#insert evil laugh here

[petitesmafia]

hopped on a viral meme trend on twitter

[lordadmiralfarsight]

Economy lesson : Money Velocity

Greetings my dear little Tumblrans, it is I, that guy that keeps making vaguely meme-y economy posts ! Today with horrible news : I have decided to teach outside of work hours ! On the plus side, unlike my IRL students, YOU can block me if you don't want the lesson.

And today's topic will be Money Velocity. What is money velocity ? It's not a bike city populated by sentient cash, despite what some might believe, no. It is the speed at which money moves inside an economy. What's that got to do with anything ? A fucklot ! Let me explain.

Money velocity is, like I said, the speed at which money moves in an economy between actors. Like consumers, banks, the State, companies, NGOs, etc. The faster that money moves, the better, because it means that money is being used for economic activity, powering various parts of the system and thus creating wealth.

Or, in the wise words of one of the few monarchs I am not physically incapable of tolerating, King Julian : we like to move it move it (it being money).

To illustrate, allow me to introduce a character : a random €100 bill. Yes, euro, not dollar, I'm European, you can't stop me. That €100 bill, which we will call Billy going forward, is used to buy a load of groceries at the market, let's say veggies for a restaurant. Billy is now in the hands of a farmer, who uses it to buy fertilizer to keep his farm going. The producer of the fertilizer then uses Billy to pay a worker, who then uses billy to pay for a new piece of furniture, and then Billy is used to buy more lumber, then to pay for repairs on a chainsaw, then to buy spare parts, then to ... You get the idea, Billy is on a grand journey through the economy, how delightfull.

When he's doing that, Billy is keeping the economic waterwheel going, round and round, and that economic waterwheel then powers society. A waterwheel that goes vroom means that the economy is healthy, which means you can safely invest in a house, new tools, a car, whatever, and it's likely that the investment will go at least OK-ish. It means banks can feel safer about lending, which is kind of a central part of our current economic model and one of our primary tools of wealth creation.

Now, if you've read my other two economic posts, you're probably thinking I'm going to explain how everything's fucked and how we're all doomed, which is a gross exaggeration and I...

Why everything's fucked

I could apologize for that easy joke, but I asked myself if I should just because I could, and my answer is no.

So, in short : money move fast, is good. So logically, if money move slow, is bad, right ? Exactly. So the question then is : what makes money go slow ? Well, a bunch of stuff can.

For instance, a low amount of existing money, AKA the money supply. People like hoarding what's rare and what has value, so valuable rare stuff is prime hoarding material. Keeping in mind that TOO MUCH money can also be bad due to hyperinflation, something that causes shudders of horror in prudish teenagers prowling DeviantArt (no, I will not change my joke) and in Germans in general (I use "cahs wheelbarrow" in attack mode to trigger generational trauma).

Another factor would be how easy it is to pay for stuff. For instance, if you have to go to the bank to take money out of your account each time you need to pay for something, unexpected/impulse buying is far less likely, if only because of the hassle. If you can pay with a credit card (and even more so if you can check your account in real time), you're more likely to feel confident buying things, which in turn means you'll buy stuff, which keeps the money moving.

Last big factor we'll see is economic actor behaviour. "Can I start blaming billionaires now?" Patience my dear, I'm giving you a reason. So, how economic actors behave has an impact on the economy, amazing discovery, next, scientists claim ocean is made of water. But more seriously, if you're putting money aside you're reducing money velocity by creating, I guess you could call it an economic drainage lake which you fill with your savings.

Now, that money isn't entirely out of the system, since you're most likely shoving it into a savings account which can then serve as a backing for banks to loan money (how did you think interests were accrued?) so it's still going through the system, even if far slower than if you spend it.

Those bank loans can still be given to consummers buying big things (like houses) and to companies looking to develop, and that still keeps the economy running, right ? Normally, yes.

"Is it time to blame Capitalism and billionaires yet?" you ask, and yes, yes it is.

So, why do we blame them now ? Easy : there's a second economic circuit that's going perfectly fine, the financial one. If we look at the entire system, there's plenty of movement of money on the stock markets, even without taking speculation into account which ... is a whole other subject I may have to look at later. The main issue is that this financial economic circuit is not as connected as the traditional one as it perhaps should be, which means the money injected into that circuit has a worrying tendency to STAY in that circuit. How ? Well ...

Investors put cash into a company, then they expect dividents. Those dividends are used to put more cash in the company or in other companies, and since monkey brain like number big, investors ask for MORE dividends, which means you need to cut costs somewhere, like for instance employees. That money is still pushing economic activity, it's still creating wealth, but that wealth is focused in a rather small group and is based on the inherently unstable stock markets, which means that it can evaporate whenever investors have a collective tantrum. There's also the fact that, despite the large sums of money involved, that particular mass of money moves far slower than the money used by consummers.

Second big issue : the drainage great lakes. You're not the only one to have savings, the 1% have savings too, except theirs are proportional to how much cash they have. Now, to be clear, most of their wealth is in assets, not in cash, but they still DO have cash, and as you are no doubt aware, they aren't too thrilled when asked to pay taxes. Taxation is theft and all that bullshit spewed by people opposed to snake BDSM.

Like I pointed out, savings aren't inherently bad, they slow down the flow of money a bit, but do not stop it, and in fact allow for crucial investments that produce new wealth. No, the main issue is where those savings are. Tax havens, a well known term for places where money is put to stay hidden and, sometimes, to be laundered. Well, these puppies form, in effect, giant financial retention dams, where rivers of cash are poured in and trickles come out.

