Best economics books according to redditors

We found 17,525 Reddit comments discussing the best economics books. We ranked the 5,127 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top Reddit comments about Economics:

u/behindtimes · 3488 pointsr/unpopularopinion

I suggest reading A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America.

It goes over a lot of detail on this subject. How they took plurality power of the government in 1982, majority in 1992, and even now, still hold 2/3s of all government positions such as federal senate/house members, governors, and state house/senators (that number may have been lowered in the 2018 election, but they still hold the majority).

That we find it horrifying that the rich have too much control with the money in this country, yet, if you look at it, the Baby Boomer generation controls 70% of the disposable income & wealth in this country.

They're a generation which changed laws to help the young when they were young at the expense of their parents. They changed the laws to help the middle aged when they were middle aged at the expense of their children and parents (e.g. wanting to get rid of the estate tax when their parents generation started dying, and no way to declare bankruptcy for student loans anymore). And now that they're old, laws are being changed to help the old at the expense of the young (not so surprisingly, a lot of state government problems are due to pension issues, which just so happen to grandfather their generation into the huge pension payouts causing all the issues).

u/Blahkbustuh · 3274 pointsr/investing

This sort of thing is like getting hit by lightning.

Imagine this: if you were around in the early 1900's, which car company would you have invested in? There were hundreds of them. Most of them looked pretty good. Even as late as the 1950's Studebaker, Nash, and American Motors would have looked pretty great. You would have no way of knowing Ford, GM, and Chrysler would have been the survivors and good investments.

Moreover, you don't remember it, but in the late 90's Apple was totally on life support. I think it was either Microsoft or Bill Gates tossed them some help, it was so bad. Steve Jobs came back and turned the whole mess around. If your dad had invested in them in 1986, he'd have sold it within 10 years and been happy to have walked away with more than $0.

Moreover #2, the late 90's was the tech boom. Look up some info on Pets.com. Yahoo was the internet titan. AOL was everywhere and bought Time Warner. Dell Computers were huge. Compuserve. The 90's was the same thing as cars in the early 1900's. You had no way of knowing out of all the tech companies that Amazon and Google were going to be the survivors.

You know how Amazon basically used the internet to eat Sears' lunch? That means smart and connected people fully immersed in the retail industry running the biggest retail business in the world and able to afford all the consultants and research they could want couldn't even comprehend what technology was going to do within a decade or two or spot what was going to be their downfall and you think you could have managed to pick Amazon out of all the tech companies at the same time?

Moreover #3, the places where there are spectacular opportunities, they occur to people around the founder and early employees and people in the venture capital industry. You'd had to have known Mark Zuckerberg in college or his parents and been able to lend a nerd with a computer $50k, or been an early employee of a "shaky" at best company. That's the risk you run if you go to work for a startup. If you have claim to a percent or two, if the company takes off, that's huge. But way more likely the company probably flops or gets bought out for a modest amount. Are you friends with college tech nerds? Are they working on stuff that you think giving them $10k's wouldn't be throwing money away? Do your relatives know their relatives? Are you in an area where you'd come into contact with those people?

Additionally, I'm 32. Part of getting older is realizing you've made choices and decisions and they create opportunities and paths and take away other opportunities and paths, and learning how to cope with seeing that you should have done something differently. We're all doing the best we can at the time. If any of our parents had bought $10k or 20k worth of Apple or Microsoft in the 90's they'd be millionaires by now. If my parents had bought a different house on a lake in the same town for a slightly higher price 30 years ago, they'd be in significantly different financial position too. If only my grandfather had bought large amounts of land near where he lived Washington DC during the Great Depression! You made the best decisions at the time, don't live life looking in the rear view mirror and second guessing yourself.

Looking at my situation, I could buy a flashy car that I like and would enjoy a lot or I could take that few hundred per month and invest it. What happens when I'm 60 and have an account with a big number in it? Then I buy the car I'd enjoy having and go on a lot of vacations, except I'll be old. And I don't expect suddenly when I'm older, my feelings will switch around and I'd suddenly start to enjoy spending money and seeing the number go down rather than saving it. And I've talked to my coworkers, a decade ago there was a person in the office where I work now was mid-50's and came down with brain cancer and was rapidly gone. We have other coworkers who die right after retiring, or aren't healthy enough to get much enjoyment. Think about that--you or me could spend our whole working lives saving money for retirement and then die in our 50's or right after retiring and not being able to get any enjoyment from it. And it's not just dying, but coming down with an illness or having a lot of pain. That isn't a very enjoyable life.

And yet I'd rather save money and push that problem out of what to do with it. This is what I think about when I think about whether to get rid of my cheap, working, boring car and consider getting something fun.

I think autonomous vehicles will be a large source of growth in the coming decade. So which company do you think will do it first? Ford, GM, Chrysler, or Tesla? What if Apple or Google or Uber or Yahoo or some company you haven't heard of right now swoops in and does it first? Surprise! You chose wrong. You could redeem yourself if you invested in a car company the tech company chooses to partner with because they know how to tech but not to make cars. Which car company would they partner with? Is it the one you chose?

Healthcare is big. It's 17% of our economy. How do you invest in that for 10 years for now? What if the people start electing progressives and they completely rearrange the healthcare system and do something like eliminate the need for insurance companies or sharply reduce the profitability of pharmaceutical companies?

Don't dwell on hindsighting yourself. If you look at any graph of a stock or anything it is sooooo obvious to spot the times to buy or sell and pick an optimum path through different investments but when you have to do it live you never know what is going to happen. If you had $10k now, do you think you'd invest it right now or do you think we're on the cusp of a recession where if you hang on to that sum for part of a year or more, you can get a much larger return? What do you think, hmm? It'll be so easy to be able to see what you should have done when you're 32 in 2029 and pull up a graph of stocks and what they did in 2019-20.

I don't want to be rude but stop it with the crypto. You know how gambling works because it exploits people who have the inclination in them to say 'just one more for sure!' even with games where the odds are actually pretty low to ever come out ahead. The fear of missing out is what compels people to get involved with it. People who say "If I had put $100 into bitcoin in 2011, I'd have $10 billion now!" like, no. It's exploiting the people like you who want to look at the graph of Apple's stock price and say "if I had bought in '86...". Also last week the Fed announced it's working on developing a peer to peer live payment system--you know one that will use real actual money so actual real people will be able to use it. That is going to diminish the real world use crypto claims to have. Canada already has a system like this and I don't know if European countries do as well.

Read this book, pup.

Basically monthly I buy the S&P 500 index. It's a trade off between how much return I want and how much effort I want to put in. I doubt I'll beat skyscrapers of people with PhD's who are experts in this, know accounting, read boring reports and do all sorts of research, and actually talk directly to the people running companies so I buy the index and won't ever be worse than the market as a whole--which the skyscrapers of people can't consistently beat. I own some other company's stocks separately, like a railroad, an industrial conglomerate, and Google and all three of those have done great. In that book I linked to, a section talks about how you can approximate the market performance with like owning any 25-30 random companies' stocks--because he's from a time before there were actual market indexes you can hold. Lately I've been starting to think that you can probably beat the market if you avoid the obvious loser or stagnant companies that are big enough to be part of the S&P 500. Like just buying and holding blue chips like McDonald's or Coke or IBM or Disney for multiple years will probably beat the S&P 500. You won't get rich enough to be able to retire at 35 that way, something like what Apple did, but you'll come out pretty solid in the long run. At the same time, so like I own say $10k of Google. If the company doubles, now I have $20k. Big whoop. Now I can retire. If the company 10x, I'll have $100k. That's even better but I still can't retire from that. The big companies can't grow so much--how would Google or Apple double in size from where they are now? Apple would have to completely invent a whole new industry again (and it'd have to be like actual AI or something nutty like teleportation). And if any one knew what that was going to be, they'd have done it already. We have RFID tags now and have had them for over 10 years yet stores still would rather pay cashiers than have customers simply walk through an RFID detector.

The next stuff to come is going to be connected with faster internet and reducing labor. Drones and getting rid of human drivers? E-doctor video visits?

u/Lt_Rooney · 2596 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

The history is simple. The minimum wage was originally passed with the intention of providing a full-time worker the capacity to support himself and a family. The federal minimum wage in the United States was set at $0.25 per hour in 1938. It was not tied to inflation and has to be increased by law. The term "Act of Congress" is often used to describe a massive and nearly impossible action. In this case it is both a literal and figurative truth.

There are a number of commenters here who seem to think that the minimum wage was ever intended to be other than you describe it. They are wrong. The minimum wage is just that, the minimum acceptable wage that a full-time worker can make and be able to subsist without assistance.
> No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. —President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933

The minimum wage was established to ensure that all workers in the US would be able to live independently on their wages. The existence of a minimum wage provides all other workers with useful bargaining leverage, increasing wages throughout. Historically this typically results in a redistribution of wealth from owners to workers (not a commensurate increase in prices as some here have claimed), which always results in an overall increase in economic growth as workers are also consumers.

In the US minimum wage has become stagnant, failing to reflect inflation. A large part of that is the misonceptions throughout this thread. Minimum wage is not "earned solely by teenagers and college students for beer money." Nor can any reasonable person suppose that anyone doesn't desere to "live comfortably on 40 hours a week."

These, fairly recent, attitudes have been encouraged by business owners who have little incentive to pay their workers a reasonable wage, so long as there is an army of unemployed and underemployed willing to do the same job. The minimum wage subverts that desire.
Simply put, an owner pays a little as he can for the labor. The rarer a laborer's skills are (not how skilled or useful he is, the owner never pays anyone he doesn't have to) the more he can charge because he is difficult to replace. Minimum wage establishes a floor, as do overtime requirements and other fair labor standards.

The minimum wage has nothing to do with whether or not someone "deserves" to be paid for their work. Your boss will never pay you more than he has to, that is the central premise of a free market. A minimum wage says that no matter how little he wants to pay you, he should still pay you enough to live on. It is also simple economic sense, it saves money that would go to public welfare to support people who are employed. It is a decision by society as a whole that no one who is willing and able to work should find themselves in poverty.

All that being said, the shareholder prefers that money goes to his bottom line, and not into wages. So he fights any increase tooth and nail. The misconceptions throughout this thread, and the insane anger focused on those one rung lower on the socio-economic ladder, are one tool to avoid it. Another is spreading misinformation, also found in this thread, to lawmakers; claiming that increasing minimum wage dampens, rather than strengthens, the local economy. And the last is simple apathy, since the minimum wage is not tied to inflation it becomes increasingly trivial as time goes by. After a while it becomes, as it has now, a poverty wage.

EDIT:
Oh my poor inbox. Ok, I'm going to try to address some of the biggest responses.

  1. I used the term "inflation" incorrectly, or at least not in the way traditionally used in economics. I also referenced minimum wage which began in the US in 1938, ignoring the 1933 law to which the FDR quote refers. I left it out because it was struck down by the Supreme Court, while the Court upheld the 1938 law. For the same reason I used the term "inflation" rather than "cost of living" or another, more accurate metric. This is ELI5, I didn't want to confuse the issue and stuck with a term I thought everyone was familiar with, rather than explaining the difference between the two, which would have done little to answer OP's question.

  2. A sizeable percentage of minimum wage workers are young adults or retirees who don't need the income. But a sizeable percentage aren't. Someone, attempting to claim I mischaracterized things, acually supported my argument. By his numbers 54% of minimum wage earners are in the young adult bracket. Which indicates that 46% are not. He handwaves this away, claiming not all of them need that income. I submit that not all of the young adults don't need that income. Just because you're 24 doesn't make you a white, middle-class, college student looking for beer money.

  3. I am not an economist. I am someone with an interest in history and political philosophy, of which economics is a child discipline. My writing is not academic, but neither is what I say innaccurate or misleading. My statements are political, in the sense that they relate to modern policy, and they are influenced by passion. I have never seen any argument against a minimum living wage that is not either intellectually dishonest, or ethically abhorrent. I will admit that I have seen many that were both.

  4. Some kind fellow has given me gold. Thank you generous stranger, for paying what you could have for free. In itself proving that there are counter-examples to my argument that in a free market people will pay as little for labor as they can get away with. This, however, is merely the exception which prove the rule. In the absence of strong worker protection laws or powerful unions most employers view their workers as expendable resources, not people, to be procured at as little cost as possible and disposed of at convenience. I lament that we've become comfortable with that view.

    EDIT 2:

    Okay, this has blown up way to far. It needs to stop. This isn't a particularly well written or researched essay on the minimum wage. It's not an academic article on the subject, or even an editorial. I only wrote this because I was royally pissed off that every other response in this thread was shitting all over low wage workers, claiming that everyone who was paid minimum wage was either a teenager or a lazy failure in life who deserved nothing. So I pulled some references from Wikipedia and hacked together a "for" response in the form of a short persuasive essay (in the sense that the essay is intended to persuay, not necessarily that it succeeded).

  • Look, if this is really interesting to you here's John Oliver giving much more eloquent, or at least entertaining, in explanation why a minimum living wage is a good thing.
  • For further viewing here he is on income inequality.
  • If you know absolutely nothing about economics and want to know if I'm full of shit, here's a great introductory book, which assumes you know absolutely nothing.
  • If you do know a little, or a lot, about economics try reading Adam Smith's famous text on the subject, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Or try another great text, which may be more relevant to our current discussion, Karl Marx's opus, Capital. Best of all, since they're both public domain, you can read them online for free.
  • If those are both too outdated for you then by all means please consider the modern, popular work by Thomas Picketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
  • As long as I'm suggesting a Christmas reading list, please consider my favorite book and the one I try desperately to emulate in my writing and personal philosophy, Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man.

    If you still think I'm full of shit, if you don't like my Christmas reading list, if you have another magical panacea, or hate poor people, or hate rich people, or want to observe that minimum wage is a band-aid for some bigger social issue; please start another thread. This is crazy. There's no way I can even see your response anymore.

    The TLDR, ELIL5 of the entire post is this: Minimum wage in most places in the US is higher than the federal minimum wage, but still not always enough to live on. Minimum wage was supposed to be a living wage, but increasing it requires an act of law even though the cost of living goes up every year. Since low wages mean low costs many business leaders and investors like a low minimum wage, so they fight efforts to raise it. As time goes on what was a living wage becomes too low to stay one. I think that's bad.

    And because everyone's gotten really riled up, here's a scene from my favourite Christmas movie.
u/gustoreddit51 · 1909 pointsr/Documentaries

In a nutshell, the classic steering mechanism for public opinion used to be Manufacturing Consent (Chomsky) or Engineering Consent (Bernays) which generates propaganda to achieve more of a public consensus whereas Adam Curtis' HyperNormalisation looks at the shift from that to neutralizing the pubilc into inaction by polarizing them with conflicting information or misinformation (patently false information) so that NO consensus can be reached. Both achieve the same goal of allowing the power elite to carry out the policies they wish while reducing the influence of an ostensibly democratic public which, in conjunction with more and more police state-like authoritarian measures making them more compliant, can no longer tell what is truth and what is misinformation. The public descends into arguing amongst themselves as opposed to those in power.

Edit. I would highjly recommend watching Adam Curtis' famous documentary The Century of the Self which looks at Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud's nephew) and the origins of the consumer society, public relations and propaganda.

u/im14 · 1073 pointsr/AskWomen

Not saving any of my disposable income - if I invested even 10% of what I earned in my 20's I'd own a house now that I'm in my 30's, but instead I'm just now trying to catch up with that train.

EDIT: For those interested in learning to invest, I'll share some resources below. As for how I invest - I have 60% in high-interest 5-year CD account (about 3.1% APY) and the rest in mutual funds (VMVFX and VTMFX to be exact). I am putting 10% of my pre-tax income into my employer's 401(k) (they match some of contributions) and am contributing maximum amount possible to my IRA. Finally I keep about 5% of the cash in a savings account which provides a relatively low interest rate of 2% (but I can access that money at any time).

What I'm excited about: moving my investments to ESG (responsible environmental, social, and governance) funds. These funds carefully screen companies for negative impacts in that area - for example, tobacco and alcohol companies would be excluded, as would oil companies, and fashion retailers that use unsustainable labor practices. One such ESG fund is run by Vanguard - VEIGX.

Tips for saving: learn about concept of paying yourself first - that means automatic deductions into a savings account that you can't easily touch that happen after each of your paycheck. This has been the key to saving - automating it so that it's not something I have to think about - like a mortgage or bill payment - makes sure I don't spend the money meant to be saved. Do some budgeting to figure out where your money goes - there's lots of tools online, like Mint, that allow you to easily break down spending by categories and even set a budget. Estimate your living expenses (rent, food, bills, transportation) and prioritize saving for a 6 months worth of living in case of a job loss or accident. Learn about lifestyle creep and always live below your means - buy used not new, avoid cheaply made low quality products, think twice whether you really need the thing you're buying, can you get it used, can you borrow it? How much is the thing you're buying a liability in terms of maintenance, insurance, etc? Prioritize spending on yourself (experiences, learning, self-development) rather than on things.

Relevant reading:

u/UNDERSCORE_WHAT · 843 pointsr/Documentaries

I got about 25 minutes into the video; I'm not wasting more time. If you want to know serious data about the dangers of central planning of the monetary system, there are vastly better sources that talk in real, economics, and not lofty, sensationalist terms.

The International Role of the Dollar: Theory and Prospect by Paul krugman

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

The Creature from Jekyll Island by Griffin

Milton Friedman's Free to Choose videos

--------

My main objections in the first 25 minutes of this "documentary" are:

1) They're not correctly defining or using the terms currency or money and not identifying their economic role. Money is not the center of an economy, it is the lubrication that permits economics to happen. Economics is the analysis of how scarce resources that have alternative uses are allocated by people (by markets).

Money doesn't create those allocations, money enables those allocations.

Even in an economic system without money, there would still be allocations of scarce resources that have alternative uses by people; whether that is choosing to use your time to cut down a tree for your neighbor in exchange for beef or choosing to use your time to mow a lawn for your mother in exchange for a smile and a thank you; your time is a scarce resource and you're choosing how to allocate it with zero money being involved.

Money is any medium of exchange and is created as a store of one's labor.

You receive a dollar in exchange for X minutes of your labor. That piece of paper stores those X minutes of your labor and you can use it in exchange for something you value.

So anyway - this video does a shitty job identifying what money is at the outset... I don't think it'll get better.

2) The banking system, monetary policy, and politicians making a killing off of those systems has not been hidden from anyone. As they admit, almost in a very quick juxtaposition with their incorrect statement, the bankers, academics, and politicians are very open about their systems.

The problem is that people are just happy with their lives and are safer than they've ever been throughout history.

3) A complete misunderstanding of what "interest" is and what fractional reserve banking is.

Interest is the cost of lending money... it is the price tag on a product just like on the coat or iPod you buy. The baker isn't going to give you all his bread for free; why should a bank give you money for free?

Fractional reserve banking can be done responsibly. Much like the interest rate, it should be done at the rate set by free markets. A fractional reserve rate of 90% almost completely guarantees that when you withdraw, you will always be able to withdraw all of your money. In exchange, banks will give you vastly lower of an interest rate than at a 10% fractional reserve rate because it is higher risk and lower reward for the bank.

Anyway - like so many other documentaries out there about extremely complex matters, this one is just trying to sell a product like every other good capitalist out there. They need to catch your attention and get you to talk about it to others to make money - so of course they're going to play to the 8th grade education market.

u/exactly_one_g · 722 pointsr/AskReddit

How to Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff

It's a pretty quick read about how true information can be used in misleading ways.

Edit: Two other redditors have pointed out that you can find it for free here.

u/stevie2pants · 527 pointsr/politics

There's a book called A Generation of Sociopaths that lays out a well supported argument that Baby Boomers carry that attitude more than other generations. Here's a crappy cell phone picture of one of the appendix charts that lists the favorable treatment Boomers have gotten from congress to the detriment of everyone else.

Our generation (I'm an early born millennial) has the environmental and fiscal mess the Boomers heaped on us to clean up, but we can and will do better.

u/MattieShoes · 511 pointsr/youtubehaiku

There's a book called Predictably Irrational that talks about studies in human behavior that's related to this. The idea is that we have a certain set of mores for social behavior and a separate set of mores for business behavior, so you get irrational behavior when you cross from one to the other.

For instance, they sold starburst candies as an experiment. As expected, sales went up as price went down, until they became free. Then people took only took a one or two, because it was now a social transaction, not a business transaction. But if they were a penny a piece, people felt free to drop a dollar and take 100 of em.

u/killroy200 · 233 pointsr/technology

It's partly a human thing, but I think it's gotten especially bad with the Boomers.

If you haven't already, I highly suggest you check out A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

Try to get past the title, since the author tries quite hard to build an objective, data-driven case for how Baby Boomers have stood out in a fairly bad way compared to both their parents and children.

u/GetOffMyLawn_ · 178 pointsr/personalfinance

I retired at 55. Edit: This is how I did it. Your circumstances will vary.

  • Max out 401K contributions. (Pre tax savings.)

  • Max out IRA contributions. (Post tax money but pre tax earnings.)

  • Your total savings rate should be about 30% of your gross. So after contributing to retirement accounts put the rest in regular post tax accounts.

  • Invest wisely. This is difficult with your 401K money since your options may be limited. Check out the /r/investing sub. Check out the Bogleheads forum. Read books about investing. Here's one place to start https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101

  • Don't spend money on crap. You don't need the latest toys, cars, clothes, gadgets, etc... If you want to retire early then everything is secondary to that goal. Live on what you have left after socking away savings.

    Having said that you will need to hit up your post tax savings occasionally. Like when the car dies (I keep my cars for 10 years), the tv dies, you buy a house, you have a kid, etc... But only touch post tax, never touch pre tax savings or retirement accounts. But that doesn't mean this you can do whatever you want with it. You will need it to retire early so bear that in mind.

    When you do retire you can use IRS regulation 72T to access money in your retirement accounts without penalties. Personally I am still living on post tax money, haven't had to touch the retirement funds yet. I do that for tax reasons, but my retirement kitty has gotten so huge that I will be screwed on taxes when I do. (I was lucky enough to work for a company whose stock price went up every year for 20 years, all that matching money skyrocketed.)

    For more info check out Mr Money Mustache's website.
u/age_of_bronze · 138 pointsr/UKPersonalFinance

Here is the mother of all lottery advice comments. I think /u/Rabid_Tanuki may have been inspired by it. It’s entertaining and worth a read.

However, I would point out that £1m is not actually all that much money. It’s a good amount, and it can guarantee you financial security for life if you play your cards right. But in many ways you aren’t in nearly as precarious a situation as the people who win £30m. Even if you did tell people (DON’T!), this still is only enough to buy MAYBE one house in a high cost of living (HCOL) area like London. Your new friends wouldn’t expect Jaguars, just free trips, parties and help with medical expenses.

Still, you need to be careful: it’s surprisingly easy to fritter away a million euros/dollars/pounds/crowns. If you know you have trouble keeping money, then it’s a good idea to get financial advice on setting up some kind of trust. Taxes are another thing to think about. Realize, though, that there are many people who have this much in a standard brokerage account just due to having earned and invested over time. Since this isn’t a stupid amount of lottery money, you could do much worse than just sticking it in some index funds, turning on dividend reinvesting, and forgetting about it. (Which funds? Getting started investing can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. By far the most important thing is to start. Read this book.)

The reason £1m is able to guarantee you financial security is because of something called the 4% rule. TL;DR: once this is invested, you can safely take £40,000 a year out of it, if need be. As you’re looking for a career in journalism, having a base income of £40k which you can rely on is going to come in REAL handy.

Congratulations: you’ve been shown to the front of the “FI/RE” queue. (There’s a UK version too.) Now don’t fuck it up!

u/darien_gap · 105 pointsr/politics

In short, if we don't reverse the trend of increasing inequality, there's nothing to rule out becoming a society structurally similar to 19th century Europe, except the peasants will work in cubes and restaurants instead of fields. The top centile will own almost all means of wealth creation and the vast majority of income. As well as having virtually total power over government. No more upward mobility, meritocracy, or representative democracy. A new aristocracy cemented in place by economic feedback loops and inheritance, so stable that it will only collapse from some big shock like world war or popular uprising.

Caveat: I'm only half way through the book... Smart people of reddit who've reddit, did I get the ending right?

u/FrostyDoggg · 104 pointsr/The_Donald

The Creature at Jekyll Island does a good job at revealing the Fed's shady inception.

It's quite upsetting, to be frank.

Here's a quick review:

>At first glance The Creature from Jekyll Island is a huge book. While this may be daunting to some, once the book is actually started, it flows smoothly and reads quickly. There are so many fascinating tidbits of information here that the reader won't even be concerned about the size of the book. The title refers to the formation of the Federal Reserve System, which occurred at a secret meeting at Jekyll Island, Georgia in 1910. It was at this meeting, as Griffin relates, that the "Money Trust", composed of the richest and most powerful bankers in the world, along with a U.S. Senator, wrote the proposal to launch the Federal Reserve System (which Griffin calls a banking cartel) to control the financial system so that the bankers will always come out on top. The biggest problem in modern banking, according to Griffin, is and has always been the creation of fiat money. Fiat money is money that is "declared" money by the government. It is not backed by anything but promises and deceit. All societies were sound financially when they used gold or silver to back their currency. When the bankers finally get their way and install fiat money, the result is inflation and boom and bust cycles. Griffin gives numerous examples of this, such as repeated failures by American colonies and European states in using fiat money. The purpose of fiat money is so that the government can spend more then they take in through taxes. Without writing reams on this book, it is sufficient to say that this is a must read for anyone who is interested in learning how the money system operates. Griffin gives comprehensive accounts of how the Fed creates money, and how this affects everyday life. I would have to say these sections are better than Murray Rothbard's book, The Case Against the Fed, because Griffin gives himself more room for explanation. Griffin does believe in the conspiratorial view of history, and he believes that the bankers are working in concert with such groups as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission to bring about a socialist-world system in which an elite composed of intellectuals and bankers will rule over the entire planet. Griffin even spends a chapter outlining how this system could come about, and the consequent results of this socialist system. These chapters are a bit unsettling, but even if you aren't interested in this worldview, you can still learn much about the economy from this book. Recommended --By Jeffrey Leach on July 29, 2001

u/Jackpot777 · 95 pointsr/videos

Wolf, J.R., Arkes, H.R., & Muhanna, W.A. (2008). The power of touch: An examination of the effect of physical contact on the valuation of objects. Judgment and Decision Making 3(6): 476-482.

Even just coming into contact with something (test-driving that car, trying on that shirt, giving that bat a few test swings) gives you a larger affinity with the object. You know you can handle it, it's the right fit for you. It's been shown before that the longer you own something now or the longer you owned it in the past causes you to increase your perceived value of that object (the "length of ownership effect", see link above for examples in the introduction), now we know that just interacting with something makes a sale more likely.

Sunk Costs comes into play too... the more you invest in something the harder it becomes to abandon it. The work Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky did in this field showed a genetic advantage for anything that placed more urgency on avoiding threats than they did on maximizing opportunities ...so you see abandoning the pre-purchased movie ticket when the film is still playing as more of a loss than what fun you could be having by just saying "to hell with the $8, this sucks" and walking away (with the possibility that something better could happen). Behavioral economist Dan Ariely hit the nail on the head on this subject in his book, Predictably Irrational. He writes that when factoring the costs of any exchange, you tend to focus more on what you may lose in the bargain than on what you stand to gain.

u/iBelgium · 92 pointsr/worldnews

The world bank and the IMF aren't organizations who operate in the best interest of the world. It does what the biggest funder tells them to do (= USA).

  1. You start a crisis in a country and force them to take a loan
  2. You give them a loan but only if you can privatize all their public resources
  3. You end up with all their wealth and you also receive money from the loan

    You can read about it in [The Shock Doctrine] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Shock-Doctrine-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999)
u/RedditAdminsAreFaygs · 80 pointsr/The_Donald

Seems like the appropriate place to plug this book: Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell

u/blackinthmiddle · 73 pointsr/politics

> This whole article is nonsense.

An opinion is only as good as the evidence that backs it up. You say it's ludicrous, but the facts say otherwise.

And just to let you know, if you've ever read Freakonomics, it goes through a very thorough explanation of why Guiliani's tough on crime policies that dropped the rate of crime in the city probably didn't do anything, as crime dropped throughout the entire country. Of course, the question becomes why did crime drop? Surprisingly, they give a majority of credit to Roe v. Wade. And again, the book backs up that assertion with raw data, not just emotional statements like you saying, "BAH, THIS IS NONSENSE!!! ARRRRGGGHHH!!!"

So...do you have some actual proof to back up your assertion?

u/dcthinking · 65 pointsr/politics

"A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America" A relevant, well-written and researched book that was released in March.

edit: release date

u/RishFush · 61 pointsr/IWantToLearn

Rich Dad Poor Dad catches a lot of flak, but it's actually really good at teaching the absolute basics in an easy-to-follow manner. Like, learn what a Cash Flow Statement is, increase your asset column, learn basic accounting language, separate emotions and money, minimize taxes. Just glean the overall principles he's teaching and don't blindly follow his specific strategies.

The Richest Man in Babylon is another great, easy to read, investing 101 book.

And The Millionaire Next Door is a research-based book on Millionaires in America and what kind of habits and mindsets got them to their current wealth. It's a wonderfully refreshing read after being brainwashed by tv and movies saying that millionaires won it or stole it and live lavish lives. Most actual millionaires are pretty frugal and hard working with modest lives.

---
And here are some resources to help you learn all the new words and concepts:

u/Uncle-Chicken · 61 pointsr/canada

Hitler didn't improve the German economy in any real sense. He and his henchman artificially stimulated the economy in order to produce arms and munitions, but their tactics had the country on the economic brink by the late 1930's. Many economic historians think he had no choice but to invade Poland in 1939 to keep the whole system propped up with new resources. See Adam Tooze's "The Wages of Destruction" for a very thorough and interesting discussion of the Nazi pre-war economic system.

u/staplesgowhere · 60 pointsr/geek

For more on this, check out Predictably Irrational.

Dan Ariely's TED talk is pretty good too.

u/vmsmith · 60 pointsr/investing

Here's some advice you didn't ask for.

I retired early at age 54 in 2006. Had a military pension, life-long medical care, nice retirement accounts, owned a home, and so on.

Two things upset my calculus.

First, I didn't realize how boring it could be. And I'm a guy who's lived by the adage, "An educated man never gets bored waiting for a train." That's me. I had lists of things to do, books to read, hobbies to start, etc. But fundamentally it was boring, and after a couple of years I resumed working as a consultant, and now I'm back in graduate school.

Second, along came the 2008 crash. It did not have much of an effect on us financially, but that was just because we were luckily completely out of the market. It did, however, have a significant psychological effect. It made me realize that in the 30 or so years I hope to continue on, there's no telling what can happen. I mean, who ever dreamed the housing market would collapse? (A few people actually did, apparently.)

So I just toss it out there: don't burn any bridges. And by that I mean, don't get so completely divorced from work that you'll have a hard time getting back in the work force should you decide to do so. I was very, very lucky in that the stars aligned just right for my consulting gig, which led to other good things. But again, that was not planned for.

Anyway, good luck in whatever you decide to do!

u/zorts · 57 pointsr/investing

Your question assumes that you are buying low, and selling high very frequently. Day traders attempt to do this. Algorithms attempt to do this with thousands of trades per day (if not per minute). These strategies require vast amounts of data in order to operate. An individual investor has no hope of buying low and selling high in a fraction of a second to make a profit. Mostly because they cannot afford to spend the time gathering the information.

So how do regular people make a profit on the stock market? The less time you have to spend gathering data, the longer you have to wait to take a profit. Fortunately waiting also means that trading expenses are few and far between. However to make any money on the stock market you MUST spend some time learning. (OR you have to pay someone like me to do that for you, I'm a Registered Representative).

The recommended reading section (to the left of the screen) is a great place to start. Begin at the bottom with Bogleheads Guide, and work you way up to Intelligent Investor. II is a great book, but it's written for people who have taken at least a Financial Accounting class or two. So if you haven't or are unwilling to take a course start with Bogleheads, which is written for just about anyone.

If you don't want to take the time to read all those books (please run screaming from the market now, if you are unable or unwilling to learn about it), I'll sum them up for you in the way that I do with my own clients.

You need two things. A Plan and a Skill. The plan I like to use comes from Jack Bogle via the Bogleheads Guide and Bogleheads.org. The skill is recommended by Dan Sheridan (a commodities trader from the Chicago Exchange). Why a plan and a skill? Well because simply putting your money into VTSMX and letting it sit is doomed to failure. "Fire and Forget" is doomed to fail. There are psychological reasons. Humans are very susceptible to a herd mentality. Which leads to 'buy high, sell low'. There are emotional reason. When the market is tanking it HURTS emotionally. And there are negligence issues. People who dump money into an account are prone to forget about it. VTSMX is a fantastic fund, if you keep your eye on it. It's the worst fund in the world if you're not paying attention.

So what is the Plan? Right out of Jack Bogles playbook, the plan is:
"Take your age in bonds." I know, it sounds ludicrous to suggest to a 25 year old that they should have 25% of their funds in, say, VBMFX and 75% in VTSMX. That's way to conservative, right? They should be in 100% risk, right? Well no.

If you all you have is one position in stocks, you don't get to practice the skill! The Skill is critical and you need a second non-correlated fund. If your investment consists of a single fund, you have nothing to exchange with. There's nothing to practice. You need at least two funds to practice The Skill.

What is The Skill.
The first investing skill that you should learn is called 'rebalancing'. You do it at least once a year (more frequently if you can afford the additional costs, or are doing it in a retirement account). Every year on your birthday, you need to get 1% more conservative (see The Plan). So on that day you evaluate where you stocks and bonds are.

You started by investing 75/25, but over a year they will be completely different. The stock market should outpace the bond market. In a good year you could end up 90/10. In a bad stock market year you could end up 50/50. Regardless on the day you rebalance you sell off enough shares of the fund that is higher then it should be, and buy shares in the fund that is lower then it should be. After this transaction your risk is re-balanced from where ever the market took it, back to what it should be for you.

On your 26th birthday you should be 74/26. By re-balancing you have captured some gains (sold high), and have purchased some under-performers (bought low). Why is this better then say 'letting it ride' on the market? By doing this you prevent yourself from being fully susceptible to the market. 100% stock market position is a gamble. You are also making yourself more conservative over time. You are avoiding the high fee's of Target Return Date Funds. You are forcing yourself to monitor your investments, although not too frequently.

So have a plan. And practice a skill. A good plan that you could start with, but you don't have to, is:

Keep Costs Low (buy index or ETF)

Take your age in bonds

Re-balance at least yearly

Strongly consider doing this in a Tax Deferred retirement account (to keep costs low when you buy/sell/exchange shares)

This is how I make money on the stock market and the bond market, and the commodities market. This is not the only way to make money with investments.

u/Metlover · 53 pointsr/OutOfTheLoop

Public attitudes are shaped and driven by the media. If the public doesn't care, it's because we've spent years conditioning them not to care. If the public in general can't name many middle eastern cultures beyond "Muslim", that is very much the fault of the media.

If prominent newspapers started giving front page headlines to the plight of the Kurds, you'd certainly see a considerable public reaction, but right now the cycle is dominated by the anti-communist Hong-Kong protest coverage because it serves an agenda for the United States. Kurds being killed because the American government made the decision to abandon them? That's a bad look on America and the media won't give it nearly as much attention. See Manufacturing Consent on this dynamic.

u/coldnever · 51 pointsr/politics

>What the fuck happened to America?

Reasoning and the human brain doesn't work the way we thought it did:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Manufacturing consent

http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499

Most have no clue what's really going on in the world... the elites are afraid of political awakening.

This (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttv6n7PFniY

Brezinski at a press conference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kmUS--QCYY

The real news:

http://therealnews.com/t2/

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X/

http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Government-Surveillance-Security-Single-Superpower/dp/1608463656/r

http://www.amazon.com/National-Security-Government-Michael-Glennon/dp/0190206446/

Look at the following graphs:

IMGUR link - http://imgur.com/a/FShfb

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

And then...

WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap

http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-haiti-minimum-wage-the-nation-2011-6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnkNKipiiiM

Free markets?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Illusion-Literacy-Triumph-Spectacle/dp/1568586132/

"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.

In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."

Important history:

http://williamblum.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcA1v2n7WW4

u/[deleted] · 50 pointsr/news

Shock Doctrine, people.
Don't have time to watch or read (read the reviews)? Naomi Klein on MSNBC explaining the basics in less than 5 minutes.

u/MissCalculation · 49 pointsr/politics

because the heads of media feel dependent on the good will of politicians "to ensure access" and other such shit. supposing this was pitched to some news network, they would reject it by saying, "no other politician would ever speak to us again."

journalists - especially the powerful ones - also have a tendency to view politicians as immune from wrongdoing. as just one recent example, joe klein defending the extremely illegal warrantless wiretapping program: http://www.salon.com/2007/10/11/klein_fisa/ . you can also check out the reactions of famous journalists to the pardoning of watergate criminals, the refusal to investigate torture in the bush 2 administration, the politically motivated firing of government attorneys, etc...

for a whole lot more on this, i'd recommend reading the intro of noam chomsky's "manufacturing consent," which is available on the internet and does an incredible job of showing how and why the media has become largely a mouthpiece for the government (at least in america). read it for free here: http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499. "with liberty and justice for some" is also a really good book on this topic.

u/Clint_Redwood · 47 pointsr/TheRedPill

First thing you have to do is learn all the lingo and jargon. Then you can learn the principles and strategies.

Investopedia is a fantastic place to get learn the lingo. Just search a word you don't understand and there will be a short article explaining it.

Then you can go two ways, learn pragmatic practices like Fundamental Investing vs Analytical Investing, Day Trading vs swing trading, stocks vs options trading, forex trading, etc.

Or you can study the grand scheme and mentality you need to become wealthy. From my experience you first need to have the mentality of a wealthy person before you can become wealthy. Like how TRP teaching you to be a certain way before you actually are. A good analogy is, "You don't meet any 80 year old people that are poor and great with their money". Just doesn't happen, your wealth is directly correlated to your behavior and outlook. Mentality and frivolous spending dictate your wealth, not how much your job pays you or your hourly wage. I know people making 100k a year that are fucking broke and will be broke the rest of their lives just because they don't care to learn how to use money.

I'd start with studying the most successful investors and businessmen ever. Learning how powerful compound investing is will probably be the most important thing. This is a great video over Warren buffett and his overarching mentality to investing. Study everything you can on him and how he "Thinks". He's mentality is what you need to learn and emulate.

The Intellegent Investor is probably the best primer book you'll ever read for investing. Its an extension to Buffetts mentality. The technicals will be over your head as a novice but pay attention to the mentality like buffett. It's written by a guy that entered the stock market in 1915 and survived through 5 recessions and is considered one of the best investing books ever written. It's one of the first books Warren Buffett ever read, he talks about it too in that video I linked. It's been updated every five years since it was written in the 70's. I'd suggest learning as much about Benjamin Graham, the author of this book, as you do Warren Buffett. Cause he's who Buffett learned from.


Now, once you get the mentality and lingo down you can focus on actual strategies and pragmatics. Financial Education youtube channel is a good place to learn fundemental investing. he's a bit goofy but he's solid on his delivery and takes a more modern approach to the buffett style of investing.

I'd recommend learning the basics of fundamental investing first. Learn how to read balance sheets, cash flow statements, income reports. Study market caps of companies, P/E Ratios, are they under or over valued, etc.

Once you have the basics of fundamental down then you can learn analytical. This is where you can make high returns on your investments but it is greater risk unless you learn how to manage them. Tons of people lose their ass in analytical because they don't know what they are doing. Educate yourself and don't be one of them. youtube the difference between day trade vs swing trade, momentum vs breakout trading, learn the difference between options and stocks, support and resistance lines, studies, indicators & signals.

That should be a good start.

edit Also Download the Robinhood app, it's the first free trading app ever. So you can literally start with $10 if you want and fuck around. the beauty of trading and investing is, it's not about the amount you start with. It's your % return per day, per month, per year. There are people day trading with 300%+ return in a month. They can take $50 and turn it into $15 or 5k and turn it into 15k. your return percent is the magic number, not how much you start with.

u/S_K_I · 47 pointsr/politics

Richard Wolff recently said something that responds to your talking point:

>"Capitalism has been here for 400 years. It has produced ever growing inequality. Periodically inequality sometimes stops and even gets reversed. The Great Depression was a reversal. The mass of poeple intervene politically. They revolt. But then, even the successful reformers fail to change the basic system. The underlying dynamic undoes the very reforms that were achieved. "To do reforms in a capitalist system but to leave a system in place, is to leave the mechanisms in place that undoes the reforms."

And using my own interpretation with what he said to your scenario, if you are actually able to shrink the big corporations, are you implying that Capitalism today as we know it needs to drown and something else replace it?

Addendum: I want to add Mr. Woff's quote is a contextual summary of Tomas Pikkety and his long time collaborator Emmanuel Saez published work on inequality called, "Capital In The Twenty-First Century".

u/hajiii · 44 pointsr/AskReddit

While what you say is true, it is incomplete, and lets the banks off the hook for where they truly are at fault, namely in buying repackaged high-risk mortgages as if they were low-risk, but higher return. In the banking world, high return + low risk = too good to be true, but they bought them like mad anyways.
Basically, mortgage lenders package a bunch of mortgages into one group, then divide that group up by risk (and therefore varying interest rates paid) and sell the different pieces at different rates to financial institutions, like the bank the OP works for. What was new was taking a group of the highest risk loans from various different loan packages, bundling THEM together into a new derivative group, then ranking THOSE loans as being from low risk to high risk (surely not ALL of them would fail at once, right?), and lower to higher returns, accordingly. But remember, all of these loans STARTED as higher return loans already (they were high risk/high return to start with), so now you had a loan instrument that purported to be LOW risk, but with much higher returns than a normal low risk wedge. This made banks and hedge funds salivate.
When these high risk loans didn't default immediately (most were ARM or balloon payment loans and wouldn't become dangerous until the first major raise in rates a couple of years down the road), financial institutions like the bank OP works for started buying them up like mad. FREE MONEY!
This created a HUGE demand for the loans from the money side, not just the home-buyer side. So mortgage lenders started creating really risky and "creative" loans, and pretty much loaned you money to buy property if you had a pulse just to keep feeding the pipe to the banks and funds.
The fault from the banks' side was that they didn't have the financial sophistication to realize this was a bubble about to burst. And I use the term "sophistication" loosely. These are people who get multi-million dollar bonuses to be the "best of the best". Yet even a high-school econ teacher could have pointed the flaws in their reasoning out to them.
THIS is where they were driven by greed to make more money, warning signs be damned. If the bank next door is doing it and making money, it must be safe and we need to get some. They are guilty of being lemmings. Greedy lemmings (in the metaphorical sense, I know lemmings don't really jump off cliffs).
Read "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis (also author of "Liar's Poker", also about Wall Street). Very enlightening.
This greed and, frankly, stupidity, that continues to be rewarded, ignored, denied, and repeated, is what I find most despicable in "Wall Street's" behavior.

u/estuarineblue · 44 pointsr/UKPersonalFinance

Please do not do BTL. Far richer people and more savvy investors have done BTL and lost money.

You have a wonderful gift. £170K is an amazing windfall for you and your partner. Do not throw it away on a speculative investment, one that you do not know anything about -- can you tell me, in quantitative terms, how the housing market is doing, what are your rental yields (gross and net)? If you cannot, do not enter the BTL market as an investment.

My suggestion to you is to look to buying a flat for yourselves to stay in, and take the remaining funds and fill up your ISAs each year. Within your ISAs, you can invest in low cost tracker Index Funds. If this concept is alien to you, now is a good time to read up about this! A simple beginner book is [The Intelligent Investor] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Practical/dp/0060555661) by Benjamin Graham.

Alternatively, look at [Nutmeg] (https://www.nutmeg.com). This is a simple platform that you can put your money into ISAs.

To put into simple terms about what your £170K can bring you:

  1. You buy a small flat for £70K. You don't have to pay rent again.

  2. You put the remaining £100k into ISAs. Fill you and your partner's ISA up to the maximum of £20K per person each year. From your original Capital of £100K in investments index funds, you safely withdraw ~4% each year without touching the capital. This means, you can get £4000 each year RIGHT NOW without doing anything, for the rest of your life, like a permanent pension. OR, if you choose not to withdraw your money RIGHT NOW, you can GROW your capital for the future.

    I am not your financial advisor! But please read and think carefully about your next steps. You have been handed an opportunity of a lifetime.
u/PhazAeth · 43 pointsr/personalfinance

You would love this book if you haven't read it. IMO, it's meant for the average joe to understand how paying anyone fees eats away at your future returns. It's fairly small and each chapter only takes 20-30 minutes to read. It's been well worth my time reading.

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns
by John C. Bogle

u/UserNotFoundError666 · 42 pointsr/stocks

An hour a day devoted to learning about stocks is a solid plan. I would suggest that the very first book you read be "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham who was Warren Buffetts mentor at Columbia University and taught Buffett how to use the Value Investing approach https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661

This is a dense read and you should approach it as if you were taking a course and studying for a final exam. Get yourself a notebook and write down all of that golden info buried in each chapter. Keep in mind this book was first written in 1949 and the format of it and the financial language may be difficult to get through but take your time, don't rush through it, take notes, highlight paragraphs, and absorb the information you'll be glad you did in the future.

​

Below is essentially a list of things I wish I could have told myself years ago in order to save a lot of heartache and lost money. Hopefully it helps you to avoid a lot of painful lessons that I learned the hard way.

  • Study "value investing" in depth. Ignore the people who say Value Investing doesn't work, Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Joel Greenblatt, Peter Lynch, Mario Gabelli, Mohnish Pabrai, etc... have made fortunes buying companies at discounts using the value investing approach.
  • After reading The Intelligent Investor further educate yourself on value investing by reading about the above investors, some have written book themselves others have had many books written about them. Also checkout r/SecurityAnalysis
  • As a beginner invest heavily in a broad based index fund that cover the whole S&P500 (VTSAX, SPY, etc...) and only devote a small percentage of your portfolio at first to stocks you've selected until you get your feet wet.
  • Ignore the financial media at all costs (Mad Money, Fast Money, Squawk Box, basically everything on CNBC...) they will lead you down a dark path that mostly resembles gambling as opposed to investing.
  • Be in it for the long haul. Do not day trade. Find undervalued companies with great management teams that have been beaten up by the market and buy shares that you know should be valued at $50 on sale for $25 dollars when the conditions are right. As Buffett has said imagine that you have a punchcard that has 20 tickets and each time you buy a company a ticket gets punched all you get for your whole life is just those 20 companies. You would want to take your time and analyze each company to ensure you're making the right decision before you buy.
  • Don't spend 10 minutes even thinking about buying a companies shares unless you are comfortable enough with your decision to hold it for 10 years.
  • Do not trade options, futures, forex, etc.... as a beginner just stick with equities at first. Get some experience under your belt and then if you want to tred into these waters later do so, but with caution.
  • There are some decent financial advisors out there but there are also lot more not worth their salt. It's good to talk to them once in a while but take their advice with caution, no one will safeguard your money or care about it as much as you do. Also most of them get paid commissions for putting you into whatever investments will give them the highest commission so look for a "fee-only" advisor if you're going use one. Trust me your financial advisor will still sleep like a baby if he loses your entire life saving, how will you sleep though?
  • Pay no attention to the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) this is some academic mumbo jumbo out of the University of Chicago that tries to make the case that markets are always efficient, it's been in most financial textbooks for decades and like most things learned in college is complete bullshit. Markets are very emotional and prone to all types of irrational behavior because well people are very emotional and irrational at times....especially when money is on the line.
  • Pay attention to large scale macro-economic conditions such as the current 10-2 year bond yield inversion that just happened a few days ago and has been a signal that has preceded the last 5 recessions. Usually a recession doesn't occur for 12-18 months out after the yields invert and there's no guarantee that it will happen just be aware of it and other macro economic indicators so you know where the economy is in the business cycle. This will allow you to take advantage of certain buying opportunities when prices are depressed.
  • Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.
u/mirroredfate · 41 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

From an economics perspective:

u/ayn_rands_trannydick · 41 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

Let's think about libertarians for a minute:

☑ Fundamental belief that only the strong should survive

☑ Weird beliefs about genetic superiority

☑ Movement that consists almost entirely of white men

☑ Advocate overthrow of democratically elected government

☑ Armed militias

☑ Prone to believing in conspiracy theories

☑ Cult adherence to philosophy

☑ Belief that truth may only be found in official party documents

☑ Dismissive of actual experts and empirical evidence

☑ Identification of racial minorities as scapegoats for societal ills

☑ Rabid protection of corporate power

☑ Disdain for intellectuals and the arts

☑ Rampant sexism

☑ Advocating the suppression of labor power

☑ Obsession with central banks laced with anti-Semitic undertones

☑ Disdain for human rights and the rights of children in particular

☑ Single-leader rule preferable to democratic rule (see Hoppe)

☑ Rabid defense of reactionary and racist thought.

☑ Unwillingness to compromise

☑ Inexplicable obsession with firearms and military-style uniforms

☑ Broad connections with other right-wing and reactionary sects

☑ Appropriation of nationalist language and symbology

☑ Persecution narrative among the privileged

Placing money and power ahead of human beings

Let's face it. There is a lot in common here. It's all uniquely Anglo-America-flavored. And they'll deny it up and down. But there are too many signs to ignore it completely.


u/kerat · 41 pointsr/worldpolitics

Well yes. The Iraq war started in 2003, and waterboarding quickly became infamous as an official US policy of "enhanced interrogation".

Some people began calling it torture, but the press didn't. The war began and the press immediately stopped calling it torture because the press generally tows the line drawn by the government.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, have a read through Noam Chomsky's and Ed Herman's Manufacturing Consent. Without being too melodramatic, it may change your life.

u/Vehe_Mence · 40 pointsr/Documentaries

Shit post is an embarrassment to those with articulate complaints about the media that are derived from long considered impacts of particular types of violations within journalists ethics (most of these complaints center on the media's presentation of statistics). With great power must come responsibility and desire for truth above all else.

This may seem verbose, but the issue is highly specific and important, so I feel it warrants the specificity.

u/tsibla · 38 pointsr/Documentaries

Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky.

Read the book or watch the documentary

u/Soss · 38 pointsr/politics

Funny, reading about this exact same situation that happened in Chile and Argentina, The Shock Doctrine

u/gebruikersnaam · 36 pointsr/politics

Manufacturing Consent

Old, but (unfortunately) still relevant.

u/bliss_tree · 36 pointsr/india

How to Lie with Statistics, Modinomics 101

> As of March 30, the number of accidents recorded in 2017-18 stood at 73 — 29 per cent fewer than the 104 in 2016-17.

> In 1968-69, the number of railway accidents fell to three digits for the first time — to 908 from the 1,111 in the previous year. Three figures have remained the norm ever since — except in 1980-81

  1. Before saying that last FY recorded the lowest # of accidents, shouldn't the journalist have also shown a line graph of decreasing-trend in the past, with an upward jump only in 2016-17?

  2. And why not include line-graphs of number of injuries and deaths too (which have suddenly gone up in recent years), to give the right perspective on scale of the accident?

    Here is a detailed story in 'The Hindu', Nov-2017, with detailed infographics:

    > Death on the rails: India’s track record., Despite establishing itself as the country's prime mode of transport, the Indian Railways has to contend with a dubious safety record

    Looks like the story itself is some elaborate PR spin, planted right at the end of the FY, with the most good-looking number carefully cherry-picked.

    > “We are absolutely keeping our fingers crossed and if you see, there is immense emphasis on safety everywhere,” Chairman Railway Board Ashwani Lohani told The Sunday Express.

    If only the ministers cut down on their boot-licking time, and put in more diligence in improving the reality rather than just managing the jhumla optics.

    > We reject any allegation sought to be made against Amit Shah's son Jay Shah: Piyush Goyal
u/BeatElite · 34 pointsr/humblebundles

The last Willey "for dummies" series I got was the how to land an IT job one and most of them were easy to read and had some decent pointers. That being said I'm always skeptical on getting stock market books. I own The intelligent investor and also have listened to Money Management Skills on the great courses audible series and I can say that phrase I keep hearing the most is that "you can't beat the market".

The average person who goes on etrade or Robin hood doesn't have the same resources as those higher up do with computers that can process hundreds of trades in the blink of an eye or potential insider sources . We also get emotional over stocks and find it hard to disassociate ourselves from our losses and boast about our gains. Getting someone else to manage your portfolio is also costly and you can most likely get better gains as long as you diversify your stocks in a mutual index fund. That's just a bit of what I learned and I suggest getting those 2 books/audiobooks that I recommend. I still believe the dummies books will be good, but from what I read, you'll have much more stress trying to maximize gains individually actively rather than take a backseat in a well diversified portfolio

u/zeedevil · 34 pointsr/AskReddit

I forget what this phenomenon is called but there's an entire chapter about it in this book.

u/ChillPenguinX · 32 pointsr/economy

This recession was coming either way. The economy never actually recovered from the last recession because the core problems of bad loans and inflation were not only unaddressed, but worsened. The economy isn’t built on fucking spending. It’s ridiculous that this is what mainstream “economists” think. An economy grows through savings and production, and everything the Fed does to try to fix a struggling economy only worsens malinvestment. Recessions happen not because spending is low, they happen because malinvestment is high and real savings are low (which in turn cause spending to dip, but you actually want that in that situation). You can’t just drive consumption and have that manifest a stronger economy. It’s about as legitimate as alchemy.


Edit: wow, I’m actually getting upvoted :). I wonder how many of those upvotes would’ve been downvotes had I explicitly mentioned that I’m arguing for Austrian economics. If anyone interested in learning how the economy actually works, here are steps One, Two, and Three.

u/32ndghost · 32 pointsr/collapse

Also, good book on subject:

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

>In A Generation of Sociopaths, Gibney examines the disastrous policies of the most powerful generation in modern history, showing how the Boomers ruthlessly enriched themselves at the expense of future generations.

>Acting without empathy, prudence, or respect for facts--acting, in other words, as sociopaths--the Boomers turned American dynamism into stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco. The Boomers have set a time bomb for the 2030s, when damage to Social Security, public finances, and the environment will become catastrophic and possibly irreversible--and when, not coincidentally, Boomers will be dying off.

u/ichmusspinkle · 31 pointsr/medicalschool

In terms of investing, What Can You Expect From the Market in the Long Run? is a nice post on the buying and holding strategy and why you shouldn't sell in down markets.

Investing can be pretty simple these days. Most of the advice on WhiteCoatInvestor (and for young professionals in general) boils down to the following (often called the 'Boglehead' approach, after Vanguard founder Jack Bogle):

  1. Live below your means to save up enough money to invest.
  2. Buy the following four low cost ETFs/index funds. The percentage of stocks you own should be roughly equivalent to 110 minus your age; the ratio of US to international stocks or bonds should be 70:30 or 60:40.

    • ETF tracking the total US stock market
    • ETF tracking the total International stock market
    • ETF tracking the total US bond market
    • ETF tracking the total International bond market

  3. Allocate as much as possible of the above into tax-advantaged accounts like a Roth IRA.
  4. Keep living below your means so you can keep contributing to the above every month.
  5. Enjoy having better returns than many professional investors!

    I recommend the Bogleheads' Guide to Investing as a starting place. A Random Walk Down Wall Street does a great job in explaining why passive investing (i.e. buying and holding) is much better than active investing for the average person.
u/fathan · 31 pointsr/TrueReddit

The hero worship of Marxist economics is largely misplaced and unproductive. Marx was ignorant of many intellectual breakthroughs in economics that occurred between his writing of The Communist Manifesto and Capital. Take, for example, the marginal revolution compared to Marx's theory of prices. No economist pays any attention to Marx's ideas on price theory, or his other "economic" contributions. Other things that people would like to credit to Marx, eg a focus on income inequality, is better credited to previous economists like David Ricardo.

Marxist economics failed to account for the core role of economics--the allocation of scare resources with alternate uses. Instead Marx simply asserted that a communist economy could achieve the same efficiency with more equitable distribution of gains, but without explaining how this could be done. He similarly ignored the tradeoff between worker's quality of life and efficiency/growth--this isn't to say that we have the right balance now, but that Marx didn't even consider the question. Every time Marx's ideas have been put into practice they have proved a dismal failure and demanded an immediate reversal to more traditional (ie "capitalist") means of organizing production. See Lenin's New Economic Policy and Deng's economic reforms. The tragic irony is that Marxist economies tend to cause the most suffering for the people they are intended to help, as the elite are perfectly capable of protecting themselves regardless of circumstances.

Marx's contributions to history are significant and his political contributions are undeniable, but we shouldn't lionize his economic theories simply by association. His contributions to economics as practiced today are non-existent. Marxist critiques of capitalism were disproven within his own lifetime. Indeed by the publication of Capital, wages of the working class were increasing. A lot of casual Marxists tend to think he predicted that "capitalism was bad" and then cherry pick periods that loosely agree with this understanding. Marxism actually makes much more specific predictions about the way the world will evolve that were false--for example, where and how the first communist revolution would take place. We shouldn't lose sight of that.

Economics is complicated and we shouldn't reduce it to hero worship of some past figure who "proved capitalism wrong". A recent book that focuses on the injustices of economic inequality with a far more sophisticated treatment is Capital in the Twenty-first Century by Thomas Piketty.

u/darthrevan · 30 pointsr/Economics

"Technological unemployment" reminds me of the "Joe Smith" example from Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson:

>...some writers [have gone] to the extreme of looking only at the immediate effects [of new technologies] on certain groups. Joe Smith is thrown out of a job by the introduction of some machine. "Keep your eye on Joe Smith," these writers insist. "Never lose track of Joe Smith." But what they then proceed to do is keep their eyes only on Joe Smith, and to forget Tom Jones, who has just got a new job in making the new machine, and Ted Brown, who has just got a job operating one, and Daisy Miller, who can now buy a coat for half what is used to cost her. And because they think only of Joe Smith, they end by advocating reactionary and nonsensical policies. (p. 59)

I'd be interested in hearing opposing views to this, however.

u/texansfan · 30 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

Not only that, their salaries are structured and referred to as "bonuses". It's just easier for people to repeat what they heard on TV.

I think almost everyone in this thread would benefit from reading The Big Short by Michael Lewis. I'm a former FA and Senate staffer, my dad was a banker now FA and we both learned a lot from that book.

u/TitusBluth · 29 pointsr/badhistory

Read this.

The short version is that the Nazis essentially ran the German economy and infrastructure into the ground through truly epic mismanagement and faced complete collapse immediately before the war and could only barely keep it ticking over during the war years by looting and forcing "loans" off the occupied countries, their allies and their own population.

u/LWRellim · 28 pointsr/Economics

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt

Or read it online (just Google "Economics in One Lesson" )

u/Luv-Bugg · 28 pointsr/news

Scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds. Neoliberal foreign policy is one of torture, of both the people and the economy. Would you like to know more?

u/Orangutan · 27 pointsr/conspiracy

A small history of biological warfare and experiments:

u/stonerbobo · 27 pointsr/politics

oh man.. just read /r/AskTrumpSupporters.. its depressing.

It really doesn't matter what arguments you make at all. Their intuitions come first, arguments come second. Intuition says Hillary is snobby/rich/evil and Trump is not, end of story.

There are people justifying Trump Jrs collusion with Russians! Anything can be justified with enough mental contortion and denial.

Really, the sooner you realize critical thinking means nothing to a huge group of people the better. Arguments don't form opinions, they are formed after the fact to justify them. Social pressures (what do my friends think?) & intuitions inform opinions.

EDIT: If this is interesting, checkout The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. Its where i stole most of this from. Theres also other related stuf in behavioral econ & psychology - Thinking Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman, Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. Its the tip of an iceberg

u/SuperNinKenDo · 27 pointsr/DebateFascism

Further Reading

Michael Huermer - 'The Problem of Political Authority':

[Hard Copy]

Henry Hazlitt - 'Economics in One Lesson':

[Audiobook]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]

David Friedman - 'The Machinery of Freedom'"

[Illustrated Summary]:[Audiobook]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]

Ludwig von Mises - 'Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth':

[Audiobook]:[PDF]:[ePub]


MisesWiki - Economic Calculation Problem:

[HTML]

Murray N. Rothbard - 'For a New Liberty':

[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]

Murray N. Rothbard - 'The Ethics of Liberty':

[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]

Frédéric Bastiat - 'The Law':

[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF]:[Hard Copy]

Ludwig von Mises - 'Human Action':

[Audiobook]:[HTML]:[PDF:[ePub]:[Hard Copy]

Murray N. Rothbard - 'Man Economy and State, with Power, and Markets':

[Audiobook][HTML]:[PDF]:[ePub]:[Hard Copy]

u/Listen2Hedges · 26 pointsr/SandersForPresident

Prof. Chomsky literally co-wrote the book on how the media is used by the ruling class to get the public to buy into the establishment narrative.

Give this book a read.
https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499

u/altovecchia · 26 pointsr/Bitcoin

The scam of the federal reserve system is explained most clearly in the book from G Edward Griffin The Creature from Jekyll Island. This is an amazing book: if you don't believe me, look at the rating on amazon with 1400+ reviews.

u/autoeroticassfxation · 25 pointsr/collapse

Have you read "Manufacturing Consent"? Possibly Chomsky's most important works.

u/EthicalReasoning · 25 pointsr/politics
u/EwoutDVP · 24 pointsr/anonymous

Actually, nobody should be afraid of anyone.

Most politicians are good people, and they joined politics because they wanted to change the world for the better. But they got stuck in the debt-based system. Just like everybody else. This leaves very little room for real change.

Everybody wants out of this system. But most don't realise, or don't know how.

Perhaps you've seen Oliver Stone's Nixon. There's this scene where president Nixon meets a bunch of young people, and they give him shit for Vietnam etc. He then realises that he was just like those kids twenty years prior, but once in office he simply wasn't left with much choice - he had to act like he did, that's what the system required him to do. (Stone's message, not mine - although I agree.)

Nobody is out to get us right now, nobody is our enemy, everybody realises that the banking system is shit at best, or downright evil at worst. Including most politicians. All we need is a way out.

Recommended books:

http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Good-Evil-Economic-Gilgamesh/dp/0199767203

http://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381395901&sr=1-1&keywords=debt

http://www.amazon.com/Currency-Wars-Making-Global-Crisis/dp/1591845564/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381395926&sr=1-1&keywords=currency+wars

And please read these articles:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-30/bitcoin-the-perfect-schmuck-insurance.html

http://rt.com/op-edge/bitcoin-money-future-fad-761/

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/20125309437931677.html

u/WillieConway · 24 pointsr/askphilosophy

I'm not sure if you're getting this from David Graeber or not, but he addresses the issue in Debt: The First 5000 Years. His answer is a very clear "no".

EDITED: Fixed the errors

u/Zabren · 24 pointsr/financialindependence

> Even this seems a bit too aggressive for my taste

Your job for the next month or three is to become a sponge for financial knowledge. Even though you have a CPA and a CFP, in order for you to feel comfortable with their decisions with your money, you need to have some amount of knowledge with finance.

Read:

u/evangelism2 · 23 pointsr/ChapoTrapHouse

I am reading through this

https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

Right now, and it would disagree fully. There a number of trends associated with the boomers and how they lived their lives, things such as drug use, premartial sex, teenage pregancy, etc that spike up with the boomer gen when compared to generation before and after. Is it really hard to say that they are a bloc with coherent political positions when as soon as they came into power they elected the first true neoliberal president, Reagan, and haven't looked back for the last 40 years?

u/estrtshffl · 23 pointsr/ChapoTrapHouse

yeah wages of destruction by adam tooze really spells out in detail how wrong this is. highly recommend

https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208

pdf, epub, and mobi files are on libgen and also i have them, if anyone's really interested they can pm me

edit: also the last chapter in margaraet macmillan's paris 1919, which tells the story of the creation of the treaty of versailles, basically makes the case that it didn't really start wwii and the germans could easily have paid of reparations because their payments were literally scaled to their gdp or whatever. like they couldn't rearm and pay, but they could pay.

u/davidreiss666 · 23 pointsr/SubredditDrama

No, Hitler and the Nazis were not good for the German economy. Please read the actual history on this. The best book about it currently probably is The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze.

u/sylvan · 23 pointsr/PersonalFinanceCanada
  1. Immediately locate a good tax accountant. You're going to need to keep accurate records of your business: income, and all related expenses, which are deductible. You're likely going to have to start paying your tax in installments. You might need to charge GST, that's why you need the accountant to help you figure that out.

  2. Hire a lawyer too. Discuss the nature of your business, and anything you should be doing to cover your ass, such as setting up a limited company, appropriate Terms of Service to your customers, liability insurance, etc.

  3. Put 30% of your earnings in a dedicated high-interest savings account, for your tax bill.

  4. Put everything else in another high-interest savings account, while you educate yourself on investing. Don't start spending yet. Read Personal Finance for Canadians for Dummies, and the Boglehead's Guide to Investing

  5. Set up a personal budget. I recommend getting YNAB. Decide where your money will go, and don't be tempted to start buying fancy houses and sportscars with the money you're making. If you're smart, you could basically set yourself up for life in the next couple years. Visit this sub and /r/personalfinance for more budgeting tips.

  6. Set up 3 accounts at a brokerage like TD Waterhouse or QuestTrade: an RRSP, a TFSA, and an unregistered account.

  7. Max out your RRSP and TFSA, based on your available limits. Use your tax returns/CRA account to determine those limits. Talk to your tax accountant from #1 about other tax-saving strategies.

  8. Invest in a mix of index funds or ETFs in each account, based on principles from Bogleheads. /r/personalfinance, /r/portfolios, and /r/investing will help here.

  9. Keep reading, learning, and decide how to leverage your money to the best advantage for your future. Education? New business ventures?

    Congrats on the truly awesome start in life!

    Oh, and don't tell people around you how much you're making. It will affect your friendships/relationships, and you'll have people asking you for money constantly.
u/mdempsky · 23 pointsr/Bitcoin

> I don't get investments and never owned stock in my life.

Thankfully, it's not too complex or difficult. I'd recommend starting with John Bogle's "The Little Book of Common Sense Investing".

u/forthemandwe · 22 pointsr/worldnews

> CNN is starting to look an awful lot like the official news agency of the US government.

"Starting to look"? CNN, NYT and much else of mainstream is a major government and elites propaganda feature since, well, pretty much always. Try this clip then this book.

u/CopperSulfateII · 21 pointsr/belgium

A party that considers communism as part of it's core message isn't one I would be hesitant to call extreme. What that effectively means is that they consider the abolition of the market economy (or the travesty of a market economy that we currently have) to be the ultimate goal of the party. And for anyone who thinks an economic model other than one involving at least marginally free markets works, please consult your nearest primer on economics such as:
https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232
https://www.amazon.com/Free-Our-Markets-Essential-Economics/dp/098442542X

u/afraid_of_ponies · 21 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

Essentially cons/libertarians troll Amazon and review books that they don't read.

This is not more apparent than all the one-star reviews of Piketty's, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. They simply give it one-star without reading it, call it Marxist propaganda, and tell us how discredited and dangerous Picketty is.

This works well on their low-info base, but it only drives away reasonable and intelligent people.

u/tangman · 21 pointsr/TheRedPill

>how this world is actually running

When you get on THAT level, almost every bit of public information is misdirection or propaganda. Powertalk. Nearly everything you learned about US and world history or economics is to keep you patriotic and complacent. It's all about power and control.

Where might one start, if interested in that red pill? Positivemoney is a start. Austrian economics is another. A couple of books are good. All Wars Are Bankers Wars is compelling.

The list goes on and on, long enough to make you feel like a conspiracy nutjob. Which is why it works so well.

u/ricebake333 · 21 pointsr/politics

First, our brains are much worse at reality and thinking than thought. AKA we can be manipulated to believe things against our interest. Science on reasoning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Manufacturing consent (book)

http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499/

Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

Manufacturing consent(vids)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwU56Rv0OXM

https://vimeo.com/39566117

Testing theories of representative government

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

Democracy Inc

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X/

http://www.therealnews.com

u/oleka_myriam · 21 pointsr/Anarchy101

Great post OP! I haven't seen the video in question (sorry) but as an anarchist I do feel confident in giving some of my views. First off, there are no right answers to these questions. Even within the same school of anarco-socialism, you'll likely get different answers to these questions from different people (ask 10 anarcho-socialists and you'll get 11 different answers) and in my view, that's a strength, not a weakness. However because I haven't seen the video, I don't know how much of what I'm about to say is addressed by it. I'm sorry!

I personally don't believe that lazy workers are as much a problem as you believe they will be and I base this on my personal experience. I have visited anarco-communes and also "temporary utopias" like climate camps and anti-globalization convergences. And, no, they were by no means perfect. In anarchist households dishes often don't get done to the extent that it's kind of a running joke. But there are lots of reasons for that. Houses aren't designed with communal living in mind. Under capitalism most of us suffer from depression and anxiety and it's hard to be motivated with that kind of thing when you're worried about your next deadline at your unfulfilling job or paying the bills by the end of the month. A more collectivist society could do things like ensuring no one ever has to do menial jobs alone (even by the simple provision of bigger sinks and bigger kitchens--ever notice how classically houses in western society were designed for use by a single-occupancy gendered labour force; my kitchen is barely twice the size of my wardrobe, but the living room, where the man of the house was expected to spend his off-labour time, is huge). And ultimately I would expect that anarchist societies would not only have a good working understanding of the sexism of gendered labour (most menial jobs are traditionally performed by women) but also be more lenient around all labour. Like maybe you can skip the washing up for that day if it's your period or if you're nursing, both of which are labour neglected by capitalism, just to choose a stereotypical and thought-provoking example. Going back to my own experiences, there were plenty of problems with places like the convergences and anarchist camps, but they never actually suffered from not having clean toilets because people understood that cleaning them was as important an activity as any other type of labour which needed to be undertaken. Ultimately, I agree with the point raised by the WNDWU (youtube link--above): "So you're asking me, who will do the dishes when the revolution comes? Well I do my own dishes now and I'll do my own dishes then. Funny that it's always the ones who don't, who ask that fucking question."

There are a lot of different thoughts about how economics can work in anarchist societies at large-scale. Most likely there would be several different economic models, possibly even within the municipal area, but certainly within different ones. In the future, Kim Stanley Robinson describes a system where small consumptive goods are created in situ, then optionally exchanged as gifts with traders. Underlying this, potassium is used as an exchange of hard currency and reserve, regulating the flow of resources throughout for the production of goods the solar system. Meanwhile, Ursula Le Guin envisaged a society organised by collectives (syndicals) where work was undertaken out of a sense of duty. Less speculatively, David Graeber has done a lot of good work documenting the use of gift economies throughout human history and it's hard to believe there's nothing there, given the overwelming preponderance and importance of gift economies to advanced human societies so far.

But I myself am not an advocate of gift economies. Michael Albert and co. have done a lot of writing on how non-gift participatory or democratic economies could be run and I highly recommend checking out his work. Albert's work is pretty much the closest to what I would like to see myself, I think and he also talks a lot about the psychological benefits of job rotation, e.g. a system where doctors also clean toilets. There is also a form of anarchism known as mutualism in which productive work is carried out by coops instead of companies or conglomerates owned by shareholders or an owner or owners. A coop can be structured along purely democratic grounds, where every decision requires a consensus meeting from relevant workers, through the whole gamut to a system with middle managers and bosses basically being like a company except that the workers form and control the board instead of vice versa. After producing goods, they are exchanged through a free-market mechanism as under capitalism. I myself am not a mutualist but really even mutualism would be a huge step forward compared to what we have under the current system, where productive labour is essentially organized by unaccountable and undemocratic corporate oligarchies.

