Apologies, I got carried away... wall of text incoming.

@RedSky

I agree, monetary policy at low rates has very little to offer in terms of economic stimulus. Then again, the focus almost solely on monetary policy is part of the problem. Fiscal policy can have a massive impact, both directly (government purchases of goods and services) and indirectly (increase in automatic stabilizers). But for that you either need to be in control of your central bank, so that you can engage in Overt Monetary Financing ("printing" money). Or you need the blessing of the private banks, which is particularly true for a Vollgeld system.

The budget is the core of a parliamentary democracy, and to be at the whim of the folks at Deutsche Bank, HSBC or Credit Suisse -- no, thank you very much. We saw how that played out in Greece.

Anyway, the central bank can do miraculous things: if it provides funds to the democratically elected body in charge of the budget, aka parliament/the government. Trying to "motivate" the private banks to stock up on cheap reserves to stimulate lending is just a sign of ideology.

The great Michal Kalecki, in his essay The Political Aspects of Full Employment, summarized the general issue of government spending quite clearly. The industrial leaders stand in opposition to government spending aimed at full employment for three distinct reasons: a) dislike of government interference in the problem of employment as such; b) dislike of the direction of government spending (public investment and subsidizing consumption); c) dislike of the social and political changes resulting from the maintenance of full employment.

I'd say control over your currency is too great a tool to leave it in the hands of unelected managers. Clement Attlee knew very well why he had to nationalize the Bank of England in '46.

Back to the issue of inflation, I'd like to make two points. First, how big a role should inflation really play when talking policy. Second, what's the influence of a central bank on inflation.

Where does it come from, this focus on inflation. People usually talk about government spending when discussing inflation. Private spending is rarely brought up, even though it can be just as inflationary. So let's ignore private spending for a moment and talk purely government spending: should a deficit/surplus not be judged primarily by how well it helps us achieve our macroeconomic goals? Or more clearly, why should we sacrifice full employment or our general welfare on the altar of inflation? Yes, that's over the top. But so is the angst of inflation.

I'd say let's stick with Abba Lerner's concept of functional finance and judge deficits/surpluses purely by how well they help us achieve our macroeconomic goals. Besides, the US has run massive deficits during the GFC, so much in fact, that a great number of monetarists saw hyperinflation just around the corner. Still waiting for it. Same for Japan. Massive deficits... and deflation.

As long as spending, both private and government, doesn't push the economy beyond its limits (full employment, real resources, production capacity), out-of-control inflation just doesn't materialize. Plus, suppressing inflation is actually one thing central banks can do quite well. Unlike causing inflation, which both Japan and the EU are showcases off. Draghi can dance naked on the table, monetary policy (QE, mainly) won't push inflation upwards.

Which brings me to the second point: what's inflation, what's the cause of inflation, how can central banks manipulate it.

CPI is often used as a measure of inflation, but I prefer the GDP deflator. CPI doesn't account for externalities that you cannot influence, whatever you do. Prime case: the price of oil. Monetary policy of the Bank of Sweden has no influence on the price of oil. The GDP inflator, however, accounts for every economic activity within your currency zone -- much more useful.

General theory says, this measure of inflation goes up when demand surpasses supply. And vice versa. The primary factor of demand is domestic purchasing power, therefore wages. If you suppress wages, you suppress inflation. If you push wages, you push inflation. More specifically, you can see a direct correlation between unit labour costs and the GDP deflator in every country at any time. Here's a general graph for multiple countries, and the St. Louis FED provides a beauty for the US.

That's why it's easy for central banks to combat inflation, but almost impossible to fight deflation.

@enoch
Pretty big essay in defense of that pop in the mouth, when I haven't seen a single person say he was at fault for it. At least, that I remember.

The only reason I piped up was because I thought there was a chance he was sexually harassing her, which nobody had mentioned.

And a calm and clear voice say -- "This guy. This guy here touched me without permission" -- Gosh. If every woman did that, not with anger but with truth... well, these guys count on women staying silent.

We are talking about two different things, yeah?

He honeymooned in Russia.


Bernie Sanders is a Communist Sympathizer.

