Tag Archives: Keynes

Is Thanos Right? Malthus, Marx and Avengers Infinity War… Live 11 AM EST Saturday

Don’t worry, I’m not going to do another comic book movie review. But the bad guy from the new Avengers movie I just saw, Thanos, presents an interesting question. He’s really concerned with overpopulation, and he wants to kill off half the universe to solve it. The film-makers are clear that he’s the bad guy, but I think they very cleverly set up a question… Is Thanos Right?

With Saturday’s 11 AM live discussion, I’ll point out why he’s wrong, and why a defect in all of our mental furniture makes his viewpoint appealing.

Do You Care About US Debt OR the CDC? Pick One.

Budgets are boring right? Not really. They are certainly complex, and passing them is complicated, as Washington, DC’s seemingly perpetual shut-down dance shows. But the question of paying for government is the most important one imaginable. Time and again in history we see great empires brought down by the simple question of “How do we pay for this?”

In the 1500s the Spanish Empire encircled the world, and controlled something like half of Europe, if not more. Their American territories brought a constant stream of precious metals. They were brought down mostly by the fact that they didn’t understand inflation, and defaulted on their debt repeatedly. In the 1920s the British Empire reached it’s largest extent. The “Sun Never Set” on the British Empire. 40 years later it was gone. Because they couldn’t pay for it. The holders of British debt in the United States got to dictate British foreign policy in a few crucial instances.

So yeah, budgets are important. And they are what this week’s video deals with.

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