Scientists invented fabric that makes
electricity from motion and sunlight.
To create the fabric, researchers at
Georgia Tech wove together solar
cell fibers with materials that generate
power from movement. It could be
used in “tents, curtains, or wearable
garments,” meaning we’d virtually
never be without power. Source
Y’all are fucking idiots. Clean energy will NEVER be enough to replace the energy we have now. We’d have to tear down DOZENS of forests just to fit enough windmills and solar panels to get even a QUARTER (probably less, tbh) of the energy we can produce now.
Yeah, sure, when they’ve already calculated that a few square miles of panels in the empty ass Arizona desert could power the whole nation. But ok, fracking and the diminishing petroleum supply is worlds better.
Nevermind that windmills are often most efficient off the coast. There they take up no land, impact no trees, don’t pollute the water, and are conveniently located where winds are often strongest anyway.
And solar panels can literally be built into roofs of buildings and in empty areas like deserts. The sun strikes the Earth with the same amount of energy in an hour that our civilization uses in a year.
But yeah, it would be impossible for us to ever have enough energy from clean sources.
Durr hurr technology is bad and I would rather light shit on fire than have clean energy
I can also testify to the Arizona desert being empty ass. And the California desert. And the Nevada desert.
The fact that anyone can believe a limited amount of dinosaur oil is more plentiful and efficient than moving air or fucking sunlight is proof that entire populations can be completely brainwashed.
it builds itself up like OKAY WE FOUND THESE DEVASTATING RESULTS
and then you go in to look and you find it had a sample size of 40
and then you’re like okay, what was the fantastic difference between these 40 people when sleeping with and without a dog
and the article is like
…so you get through it and you’re like you’re trying to tell me you think this is substantial in any capacity, this 40 sample size 3% difference ass bullshit??????????? you fucking shitforbrick bad at math fake ass science losers?
SHOW ME SOME CONFIDENCE INTERVALS, YOU FAKE BITCHES.
From a macroeconomics standpoint, Bridges is completely accurate.
The problem with most Tories (and many Republicans in the US) is that they either have big business interests at heart or have bought the lie that government is like a business. Government is not a business! Microeconomic principles, even ones that apply to entire industries, don’t apply to governments!
Here’s the fundamental macroecomic model of an economy:
(image from tutor2u)
Notice that the system is circular. The model shows that the economy inherently needs to be balanced. If some households are making hundreds of times the income of other households, they will put the vast majority of that money into savings and investment.
This is bad for the economy.
Some savings and investment is necessary. But too much means the little green arrows are siphoning off vast portions of the peach demand arrow (”purchases of goods and services”). This means that companies are fighting over a smaller and smaller pie. Even if you heavily fund those companies, many will collapse due to lack of demand for their products, unless they become monopolies and the sole practical source of their product. Monopolies are technically illegal in the US, but we have them anyway because of this problem (and a lack of enforcement).
The other way you can damage the demand arrow is by shifting the proportions of the purple income arrow. Most people make money from wages, so if you significantly decrease those relative to dividends, interest, profits, and rent, you’ll harm the majority of households. In turn, this again decreases the peach arrow because many households only need a set amount of a given product in a year. The fewer households that can afford the products, the lower overall demand, because the remaining households won’t buy up the difference.
Households with average levels of income spend far more money than they save, of necessity, and they do so at a relatively steady rate. This is good for the economy.
Households with incredibly high levels of income – millionaires, etc. – save far more than they spend. They tend to make their money off of dividends, interest, profits, and rents – not wages. Therefore, to improve the economy, including increasing tax revenues for the government, two basic steps are urged by almost all macroeconomists:
1. Increase wages, especially at the lowest end. This expands the tax base and drives up demand for basic goods and services, stabilizing the industries necessary to a decent quality of life: agriculture and food production, clothing, housing, education, transportation, etc.
2. Use progressive taxes, in which those who make the most money, particularly off of dividends, interest, profits, and rents, pay a higher percentage of their income as taxes. This allows that money to be spent directly on goods and services or to be redistributed to poor households, who will in turn spend it on goods and services. In both cases, money that would have gone into savings and investment instead goes into demand. This makes businesses more successful and a large number of households more prosperous. Society as a whole benefits from decreased crime, lower health problems, and improved public goods like education, roads, emergency response, infrastructure, etc.
Macroeconomics is the opposite of an individual business. Individual businesses study how to take the most pie for themselves and keep it. Macroeconomists – and governments – study how to make the pie bigger and distribute it in such a way that society as a whole benefits from the growth.
Conservatives: doing economics wrong for the past several decades by deliberately pretending that knowing how to run a business is anything like knowing how to run a government. Being fiscally cautious and being uneducated do not have to go hand in hand. (I’m both, for example.) But the rhetoric for slashing budgets has been laden with errors and ideology since at least the 1930s, and I’m tired of it.
ONE MORE TIME FOR THE MORONS AT THE BACK IN OUR GOVERNMENTS
Or as Paul Wellstone used to say, “We all do better when we all do better.”
Ta dah.
Thank you.
I wish the part about aunts on facebook wasn’t true.
Death By Catchphrase 