The invention thing is quite interesting, I think. Just as in an anarchist society you might get several economic systems, so today we actually have several economic models under capitalism as well. One which I am quite familiar with as a software engineer is the open-source model of software development. Last year I invented a new and pioneering method for installing Wordpress websites using a fairly obscure collection of deployment software. The mechanism I invented is so niche that even I struggle to develop the enthusiasm to explain its benefits even to people within the same field but I was excited enough to develop it that I spent three months of my free-time doing that, and now that it is done I am still pleased with the effort even though no one uses it. So basically I invented something and released it for free which was the very definition of a project for which I receive no thanks: no economic compensation, no fame within my professional circles, etc. And yet I was still happy to create and distribute it for free, even allowing others to modify it if they found it useful. So I think that when you are very invested in a particular problem field it's actually very easy to develop the enthusiasm to figure out an invention for a better way of doing something, even if you know you'll receive nothing for it but the personal satisfaction of having simplified a particular problem. And of course in an anarchist society you could expect that most techniques and methods are open-source, and able to be modified and improved upon for free by any interested party. Receiving fame among one's professional peer group, being invited to prestigious conferences within your field to talk about your invention, maybe even being interviewed by the news media--these are all extremely good motivations for creating something, arguably a lot stronger than money actually. (Considering most invention these days is IP-protected and ultimately owned by corporations, I'm kind of surprised the myth of the solo inventor made rich by his own success succeeds actually.) And this happens a lot in software. The most common operating system software globally across all devices? By far, Linux. Windows only leads in the desktop, and that only because of entrenched capitalist user lock-in paradigms.

u/JimC29 · 20 pointsr/financialindependence

Take 5% of your money and try something else but I advise you to read the Intelligent Investor first. Benjamin Graham has been right for the past century and will be right for this one too. I add individual stocks during market downturns but keep 90% of my money in index funds.

https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661

u/coffeesippingbastard · 20 pointsr/math

friend of mine worked at a company that was highly metrics driven. Only nobody in his division knew statistics at all.

I joked to him to read "how to lie with statistics"

https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728

The mad bastard actually read it cover to cover. He ran roughshod. Justified massive headcount increases, made his numbers look amazing, got promoted. Shit was hilarious. He has since moved on.

u/iwanttoparticipate20 · 20 pointsr/DunderMifflin

I had a highschool math teacher who always told us to be warry of statistics and even had a book he shared.

How to Lie with Statistics https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393310728/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_mfP4DbK80WD65

u/SatAnCap · 20 pointsr/Shitstatistssay

Jokes on them, I shall use that as a wishlist! >:D

(Also they forgot Basic Economics, so it's wrong)

u/Awale-Ismail · 19 pointsr/GenderCritical

>He keeps claiming that "there has been no better time for any human to be alive"

Completely wrong and modern brainwashing done well. Humans were better off as Hunter-Gatherers. Chronic diseases? Overwhelmingly unheard of. Mental health problems? Overwhelmingly unheard of. Physical fitness and proper bodily development? Impeccable. Leisure time? You'd be surprised. Social situation? None of the brutal and rigid social stratification that is so often ubiquitous among agriculturalist societies. Mostly all we have on these guys is modern medicine which grants us the ability to not die from simple infections or have to deal with infant mortality at an alarming rate.

This extends to women as well. Women were often better off when Humans were Hunter-Gatherers whereas they're almost always fucked over in agricultural societies; made to be submissive so they can keep being used as baby-making machines for the expansionist, world destroying way of life.

_________________

Also, to hell with your boyfriend, dear. He sounds like a tool. You can do better than him.

u/Amerikanskan · 19 pointsr/Anarchism

>If you don't understand calculation problem, marginal value, global capitalism, freedom, income mobility, regulations, innovations in the first place of course you'll end up as a commie. What did you expect?

Lmfao. I see somebody just finished Economics in One Lesson

u/BrutalJones · 19 pointsr/Anarcho_Capitalism

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt got me started, so I'll go with that one.

u/GodsAngell · 19 pointsr/greatawakening

The US went off the Gold Standard with Nixon. Our currency is FIAT Currency, backed by nothing but our promise to pay. Not much when compared to a Gold Backed currency. Usually Fiat Currencies flame out fast, but it didn't this time, and that is because of the deals made with the Middle East that OIL can ONLY be PURCHASED with either U.S. Dollars currency or the British Pound. (Enter the PetroDollar) So you want OIL for your country? Guess, what? You have to exchange your currency into U.S. Dollars. This creates an artificial demand for our flimsy fiat currency, and this demand staved off its CRASH to date. There is always a demand for OIL, so there is always a demand for the U.S. dollar. Consequently the US Dollar has always been a traditional stable safe haven currency. (The last thing anyone wants, is, to have all their paper assets in in a currency that has crashed and is worthless.)

Enter former CIA asset gone rogue Saddam Hussein, threatening to sell his OIL with other currencies. Enter "Shock and Awe" invasion of Iraq......supposedly to find weapons of mass destruction, but they never found any.....oh yes, and 911 which Iraq had nothing to do with. IT WAS CURRENCY THREAT. This was the REAL reason for that invasion. invasion complete and Iraq is back to only accepting U.S. currency for their oil.

Daffy Qaddafi (Lybia) was going to do the same thing.....and he is GONE now! Remember Hellary's joke "we came, we saw ....and he's gone! Ha, Ha."

Message to the world??? You don't mess with the stability of the U.S. Dollar.

Enter China, now introducing the first GOLD Backed Currency. Now what? Will people flood to it and cause the U.S. fiat currency to crash??

Its a high risk move by China, who now has their own Million man army and subs, and satellites, and ships, etc.

The PetroDollar:


https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/petrodollars.asp

The Federal Reserve The Engine of POWER:


http://www.khouse.org/articles/1995/63/

The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve

https://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/091298645X

Youtube: The Creature From Jekyll Island (by G. Edward Griffin)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu_VqX6J93k

u/d8_thc · 19 pointsr/CryptoCurrency

Whoever hasn't read The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve - I can't recommend it enough.

u/whosdamike · 19 pointsr/Frugal

Wow, there is so much hate on stock investing here.

I recommend cross-posting to /r/personalfinance.

I think you picked a good mutual fund for someone with risk aversion. If she's that averse to talking about stocks, then I don't think a book will help - but if you'd like to understand the arguments better, the best introductory work on the subject is The Intelligent Investor.

I think education is the best tool here. There are a few critical points that she'll have to understand if she wants to accept investing as distinct from gambling:

  • Actually choosing individual stocks and profiting is exceedingly difficult, except for rare individuals with the time and skill necessary to do so.

  • Individual success and failure often falls into statistical noise. Like an infinite number of monkeys mashing typewriters, sometimes someone hits Shakespeare.

  • Regularly putting money into a balanced mutual fund is not the same as trying to pick stocks, time the market, or otherwise "beat the odds."

  • The "bet" you are making is that your allocation of stocks/bonds will accrue value over decades. This is an extremely solid bet... but it is not a guarantee.

  • What is a guarantee is that keeping your money as cash, and not investing it, will mean you lose value in the long run to inflation.

  • If you don't have the stomach to keep your money in the stock market during bad times, then you're stacking the deck against yourself. Getting out of the market at the low points is the same as selling low and buying high.

    And a final bit of advice you probably don't need: if everyone is telling you that something is guaranteed to give you a return, that is an excellent sign of a bubble.

    Past examples include tech stocks and real estate. You can make a strong case for gold, but as always, it's dangerous to try to predict the future.
u/vstky · 19 pointsr/stocks
u/Lightfiend · 18 pointsr/psychology

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature - evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics. (probably most interesting from a Freudian perspective, deals with many of our unconscious instincts)

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces The Shape Our Decisions - Unconscious decision-making, behavioral economics, consumer psychology. Fun read.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Most popular book on the psychology of persuasion, covers all the main principles. Very popular among business crowds.

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships - Social neuroscience, mirror neurons, empathy, practical stuff mixed with easy to understand brain science.

Authentic Happiness - Positive Psychology, happiness, increasing life satisfaction.

Feeling Good - A good primer on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Also widely considered one of the best self-help books by mental health practitioners.

The Brain That Changes Itself - Neuroplasticity, how experience shapes our brains. Some really remarkable case studies that get you wondering how powerful our brains really are.

The Buddhist Brain - The practical neuroscience of happiness, love, and wisdom from a Buddhist perspective.

That should give you more than enough to chew on.



u/EricksA2 · 18 pointsr/todayilearned

Halitosis as we know it today is the product of the Listerine company.

For years they tried to find uses to sell their product. It started off as a surgical antiseptic for wounds. Then it became a household antiseptic, a floor cleaner, a cold and sore throat remedy, and even a douche that was capable of curing gonorrhea.

Finally they decided to market it as a mouth wash. However, mouth washes didn't exist. Bad breath existed and there were means to deal with it; however, it wasn't that big of an issue to people and no one felt as self-conscious about it as they do today. So the Listerene company made use of the relatively-obscure medical term called "Halitosis" and marketed its product as the way to cure this horribly embarrassing disease that you didn't know you had.

Their massive marketing campaign changed the entire public's opinion on bad breath. They ran ads such as a bride second-guessing marrying her fiance because he has bad breath, stating "Can I be happy with him in spite of that?" Bad breath was no longer something that can be overlooked. It is something that reflects very badly on the person and it is now a disorder that can and should be treated. Thanks to their Halitosis marketing campaign, their revenue went from $115,000 to $8 million in just seven years.

Sources:

Wikipedia

Freakonomics

Advertising the American Dream

u/p0m · 17 pointsr/badeconomics

I think a better question is why did /r/economics significantly improve in quality.

To begin, libertarians are a very vocal, opinionated, stubborn group who thrive in fringe internet communities. Paleo-libertarians ("Austrian" school followers) in particular think that their ideology is not just an ideology but actually Very Serious Intellectual Economics, so of course they'd find /r/economics to be a natural fit for themselves. I mean think of how many libertarian writers conflate their politics with "basic economics." You don't usually see liberals or moderates pulling that.

A few things happened over time though:

  • Moderators stepped up to improve the quality. /u/besttrousers in particular deserves a lot of credit.

  • Reddit itself became a more mainstream site, and libertarianism isn't exactly mainstream. So an influx of mainstream thinkers crowded out libertarians.

  • The Ron Paul 2004/2008 hysteria died, so libertarian "recruiting" (sorry if that's a loaded term) slowed down.

  • This is just postulation on my folk, but I think among younger folk, libertarianism is starting to look crazier and crazier. I mean I'll just take climate change as an example. Many libertarians deny climate change (they call it "AGW"), which is becoming more and more irrefutable... and yet they're all science-touting atheists? Oh...kay. There's also straight-up no purely libertarian solution to climate change. None.
u/thetompain · 17 pointsr/ethtrader
u/satansbuttplug · 17 pointsr/financialindependence

"I just finished Rich Dad Poor Dad which seemed like a bit of a cheesy self help book written in a couple days to serve as another part of this guy's passive income"

You are already ahead of 95% of the population. Recognizing that most financial advice is intended to make money for the adviser is the first and most important step.

"Passive income generation" and "higher reward investments" are dangerous terms to use. They are the RDPD con artist terms that equate to get rich quick schemes. You are better off starting off by reading Jack Bogle's "The Little Book of Common Sense Investing" (http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101) as a start. Then you should educate yourself on what realistic investment returns are. They generally correlate with risk. Anytime you start looking at returns of 10% or more you must take on significantly more risk than the general market.

u/EvanHarper · 17 pointsr/todayilearned

Yeah let me just finish re-reading my copy of Wages of Destruction then maybe i'll get to your Wikipedia link you fucking scrub

u/omaolligain · 16 pointsr/AskSocialScience

Nudge by Thaler (Nobel Prize in Economics) & Sunstein
A book which is unquestionably about Economics and Public Policy

​

I haven't read it yet but it's on my list:
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics also by Thaler

​

Thinking Fast & Slow by Kahneman (Nobel Prize in Economics)
Not strictly about economics but Kahneman essentially created the field of "Behavioral Economics" and the implications for his theories about decision making bias are extensive in Economics. In many ways Kahneman and Tverski's work is the foundation of Thaler's in Nudge.

​

Also:
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
If you can't tell I like the Behavioral Econmics books...

u/disuberence · 16 pointsr/neoliberal

I think you will be surprised to learn that what you have come to understand about neoliberalism and the positions supported by this sub are not always in alignment.

Make sure to read Why Nations Fail. Your first book report is due in two weeks.

u/New_Ketone · 16 pointsr/TumblrInAction

Basically, I think this is about Deep Green REsistance. Edit: fixed the link, sorry 'bout that.

They are a hardline environmentalist group that believes in complete de-industrialization and the return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They also believe that violence is an acceptable means to achieve this end. Lierre Keith, one of the group's founders, is a radical feminist who does not believe in transgenderism (which is where the "TERF" part comes from).

As for the "white veganism" part, it is not really accurate. DGR are actually critical of veganism (remember the hunter-gatherer part I told you about?). Keith authored a book called The Vegetarian Myth which, to her credit, I think actually had some interesting ideas.

u/ValkyrX · 16 pointsr/politics

There is a book on that generation showing how they used their voting power to benefit their own interest by screwing future generations. A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

u/ricklegend · 16 pointsr/dankmemes

If you want to read exactly how untrue that is here's a great book to start: https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

u/somewhathungry333 · 16 pointsr/canada

>Is there any politician out there willing to fight for Canadians? Is that too much to ask?

Sorry to tell you the government doesn't work for you.

These links will take a while to digest, but if you want to understand what's going on in the world, you owe it to yourself to become informed about the true state of the world.

Our brains are much worse at reality and thinking than thought. Science on reasoning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Rd wolf on economics

http://www.rdwolff.com/

"Intended as an internal document. Good reading to understand the nature of rich democracies and the fact that the common people are not allowed to play a role."

Crisis of democracy

http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Democracy-Governability-Democracies-Trilateral/dp/0814713653/

Education as ignorance

https://chomsky.info/warfare02/

Overthrowing other peoples governments

http://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-other-peoples-governments-the-master-list

Wikileaks on TTIP/TPP/ETC

https://youtu.be/ABDiHspTJww?t=17

Energy subsidies

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2015/NEW070215A.htm

Interference in other states when the rich/corporations dont get their way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxp_wgFWQo&feature=youtu.be&list=PLKR2GeygdHomOZeVKx3P0fqH58T3VghOj&t=724

Manufacturing consent (book)

http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499/

Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

Manufacturing consent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwU56Rv0OXM

https://vimeo.com/39566117

Testing theories of representative government

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

Democracy Inc

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed- Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X

From war is a racket:

"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]

"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]

"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]

General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of tramautized soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/

Blum:

http://williamblum.org/aer/read/137

US distribution of wealth

https://imgur.com/a/FShfb

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

The Centre for Investigative Journalism

http://www.tcij.org/

Some history on US imperialism by us corporations.

https://kurukshetra1.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/a-brief-history-of-imperialism-and-state-violence-in-colombia/

The real news

http://www.therealnews.com

u/wonderful_wonton · 16 pointsr/economy

This is a classic example of How to Lie with Statistics.

Just because people in rural & remote counties have fewer possessions and make less money, doesn't mean they're materially poorer in a qualitative sense.

I have a lot of shit I wouldn't need if I lived in Mississippi. (I know because I spent a few years in Mississippi). It costs much more to live where I live and it takes more income and more stuff to live here. But I was much better off in Mississippi in terms of quality of life materially.

If you look at the map of red vs. blue counties you can see the blue are concentrated in urban and coastal, which actually makes this a comparison of geographically different kinds of economies and a therefore a fallacious statistic.

tldr; increased consumerism and the increased cost/income associated with high consumerism does not equate to better or worse material conditions when you compare rural regions with urban regions. People lie with statistics

u/PumpkinAnarchy · 15 pointsr/Libertarian

Both Economics in One Lesson and Basic Economics are golden, though for very different reasons.

Economics is One Lesson starts with a truth that is obvious and simple once you hear it explained. You think to yourself, "Well, yeah. Who could possibly think otherwise?" And then you hop onto Reddit and see that a substantial preponderance of Reddit are afflicted with a mindset and beliefs that fly in the face of this simple truth. It then spends time expanding on this truth and applying it to tons of different things that you wouldn't intuitively see it applying to.

Basic Economics is better though. Both are well worth reading, but Sowell's work is incredibly comprehensive. When I read it, it didn't come across as someone trying to prove any world view, as tends to be the case from so many economists. It is him simply seeking to explain economics to someone who is new to the field. To his credit, he uses terminology that is accessible to anyone and doesn't spend a single moment trying to prove to how smart he is. (Though his brilliance is immediately evident.) Its most important quality is that it doesn't ask you to partake in a string of thought experiments to reach some grand conclusions. Every assertion he makes is supported by multiple studies and historical examples. This happens time and time again. And the bolder the claim, the more evidence he provides. It's remarkable.

While it does weigh in at 700-ish pages, Basic Economics is almost certainly the perfect book for getting your feet wet when in economics.

u/chandler404 · 15 pointsr/personalfinance

I'm a HUGE fan of this book, and actually read it. The version I read had commentaries at the end of each chapter that were written a bit more recently, so it helped to make the book book feel current (it was written in the early 70s). (http://www.amazon.com/The-Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing/dp/0060555661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341621394&sr=8-1&keywords=benjamin+graham+investor)

I found it to be a comprehensive explanation of all the financial instruments I'd ever heard of, and explained clearly what they were and how they worked. It's kinda like having a rich uncle sit you down in his wood paneled office and explain to you how the financial world actually works.

It's not simplified, and it can be intimidating, but I'd highly recommend it.

u/kleinbl00 · 15 pointsr/bestof

>Thanks for the response.

Thanks for the conversation. I'm enjoying it.

>So, if I understand correctly, you're saying that karma as a content-sorting system is a useful and necessary part of reddit, while karma as a label on a redditor is an unnecessary and detrimental aspect of reddit.

I largely endorse this summary. I'm not saying personal cumulative karma is completely worthless, but I think "karmawhoring" is entirely related to going for a big score beyond that which is necessary to prevent filtering. I think there should be some point where you "win the game" or "stop leveling" and the score ceases to matter. Those who are only here for the score will either start a new account or leave. Those who were here for the discussions will continue on as before, less the annoying "you're just here for the karma" discussions.

At some point, our cups should truly runneth over.

>I would understand this opinion, as it is explained in the "Abolish Karma" post, but the very beginning of the linked comment seems to suggest otherwise:

>So, here karma (the summed label-on-a-redditor kind, not the content-sorting kind) is a currency regardless of its superficial valuelessness, which would seem to suggest something rather contrary to the "Abolish Karma" post: that karma does have some sort of underlying value.

I touched on this just a moment ago but I'm happy to elaborate.

Dan Ariely has done some interesting research on value and currency in Predictably Irrational. Basically, our behavior is manipulated easily by arbitrary numbers and arbitrary situations. The model for karma is very much like a score in a persistent-universe MMORPG. Scores in MMORPGs lead to gold farming. Most every participant on Reddit is at least passingly familiar with these environments and many of our participants are eloquently versed in them. Meanwhile, there are very few online communities that assign rank and weight to comments. So while the discussions have more in common with a PHPBB or the like, the community isn't unlike WOW.

Where things fall apart, of course, is the fact that you can't sell or trade Karma. Psychologically, however, that doesn't matter - we're primed to expect some sort of redemption system for our score because of past experience and peer influece, so we behave as if there's some sort of redemption system for our score.

I believe this makes Reddit a worse place rather than a better one - if there were some sort of exchange for karma, people wouldn't be scolded for having a high score. People who were just reposting things for the high score would be drummed out of the community. In a very real way, we're acting as if our poker chips are money... when in fact we can't even use them to bet more.

In a nutshell, Redditors behave as if that cumulative karma score had value, even though it doesn't... and this dichotomy causes a lot of squirrely behavior.

Like reposts.

u/rumblestiltsken · 15 pointsr/australia

In my mind this is the actual ideological war that is currently being fought, but it never gets too much of a discussion. Glad books like Capital and Reich's new documentary are prosecuting the case.

This issue is the clear separation between the parties. This is all the data we have on equality in Australia, red is for ALP governments and blue for LNP governments.

Since 1980, the ALP have run an even keel on GINI, which is the accepted measure for inequality. They haven't improved equality of income, but it hasn't gotten worse.

Since 1980 the LNP have seen inequality increase rapidly, with GINI up 0.05, making us the 9th most unequal country in the OECD (out of 34 countries).

If GINI hadn't gone up (ie ALP was in power and maintained their trend), we would be around the tenth most equal, jumping around 15 countries or half the OECD.

Of course, as you can see, this means we have a centrist and a right party, which means inequality will always go up over time. The ALP have ceded the battle, in effect. Perhaps why the Greens vote is creeping up, along with the vote for the populist right, like PUP?

The good news? The last time inequality was this bad (US graph just because we suck at this topic, it is relevant here for a number of reasons) was the start of the Progressive Era, which resulted in more progressive taxation, a focus on education, healthcare and scientific research, exposure of political corruption, big leaps in equality for women and racial/ethnic minorities and so on.

Is the same happening now? The conversation has already started, with books like Capital. The Occupy movement and March in March were huge, and while the media basically ignored them or criticised them, hundreds of thousands of people in the streets doesn't happen for nothing.

Even some MPs are talking about it.

Time for a New Progressive movement?

u/r4ndpaulsbrilloballs · 14 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

Libertarians, specifically ancaps, literally started /r/EndDemocracy and wrote books like Democracy the God that Failed and articles like A Libertarian Case for Monarchy.

Whether you personally realize it or not, libertarians really do hate democracy and want to replace it with strongman dictators, or monarchs in polite terms.

u/Containedmultitudes · 14 pointsr/HistoryMemes

That was the first serious history book I loved. The rise in particular is amazing as a primary source, as Shirer was a journalist in Austria before and after the Anschluss. Just don’t put too much stock in what he has to say about teutons.

Also, my French exchange student just about had a conniption when he saw the swastika on the spine on my bookshelf.

Edit: while I’m here I’m going to recommend my current favorite history of WWII, The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. I’ve never found economics so fascinating, or been more thoroughly convinced that Speer should’ve hanged.

u/SoftandChewy · 14 pointsr/samharris

One of the things I loved about this piece is how he revealed two very sneaky statistical tricks used by those pushing the narrative that the science is against the memo. I'm as much of a sucker for seemingly solid statistical claims as the next guy, so I really appreciate having my eyes opened about how misleading they can be.

(Yes, I'm familiar with the Twain/Disraeli quote and this book too.)

u/ER10years_throwaway · 14 pointsr/financialindependence

Before 2008 spirits were high and low depending on where you were invested. Remember that the .com bubble had just popped a few years earlier, which stung a lot of people, but that the real estate run-up began right about the same time the .com boom ended.

After the downturn it horribly, horribly sucked except for people who were foresighted enough to get short real estate-related derivatives.

Which I wasn't, so for us the downturn sucked, sucked, sucked.

u/Pilebsa · 14 pointsr/politics

here's the book Manufacturing consent.

u/Bulletproof_Haas · 14 pointsr/wallstreetbets

Realize that you always need to be learning and taking in new information. You will never "master" the market, nobody else has mastered it either, so take others' opinions with a grain of salt.


As much as people joke around here it can be a good way to spur new thought. If someone says the market will crash in 3 days? Why? Do you agree? If so, why? What data can you come up with to support that? (Etc, etc). Your goal should be to become knowledgeable enough to look at the economic landscape and come up with a personal opinion about what will happen next.

Once you have an informed hypothesis on what will occur then you make investments based on those convictions.


u/throwbubba1 · 14 pointsr/investing

Read. All the famous investors started reading at a young age and read ferociously (ok maybe not all but most).

Go to the library if you can, they generally will have all the quality investing tomes, without some of the "get rich quick manuals" which only benefit the authors.

Here is a few books to start with:

u/solaceinsleep · 14 pointsr/videos

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America:

> In A Generation of Sociopaths, Gibney examines the disastrous policies of the most powerful generation in modern history, showing how the Boomers ruthlessly enriched themselves at the expense of future generations.
>
> Acting without empathy, prudence, or respect for facts--acting, in other words, as sociopaths--the Boomers turned American dynamism into stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco. The Boomers have set a time bomb for the 2030s, when damage to Social Security, public finances, and the environment will become catastrophic and possibly irreversible--and when, not coincidentally, Boomers will be dying off.
>
> Gibney argues that younger generations have a fleeting window to hold the Boomers accountable and begin restoring America.

https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

u/99levtt · 14 pointsr/chicago

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America
> Gibney shows how America was hijacked by a generation whose reckless self-indulgence degraded the foundations of American prosperity. Acting without empathy, prudence, or respect for facts-- acting, in other words, as sociopaths-- they turned American dynamism into stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco. ...

u/jwilke · 14 pointsr/AdviceAnimals

Check out Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson." It does a great job of offering counterpoints to false ideas people have and express in mainstream news outlets and on Reddit.

I think modern economics, at least in the US, is a bastardized system of what a free market should be and is instead, corporatism. In a pure free market, economic progress should look like a sine wave with peaks and troughs. Some good times and some bad times but with a slightly upward trend for growth.

The problem in the US is that politicians don't want there to be a trough during their term because it gets in the way of their only goal: to be re-elected. So, elected officials provide subsidies to certain industries to prop them up until the next election. Through these subsidies, government picks winners and losers instead of the free market.

Over time, leaders from government and leaders from corporations switch back and forth, through bigger campaign donations or bigger subsidies. This is why you see people from Goldman Sachs or Monsanto getting jobs with the Federal Reserve or Department of Agriculture, and vice versa.

To answer your question, enough time has gone by that the biggest players in the private industry are given government allowances that make it impossible for out-of-favor firms to compete.

Paul's policies break this up. If the Department of Education is gone, then local school districts may choose who supplies their school lunches, leaving the big supplier who has donated millions to the DOE officials without their guaranteed contract.

Also, reverting to the gold standard would be really tough for our economy due to it's size, though not impossible.

Hopefully there are others in this thread more knowledgable than myself who can chime in.

u/donkawechico · 14 pointsr/personalfinance

Go to Vanguard.com and open an individual account (or in your case, a Roth IRA account as well). You'll wire money into this account from your bank, and then you can use their interface to purchase shares in any stock you want.

Do NOT buy individual stocks (like AAPL, GOOG, etc). You CANNOT predict what stocks will go up or down, no matter what the "pros" tell you.

You CAN predict (with reasonable confidence given historical data) that the market as a whole will go up 5-7% annually when averaged over 30 years.

If ONLY you could buy shares in the entire market! Wait. You CAN! With these special kinds of stocks called Index Funds which are themselves a large collection of stocks designed to go up and down with the market.

But the market is still volatile and risky. That's why you should also invest in bonds which are lower risk, but lower yield. Rule of thumb is that you should invest your age as a percentage in bonds (if you're 30, 30% of your portfolio should be in bonds). Reason being you don't want riskiness when you're a couple years away from retirement.

If ONLY there were a type of fund that would AUTOMATICALLY adjust your bond holdings as you age. Wait. There IS! With these special kinds of Index Funds called "Target Retirement Funds". Simply buy into the fund for your retirement year, and the adjustments will happen for you as you age! For example, I plan on retiring in 2050, so I have shares in VFIFX.

Now, you can buy as many shares as you want in an individual account, but when you take the money out, you're going to get taxed significantly on your gains (capital gains tax). You can avoid this tax hit by buying your shares from within a Roth IRA account (as opposed to an individual account). There are a lot of restrictions on these IRA accounts, but when you withdraw money at retirement, it will not be taxed (if it's Roth rather than a Traditional IRA).

Lastly, do yourself a massive favor and read this book 8 times: The Boglehead Guide to Personal Investing. I was just like you last year. I read that book, and hung out here in /r/PF, and now I have a fully-implemented retirement strategy.

u/zip_zap_zip · 14 pointsr/Libertarian

Hey eggshellmoudling! I'm at work so I can't pull up many references, but I'll see if I can help with some of your questions here.

First, the question of income inequality being a threat, and how it relates to redistribution. I definitely agree with your assessment of the last answer. It was more of a condonement of wealth redistribution than an explanation of the problem we (saying that as a libertarian, but I don't speak for all of us) have with calling income inequality a threat. In and of itself, wealth inequality is simply a consequence of how society is working. I think that a good argument could be made that inequality IS a threat in a system like we find ourselves in now, because money is so closely tied with power and rich people can use their money to influence the government and get richer. However, a small percentage of a population being incredibly rich isn't inherently bad. As long as they have come across their money in a fair (loaded word) way, as in without coercing or tricking people, they have given enough to society to merit having that amount of wealth. The only potential threat, which is a pretty minor one really, is that they don't spend their money responsibly. If, for example, they use their money to pay every person in the world to stop working, they would disrupt every market and people would starve to death. A more realistic example might be hoarding it in a place where it isn't effectively invested. If they are using the money to invest in other industries or employ people for tasks that add wealth to the system, which almost every rich person does, they aren't hurting anyone by simply being rich.
As far as redistribution goes, we believe that the current amount of inequality is heavily aided by things like redistribution of wealth and government regulations. For an example of that, say a really poor person finds out that they have a knack for orthodontics (not sure how they found that out :p) and that they could help a lot of people and make a ton of money practicing it. It wouldn't matter at all in today's system because they would be restricted by the barriers of entry to that field established by the government. Like I said before, you can argue that wealth inequality is bad right now, IMO, because the rich are so easily able to use their wealth to keep the poor poor through government coersion, which is unfair to the poor.


Second, how do we address the problem of a tiny minority controlling the wealth and allow people like you to thrive? I don't think you'll like my answer to this one, but please understand that I'm trying to be respectful and if anything comes off as rude or condescending I apologize. One way to think of wealth is as a big pool. Production adds wealth to the pool, and by adding to the pool people are allocated a certain portion of the pool. It might help to say this simple truth: there is only as much wealth in the world as is produced. That sounds simple but has huge implications. Mainly, it means that if everyone is doing the thing that they do most effectively, society as a whole benefits from a bigger pool. Now, back to your question. I have addressed the first part already, but when it comes to people that are trying hard but aren't getting a big enough portion of the pool, the fundamental reason (in a market society) is that they aren't contributing enough to earn a bigger portion. They are contributing less to the wealth of the world so they don't get as much wealth themselves. The ways to fix that are to either (1) grow the entire pool or (2) find a new way to gain more of the pool, thereby contributing to (1). That being said, I would be willing to bet that your situation is entirely different from that. For example, I highly doubt that you would feel maxed out on effort, talent, and luck if there weren't so many boundaries set up in society today.

I rambled a bit there but hopefully it was helpful. Let me know if you have questions about anything. If you are interested in why we (or at least I) believe that our system would be the best for every individual on average, I would highly recommend reading Economics In One Lesson or Capitalism and Freedom (this one is a little more difficult). They lay everything out very logically and had a huge impact on my belief system.

u/ductyl · 13 pointsr/financialindependence

I highly recommend The Bogleheads Guide To Investing, it definitely gave me the understanding and confidence of index investing, plus, it's great to lend out to other people when they show interest in the topic.

As for how much of your starting income to set aside, the most important part is just to start it, and automate it.

  • Start a Roth IRA at Vanguard
    • Roth IRA because your starting income is likely to be fairly low, which means you'll be in low tax bracket, so it's better to pay taxes on that money now, rather than when you withdraw it (which is how a Traditional IRA works)
  • Set up an automatic transfer that happens after every payday
    • Note that you'll need to be confident the money will be there, so if you work for a smaller company where the paydays sometimes "drift", you might want to set up the automatic withdrawal to occur 1 week later than you expect to be paid
    • Also note that the Vanguard automatic withdrawal is often delayed by several days, I wound up setting up a separate checking account for it to withdraw from, and I have my normal checking account automatically transfer the money into my "investment checking account" each payday, that way I don't have to worry about whether my main checking account balance is before or after the Vanguard autoinvestment occurs
    • Choose an amount that makes sense for you, don't starve yourself, and don't frugal yourself out of fun... you are young and should still enjoy life, personally I recommend that people start with something like $50 each paycheck, but that obviously depends on how large your paycheck is, you can always adjust this later, and obviously you can make manual deposits to the Roth IRA if you have extra money you want to invest

      Note the below is just my recommendation for what I would do if I were just starting out, you should absolutely determine your own investment strategy and risk tolerance (although you are young, so you can afford to be more aggressive than someone closer to retirement)

  • Stage 1: (Optional) Every once in a while you can go into your Roth IRA and purchase the VTI ETF when you have enough in your Money Market Settlement Fund to buy a whole share.
    • Unfortunately you can't set up automatic purchase of ETF funds, so you'll need to go buy shares manually while you're in this stage
  • Stage 2: Once you have $1000 in your Roth IRA, invest it into whatever the farthest out Target Retirement fund is (when making the purchase transfer from any ETF shares if you purchased any previously), currently it's their Target Retirement 2065 fund, this will get you into the market, with roughly 90% stocks and 10% bonds
    • You can then set up future automatic transfers to automatically buy more of this fund
  • Stage 3: Once you get to $3000 in your Roth IRA, you can then invest in VTSAX (transfer from the Target Retirement fund to VTSAX), which is the banner fund for low expense ratio index funds
    • Update your automatic investment to go into this fund
  • Stage 4: As you build more and more money in your Roth IRA, you can start to diversify your holdings based on your investment plan, find other funds that match your strategy and see what the minimum investment is (most are either $1000 or $3000), and when you have enough in VTSAX where transferring the minimum investment to a new fund makes sense, you can do so
    • Update your automatic investment to contribute appropriate percentages to each fund, depending on your investment strategy

      Just to cover all the bases here for starting out:

  • You should also be saving up money for an emergency fund, it's up to you to determine how much makes sense... if you're still on your parents insurance, and you can count on them for a safety net, you can be a little slower at building up this emergency fund
    • - Note (Advanced strategy): There is another benefit to the Roth IRA that I didn't mention above, which is that you can withdraw your contributions (but not any gains those contributions have made) from the account at any time, without paying an early withdrawal penalty or taxes. This means that you can technically use the Roth IRA to cover emergencies.
      • It's not "best practice", because you don't want to be pulling funds out of your retirement to cover emergencies, however if you have to choose between an emergency fund or contributing to a Roth IRA, I strongly recommend contributing to the Roth IRA and leaving the enough funds in the Money Market Settlement Fund to act as an emergency fund if you need it. This way you still have access to the money if you need it, but you're also getting money into the Roth IRA while you can. The $6000 yearly contribution limit seems like a lot now, but later in life you'll (hopefully) start maxing it out every year, so it's better to get the money in now and hope you don't need to take it back out then to leave it in a checking account where you might struggle to get it into a tax advantaged account later.
      • You should still make sure you have enough of an "quick access" emergency fund in a regular checking/savings account to cover immediate problems (overdraft on main checking account, need to fill up gas right before a paycheck, unexpected costs, etc.), as transfers out of your Roth IRA may take up to a week to show up in your checking account. Obviously you should also work towards eventually building a full emergency fund outside of your Roth IRA so that you can invest that money, rather than holding it in the money market fund, but when you're just starting out the Roth IRA can be a powerful place to keep the emergency fund until you can afford to contribute to both.
  • In case you wind up at a job with a 401k match that you can participate in, you should participate in the 401k plan and maximize the match that you can get from your employer before you add money to your Roth IRA (but only after you have your emergency fund, since it's a lot harder and more expensive to try to get money from the 401k than the Roth IRA), this is basically "free money" that is considered part of the compensation you receive from your employer, so you definitely don't want to leave it on the table if you can help it.
    • 401k plans vary wildly, but generally speaking you're looking for index funds with low expense ratios. Since every 401k is different, you can always reach out (either here or on Bogleheads forums) for advice on your specific plan options.
u/Yep123456789 · 13 pointsr/personalfinance

The side bar here is pretty good.

This is also a pretty fantastic and easy read: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101

It’ll cost you like 10 bucks and by the end, you’ll have the info needed to make a basic portfolio.

u/Kriegenstein · 13 pointsr/Bitcoin

Investing in cities via Municipal Bonds is the very essence of value investing, just on a scale that isn't related to a company.

