I work with Indigenous tribes & Indigenous activist groups throughout the west and midwest, everyday. They can be confrontational, no doubt. But, I also don't actually fault these brats. They just remind me of all of the jock ass ignorant privileged scum I grew up with in PA being confronted with something they aren't prepared for.

Not to mention the fact that we are now fully in a digital age of Google algorithms that basically give a person exactly what they are looking for and nothing else (an internet search used to be research in the 90's, siphoning through a lot of info). People are growing up in very insular bubbles; and ignorance breeds from that. One should also fault the educational system; but in a place like Kentucky, I'd imagine the social media bubble is fueling these kids' education more than their public schools are; there's always college (hopefully).

I disagree. Pinpointing the problem isn't very hard if you have some idea of where to look.

As someone who was 'coming of age' in my profession when No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and its successor the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), I can provide some insight into how these policies have been enacted and how both have been detrimental to the public education system as a whole. The former is a GWBush policy, and the latter is an Obama policy meant to mend the original law, so both liberals and conservatives are to blame to some degree, but both are based on the same philosophy of education and teacher-accountability.

There are some other mitigating factors and outside influences at work that should be noted: gun violence, the rise & ubiquity of the internet, and universal cell phone availability, all mostly concentrated in the past 10 years that play a large role. Cell phones, for example, are probably the worst thing to happen to education ever. They distract, they assist in cheating, they perpetuate arguments which can lead to physical altercations, and parents themselves advocate for their use "what if there's an emergency?!?!"

The idea of "teacher accountability" is the biggest culprit though.

Anecdotally, I've caught people cheating on papers. A girl in my honors English class basically plagiarised her entire final paper that we worked on for close to a month. The zero tanked her grade, which was already floundering, and the parent wanted to meet. I'd rather not go into detail to protect both the girl and my own anonymity, but suffice to say, all of the blame for this was aimed directly at me. How? Well I (apparently) "should have caught this sooner and intervened." Now, the final in that class is 8 pages long, I have ~125 students all working on it at the same time. but my ability to check something like that and my workload are beside the point. I'M NOT THE ONE WHO COPY PASTED A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE AND DOCTORED IT UP SO IT COULD SQUEAK BY THE PLAGIARISM DETECTOR (shows she knew what she was doing, IMHO). Yet, I'm still the one being told that I was responsible for what happened.

Teacher-accountability SOUNDS like the right thing to do, but consider the following analogies

--Students are earning poor grades, therefore teachers should be demoted; put on probationary programs; lose some of their salaries; and if they do not improve their test scores, grades, and attendance; be terminated from their positions.

as to

--Impoverished people have poor oral hygiene/health, therefore their dentists should be forced to take pay cuts from insurance companies. If the patients continue to develop cavities and the like, the dentist should be forced to go for further training, and possibly lose his practice.

I have no control over attendance.
I have no control over their home life.
I have no control over children coming to school with holes in their shoes, having not eaten breakfast.

@Mordhaus the part about money grubbing could not be further from the truth.

I'll be brief b/c I know this is already too long for this forum, but Houton Mifflin, McGraw Hill, Etc. Book Company is facing a shortfall of sales in light of the digital age. It may be difficult to blame one entity, but that's a good place to start. They don't sell as many books, but guess who produces and distributes the standardized tests and practice materials? Those same companies who used to sell textbooks by the boatload.

When a student does poorly, they have to retest in order to recieve a diploma. $$$ if they fail again, they retest again and again there is a charge for taking the test and accompanying pretest materials. Each of which has its own fees that go straight to the former textbook companies. See: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/testing/companies.html

In short, there is an incentive for these companies to lobby for an environment where tests are taken and retaken as much as possible. Each time a student has to retest that's more $ in their pocket.

How can they create an enviorment that faccilitates more testing? Put all the blame on the educators rather than the students.

That sounds a little tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory-ish, but the lobbying they do is very real: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/30/report-big-education-firms-spend-millions-lobbying-for-pro-testing-policies/?utm_term=.
9af18f0d2064

That, combined with exceptions for charter/private schools where students have the option to opt-out of said testing is skewing the numbers in favor of all of these for-profit companies: http://sanchezcharter.org/state-testing-parent-opt-out/ << one example (you can't opt-out in a public school, at least in my state)

@bobknight33 idk if i'd call business-minded for-profit policies "liberal"

My God! - Is this what we have come to with entertainment?
The digital age is killing creativity with nonsense.

Well, cheers for sticking with it anyway, I really appreciate it.

