Economics - science, theories, programs, and policies

All of a sudden, Harvard is going to have 50,000 students paying $1 per term.

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I can see Harvard restructuring with 50 different semi autonomous colleges under the university- like Oxford? But they pool the management of their endowments.

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I’ve read a few updates about the ongoing (and expanding) boycotts against corporations supporting actions taken by the regime. First they focused on rolling back DEI, then billionaires involved in dismantling democracy (while engaging in obscene displays of privilege), and now companies enabling ICE have joined the list. Even food truck companies are getting backlash. Here’s a video that begins with Amazon’s Prime Day and goes into more detail about the rest:

There’s also news about the countries boycotting the US:

Now I’m wondering if a general strike would work:

:thinking:

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A general strike would be amazing, but I worry there are enough people in precarious situations who can’t take that economic hit. I’m sure mutual help and charity schemes are going on, but I doubt they’re robust enough to deal with that sort of influx…

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Agreed, there will be some who cannot join in for financial reasons. For others, it might be a matter of preparation - depending on the duration. This describes one-day or two-day events (different from boycotts or prolonged actions taken by unions and other groups of workers sending a message to employers):

If the majority of people can handle a day or two, that could send a powerful message to TPTB.

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Oh I agree, I’m more worried about the undeserved repercussions and revenge which will come after.

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Here’s a crazy idea: just make med school free. California could tuck that into their G7-level state budget like a grain of sand under I-5. Fund it with a tax on Health Insurance and hospital CEO’s income…

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I’m sure this will result in a wave of conservative political commentators bloviating endlessly about “JuDiCiAL oVeRrEaCh!” and the powers of the unitary executive.

Right? … Right?

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Wall Street’s AI Bubble Is Worse Than the 1999 Dot-com Bubble, Warns a Top Economist

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But, that might imply that people refuse to learn from history! @mindysan33, surely this is cannot be!

Muttley GIFs | Tenor

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Here’s an interesting discussion called “Makers, Takers & America’s Wealth Distribution Problem” on The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart. It includes policies, inequality, progressive capitalism, governments being pro-worker vs. pro-corporation, alternatives for better balance / options for workers instead of exploitation, and more:

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https://archive.ph/cjeRj

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The way I read it, this isn’t really about being able to pay with gold, this is about setting up electronic payment platforms that pretend to pay with gold. Which may or may not actually exist in some bank vault or other. Seems like a golden opportunity for grifters.

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Just like it was the last time this was tried:

I know I’ve said this before, but all these digital currency cranks seem to be speedrunning the reasons behind every single banking regulation.

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Some people seem convinced that gold has some kind of “real” value, while dollars only have value because the US government says they do. This ignores the fact that gold has very little intrinsic value these days. It’s not particularly rare or scarce. It has some utility in manufacturing, especially in circuit boards, but mostly, it has value because we all just agree that it has value, and that value fluctuates because of speculation and other human-caused market forces. And this new wave of supposedly making it easier to spend your gold is really just a new, unregulated currency system someone came up with. So of course it’s going to attract grifters and scammers. And once enough people have lost their life savings to it, it will fade away again for a few years unless we pull our collective heads out of our collective asses and remember that government can regulate this shit to prevent it.

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