The rest of your mess of a point has nothing to do with his investment philosophy. He makes money where he sees value. How he defines value would require a few weeks reading on your part, so get to work:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing/dp/0060555661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396646177&sr=8-1&keywords=the+intelligent+investor

u/fresheneesz · 13 pointsr/Bitcoin

China's authoritarian directives have absolutely pushed it far ahead of the squalor its previous authoritarian regimes had perpetuated. Its really flabbergasting to me how people point to this as a positive for china-style authoritarian regimes. Even more stupid is the people that try to say China has a new form of government. They don't. Its basically a dictatorship.

Countries with authoritarian regimes can certainly have massive growth between huge valleys of economic stagnation or collapse. You should read Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson. They have a very clear and well supported theory on the effects of government institutions that explains china, russia, the US, and all the rest: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227

And lastly, democracy vs non-democracy is not a binary thing. Russia, for example, has a "democracy" but very little real representation of its people. India has a similar problem to a far lesser degree. And so does the US for that matter. Democracy is new and something we still have to improve on. But the economic effects a democracy has, of causing sustained but slow growth, are far better than the massive economic swings and generally far lower economic prosperity of authoritarian countries.

u/purple_ink · 13 pointsr/Paleo

In my opinion, impossible. I'm taking advantage of a paleo lifestyle, but I don't think it's practical on a large-scale level. Like leevs11 said, the only reason there are 7 billion people is because of agriculture. While many were saved from starvation, the long-term outcome was more mouths to feed, and of course, starvation continues.

Lierre Keith is interesting talks specifically about this topic. You can download a speech by her here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?007hq967v7xy937
Her book:
http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

Also, read this article, written in 1987, describing agriculture as, "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race":
http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html

u/theredmanspeaks · 13 pointsr/politics

That Piketty book really is a fascinating read though. For those interested, it's called 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century''. It covers lots of basic economic tenets, and makes a good case on his global capital tax theory, which seeks to quell the issues inherent with Capitalism that give rise to an increased disparity in income and wealth distribution.

Good food for thought.

u/ErnestPwningway · 13 pointsr/todayilearned
u/cryptovariable · 13 pointsr/politics

>As a result, "the security situation in Afghanistan has worsened to its lowest point since the toppling of the Taliban a decade ago and attacks on aid workers are at unprecedented levels."

False.

I'm assuming that Chomsky hasn't been to Afghanistan. I have, multiple times. The peak of violence was in 2007. And the Afghan people agree. (PDF link, page 24)

>The people of Afghanistan, teetering on the edge of starvation in September 2001, were deprived of much of the food and medical assistance from international aid that was keeping them alive because Coalition airstrikes destroyed infrastructure and made travel unsafe for aid trucks.

False.

There are fewer babies dying now, more hospitals than since before the invasion, and the average life expectancy has risen by almost 20 years.

>Chomsky laments that the US government largely dismissed these human-rights problems in its quest to "secure our interests."

False.

Hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of people have been sent to Afghanistan to rebuild the medical, telecommunications, energy, and civil infrastructures of Afghanistan. The US didn't destroy it, decades of war with the Soviet Union and its subsequent neglect by the Taliban did. The reason you didn't see "Shock n'Awe 2001!™" with the US invasion was because there was hardly any infrastructure left to destroy.

>Chomsky was one of the few people in the United States at that time to publicly talk about how deeply the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in arming and training the mujahideen in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

False.

This is, and was, common knowledge. It was widely reported in the press in the 80s.

And before anyone goes on about how the CIA created Bin Laden, let me just put out that both "The Black Book of Communism" (Courtois, ed, 1997) and "The Sword and the Shield" (Mitrokhin, 1992) note that most of the ideological underpinnings of the modern-day jihad were put into place by the Soviet Union's attempts to eradicate Islam through violence, and that any US aid (none of which went to Bin Laden) was merely a confidence-boosting side show to the main conflict.

Not to mention the fact that in addition to the US, almost all of Europe, Saudi Arabia, and China, also gave aid to the Afghan Mujahideen.

>For example, the United States recently risked a major international conflict with a nuclear-armed nation, Pakistan, by assassinating an influential figure in one of its major cities.

If you think we are not already engaged in an international conflict with parts of the Pakistan government, I have a bridge to sell you.

But I suppose I'm just pissing into the wind.

This is the glorious Chomsky, after all. He is trapped so many decades back in political reality that he is probably still writing checks to the Sandinista National Liberation Front .

u/Apetn · 13 pointsr/AskSocialScience

For intro sociology, I'd recommend some preachy nonfiction. They are written for laymen but introduce the sociological style of approach. Something like Fat Land or Uninsured in America.

Freakanomics is not exactly sociology, but could be an interesting read for someone interested in social economics / group behavior. Jonathan Kozol is a reporter, not a sociologist, but his stories mix investigative reporting with a human element to focus on topics of interest to the field of sociology. I remember Nickel and Dimed also being a good read.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is not a book about sociology, but rather a specific example of culture clash within the context of medical care. That being said, it is a big reason why I decided to become a social worker (which is a profession in line with the two fields mentioned in your post).

A Place at the Table is a movie that might fit the bill.

Note: I'm American. I imagine other places would have different topics of interest.

Edited: add movie and fix format

u/Exanime4ever · 13 pointsr/CanadaPolitics

I'm just going to leave this book recommendation here

​

A Generation of Sociopaths

​

Edit: stupid "new" reddit can't deal with it's own link formatting

u/SnackRelatedMishap · 12 pointsr/worldnews

> Sounds like more conspiracy bullshit with no actual proof

Dude, so many books and articles have been written about this. The fact that this is new to you does not make it a conspiracy theory. It's not even controversial.

Western economists at the IMF in the 90's prescribed a set of policies, now colloquially known as 'shock therapy', to emerging market nations. In Russia these were prescribed ostensibly to help clamp down on an incipient hyperinflation. The radical policies consisted of a simultaneous elimination of all price/currency controls, wholesale privatization of all state-owned industry, and trade liberalization. The results were devastating, and allowed for a looting of the Russian economy by Western capital and, later, by Russian oligarchs in collusion with Boris Yeltsin.

Jeffrey Sachs, who was one of Yeltsin's advisors, has written much about his role in the crisis, and still feels the need to defend his record. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate, has a chapter in his book Globalization and its Discontents called "Who lost Russia?" in which he lays the blame square at the feet of free-market economists prescribing economic shock-therapy. Some believe that Larry Summers lost his bid to become President of the World Bank because of his role in the Russian economic reform project(also see: How Harvard Lost Russia for more about Summers).

Other books:

Sale of the Century, by Chrystia Freeland(formerly the global editor-at-large at Reuters)

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein

u/highfructoseSD · 12 pointsr/sugarlifestyleforum

You could get him a nice book as a make-up gift, this will cheer him up no doubt:

"A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America"
https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

"In A Generation of Sociopaths, Gibney examines the disastrous policies of the most powerful generation in modern history, showing how the Boomers ruthlessly enriched themselves at the expense of future generations."

u/garythegabber · 12 pointsr/worldnews

If you actually studied propaganda systems you would know that the West's media, especially UK's, and USA's are by far the most unified, most biased, and most selective of topics to cover in the world. It's a lot harder to ban the publication of certain articles or views than to make it in the media's interests to publish them - in this case they will do it themselves. And most of these media-owning corporations are interested in the American corporate power and increasing it. Also, even though, in America there seems to be a lot of different media organizations, almost all of the media consumed comes out of a few corporations. As a Canadian who has studied in Moscow I can say that there is a lot more political 'dissent' and debate in Russia than in the West, sure there are some obviously biased media organizations like RT, but these are few and there are a lot of objective and highly Putin-critical media organization in Russia. There are also many more political and social factions in Russia than in US or Canada that regularly appear in the media, in both bad and good lights.

Sources:

Corporations owning the media:

http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6

Presentation and analysis of Western propaganda systems:

http://www.amazon.ca/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499

Article describing the bias of the western media in the context of the current Ukraine crisis:

http://zcomm.org/zmagazine/outrage/

Let's be honest your entire perception of Russian media as being monolithic and pro-Russian gov is based on what you've heard from Western media.

u/jambarama · 12 pointsr/Economics

My two favorite books which introduce economic thinking are Armchair Economist and The Undercover Economist. They're quick reads, they're jargon free, and actually teach some of the thinking. Unlike the pop-econ books (Freakonomics and its ilk), which are simply about strange results from research (some of Landsburg's later books suffer from this problem). For an introduction to behavioral economics, you can't do better than Predictably Irrational.

For substance, textbooks are probably best unless you have a carefully chosen list of academic articles. Wooldridge for Econometrics, Mankiw for introductory macro, and Nicholson for introductory micro (Krugman's micro book is fine too). Mankiw writes my favorite econ textbooks. For game theory, I used an older version of Watson's textbook, and it was fine, but I don't know how other game theory books stack up.

If textbooks are a bit much, but you still want a substantive book, the first chapter of Thomas Sowell's introduction is very good, the rest is decent repetition. If you want a some discussion of discredited economic theories that are still trotted out regularly (like trickle down), Zombie Economics is a really fun read.

u/huppie · 12 pointsr/teslamotors

I'm pretty sure the 90D option is merely there as a 'decoy' (as Dan Ariely calls it.)

In short: Our brain tends to work with price differences in a relative fashion. The mere presence of the 90D option makes the 100D look like a way better deal. Bonus: People tend to choose the 'middle' option if possible! It's there to lure customers that think about a 90D into spending an extra $3k ("It's a way better deal!"), and lures people thinking about a 75D into upgrading to a 90D ("At least I 'saved' $3k compared to the most expensive option!")

Anyway, the book linked above (or anything by Dan Ariely, really) is well worth a read if you want to have a look into the psychology companies (or salespeople) use to get you to pay (a lot) more than necessary.

u/lampenstuhl · 12 pointsr/MapPorn

That's not true. Rural Bohemia was more advanced than rural France in the beginning of the 20th century. Read it in this book, I'll just suppose they got their sources straight.

u/josiahstevenson · 12 pointsr/badeconomics

You thinking more Poor Economics or Why Nations Fail? There's also some good stuff on urbanization's role in development in Triumph of the City which has a lot of implications for developed-world city policy too.

u/weirds3xstuff · 12 pointsr/changemyview

There are two books that I have read that have done a great deal to help me understand the dynamics that allowed Europe to rise to dominance starting in the 17th century: Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Why Nations Fail. The former talks about the geographical and ecological considerations that stifled development outside of Europe. The latter talks about the role if extractive institutions, set up by colonial powers, that remained after decolonization and prevented previously-colonized nations from developing. I can't do their arguments justice here, but if you are sincerely interested in changing your view I strongly recommend reading those books. I'll try to address your specific points:

> it seems to me that those of European heritage have made the most long-lasting and significant contributions to mankind. To name a few: space travel, internet, modern technology and medicine.

All of these marvels are founded in the scientific method, which developed during the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment has been successfully exported to multiple non-European countries, most notably Japan. So, it's not just Europeans who are able to appreciate Enlightenment values. But the Enlightenment did start in Europe. So, to believe that the Enlightenment proves that Europeans are superior you must prove that the cause of the enlightenment was the innate character of Europeans, and not any contingent factors. That is...very difficult to do. And, yes, the burden of proof is on you, here, since the null hypothesis is that the biological distinctiveness of Europeans is unrelated to the start of the Enlightenment.

> I realize Arabs of ancient times also contributed a lot in the realms of mathematics and medicine.

Yes. Different civilizations have become world leaders at different points in history, which makes the idea of some kind of innate superiority of one civilization really hard to believe. It just so happens that the Islamic Golden Age occurred at a time when it was impossible to communicate over large distances, while the European Golden Age (which we are now in) occurred at a time when communication is instantaneous and we can project military power across the entire world. In other words, the global dominance of Europeans is historically contingent, not an immutable fact of biology.

>One argument I frequently hear to counter this position is that other nations have failed to develop due to colonization and exploitation.

This is an excellent argument, and is, essentially, correct.

> if they were on the same level as Europeans intellectually and strength wise, why couldn't they have found the means to fight back and turn the tables?

Although they were at the same level as Europeans "intellectually and strength wise", they were not at the same level technologically. Europe was in a golden age, Africa, India, and China were not. Again, the key here is that the European Golden Age occurred at a time when it was possible to travel the oceans and project military power worldwide. That was not the case in the Islamic Golden Age or the Indian Golden Age, which explains why those civilizations didn't conquer the world in the way the Europeans of the 19th century did.

>Instead of Europeans doing what they've done to others, why couldn't it have been the other way around?

Guns, Germs, and Steel does the best job of explaining this. In short: Europeans were blessed with livestock that could be domesticated and a consistent climate that allowed them to produce lots of food more efficiently that other regions of the world could, which allowed them to spend more time on other things, like technology. Again, the full argument is the length of a (very good) book, so I suggest you pick it up to get more details.

u/HoosierProud · 12 pointsr/StockMarket

Read the Bogleheads guide to investing. This honestly should be required reading for all Americans. The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470067365/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_6tBgDbZ99RCSR

u/Nantes22 · 12 pointsr/zerocarb

Your body will thank you. Raised vegan, sometimes saw my parents “lapse” into vegetarianism, went to mostly vegetarian as an adult but rebelled by trying inconsequential quantities of meat. I had a myriad of mystery health problems that I couldn’t understand and neither could my doctors; I’m early 30’s. It was a horrible journey, but I feel like a new person on carnivore/zero carb and I’m only three months into it. Also everything is starting to make sense which is glorious.

I’ll be honest with you, changes in weight or muscles are not as visually dramatic for me initially. If your experience is like mine, your body will spend a lot of time nourishing deprived joints, bones and muscles in the beginning, but you’ll feel more energy and stronger. I also experienced extreme oxalate dumping which was tough. I wrote some of my experience here (kind of went on a tangent, tbh!):
https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/comments/df5qdp/optimizing_my_way_of_eating_for_further_health/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

If you have more questions, feel free to message me. I’m still learning about meat (I didn’t even know what each cut was or how to cook it) but I hope you enjoy that first steak as much as I did!!!

Oh I suggest some good reading for recovering vegetarians/vegans, message me if you’re interested in a book list but “vegetarian myth” by Lierre Keith is a good primer:
https://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804/ref=nodl_

u/pumpkin-poodle · 12 pointsr/Paleo

You're not alone. Menstrual problems are extremely common in vegetarians, and so are mental health issues. There's plenty of stories similar to yours over at the WAPF, Let Them Eat Meat, and Beyond Vegetarianism. Personally, I gained a whopping 55lbs, developed B12 deficiency (despite taking 1000mcg of methylcobalamin per day), and ended up with a bunch of other nasty things. I'm proud to say that I've lost all of that weight plus seven pounds. (Who would've known a slice of bambi's mom could be so satisfying?)

So, a lot of people have clearly experienced health problems as a result of a vegn diet. Why does the ADA still insist that a "well-planned vegetarian diet" (a clear oxymoron) is healthy and even beneficial? [Seventh-Day Adventists and vegns have so much influence on the ADA to the point that it's rage-inducing.](http://letthemeatmeat.com/tagged/American-Dietetic-Association)

The Vegetarian Myth, The Mood Cure, The Meat Fix, The Ethical Butcher, The Whole Soy Story, and Defending Beef are all worth giving a read. Were you tested for B12, iron, zinc, Vitamin A, Vitamin D, magnesium, and/or iodine deficiency during your vegn years? If you quit recently, it's very likely that you're still deficient in some of these vitamins and will need to supplement for awhile. DHA and EPA are also very important due to how poorly ALA (such as that found in flaxseeds) converts to these essential nutrients.

I was vegan for nearly six years. No cheats. I always had my doubts about it, but getting to learn what other veg
ns look like was my last call. Just keep in mind that some lifelong meat-eaters will insist that a vegetarian diet is healthier. And some people are really mean.

u/Lukifer · 12 pointsr/Bitcoin

> My means are rules that allow voluntary relationships with minimal violence.

There are two problems with this model:

  • Voluntary: When there are extreme disparities in resources, calling relationships voluntary is questionable. Someone in poverty can "choose" to work for 10 cents per day, or "choose" to pay $1000/pill for life-saving medication. Where there is no leverage, there is no agency; where there is no agency, there is no will.

  • Minimal violence: Existing capital and property relationships are maintained via the threat of force. Violence is not eliminated, and instead becomes a tool of the wealthy, applied selectively. (Poor Charlie Shrem sits in prison, while the big bankers faced no consequences.)

    That said, I'm not going to claim Chomsky's solutions are necessarily realistic. However, there is a wider spectrum of potential community and social systems than what we have become accustomed to, and it is this history from which Chomsky draws. I recommend David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years for exploring the history of money and its relationship to war, slavery and the state, and the multitude of primitive currency-less societal systems for managing responsibilities and resources (spoiler: it wasn't barter).

    While I have no illusions about the possibility or desirability of reverting to pre-industrial, small-scale social systems, I don't think we should be content with prioritzing the rights of capital as an end unto itself, and I am confident in our ability to create superior and more equitable post-state social structures.
u/debteater · 12 pointsr/financialindependence

Anyone have any book recommendations for a 26 year old? No topic in particular, not necessarily financial/business or otherwise, just any suggestions?

I'm currently reading:
https://www.amazon.com/How-Not-Be-Wrong-Mathematical/dp/0143127535
I'm not far into it, but it's basically on how to properly apply mathematics and logic to problem-solving. It's not exactly a new strategy for life or anything, but it's probably a good idea to read if you're analytical. I got it off Bill Gates reading list.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728
Found through the reading list- This one I've finished and can't recommend enough. It's from the 50's and it's intended reader were investment bankers. The main suggestion is hide yourself from bad information because you can't eliminate the impact it'll have on your decision making, and we aren't exactly equipped to know what's good or bad if we don't have experience in that realm already. It's a lot of common stuff people use stats for to push a product service policy etc.

https://www.amazon.com/Starship-Troopers-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0441783589/
I'm really into it. I love sci-fi. I don't necessarily love philosophy, but I'm really enjoying this book. It's hard for me to read a lot of at once but I don't ever want to put it down. The mindset of the character and narration really gets me. Since reading this, I've heard or noticed many many recommendations for Heinlein, though I'm unsure. He seems to be a proponent of fascism, but I guess he could just be writing down the fantasy of the particular fascist society he created and not necessarily saying "ya know this is how we should be" I don't know. I see conflicting things.

u/Kortalh · 12 pointsr/Anarchism

I don't know if you can attribute it entirely to apathy. Lots of Americans are kept too busy -- worrying about their jobs and other immediate needs -- to the point where they can't pay attention to politics beyond what they get on the evening news.

And as long as stories like this don't make it onto the evening news, they'll continue thinking society as a whole is alright and they're just unluckier than most.

Check out Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent": http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499 -- it may be 25 years old already, but it's still dead on.

u/BJHanssen · 12 pointsr/WikiLeaks

The error comes from focusing on the wrong filters. The "liberal media" is a thing (in two ways, really, but let's focus on the one people generally refer to) when you look at rhetoric. This can be determined through linguistic data analysis, which Seth Stephens-Davidowitz did in his book Everybody Lies. One of the interesting things he shows there is that the rhetorical bias varies not by ownership, for instance, but mostly through the dominant political leaning of the area in which the paper (which was the focus of the study) is sold. That is, a news outlet's rhetorical bias depends on its audience, not its owners.

This analysis is useful, but there is a glaring problem with it: In focusing on rhetoric, it ignores actual policy advocacy and, importantly, publication bias. And that's where the owners have influence. As long as the policy advocated agrees with the owners (and the media's inherent structural biases, re: the Herman-Chomsky Propaganda Model), how it is presented (the rhetoric) only matters to the extent that it influences revenue. And anything that is counter to these interests, will be ignored.

So, yes, there is a "liberal media" (and they're actually fairly dominant). Problem is, they are liberal in rhetoric only (and sometimes in actual policy, depending on what you mean by 'liberal'). What the media doesn't tell you is usually much more important than what it does.

u/adrianmendez16 · 12 pointsr/berkeley

This reminds me of the book "How to Lie with Statistics"
http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404410530&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+lie+with+statistics

Manipulating stats is quite easy, but how many people are really going to investigate how they collected those stats.

u/elmexiken · 12 pointsr/teslamotors

Actually they do....

https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728

Also, you have anecdotal evidence, which is not much evidence at all.

Thirdly, this is a repost.

u/he3-1 · 12 pointsr/AskEconomics

> They source the OECD report.

They source data from OECD and WHO and then do this.

> Well it's not better than other countries health systems,

Again based on what metrics?

> and it cost more

Is the French system worse then the Sinaporean system because France spends more?

> I think it's a stretch to say it performs as well as it could.

No healthcare system performs as well as it could. Even if we could rank efficacy position would be irrelevant from a policy perspective, you still need to improve even if you are ranked first.

u/John_Yossarain · 12 pointsr/JordanPeterson

I'd recommend reading many sides/perspectives so that you can formulate an independent mind and not just be a mouthpiece of some economist's ideology. For instance, I disagree with a lot of Marx, but I think his materialist critique of history and his critique of capitalism are very useful and a lot of it is correct. His solutions/recommendations are shit, but that doesn't discount his contributions. My recommendations:

Generally Considered Right-Leaning Economics:

Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson: https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510274539&sr=8-1

F. A. Hayek, Road to Serfdom: https://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Documents-Definitive-Collected/dp/0226320553/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510274634&sr=8-1

F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: https://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Conceit-Errors-Socialism-Collected/dp/0226320669/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1510274634&sr=8-3

Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations: https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Nations-Bantam-Classics/dp/0553585975/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510275227&sr=1-3

Frederic Bastiat, The Law: https://www.amazon.com/Law-Frederic-Bastiat/dp/1612930123/ref=pd_sim_14_5?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=31TE91RXV0Q2XPPWE81K

Also read: Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, and Ludwig Von Mises

Generally Considered Left-Leaning Economics:

J. M. Keynes, The General Theory: https://www.amazon.com/General-Theory-Employment-Interest-Money/dp/0156347113/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510274943&sr=1-3

Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital: https://www.amazon.com/Accumulation-Capital-Rosa-Luxemburg/dp/1614277885/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510275041&sr=1-2

Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution: https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Writings-History-Political-Science/dp/0486447766/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510275041&sr=1-1

Also read: Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky. Modern day Left/Keynesian economist is Paul Krugman.

Anarchism:

Emma Goldman: https://www.amazon.com/Anarchism-Other-Essays-Emma-Goldman/dp/1484116577/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510275717&sr=8-1

u/LibertyLOL · 11 pointsr/libertarianmeme

>I do want strong public education and universal healthcare. However, I want those services to be provided with the most efficient use of tax dollars instead of that money being pissed away.

Yikes, Please read

u/bushforbrayns · 11 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

Your response is very silly. The answer to OP's question is far simpler - no need to call anybody racist - and has to do with economics. Chapter 23 of Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson explains that the purpose of inflation is to cancel out minimum wage laws. Devalue the currency and suddenly businesses can afford to pay $15/hour to flip burgers. But inflation is worse than that; it necessarily involves a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich (since the wealthiest folks are those closest to the newly minted money). This is very useful to people in power because the effects are largely indirect and invisible.

The Nixon Shock of 1971 removed the exchangability of US dollars and gold, instituting a freely floating currency and unleashing the Federal Reserve's power to devalue the dollar with impunity. This has involved a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top, sucking purchasing power out of the middle class and resulting in the current situation that OP is inquiring about.

This chart shows inequality over time and illustrates what happened since the 70's.

u/igonjukja · 11 pointsr/worldnews

If you really want to understand why this is happening there's a widely praised book by an economist called Thomas Piketty that summarizes it like this:

-For most of human history the returns on capital exceeded economic growth. Because of this if you had capital to invest you were pretty sure to do a lot better than if you had only your labor to give. Economic inequality was the status quo. From a recent interview with Piketty in the NYT:
>Over the 1700-2012 period, world output has grown at 1.6 percent per year on average.
>In contrast, rates of return on capital can be 4 to 5 percent over centuries, or even higher for risky assets and high wealth portfolios. Contrarily to what Karl Marx and other believed, there is no natural reason why rates of return should fall in the long run. According to Forbes’s global billionaires list, very top wealth holders have risen at 6 to 7 percent per year over the 1987-2013 period, i.e. more than three times faster than per capita wealth and income at the world level.


-Around WWII this changed. Destruction, inflation and other crises, plus the social institutions set up after WWII in the west, caused inequality to stop rising.


-What we're finding out now is that this brief period, which lasted until the 1980s, was an anomaly. (Personally I find it interesting that this period stopped right around the time we in the U.S. and the U.K. decided we needed less regulation and government involvement in things). Things are now getting back to the way they used to be.
>U.S. inequality is now close to the levels of income concentration that prevailed in Europe around 1900-10. History suggests that this kind of inequality level is not only useless for growth, it can also lead to a capture of the political process by a tiny high-income and high-wealth elite. This directly threatens our democratic institutions and values.

The question is, what are we going to do about this?

u/intravenus_de_milo · 11 pointsr/Christianity

If you have an interest in the topic, I'd encourage you to read Debt: The first 5000 years

Mr. Graeber argues that contemporary major religions: Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam were spiritual reactions to an increasingly material world -- which really didn't exist prior to the invention of money, and debt, debt peonage, and ultimately slavery. And indeed, into the middle ages, Christian thinkers were even questioning the godliness of private property itself.

Which is why "And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" makes a lot more sense in the Lord's prayer.

Really fascinating book. He also debunks the idea of a barter economy you mentioned up thread.

u/wasabicupcakes · 11 pointsr/PoliticalHumor

The Shock Doctrine. Pretty eye opening.

u/MrSamsonite · 11 pointsr/AskSocialScience

For a broader look at the military and economic coercion of Latin America from the 1950s to the 1980s, see The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. For her coverage of Argentina, she draws heavily on True Crimes: Rodolfo Walsh and the Role of the Intellectual in Latin American Politics, which provides a great feel for the economic and social changes resulting from the country's various coups and uprisings.

This is admittedly a very leftist point of view of the situation, and one based more in issues of populism vs. neoliberalism in general than in Argentina specifically. For more on your specific question, this seems like a great starting point, if you haven't looked into it already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Argentina

EDIT: Here's a solid primary source on US support of the Argentine military junta in 1976: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB133/

u/LX_Emergency · 11 pointsr/lostgeneration

I don't have to...just read this.

u/stratozyck · 11 pointsr/politics

https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

In short: they inherited cheap college, relatively new infrastructure, and low government debt to GDP ratio.

They left us underfunded college that requires massive debt to go to, $3.2Trillion gap in infrastructure, and highest peacetime debt to GDP ratio in American history.

Prove me wrong on that! No matter how you slice and dice it, the generations after the boomers have to pay for all this. America can't do things anymore because they've locked up so much of our future spending before my generation even had a chance to vote

u/thebrightsideoflife · 11 pointsr/occupywallstreet

It was in response to the Aldrich plan which preceded the Federal Reserve Act and failed. It was not the "current situation" at the time the cartoon was made. The cartoon was warning what would happen if the Aldrich plan passed.

The story of how the unpopular plan was essentially enacted as the Federal Reserve that we have today is an interesting story full of clandestine meetings. If you want to read about it here's the book.

u/Libertos · 11 pointsr/Bitcoin

I bet most Americans do not know the Federal Reserve is a private banking cartel (Its as "Federal" as Fedex) and your personal income tax was implemented around the same time in 1913... Must be a coincidence right?

This book should be mandatory reading in high school. Take the red pill... https://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/091298645X

u/Phyb3r_Optik · 11 pointsr/pennystocks

If you are new, it's very risky to take suggestions from random people on the internet. It could be a hit or miss, but a thorough read on books like Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham is a good start to understanding the market. From there, you can gain a basic understanding of suggestions people give you to discern if it's a good buy or not. Buying stocks merely on speculation as you are doing now can be exciting as long as you are ok with losing your hard earned $300. Just be aware of the risk.

u/Neophyte- · 11 pointsr/australia

good use of ETFs, bond / equity mix. % of bonds in your age and the rest in equities. Vanguard is great for this, this book is excellent to get a grasp of everything

http://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0470067365

u/oggalily · 11 pointsr/personalfinance

Invest in index tracker funds rather than actively managed funds. Actively managed funds rarely beat the market over long periods of time, particularly when "middle-man" costs are taken into consideration. Read this book by John Bogle for an excellent and concise explanation of this.

u/Nota2ndaccountatall · 11 pointsr/CringeAnarchy

Free market to an extent.

Skimming the wikipedia page doesn't make you an expert on the economy. The markets were not planned, but the government stepped in when the health of the nation depended on it. Ebs and flows were common and expected. Subversion of the nation/the peoples would be dealt with.

Do actual research of the economy, don't be a retarded right winger who sees "socialist" and thinks "holy fuck nazis were left wing communists".

​

https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208

https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Revolution-Ideology-Programs-Foreign/dp/0988368234/ref=pd_rhf_se_s_cp_0_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0988368234&pd_rd_r=bd9c2c5d-283b-4811-bca8-9ac222f69ce3&pd_rd_w=nxQzY&pd_rd_wg=wBgVE&psc=1&refRID=PX3VCSQPKBMYN7FV82YS

u/IAmScience · 11 pointsr/exmormon

Critical thinking is something that we stomp early, and that stays pretty well stamped out without some care and attention.

In his AMA earlier today, Neil Degrasse Tyson suggested that children are born scientists, who bring a sense of curiosity and wonder to everything they do. Adults are usually the ones whose minds slam shut.

Our schools, our churches, our upbringing in general teaches us precisely how to be accepting and uncritical. Those systems simply demand belief in what is being offered as though it were indicative of some capital-T "Truth".

So, your job needs to be to start thinking like a child again. Everything you encounter needs to be questioned and interrogated. Remember: You've been raised to do precisely the opposite, so this won't be easy. You need to continually remind yourself to look for the holes, the flaws, the shortcomings in the arguments that are put forward.

I would recommend the following things:

  1. Start by examining Op-Ed pieces in newspapers. Look for the biases of the author. Figure out which side they're on. I recommend the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times op-ed pages. That's a fairly easy way to start looking at the arguments offered by the political left, and the political right in the US.
  2. Pick up the following two books: The Philosopher's Toolkit and Thank You for Arguing They're excellent books that will offer you a set of tools to evaluate arguments from a reasoned perspective. They demonstrate the tools of good argument, informal logical fallacies, and rhetorical tropes that are commonly used to persuade. They are very handy books that everybody should have on their shelf.
  3. If something seems off, then it demands further investigation. Evaluate the source of any and all information. Figure out where the data comes from, who funded the research, whether or not the numbers being presented are legitimate, etc. How to Lie With Statistics is a great tool for learning how people commonly fudge numbers to represent their positions. Knowing how it's done can help you see where people misrepresent data, whether maliciously or not.
  4. Recognize your own biases and preconceptions. Make sure you're clear on where your own privileges and understandings come from. Interrogate your own position thoroughly.
  5. Remember always that this will not be easy. Sometimes you will fall victim to the same biases and shortcomings as those with whom you are engaged in debate. Go easy on yourself, but remind yourself that you do not have all of the answers.

    The more you practice, the easier you'll find it to keep an open mind, and be willing to entertain evidence which challenges your beliefs and opinions. You'll even welcome those challenges, because they help you advance your knowledge and understanding.

    Do those things, and you'll find that all of the questions you pose here become much easier to deal with over time.
u/Another_juan_please · 11 pointsr/progun
u/destin325 · 11 pointsr/politics

If every republican read how to lie with statistics -Darrell Huff (1954) Fox viewership would drop. Hell, Democrats or anyone for that matter should read this. It makes trusting a news source a lot harder when you immediately pick out devious tricks to engineer partial truths.

u/cryptorebel · 10 pointsr/btc

Why would you care if something is increasing so low. Its like from 0.0000001 to 0.001 it increased by 10,000% sounds like a huge increase but its not. Its propaganda. How to lie with statistics

u/venttownlol · 10 pointsr/California_Politics

This statistic is thrown around all the time, and is almost totally meaningless. Did you know that 47 year-olds get paid more than 18 year-olds? Why? How dare they! Outrageous I say! Of course there are plenty of legit reasons why, job selection, experience, etc...



If an employer could truly get away with paying $0.88 to a woman instead of $1.00 to a man for the same job all men would be out of work tommorow.



I suggest reading how to lie with statistics. A great intro into reading through the constant BS the media pushes.



That said, there are plenty of discussions to have around pay issues, including why teachers and home health aides get paid so little, how to compensate for the crucial work stay at home moms do, why more girls aren't getting into engineering, etc... Difficult issues.

u/nickl220 · 10 pointsr/PoliticalDiscussion

Fannie and Freddie made up less than 1/5 of the crisis.

source source source

u/mariox19 · 10 pointsr/Libertarian

Someone who hasn't even read the first few pages of Hazlitt's book, I presume.

u/strolls · 10 pointsr/UKPersonalFinance

It's statistically unlikely that active investors will beat the market - that's not actually the same thing as hard. Saying that it's very difficult to beat the market is just a useful shorthand.

In Tim Hale's Smarter Investing he tells the story of James [1,](https://i.imgur.com/0z08uhw.png) [2,](https://i.imgur.com/pIN2fyR.png) [3] to illustrate typical retail investor behaviour. Read it for yourself - is he wrong to say that most retail investors behave like this? James is perhaps a bit worse than average, but investing psychology is the curse of most retail investors and they things like panic selling in a downturn.

Other retail investors are underinformed know-it-alls, which is a curse one has to look out for - as an active investor you have to be incredibly humble, and you have to examine your own motivations and fears; your goal is to understand your own flaws and shortcomings as an investor, endeavouring not to fall prey to them.

One of the most common statistics cited against active investing is that the majority of fund managers do not beat the market [1, 2, 3]. I can't say I know all the reasons, but other investing psychologies apply to them - most of them are corporate employees and have bosses to answer to; investors will flee when they underperform and generally there are pressures upon them which will lead them to conform and hug the index (but with higher costs).

Search YouTube for the videos of Paul Lountzis speaking at Ivey - I think they're each about 60 or 90 minutes each, and he does repeat himself some, but they're worth watching in their entirety if you're interested in this stuff. If you're interested in this stuff you should be reading and watching as much as possible, because it is a necessity to be informed.

Lountzis gives the example of a new fund manager arriving at an investment bank, and being given $10M or $100M to invest on behalf of clients. He is given a sector he must invest in - like US small cap - and then he must invest that money within 30 days or so. He cannot sit on this money for 6 months looking for the right opportunities, because who would put their money in an investment fund that is sitting on 80% or 90% cash? Hence many of the best opportunities are denied them - they must invest the money and they may be forced to realise losses if they need to release money to investors or invest in something else. This constraint is not foisted upon the private investor.

If you ignore the costs of trading - which are incurred by index funds too - half of all stockmarket transactions beat the market. The problem is with doing it consistently, but I believe it's possible to beat the market with discipline, a buy-and-hold strategy and some fundamental analysis (read The Intelligent Investor).

u/pgm_01 · 10 pointsr/Connecticut

It is time to ditch conservative economic beliefs. Cutting taxes helps to collapse the middle class, government programs help maintain and expand it. Read Capital in the Twenty-First Century. We have tried conservative and neoliberal economic theories and they are proven not to work. Foley is just the latest to try to push the same broken ideas and it will lead to a predictable end, the rich get richer while the middle class gets pushed downward. While Malloy is not very good, Foley will be terrible.

u/Decentralist- · 10 pointsr/Anarcho_Capitalism

A pretty radical thing to say but a thing that must be said.

Democracy is the worst form of tyranny. It fools the mob into thinking it has the might of power, when in reality that power is most concentrated and unaccountable in a democracy.

