"People between 40 and Ω (an indeterminate number defined as “really, just way too old”), are primarily employed as meaning-makers for the under-40 set. This is because they are mostly good for nothing else, and on average not valuable enough themselves for society to invest meaning in."
At some point, intelligent members of society (read: YOU PEOPLE) will realize that there is no such thing as zero-sum fiat monetary system. You don't need to tax someone for the government to create a new spending program. There is no scarcity in USD (its fiat money, there's infinite supply). When there are economic resources untapped, the ~50% unemployed & underemployed, the Government MUST step in and provide stimulus. The multiplier on the economy has been well studied and would benefit society greatly.
IN FIAT MONEY SYSTEMS (USD, CAD, JPY, AUD, CHF, etc.) FEDERAL DEBT IS PUBLIC INCOME. FEDERAL SURPLUS IS PUBLIC DEBT.
Those skills would get you callbacks. The killer in South Florida, at least, is the "3-5 years experience" requirement so often seen in job postings. A nice portfolio could overcome that hopefully.
>>Basically you should teach yourself how to build essentialy any CRUD app (blogs, wikis, basic twitter, news site, hacker news, reddit, etc). When you can do that, you're employable--and probably well above average, honestly.
That's a tall order to become barely employable. I'm guessing this is written from a Silicon Valley / SF market perspective?
Amazing if it actually happens. I don't think basic income guarantee alone will get Greece's economy going. Sadly, the economic/monetary illiterates will blast the basic income for anything less that a complete economic revolution.
There is one major difference between households and sovereign-currency Governments: households can't create the money they use, but Governments can.
"So you're saying government debt doesn't matter? What about Zimbawe, Argentina, Japan, Pre-WWII Germany?"
First, I'm not saying that Government debt doesn't matter. Like all things, there are limits. What I am saying (and MMT says) is that there are conditions under which increasing national debt make sense - notably high unemployment and underemployment. ONLY the Government can kickstart an economy in this scenario. In those hyperinflation cases, you saw Governments whose debt was denominated by foreign currencies and they tried to print their way to solvency, which of course failed.
The title of the article is actually: "Nobody Understands Debt". A few years ago I discovered Modern Monetary Theory (thanks Warren Mosler, Bill Mitchell, Randall Wray, Stephanie Kelton) and it really opened my eyes to the universal misunderstanding of national debt. It boils down to this: the household debt model does not apply to governments that issue their own currency (USD, AUD, JPY, etc., but NOT the EUR).
I've been listening to a relevant audiobook lately: Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday.
In it, he speaks about his role in manipulating the smaller blogs with over-the-top stories (read: PR stunts), which are then "traded up the chain", used as sources for larger blogs, eventually making their way to the national media.
What is Money? can be broken down into: How is Money used? and How is Money created?
How Money is used is virtually the same for everyone:"medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account".
How Money is created is more interesting. It is essentially created by fiat, which undermines the general belief that the quantity and value of money are closely associated with the amount of economic goods and services in the consumer economy, and it is not.
Learned two new things: WhatsApp co-founders were denied employment by Facebook and the criteria that makes you unemployable (and/or too qualified) to work in SV.