“It’s a lava lamp, Mom! I swear!”

The waterfall challenge is going viral on tik tok

He’s taken control of the revenue from Venezuelan oil which goes into his slush fund that has no congressional oversight

I want to dress as Segal for next Halloween but I can’t find a wig. Also:

Too hot

There is a for-profit medical clinic near me where they told the workers that " we’re all just really cool and we love our jobs so we don’t take breaks" - they didn’t allow workers to take breaks as required by law so I created pamphlets about how to report and get compensation for wage theft and I passed them out on all the cars outside the clinic.

Are there a lot of reputable sources that the U.S. was involved in La Violencia?

I’ve studied Colombian history as well as US involvement in South America and have not read about any connections.

Google search shows this but I’m not sure it’s a trustable source https://colombiareports.com/50-years-us-intervention-colombia/

Or maybe a hot dog bowl, it’s like a burrito bowl but it’s chopped up hot dogs in a big old bread bowl

Dick and Jane went up the hill each with buckshot and a sawed-off

There’s a lot of wires but they aren’t twisted and tangled, they’re organized and run straight.

Maybe eat more hot dogs?

I didn’t consider that you could still classify banking as fractional reserve banking even though there are no fractional reserve banking requirements. In my mind the concept was one of regulatory oversight.

Do you think that when a bank loans money to another bank they are creating money out of thin air? If they can do that then why do they need to borrow money?

I think you’re doing a good job interpreting and explaining modern monetary theory, I just don’t agree with all of it, although I agree with the concept.

Do you believe that the US government must collect taxes before it can spend money? Or do you agree that government spending is self financed and money creation (in spending by the US government) is only limited by concerns of inflation?

Do you believe that Banks hold digital money in their reserves? I do. Who do you think created that money?

You’re right that that article does talk about banks creating money and it’s true that banks can create money when they lend more than they have in reserves and assets. But my larger point was that IMO bank loans are credit but the bank loans are repaid with actual money. Maybe it’s semantics.

Also, you mentioned fractional reserve banking but that no longer exists. It ended around 2020 when the government changed regulations and no longer requires banks to hold any ratio of reserves to debt.

When a bank issues a loan it creates a credit in the borrower’s account. When the borrower withdraws/transfers the money from their account the money comes from the bank’s reserves. The bank’s reserves consists of deposits and other liquid assets. The money in the bank’s reserves started its life by being created by the federal government. You may argue that the bank is loaning money that it does not hold in reserves, but for lack of a better description, this is a huge liability for the bank that can create insolvency issues (bank run). For this reason, I do not agree that banks create money when they issue loans, since the bank’s reserves are not created by the bank.

Money collected from taxes is basically recorded in a ledger / account by the Treasury. Some people look at this as the end of the lifespan of that money or the destruction of that money.

Money begins its life by being spent by the federal government. They essentially create money with the press of a keystroke (granted they are spending funds which are approved by Congress and allocated for projects), the money credits a Treasury account, then they transfer it / spend it which puts the money into circulation.

The federal government does not actually NEED the money you pay in taxes to fund their spending. Money does not come from people. It is created solely by the treasury. The federal government WANTS the money from taxes to approximately match the amount they put into circulation through spending in order to prevent runaway inflation. If they spend more than they collect they are adding to the supply of money which seems to be normal for a society with a growing population and successful marketplaces, but if they spend to much you get inflation.

The federal government does not need to have any debt. But they chose to because creating so much money that they can pay off all debt would create inflation.

The federal government believes that balancing is important. They want the amount of goods and services that America exports globally to match the amount America imports. Each year there is a deficit which means that America receives more goods and services from other countries than it exports. In order to balance this, the Treasury issues bonds equaling the amount of the year’s trade deficit. We don’t have to do this but we choose to because we believe it will create financial stability.

The bonds that are issued by the US Treasury are US debt, which means that the US collects money and gives a promise to make interest payments and to repay those bonds when they are due. US debt comes from bonds that are issued by the Treasury and which will come due to be paid at the end of the Bond’s term.

BTW, banks essentially act like a store for money, where their job is to not run out of money. Their biggest fear is a bank run where everyone tries to withdraw at the same time. Deposits that are made, for example into checking accounts, are added to the bank’s reserves but can be used for anything from lending to investing to paying withdrawals. When you make a deposit at the bank, the bank creates an entry in their Ledger saying that they owe you that amount of money. That money is a liability for them (they must pay it to you) and they simultaneously credit their reserves.

You’re only looking at retail and you’re discarding what I’ve said about household food waste.

Globally, the majority of food waste, around 61%, occurs in households

From Wikipedia: “Food loss and waste is food that is discarded or otherwise lost uneaten. This occurs throughout the food system, during production, processing, distribution, retail and food service sales, and consumption. Overall, about one-third of the world’s food is thrown away, and a similar proportion of calories is lost on top of that by feeding human-edible food to farm animals. A 2021 meta-analysis by the United Nations Environment Programme estimated that global food waste amounted to 931 million tonnes annually (about 121 kg per person) across three sectors: 61 percent from households, 26 percent from food service and 13 percent from retail.”.

More sources https://www.usda.gov/about-food/food-safety/food-loss-and-waste/food-waste-faqs#%3A~%3Atext=In+the+United+States%2C+food%2Cfar-reaching+impacts+on+society:

And

https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=43836&v=0 check the summary PDF

Utilizing household food waste is a matter of getting uneaten food to people who would eat it. It’s incredibly difficult, this is the challenge that I referred to as logistics.

I agree with you but there are logistic challenges to getting 1/3 of a banana to the person who needs it. This example may seem silly but it’s a realistic example of household food waste.

But I agree that solving hunger should be a society’s top priority which it clearly isn’t under a food for profit model