Many libertarians have already theorized on why Monarchy is even a better form of governance than Democracy. For those interested in reading more check our: http://www.amazon.ca/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Monarchy-Natural/dp/0765808684

Great video Jeff! Keep them coming please!

u/Vitalogy0107 · 10 pointsr/altright

Only that the left out a few things! Like the ever-important establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913 through a secret conspiracy you can find out in The creature from Jekyll Island and a ton of other instances of world Jewry collaborating against the world. However, it's a pretty great summation.

u/LEPv0 · 10 pointsr/SandersForPresident

let me remind you that corporate media is the spear of the U.S. propagandistic machine, just watch for entertainment

http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1453832685&sr=8-4&keywords=noam+chomsky

u/Krase · 10 pointsr/MensRights

There is a great book a professor of mine asked us to read for a statistics class. The title was "How to lie with statistics". I highly recommend it if you can find it. Basically, it shows you how to spin numbers to prove whatever you want.


Woohoo, I found it on amazon

u/bzishi · 10 pointsr/Bad_Cop_No_Donut

Ugh. It is really sad when Vox comes in to present the more rational argument (their top article today is that you shouldn't watch The Interview because that would helps NK).

Still, the USA Today was pretty slimy right there. Clearly someone at the USA Today bought the book How to Lie with Statistics.

u/DustinEwan · 10 pointsr/investing

The answer, as usual is: it depends.

If you want to invest your money, then there's no better time than now. However, the implication is that when you invest that money you have to leave it sit long enough to do it's work.

At 19 and wanting to invest, you have time on your side. You need to be able to stomach volatility in the market and not get excited when your stocks rally for 30%, nor should you despair when the stocks plummet by 40%.

Traditionally speaking, the stock market averages between 6%~8% a year, which is much better than any savings account you're going to find. However, you shouldn't treat it as a savings account because volatility will almost certainly put you in a bad position to sell whenever you need the money most.

If you feel like you can stomach that volatility and turn a blind eye to both the rallies and collapses, then the stock market may certainly be for you. If you are NOT looking to place your money in good companies for a long period of time (10+ years), then it's my opinion that you are simply speculating... in which case you may as well go to the casino.

If at this point you have decided that you would like to invest in the stock market, you now need to figure out the degree of involvement you would like to dedicate.

If you're looking for a simple hands off investment, then you should just invest in an index fund such as VFINX, SWPPX, or QQQ.

Index funds closely track the performance of the market and charge minimal fees. They are pretty much totally hands off on your part, and are the Ronco of stock investing. Just set it and forget it, and enjoy your ride on the market.

A step above that are mutual funds. They actively try to beat indexes, but charge a fee to do so. There are mutual funds for any style of investing, and people tend to choose mutual funds that coincide with where they think success will lie. That means choosing foreign or domestic, stocks or bonds, and even individual sectors like technology, retail, energy, etc.

The world of mutual funds is vast, and provide an opportunity to beat the market, but it comes with a price. I'll leave the rest up to you to do your research.

Finally comes individual stock picking. Picking individual stocks is the highest risk, but also have the potential for the highest returns. Also, there are no fees except for the fee for purchasing your shares.

There is also a lot to this world, as I'm sure you know, but if this route interests you, then I would suggest you pick up a few books, beginning with The Intelligent Investor.

This book is, in my opinion, the best introduction out there to investing for long term wealth.

Finally, since you're so young and you seem to have an eye out for your personal finances, I absolutely recommend you read The Millionaire Next Door.

Good luck!

u/ciscomd · 10 pointsr/Foodforthought
u/NWuhO · 10 pointsr/OldSchoolCool

>How did they ruin the economy?

Oh I dunno, maybe by forcing inflation on the country and then trying to shore it up by ransacking, pillaging and having many of the able bodied workers sent off to die.

>but the Weimar Republic had a torched economy.

It wasn't great, sure.

> Hitler brought unemployment from a high of 35% in 1932 to below 1% by the time Paul von Hindenburg died (1934).


Hitler and his cronies cooked the books on employment figures. That's Nazi Politics 101.

Of course, Global economic recovery was a pretty good thing for the whole world.

>. How does that qualify as 'ruining' the economy? Lol

Unsustainable industries

No ability to import goods

No ability to produce important domestic goods

Large numbers of people removed from employment record

Certain leaders, scientists and professionals barred from further work

>You have every excuse in the book.

Yes, [this book] (https://www.amazon.ca/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208)

Do your homework champ

>The Rothschilds: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family

Where's the evidence?

>Ludwig Wittgenstein: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

Where's the evidence?

>You should know the Rothschilds. They are probably the richest family the world has ever known. Trillionaires. Of course, not so much anymore, but the story was different a few decades ago.

and?

u/coinsinmyrocket · 10 pointsr/AskHistorians

Speaking on Germany, Hitler and other leading Nazis made a big point of not having women work outside the home to assist in the war effort as well as maintaining the idea that life would "continue as normal" even when it was apparent that life was anything but during the early stages of the war.

This meant mainly that German industry was not completely focused on assisting the German war effort, and the parts that were focused on war production drew heavily upon foreign and slave labor pools in order to free up German men for military service. Even then, Germany didn't officially enter a state of Total War until early 1943, and measures were still taken to ensure German women weren't prioritized to assist in the war industry when their assistance could have been useful. Slave and foreign labor were seen as the chief sources of labor to be capitalized before women were even considered a potential source of labor. This obviously began to change as the war closed in on Germany's borders.

Whereas in WWI, the German government did not have nearly as many reservations about employing German women in the war effort. I cannot speak as specifically about German industry and output during WWI (I'm not as well read there), but I do know that women were called upon to work in the industry without nearly as many reservations than the Nazi government had during WWII.

Further reading:

Germany At War by Richard Evans

Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze

The End by Ian Kershaw

u/Reg_Monkey · 10 pointsr/badeconomics
u/Aybram · 9 pointsr/Suomi

>Ilman siionisteja slaavit olisi vapautettu kommunismin yöstä.

Ainoa asia mistä slaavit olisi vapautettu olisi ollut heidän omasta hengestänsä. Kannattaa myös lukea Adam Toozen kirja The Wages of Destruction jossa Tooze käsittelee sitä miksi Kolmas valtakunta oli vuonna 1939 tilanteessa jossa ainoat vaihtoehdot olivat puolustusleikkaukset tai sota ja velkaa oli suhteessa bruttokansantuotteeseen enemmän kuin Yhdysvalloilla oli sodan jälkeen vuonna 1945.

u/RepublicanShredder · 9 pointsr/MECoOp

You might want to read this book and you might come to a slightly altered conclusion. Same end result yes, but the method emphasized more on absolute surprise on the German's part than the alleged French 'surrendermongering'.

Thought I would share that thought. It's quite an amazing read, especially if you believe the myth of Nazi Germany being an economic powerhouse.

u/TheRealAntacular · 9 pointsr/investing

Here's a short list of what I would consider the cream of the crop as far as fundamental analysis books for a beginner:

Beating the Street

One Up on Wall Street

F Wall Street

Financial Times Guide to Value Investing


Getting Started in Value Investing

And of course

The Intelligent Investor

u/Falcrist · 9 pointsr/KotakuInAction

> I can sit here and convince a lot of people that Black, Hispanic, Asian, or White people have sick twisted cultures. If I decontextualize those statistics intentionally my portrayal of the group is bordering on dishonesty.

In case anyone doubts you, here is a book that you'll find in many poli-sci classrooms: http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728

Note: The text at the bottom of the cover is a joke.

u/gospelwut · 9 pointsr/linux

You're right; I was probably a bit too smarmy. Statistics really aren't a natural thing for a person to "intuit" about. How To Lie With Statistics was my first stats book in college, and I think it was a brilliant decision by whomever designed the curriculum.

u/tarotjustice · 9 pointsr/Libertarian

The apparent change of those who think it is justified is actually less than the margin of error of the poll. The change in those who think it's politically motivated is just over the margin of error.

Biggest change is among Republicans, who previously thought Trump should cooperate, but now don't.

Also they only spoke with 1,101/235M+ Americans of voting age

How to Lie with Statistics https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393310728/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Kp38Ab9T1YZET

Good read.

u/hfutrell · 9 pointsr/financialindependence

It helps that I work in a very highly paid industry. I would not be able to save nearly as much as I do otherwise.

I cannot recommend this book enough:

http://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0470067365

u/petrus4 · 9 pointsr/IndianFood

I will probably get downvoted for this unfortunately, but:-

Minimise (don't completely eliminate, but restrict) rice and all other forms of carbohydrates, such as potatoes and primarily starchy vegetables. Conventional opinion assumes (as the people in this thread have) that weight gain is caused by animal fat in the diet, but said conventional opinion is wrong. The lipid hypothesis is BS. Carbohydrates are the real problem; they get converted to sugar, and then directly to body fat.

The Vegetarian Myth. The author of this is a prototypical cultural Marxist, but she provides the best debunking of the lipid hypothesis (why animal fat in the body is supposedly destructive) that I've ever encountered.

Wheat Belly. This is an accompanying book about why wheat and cereals, rather than milk and fats, are the real enemies of weight loss.

u/Vittgenstein · 9 pointsr/TrueReddit

Not quite my friend, as David Graeber reveals in his study, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, for the most part debt/credit create these incredibly high gaps only when there is an institutional attempt to artificially create wealth by the elite, for the sake of the wealth creation. In our modern times, it would be called speculation. In the past, it was fucking with the relationship between currency and precious metals.

u/blackstar9000 · 9 pointsr/books

Economics In One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt is the primer that was recommended to me when I started (slowly) reading about economics. No doubt at greater levels of complexity his thesis starts to fray a bit, but the book is a clear introduction to the fundamentals.

u/thrallsballs64 · 9 pointsr/LateStageCapitalism

I'm currently reading a book called The Shock Doctrine that explores how the southern cone was forced into extreme free market capitalism. The book actually explores the forced free market capitalism on a global scale but the first third of the book is mostly about South America.

I usually stick to the fantasy genre but this book is really well written and has been eye opening for me.

https://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999

u/whyamisosoftinthemid · 9 pointsr/whatstheword
u/picklemeparsnips · 9 pointsr/UkrainianConflict

You are better off reading The Shock Doctrine as it has more background and much better sources from several credible people.

Or of you are just literally challenged you could always watch the film of the book, but that is the lite version.

The IMF are gangsters and every where they go they leave a trail of debt and exploitation. Ukraine will be no exception.

u/ludwigvonmises · 9 pointsr/austrian_economics

Sure there are.

  • The Dao of Capital by Mark Spitznagel

  • Austrian School for Investors by Rahim Taghizadegan

    Although Taleb is not strictly an Austrian economist, his book The Black Swan contains a lot of Austrian insights on probability, uncertainty, risk, public choice insights (regarding govt, the Fed, and financial markets in general). He quotes Hayek and other Austrians approvingly throughout.

    Also of interest would be Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor. Not an Austrian by any means, but his value-investment approach is consistent with Austrian theories on the firm and his comments about uncertainty and forecasting could have nearly been written by Mises himself.
u/narakhan · 9 pointsr/rational

Don't know specifics of what you're after, so I'll shotgun you with links:

u/roast_spud · 9 pointsr/books

Psychology (studied, but never practiced)

Here are a selection of interesting books:

u/LateralusYellow · 9 pointsr/guns

Daily reminder that Democracy != Freedom, and is not even technically necessary for freedom to exist.

u/notabiologist · 9 pointsr/worldnews

I understand your reaction, but there is some serious critique against the media in the West as well. True, people can get more sources than in Nord Korea and I think nobody will ever argue our media is even close to being on the same level as the media in Nord Korea. That would be crazy. However, our media is still very prone to bias.

The thing is, there is no huge conspiracy to push the media certain ways. It is just the result of different actors behaving in certain way. If you are interested in how the media is affected by this I would advise you to read Manufacturing consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.

Yes you are right, we have a lot of different sources to our possession, [regarding your comment below] however, what you should always take into account is that the position being taken by the bulk of media will outweigh the positions being taken by subculture media. This means that for most of the people the access to the media they actually have is the access to the position of the bulk media. So in this case it doesn't really matter what the potential media access to these people is, because they will never reach the potential (nobody ever will).

Than another thing is the fact that the bulk media is always seen as more objective than subculture media. While they both, arguably, have huge bias. Now this is understandable; you'll have subculture media on every stupid idea around, while the bulk media at least adheres to some sort of journalistic standard. There are, however, good subculture media around, which are arguably better than the bulk media. But these are often very specialized media, reporting only on 1 issue.

Conclusively, media is biased and there is no way around this. By having a lot of different media sources you'll have all biases and you could arguably collect the least biased view. However, the bulk of the media are all relatively in the same category and appear to have the same bias. Meaning that this bias will not be resolved in the biggest proportion of society. In addition even if people search for sub-sources of media a lot of them will only be eluded by some shitty left or right wing conspiracy media site.

All in all; people are unable to estimate the objectivity of media and this goes for all people [only by looking back in time can people sometimes see whether media was objective of not]. The reason why people can't judge the media is because it does not reference their sources. One possible solution people are talking about is by creating new journalistic standards in which all information should have a source and be referenced to, in the same way this is done in scientific papers. Additionally the media can become peer reviewed and this can serve as its validation. Us normal people can then trust in the peer-reviewed process
or look at their references and the other data and articles and form our own conclusions (if we have knowledge about the subject).

But right now we don't have such a media and so the best position you can take about the media is that [1] it is biased and [2] this is not the result of some crazy conspiracy.

I kinda made this up, I don't have a good word for it at the moment.

u/n0xin · 9 pointsr/news

> I can't keep writing about for ever...

Sad but true. Once or twice, okay, we'll throw you a bone. But more than that, you must be obsessed, paranoid, or delusional -- aka one of those wacko nutjobs.

I'm curious if you, as a member of the press corps, have ever read Noam Chomsky's book "Manufacturing Consent" and what your perception might be as an industry insider.

u/constantreverie · 9 pointsr/DotA2

Always loved the book How to lie with statistics,. Found it from Bill Gates top 10 must read list, loved it.

Complexity should give it a try!

(I don't think its Nahaz fault, COL playing terrible. I do hate the "stats dont lie" shit he does though.)

u/Ut_Prosim · 8 pointsr/offbeat

You might find this an interesting read.
_____

Also, I don't think the state or federal governments will care about 0.9% and 0.005% of homes, but if sea-level rise starts negatively affecting NAS Oceana or the Norfolk ship yards, they certainly will take notice.

u/ThisAccountKicks · 8 pointsr/politics
u/the_curious_task · 8 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

A young person has spent his entire life having his needs provided for by his parents. So the only model he really knows is one where a benevolent authority figure takes care of people in need. Naturally he supports a strong welfare state.

As he grows older and becomes responsible for himself, he begins to understand that making good choices and working hard helps him do better in life, and helps him best provide for his family. So when the authorities take more and more of his earnings and give it to other people who he thinks are making bad choices and working less hard, he gets resentful. He wants the government to get stop interfering in his life. [Here I'm using a more classical understanding of conservatism, not the currently popular xenophobic, warfare-oriented understanding of conservatism.]

Also, in rare cases, as he gets older he'll learn enough economics to understand why welfare programs do more harm than good, and will advocate against them.

u/ExisDiff · 8 pointsr/GoldandBlack

https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232

I recommend you start with Hazlitt's book.

Try to avoid the capitalism vs socialism dichotomy, that is not going to be majorly helpful.

The most obvious is that taxes that is reducing the incentive to make a profit, but there are a myriad of other reasons that reduce the incentive that the book elaborates on.

u/JobDestroyer · 8 pointsr/GoldandBlack

If you're new to econ, I would suggest either Basic Economics, as /u/snatchinyosigns suggested, or "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt.

http://www.hacer.org/pdf/Hazlitt00.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=economics+in+one+lesson&qid=1555251994&s=gateway&sr=8-1

From there, you might want to get into some of the morality-focused books, if you want a short/easy one, I suggest "Anatomy of the State" by Murray Rothbard

https://mises.org/library/anatomy-state

If you want to learn about how an anarcho-capitalist society could work, I'd read Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman

http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Machinery-Freedom-Guide-Radical-Capitalism/dp/1507785607/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=machinery+of+freedom&qid=1555252140&s=gateway&sr=8-1

u/Re_Re_Think · 8 pointsr/lostgeneration

Because despite huge growth in worker productivity, grow in worker wages has been stagnant. You can ignore technological and efficiency advances and blame it on overpopulation and a world facing peak oil and other peak resources (meaning less consumption would be available per person), but that hasn't stopped capital gains from going through the roof, so that doesn't make any sense.

No. The political and economic system we've tacitly settled upon is designed to concentrate wealth (which is what the phrase "the 1%" was supposed to allude to). What's happening is that everyone except the single richest person in the country is being screwed, everyone up to that just slightly less and less so the higher you go.

That's why your wage sucks.

u/Icedcoffeeee · 8 pointsr/politics

Have you seen the movie The Big Short? Based on this book http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Short-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393338827

The bailouts were a huge win for the banks. Our economy lost trillions. That's jobs, people's homes, huge amounts from their 401k. Americans killed themselves, because of what they lost.

u/MCFRESH01 · 8 pointsr/marketing

http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0061353248

This is a great book and will probably tie into a lot of psych ideas as well as marketing ideas. It basically goes over how we can predict that people will make "dumb" choices based on personal bias.

I think its a must read for most marketers, especially those interested in running their own tests or working in CPG companies.

u/Boredeidanmark · 8 pointsr/pics

It would be impossible to study (as opposed to hypothesize), but waiting 10 years would almost certainly have been worse for Germany.

AFAIK, it's a commonly held view among historians that the Germans were only able to be as successful as they were because the timing was perfect for them. However, I am not a historian and I would love anyone who knows more than me to chime in (esp anyone from /r/askhistorians)

First, Stalin had just purged vast numbers of high ranking military officers (50% of the entire Soviet officer corps) and their replacements had not yet acquired the experience and knowledge necessary to be effective. The deep operation strategy that the Soviets used effectively later in the war had been developed by the 1930s. But almost everyone who was well versed in it was killed by Stalin and it was disregarded because no one wanted to be associated with the doctrines of people who were purged. In another ten years, the Soviet officer corps would likely have been better developed and the Soviet economy would have been stronger.

Second, the western powers were slow and late in preparing for war. The Germans had been preparing full-tilt since the mid-30s. If the UK and France had another ten years to prepare, I think their air forces would have been overwhelingly larger than Germany's (though they did overly rely on strategic bombers).

Third, the German economy would have collapsed by then. Germany went deep into debt to finance its military buildup, and it did not have the money to continue. Taking over Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, and Denmark allowed it to loot those countries successively and pay for more. A top source on the Nazi economy is Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction

u/LegitimateProfession · 8 pointsr/politics

You don't understand economics. If it's too expensive to use Chinese labor to make cheap goods, that means China is already too wealthy and developed to need to rely on low-value manufacturing in its own labor force.

In fact, moving such factories to India, SE Asia or West Africa would mean more money going to China, as Chinese companies invest in the developing economies the same way US companies and individual investors have gotten wealthy from Chinese development, production and consumption.

Other countries will change their laws to whatever China wants. They want to compete to attract all those factory and low-level service jobs that China is seeking to offshore.

Why Nations Fail

Yi Wen's illustrative essay on how China's economy developed so rapidly

u/Beren- · 8 pointsr/SecurityAnalysis
u/Codemastadink · 8 pointsr/investing
u/mmmberry · 8 pointsr/TwoXChromosomes

That book has been debunked by several credible people (dieticians, nutritionists, the scientific community, etc).

Long story short, there is no research and Keith just cites her favorite authors as proof (at one point she cites Wikipedia). The fact that she is so heavily supported by the Weston A. Price foundation (and cites their information as proof of her claims) is enough to question everything in the book. She uses one book by two physicans with no background in anthropology or evolution and puts forth their ideas about dietary evolution and presents it as incontrovertible evidence. No, it's not incontrovertible...having one source say something and then presenting it as incontrovertible (especially when the authors have no expertise in the area) is dishonest writing.

Please, do your own research or at least further investigate her sources and consider making an appointment with a dietitian.

Edit: Here are some reviews on Amazon which include some of the more egregious problems with the book. Obviously, take both those and the book with a grain of salt. But some of the problems with the book are so glaring that you can do your own research after reading reviews (where errors are pointed out).

u/jayycox · 8 pointsr/nanocurrency

There are interesting theories about the beginnings of money where it wasn't really adopted until it was used as the sole way of paying tax before that everything was based on credit/debit. A state would pay its soldiers in 'x' currency but also would require their taxes to be in 'x', that drove adoption.

​

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290

u/imgram · 8 pointsr/investing

If you want to just save/invest passively: https://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0470067365

For most people (who really don't spend the time to understand companies), I'm totally in support of what I call the Ronco Rotisserie method of investing: Set it and forget it! Buy some low MER ETFs and forget about them.

If you want to invest more actively, I like Peter Lynch's books, classics like The Intelligent Investor. For ideas, I'll look to Morning Star, Valuline, Credit Suisse, etc.

I don't trust sources that generate revenues off of views and/or clicks (CNBC, blogs, etc.). Most visibly, you see the militantly bear cases for Uber/Lyft here or militantly bull cases (at least until recently) for Tesla, which I think is impacted by sources that are looking to generate buzz. Then you go read something like Aswath's blog, Morning Star, or Credit Suisse which has a much more balanced view on the company when compared to MSM.

u/King_Tofu · 8 pointsr/personalfinance

the books reccomended in the faq provide abundant info. Specifically,

"The millionaire next door" -- explains the importance of defensive spending and talks about how fiscal responsibility is passed to your kids depending on your money attitude.

"I will teach you to be rich" is a good general primer.

"The boglehead's guide to investing" introduces all the options out there and explains why investing in low-cost index funds is best for the long run.

edit: "I will teach you to be rich" is a more stimulating read, followed by millionaire, and last is boglehead.

edit 2: Millionaire is more "mindset" with not many practical advice except for its section on how financial responsibility is inherited onto kids

u/Berning_sensation · 8 pointsr/financialindependence

> Is there anything in economic research about this?

Yes, lots. For example, Capital in the 21st Century, published in 2015, was a blockbuster work of economics.

> What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality―the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth―today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again. A work of extraordinary ambition, originality, and rigor, Capital in the Twenty-First Century reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.

u/KissYourButtGoodbye · 8 pointsr/Libertarian

>even if the mob does graffiti up my website on occasion.

Or jump you and steal your money.

>A 230 year old legal document that has seen every President from Richard Nixon to George Washington wipe his ass with it when he finds it inconvenient doesn't protect people from anything.

Completely true.

>Democracy is - like it or not - the only real check on government.

Laughably foolish. Democracy is the God that failed, to quote Hans Hoppe.

>The American model – democracy – must be regarded as a historical error, economically as well as morally. Democracy promotes shortsightedness, capital waste, irresponsibility, and moral relativism. It leads to permanent compulsory income and wealth redistribution and legal uncertainty. It is counterproductive. It promotes demagoguery and egalitarianism. It is aggressive and potentially totalitarian internally, vis-à-vis its own population, as well as externally. In sum, it leads to a dramatic growth of state power, as manifested by the amount of parasitically – by means of taxation and expropriation – appropriated government income and wealth in relation to the amount of productively – through market exchange – acquired private income and wealth, and by the range and invasiveness of state legislation. Democracy is doomed to collapse, just as Soviet communism was doomed to collapse.

Source (translated from German).

u/grebfar · 8 pointsr/geopolitics

In short: Regulatory capture in the US led to the US Government handing out large sums of money to US Companies for services that were never delivered.

See also: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Kline

u/cavscout43 · 8 pointsr/Denver

> Legitimately, did you come up with this eloquence on your own?

Read a lot on the topic.

Recommend A Generation of Sociopaths for the details on tax breaks/regulations and empirical breakdown on how they flopped on things like marijuana, abortion, and immigration based on what was convenient and desired at the time.

For a good write up on how the meritocracy was hijacked and turned into a tool for inherited wealth transfer, How the Boomers Broke America, written by a Boomer no less who profited from the original meritocratic system they took over.

How America Lost Its Mind goes even beyond the Boomers and gets into the culture of "Democracy means my opinion is as valid as anyone else's facts" and how the young Boomers of the '60s tripping on acid, deciding all reality was subjective would eventually end up glued to Fox News & Rush Limbaugh being spoon-fed their desired subjective reality decades later.

The War on Science isn't written with a specific generation in mind, but shows how an ocean arose between the scientific community and Americans as a whole during the Cold War and guaranteed government funding for all things science to win it. Gets into the psychology of what happens when people aren't intimate with empiricism and become mistrustful of experts and facts.

If you look at demographic trends, such as Pew Global, you see a lot of interesting things: Longer working hours for us now than they grew up with, from the mid 70s onwards median wages stagnating as productivity grew multiple-fold as labor laws/unions were weakened, Millennials have lower rates of drug usage, teen pregnancy, abortion, pre-marital sexual partners, etc. yet still get bashed as being "bad" by their multiple divorcee parents.

If you have specific questions or whatever, feel free to ask.

Cheers

Edit: Note that this isn't a scathing indictment of every individual Boomer. My father inadvertently checks a lot of the more negative generational stereotype blocks without necessarily being a bad person for example, just how he was raised and the effects of living in a society dominated by his peers. There are plenty of good Boomers, this is an analysis of how their culture came to change the nation when they became a supermajority with over 50% of all votes by the early 80s, and were able to completely hijack public policy to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. It's a warning, as millennials will soon be the largest demographic, and barring a Black Swan type demographic event, will enjoy nearly that level of political power and potential for abuse in the decades to come as the Boomers die out.

u/AFuckingCentaur · 8 pointsr/politics

I believe it is called "9-11".

I would also recommend these:

The Responsibility of Intellectuals

Manufacturing Consent (the book)

Manufacturing Consent (the documentary)

He has written like 100 books so there is a lot. Those are probably good starting points. There is an anthology book called "The Essential Chomsky" that is a nice collection too.

u/ttg314 · 8 pointsr/investing

mayne, investopedia puts ya off on da right foot, ma suggestion...read all da articles. den u can start readin da good shit lyke ma nigga buffets book. also dis nigga khan will teach ya a lot of gud shit. member ta read da wsj, bloomberg, ft, dealbook, marketwatch, ect. to know wuts goin on in da wild markets.

gud luck ma nigz, if ya need more pointers just let a nigga know

u/madsci · 8 pointsr/smallbusiness

Predictably Irrational is a great book that covers this and a bunch of related bits of psychology.

u/pastarific · 8 pointsr/heroesofthestorm

> I don't own the Nexus Charger but I would be pretty pissed if I spent $40 on a Virtual Ticket for an exclusive mount and it's added to the store as a gold mount.

wat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost%E2%80%93benefit_analysis

Mount was "priced" at $40. You valued the product at or higher than $40. The transaction was made. You were happy. The end.

If you have a problem with this concept, then you should consult a list of decision-making cognitive biases and consider where your problem lies, because your opinion (or buying thought process) is, by definition, irrational.

Further reading: https://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Decisions/dp/0061353248

u/adhi- · 8 pointsr/nba

you would absolutely love this book.

u/gigamosh57 · 7 pointsr/RealEstate

This was from a chapter in the original Freakonomics book.

u/ardent_stalinist · 7 pointsr/reddit.com

One thing I would add as the submitter: This blogger sounds as though she has read The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith, and while I don't fault her for that if so, I do think it would have been better had she been upfront about it.

u/US_Senate_SgtAtArms · 7 pointsr/news

I can't recommend Debt: The First 5,000 Years enough.

u/jitty · 7 pointsr/Bitcoin

To understand money you need to first understand debt.

Read "Debt: The First 5000 Years"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1612191290?pc_redir=1409142733&robot_redir=1

u/GundamWang · 7 pointsr/news

It's because we live in a democratic society, where unfortunately, the same people who believe all pit bulls are vicious dogs, a blink away from ripping your throat off, are the same ones who will vote to one day ban pit bulls based on false evidence. Furthermore, you should never, ever make conclusions based on bad data. That just seems like common sense to me.

In the past year, pressure cookers have been the single greatest direct terrorist threat to Boston. This is a true statement. It is also useless data. Making any judgements based around it is a waste of time, and really boggles the minds of people who actually know it's useless data.

Remember, statistics can be manipulated to show anything you want. A great book that my stats teacher had us all read: http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728

u/Anonymous_Source · 7 pointsr/personalfinance

Read the book by Michael Lewis.

u/Bonhomie3 · 7 pointsr/news

At the height of the subprime boom Fannie and Freddie's business was actually shrinking, while the large private lenders (Countrywide most notably) were expanding. It wasn't uncommon for them to push borrowers who could qualify for conforming 30s into the exotic types of mortgages. The selling, packaging, slicing, insuring and purchasing of loans was an enormously profitable engagement for everyone every step of the way.

Mortgage lenders won every time they handed out a nonconforming loan, which was a lot more valuable than a vanilla 30 year fixed. They did't care about quality because the banks were all but telling them straight out 'we'll buy anything'.

Banks profited on creation and sale of the collateral debt obligations and because the CDOs allowed them to hold less money in reserve to guard against borrower default. They didn't care about quality because they'd turn right around and package the loan into a CDO.

The insurance company AIG was winning on collecting premiums on AAA-rated securities that they thought had no chance in failing. Oh, and they got to be rated AAA because the agencies handing out the grades were paid by the banks. So if Moody's won't give Countrywide the needed grade, then Standard and Poor's across the street surely will.

Hell, even the man on the street profited by using the house's rising value as a piggy bank. Or they just speculated by buying investment property, waiting not too long of a time, and flipping it for a good profit.


If anyone wants to really understand the full extent of the crisis, pick up All the Devils are Here or Michael Lewis's The Big Short. For the tl;dr version you can read this

u/Legend_Of_Herky · 7 pointsr/politics

I wish I could say I was surprised at the level of stupidity. You realize stock is ownership of public companies that......provide economic value? I don't even want to bother correcting everything else you said. Rather, here's a link to an entry economics book that might help you begin to understand the topic. https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536700354&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+economics&dpID=41MDRqLIVoL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

u/HandsomeRuss · 7 pointsr/books

In my opinion, his most important work is his propoganda model and writings on the mass media.

Manufacturing Consent

u/iMightBeACunt · 7 pointsr/dataisugly

I hope you're sincerely interested, because I am going to answer like you are :)

Each bracket has no relation to the next one. Drawing a line implies that there is a functional relationship between family income and SAT score. There IS a trend, but this is not the proper way to imply a trend. This implies something else at hand, like an equation or something.

I know I am not phrasing this well.

But even a bar graph would make the data look better.

Another thing to note: look at the axes! The y-axis starts at 400 and ends at 600. The altered axis makes the data seem more extreme. 200 points difference IS a large difference in SAT scores, but the way they represented it made it seem even larger.

If you are genuinely interested, there is an amazing book called "How to Lie With Statistics", which you can buy on Amazon that teaches you about all the naughty things that people do to manipulate their graphs to look better! Or you can download this powerpoint which goes over how to display data badly, haha!

u/DavidRoyman · 7 pointsr/todayilearned

The way /r/GoodMerlinpeen/ has presented this statistics is taken out of an example from this book

u/pencil_and_paper · 7 pointsr/vancouver

Its the process that numbers were calculated with that you should also be concerned with. Mailing address isnt a good proxy for 'foreign' as many commenters are pointing out.

I could do a bull shit study on shit data and feed you some numbers, but hopefully you would be sceptical about it!

Also check out this book How to Lie with Statistics for a decent explanation.

u/sdv92348h2f0h8240h · 7 pointsr/technology

A government agency isn't a part of the free market. The hypothetical free market solution would be having multiple completing licensing agencies (like you have with some goods like plastics/oils) that other companies require to work with them (at the community level or otherwise) and if any of them were to openly violate trust they would be thrown out and one of the other companies would be preferred. Would require very different infrastructure but that's not surprising as you'd have to be a bit confused to call the current system a free market.

It's also not mythical it's a pretty clearly explained and defined thing. Here is a good intro book.

https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232/

u/TheGhostOfTzvika · 7 pointsr/usanews

May I suggest some reading for you, or anyone else interested in the matter?

The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression -- by Mark Kramer, Jonathan Murphy, Stephane Courtois, and Jean-Louis Panne

Let History Judge -- by Roy Medvedev and George Shriver

I don't have any connection to Amazon (for which there are alternatives) and don't get paid to shill for them.


u/avengingturnip · 7 pointsr/TrueCatholicPolitics

Seriously, read some history. Claiming that the violence attributed to socialism is a reaction from capitalists who are attempting to preserve the system is a vague claim that is unsupported by history. Again, read some real history.

u/Awesomeautism · 7 pointsr/stocks

This is what I tell all beginning investors, also being told this myself as a beginner, but before you find any sort of apps to trade on or taking stock recommendations, you need to figure out what kind of investor you are and develop an investing technique that fits you. What kinds of stock you invest in are mainly determined by how long you want to wait before selling the stock and how urgently you need the money.

Most investors are typically classified as either Defensive or Speculative. Defensive investors are ones who buy stocks in companies that have a long history of slow growth, and are not likely to make big gains quick. These kinds or stocks are the kinds people would invest in for their retirement or educational plans and are either classified as Defensive stocks (slow steady growth) or Income Stocks (stocks that pay out high dividends above the national inflation rate).Stocks like these would belong to companies that sell products that are classified as Essentials such as food, water, or energy.

Speculative investors invest in stocks that they believe are going to grow quick, and are willing to take on major risk in order to potentially see those large gains. These kinds of stocks are classified as Speculative (high growth and risk), Growth Stock (small or start up companies with high risk), or Cyclical (performance fluctuates with the economy in major losses or gains). These kinds of stocks would belong to companies that sell luxury products that may not sell well if demand is not high enough.

What you need to know is what kind of investor you are, and what kinds of returns you want, and how quickly you want them. Once you know that, you can find the right stocks for you. But now is the best time for people like you to be learning about investing, gaining experience, and investing in companies.

Once you know how quickly you want returns, and how much risk you want to take, you can begin to develop an investing technique that suits your comfort zone. This will ensure that you don't get ahead of yourself, and lose all your money in blind foolishness.
If you want an app to practice investing before you do the real thing, Investopedia.com has a great simulator that lets you invest fake money and get accurate feedback of the market. The website also has a wealth of information about every subject you could learn about in regards to the stock market and trading.

Yahoo Finance is one of the best websites I've found for easily accessing the data you need on each stock and getting the best feedback of the current state of the market. You can also easily find stocks with the Yahoo Stock Screener.

If you want a book recomendation, The Intelligent Investor is considered an essential read for anyone who wants to have success, large or small, within the trading market. Warren Buffet, the most successful stock trader in history, said that it is "By far the best book on investing ever written." Here's the amazon page to buy it.

u/jay9909 · 7 pointsr/investing

I read the following, in roughly this order:

u/darthvoldemort7 · 7 pointsr/stocks

The old adage goes "give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he's got food for life" or something along those lines.

Therefore, instead of answering your Reddit post, I will refer you to the Bible of Investing, "The Intelligent Investor".

The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition) (Collins Business Essentials) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060555661/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_ESjbzbJMA1ZR0

Don't be a sucker who plays the market. It's on a tear right now and everyone is overly optimistic. Place it in a vanguard etf or a robo advisor like betterment or wealthfront. Take the emotion out of your investing and enjoy the 4-7% growth over the next ten years.

u/TubePanic · 7 pointsr/italy

> Come da titolo, se siete esperti di economia ditemi un po' dove posso trovare una trattazione divulgativa della materia o un qualche corso online.

Dunque: IEA e' abbastanza tecnico e te lo sconsiglio, ma Undercover Economist e' divertente, e puo' valer la pena di leggerlo anche solo per intrattenimento; sulla stessa riga c'e' anche Freakonomics che pero' a me e' piaciuto molto meno.

Se poi ti viene la voglia, io inizierei con un po' di microeconomia, ci sono ottimi testi universitari che pero' costano un botto; pero' in genere si trovano usati a poco. Quello di Krugmann e' molto 'easy/pop' e con poca matematica (l'ho solo sbirciato, pero'); io ne avevo uno di Perloff e non mi sembrava male (ma parlo di un bel po' di anni fa; probabilmente c'e' qualcosa di piu' aggiornato).


Per i corsi online: una mia conoscenza ha seguito un corso su Coursera di un tipo indiano (non mi ricordo), ma era orripilante: un mio amico lo seguiva, mi ha chiesto di dargli una mano, ho provato a guardare uno dei video e non ho mai visto spiegazioni cosi' vaghe e confuse. Evitalo come la peste..