Bernie Sanders is the first Democrat who is honest about being a socialist. After all, with their policies demanding more and more government intrusion into our business and personal lives, they could only hide the truth of what they actually believe for that much longer. However, since socialism has failed everywhere it’s been tried, Bernie even admitted that the word socialism has become somewhat of a hindrance. Of course, you could point out all the despotic Socialist regimes, and you’d be making a good point. However, Bernie would still disagree with you! Not because he doesn’t think the mass murder and famine were a bad thing, but a good one. That’s right. An interview with Bernie emerged where he praised Fidel Castro’s regime. If you think his rape fantasy essay was shocking, or his folk album was hard to stomach, just wait until you hear his opinion on Communist Dictators A lot of people don’t know this, but Bernie actually hung a Soviet Flag in office when he was mayor of Burlington. According to reporter Trevor Louden, Bernie hung the Soviet flag in his office to honor the Soviet sister city of Yaroslavl. You know, singing praises to the opposing side while you’re at war might seem treasonous to some, but if you’re a mayor of a major city, it’s perfectly acceptable and everyone will forget about it. No need to mention that the USSR was responsible for what some believe to be the biggest genocide in history. You’d be crazy to call Bernie a Communist. He only proudly hung their flag in his office.

Bernie Sanders did not only vacation in the Soviet Union, he honeymooned there. He described it as “strange honeymoon”. Once again, Sanders used the excuse that he did so in his town’s sister city of Yaroslavl. You have to wonder how much bad the Soviet Union could have done that Sanders was willing to overlook . Perhaps if Bernie loves Yaroslavl so much, he could do everyone a favor and move there.

If they have to write an essay about the art to define what I'm looking at, then they are a creative writer, not a visual artist.

I should be able to look at a piece, and get something out of it. Good feelings or bad, it should evoke something that makes me want to be part of it. Edward Munch and Francis Bacon, hell even HR Giger didn't make art that was feel good, but their works are amazing and evoke emotions that stay with you.

Please expound on the "this is all" bit.

Kerzner's essay?

The kerfuffle as a whole?

It's a five part essay series, so it cover quite a bit.

This first part is the intro of course, so yes it sorta drags.

I strongly encourage you to listen/read all five parts.

She talks about stuff like:

- How hypersexualization of males in games is completely ignored.

- Cultivation Theory - and how's it be misrepresented to correlate and/or assert hypersexualization with an increase in misogyny/rapist behavior.

[When in fact, the theory states that an audience would simply perceive the world as more sexualized than it really is.]

- The difficulties she's faced in being taken seriously as a female games journalist for over a decade..

- And how it's bullshit that youtube sensationalism allows less legitimate & disreputable "journalists"..

to drown out the voices of much better, tempered analysis/commentary.

I listened to the entire series while playing Age of Wonder 3.

w00t! woot! go games! Have fun!

"What I'm exploring right now is the subject of my own mortality. It's an area that I'm curious about, and I'm researching it to see if there's a photographic essay in it for me. If images don't start to come, I'll go to something else." - Leonard Nimoy

@kceaton1
@JiggaJonson

I think there's a big difference between instant fire-able offences (drinking on the job) and mediocre teaching. My mother is a teacher and she definitely talks about a dichotomy between those who try and those who don't.

Unfortunately the system they have in QLD, Australia for end of high school exams is that the teachers can set the exam themselves for their students rather than any form of independently set examination. This means there is a huge incentive, for say Math, to teach to a specific test, then give the exam with largely the same questions but the numbers changed.

There is performance tracking at a school level and principals are incentivised to create good results but often this can be achieved with rote learning rather than genuinely understanding the subject matter due to the lack of externally set examinations.

Meanwhile, while unions ensure that risk of job loss is low, principals can transfer teachers to far away schools with poor conditions easily, and since performance can be fudged, your ability to retain a specific position is largely determined by your personal relationship with said principal.

As far as students being able to address bad teachers directly, how? As you mentioned Jigga, they will likely not be taken seriously if they complain as some will assume it's as a result of work load rather than teaching performance. The only way you can really measure it is student performance objectively measured by externally set examination.

Yes, it's not a perfect measure. Student performance may be determined by the cohort or the effectiveness of teachers in lower grades. That's why you test them before and after to measure progress rather than raw performance. You can also look at average results over 3-4 years to avoid specific class bias and to allow room for improvement.

