I know you probably want to go back to Gold but our economy is too big for that and it would be silly. You need a money supply and you need a currency that isn't pegged to any physical asset. Otherwise you artificially constrain your economy to that asset .

The problem is we keep printing money and then giving it all to about 3,000 billionaires and then they use it to buy up competitors and jack up prices on you and me.

The issue is that we have a ruling class and a lot of us seem to want it that way because they want to believe that there is order and structure to the universe instead of the frightening chaos that we actually live in. So they turn right wing and support a hierarchical structure that makes them feel like that order exists even if in reality it doesn't.

For the older ones a lot of them will drop dead before reality comes calling but if you're under 50 you can't pretend the real world isn't real anymore. The protections from the New deal and the Great society or your local equivalent have completely broken down.

I went the entire day without thinking about trans people until you mentioned it. Why do you keep thinking about them?

Seriously, the idea that we know all the practically important physics there is is the kind of thing only somebody who's never done science or engineering would believe.

Adjusted for inflation, the federal government simply spend less on education than we used to (ref1). And that doesn't even account for the fact that the population has grown.

Not that per student spending is the only or best metric to measure education. You could look at college graduation rates, in 1980 it's 16.2% and by 2020 it's 37.5%, so by that metric we're doing very well. (sorry, Statisa won't provide me the source unless I pay the money. I had a hard time finding the 1980 graduation rates)

Looking at the statistic of "Attained Tertiary Education" on wikipedia, which convenient has linked reference.
    USA 43.1% (ref2)
    China 16.1% (ref3)

From that point of view, the USA is winning. Right?
Not really, it's also a bad metric (I chose it intentionally). Take into account China's long-term strategy, which is no open secret. We saw a dramatic increase in the influx of Chinese students into American Universities, becoming the dominate source of international students for US schools. And now we see their numbers going back down, after Chinese Universities were built and expanded over the years. We would of course expect a shift, with cheaper and improved schools in China reducing the number of foreign students applying to US schools.

Long-term what does this even mean?
It means China has a plan and they have been executing on that plan for decades.

What's the US's plan?

*ref1: Education Spending Declined During 80’s, Report Says
*ref2: S1501 - Educational Attainment
*ref3: 4-4 Population aged 25 and over by region, sex, and educational attainment

Sounds like he already blew most of the money, there isn't enough left to buy a pardon.

It never ceases to amaze me that these morons somehow think they're going to get away with the dumbest frauds imaginable. Yeah, I know every criminal on the planet thinks that he's smarter than the police (and the majority of them are, or else crime wouldn't be a viable career choice), but do you really think you're smarter than mega-corporation accounting departments? Really? That's a whole new level of delusion.

New and improved! Now with 21st century anarcho-capitalism in every bite.

The way they got so big wasn't that they were super efficient they just went around buying up their competitors and they happened to have some venture capital because bezos had some connections through his parents.

If we had proper antitrust law enforcement someone would have noticed ages ago that Amazon was going around buying up competitors and shut that down but well, we don't.

So now we've got a handful of retailers and they are all basically owned by the same handful of major shareholders so they all have the same prices and those prices keep going up because good luck starting a competing retailer.

Then why should anyone put the effort in to watching it?
That's the problem with AI slop. You cut humans out of one end of the equation but don't realize that also is going to remove humans for the other end.

The media executives of the world must think we're all pretty stupid if they think that your average consumer is OK with ever decreasing quality of content. It gets to a point where watching grass grow is more entertaining than confusing moronic slop, and nobody is getting paid then.

MAGA with mod points are already butthurt. The Arkansas budget is $ 6.49 billion. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Farkansasadvocate.com%2F2...

We're looking at what, 0.04% of the budget for PBS?

$2.5 million doesn't even register on the state budget. PBS is incredible value for the money. I watched PBS frequently as a child and not just for the childrens shows. I learned to cook with Julia Child and Yan Can Cook. I learned home improvement from watching Bob Vila. I learned carpentry from Norm and his massive shop and also how it was done by hand with the Woodrights Shop. Not to mention all the science and documentary shows. But I guess all that stuff is woke and gay now for not kissing a certain orange individuals ring.

And I tried to impart them on my kid. They didn't listen because kids don't listen to their parents.

The thing that makes my kid better off than their friends is that they don't have any student loan debt because I paid their way through college and I also gave them several thousand dollars to get them set up when they were entering the workforce.

So for example my kid had a couple of really shitty jobs at the start of their career that they were able to quit because they knew they could go without working for a little while if they absolutely had to.

Now strictly speaking that isn't nepotism that's just generational wealth. My kid would be much better off if I was in a position to help them with nepotism. But that said there is a lot of nepotism out there...

Had to turn down a role in season 2 because the money they were paying her wasn't enough for her and her family to live in London.

Industrial R&D is important, but it is in a distrant third place with respect to importance to US scientific leadership after (1) Universities operating with federal grants and (2) Federal research institutions.

It's hard to convince politicians with a zero sum mentality that the kind of public research that benefits humanity also benefits US competitiveness. The mindset shows in launching a new citizenship program for anyone who pays a million bucks while at the same time discouraging foreign graduate students from attending universtiy in the US or even continuing their university careers here. On average each talented graduate student admitted to the US to attend and elite university does way more than someone who could just buy their way in.

The worst threat to the US automotive industry is the US automotive industry.

In 2016, over a quarter million people put down $1000 for a Tesla Model 3, with no firm date for delivery from a company which wasn't producing even 100,000 cars a year. That should have told the US automotive industry something. Today, it's sibling, the Model Y, was the fourth best selling car in the USA in 2024. The US automotive industry has been completely incapable of building a similarly attractive vehicle, although it has made a couple of really good ones that just haven't caught on. The most exciting competitors to Tesla have been Kia and Hyundai, both South Korean companies (which, coincidentally, is where GM's 2017 Bolt EV was designed).

Why haven't the Detroit guys been successful? Answer that question, and you'll know why they're their worst threat.