The first time this will probably come into consideration in the real world is consciousness uploading. It's not far fetched that we will eventually have the technology to take a snapshot of all of the atoms in our bodies and simulate that arrangement on a computer of some sort.

It would be exactly like your consciousness if it's simulated with 100% accuracy. And again, who can say that we'll never get to that point? But when your biological self dies, will you really be immortal if the original consciousness is destroyed?

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.

Not exactly sure why men would be surprised women have 3 openings, we do too. Kinda inside-out arrangement from the bedazzlejayjay, but still three.

I fully agree. It's a good rendition and does the original song justice but the voice is just too autotuned for my tastes. And the whole arrangement is too... pretty. There's no 'live' feeling to it. It's just his voice and a bunch of perfect instrumentals. Like he's singing to a midi track or something.

Edit: part of what bugs me about autotuning voices is that they're actually tuned to the wrong notes, ie. equal temperament instead of the just temperament a good singer sings naturally. There's the whole bit about voice ability but if they just tuned it to the right notes I'd be happy... or at least happier...

As a side note, I noted in the comments:
Heck people don't get the scale between the Earth and the Moon. The distance is so great that all the other planets of our solar system could fit in between the Earth and the Moon, while at aphelion anyhow, and have a bit of room to spare. If you arrange the planets pole to pole, then you can do it during the average distance of the moon's orbit. You can't pull the trick off while in perigee though as it gets about 27 kilometers too close, though this sort of shows the scale of the orbital eccentricity.

That is a very good question. I'm thinking it's a physical structure since it remains in a fixed position. Perhaps wire covered in whatever they coat sparklers with, arranged in the ladder configuration and held aloft by a kite or structure or something.

Cool arrangement and vocal performance but it's not quite in tune... Still enjoyable and worthy of an upvote!

Edit: I think they were having some sound issues during this video. There's a bit of feedback you can hear at one point. I'm going to guess that the two girls on the left have perfect pitch and the other girl just has very good relative pitch and couldn't quite hear the others because of the sound system..

That's a really good question If not, they're all wasting their time.

I think it should be possible, unless they have managed to purify it too much.

Someone needs to arrange this test... for science!

I appreciate her voice, but I hate this arrangement. It sounds like when someone tries to copy a well known song but to avoid copyright infringement, shifts notes around to almost sound like the original, but not quite, and ruining it in the process.

I find it baffling how poorly thought out and executed this was.

Skyrim? Ok, I get that it's got the largest mod scene, but if they'd done their research they'd know that a lot of Skyrim mods have complicated inter-dependencies with script extenders, assets borrowed from other mods, other mod resources such as animation behaviors or skeleton rigs, patches for compatibility, load order management, SkyUI....the list goes on.

The cynical part of me thinks that they knew their micro-transaction model wasn't really a good fit, but they just wanted to see if they could get away with it. Donations or a Patreon type of system would seem to fit modding a lot better, but I don't think Valve or Bethesda can make themselves the middlemen in that arrangement nearly as easily.
The naive part of me thinks that perhaps they just badly misjudged this...I'm not sure that level of incompetency is really better.

I'd love to see some of the more prolific modders able to make it a fulltime profession, if not just so they could hire some decent voice talent...

Well THIS one is obviously a CG interpretation, perhaps arranging real photographs in a 3D program and then moving a virtual camera through them...
But the spectacular Hubble still photographs are REAL in the sense that they are graphs of real photons coming off real stuff out there. Just filtered for different spectra and then composited back together, packing more information into a single image.
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/meaning_of_color/index.php
I know what you mean though. There are no "natural light" cameras on the Hubble. That would be a waste of space.

How does one arrange contests like these? I'd like people to come compete on my lawn.

New contest ever week!

I bet the reaction to cabochon jewel settings is similar to the trypophobia people were having looking at the new Apple Watch face. (link) I can certainly perceive the hideousness of the cabochon but I wonder if that wasn't part of the reason for using it. It would produce a reaction through the arrangement and would hence be very memorable not just for it's extreme opulence.

Haha, I knew I'd open a can of worms....
I enjoy music of all types, trust me. I know the history. I grew up in a radio station, and remember when DJs were the rock Stars of the 70s.

I have no boundaries, and in fact, the more music pushes the boundaries the better, but I still have to feel the groove.
Often, "musicians," get caught up in the medium and forget the composition. I know - I'm an artist, I've been there, created works, not for composition, but to better understand my medium. It's still art, but it's not "ART."

See what I'm saying. There is a whole new generation of not just musicians and composers, but listeners. they have their own new sound, but a lot of the soul is getting filtered out while the artists explore the medium. I know it will come full circle, but I believe we are in a stagnant period of exploration.

And no, I'm not commenting on all those classical musicians, in fact, they are doing the opposite. There are many classical musicians that are taking their instruments in new directions - finally - and breaking out of the Bach & Beethoven standards. (Stereotyping here). My favorite is Stravinsky, who pushed every boundary of his day. and Guys like Rossini, who was the Heavy Metal Rocker of his day. But there comes a time, to break out and use the instruments differently.

And that's what they are doing right now. Breaking out and exploring. Which is great, it will define another period in music. But we're not quite there yet. Publishers and studios, are the bottom feeders, trying to keep the industry alive, but they are manufacturing the lowest common denominator, giving the public some of the most contrived music of our day.

It's okay to criticize music as it evolves and still like it.
If we don't criticize it, then it doesn't evolve. And I think the artists themselves would agree because, once you stop and consider your groves perfect, then there is no point creating more.

You can come to the defense of the genre, but not every piece is perfect. Yes there are better musicians out there, and some worse, and some I like, you won't like, and so on, that's what makes it great. I remember laying on the couch listening to Kraftwork's Autobahn for hours and loving it. That was over 25 years ago. And I've listened to so much more in between. I've heard it, I've studied it in school, spun discs and worked DJ booths, and was literally raised in a radio station. I've heard a lot, and have the knowledge to compare notes.

I'll end this, it's going too long - but suffice to say, this piece here, is okay, but has no crescendo, nothing to keep me on the edge. The grove becomes quite trance, while trying not to be. He's done a great mix up, and I see what he's doing here. He's taken video excerpts and contained and arranged them together. Great... he's experimenting. But it's not perfect, and that's okay. He's worked hard to create something, and as he evolves, he'll create better, that's what it's all about