Credo che qualcosa di migliore sia su Khan Academy; vale la pena di guardare. (EDIT: ho guardato ed e' un po' stringato, ti servira' un supplemento. Krugmann, Perloff o qualunque altra cosa sia disponibile usata a prezzo ragionevole; evita le traduzioni italiane, pero').

Dopo aver guardato un po' di microeconomia, potrai decidere su cosa buttarti.


Se ti interessa la finanza e ti piacciono i romanzi, leggi Liar's poker, che mi e' sembrato spettacolare. E se a questo punto ti prende l'idea di capire cosa sono mai questi misteriosi bond e derivati, c'e' un ottimo e chiarissimo (ma un po' pesante) libro di finanza di Ivo Welch disponibile online; richiede un po' di matematica ma e' chiarissimo.

Ah, visto che ora va di moda la 'behavioral economy', puoi anche leggere qualunque cosa di Dan Ariely (tipo Predictably Irrational), ed e' sempre divertentissimo (e ha fatto pure lui un corso su Coursera con cui mi sono diverito un sacco). Ma se ti interessano poi gli aspetti seri, leggi lo spettacolare Thinking fast and slow di Kahneman (premio nobel, a ragione).

u/electrace · 7 pointsr/slatestarcodex

>Obviously the fee wasn't large enough to create a sufficient incentive for many parents to pick up their children on time, but introducing it gave parents the impression that the fee made it okay.

I think that's the point. Or at least, that was the point in Predictably Irrational, the first time this example was given in a pop-econ book (to my knowledge).

In theory, any fee should increase the incentive. In practice, the small fee offset the social pressure that they felt to pick up their children on time.

>This isn't evidence that incentives don't work; it's evidence that badly-designed incentive schemes don't work.

It's evidence that not all incentives work. Introducing a tiny fee was a tiny incentive, and it didn't work.

u/W_I_Water · 7 pointsr/history

Shirer for sure, Speer should be the tenth book you read about that subject, not the first or even second. Speer is simply full of lies and omissions.






May I suggest "The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy" by Adam Tooze.


ps "Perhaps America will one day go fascist democratically." - William L. Shirer

u/smb89 · 7 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

This has been a big subject of academic debate. But the most popular theory among economists (but not necessarily other social sciences) is that it had a lot to do with the kinds of governments that colonists set up; which in turn had a lot to do with native geography and, in particular, disease environments. I did some of my postgrad on this.

In short - if your initial settlers survived, you set up a colony your people could go live in, and you set up government and institutions based on yours back home. They weren't democracies as we know them know, but they had property rights and rule of law.

If your initial settlers didn't, you extracted what you could from the people and the land and stayed as remote from them as you could. The government and institutions you set up were then effectively corrupt and exploitative to begin with.

The theory goes that institutions like that don't change quickly (revolutions can change them, but not always for the better), so countries that started at a disadvantage with the colonisation ended up at a disadvantage.

The most common example is the British Empire in ie Canada or NZ versus sub Saharan Africa.

If you're interested in further reading this was the original seminal research even if it does get a bit technical in parts (https://economics.mit.edu/files/4123). There's also a related book by he same principal author which is more recent (https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227)

u/Fauler_Lentz · 7 pointsr/MapPorn

There are very few examples for countries that managed to build a well working state from nothing within a very short period of time. Most of the nations that are wealthy and not corrupt today went through a development that took them decades, or even centuries: The UK, France, Benelux, German states and Scandinavians all started developing public education and efficient administration in the late 18th or early 19th century, which is one of the reasons they all pretty much exploded in strength during the 19th century, while Italy, Spain, Easter Europe and Turkey stagnated and stayed as corrupt as they've always been. Japan is a rare exception, they joined the club in the late 19th century and went from irrelevant to first rate power in just 30 years, as is Austria, which was the only part of the Austro-Hungarian empire that did fairly well after its demise.

It's not a coincidence that Germany, Austria and Japan fared so well after the second world war. They lost everything of material value, but they didn't lose the people that are most valuable to a modern nation: Diligent officials, teachers, professors and industrialists.

Meanwhile Italy was - and is - still corrupt and unstable as always. The destruction the war brought with it did not help them become something better, on the contrary: one of the major benefactors of the downfall of the fascist regime was organized crime.

If you're interested in reading about what helped the nations that are well of today become that way, and why nations that were historically poor have such a hard time achieving the same, I highly recommend the book "why nations fail"

u/MetricT · 7 pointsr/nashville

> Personally, I think its just as annoying to see Boomers blamed for everything too. Yes, they're older, but a lot of them are just like you and me.

I'll just leave this here...

https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

u/AllPintsNorth · 7 pointsr/Futurology
u/johnsmithindustries · 7 pointsr/personalfinance

Me too! For a little motivation, check out Mr. Money Mustache and Early Retirement Extreme. For some really good information, check out Get Rich Slowly and The Simple Dollar - both have extensive archives on frugality, saving, investing, and debt repayment. I read all of those every day.

Here are some basics:

  1. Start an emergency fund in a new savings account with 3-6 months of expenses. Don't touch this unless there is an emegency (job loss, car repairs, etc.). This will keep you from aquiring any debt and allows you to be bold with your savings/investment goals.

  2. If your employer has a matching program for your 410K, contribute as much as you need to get the match. This is FREE MONEY and as a bonus your contributions reduce your taxes for this year.

  3. If you have any high-interest debt (~7+%), pay it off. If not, start a Roth IRA and try to max it out every year ($5000/yr). I recommend low cost index funds or a Target retirement fund (aka "lifecycle fund") with a low expense ratio. Because contributions to Roth IRAs are from after-tax earnings, this money will grow/remain tax free for the rest of your life.

  4. If you have any other debt, pay it off as fast as you can using a debt snowball.

  5. If you have any left over, contribute the maximum you can to try and max out your 401K ($16500/year) - the more you contribute, the more you save on your taxes this year.

  6. Save, save, save. With your goal you need to save as much of your income as possible. If you can max your 401K and Roth every year, you'll be well on your way to financial security. But those are your retirement savings, and you won't be able to utilize them for a while. So your best bet is to save and invest a large portion of your remaining income - this will ensure that you will not have to take on any additional debt and can save thousands if not hundreds of thousands along the way (think paying cash for a house vs. a 30 year mortgage)

    ERE and MMM both are into frugal lifestyles combined with established passive income streams from real estate and investment earnings. That seems like the way to go, especially given the low prices for real estate and the increase in renting.

    I would also start reading on these topics. For an eye-opening motivational read, try The Millionaire Next Door - I recommend that to everyone regarless of their personal finance goals. For starters in investing, The Boglehead's Guide to Investing is great, and a lot of the information can be found free at the wiki. GRS has a great post from a while ago on the 25 Best Books About Money.
u/mrzulu · 7 pointsr/personalfinance

Probably the best thing you can do is to educate yourself so you can make really good decisions not just with this $10K but with all your future earnings. Start off with The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing (you can also get it free from the library).

u/sbonds · 7 pointsr/personalfinance


>Man, this subreddit always makes me feel like garbage.

Don't sweat it. Just by reading this and caring you're ahead of most people. The subreddit will self-select for people who have the time and money to invest.

> 401k up to employer match
>
Max out Roth IRA
>* Max out 401k

Even if you only get partially through the second step, you're still doing well. The money you invest now will be worth much much more after growing for a couple decades. The habits you develop now on good saving will be even more valuable. :-)

>That's it. I don't really know the difference between stocks and bonds and I have no idea what any of these acronyms are, but I guess that's why I'm here: to learn.

Here are some good books to learn from-- go check your local library for them or even an earlier version:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062006487/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0470067365/

u/Katsas_pl · 7 pointsr/investing

http://www.amazon.com/Number-Quarterly-Earnings-Corrupted-Corporate/dp/0812966252

http://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0470067365


Both are amazing.

"Knowing what I do now, if at age 21 I'd had my choice of $2,000,000 or the wisdom to understand the concepts in this book, I'd choose wisdom. "

u/azzbla · 7 pointsr/politics

Thomas Piketty's book is what you're looking for then. It explains everything you're asking for and then some in a very readable way.

u/Randy_Newman1502 · 7 pointsr/badeconomics

A better financial history type book is the Reinhart & Rogoff one.

As long as you are building a list, let me share my to-read list after I finish reading my current book:

u/billhang · 7 pointsr/philadelphia

Re: "good points" - as you surely know, the basic argument the Occupiers made has been quite clearly confirmed.

Re: "had to be reckoned with" - - just one example - - if Occupy hadn't established the one-percent-are-fucking-you narrative so firmly, Mitt Romney's "47 percent" comments would probably not have been seen so clearly as a one-percenter's hooey.

And an aside: last time we had an exchange, we were about eight comments in when you said something along the lines of, "keep typing, I don't even read your stupid shit cuz you're so wrong and dumb and I'm so right and smart haw haw." If that's still your way, let me know now - - I like a conversation, myself.

u/tocano · 7 pointsr/Libertarian

> Your morals in terms of what's fair and what's not are yours but in order to operate a democratic state people must abide by the laws even if some dont see them as fair

Why? In the US, Martin Luther King Jr rejected the laws regarding protest while speaking out against injustice. Rosa Parks rejected the laws about blacks riding in the back of the bus. Muhammad Ali rejected the laws on conscription. If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.

> The self determination right is an individual right

ONLY an individual right?

> includes infraeastructures, markets and territory that as of now are available to every European citizen, that the rest of Spain has contribute to sustain and create,

By that argument, the best approach would be a single, global govt. After all, why should the people of the US contribute to infrastructure ONLY they get to use. How can different countries POSSIBLY interact if they can't have shared infrastructure and markets.

No, what you're talking about is the cost of separation. It exists and is a discussion worth having once you recognize the group has the right to political autonomy. So hold the damn vote to see if you even need to get to that point. Maybe you're right and it will fail.

> the example of the job doesn't translate well.

Sure it does. After all, you quitting creates a cost on the company. They have to search and hire a new employee. They have to train them. The other employees will be less efficient and effective while they're finding someone new to replace you. So clearly there's a cost. You're trying to argue that there even exists a cost means that they shouldn't have the right to self-determination at all. That's a complete nonsequitur.

> Also since this is a nationalistic movement, they will drag the 49% of those who dont want that independence, even if huge chunks of them want to remain as spain or other free political organizations, calling for the unity of Catalonia (that by the way each year seems to be a bigger part of Spain for them). At the end of the day this is not about democracy or self determination, it's about nationalism

Maybe you're right. Maybe democracy is overrated.

u/CelineHagbard · 7 pointsr/conspiracy

>Completely agree, especially about anti-Semitic red herrings.

It's pretty effective because there's a number of different claims that get conflated, sometimes on purpose and sometimes out of ignorance. Some of these claims are:

  1. Jews are overrepresented in high positions in finance, government, and media.
  2. Powerful Jews use their connections with other Jews to expand their power relative to the rest of the populace.
  3. (All) Jews are involved in a conspiracy to gain power at the expense of the rest of the populace.

    (1) is pretty much true by any given metric, but doesn't necessarily mean much. (2) is arguably true as well, but not really surprising per se. Any community of people tends to work with others in their community for mutual benefit. Jews are likely more prone to this by the simple fact that they share a history of oppression from the larger societies they've lived in. Cooperation wasn't a luxury; it was necessary for survival.

    (3) is the problem because arguments for (1) and (2) are often misconstrued as (3). Many people actually do seem to argue for (3) or a slightly less strong form of the position, either out of ignorance, but there's also documented cases of people pretending to hold this position specifically to discredit (1) and (2).
    ***
    Check out The Creature of Jekyll Island for a different take on the history of the Federal Reserve, or James Corbett's documentary Century of Enslavement.
u/roo-ster · 6 pointsr/politics

Read this book, and you'll know.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty

u/SammyD1st · 6 pointsr/Natalism

The answer is so obviously yes that this seems a pretty trivial criticism.

Further increases in population allow for increase economies of scale, which allow for increased specialization and therefore increased wealth. Adam Smith's parable of the pin makers doesn't work if there's not enough people who are pin makers.

If you'd like just one specific noteworthy example, I would point to Piketty's criticism that population stagnation is the major cause of income inequality.

Another good random article on this topic:
http://primacyofreason.blogspot.com/2012/01/economic-benefits-of-large-growing.html

I mean, there's lot to debate on this subject. But to merely be able to even "think" of "any problem" is a pretty low bar, that's very easy.

u/novacham · 6 pointsr/The_Donald
u/techstuph · 6 pointsr/AskTrumpSupporters

I wish everyone (supporter or not) would read this. I wish everyone would listen to the No Agenda show. I wish everyone would read The Creature from Jekyll Island.

u/dag_1996 · 6 pointsr/stocks

> "I've been doing my research and realise there is no way to make it rich quick ..."

It appears that you've already learned two of the most important things about investing: [1] Like anything else in life, what you will get out of it is a direct result of what you put into it (doing your research is extremely important to investing in individual stocks). [2] Investment returns are a direct result of the amount of risk taken, so you generally won't "get rick quick" unless you risk losing everything quick and there's still never any guarantee. That approach is not recommended, especially for beginners, but it's important to know that very many prefer that approach so you must take all advice and "hot tips" with a pound of salt.

As someone else suggested, it might be best to start with an ETF while you continue to learn how to evaluate individual companies, sectors, etc. ... perhaps an ETF that focuses on a strategy like DGI (dividend growth investing). Last, but certainly not least, read [The Intelligent Investor] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing/dp/0060555661) by Benjamin Graham.

u/indexinvestoreu · 6 pointsr/eupersonalfinance

I would recommend against buying individual stocks for any non-sophisticated investors. There is wide research that shows that most active investors can't consistently get good returns on individual stocks. The bogleheads wiki elaborates on this topic (https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads%C2%AE_investment_philosophy)

If you do wish to invest in individual stocks I think you may need to devote time to do thorough research on your investments. I seriously don't think some stocks recommendations on reddit are going to be very useful. The learnings of the Intelligent Investor (https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661) are a good start.

​

u/classiste · 6 pointsr/gadgets

If their stock dropped 61% because apple pulled out - they don't have a bright future. You sound like the kind of person interested in investing in coal.

Edit: Educate yourself: https://www.amazon.com/Security-Analysis-Foreword-Buffett-Editions/dp/0071592539

The past is not an indication of the future in investing. You are speculating, one of the worst things you could do as an investor - here, educate yourself some more: https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661

u/mellolizard · 6 pointsr/economy

You should the read the book, How to Lie with Statistics. It is a common practice to mess with graphics to make a point.

u/anon35202 · 6 pointsr/teslamotors

My point is that if you use one standard to measure one thing, and a different standard to measure another thing. Juxtaposing them and saying: "this this is more than that thing", then you're going to make what appears to be a convincing argument, but ultimately it means nothing.

One of the years in the next 3, US Oil is going to have a 150 Billion dollar Gain because some of that 67 billion dollar loss was infrastructure maintenance and will produce huge returns later. You teslamotors fanboys aren't going to upvote that post when it rolls around, showing how US oil is still 3 or 4 orders of magnitude more capable of producing returns on investment than Tesla EVER will.

There are lean years, and there are growth years for big oil. I can make the same argument, having a kid with a Popsicle stand laugh at a bunch of contractors building a skyscraper and shouting: "My popsicle stand made more money this year than you". It's meaningless. It ignores the most important thing which is 5 year moving average of return on investment and investing for future gains. This whole article made me stupider by reading it.

The book you need to read is: https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728

u/bigfatrichard · 6 pointsr/uwaterloo

I think your idea of seeking assistance is an excellent one. Most people don't realize the impact of mental health in tackling intellectually challenging tasks. An athlete knows that to perform well, they must take care of their physical health by working out, controlling diet, etc... Similarly, one with intellectual pursuits need to take care of their mental health, but often they are unfamiliar on how to do so. Sleeping well, eating properly, etc. are very important, and instead of a coach, as in the case of an athlete, counselling services, psychologists, psychiatrists, etc. can help in training for mental health.

Be honest when working with Counselling Services or psychotherapists. If CS hasn't been working well for you, explain to them why you think that is. They will provide you with a list of psychologists / therapists in the area. The University Health Insurance Policy (UHIP) covers 80% of the costs of a psychologist. CS will explain this to you in greater detail.

Other than that, I can recommend a few things to get in better (mental) shape.

  • Hit the Gym. Working out is the best all-around fix for every problem in life. Visit /r/fitness and read the starter's list. Before you know it, you'll be sleeping well, feeling energetic and more motivated than you've every been in your life.

  • Read books about things that you like. For example, if you're looking forward to a career in finance, read The Big Short. Also read some books that might help you get motivated. I recommend Talent is Overrated.

  • Continue working with CS or a psychotherapist and get (mentally) fit. Even the faculty and staff at the University also take advantage of these services, because they know its importance.

    And remember, this is exactly why you're here in University! This is part of your education, and as you tackle these challenges, you will grow as a person. Good luck!
u/CerebralPsychosis · 6 pointsr/JordanPeterson

I would like to summarize JBP's position. Capitalism is not the best system but it works. It sucks on certain cases but it works. Also socialists ( most of them but a few are genuine caring individuals driven by compassion and horror at the poverty of the people. Most hate the rich , also George Orwell commentated on that in his book road to Wigan pier.) They seek to correct a system without correcting themselves first which proves they cannot correct the system. Also poverty is declining due to capitalism and it allows for creativity and a system which is in tune with natural law of inequality and the 80/20 rule.

as long as there is income and output there will be hierarchy and inequality. Humanity is corrupt and it will have corruption in every human endeavour.

also any system which tries to work against the natural law fails and falls short for numerous reasons.

Socialism cannot work in a psychological way due to human nature.

by the way , not my position , just a summary ( plenty of paraphrasing )

here are references https://youtu.be/f-wWBGo6a2w

https://youtu.be/6G59zsjM2UI

https://youtu.be/I8Xc2_FtpHI

here are some of Jordan’s looks on economics. https://youtu.be/bOMksnSaAJ4

https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Factfulness#

https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730

u/abandepart · 6 pointsr/COMPLETEANARCHY

$78b a year? Really?

Thanks for the meme, guys.

Basic Economics https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465060730/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_a6IPCbZHR1ZWY

u/albh · 6 pointsr/vancouver

Before you even go to a financial advisor or one that any Redditor might post to recommend as friends, go borrow these books from the library for a read so the investment world makes sense to you when you do talk about money with a planner and want to make sure you're getting good advice:

http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Practical/dp/0060555661

http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/0393081435

http://www.amazon.com/Warren-Buffett-Way-Second/dp/0471743674

If you're really lazy, at least read the first one.
If you're really, really lazy. Follow this blog for a bit http://canadiancouchpotato.com/

After that, only then should you take referrals and recommendations. Go to a few, and armed with some knowledge, you'll be much prepared to sift through advisors that are trying to bullshit you for front-loaded commissions, etc.

u/azirafale · 6 pointsr/UniversityofReddit

I just stumbled onto this subreddit for the first time now, so apologies if I'm not replying to the request as desired.

Investing isn't really something that you can learn, in the sense that it's not like riding a bike where you practice and then after a little bit you know how to ride a bike and that's it. Think of learning to invest more as a constant journey, where you're always growing and gaining understanding but you can't really ever know enough. Most successful investors, including Warren Buffett and Charles Munger, are voracious readers simply because there is so much out there to absorb.

Here's the start of a reading list to take a look at, listed in order of how I would tackle them in your place (though obviously skip some or jump ahead if one description catches your eye specifically):


  • Millionaire Next Door--not an investing book, but you mentioned saving for the future and so I think this is a good place to start. This book, which covers the results of a study of many first generation millionaires, will teach you how you should be thinking about money, saving, and consumption. Dry, but not a difficult read.


    Indexing:

  • Random Walk Down Wall Street

  • Four Pillars of Investing

  • Unconventional Success--These three I would consider as one big package, because they all address kind of the same philosophy and investing strategy (though in slightly different ways). There's no preferred order for this group, so I've listed them in what I think is from most accessible to least accessible (they all get into some technical details that may be difficult for someone not familiar with the topics, but they are all written for the layman so while it may take some work, you should be able to get through all three).

  • Bogle on Mutual Funds--This is the only book I'm recommending here that I haven't actually read. I'm including it only because I realize that you asked for a crash course so to speak, and none of the three books above are 100% easily accessible (though they do cover everything). I've read other books by John Bogle and I know enough about him and his investment philosophy to be able to recommend this confidently enough and to have a good idea what he talks about here. I suggest trying as much of the above three as possible, but if you do find them too difficult try this one out first as it'll undoubtedly be an easier read all the while covering most of the basic points outlined in the above.


    Value Investing:

  • The Little Book That Beats the Market--Very short, very accessible (all technical details are hidden away in the appendix. I don't recommend following his strategy outlined in the book verbatim, but as an intro to value investing concepts it's not a bad start.

  • The Intelligent Investor--This is basically a summation of Warren Buffett's investing philosophy. It is quite old, and definitely difficult at times, but well worth reading.


    Those are what I would start with. I recommend reading the books on indexing first not because I think the efficient market hypothesis (one of the topics covered in all three books) is 100% correct (it isn't), but because you need to have a filter in place that makes you skeptical and able to dismiss all the garbage investing advice that's out there (technical strategies promising 10%+ yearly returns guaranteed, etc). The value investing books I include because it is the only chance you have of beating the market over the long run, though I would only recommend the active management route if you have the time and energy to dedicate to it.

    Most of what's in these books does boil down to a few basic tenets that could probably be summarized in a few pages, but I would discourage you from looking for quick investing summary information because it won't be of any use to you. It's not enough to understand/know the concepts. You have to believe in them, and live them every day. If you aren't absolutely convinced of the investing strategy you're using you'll wind up capitulating at the worst possible time and losing a lot of money, or at the very least being one of the many people who 'chase winners' only to suffer from consistently mediocre performance. That's why you need to be reading regularly--to keep your conviction and refresh yourself on the fundamentals.

    Best of luck.
u/Narrative_Causality · 6 pointsr/wtfstockphotos

This worked really well for the Freakonomics cover. It...doesn't work so well with a banana.

u/alohafromalesha · 6 pointsr/suggestmeabook

Freakonomics: by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner

Just very fascinating, makes you think.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060731338/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_1cPxCbMR2SG2J

u/FacepalmNation · 6 pointsr/answers

Freakonomics says the dominant factor for the drop in crime was abortion legalization.

u/eazy_jeezy · 6 pointsr/latterdaysaints

In Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational there's a chapter that explains how fragile our boundaries can be.

A survey subject was asked, while in a cold state, a variety of questions about sexual preferences and how flexible they were with morality, including whether they'd use alcohol or drugs as a means to get sex, whether they would have sex with a woman unusually older or even not quite legal. The answers were recorded and the test subject was paid. Several days later, the same subject was invited back for another test, this time under different conditions. The test subject was left by himself in a room with pornography playing, and he was instructed to pleasure himself, but not to orgasm. Every minute or so, a question would pop up on the screen and he would have to answer by clicking with a mouse. Here's the kicker:

When sexual feelings were turned on, the decisions and preferences varied by over 70 percent. Yes, the subject who swore he'd never use alcohol to get into the pants of a 16 year old now found the idea tempting. The guy who would never be attracted to an old woman was now suddenly willing to give it a try. The person who swore to be abstinent was now having trouble with that commitment.

Mormons (and other faiths) do right by not pushing boundaries. If your boyfriend wants to go farther, explain to him that if you do, it may compromise your ability to use proper restraint in the heat of the moment. It's important that you both really understand this. There may be nothing wrong with what you want to do, except that it makes it easier to get his hand up your shirt or down your pants, and there's a tipping point there that once reached is dang near impossible to turn back from.

u/lutusp · 6 pointsr/askscience

Here is a good summary of the issue: The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability

u/Annihilia · 6 pointsr/Anarcho_Capitalism

>BTW.. in the history of the world it is mostly innovations that are putting people out of work. Not putting people TO work.

Might I suggest this book before you go lecturing about things you have no idea about?

Yes, let us abandon the use of automobiles in order to return to the glory days of the booming horse and buggy industry where it took about ten people at most to put together a vehicle..

Or why don't we stop using cell phones? I'm sure the laid off land-line techs will appreciate this, but what of the many thousands of app developers, accessory manufacturers, researchers, and wireless infrastructure engineers that exist as a result of this advancement?

u/NuclearTurtle · 6 pointsr/CapitalismVSocialism

My first thought was Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, but Basic Economics works just as well

u/spendabit · 6 pointsr/Bitcoin

If you're looking for something more concise (as an intro to economic thought), Economics in One Lesson is a go-to resource. (Also avail. for BTC. :D)

u/Heinskitz_Velvet · 6 pointsr/Documentaries

Well the easy answer is when they ran articles suggesting that Saddam had or was very close to getting WMDs, or that AQ had connections to Iraq which helped Bush drive the US into the Iraq War. If you've read Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, they focus on the NYT and show a clear bias towards their corporate sponsors, as well as with the military industrial complex. The things you see and more importantly the things you don't see, are bought and paid for in all major news publications.

There's actually a wiki article about NYT controversies.

u/mrmaster2 · 6 pointsr/worldnews

The "news" media has operated as a propaganda apparatus and has not simply "reported the news" for literally decades.

You only feel to the contrary, and that this is a new thing, precisely because they are so good at their brainwashing. This famous book can explain more:

http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499

u/xxtoejamfootballxx · 6 pointsr/todayilearned

Lol are you seriously just going to respond with another cherry-picked point?

How about the part of the post actually describing the reasoning for skewed statistics? Honestly you could benefit from this book if you think an unsourced offhand comment that "Statistically, random vague statement " is considered "factual evidence".

u/jcargile242 · 6 pointsr/politics

Looks like someone read How to Lie with Statistics: http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728

u/cudenlynx · 6 pointsr/ColoradoPolitics

In the first article you linked:

> “We have universal health coverage - you don’t pay to see your doctor or go to the hospital. We have a high degree of social security. You are entitled to benefits if you lose your job, if you get sick, if you are disabled. We have one year of maternity leave, we have one subsidised early childhood education and care and we ensure care for our elderly if they cannot manage on their own,” he said.
>
> “We also have a strong and fee educational system. Students in institutions for higher education and university do not pay for their education, on the contrary they receive educational grants for studying,” he added.

Those are the exact things Bernie wants, and the majority of Americans want. If that's socialism, then call me a socialist. Bernie wants the programs that have been working there to be used here as well. Did he said he wants to copy everything no. That's not what a model is.

The term Bernie Bro is sexist considering most of his supporters were women. To title your article with the term is just bad journalism and doesn't set the right tone for making any type of point.

Your second article is from by Jeffrey Dorfman who has been found to stretch the truth.

The article Jeffrey wrote is a textbook example of how to lie with statistics. His hole premise comes from this [Neoliberal think tank](The Fraser Institute, a Vancouver-based, pro-free market). AKA let's come up with a conservative study that fits our narrative.

The second article is by William O'Keefe a known Big Oil lobbyist so it's no surprise he's writing hit pieces on Bernie and Socialism. He want's that Venezuelan oil that the new president is giving to all his supporters.


How can you support this argument

> “The message from groups like Occupy Wall Street has been that inequality is up and that capitalism is failing us. A more correct and nuanced message is this: Although significant economic problems remain, we have been living in equalizing times for the world — a change that has been largely for the good. That may not make for convincing sloganeering, but it’s the truth.”

When the income inequality of not only the top 1% but the top .01% and above is at a sickening and inhumane rate.


Did you seriously link to a John Stossel video? He is known for only giving one side of an argument. Listen, I don't want to be a socialist country either. But I do want certain socialist programs enacted, Medicare 4 All and Free college tuition through a marginal tax rate on the top earners in this country. Putting these two items in place does not turn us into Venezuela overnight, nor will it mean we'll be socialist in less than 100 years. To push the false narrative that that is the direction the left wants to go in is false and is again, really bad journalism. You should be ashamed for using that video to support your argument.

Edit: words

u/nomoregouge · 6 pointsr/ontario

no one, there is a good book on how to figure out what is actually true (how to lie with statistics), it is great and really lets you know something.
https://www.amazon.ca/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728

u/aryllies · 6 pointsr/japanlife

I highly recommend reading "The Bogleheads" as a great introduction to investing.

The Bogleheads are basically a group of people following the investment principles of late Jack Bogle, founder of one of the most successful investment companies, Vanguard.

Have fun.

https://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0470067365

There's also a remarkable forum/ community over there:

https://www.bogleheads.org

u/judgemebymyusername · 6 pointsr/Bogleheads

You need to study up. Investing $20 in a book or two won't kill you when you have $1M in investments.

I recommend this http://smile.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0470067365/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398314109&sr=8-1&keywords=bogleheads+guide+to+investing

Then call Vanguard and ask them for assistance. With that kind of money you get free help from a financial planner.

u/PC__LOAD__LETTER · 6 pointsr/personalfinance

Mutual funds are probably your best bet for getting started. Super simple, instant diversification; just set it (monthly contributions), forget it, and let compound interest work. Check out this book: The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing.

If you'd like to do something more active, there's nothing wrong with that, it's just very hard to beat the market. Most professionals can't even do it consistently.

u/raoul-duke- · 6 pointsr/financialindependence

Coming from someone who has a reasonable amount of experience investing, this is what I wish I were told when I was in your shoes.

  1. DO NOT DAY TRADE. It is one of the surest ways to lose your paltry sum of money to fees and expenses.

  2. Read http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101 ASAP. Very solid basic outline on how the financial markets work. Implement the advice today. Seriously, open an account and put your money to work for you. Compound returns are almost magic.

  3. Rebalance annually.

  4. Write down your ultimate goals and form a plan for executing them. Ex: I would like to have 100,000 by my 25th birthday. If equity markets return an average of 8% and you invest X each year, can you reach this goal?

  5. Learn how to use Excel. I cannot stress enough how valuable MS Excel is in financial modeling. If this is truly an area of interest for you, you will be very well served by learning to use the tools of the trade.

    Best of luck.
u/toastthemost · 6 pointsr/pharmacy

>i don't know much about savings/retirement accounts/401k's/ or anything of that nature :/ ... Any dummy guides for someone to learn more about this stuff?

Please read the r/personalfinance wiki.

Basically, you want to start with a budget. Figure out your average expenses and essentials. Get an emergency fund of money in a savings account that you WILL NOT touch unless it truly is an emergency. This fund should cover 6 months of expenses. Basically, if you lose all sources of income, this will keep you from hemorrhaging into debt immediately, and allow you to get on your feet again. Start with a small emergency fund if you have extremely high (e.g. Credit Card/payday loan) interest rate debt.

Then, contribute what the company will match to your retirement.

Then, pay off all of your high-ish interest rate debts (e.g. Student Loans).

Then, max out retirement contributions.

For info about investing, read up. (Get it from a library to invest that money wisely)

>My family was never one to be able to do any of that considering we were the paycheck to paycheck type.

Yeah, try to get out of that mindset quickly. Just because you have money now does not mean you should spend it.

u/hibryd · 6 pointsr/AskReddit

> You are unlikely to happen upon an investment strategy by sheer luck as effective as those your advisor would use EVERY DAY.

That's why professionals beat the odds. Oh, that's right. They don't. They frequently lose to dart boards. That's because no one (except Buffett, apparently) can actually beat the market.

What on earth could a financial advisor do with $200K that she couldn't do herself for cheaper? If she sticks it into the S&P500 and leaves it, she's going to beat 95% of the professionals out there. What is an advisor going to do for her, other than charge fees to do what she can do at Vanguard.com for free?

Edit: OP, here are some books to read: 1, 2

u/ElMonoBongo420 · 6 pointsr/investing

A Random Walk down Wall Street http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/0393330338
Little Book of Common Sense Investing http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101
are great reads.
But if you dont want to read those I can tell you what they all say.

tl:dr = Buy Index Funds, buy more index funds, hold forever. Be rich.



u/Compound288 · 6 pointsr/PersonalFinanceCanada

Aside from my book:), my favourite is Jack Bogle's Little Book of Common Sense Investing.

u/RedMarble · 6 pointsr/badeconomics

Not a direct answer to your question, but if this is a subject you're interested in I cannot recommend Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction enough.

u/espressoself · 6 pointsr/badeconomics

I mean, it is this sub's favorite meme

Quoted from his EconTalk segment: (link here)

>There's a very interesting thesis that Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel sort of formulated, which is that really the geographic factors determined where early civilizations blossomed, and that, almost in a deterministic way, shaped which societies are more developed today. And we go in detail about why we sort of disagree with the thesis and why it's not really capable of explaining the patterns of what we see around us today; but they are interesting sort of variants of this. But the one that I think is more kind of popular among journalists and academics is a sort of cultural hypothesis. Max Weber was the person who developed the most famous example of this, or the Protestant ethic and constructive process; and Catholics. That's not as popular perhaps today. But if you sort of ask people why China is doing so well: Well, it is about Chinese culture. Why the Mexicans aren't doing so well or why sub-Saharan Africa is poor: It's all about national cultures or some cultural traits shared by a variety of individuals; or it would be Muslim versus non-Muslim. And again, we try to explain why such explanations are very limited. China has had the same Chinese culture but it did extremely badly under Mao... they did extremely badly 40 years ago when they had terrible incentives under Mao, and suddenly started doing well when the incentives changed. And all the while the same people in Hong Kong were doing very well. That should tell you something.

u/lawrencekhoo · 6 pointsr/AskEconomics

In general, Peterson is not reliable. He tends to cherry pick, selectively omit, or outright distort, the 'facts' he cites. For the case of the Pareto Principle, which is often stated as "20% of the population will own 80% of the wealth", this is only true for certain parameters of the Pareto distribution. In reality, human societies are diverse; some societies have a high concentration of wealth and income, while other societies have much lower concentrations. As you correctly surmised, much has to do with the institutions that exist in the society. As Acemoglu and Robinson argue, when the elite control the government, they set up institutions that enriches the elite while dispossessing the majority of the people. A strong government that strives to restrain the exploitative tendencies of the elites will enable the majority of the people to reap the economic benefits of their work and will lead to faster economic growth and a more equal society.

u/raoulbrancaccio · 6 pointsr/Gamingcirclejerk

>This has nothing to do with socialism or capitalism. Capitalist states often have the same social programs, but they have well made economic policy that can generate the wealth to sustain it without forcing everyone into poverty (see Denmark, Canada, Australia, etc)

No, it has to do with socialism and capitalism, it is not capitalism that generates that wealth, resources and labour generate wealth. If it was capitalism, then why are Somalia and Liberia so poor, their capitalist wealth generating magic should protect them, shouldn't it? They are being exploited out of their resources, so they cannot generate wealth, also, Cuba is just as poor as these countries, but it fares much better, I wonder why.

It is convenient to only talk about Europe, North America and Australia when you have to defend capitalism.

And Australia doesn't even have that big of a welfare state tbh.

>Venezuela was only doing "fine" because they were filthy rich from oil.

Yes, so?

>Compare them to singapore which didn't have said luxury of ridiculous wealth under their land.

Singapore? Have you ever heard reports of people actually working there? It's rich because their workers are controlled and alienated by the state, again, you are reinforcing my point (which is Keynes point, which is everyone with a brain's point), it is not capitalism that creates wealth, but it is labour and capital.

>Imperialism is entirely separate from capitalism (mercantilist nations relied on it the most)

I am not only referring to classical imperialism, but especially to economic imperialism, which includes the exploitation of resources and of cheap labour from other countries.

>are you really fucking implying USSR / PRC didn't kill innocents what the fuck.

When did I imply it? Just saying that capitalism kills mostly innocents, also, numbers are definitely inflated, the 60 million figure for Stalin is a meme by itself, and it is literally backed up by nothing.

>Read a book

>Exploitation tends to harm the imperialist nations, and nations become wealthiest by providing the means to success to all their citizens. It just so happens that private property and free enterprise does this the best.

I love it when people tell me to read a book, when they do it's probably the only book they've ever read, and they usually feel so triumphant when they have actual literature backing up their claims, no matter the context, also, it is always by some American economist.