Most of the money put in tax havens don't return to the economy they come from. And, to be perfectly honest, they don't go into the tax haven's economy either. It just ... sits there. Hoardingly.

Proportionally, the tax havens have less of an impact than the parallel financial circuit, but they are visible and, most importantly, symptomatic of a way of thinking, of acting, of hoarding wealth and value.

So yeah, that's money velocity, or how fast money goes in the economy. Put simply, our system is currently obsessed with the stock market due to a systemic gambling addiction and has forgotten that the basis of a consumption economy is the consummer, which uh ... is generally in a less than ideal situation right now.

Now, when this topic was suggested to me, "trickle down" economics was mentionned, with the suggestion that I show how it's a scam. Well, I think it's already done fairly well with the above, as the system set up to "trickle down" was what spawned the financial circuit and allowed wealth monopilzation that spawned the tax haven problem on its current scale.

But I feel I should go further.

Is trickle down economics doomed to fail in all cases ? No, it can work actually ! It's just like unregulated Capitalism or Real Communism(tm), it can work if you just do this one simple, cheap, easy thing : replace all humans with robots bound by a strict programming.

Like many other economic or political ideas, "trickle down economics", in its stated goal and ideal functionning, is predicated and dependant on being populated purely and entirely by good faith actors. Adding any degree of human interference leads to the idealized system collapsing in one way or another.

This leaves two options :

Reagan and co were unerringly naive and incapable of considering the possibility humans could act selfishly or in a way that didn't match their vision.

They knew and were counting on it, and only sold the ideal as a sugar coating for the bullshit.

I'll let you pick which one is more likely.

[rachelordwayart]

Collab fanart with @micaxiii of @darkwingsnark's OCs LeSnoop & Dr. Lederhosen (see *Insert Evil Laugh Here*!) I'm always amused by how well we can all make our styles blend together in group art.

[a-demonic-duck-of-some-sort]

Important message to my girlfriend specifically: your likes show up on my dash

[maybankbae]

also thinking abt writing 5SOS fanfic/blurbs… would you guys like that or no?? hmm i have ideas upon me

[geekynerddemon]

Steggy Week Day 5: Missing Scenes and Favourite Moments

How did Peggy get the two bullet wounds on her shoulder?

Peggy gets shot while walking in front of Steve from very far away. Maybe the bullets were meant for Steve…

[purple-genius]

LEO AND I HAVE MADE A DISCOVERY

I HAVE A NEW WEAPON

I AM GOING TO USE IT

[alwaysrepeats]

Person A: "We're ALL dying. You aren't special!"

Person B: "No, no, I mean that I'm going to... you know, go quicker..."

Person A: "Sure, rub it in. Speeding up the process isn't going to help."

Person B: "I don't think you get it! I'm dead in a eight months, you moron!"

Person A: "Yeah, and I'm going to die in five months. Person C might die in two weeks or four months."

Person C: "Don't bring me into this. I want nothing to do with this."

Person A: "We're all dying. Have been since the beginning. You aren't special."

Person B: "W-What?"

Person A: “You can’t just expect me to stand back and watch you sacrifice yourself like this!”

Person B: “I’m the logical choice.”

Person A: “How the fuck are you the logical choice?!”

Person B: “Beacuse I’m already dying! I just…. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

[critter-covenant]

BOOM frowning critters yuri be upon ye

Catfeine and Dogpressed by @/eggritos!! :D

[vexcraft]

curious because I haven't seen all of Cub's pov hermitcraft seasons, but I'm genuinely curious to know, what is the context of Cub being a bunny? Was there a season where (like Mumbo's potato/pig arc) he temporarily got turned into a bunny?

aside from the time cub dressed up as a bunny so scar could hunt him down at the golf course, we just made it up .

there's no real context we just thought it would be silly. there are a few bunny related cub clips but that's just a coincidence

you can't tell me this isn't him though. he would do this

[rachelordwayart]

A commission for @darkwingsnark of her OC Dr. Lederhosen! https://tumblr.com/snark-art-attack/tagged/insert%20evil%20laugh%20here

@darkwingsnark first created Dr. Lederhosen when we were teens on DeviantArt and my main memory of him is this sketch I did in 2010 with one of my OCs (Harvey, right) and one of @insolenthare's (Timothy, left), so I absolutely had to draw him dancing

Also, I listened to Lizzo's "2 Be Loved" several times while working on this, so I can't help but imagine that's what he's dancing to XD

Commission prices & info (this was a "Surprise Me special")

[karatekels]

I take great pride in my ability to guide and twist people's brains towards accepting yet another fictional character to be infatuated with 😈❤️

Cobra Kai (2018 — )

Are you okay? Yeah, I’ve had worse.

[sunny-12557]

ubersaw!! >:3

[general-yasur]

ZANE IS REAL

[yoweasmadness]

I'm making an AU based or idk- on Tangled (That Disney movie since I love it). I'm still working on it but I'll draw this two in digital eventually

[yanmuffins]

stop giving me good ideias to draw, I'm fighting the demons of artblock right now-

can u see my sketchbook looking at me with DREAD as I step closer with my poor, poor old pen as I tremble with the force of YOUR IDEIAS

srsly, artblock hitting me so hard right now that I forgot how to draw MABEL and she's literally the EASIEST person to draw from gravity falls

sorry, needed to ramble so I could procastinate on finishing yet another drawing, but now i gotta go

wish me luck 😔

ehehehehe ( •̀ ᴗ •́ )

i’m glad my silly little concepts are stirring up your mind!! i take full responsibility. hopefully it’ll make your art block go away. i do very much wish you luck, and happy drawing!!!