It's simple accounting. Net money in must be more than or equal to net money out when adjusting for any temporal changes in the face value of the assets. If you use more than you produce, either you are going to have to pay in the future, or in the case of the government, you can die and let your children pay.
Funny how people complain about federal debt, when the people complaining benefitted the most from the system. It is your children who will be paying the interest, while the older folk enjoyed a heated economy with high government spending. Economics is just as fundemental as physics. There are conservation laws that cannot be violated. However you can make other people hold the bag.
No, I was under the impression that foundations must be established with a non profit goal in mind. I thought you cannot just give beneficiaries cash. I see I was mistaken and that private foundations allow you to treat the structure the same as a trust fund.
It will hit their balance sheet. For the debt to get the credit rating they want, facebook must commit to spending money on whatever the special purpose vehicle is doing.
Competition doesn't have to be merit based. My view on competition rules is that it should prevent winners, period. If there is a company so good that they can effectively monopolize a market based on merit alone, they should still be punished. How is that advocating for merit?
> How does a system that rewards people for being good at what they do 'take away liberties'?
Define being good at what you do. It's not such an easy thing. IMO the best way we can do such a thing is let markets and trade define what it means to be good at what you do. If you provide value to others and your customers are willing to pay you a premium, that means you are good at what you do.
It's hard to explain my way of thinking to you in a comment on an online forum, if you are willing to look it up, the word to search is libertarian.
> Who decides this now?
The system is currently a democratic one, with a large state. The people decide who gets to control the state. The problem is, the government has so much power, it motivates greedy people to try to control it. So the rich and greedy spent their money on manipulating the democratic vote in order to get control of the government and hopefully make the money they spent back with some extra.
In my opinion, the government should be weaker in terms of its monitary power and stronger in terms of its policy power. Less taxes and more enforcement of competition rules.
The system is too big and complex for there to be a notion such as merit. We are animals and just like all animals we must fight to survive. Some people get lucky, some get unlucky. Merit is irrelevant.
And if you try to create a merit based system, you take away the liberties of the people. Who decides what person deserves more than another? You will create a system ripe for corruption.
Why though. This is a dead serious question, what is the difference in using financial derivatives and prediction markets. Both are a transaction between parties that is influenced by some other underlying event. Why is it ok for the event to be a stock price, but not ok for it to be a sports match?
How are radio telescopes and mars rovers in my interest? How would you know what is in my interest? I worked for my money so the person in the best position to judge what is in my interest is me. I am sorry for you if that is such a hard concept to understand.
What actually happens is, smart people are isolated from the problems of the general population and work towards meaningless goals at the cost of the everyday tax payer doing unglamorous work to earn a living. Decoupling science from the state will also reduce the meaningless competition of academia that leads to the publish-or-perish and replication crises, because the people who will be doing it, will do it for the love of the game, regardless of social status and money.
If you want to live in this world, you have to trade your time and provide value to others. You shouldn't get a free pass because, just because you convinced yourself and the government that you're smarter than everyone else.
Funnily enough, the future of the Chinese economy depends on being able to access their local market. The chinese people save too much and aren't buying their own products
Funnily enough, linear algebra is a good example of how doing doesn't lead to understanding. Just calculating eigenvalues and eigenvectors don't give you the geometric view of what is happening. Also talk to some engineering students who learned how to do matrix multiplication, but can't tell you what a vector is (it is not just something with magnitude and direction).
I don't agree. How can wasting your money in your twenties and thirties be more valuable than saving for an early retirement. Imagine being able to retire at 40 and do whatever you want. If you weren't stupid, your health should be good enough. Why prolong the time you have to do stupid chores for other people when you can be strategic and opt out as early as possible.
The act of grading itself is what's wrong with colleges. Different people learn at different paces. Forcing everyone to work at the fastest rate and then judging them for not performing is what kills interest in subjects. People should be allowed to write tests when they want to, learn at the pace they want to decide for themselves when it's time to move on, because lets face it, not everyone cares about some prof's pet subject.
The problem is that higher education became something marketable and universities decided to sell diplomas instead of giving people a chance to learn skills they think might help them reach their goals.
> I'm a paid subscriber of open AI, but it's really just a matter of convenience. The app is really good, and I find it's really great for double checking some of my math.
That right there is why they are valuable. Most people are absolutely incompetent when it comes to IT. That's why no one you meet in the real world uses ad blockers. OpenAI secured their position in the mind share of the masses. All they had to do to become the next google was find a way to force ads down the throats of their users. Instead they opted for the inflated bubble and scam investors strategy. Rookie mistake.
The sooner people realize that there is no such thing, the better. People are extremely incompetent in judging competence. With that said, the solution isn't to then just hire the person willing to do the work for the least amount of money. You americans should realize you live in a society together and have obligations to give each other chances. Plenty of bright people around. This new top down command and control culture that has taken root in the American corporate world will be the downfall of the nation. Everyone is just trying to screw over the next guy for a quick buck.
Past a certain point, skill doesn't contribute to the magnitude of success and it becomes all luck. There are plenty of smart people on earth, but there can only be 1 founder of facebook.