It's a one hour talk on the deficit in particular, and most of what she says is based on MMT principles that would add another 5 hours to her talk if she were to explain them. With neoclassical economics, you can sort of jump right in, given how they are taught at schools and regurgitated by talking heads and politicians, day in and day out. MMT runs contrary to many pieces of "common sense" and since you can't really give 10 hour talks everytime, this is what you end up with – bits and pieces that require previous knowledge.

I'd offer talks by other MMT proponents such as William Mitchell (UNSW), Randy Wray (UMKC) or Michael Hudson (UMKC), but they are even less comprehensible. Sorry. Eric Tymoigne provided a wonderful primer on banking over at NEP, but it's long and dry.

Since I'm significantly worse at explaining the basics of MMT, I'm not even going to try to "weave a narrative" and instead I'll just work my way through it, point by point.

@notarobot

"Let's address inequality by taking on debt to increase spending to help transfer money to large private corporations."

You don't have to take on debt. The US as the sole legal issuer of the Dollar can always "print more". That's what the short Greenspan clip was all about. Of course, you don't actually print Federal Reserve Notes to pay for federal expenses. It's the digital age, after all.

If the federal government were to acquire, say, ten more KC-46 from Boeing, some minion at the Treasury would give some minion at the Fed a call and say "We need $2 billion, could you arrange the transfer?" The Fed minion then proceeds to debit $2B from the Treasury's account at the Fed (Treasury General Account, TGA) and credits $2B to Boeing's account at Bank X. Plain accounting.

If TGA runs negative, there are two options. The Treasury could sell bonds, take on new debt. Or it could monetise debt by selling those bonds straight to the Fed – think Overt Monetary Financing.

The second option is the interesting one: a swap of public debt for account credits. Any interest on this debt would be transfered straight back in the TGA. It's all left pocket, right pocket, really. Both the Fed and the Treasury are part of the consolidated government.

However, running a deficit amounts to a new injection of reserves. This puts a downward pressure on the overnight interest rate (Fed Funds Rate in the US, FFR) unless it is offset by an increase in outstanding debt by the Treasury (or a draw-down of the TT&Ls, but that's minor in this case). So the sale of t-bonds is not a neccessity, it's how the Treasury supports the Fed's monetary policy by raising the FFR. If the target FFR is 0%, there's no need for the Treasury to drain reserves by selling bonds.

Additionally, you might want to sell t-bonds to provide the private sector with the ability to earn interest on a safe asset (pension funds, etc). Treasury bonds are as solid as it gets, unlike municipal bonds of Detroit or stocks of Deutsche Bank.

To quote Randy Wray: "And, indeed, treasury securities really are nothing more than a saving account at the Fed that pay more interest than do reserve deposits (bank “checking accounts”) at the Fed."

Point is: for a government that uses its own sovereign, free-floating currency, it is a political decision to take on debt to finance its deficit, not an economic neccessity.

"Weimar Republic"

I'm rather glad that you went with Weimar Germany and not Zimbabwe, because I know a lot more about the former than the latter. The very, very short version: the economy of 1920's Germany was in ruins and its vastly reduced supply capacity couldn't match the increase in nominal spending. In an economy at maximum capacity, spending increases are a bad idea, especially if meant to pay reparations.

Let's try a longer version. Your point, I assume, is that an increase in the money supply leads to (hyper-)inflation. That's Quantity Theory of Monetary 101, MV=PY. Amount of money in circulation times velocity of circulation equals average prices times real output. However, QTM works on two assumptions that are quite... questionable.

First, it assumes full employment (max output, Y is constant). Or in other terms, an economy running at full capacity. Does anyone know any economy today that is running at full capacity? I don't. In fact, I was born in '83 and in my lifetime, we haven't had full employment in any major country. Some people refer to 3% unemployment as "full employment", even though 3% unemployment in the '60s would have been referred to as "mass unemployment".

Second, it assumes a constant velocity of circulation (V is constant). That's how many times a Dollar has been "used" over a year. However, velocity was proven to be rather volatile by countless studies.

If both Y and V are constant, any increase in the money supply M would mean an increase in prices P. The only way for an economy at full capacity to compensate for increased spending would be a rationing of said spending through higher prices. Inflation goes up when demand outpaces supply, right?

But like I said, neither Y nor V are constant, so the application of this theory in this form is misleading to say the least. There's a lot of slack in every economy in the world, especially the US economy. Any increase in purchases will be met by corporations with excess capacity. They will, generally speaking, increase their market share rather than hike prices. Monopolies might not, but that's a different issue altogether.

Again, the short version: additional spending leads to increased inflation only if it cannot be met with unused capacity. Only in an economy at or near full capacity will it lead to significant inflation. And even then, excess private demand can easily be curbed: taxation.

