Archive for August, 2008
Recycling is Retarded.
I thought most intelligent people knew that recycling is a net economic (and environmental) loss, but it turns out that otherwise smart people (typically liberals, who I suppose are of questionable intelligence if they support leftist economic ideals) actually believe that recycling paper, plastic, and other shit* is a good thing.
If you also believe this, well, read this. And Google search any number of other studies that back it up. Because I am sick and tired of being forced to pollute the environment and increase my tax burden for no fucking good reason.
* Aluminum cans don’t apply. Ever wonder why they pay you to recycle cans and nothing else? If recycling was so good for the environment/economy, they would pay you to do it.
A Note on Gold, again.
I have entertained a few questions about gold as an investment, since I have posted tons of brags and graphs about how awesome I am at predicting the markets. In reality, I boast no such claim - gold as an investment is a relatively poor one, given the capital gains taxes and the storage costs of the actual metal if you own it, compared to an ETF like GLD. Held gold pays no interest or dividend, to boot.
A post in the Economics forum at 2+2 brought this up, and I felt it worth posting about. The reason that I made a significant purchase of gold was a hedge against monetary disaster, not as an “investment.” I would assume that Buff (ikilled007) had the same reasons as well.
So, “investing” in gold isn’t exactly the reason we chose to buy shares of GLD / buy gold coins. We did it because an intermediate understanding of economics indicated that hedging against domestic monetary risk would likely have a positive net gain. It was fairly obvious then, and now we are vindicated, as satisfaction with the government and the economy reaches rock bottom.
You cannot artificially manipulate the price of goods and services by printing tons of worthless fiat money and expect that the markets won’t push back. This type of analysis is not even worthy of economic analysis; it is simple arithmetic. When you intentionally devalue the purchasing power of one individual US Dollar, what do you think is going to happen?
Keynes was wrong, but it’s decades too late to point that out. Reserve banking will be the death of our economy.
Men’s Swimming 4×100 Relay
That was awesome. Fuck you, France.