#economically illiterate

[snowlithills]

i am going to explode kier starmer with my mind

[theunvanquishedzims]

Character concept: kindly old mentor figure who is scouring the land in search of The Chosen One to pull the sword from the stone. They find the kid destined to be king, whisk them away on a magical adventure full of lessons like "be a good sport" and "always see the best in people," and guide them to the stone.

The child pulls the sword out and immediately gets knifed in the ribs by their mentor, who takes the sword, hides the body, and gets declared the rightful king.

[culturevulturette]

[nando161mando]

Every time some economically illiterate person insists Hitler was a socialist, I alway think of this:

[fennopunk]

It's exhausting trying to explain to people I need help on doing certain tasks, not because I don't KNOW how to do them, but because my brain is wired weirdly, and I need someone present so I can do them myself

It's especially annoying when it's stuff like "how to do X in computer/internet" and not only am I from the generation that was actually taught how to use computers in school, I have goddamn certificate on it AND AN ENTIRE FUCKING DEGREE THAT REQUIRES COMPETENCE WITH COMPUTERS.

[eyepool]

Bullshit.

You aren’t entitled to your techno-utopian post-scarcity “everything is free, and anyone who wants money in exchange for a service is a disgusting capitalist” world yet. Not until the people who provide you such services — from startups to big companies to coders and artists and writers — still live in a non-utopian world where things like servers and bandwidth and rent and food actually cost money.

If you dickhead cheapskates won’t pay for stuff, people will quit making it. Don’t blame them when it happens.

PS: Double bullshit points to anyone who goes along with this, and then whines about their own art or writing being ripped off by others. Hypocrites.

you know the drill, op disabled reblogs etc etc etc

[vanilla-voyeur]

Kinda annoyed with the assumption that all socialists are just economically illiterate dumdums who would realize the error of their ways if they'd just take an Econ 101 class. Well I have taken introductory econ classes. I've taken multiple econ classes. The university I went to has one of the top 10 economics programs in the US. I originally went into college wanting to be an econ major before I switched to CS. I got to the point of taking one upper division class right before we started getting into the calculus.

The problem with how economics is taught in school is that it takes an approach of capitalist realism that taints their interpretation of everything. Everything that supports the ends of capitalism is assumed to be good. Everything that doesn't maximize efficiency is assumed to be bad. Anyone who advocates for something that has been shown not to maximize efficiency is a big dumdum who doesn't understand economics. There is no question or discussion about whether maximizing efficiency is something we always want in every case.

We got taught that price floors and price ceilings and taxes and regulations cause deadweight loss. Deadweight loss is bad for maximizing efficiency. All those politicians who want rent control and minimum wage and increasing taxes on the 1% are big dumdums who don't understand basic economics. Are there any trade-offs where it's worth it to increase deadweight loss for some other benefit? Not considered.

I do remember getting taught that monopolies are bad. Monopolies also cause deadweight loss. Notably, it is incredibly hard to be a billionaire without being the CEO of a monopoly. Billionaires are causing deadweight loss. Any politician who's against trust busting is an economically illiterate dumdum. If you don't have a problem with billionaires then you hate the basic principles of capitalist competition. (Or alternatively you're an economically illiterate dumdum.)

There are many forms of economic efficiency, but the only one I was taught in school was Pareto efficiency. None of my professors mentioned any other variant. Pareto efficiency was treated as a law of the universe. It's just a theory by some guy. He made some pretty math equations that work under idealized conditions. What if he's wrong? What about all the other models that think he's wrong? What if he's right but he didn't consider things like institutions of oppression? (19th century white Parisian nobility are well known for taking into account how racism, sexism, classism, etc affect society.)

I think the order of classes is suspicious too. First you get simplified microeconomics then simplified macroeconomics then increase the math of each while still being simplified, all before talking about where real life capitalist countries are failing at approaching the idealized model. By that time, the capitalist realism has already set in. We should get to the differences between the graphs and the reality by the third class bare minimum. Perfect competition isn't possible. It's a utopia. Does that actually mean that we should be trying to get closer to it? What sort of trade-offs should we consider when we're departing from perfect competition? We never discussed it.

To the extent of my knowledge, my university never had a class on idealized socialism or communism or any other economic model but focuses entirely on idealized capitalism until upper division classes. The only classes that acknowledge socialism exists compares existing capitalist countries to existing socialist countries. By then, you've already drank the Kool aid of how capitalism could be at its best and it turns out theoretical capitalism is more attractive than existing totalitarian dictatorships. What would a socialist democracy look like? They never bother to ask.