Anyways, I do love me some Acemoglu (studied him pretty intensely in university, and I am rather fascinated by his theory of institutions being a fundamental driver in a nation's development, with the whole inclusive v. extractive discourse), but data is against the fact that exploitation harms imperialists, it might harm the nations that imperialist companies are located into (I would need data for this though), but it does not harm said imperialist companies, and how much cheap labour and resources are exploited in both Asia and Africa should tell you figures about it. You are confusing trading with exploiting, it's the former that gives theoretical gains to the poorest nation in some macroeconomic models.

Also, if you'd like, Read a Paper, even for a capitalist right wing economist such as Allen the centralised functions of the USSR are finely designed to bring about economic growth (and the USSR was the fastest growing nation for 50 years), so your "most efficient" meme which originates with the neoclassical school is just empirically wrong, and what I already said about Cuba (thanks to the embargo it's just as poor as some African countries, but it fares much better) further cements it, and I'm saying this without even supporting the Stalin-driven USSR (guilty of following aggregate results more than worker benefit, like capitalists do).

And, alas

>Marxism is a meme. That's why it will never be taken seriously by people outside of New School or UMass (besides internet memers and autocrats), sorry son.

I don't want to be racist, but this is the final showing that you are an American kid stuck in your own all-American Neoliberal bubble; Marxism is taken seriously (very seriously) everywhere except for the country that has a strong propaganda against communism, a right wing skewed government where the """"left"""" is composed of liberals and a government and education system which are quite literally controlled by big corporations, I wonder why.

And fun fact, in the rest of the world your economics literature (not all of it of course, some of it is good, mostly from the salt lake schools) is what is being made fun of.

And since we're talking about the US, lolefficiency, more than 5 times more vacant homes than homeless people, truly a fair and efficient allocation of resources, wouldn't you think?

u/PrototypeModel · 6 pointsr/Political_Revolution

It's a good thing smart people have been talking about this for years. Here, have a documentary. There's a book too!

u/big_al11 · 6 pointsr/politics

It's always been like this. If you're interested check out:

Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times by R. McChesney

Necessary Illusions : Thought Control in Democratic Societies by N.Chomsky

Our Unfree Press: 100 Years of Radical Media Criticism by R.McChesney

Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the News in an Age of Propaganda by E.Herman

Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media by M.Parenti

Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America by R.McChesney

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by E.Herman and N.Chomsky

Constructing Public Opinion by J.Lewis

The More You Watch the Less You Know by D.Schecter

The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas by R.McChesney

Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Critical Reader by Dines and Humez

Beyond Consumer Capitalism: Media and the Limits to Imagination by J.Lewis

Propaganda by E.Bernays

Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment by M.Parenti

When News Lies by D.Schecter

Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda by N.Chomsky

Will the Revolution Be Televised?: A Marxist Analysis of the Media by J.Molenyeux


All these guys have youtube lectures if you aren't much of a reader. Alternatively check out the following documentaries:

Manufacturing Consent

The Myth of the Liberal Media

The Power of Nightmares

Psywar

Class Dismissed: how TV frames the working class

The Power Principle

Project Censored: Is the Press Really Free?



Or you could even do a course in media literacy and watch Sut Jhally's lecture series on Media, Public Relations and Propaganda.

u/omphalososos · 5 pointsr/socialism

My go to recs include a mix of articles, videos, and books. Check out Albert Einstein's Why Socialism? After that maybe watch Richard Wolff's Intro to Marxism. Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine is not a socialist book per se, but it illustrates the evils of capitalism and the real world consequences of historical atrocities committed in the name capitalist interests. Also, you should read primary texts. Read Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky. This Study Guide for Revolutionaries has essentially all of the canonized Marxist works categorized like a syllabus. If you haven't read the Manifesto yet, be sure to knock that one out too! Hope these suggestions help!

u/Mentalpopcorn · 5 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

I wrote a paper analyzing Chilean politics last year. The thesis was that libertarianism, Friendmanite neoliberalism, etc., in pure form, can only exist under authoritarian or totalitarian (in the case of Ayn Rand's objectivist capitalism) regimes and are logically incompatible with democracy.

The conclusion was that if people are ever given a vote, they will by and large vote against purist constructs of these political theories, and I used Chilean politics to demonstrate the point. I presented the argument in class and the logic of it was accepted, even by the two libertarian leaning classmates, but sadly it didn't move them at all. They concluded essentially that political freedom is unnecessary for real freedom™.

EDIT: If anyone is interested in learning more about the very fascinating "libertarian" dictatorship in Chile, and how it was implemented with the help of Milton Friedman, I suggest checking out Naomi Kline's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She's definitely a leftist, and so it should be read with her bias in mind, but she's a fantastic writer and journalist and there's enough factual information to form your own perspectives on the matter without relying completely on her analysis.

u/drownme · 5 pointsr/worldnews

And read the Shock Doctrine. Some of Klein's arguments are iffy, but on the whole it is possibly the saddest book I have ever read.

u/fivehundredpoundpeep · 5 pointsr/lostgeneration

LOL this is a small Midwestern town, but no not San Francisco,I'd be homeless there. But it is like San Francisco, wealthy people from a huge metro city come here with their second vacation homes. Most of the populace is at the six figures level. I can't name where I am at, but think this place has the golf courses, expensive spas, etc etc. Yes many of these are very religious conservative wealthy people. I come out of a more well off family and know for a fact many got jobs via connections. I was the scapegoat so not allowed to share in the "wealth" so to speak. I have a few Baby Boomer friends, they get upset when I talk about generations, I understand, there are exceptions to all generational generalities, but I have to admit when I read this book, I agreed with a lot of it.

https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

u/T_4_R · 5 pointsr/sandiego

I am working my way through this book. Highly recommend it.

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

u/MauriceReeves · 5 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

Well, you're not far off. This book is very popular in libertarian circles: https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232

u/-tactical-throw-away · 5 pointsr/The_Donald

Economics in One Lesson should be required reading for all. Most people only look at the seen costs of projects but are ignorant of the unseen costs.

u/ashmoran · 5 pointsr/btc

The advantages of learning about economics go way beyond understanding Bitcoin.

Economics (in the school started by Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, etc), is the study of how people act in order to achieve happiness. It asks: given people have certain goals (but without making any judgements on what those are), and limited time and resources to achieve them, how should they act to maximise their satisfaction? Even a man alone on a desert island is acting economically: should he spend another hour making shelter, another hour catching fish, or another hour relaxing in the sun? The economics of trade is built on top of this. Will one person with too much fish, and another with too much wood, discover they're both happier after trading than they were before, even though the total amount of wood and fish in existence has not changed? Indeed, the most important work on economics by Mises is called simply Human Action.

A few years ago I came across a book (Economics in One Lesson) which began with the following foreword:

>I strongly recommend that every American acquire some basic knowledge of economics, monetary policy and the intersection of politics with the economy. No formal classroom is required; a desire to read and learn will suffice. There are countless important books to consider, but the following are an excellent starting point: The Law by Frédéric Bastiat; Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, What Has Government Done to Our Money? by Murray Rothbard; The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek, and Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan.
>If you simply read and comprehend these relatively short texts, you will know far more than most educated people about economics and government. … If you care about the future of this country, arm yourself with knowledge and fight back against economic ignorance.

I did exactly this and read them one by one. I summed up my findings in this blog post. I've found the books in the list above enough to defend against the biggest and most common fallacies you see in the news. I highly recommend reading at least one, if not all of them, and Economics in One Lesson is the one I recommend most.

u/me_gusta_poon · 5 pointsr/JoeRogan

You listen to those clowns at Chapo Trap House? Please do yourself and the world a favor and buy yourself one of these

u/caboose1234 · 5 pointsr/AdviceAnimals

Ha, you're funny. Let's go over these.
Credit Rating: I can argue this was inevitable from the way things were going when Obama assumed office. You may argue it was not. This is not something I feel can be argued effectively.

Unemployment If you can look at that graph and tell me you still think it doesn't look better under Obama, I will call you a liar.

Gas was artificially low for a tiny period of time. A few months before that is was well over four dollars a gallon.

Debt I will agree has gone out of control and needs to be reigned in. Unfortunately a vast bulk of this is medicare and no one will touch that.

For the wars I'd rather see troop deployment numbers than number of wars.

Budget is congress. There is no argument for this. The creator of this graph was an idiot for including it.

By the way, statistics lie very easily. Read a book

u/Whiggly · 5 pointsr/politics

This should be required reading.

But yeah, it's a little freaky how many people simply replace theology with science to form arguments about things they don't actually comprehend. That's not disparage science or scientists in general. But there's a lot of ignorant people who believe things not because they heard what scientists said and went and read about their work and examined what they did and tried to actually understand what was found, but because "science said so." Sometimes that can be abused... see the anti-vax movement.

u/Mithryn · 5 pointsr/IAmA

The infographic, frame by frame

I'm a data analyst by profession, and this book would help anyone understand what is going on here.

Not because mormons are all liars, far from it, they are some of the most honest people, but the newsroom likes to juggle statistics. Every piece of information individually is true, but when placed next to each other they build a picture that is deceptive.

Frame 1: Sacrament meeting attendance "100%"

This is straight out deceptive

The Numerator here is "Active mormons" and the Denominator here is "Active Mormons". Now my wife is an active mormon, and she misses every once in a while so on top of measuring the same number on the top and on the bottom, they've also rounded up.

Frame 2: 1.3 million worship services: Straight forward, take the number of chapels in service x the number of weeks in the year. Somehow I think it will still fall short of 1.3 million. Let's check: 21,335 church units x 52 = 1,109,420. I'm not sure how they get 1.3 million, but it's > 1 million Close enough.

Members believe

They do believe in the bible as well as the book of Mormon, and Christ is mentioned that frequently, which is fascinating because 2/3's of the book occurs before Jesus is born. In fact, Mary is given by name hundreds of years before she was born, and John the baptist's exact phrases are quoted hundreds of years this should give one pause.

9 out of 10 members pray daily This is taken from active temple-recommend holders, or the most faithful of the members, certainly out of that "regular attendence" number above, these people are probably only half. Denominator units matter.

4th largest church here is where the deception begins. Because those "member" numbers above were only for active people, but to get the "Largest in the U.S." status they claim here, they include anyone who was ever a member. i.e. babies who never went to church, individuals who died until they are 110 years old, people who have resigned from the church. census records indicate that only 5 million members are active

According to the study

Mormon's placed 3rd, which is impressive, right after atheists and agnostics. Interesting tidbit

77% of members attend weekly again, one must ignore the 2/3rd of members who no longer self-identify as members, who were included in the 4th largest calculation. Members who self identify attend church more regularly. Imagine if catholics could remove from their denominator everyone who doesn't attend regularly from their attendance calculations!

73% listed marriage

Again, we're looking at the top of the top members. These members hold recommends and were probably already married. We're not asking kids if they are going to get married, we're asking already married people if marriage was a top goal. The idea that 27% of them do not have it as a goal should be telling.

96% donate These donations are required to be counted as an active member. They don't donate free-willing, they give money because it is required, like a tax, for membership.

80% donate to non-religious causes The Boy Scouts of America is closely tied (most would say owned) to the LDS church. Most of the "Non-religious" donations go to the Boy Scouts, which are allowed to use the church buildings for fundraisers, and to request funds twice a year in church. This year, my local authority (The Bishop) gave a talk in Sunday about the importance in donating to the friends of scouting program.

70% participate in religious volunteering again, most active members, but yes, they are excellent at volunteering. I have to wonder if they include volunteering at church run facilities (Such as the welfare farms) in this number.

Fasting this is true that they fast once a month, and donate the value of two meals (Usually much more) to the church (not to any charity, to the church). The church then puts this money into an interest bearing account for 3 years, and finally allows it to be spent at the end of those three years, when a bishop makes a request. This money is used for things such as reformation of gays at private company camps. Interest spun off the money is used in for profit ventures such as the mall. Most members do no know how their fast offering money is used.

More members live outside the U.S.

It was just discovered that almost 1 million members in Brazille do not exist. I would suggest that this is using global numbers including inactives to get this total, but if we are to use the "Active membership" numbers from above, we'd find that most members are not only in the U.S., but in Utah.

I don't know where they get the 28,000 congregation number, as I took my 21,000 congregation number directly from the 2012 conference report. Unless we built 7,000 ward houses in the last few months, I am suspicious of this number.

Total Church Membership as mentioned before, this includes anyone who was ever baptized whether they left, died until 110, etc. This is not the denominator for most the statistics on this infographic.

185 countries this is an accurate number by everything I could find.


u/MiltonFreedMan · 5 pointsr/Libertarian

Free to Choose

and Basic Economics

More modern look at the current state of the US - By the People

u/farewell_traveler · 5 pointsr/politics

A few white Pastors I know are becoming more vocal and critical regarding POTUS and Friends, but in general I've found that while the conversation can be had, its next to impossible to actually change anyone's mind. Of course, we could just chalk it up to my poor persuasion skills.


It's truly tragic that the Republicans grabbed the 'God' theme. Sure, sure, we wanted to avoid the domino effect and wanted to unite the country, but hey, guess what? Jesus mentioned something about preaching to ALL nations, so I'd think that'd include communists and even countries labeled as an 'enemy'.


I'd also want to suggest that there are plenty of 'phony' Christians out there who are warping the image of "Christians voting for Trump", but I've met enough 'real' Christians who voted Trump. Something about economics and saving babies. It'd be nice if they read some literature, such as Basic Economics so that they'd actually have a basic understanding of the topic, and maybe even Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger so that they can better understand how well they truly have it (and might even stop griping about 'government handouts').


Despite the uphill battle, I'd encourage the conversation. Best case, they learn that Jesus wasn't a rich white man who bought off the Pharisees and only loved English-speaking peoples of pale complexion. Apologies for the minor rant, I'm somewhat annoyed with the world on this fine morning.

u/FelixFuckfurter · 5 pointsr/SeattleWA

You want evidence that people buy less of something that costs more?

OK.

u/FirstAmendAnon · 5 pointsr/politics

While I do not disagree, it is Capital*

read this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X

u/CatoFromFark · 5 pointsr/CatholicPolitics

Geez, where to start?

First of all, since WWII there has only been one election decided by 10% or more, and that was Reagan. Every other election has been nearly 50/50 between the two parties. No matter the changes in demographics, which states voted what, which issues matter, etc. Always basically a coin toss as to who wins.

So to say "We are imploding as a country" is just hyperbolic idiocy. We are, as we have been for 70 years, divided in half. Seriously, just stop. If the election results on one hand or the "protests" on the other cause you to think anything real has changed, grab some smelling salts, grab your fainting couch, grab a Xanax, get a therapist, whatever, but seriously stop being such a drama queen. Half the county is Republican, as it has been for nearly a century, and the Democratic left is a bunch of cry babies, as they have been since 1969 at the latest. Just stop.

Second, this whole massive angst is, again, such a great example of why democracy is not a great idea. It takes EVERYTHING related to government - law, economics, foreign policy, war, whatever - and transforms it into an ideological statement about life, the universe, amd everything. It makes it such a bigger deal than it ever would otherwise be. As everyone, from democracy's supporters to its critics acknowledge. It's not that important. Just let it go.

u/carlivar · 5 pointsr/politics

You think Bernanke is concerned with income equality? His monetary policy is designed to keep the "too big to fail" banks as healthy as possible. He is the banks' #1 crony.

I highly, highly suggest you read a couple books:

End the Fed

and

The Creature from Jekyll Island

The second book is especially interesting. It was the banking elite that wanted the Federal Reserve. Binding money to a commodity like gold restricts any sort of control of monetary policy. That is why Nixon ended Brettan Woods in '71 as well.

u/maelfyn · 5 pointsr/reddit.com

If you enjoyed this short movie, and you'd like more detail, I'd recommend checking out this book as well. I read this 608-page book in 2005 and I loved it. This movie is very impressive because it condenses 608 pages of information into a 30-minute movie.

u/stairmaster · 5 pointsr/finance

This book explores the histories of the various central banks and monetary policy in the US (yes there were central banks before the Fed, including when their was one in the Confedaracy). The author will sometimes get a little caught up in conspiracy stuff at points, but overall a very fascinating read.

u/BangkokPadang · 5 pointsr/AnythingGoesNews

They were intentionally created with the word "Federal" in them so people would think the government was running them.

EDIT: Anyone who wants to know more should read "The Creature From Jekyll Island" It is an in-depth exploration of the creation of The Federal Reserve, and is eye opening.

u/q_pop · 5 pointsr/UKInvesting

Over at /r/ukpersonalfinance we have a small "recommended reading" list that's worth looking at.=: http://www.reddit.com/r/ukpersonalfinance/wiki/faq#wiki_recommended_reading

> Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham
>
> This book was written by the father of "value investing", and the mentor of Warren Buffett, who is widely accepted to be the world's most successful investor.
>
> It was originally published in 1948, but Ben Graham updated it periodically over the years, and it stands as true today as it ever has.
>
> Beating the Street - Peter Lynch
>
> Published in 1994, this is arguably showing its age more than Intelligent Investor. Either way, valuable reading from one of the best managers of money in the past few decades.
>
> Naked Trader - Robbie Burns
>
> Subtitled "How anyone can make money trading shares", this is an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek account of one financial journalist's attempt to quit his job and make £1,000,000 using a short-to-medium term trading strategy. Not very scientific, but an interesting counterpoint to the previous recommendations.
>
> Smarter Investing - Tim Hale
>
> The ultimate counterpoint to attempting to "beat the markets" - after spending 15 years working in active fund manager, Tim Hale concluded that the best outcomes for most investors in most situations would be a simple portfolio of "passive" investments (that is, funds which attempt to track a market, rather than outperform it). This style is favoured by the likes of Monevator, and many of the subscribers here.
>
> Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder letters - Warren Buffett
>
> Not a book, but a series of essays over the years from the world's most successful investor. Makes interesting reading! Notably, the 2014 letter (not published in the above link but published here in abridged form) implies that he now feels most investors would be best served by low-cost trackers.
>
> The Financial Times guide to investing - Glen Arnold
>
> A great starter guide, going from the very basics (why businesses need shareholders) to more in-depth explanations of different types of investment, and step-by-step guides on how to execute trades.
>

u/zpenacho · 5 pointsr/personalfinance

Calculate out/project your monthly expenses and multiply them by 3-6. Then start saving that amount of money in a savings account. If for some reason you lose your job or something happens (your car breaks down, you have a medical bill) you can use this money to keep yourself from going into debt. When the emergency has passed, replenish the savings account.

Once that's established setup a Roth IRA and start contributing to it and investing.

If you're serious about trading, read these two books in this order before proceeding:


https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101

https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661

u/publius_lxxii · 5 pointsr/IAmA

>>Read the intelligent investor After you finish it, ...

>Warren Buffet loves that book.

That's a minor understatement.

Warren Buffett named his son, Howard Graham Buffett, after the author. No joke.





u/pokemong · 5 pointsr/IWantToLearn

Have a look at this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intelligent-Investor-Benjamin-Graham/dp/0060555661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300704487&sr=8-1. It is written by the guy who taught Warren Buffet to invest and mostly covers the general approach and mechanics of investing in fundamentals. It's the bible of personal investing. I would check out the links other redditors provided for the very basics, then read this book to understand the overarching concepts. Good luck!

u/beavioso · 5 pointsr/AskReddit

Warren Buffett, richest guy in the world at one point, now probably in second or third believes in smart investing. He went to Columbia University in NYC to learn directly from Benjamin Graham and David Dodd. So, you couldn't go wrong by reading or skimming The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham before you seek a financial investor. See if your local library has a newer edition (it will include a discussion on newer securities, such as Mutual Funds, etc.).

u/bbqbot · 5 pointsr/investing

Go read Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor for everything you need to know about value investing. Buffet claims he won't ever write a book since everything is in there (also, author is the guy who Warren learned from).

Excellent book.

u/stringdom · 5 pointsr/askscience

It's the blog of the author, and that's the first chapter of his whole book where you can find references to further reading. The main issue is about the fundamental differences between animal fats and proteins versus vegetal fats and proteins and how they're metabolized in completely different ways by the body. This among hundreds of other bits of information, especially the critics upon ethical and social aspects of vegetarianism and ecological concerns like sustainability itself. Like I said in another comment, veganism is better than the average post-industrial world diet but is no better than a healthy omnivorous diet. Furthermore, vegan diet is extremely easy to mess up and end up hurting yourself and is mostly impossible to attain a perfect vegetarian diet without chemical supplements of nutrients.

EDIT: Further read: New York Times article can be backed up with this article.

Additional data

There's also the issue of what does a true vegetarian diet consist of. Eggs or milk count? yogurt? fish? bugs? Morally would you renounce to reading books, using plastics, wearing leather, and consuming certain medicines and other product produced out of farm animals? how does this would play out on an ideal Vegan world?

u/MarcoVincenzo · 5 pointsr/Paleo

Go visit them before you eat them. See them being treated well and having good lives even though (because?) they're being raised to be our food. It's the cycle of life, they eat their food, we eat them--and, eventually we die and rot and become plant food and it starts all over again.

Edit: you might also want to take a look at Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability.

u/SergeiGolos · 5 pointsr/Fitness

Out of curiosity, the fact that you are vegan, is it a health life style choice, or are you not eating meat and animal products because of a moral objection?

If it is simply a health choice, i recommend reading the book Vegetarian Myth this might help. If it is a moral objection to eating meat, can't really help you, but solute your resolve.

Also, 40 min HIIT, either you are an animal or you are not giving the proper intensity. HIIT workouts shouldn't really last longer then 15 - 20 minutes. Tabata for example is ideal to only last 4 minutes.

Anyways best of luck to you.

Edit: spelling

u/biba8163 · 5 pointsr/CryptoCurrency

> Dogecoin is up 75% in nine days. A nocoiner told me that's a reason why crypto is a complete joke. What do I say back?

Vitalik Buterin kept referencing this book in his tweets:

Debt: The First 5,000 Years

It's interesting throughout history what has been accepted and worked as money/currency. I think that we only have recent history as a reference so only trust government issued fiat which keeps having diminishing purchasing power because of its endless supply.

Basically it seems anything can work as a currency as long as there is network effect and trust is developed. There's even examples of silver that is stored but never ever even moved that act as a store of value while grains act the medium of exchange that are back up by silver in Sumerian civilization.

u/EverForthright · 5 pointsr/AskWomen

Oof, that's a tough one. I really like Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber, This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin and Whipping Girl by Julia Serano.

u/jacobheiss · 5 pointsr/investing

A lot of this comes down to how actively you want to engage in the process, how much of an "enterprising investor" you want to be as opposed to a defensive investor.

For the more defensive position, a lot of /r/investing appreciates Graham's approach emphasizing value, even if a substantial quantity of capital is devoted to playing the market itself (something Graham called speculating). If that approach is interesting to you--which seems likely given your stated desire for low to medium risk with steady growth--then the main adjustments you'd need to make are as follows:

  • Quit sinking the majority of your capital investment into just a couple stocks and stay away from actively managed mutual funds, too. For upwards of 80% to 90% of your capital, go with a balance of indexed stocks and bonds. A common way to do that is to subtract your age from 100 and let the difference be the percentage of stocks; in your case, we're talking 76% of your capital in indexed stocks and 24% in bonds if you did not set aside anything for more speculative forms of investment. If you set aside, say, 10% of your capital for speculation, then we'd be talking about roughly 68% of your total capital in indexed stock and 22% of your total capital in bonds. Periodically buy / sell to maintain this balance; some people who are really disinterested in closely playing the market do this only once or twice per year with long term success. Your goal here is to diversify your capital outlay in one of the most boring yet demonstrably low risk / consistent growth ways out there, and that is a portfolio heavily biased towards indexed stock and bonds. For a text that develops the logic and details of this approach, read The Millionaire Teacher.

  • There are tax advantages to contributing to a 401k; so, a lot of people would council maxing this out. Nevertheless, a 401k is just a type of account; you would still want to follow the principle in the previous point in deciding specifically what sort of investment you want to "point" your 401k towards. (I say this because some people are under the mistaken impression that a 401k is itself a form of investment, e.g. "I have some capital in stocks, some in bonds, and some in a 401k.")

  • With whatever quantity of capital you chose to devote to more speculative activity, say, 10% of your total capital outlay, think of this as your chance to experiment. If you like KO and WEN, great. As frequently as you want to play the markets, whether you want to go long on this stock or short on that, this (and only this) portion of your capital is yours to do with as you please. Have fun, but don't ever allow yourself to pull capital from your more secured forms of investment over to speculative activity if your goal is "low to medium risk with steady growth." Speculation is inherently risky; that's the way it works. And it's not something you can just do every once in a while with consistently solid results; it takes serious devotion.

  • Since you mentioned holiding a normal savings account and/or a CD, I'm going to mention that most folks council retaining upwards of 3 to 6 months worth of expenses in a totally liquid form of savings. This won't make you any money whatsoever (well, unless we wind up with a nice drop in inflation and you can take advantage of some pretty crazy rates select credit unions offer, like Baxter's "Rainy Day Savings" at 3.0% APY). But that's okay; the goal here is to have cash on hand for an emergency. CD rates are pretty terrible across the board right now; so, you're better off going with a high interest online savings account like ING Direct Savings or Discover Online Savings if you don't want to bother with or cannot get credit union membership enabling you to snag those nicer savings account rates.
u/G_Morgan · 5 pointsr/investing

Since you are from the UK I'm going to recommend /r/UKPersonalFinance's bible of Tim Hale's Smarter Investing. That basically explains passive investing, investing aims and timelines, portfolio strategies, etc and also inoculates you against trying to be too clever.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Smarter-Investing-3rd-edn-Decisions/dp/0273785370

You can also read the more general The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham but unless you are going to really dedicate a shed load of time to it Tim Hale's book is precisely what you need. Graham is basically the standard text on the matter but it goes into a lot of detail that isn't really relevant anymore whereas Smarter Investing is primed for modern investing and particularly deals with the UK environment more.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Practical/dp/0060555661

If you are going to invest you absolutely want to use the right platform for it. The UK has a good number of tax efficient platforms for investment. Specifically:

  1. Stocks and Shares ISA - Standard tax free investment account. You can put in £20k annually and will never pay capital gains taxes on the earnings. The new tax year starts on the 5th of April so if you have money to invest now you can put money in without using the limit for 2018-2019.

  2. Lifetime ISA - Similar to a S&S ISA except there is a £4k limit (this counts to your £20k limit but you can only put £4k in a LISA). The big win with a LISA is the government puts in 25% of whatever you put in. The downside is you cannot withdraw money penalty free unless buying your first house or when you are 55. Withdrawing otherwise means you pay a 25% penalty on withdrawal (and because -25% is bigger than +25% you actually lose money). Again a LISA opened now can take £4k before the tax year ends on the 5th. Then you could put in another £4k from the 6th. One other detail is you cannot use a LISA towards a house within 12 months of opening it.

  3. SIPP - A tax free investment pension. You never pay CGT like an ISA and you can put in however much you want. The government will give you back your income tax on up to £40k (that is the amount put in + the returned income tax caps at £40k) though you'll have to self assess to reclaim tax on higher rates (basically the government will put up your tax free limit for next year, the bonus is only directly 25%). You cannot withdraw until you are 55, penalties on early withdrawal are absurd (60%+). At 55 you can immediately take out 25% tax free. Any further withdrawals are taxable income.

    Basically it boils down to SIPP for retirement, LISA for buying a house (and to diversify against potential changes to the SIPP in law), S&S ISA for everything else. The one upside of an ISA over a SIPP is withdrawals from ISAs are never taxable. So using the £4k LISA limit each year makes sense once you are below the upper bands on income tax. As you'll effectively be able to withdraw from your LISA at will from 55.

    //edit - List of platform providers and fees below.

    http://monevator.com/compare-uk-cheapest-online-brokers/
u/Gazzellebeats · 5 pointsr/LetsGetLaid

>I don’t regret having one, just extremely ashamed of being sexual and communicating it to girls and also showing it to the world. Attracting girls’ attention and whatnot isn’t very hard but progressing things to dating, holding hands and eventually sex is impossible. I can’t even call them or message them on Facebook or Whatsapp because I just feel like an idiot for doing so. Making a move in clubs and bars is also difficult although I once got close to leaving with a girl but she didn't want to. I got made fun of a lot growing up for not having a girlfriend and this made me feel like i do not deserve one. It doesn't matter if I've got the green light to go ahead I just feel really ashamed do it. Even something like looking at a fit girl wearing a short skirt makes me feel bad for checking her out and that I shouldn’t be doing it.


I know what you mean. I've been there myself, but even when I was there I was entirely self-aware of my shame and I was skeptical of the validity of my emotional reactions; I realized they were ingrained. Being aware of your emotional reactions allows you to be emotionally proactive. Your sex-negative problem is mostly an emotional issue, and not much else, right? I've been there. I wouldn't doubt that you are also decent looking and have both latent and actualized social skills. Most intelligent introverts have a lot of potential to be who they want to be because they know themselves more deeply than others. You must use your introverted nature to your advantage and recognize the differences in others and yourself. In all honesty, there are an infinite number of unwritten rules; everyone's abstract/emotional logic is different. Many of them are foundational and predictable, however; including yours and mine. Like anything else, being emotionally predictable is not a black/white issue. It is a grey area, and you have to balance your reliability with creativity.


Being made fun of for not having a girlfriend is just as sexist as being made fun of for not having a boyfriend; gender equal too. Were you ever shamed for not having a boyfriend? It's clearly a matter of groupthink and extroverted style; not for everyone. Dating relationships, for extroverts especially, are often attention-getting and showy. They wear their relationships like trophies won. Usually introverts prefer a more private relationship because they have less social desire and are often shamed because of it. Introverts are “themselves” more often in private. Extroverts are “themselves” more often in public. There is no shame deserved either way, regardless of popular opinion. Both styles have their strengths and weaknesses, and you should try to introject some of the traits that you enjoy in others; regardless of type. That is how you become balanced.


>I’m receiving counselling from a pastor who advocates the whole “no sex before marriage” thing and believes that people should only date to get married and sex is only for making kids which is stupid IMO because I do not plan on getting married anytime soon.


Counseling from a Catholic pastor? Watch out, that is one of the most notorious sex-negative societies out there. They own the abstinence-only charade while they parade horribles. Marriage is not the answer to anything; it is an institution of the state. Anything else attached is sentimental.


If you haven't already, I recommend doing an in-depth study of animal sexual behaviors; especially the most intelligent animals. All animals have sex for pleasure, but some animals are only driven to have sex at certain times of the year; humans are on a 24/7 system.


>I’ve tried the no fap route and gotten very high days counts but that hasn’t really helped me at all.


Sexual frustration doesn't help anyone. If you are mindful, then you can use your libido to further your goals, but it is not an all-cure.


>Got any sources to help overcome sex-negative perspectives? I’m interested in recreational sex not baby making sex.


Absolutely. I recommend starting with actual sex science and learning about male and female psychology and neurology. Then work your way into reading about sex culture. You should also study developmental psychology as you will probably need the clinical context in order to objectively self-evaluate your childhood influences; it is necessary for self-therapy. The best therapy will always be self-therapy; no one will ever know you better than yourself.


Evolutionary Science and Morals Philosophy:

The Selfish Gene

The Moral Landscape

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do?


Sex Psychology, Science, and Neurology:

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

The Female Brain

The Male Brain

Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love

What Do Women Want

Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between)

Sex: The world's favorite pastime fully revealed


Behavioral Psychology and Abstract Economics:

How Pleasure Works

Freakonomics

Quiet: The Power of Introverts In A World That Can't Stop Talking

Thinking Fast And Slow

We Are All Weird


Developmental Psychology:

Nurture Shock

Hauntings: Dispelling The Ghosts That Run Our Lives


Empathy Building:


Half The Sky

The House On Mango Street

Me Before You

The Fault In Our Stars

Also check out James Hollis' Understanding The Psychology of Men lecture if you can find it.



Movies: XXY, Tom Boy, Dogtooth, Shame, Secretary, Nymphomaniac, Juno, Beautiful Creatures, and The Man From Earth.



All of these things are related, but it is up to you to make the connections; pick and choose which material suits your interests best. These are the things that came to mind first, and they have all influenced my perspectives.

u/RockyMcNuts · 5 pointsr/Economics

These are not finance books, but popular books on behavioral economics by leading academics

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast And Slow (a classic, I think)
http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555

Richard Thaler, Cass Sunstein - Nudge
http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/014311526X

Dan Ariely - Predictably Irrational
http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0061353248

u/Geistbar · 5 pointsr/worldnews

A "purely capitalist" economy is impossible, because the end point relies on ideal market characteristics: all competitors and consumers having access to perfect information, and that all actors are 100% rational.

For the first, companies will not offer that, nor will consumers have the resources or time available to themselves to acquire it. Consider, for example: where did the milk from your fridge come from? who shipped it to the grocery store? how much did the farmer get paid? how much waste does cow -> milk process produce? all of those could be or are pertinent questions to some people, and are not trivial to determine. Now extrapolate that out to everything you buy. In most cases, we only have the information we do have because of government intervention.

For the second, humans do not act 100% rationally when making purchases. There's a fantastic book on it. One of the examples that works very well here was the way humans respond to "free". In a study, they gave out Amazon gift cards: a $10 gift card for $1, or a $20 gift card for $8 (limit 1 choice), most people chose the latter, as that has the maximum benefit to the purchaser ($9 of benefit vs $12). After lowering the price on each by $1, most people took the former, even though the latter offered a greater value -- a net gain of $13 instead of $10.

Pure capitalism is like pure communism: sure, it sounds great on paper, but in practice it's impossible to attain and significantly more flawed than a hybrid system.

u/GOD_Over_Djinn · 5 pointsr/Economics

Out of all of those, which would you say are frequently underrepresented in MSM? It seems like the first one is pretty readily parroted by everyone as though it is some grand indictment of supply and demand (it's not) -- try googling the phrase "perfectly competitive markets don't exist". Freakonomics did a pretty good job of popularizing the idea of externalities. Books like Nudge and Predictably Irrational have done a pretty good job of popularizing the recent ideas of behavioural economics. And what to do about natural monopolies (or what even constitutes a natural monopoly, in the real world) is still very much a matter of debate; it's not like there's a definitive answer to that.

u/wingzeromkii · 5 pointsr/Android

If you find this interesting, you might want to check out his book, Predictably Irrational. It's full of interesting examples like this where your mind works in ways that you might not expect.

u/Kellivision · 5 pointsr/infj

Recommended Reading:

u/not-a-jerk · 5 pointsr/psychology

Obviously everyone has their favourites. My primary areas of research are cognitive bias and relational psychology, so I'd recommend starting with:

Cognitive Bias

  • Stumbling on Happiness (book)
  • Predictably Irrational (book)

    Relational Psychology

  • Close Encounters (book)
  • Science of Relationships (website)
  • Not A Jerk (blog, not exclusively psych)

    Rationality

  • Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (free ebook)
  • Less Wrong (website)

    For maximum enjoyment, I'd suggest Stumbling on Happiness or Methods of Rationality, they're both very well written and entertaining reads.

    Finally, if you start looking up references and papers (and if you're interested in this, you will), then grab a copy of zotero. A good citation manager is an absolute joy.

    Disclosure: I'm a member of the International Association for Relationship Research, which is responsible for the Science of Relationships. I'm the primary author for Not A Jerk. Links to Amazon include my affiliate ID.
u/TheFeshy · 5 pointsr/TrueAtheism

> simply inquiring to your own experience of being. Turning attention inwards and playing around, trying to discover something.

This is introspection, not spirituality. Or, on a deeper and more scientific level, psychology and neurology. Our personalities and "selves" are made up of numerous sub-parts - every day experiences that pit those parts against each other are common. Like when we want that cookie, but don't want to get fat. But we can probe those parts much more thoroughly, and even selectively disable or trick or occupy one of those sub-parts. You get fascinatingly different answers if you ask people certain questions while they are also continuously adding one to a number every few seconds as opposed to a normal state, because the "consciously considering" part of their brain is distracted and other parts do their best.

