from the article is chilling.
“That economic stratification may lead to collapse on its own… Under this scenario, elites push society toward instability and eventual collapse by hoarding huge quantities of wealth and resources, and leaving little or none for commoners who vastly outnumber them yet support them with labour. Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the elites due to the absence of labour.”
Enjoy! http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse
The sad part to me is that this is a story that has repeated itself multiples in our history, yet we are not smart enough to learn from it. Or perhaps we do not have the gumption to push against the greedy hoarders and those more interested in the current profit.
Robert Reich – Why is a Wall St Sales Tax a Good Idea
Unions Are About Fairness
Nicholas Kristof recently wrote an editorial, The Cost of a Decline in Unions
On the whole I believe unions to be a necessary component of our capitalistic system. The individual worker has very little power in dealing with large businesses or large government entities. When they do have power it is when there is a tight labor market, but those seldom seem to last very long.
It is always dangerous to generalize from one’s personal experience to make points about larger issues, but here I go. I have seen union membership be required when the union did little for the worker. They were in place, gathered their dues, and that was about it. At the other end I have seen unions so intent on justifying their existence that they frequently went to the extremes. They did not realize that sometimes good is good enough. There is, of course, a MLK holiday. The union for the outfit I worked for in Memphis managed to wrangle another holiday, the day of MLK’s assassination. It always struck me that they filed all too many grievances, and generally tried to maintain an attitude of the union versus management. Frequently what seems to happen with unions in place is an overly structured workplace. The company and the worker lose some ability to do the work creatively. In the past the union managed to create jobs that were perhaps unnecessary. I had a roommate in Rhode Island who was a union fireman. His workday consisted of going in at 11 p.m., Continue reading “Unions Are About Fairness”
Big Pharma Spent $24 Billion Dollars Advertising to Doctors
Wonder why your prescriptions cost so much?