As for the Angry Birds analogy: yeah, I'm not a fan either. But all the other talks on this topic are even worse, unfortunatly. There's only a handful of MMT economists doing these kinds of public talks and I haven't yet spotted a Neil deGrasse Tyson among them, if you know what I mean.

This isnt about the change new technology brings. You can welcome the Digital Age or you can condem it. Doesnt matter. What matters that things WILL change. Very drastically in a small amount of time. A LOT of stupid, boring, menial jobs will soon vanish. Which is a good thing, but what to do with all this people who worked on those jobs?

Our wealth is based on us buying lots and lots of new things. Things and services. For that, we need money. We work to get that money. But if more and more jobs vanish, you cant just wait and hope for the best. You have to somehow counter that loss of expendable income.

What method you use or what combinations will be effective ... time will tell. But relying on the Invisible Hand of God (err ... The Free Market) and making the already super rich even more rich will NOT work.

As i said ... in Davos more and more influental people finally agree that something has to be done, because those job losses and economic changes will happen. Very fast. This is not a slow process like changing from hunter/gatherer to farming. Even the Industrial Revolution took several generations to finally establish itself. The Digital Revolution, in combination with a more and more intertwined, globalized world will change our lives in a matter of only a few decades.

Something tells me he knew someone as a teacher. My Mother is a teacher (retired now) and let me say, that is one of the most selfless jobs in the world--IF you decide to make it that way. There are some teachers that truly do ride on the coattails of others.

But, the majority (especially Elementary) need a huge amount of preparation to get anything done. The digital age will help this, a bit. The real problem is lack of funds (along with not buying adequate resource materials), lack of pay, and BY FAR the biggest issue is classroom size...

Wondering how this relates to "the digital age", it occurred to me the aesthetic reminds me of Anonymous. The whole dark look, unified front, lack of individuality. Is that what they were going for?

It's tempting to go off on a diatribe about the current trend towards total anonymity - abdication of individuality - in defense of personal liberties, but digressions should know their bounds.

Many authors spend years just trying to get their name out there, so for awhile...it's in their interest to have their work shared if it's not selling like hot cakes on day one.

Once they become more established and known, then the sharing will have more of an impact on their income.


Basically, starting out...without a name they are going to be lucky if people even consider reading their stuff. Lots of guys go a decade before they get to where they can make a living off their work. It's quicker now to pass your work around, but there also a lot more competition with the digital age. A fairly active self-published author whose been tracking his progression on his blog for years says that a writer's best effort for advertisement is writing more books. So that the chance of you being featured on Amazon or some other digital offering is higher, and that you have the ability to offer one of your older books for greatly reduced prices or even free to pick up new readers who may go on to buy your products. It's one of those scenarios that you're kinda damned if you do, damned if you don't on both sides of the equation. Customer can't buy every authors books nor read them all, so free might be what it takes to get your foot in the door with them. However authors can't make a living giving away all their stuff to get noticed, but they may never get enough of a notice to make a living off of their work without giving it away at some point to pick up reviews and word of mouth.


An author, their feelings on the issue is going to vary greatly depending on their success. If they've been at it for years, they might be happy to pick up the extra eye balls from someone spreading their work around. Where as someone like King probably takes a much dimmer view on it. But there's been an up swing in complaints from publishers about libraries and how much they pay for digital stuff, so all that complaining kinda becomes white noise after awhile despite how valid their complaints may be...because every industry seems to be complaining about "lost sales" with some astronomical number to attach to it.

Being someone who has done as much downloading as I have (and will probably continue to do so) I don't think I'm in a position to complain about it too much. If I were a writer, artist, or musician and I was making enough to make a decent living then I'd probably shrug off the rest and be happy that people were actually paying attention and get on with my life. I think the digital age has really thrown many of us for a loop, I can't remember if there was a time in human history before this when we were able to reproduce a product at virtually no cost and yet our thinking is still heavily rooted in the concepts of scarcity and supply and demand. So our entrepreneurs and our business tycoons spend centuries perfecting the art of manipulating these market forces and have suddenly run smack into something that is shiny and new and also resistant to the old ways of doing things, chaos ensues.

>> ^DrewNumberTwo:

Your car analogy is accurate, but misleading. If the car were newer, then it would in fact be against patent law to make one on your own. The SCO case is, I believe, patent law, not copyright.
I don't get your argument regarding publishing companies of various kinds trying to make money for themselves and not paying artists much. This is the old "artists deserve more money" argument. Frankly, they don't. And I'm saying that as an artist. If you're an artist and you give someone your art in exchange for whatever percentage, then you've agreed to that amount and you deserve that amount, and no more. The fact is, selling art is hard. It might not seem that way because we see it everywhere, but having art sitting in your house or on your computer and making money off of it is just plain difficult. The easiest route is frequently to let someone else do that for you, and to artists who can't afford a cup of coffee, making some decent cash sounds like a good deal.
Artists who don't want to go that route are free to keep their content and sell it themselves.