As far as standardised measures, a good test for say Math will require broad knowledge rather than specific facts as the questions that could be asked would be widespread and would test understanding rather than rote learning. For subjects with wider and less specific knowledge areas like say English or History you avoid advantaging specific knowledge by giving a wide range of options for essay questions.

this was a great discussion.
i was never a huge fan of sam harris as being a solid representative of an atheist viewpoint until a fellow sifter pointed some great essays by harris (waves to qwiz).my narrow opinion was mainly due to only watching short clips of harris,which is pretty unfair to harris and not indicative of his approach.

so i have gained a modicum of respect for harris in his ability to be reasoned in certain instances,though i may still disagree with many of his conclusions,for a multitude of reasons.

that being said i had two problems with this interview:
1.the first 5 minutes was harris whining and crying.that was total turn off.
2.at approx the 2hr mark he makes the argument that islam needs to experience a reformation,great argument and one i agree with,but in the VERY next sentence out of his mouth he criticizes reza aslan as not suggesting that islam is desperately in need of a reformation.

this is an out and out,bold face lie;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_god_but_God:_The_Origins,_Evolution,_and_Future_of_Islam

the entire book is an argument for reformation of islam!!

props to cenk for calling harris out on his draconian imaginary policies (if he were in charge).the arrogance of harris needs to be challenged at ever step and cenk did a great job.harris spent the majority of this interview back-pedaling.

there are some amazing atheist thinkers out there and throughout history,harris,at best,is mediocre.

i have read hitchens and harris is no hitchens.
*promote

Interesting that you bring up Sowell. I have a way right wing brother in law who wanted a Sowell book for X-mas. I got it for him and read about 2/3's of it before I gave it to him. Anyway, Sowell demonstrates the same flawed arguments that you do. And he also completely contradicts himself through the course of his essays (like you). As pointed out, you state that anyone that resorts to name calling loses the argument and in your very first post, you reference to Jon Stewart acting like a Nazi. Can you not comprehend this contradiction?

I don't believe in you being banned for your opinion. But, I do get a good laugh at how easily you are collectively torn apart time and time again. I also believe that deep down, you know that you are wrong in all of these comments. And admitting you're wrong ruins the utopia you live in where there's no racism, inequality, etc...

Folks, just ignore the trolls. The ignore button is right there. There's a clear distinction between rational counterpoint argument and these guys' bullshit. Over a course of years visiting this site, it has become painfully (literally) clear to me that they are not worth listening to, and it sounds like many of you have reached the same conclusion. They're on my ignore list, but I end up reading their comments anyway because you guys put their comments in quote blocks, which makes me sad.

Now, slightly more on topic, I'm always amazed at how well satire shows like this, The Daily Show, and Colbert produce the most interesting investigatative material. It's an interesting line to walk where they are not performing purely journalistic functions, so they're technically more free to cherry-pick parts of the topic for comedy/satire, but you can also tell they ARE trying to get to the nut of the matter most of the time. Further, the discussions we've been having on this page (the productive posts, at least) illustrate that we're actually holding them to journalistic standards anyway. Or at least argumentative standards; we see the segments of their shows as "not just jokes". What a great format. It also allows them to instead produce whole segments on calling out others (usually Fox) on their journalistic failures, which is an extremely important function but one not undertaken by most of big media.

Sorry for the essay. I like productive contributions on VS because reading the comments on CNN is just worse than YouTube...

Delve Deeper:
Part one of the series: vimeo.com/84022735
The series was part inspired by Mastery by Robert Greene
amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B009U1U2IU/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B009U1U2IU&linkCode=as2&tag=adammeetsworl-21
You can read more about Leonardo daVinci's difficult years in: "Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession and how Leonard Created the World in his Own Image" by Toby Lester amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1439189242/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1439189242&linkCode=as2&tag=adammeetsworl-21
This series began life as a couple of essays on Medium
Difficult medium.com/i-m-h-o/a7f8bdabd67b
47 years to success medium.com/the-dept-for-dangerous-ideas/8654ee14e4b2
====
Released under a Creative Commons Licence 3.0 - Remix & share with non-commercial attribution
Credits:
All paintings and archive in the Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons & Prelinger Archives
The Craig Ferguson Show © CBS
Music released under a Creative Commons Licence
"Lullaby" by _ghost (soundcloud.com/ghost-14)
"Hungaria" by Latché Swing (jamendo.com/en/artist/latche_swing_(3)
"July" by Marcel Pequel (last.fm/music/Marcel+Pequel)
"One" by Marcel Pequel (last.fm/music/Marcel+Pequel)
"Todo se precipita a tu alrededor deprisa" by Ruido Blanco
John Coltrane By Gelderen, Hugo van / Anefo [CC-BY-SA-3.0-nl (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/nl/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons
John Lennon By Roy Kerwood [CC-BY-2.5 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons
Sir Alec Guinness By Allan warren → allanwarren.com [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons
Tim Berners Lee By John S. and James L. Knight Foundation [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Rafael Nadal By Steven Byles from Singapore, Singapore (Rafael Nadal Uploaded by russavia) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Steve Jobs By Matthew YoheAido2002 at en.wikipedia [CC-BY-3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
Bill Gates By Kees de Vos from The Hague, The Netherlands [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Richard Branson By David Shankbone [CC-BY-3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Bob Dylan by Chris Hakkens
Horse statue By Jenny Poole from London, UK (Skopje horse statue Uploaded by raso_mk) [CC-BY-2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Mark Zuckerberg :Credit line on the web (with hyperlink): Guillaume Paumier, CC-BY.
One Direction: Fiona McKinlay
Miley Cyrus: Mike Schmid
Taylor Swift: By Eva Rinaldi from Sydney Australia (Taylor Swift Uploaded by russavia) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Subtitles:
Spanish by Ana Ribera Molinos about.me/anaribera
Portuguese by Gustavo Silveira
Story Design and Production by Adam Westbrook
adamwestbrook.co.uk
Published by
delve.tv