You can't compare and contrast something you don't know anything about. It's all capitalist realism. Anyone who hasn't taken a Socialist Economics 101 class where they draw the simplified graphs and they explain the concepts is an economically illiterate dumdum too.

[irnbraw]

ADVERTISMENT

[liberalsarecool]

Trump is economically illiterate. He is a landlord who wants to evict 20 million people. Trump is an asset for Russia and will betray the US and our EU allies. Trump will continue to hand over US intelligence to our enemies.

No amount of orange makeup and word salad disinformation will change these facts.

[soft-dark-vintage-blog]

I think it's so fucking clever that Hozier put Jackie & Wilson and Someone New back to back in his self-titled album. I mean, they're two ends of the same situationship and depict so well the current dating culture in general. Jackie & Wilson is that needy, hopeless, lonesome state where u just really long for companionship, connection, and stability. It doesn't matter with whom, it doesn't matter where, it doesn't matter how. Every person who crosses your path seems the one because you craft an idealized version of them in your mind. On the other hand, Someone New, besides keeping partially the idealizing strangers theme, goes for a more hedonistic route. It rejects the prospect of a stable relationship that leads to the traditional path of marriage and family in favor of exploration, the pleasures of the flesh (not necessarily only sex), adventure, and excitement. Yet it gets even more interesting if you consider that the persona is the same in both songs, but in different moments of their life (we all have been in both positions at least once). It beautifully captures how the experience of being a young adult is so much different than it once was. It brings up the contemporary developmental psychology that rejects that view of adulthood as the absolute end of development. 

I particularly like to think about these songs through the concept of emerging adulthood and how, due to the cultural and economic changes of our times, the self-exploration, construction of identity, and the "not really knowing what you wanna do with your life", that is usually expected only in adolescence, stays with us for longer nowadays. We're always changing, we'll be always developing till the day we die, and developing doesn't necessarily mean going forward.

Sometimes we take a few steps back, and that's completely okay. We can be Jackie & Wilson one day, Someone New the next one and then Jackie & Wilson all over again. So in this essay, I will discuss Hozier's discography through the views of contemporary developmental psychology and the common themes with 20th century Latin American poetry…

(My grammar in English is not the best, but I swear I'm not that illiterate in my first language)

[dirtgrubroy]

the ongoing gag that charlie is stupid and illiterate but also is a musical savant that can read theory and has a better grasp on economics than the rest of the gang. that he’s gross and grimey but is arguably the one member of the gang the rest are most physically comfortable with, the one member they’ll all come together for .::;; i need to sleep for a very long time

[communist-ojou-sama]

Do-nothing know-nothing economic illiterates will see graphs like these that show that almost no value from private equity has been handed over to shareholders in the form of dividends even as China rocketed up to become the largest economy in the world in PPP terms and still use terms like "class collaborationist" and "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" to describe the PRC.

The only word to describe it is idiocy.

[vomitdodger]

And by that he means he is transferring the debt to the American taxpayer. And no lame stream media will point this out or asks the “what next” questions revolving around the debt.

For the young socialists who might not yet get this, if this “cancellation” was a legit thing, then why not cancel, mortgages, medical debt, car payments, etc etc etc.

Because it not real. It’s pure pandering to the economically illiterate, many of whom made bad choices to incur the debt. The banks WILL get the money somehow. It’s just not specified. If they didn’t, the banks would collapse. But then again the socialist probably want that too.

[darkeagleruins]

"Government construction of homes would take resources out of the hands of the private sector, reducing the number of housing units the latter can build. At best, this is rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic...."

[centrally-unplanned]

I guess to balance out my frequent Biden defense, a 100% tariff on EVs+ from China is some rank insane economic illiteracy. Like I get red baiting the voting base, but remember, they are also economically illiterate. They won't know if your policy is actually good or effective not, just propose the not-awful ones! "New industrial subsidies for EV production" yeah probably wasteful but w/e I get that, don't sabotage green energy developments for no reason.

Definitely one of the worst developments of the recent times is how much the protectionist turn is actually real, Biden & Trump both are true believers in it so it is much harder to shake.

[nonevahed]

Learning about 1930s German politics... People are as illiterate about economics as ever. Literally everyone except the SPD wanted the government to simultaneously maintain government spending and also stop taking out foreign loans?