If the car were newer it'd be illegal to sell it. If you made one for your own use, there shouldn't be any legal recourse for the company to follow. It's been a long standing tradition that reverse engineering is allowed, only broken with the digital age and "no bypassing of countermeasures".

SCO is patent law, but they were selling licenses to "guarantee" people they won't be prosecuted once they won. They were selling something they hadn't even proven they owned yet...another aspect of the digital world that's broken. People without the legal rights claiming they do and infringing. Businesses do it all the time by taking other people's pictures and using them in their ads. Even Congressional members have been caught doing it....they don't understand why it's frustrating for a "normal" person who can actually be sued when it happens.

The publisher argument was to show that the traditional way of publishing is no longer relevant in the digital market. They are trying to muscle in after the fact, in spite of customers and in spite of self published authors to dictate what everything should sell for and how it should be sold. They are failing overall, but it doesn't change the fact that they are trying. They are also going after the libraries and trying to undermine the lending system the libraries have, after they've already sold them the goods. So here, the publishing houses are using their wealth and power to attempt to stop distribution channels they don't control much like the RIAA. NYT won't acknowledge self-published authors on their best seller lists, because of it's ties to publishing, in another attempt to discredit non-publisher affiliated authors.

The law is there to protect people, not the people who have corporate backing. A self pubbed author makes 70% of book sale price on Amazon, less than 15% if it's through publisher. The self-pubbed author pricing is usually less than 5 dollars...something around 3 dollars usually. And the publisher authors usually sell for hard back prices, 15 dollars or so. They want to force everyone to sell books at the 15 dollar mark, when self-pubbed authors have found that under 5 bucks gets them the most coverage AND money. So despite the evidence, the big pubs are attempting to influence the market and infringing on the rights (not necessary their copyrights, but I believe they are by attempting to prevent them from distributing it as the people want and the author wants) of the other authors to sell their works as they see fit by attempting to take over the market places.

The future of publishing houses looks like they will have to become small electronic based outfits that provide the author with an editor, cover artwork (relevant and beneficial to sales of book), and possibly facilitate audio book deals and other countries markets so the author can continue writing instead of marketing. For a 15-20% percentage of sales so they have an incentive to do it right and sell quantities at the popular pricing schemes instead of taking the lion's share and scooping up all authors so they get enough to stay afloat despite the content creators getting crumbs. But it still doesn't mean they should be attempting to prevent non-affiliated authors from being noticed and selling books as they see fit due to deals they make on behalf of all "book sales" they control or not.

>> ^BoneRemake:

Yea well just the opposite can be said about their closing statement, not buying counterfeit product takes away jobs from people in countries that cannot feed themselves.
What is so special about English talking DVD manufacturers employees.



Think about it as choosing who you want to support with your dollars. In either case you will get the same product. Will you support the artists who created the product and will go on to create more products for you to enjoy. Or will you support the guy who downloaded it for free and is just making pure profit off of the experience. In my mind, he is the only criminal in the transaction but your action can enable that crime to continue to occur.

if i understand this right: i get like 50 people in other countries to agree with me on something we can make it a law? i think all the occupy wall-streeters need together and make some actual changes.

also, if your worried about this, realize that ISP companies will shoot this down, they loose the most. it just makes the wrong people responsible and have to pay for someone else's crimes. IP addresses and MAC addresses can be changed so fast, and proving anything in a digital age is so hard. But the 1% dont care about that anyways...

/rant
to anyone who runs a business (i do and have learned stuff the hard way): if you don't want your expensive products to be copied cheaply, sold at 20% the cost your selling it for and loose mad profits, make the product in question more available to the public, no one wants to pay for shitty music or movies anymore. if the public likes something, they'll support it! so make worth while products and quit acting like your the victims.
/rant

I love how computer animation in the digital age has reincarnated the "B" movie.

Oh, this State Department Press Release is just epic. EPIC!, I say.

The United States is pleased to announce that it will host UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day event in 2011, from May 1 - May 3 in Washington, D.C. UNESCO is the only UN agency with the mandate to promote freedom of expression and its corollary, freedom of the press.

The theme for next year’s commemoration will be 21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals’ right to freedom of expression. At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information. We mark events such as World Press Freedom Day in the context of our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age. (...)

When single mothers are fine $15M, it's time to take a look at copyright protections in the digital age.

http://blip.tv/file/4341980