DELVE DEEPER
For more on Leonardo DaVinci's little known early years take a look at:
"Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession and how Leonard Created the World in his Own Image" by Toby Lester amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1439189242/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1439189242&linkCode=as2&tag=adammeetsworl-21
"Leonardo and the age of the eye" by Ritchie Calder
"Mastery" by Robert Greene amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B009U1U2IU/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B009U1U2IU&linkCode=as2&tag=adammeetsworl-21
This series began life as a couple of essays on Medium
Difficult medium.com/i-m-h-o/a7f8bdabd67b
47 years to success medium.com/the-dept-for-dangerous-ideas/8654ee14e4b2
Sources:
All paintings and archive in the Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons & Prelinger Archives
Ultimate Fails Compilation: youtube.com/watch?v=Ujwod-vqyqA
The Craig Ferguson Show © CBS
Music released under a Creative Commons Licence
"Nola" by Broke for Free soundcloud.com/broke-for-free
"Lullaby" by _ghost soundcloud.com/ghost-14
With extracts from:
"Frozen Star" by Kevin Macleod incompetech.com
"William Tell Overture" by Giachino Rossini
Translations:
Spanish by: Elena Sanchez
Portuguese: Gustavo Silveira
Story Design and Production by Adam Westbrook
adamwestbrook.co.uk
Published by
delve.tv

What's interesting about Al Sharpton is rarely have I seen anyone come under such scrutiny throughout their entire life. All their choices places under a microscope as they navigate the already perilous political landscape of Activism. The wild speculation and misinterpretation would be enough to crush most men.

His life is what I could see happening to Martin Luther King Jr. if he lived. MLK was about to make a speech and start a campaign against specifically poverty and inequality before he died. It was going to be his next project and one that had a lot of support among blacks and the lower class. It was already starting to happen that mainstream state supporting media was turning against him. It's the idea of "Ok we agreed with you on this but now you've been radicalized." The idea that radicalization is when you try and do something we can't possibly support, like fair wages or money out of politics.

Not trying to say that MLK and Al Sharpton are equals, but if MLK had lived I'm certain that his Wikipedia page would be, along with Sharptons, an essay on every misspoken word, every misguided action. Everything placed under a microscope which not even the most pious and dedicated man could escape. It would be a farce, and that's how you destroy an opponent, any opponent. This is why our politicians are all pieces of cardboard that suck.

If you provide evidence that's compelling and can be verified there is no reason why a serious academic shouldn't take it seriously. There are a lot of echochamber and lazy academic bullshit that bounces around. I'm not going to deny that I hate it and see it constantly.

But I cite again when Noam Chomsky makes an argument against something like that, he provides a mountain of fucking evidence. This video doesn't do that sir, it's a debate that should've been had after the material say a book or study or essay had been presented and a challenge had been thrown down. We've skipped a bunch of fucking steps here, we're basically sitting in a garage with some beers arguing whether or not Beiber should be legally sent back to Canada.

So far no one has been able to point me towards someone who's done serious academic work on this subject. Heck no one is even claiming like Donald Trump that they've already done the work on it.

To your point about Christopher Columbus, when I was in High School I found this out when I was given "A People's History of the United States." The reason why it was compelling to me was the shear volume of material on the subject as well as it's references. In contrast my history book had one paragraph on Christopher Columbus's finding of the nation, it was preposterous.