charles brough

I noticed charts that show that the extreme of wealth and poverty that we experience now also existed in 1929. It spiked then, and began to fall as the stock market went down. Deflation seems to deflate the moneyed class! Will that happen with us?

I thought that people believe that their beliefs ARE the truth. If they are wrong, perhaps you miight tell me what IS the Truth? Is it necessarily what YOU believe? I don't mean to be rude; it is just that when it comes to understanding ourselves and the universe, there is no such thing as "truth." it is only what we consider to be the most accurate understanding to date. so EVERYTHING is belief. some is just more accurate than the other . . .

We had an excellent system to bring about this transition to our modern secular developing type nation. Our secular ideals are all shaped by a social science theory in a way that avoids conflict with the old religions. Then it tends to draw their attention and focus from the old system to our new secular ideals of equality, democracy and "the American Dream.” The problem now is that “the American Dream” is shown up as an intense focus on millions of unemployed in our media and broadcast abroad. Also, our invastions of Islam and defense of Isreal is working against secularization. The whole tre

I understand hnw how my statement could be easily misunderstood. Do you really think it is necessary to cite sources for the statement that the Civilization of Ancient Egypt was any different from the patriarchal-monogamous social/political system that dominated the Mesopotamian civilization and every one since, including in the New World? The word "society" really has no meaning unless it is defined in terms of the mainstream ideological system that binds the people into it. Otherwise, it means just any group larger than on individual. No mainstream society in history has been ruled by women

Our elected presidental system and two Congress system is certainly working badly now and I am not surprised to hear other people begin to show less religious-like adoration of our Constitutional system. It would appear that the Parlamenty system works better. We have idealizsed the American Consitution all over the world and made it into a sort of Bible to our special form of the Western secular ideological system. Because it now no longer works so well and also because we have bogged down flailing in two wars against Islam and running up huge debts, our whole secular ideological system is, s

It is exciting to be having an intelligent discussion like this going on with someone who knows the subject well. Yes, I've also stumbled on to the concept that we especially in the US have experienced a selective out of Europe people who wanted to escape and spread out. As you say, it has promoted an entreprenural spirit but also an ambigious response to living together packed into crowded cities. It it is at the same time both exciting and also stressful. I think it is part of the reason health care costs in the US are the highest in the world, perhaps more than that spent in the whole w

Eventually, we will have hyper-inflation that will end the dollar and wreck the civilization as it has in others in the past. Rome ended up without silver or gold in the coins and China resorted to the printing presses. This is a good time to buy gold.

I understand the official rate has been about 3% for the last 60 years---even when you factor in what it has been in the last two years. I know that when we have generally inflated to get out and get growth back but never reduce Federal expenses at least enough to pay for the stimulus. However, if we don't inflate to get out of it and instead try to reduce the debt now, we end up with a deflationary collapse in credit and a downward spiral as mfgs fire to reduce costs and more workers become unemployed. More being unemployed, there is even less manufacturing demand leading to still more layo

The concept of a major woman-led society in prehistory is contoversial. Anthropologist M. Gimbutas popularized the concept but the anthropologist consensus seems to be that there has never been a woman-run society. The pro-woman-run sociey evidence is the following: (1) Ancient mythology gives evidence that a Mother Goddess worshipping society did exist (2) Agriculture logically sprang from the female as women did the gathering in hunting/gathering societies. (3) Hundreds of prehistoric mother goddess-like figurines have been found. (4) Ancient Crete and the Indus valley so

Isn't that what we have already begun to do? We no longer have any silver in our coinage and even the pennies and nickles are a base metal alloy!

Apparently it couldn't, but then banks could not lend out credit, either. They would only be able to loan out what had been deposited with them. If the borrower defaulted, the depositors and the bank would both lose. Correct me if I am wrong, but there would be no selling of bonds and stocks either. We used to have some sort of a gold exchange system in which we had both gold and paper currency. Who can fill us in on this?

I am not aware of being warned about that, but since you say it is in the rules, you can be sure I won't do it again. :doh:

That is certainly true of the individual and to some extent other countries, even us, eventually. However, we can still have a number of economic cycles of growing debt, higher prices, recovery, bubble bursting and then recession ahead before we lapse into what could the the last and final hyper inflation such as which helped bring down many earlier civilizations---paper money inflation in China, debased coinage in Rome, etc. We will continue to follow this cycle. Even the Tea Party people will become impotent when things get bad enough and the street demonstrators turn into immense rioting

I see us able to be bonded into religion-bonded societies that later on divide. The dividing tends to break down society because we are small group primates that need a common and united ideological bond to substitute for the small groups we evolved living in. So, conditions grow worse as the old ideological system continues to divide and the society weakens and ceases to lead the world. When conditions get bad enough, people swing over to a more advanced new ideological system. Thus, the human total cultural heritage continues to grow, our population on Earth continues to increase and, th

It would certainly be more effective to stimulate the economy by government providing money for the rehibilitating of our decaying infrastructure. However, any more expansive increase of credit money in the economy by government would move us gradually out of this slump. I am unaware of any evidence that anything but a spike in the price of oil has or could cause stagflation during a stimulus. Japan once had a gigantic stock market bubble that collapsed like a house of cards and left the country in a deep depression. That was I think in the 1980s. Our government tried to get them to expand