OddThoughts

What does this mean?

A Note: -> a “promise or certificate” that an amount will be paid to you. as apposed to a Draft (ie: cheque), which is an order that an amount be paid to you.

So the “idea” is this. Orginally if someone did a “service” for you, or provided you with a “product”. Then you would be in debt to them.

The barter system is the exchanging of one form of goods/services for another. Later things like gold and silver were traded for goods and services (to pay of this debt).

Legal Tender is the “forced requirement” for a person to accept the bank note (cash bills) as payment for debt.

So if you go to the store, and purhase groceries totalling $50.00, the grocery carrier has to accept your cash as payment for the goods. (They are not required to accept cheques, credit cards, debit cards), but they must accept cash. The currency of the nation as defined as “legal tender”.

(it’s double quote day “” for everything)

Reference:

What is a negotiable cheque? 

A lesson in economics

Here’s the idea.

In the best of worlds, people would go about their daily lives, and the economy would be good and strong for everyone in society. People would work hard, make money, buy goods and services, and we would be all “happy go lucky”

However, we watch the news, listen to the radio, read the paper. All these things tells us about something called the “economy”. It’s in a downturn, people are losing money, the sky is falling, etc. etc.

This “economy” to which you hear in the news. It’s not real!!.

The truth is if the thing called the “Dow Jones” drops 500 points, your life still goes on and continues the way it always did.

Maybe I’m being too critical, the problem is not with the economy. The problem is a very common error people make in analysis and creating self fulfilling prophecies.

You go through life, you encounter problems, you try to figure out the cause of your problems, you try to define an action plan to solve these problems. (at least that’s what I do)

Whether you are an analyst or the average ‘joe plumber’. You still do these things. Some of us maybe more conscious/aware of it, but we all do it on some level.

Certain “events” in life happen, to society in general. “The Economy” is one of those events.

As humans, it is a natural (intrinsic) human trait to point to one of your problems and attach one of these “socieity events” as the cause. We all do it; and this doesn’t mean we are right, but it’s very easy to do. Although it might make us ‘feel good’ it doesn’t really solve the problem.

So let’s say you are the “typical” person, you probaby have lots of credit cards and “consumer” debt. If the economy takes a downturn perhaps you start experiancing pain. The debt collectors get ansy and want their money back; and you don’t have it to give to them. Perhaps you start to panic? Perhaps everyone in the society starts to panic, and everyone just stops spending and the economy slows down even more; and the news/media reports the problem is getting worse, and you get more scared, and the cycle continues…

You start to feel powerless, nervous, and you don’t know what to do. You see the problem is not with the economy. “The economy” is a simply reflection of the actions of people re-acting to what they see/hear in the news. As hard as it sounds; stopping listening to this trash and focus instead on what you can control, what you are responsible for. And things will get better..PROMISE !

Some call them ‘crackberries’. Blackberries were one of the first mobile phones out there that had a) a keyboard and b) email through a mobile phone; as simple as text messaging.

This doesn’t make them the best. And for my fellow Canadians. I’m sorry that I’m not supporting the Canadian “RIM”.

I actually have nothing against Blackberries. I just don’t think they are the “best” device for mobile phone and messaging. I’m a swiss army knife kinda person and Blackberries just don’t cut it for me.

What tends to happen is a) a company releases a “new thing”. That new thing becomes a buzz word (eg: in business) and everyone buys one.

This company then gets the largest share of the market (you can call it ‘first to market popularity).

As other companies come out with perhaps even better products, the first product continues to hold the share. Usually because of popularity/loyality.

And hence the blackberry remains popular, though there are several other products that can do a better job

Lately, I’ve decided to look a little into politics and trying to figure it out. In particular I am becoming confused with some economic theories and political views.

First I had to learn about some basic ideas regarding ideas around equality.

Equality of Opportunity (Equal Opportunity) -> This is the situation in which every person in a society is considered to have an equal chance. This might be equal access to education, employment, income. Economically speaking, it means that everyone has an equal chance to earn a wage. Those that earn more then others are considered to take better advantage of their opportunity then others.

Equality of Outcome -> This is a situation in which every person in a society is gaurteened a ‘bare minimum’. Economically speaking, this is the idea of a bare minimum income level upon which to survive. Typically this is done by setting different tax levels to different income levels and re-distributing wealth. This type of taxation is known as progressive taxation.

Now let’s define the political parties:

Liberal (Democrat) -> The economic policy of a liberal is to strike a reasonable balance between Equality Of Opportunity and Equality of Outcome. In general, one would expect a liberal platform to include more spending in areas of social welfare to increase the well being of everyone in the society.

Conservative (Republican)-> The economic policy favors Equality of Opportunity over Equality of Outcome. From an economic point of view, one would expect conservator policies to move away from taking taxes to pay for social activates and possible including reducing (or cutting out altogether) spending tax money on social programs.

But here is where things start to get complicated, it’s not a black and white thing. Conservatives have many other views then economic ideologies. For example, a conservative would favor preservation of culture, heritage, religion. Though the specific questions of what things we should preserve and what things should be “thrown out” would differ from conservative to conservative making a defection hard to define.

From an economic point of view, there is a another term known as “Libertarianism“. Although it shares the same “liberal” root word. It is in fact, closer to a conservative economic point of view. At the far end of the spectrum, the libertarian view states that the only taxes that should be collected are for protection (e.g.: Military & Police). Taxes for social programs are ‘unjust’ because they basically force people to make charitable donations against their will.

So this is why I’m confused, conserviates are liberatrian? shouldn’t the liberals be liberatarian?