Our sense of position is one such part of our personality. It can also be fooled, which leads to some odd experiences (feeling "out of body" for instance) - but never ones that actually violate what you could do normally - that is, you may feel as if you're floating above the room, but you still can't see behind you or on top of objects too high to see.

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran actually devised an experiment that ended in people feeling as if the table they were sitting at was part of themselves.

These experiences are a "spiritual" feeling to some people; but spirituality does not provide us with tools to probe them more deeply, or come to a better understanding.

But all of that is just the start; for a fascinating taste of how the sub-parts of our mental heuristic algorithms interact, I suggest this book

u/CuriousGrugg · 5 pointsr/psychology

>A lot of modern psychology and neuroscience appears to be neglecting the concept of the unconscious mind.... Psychology is so determined to get religion out of science that it cannot allow for the concept of the unconscious

I honestly cannot imagine how you came to this conclusion. There is no question at all among psychologists that unconscious processes play an important role in cognition. Every single popular cognitive psychology book I can think of (e.g. 1 2 3 4) discusses the importance of unconscious processes.

u/drtrave · 5 pointsr/Entrepreneur

Your question is very important. Especially for early stage or even first-time founders, who don't have the right support network yet. There are many more resources like Facebook groups, and youtube channels that you can leverage to learn more about entrepreneurship, specific skills, and industries. Let me know if you're looking for something more specific. I'd be more than happy to give you additional pointers.

 

Here is a list of resources that I found very helpful on my journey:

 

Forums
 

Reddit: I was impressed with the quality and depth that you can get by asking meaningful and targeted questions in the right channels such as r/entrepreneur and r/startups.

 

Podcasts
 

All of the podcasts provide a great learning experience through case studies, founder interviews, and startup pitches. Believe me when I say that whatever challenge you're having someone more experience can very likely help you.

 

  1. Jason Calacanis: this week in startups
     

  2. Tim Ferriss: The Tim Ferriss Show
     

  3. James Altucher: The James Altucher Show

     

    Newsletter
     

    Launch Ticker News: One of the best newsletters out there that captures the latest tech and business news sent to your inbox several times per day.

     

    Blogs
     

  4. Andrew Chen
     

  5. Entrepreneurship Unplugged

     

    Books
     

  6. Roger Fisher: Getting to Yes
     

  7. Dale Carnegie: How to Win Friends and Influence People
     

  8. Dan Ariely: Predictably Irrational

  9. Eric Ries: [The Lean Startup] (https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1522354359&sr=8-2&keywords=the+lean+startup)

  10. Noam Wasserman: The Founder's Dilemmas
u/Order_Orb · 5 pointsr/socialism

Historical inaccuracies in a Hollywood movie? Never!

>Germany controlled some 36 percent of European wealth by 1940, while the Soviet Union possessed about 28 percent (see Table 3.3). In the spring of 1940, Germany conquered Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Norway and immediately began exploiting their economies, adding to its wealth advantage over the Soviet Union.^65 The Wehrmacht then invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, and within six months Germany controlled nearly all Soviet territory west of Moscow, which was prime real estate. By late 1941, the Soviet Union had lost territory that held 41 percent of its railway lines, 42 percent of its electricity-generating capacity, 71 percent of its iron ore, 63 percent of its coal, and 58 percent of its capacity to make crude steel.^66 In the spring of 1942, the Nazi war machine further extended its reach by driving deep into the oil-rich Caucasus region. The Soviet Union lost roughly 40 percent of its national income between 1940 and 1942.^67 Germany appears to have held more than a 3:1 advantage in economic might over the Soviet Union by 1942 (see Table 3.4).

>Despite Germany's profound advantage in latent power, the Soviet war economy amazingly outproduced the German war economy over the course of the war and helped shift the balance of power in the Red Army's favor. As described earlier, the Soviet Union produced 2.2 times as many tanks as Germany and 1.3 times as many airplanes between 1941 and 1945. What is most astonishing is that the Soviets even outproduced the Germans in the early years of the war, when German control of Soviet territory was at its peak and the Allied bombing campaign was having barely any effect on the German war economy. The Soviet Union, for example, produced 24,446 tanks in 1942; Germany produced 9,200. The ratio of artillery pieces for 1942 was 127,000 to 12,000 in the Soviets' favor.^68 This asymmetry in weapons production eventually led to a significant Soviet advantage in the balance of ground forces. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Soviets had a slight advantage in number of divisions - 211:199 - the key indicator of military strength. By January 1945, however, there were 473 Soviet divisions and only 276 German divisions, and the average Red Army division was far better equipped with weapons and vehicles than the average Wehrmacht division.^69

>How did the Soviet Union manage to produce so much more weaponry than a much wealthier Nazi Germany? One possible answer is that the Soviet Union spent a larger percentage of its available wealth on the military than did the Third Reich. But in fact Germany devoted a slightly larger percentage of its national income to defense than did the Soviet Union. The German advantage in defense spending over the Soviets in 1942, for example, was 63 to 61 percent; in 1943, it was 70 to 61 percent.^70 The Allies' strategic bombing campaign might well have hurt German war production in the last months of the war, but as noted above, the Soviet Union was turning out greater numbers of weapons than Germany long before the bombing campaign began to have any significant effect on German output. The Soviet effort was also helped by the U.S. Lend-Lease program, although that aid accounts for only a small percentage of Soviet output.^71 The main reason that the Soviet Union produced so many more weapons than Germany is that the Soviets did a much better job of rationalizing their economy to meet the demands of total war. In particular, the Soviet (and American) economy was far better organized than the German economy for mass producing weaponry.^72

[Source.]
(http://books.google.com/books?id=lDzCD_C_ipoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=John+Mearsheimer&hl=en&sa=X&ei=EYHYU4PyFMKPyASh5YHgBA&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=snippet&q=soviet&f=false)

See also:
Accounting for War: Soviet Production, Employment, and the Defence Burden, 1940-1945 by Mark Harrison

The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze

u/BionicTransWomyn · 5 pointsr/DebateFascism

>The Gross National Product had increased by ten-fold in 1938

GDP alone is hardly the measure of the health of an economy in this case. If you look at official numbers, about 10% of that GDP was tied into direct rearmament efforts. That doesn't include all the short-term borrowing that the Nazis had to do to push rearmament even further (ie: MEFO bills).

In addition to that, a lot of spending and investment was ancillary to the armament industry, for example while not counted as a direct military expenditure, the financing for expanding civilian truck factories. Or efforts in production of synthetic oil.

I also find it funny you used the GDP graph from the Economy of Nazi Germany wiki page, but clearly did not read the page. Let me help you out:

>The Nazis believed in war as the primary engine of human progress, and argued that the purpose of a country’s economy should be to enable that country to fight and win wars of expansion.[4] As such, almost immediately after coming to power, they embarked on a vast program of military rearmament, which quickly dwarfed civilian investment.[5] During the 1930s, Nazi Germany increased its military spending faster than any other state in peacetime,[6] and the military eventually came to represent the majority of the German economy in the 1940s.[7] This was funded mainly through deficit financing before the war, and the Nazis expected to cover their debt by plundering the wealth of conquered nations during and after the war.[8] Such plunder did occur, but its results fell far short of Nazi expectations.[9]

So why is this bad? Because weapons do not increase capital, they do not improve the standard of living, once they are produced, without a war, they do not create jobs. So tying a majority of your economy in military spending is really a dumb move.

Also there's a bunch of other issues like shortages of raw materials, the maintenance of the Gold Standard (lul), the terribad export policy of the Nazis, the mounting debt, the shortage of foreign exchange, etc.

If you really want to learn about the economy of Nazi Germany, read Tooze, who authored pretty much the best book on the subject, instead of a 2h30 Youtube video.

https://www.amazon.ca/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208

u/ADF01FALKEN · 5 pointsr/pics
u/WhereCanILearnR · 5 pointsr/badeconomics
u/the_popcorn_pisser · 5 pointsr/Drama

I'm not going to touch this one because it's already been there for a day but as a Central American let me clear something up:

The shit that happened in North America doesn't even compare to the level of attrocities that happened in the rest of America. It is even argued that the reason why the US and Canada are wealthy and Latin America is a shithole goes to how different both regions were conquered. Up north Europeans were eventually forced to actually trade, down here they literally raped and pillaged and those power structures remain today (https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227)

u/econlurk · 5 pointsr/badeconomics

>a book is the thing you do when you can't get a theory past the peer-review process.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307719227

u/derleek · 5 pointsr/The_Donald

Yup, these are the same people who will gladly condemn Saudi Arabia and praise Iran when it suits their causes. Noam Chomsky's - Manufacturing Consent has a lot to say on this subjeect.

u/stackedmidgets · 5 pointsr/Anarcho_Capitalism
  • Almost everything by Chomsky (it starts to blur together after a while). Those damned nun-killers from the School of the Americas! Killin' nuns like they do! Manufacturing Consent is a great read for any teenager, although limited in its explanatory power. There's a big blind spot in Chomsky in terms of explaining the universities, the foundations, and how they coordinate with the press.
  • Studies in Mutualist Political Economy -- this one's more fun when you don't know the history already
  • Homebrew Industrial Revolution -- this one's fun but somewhat sloppy on technology
  • Illuminatus! -- probably shouldn't suggest this because there's a good chance that your brain will fall out your head after you read it. This book and other Wilson books ought to be controlled substances.
u/moto123456789 · 5 pointsr/urbanplanning
u/HillarysPizzaParty · 5 pointsr/conspiracy
u/GooseGooseDucky · 5 pointsr/conspiracy

Yes, Chomsky offers some great insights that amaze one. In our routine lives we never stop to think of things from different perspectives to really figure things out.

That quote came out of his book "The Common Good" but my favorite is his text "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media".

u/Go_Todash · 5 pointsr/worldnews

Noam Chomsky has been talking about this since before most of us were even born.

u/phaNIMAnon · 5 pointsr/The_Mueller

From the top gilded comment on the original thread:

​

"In a nutshell, the classic steering mechanism for public opinion used to be Manufacturing Consent(Chomsky) or Engineering Consent (Bernays) which generates propaganda to achieve more of a public consensus whereas Adam Curtis' HyperNormalisation looks at the shift from that to neutralizing the pubilc into inaction by polarizing them with conflicting information or misinformation (patently false information) so that NO consensus can be reached. Both achieve the same goal of allowing the power elite to carry out the policies they wish while reducing the influence of an ostensibly democratic public which, in conjunction with more and more police state-like authoritarian measures making them more compliant, can no longer tell what is truth and what is misinformation. The public descends into arguing amongst themselves as opposed to those in power.

Edit. I would highjly recommend watching Adam Curtis' famous documentary The Century of the Self which looks at Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud's nephew) and the origins of the consumer society, public relations and propaganda."

​

The referenced material above:


  1. https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499/ref%3Dsr_1_1?ie=UTF8%26s=books%26qid=1274759989%26sr=1-1
  2. http://classes.dma.ucla.edu/Fall07/28/Engineering_of_consent.pdf
  3. https://thoughtmaybe.com/the-century-of-the-self/
u/Bael_Take_The_Wheel · 5 pointsr/fatlogic

Relevant book.

Was written in 1954 and still shockingly relevant.

u/Xenolan · 5 pointsr/atheism

I would definitely say that the Bible is the most Influential book ever written, though humanity would have been a lot better off it it weren't.

Insofar as the most valuable, my vote would go to Principia Mathematica. Although its readership was limited, it was the magnum opus of the greatest scientist who ever lived (Newton was also a colossal dick, but the value and brilliance of his scientific discoveries is unquestionable). With that book, Newton irrevocably took physical science out of the hands of the philosophers and into the hands of the true scientists. It heralded the first real scientific revolution. Newton showed us that we CAN understand the Universe, that mysterious things like gravity and light and the motions of the planets DO have explanations which make sense. And, with the exception of extreme circumstances where one must consider the effects described by Einstein's theories of Relativity, Newton's laws still apply to everything we do today.

One book which should have been on the list is, "How to Lie with Statistics." That one ought to be required reading for every single human.

u/cwmshy · 5 pointsr/Calgary
u/dacian420 · 5 pointsr/canada

This book was the optional reading for my first year stats class. Should have been required.

u/SmogArithmetic · 5 pointsr/politics

The cover is tacky and it was published a little while ago, but I highly, highly, highly recommend: https://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0470067365

The principles in this book are very sound for those of us who do not want to be full-time investors (and who couldn't handle the risk anyway).

u/drunkpotato · 5 pointsr/personalfinance

Please do nothing yet. Please do nothing yet.

I think the other advice in this thread is worthwhile, but I don't think you should follow it YET. There is a great book, the Bogleheads Guide to Investing ( http://smile.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0470067365/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1421501534&sr=8-2&keywords=bogleheads+guide+to+investing ) very down to Earth, and there's a chapter on windfalls.

The first piece of advice is DO NOTHING for 6 months. Don't give it away, don't spend it, don't invest it, literally park it and do nothing. For 6 months. That ought to be enough time to give you some breathing room, learn how the money will be disbursed and what any potential tax liabilities are, and time to consider your options. Also gives you time to browse the personal finance section!

u/europas · 5 pointsr/personalfinance
u/hroushknr · 4 pointsr/investing

I really liked Beyond Paycheck to Paycheck for general personal finance and investing. It assumes absolutely no prior knowledge and really walks you through everything from budgeting to saving to investing to estate planning. I'd start here.

I also liked The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing, which is basically a summary of the low-stress, long-term investing style that the company Vanguard has tried to make possible.

As usual, the For Dummies series also has some very good information, and your library will almost certainly have pretty much any title you want from them.

Good luck!

u/discoganya · 4 pointsr/personalfinance

Converting a 401k to a Roth IRA will trigger tax. So in general it is a bad idea, unless you are in a very low tax bracket today and expect to be taxed higher later in life.

Converting a 401k to a traditional IRA is tax free. But I tend to dislike that also - it increases your "IRA basis" and makes future conversions painful (e.g. backdoor Roth).

Most obvious choice would be to roll over all older 401ks to your current one - but that's only worth it if the current 401k fund choices are better. If you want to do this, please post the fund choices in the 401ks and I can comment on whether a rollover is a good idea.

Easiest option is to do nothing - and that's not a bad idea at $17k in assets. When you get to $50k-100k, read some books, get knowledgeable about investing and make an informed decision.

Good Luck!

u/uselesslogin · 4 pointsr/Bogleheads
u/Dyogenez · 4 pointsr/financialindependence

General Greeting: I'm 34m, engaged, no kids in our plans. Have lived in Orlando for 16 years since college, and have been making websites and working in software engineering since high school. I absolutely love teaching people how to code and lucked into joining Code School (as you would easily discover looking at my post history).

What brought you to /r/fi: After my mom passed away ~11 years ago, I started reading everything I could to understand what to do with the modest inheritance. This led to reading things like The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing, The Millionaire Next Door and eventually MMM which helped refine and shape my view of investing, consumerism and the role of money in my life.

Other hobbies/interests:: I listen to a lot of audiobooks, and challenge myself to read/listen more. Recently started a site (minafi.com) to write about topics different from my day to day -- minimalism, financial independence and mindfulness. It's been fun having another avenue to write about things that are at the top of my mind, and explore something different from programming. Bunch of other common hobbies - CrossFit, board games, cocktails, eating anything and traveling anywhere.


Picture of yourself if you want: Somehow even though I'm crazy open with personal facts, sharing a photo seems quite intimate. I don't think I've done that before on Reddit, but here goes!.

u/ACDCrocks14 · 4 pointsr/investing

Educate yourself before you start blowing money. Go read a book on investing like Bogelhead's Guide. You won't learn anything of value from blowing money on penny stocks, other than not to blow money on penny stocks. Knowledge is power, but you're seeking it in the wrong places.

u/jbomb6 · 4 pointsr/personalfinance

Boglehead's Guide to Investing this book is an amazing comprehensive guide to financial markets, saving, spending, bonds, taxes, etc etc. It is a collective thought project by 3 very wealthy investors with nothing to gain but to teach everyday people about money. It is very well written, well thought out, and covers a lot but does a great job of explaining it to financially illiterate people. I would definitely suggest giving this book a read or at least, checking out a few chapters.

u/gb6011 · 4 pointsr/personalfinance

I'm in a very similar boat and I recommend staying with the target date fund. That's going to be the easiest way to almost guarantee a solid return.

If you want more details I suggest The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle. For me personally it helped shine a light on why target date funds and index funds are so good.

u/frankreyes · 4 pointsr/argentina

Economía e inversiones son dos cosas muy distintas. Los libros de economía que leí están en ingles y son:

u/cthulhucumsicle · 4 pointsr/themountaingoats

I'm a huge fan of JD; but this just doubles-down on my concern that he is ruining his health by being vegan.

Silly list of evidence;

Low energy - need to lean on things to stay up right.

Depressed - Lack of animal based nutrients and healthy fats impacts mental health. I note his older songs seemed to be dark, but on the average less morose. Saw a concert recently and have to admit that I was disappointed he played mostly "sad, relationship songs" and few of his more exciting songs. I really wanted to hear Autoclave and Michael Myers Resplendent but you can't please everyone I understand. Still - I left feeling really down in a way that I did not expect from listening to the albums.

His teeth are falling apart and he doesn't know why - this is often the warning sign that turns vegans into some version of paleo-type eaters. Happened to Robb Wolf, Lierre Kieth, and others.

When I see photos he just doesn't look well. This is what my vegan (not the fat ones that eat vegan junk food but the ones that actually eat vegetables) friends look like - thin but without that warmth in their skin, lines, wrinkles, etc.

u/statoshi · 4 pointsr/investing

As I mentioned in my other comment, here's a breakdown of Bitcoin's security model. Before Bitcoin was created, everyone thought that it was impossible to provide such guarantees. Satoshi's solution to the Byzantine General's Problem was a breakthrough in Computer Science.

"Money" is just a collective agreement that something has value and functions well as a medium of exchange. If you think that money is something that must be provided by a government, I'd recommend that you educate yourself more about the history of money. A book I recommend is Debt: The First 5,000 Years

u/clonal_antibody · 4 pointsr/Kossacks_for_Sanders

Money is a debt obligation. So when we take care of each other we get money. It is not when we get money we will take care of each other. Cart before the horse

u/b_alliterate · 4 pointsr/politics

Oh man. I'm saving a copy of that graph. That's How to Lie with Statistics 101.

u/stef_bee · 4 pointsr/FanFiction

How to lie with statistics.

>"The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify," warns Huff.

u/SomethingMusic · 4 pointsr/AskTrumpSupporters

Very succinct and efficient post!

I also suggest reading The Big Short (the movie helps as well, but comes across as very anti-wall street while the book helps you understand wall street decision making), as the 2007-8 housing market crisis really is still relevant and directly effective Fed Rev policy.

https://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393338827?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

The government is not innocent in this as well, as bond institutions Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were both equally culpable, hence why they no longer exist.

u/ad_tech · 4 pointsr/AskReddit

The Big Short, by Michael Lewis, does a great job explaining some of the causes of the financial meltdown. It's told from the perspective of investors who saw it coming, and put their money where their mouths were.

IMHO, the credit rating agencies, like Standard & Poor's and Moody's, are the primary source of the entire meltdown. They gave top ratings to mortgage investments regardless of the quality of the mortgages. This led investors to sink tons of money into mortgage investments, thinking they were perfectly safe. This drove demand for banks to get more people to sign up for mortgages, whether they were qualified or not. The whole system was based on the premise that housing prices always go up. As soon as they started going down, everything fell apart.

u/mattymillhouse · 4 pointsr/suggestmeabook

The Big Short, by Michael Lewis

Lewis has a gift for explaining complicated concepts. And before he became an author, Lewis actually started his career working on Wall Street (which he chronicled in the book Liar's Poker). In The Big Short, Lewis explains what caused the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-08. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

If you're looking for something a little shorter to give you an idea of how Lewis writes, here's Wall Street on the Tundra, which is an article about how Iceland apparently became one of the richest nations on earth . . . on paper. And how that led to its own financial meltdown.

u/Ruminant · 4 pointsr/Conservative

The financial crisis was not caused by the CRA or anti-redlining litigation. As Wikipedia helpfully summarizes,

> The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission reported in January 2011 that "the CRA was not a significant factor in subprime lending or the crisis. Many subprime lenders were not subject to the CRA. Research indicates only 6% of high-cost loans – a proxy for subprime loans – had any connection to the law. Loans made by CRA-regulated lenders in the neighborhoods in which they were required to lend were half as likely to default as similar loans made in the same neighborhoods by independent mortgage originators not subject to the law."[67] Critics claim that the use of the high-interest-rate proxy distorts results because government programs generally promote low-interest rate loans – even when the loans are to borrowers who are clearly subprime.[152] Several economist maintain that Community Reinvestment Act loans outperformed other "subprime" mortgages, and GSE mortgages performed better than private label securitizations.[2][27]

If you want to understand the behaviors that actually caused the suprime mortgage crisis, I suggest that you read The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. It is an account of the financial crisis from the perspective of a few people who made millions of dollars by shorting (i.e. betting against) the very mortgage-backed securities which caused the crisis. You can read it for free if you have a Kindle and Amazon Prime, or you can check it out from your local library.

Nobody forced these banks to make the terrible subprime loans that caused the collapse. The banks willingly gave mortgages to people that they knew would be unable to repay them. Why? Because the banks wouldn't be on the hook when the mortgages failed. They had invented a bunch of "mortgage-backed securities" (pools of mortgages, and later pools of pools of mortgages) specifically so that they could sell their mortgages (and the risk of people defaulting on those mortgages) to other unsuspecting institutions.

These "financial instruments" were like machines that could turn a pile of crap into 80% gold and 20% crap. The raw material for these machines were mortgages, which is why the subprime lenders wanted to make as many mortgages as they could. They didn't care about the quality of the mortgages that they made, because they were selling the (deliberately-misassessed) risk to other people.

You've probably heard of an insurer called AIG, which the federal government bailed out to the tune of $182 billion during the subprime mortgage crisis. AIG was one of the unsuspecting institutions that bought those bundles of crap mortgages. AIG bought them because the Big Three ratings agencies (Moody's, Fitch Group, and S&P) said the securities were safe investments (I believe they rated many of them as AAA, the same rating given to US government bonds). Of course, the securities weren't actually that safe. One reason for the incorrect ratings was that the investment banks deliberately manipulated their ratings criteria. For example,

> A pool of loans composed of borrowers all of whom had a FICO score of 615 was far less likely to suffer huge losses than a pool of loans composed of borrowers half of whom had FICO scores of 550 and half of whom had FICO scores of 680. A person with a FICO score of 550 was virtually certain to default and should never have been lent money in the first place. But the hole in the rating agencies’ models enabled the loan to be made, as long as a borrower with a FICO score of 680 could be found to offset the deadbeat, and keep the average at 615. [Source: The Big Short]

and

> Eisman learned that the rating agencies simply assumed that the borrower would be just as likely to make his payments when the interest rate on the loan was 12 percent as when it was 8 percent—which meant more cash flow for the bondholders. Bonds backed by floating-rate mortgages received higher ratings than bonds backed by fixed-rate ones—which was why the percentage of subprime mortgages with floating rates had risen, in the past five years, from 40 to 80. [Source: The Big Short]

There were other ways of deceiving the ratings agencies, too. The agencies paid too much attention to the FICO scores, and not enough to the actual credit histories that yielded those scores. So a California grape-picker with a sparse credit history making less than $20k per year could qualify for a very expensive mortgage, because he had never borrowed a lot of money and thus never had a payment to miss or a loan to default on. Worse, the grape-picker might actually be used as the "good" borrower in order to balance out a "bad" lender in the mortgage pool.

Part of the problem is that most of the smart finance people work for the banks instead of the ratings agencies. That's what happens when the banks will pay seven figures and the ratings agencies only five figures. But another issue was that the ratings agencies didn't want to look too closely at these mortgage pools. The ratings agencies were paid by the banks, and so an agency that rated the securities too harshly was an agency that would soon be out of customers. Some employees of the ratings agencies have attested that they were specifically discouraged by their superiors from strictly scrutinizing the securities that they were assigned to rate.

TL;DR: Banks were not forced to issue subprime mortgages. They willingly chose to, because mortgages were the raw material for a Ponzi-scheme collection of mortgage-backed securities. Blame for the subprime mortgage crisis rests primarily on the subprime mortgage lenders and the ratings agencies that enabled them.

edit: typos, removed unnecessary italics

u/karmaecrivain94 · 4 pointsr/france
u/TJ_Floyd · 4 pointsr/AskConservatives

Well, as you probably know these Economic schools of thought are usually associated with some university or group of Economists. For instance, the Chicago School was associated with the University of Chicago. Thomas Sowell is a very popular Conservative economist that adheres to the Chicago School who put out his book Basic Economics a few years ago. Although it's a book about Economics, it's written from a popular perspective meant to appeal to the general layman. Many Libertarians follow the Austrian School and still read the books of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, both unorthodox economists.

Economics is one of those subjects that often takes on an ideological nature. As much as one wants it to remain scientific, people from all creeds are guilty of ideoligising Economics. The Left is not exempt from doing this, either. Marxist Economists still teach the Labor Theory of Value, an idea rejected by mainstream Neoclassical Economics. In fact, Marxists pretty much reject all of Neoclassical Economics in favor of Marx's approach to Economics. I remember listening to some lectures by Richard Wolff, a popular Marxist Economist, and he said when he discusses economics with other Economists they never know what he's talking about, because Marxian economics is so radically different from mainstream economics, since it has different definitions and premises.

> It also seems odd to disagree with the majority of universities teachings.

These schools of thought form due to disagreements in theory and interpreting data. Marxist, Neoclassical, Austrian, Modern Monetary Theorist, etc. economists remain scientific and objective in their approach to Economics, but each have different theories regarding how the Economy works. People tend to latch on to the theories that agree with them or confirm their bias. This isn't just a Conservative thing, it's an everybody thing.

u/adodson · 4 pointsr/obama
u/fapman · 4 pointsr/business

The Chicago School - the people who brought you the bloody revolution in Chile. Nice.

u/veringer · 4 pointsr/me_irl

The boomers nominated and elected the people you are labeling overlords. They enabled their overlordship. They supported (even if tacitly) the policies that these overlords enacted. The overlords are, by and large, themselves boomers.

You're right that it's unfair to lay all the blame on one generation, but they do deserve quite a lot of blame--owing to their disproportionate political weight and cultural influence. I think the better argument is to consider that whatever changes took place, they weren't necessarily done with malice or necessarily differ from counterfactual speculations. That is to say, boomers aren't that unique, and even if their population wasn't so large, reality may have unfolded similarly or worse.

Books have been written on how boomers fucked things up, and I'm sure more will follow. My instinct is that populations of people tend to have similar distributions of personality types that tend to yield predictable patterns through time. Namely, authoritarian followers (representing some significant fraction of people), routinely prop up authoritarian leaders who work to undermine broadly democratic processes. It seems like we take 2 steps forward and 1 step back carrying the vestigial cultural baggage of this primitive instinct. That doesn't just disappear in a generation and won't disappear with gens X, Y, Z either.

u/Jack_Burton1588 · 4 pointsr/Berserk

Ugh. Ok SJW. I dont feel like entertaining you anymore. Here read this , https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232

LEARN SOMETHING.

u/captain_gordino · 4 pointsr/Economics

>Automation — long a force in agriculture and manufacturing — is accelerating in the retail sector, a trend that could hamper efforts to bring down the nation's stubbornly high jobless rate.

This is stupid. See: Economics in One Lesson, chapter 7; the curse of machinery. For anyone on this subreddit who doesn't have that book: Amazon.

u/deadalnix · 4 pointsr/btc

I don't think it is bullshit. This is the value of BTC as money, and money only. Bitcoin is also a store of value, a speculative asset, an edge against mainstream assets, etc...

The amount exchanged on exchange do not really matter as they are off chain and very high velocity, so don't contribute to the value of the asset as money.

Even if I assume your $200M is right, then the points still stands, most of BTC's value do not come from it's monetary use.

EDIT: Getting downvoted for reminding basic economics, bravo bravo ! You guys should spend less time on reddit and start reading this: https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232

u/br0hemian · 4 pointsr/torontoraptors

I get painted as a radical in today's backwards world, but anyone who studies economics knows that politically motivated moves like this have no basis in economic reality. You can write whatever laws you want to write, that's not how the value of the dollar is decided. The purchasing power of the dollar adjusts according to its availability - and a number of other factors. Writing a law as simple minded as "you have to pay people more money" takes away from the purchasing power of the dollar. Although probably not the only factor, your rent went up as much as it did largely due to the increase in minimum wage. This is not "corporate greed" it is a functioning economy. It has been done countless times in human history, and yet here we are, actively continuing the bad practice into 2019 and beyond.

I realize this is not the place to get into a huge conversation about this necessarily, so I will stop myself, but if you or anyone is interested in a grounded view on the nature of an economy, I would highly recommend reading Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt.

u/cryptoglyph · 4 pointsr/boardgames

You need to read this, which you can buy for $0.99 used on Amazon (or probably $10 locally somewhere): http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422488301&sr=8-1&keywords=economics+in+one+lesson

Your arguments do not comport with economics.

u/GrahamAndDoddsville · 4 pointsr/investing

The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060555661/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_3Unbub0KY51BG

u/HonorAmongSteves · 4 pointsr/personalfinance

Investing is a marathon, not a sprint. I'd recommend you read The Intelligent Investor before making any purchases.

u/DirectorCurator · 4 pointsr/financialindependence

How deep down the rabbit hole do you want to go? Buffett himself would recommend you index. But, if you must, start with Ben Graham and move on to learning accounting and then start with Buffett's annual letters.

u/pangolin44 · 4 pointsr/investing

Here's the recommended reading list on this subreddit's sidebar.

I personally started off with Peter Lynch's One Up on Wall Street. It's a good book for beginners to help you start thinking about stocks analytically. Regardless of what you start off with though, definitely follow it up with The Intelligent Investor. That is a fundamental book with some big concepts in there such as "Mr. Market" and "Margin of Safety"... but it's not an easy read until you have some foundation first.

u/eigenman · 4 pointsr/StockMarket

The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham is a must.
http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Practical/dp/0060555661

I also have a PDF copy of Margin of Safety by Seth Klarman.
http://financetrends.blogspot.com/2008/08/seth-klarman-margin-of-safety-pdf.html

u/TOMtheCONSIGLIERE · 4 pointsr/investing

> Or is there something that I am missing.

Yes.

-

So if they have more profits next year, and do the same thing, it happens again and again and again and again. The value goes back up, then it gets distributed out to the SHs. So you have your stock (similar price) PLUS income.

-

I suggest you read this and this.

u/jagershotzz · 4 pointsr/StockMarket

The grandaddy of them all is "The Intelligent Investor" Benjamin Graham. "By far the best book on investing ever written." --Warren Bufett

u/Redebidet · 4 pointsr/investing

If you are looking for forecasts, you will probably read a bunch of investing news sites. They all have forecasts for pretty much everything under the sun, and you will pretty much filter out anything that doesn't say what you want to hear. Don't put much stock into forecasts.

Do yourself a favor and read The Intelligent Investor. It sounds like you're looking to make some quick bucks on some money you don't really need, but that could lead to speculation, not investing, and you could wind up losing a lot more than you think possible.

The book will give you a good idea of how to split your capital between stocks and bonds, and why splitting is a good idea. It will tell you how to evaluate stocks and industries, so when you read about forecasts and what have you, you can actual evaluate what you're being told. It's a good place to start.

If you look to the side bar to the right, there is additional information on how to start out.

u/Snowpocalypse149 · 4 pointsr/intj

You hit the proverbial nail on the head. Make-work bias has been around for centuries and there is usually only temporary unemployment for those whose jobs get replaced by capital. But like you said it's not really worth worrying about at this point.
If anyone has any interest in technological advancement or capital from an economic standpoint, these are some great books to check out:

[Capital in the Twenty-First Century] (http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0ETBP81SYG4890W6R34T)


[The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Second-Machine-Age-Technologies/dp/0393239357/ref=pd_sim_b_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=0N2W244G0SF4XT3Q5MDB)

[The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating/dp/1448659817/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=0Q1BR5DDQRM29TZPTGBN)

u/radong01 · 4 pointsr/educationalgifs

It's true. Only 60 million make it into the top 1%, with $34,000/year. Half of that 1% (29 million) live in the US. The number comes from Branko Milanovic's work, and his book The Haves and the Have-Nots.

Here are some articles on it from well respected organizations:

http://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/inequality-and-rise-global-1-great-new-paper-branko-milanovic

http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/02/27/were-all-the-1-percent/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/garyshapiro/2012/05/30/we-are-the-worlds-one-percent/#7db36adf20f0

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/04/americans-make-up-one-half-of-the-one-percent_n_1183713.html

However, keep in mind they all cite the same source, which is Milanovic and his book, and were all written at around the same time, so I assume it was Milanovic's publisher paying a PR firm to get these written. But that's pretty much how most media works now days. So if you are still skeptical of the number, I suggest reading the book, or finding some of Milanovic's published papers and reading through the methodology used to come up with his numbers.

Another fantastic book on the subject is Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century. I highly recommend reading it. Picketty actually expected huge amounts of controversy when he released his book, and was surprised to find out that not many people disagreed with his methodologies and conclusions. Which is pretty scary in itself.

u/thecat12 · 4 pointsr/TechoBlanco

"Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy" sobre Anonymous. Estaba muy interesante por que, uno, describe lo que ha pasado los últimos 6 años en cuanto a seguridad en línea desde la perspectiva de Anonymous, y dos, por que me tocó vivir muchos de esos momentos en línea y en la vida real con lo de Cientología, Wikileaks, Occupy, etc. 10/10 recomendaría.
Antes de eso: "Social Physics". Dice que podemos usar "big data" para monitorear las interacciones de las personas para tomar mejores decisiones sobre como organizar nuestras empresas, organizaciones, y ciudades. Tipo chido, pero lo que argumenta sobre big data según yo puede exacerbar la desigualdad en poder que ya existe entre los "pudientes/1%/corporaciones" y el resto de la "gente común y corriente". También está el peligro de que los algoritmos que usamos para tomar decisiones no tomen en cuenta muchos factores importantes que igual pueden empeorar la disparidad económica y racial que ya existe. Pero tiene ideas muy interesantes. 8/10 léanlo si le entran a este tipo de cosas.
Siguiente: Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Trata sobre la desigualdad que existe y se ha creado con nuestro sistema económico actual. Viene muy recomendado.

u/TheMacroEvent · 4 pointsr/Economics

This isn't exactly a novel criticism. Thomas Piketty stresses in Capital in the Twenty-First Century that economists have gone too far with mathematical models and more qualitative assessments should be used in developing models.

u/sulla · 4 pointsr/reddit.com

If you're actually ready to question our state religion of democracy, not just joke about it, you might enjoy this 1951 book by "ultraliberal monarchist" Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn.

Short summary: it's not true that the opposite of democracy is dictatorship. The opposite of democracy is the rule of law. Dictatorship, aka Caesarism, is the first cousin of democracy and generally its most stable endpoint.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Democracy: The God That Failed is also worth reading, but it's not on line as far as I know.

No, the fact that these people have German names doesn't mean they're Nazis.

u/emazur · 4 pointsr/Libertarian

The Law by Frederic Bastiat (awesome, short, soooo many quotable quotes)

Healing Our World by Dr. Mary Ruwart (old version available free)

Haven't read any of his books (have listened to many lectures and radio show), but something by Harry Browne should do quite nicely. I've heard great things about Why Government Doesn't Work

Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity - John Stossel (do check out his excellent Fox Business show "Stossel" on hulu.com, and look for his old 20/20 specials on libertarianism - they're fantastic)

good economists: Peter Schiff, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Walter Block

You might be better off waiting til you get more comfortable with libertarianism, but G. Edward Griffin's Creature From Jekyll Island is a must read. It's more about the monetary system and the Federal Reserve than libertarianism in general though.

I haven't read anything that makes a good argument against libertarianism, but can recommend a guy who makes a seemingly good argument against capitalism and for socialism - Michael Parenti. I haven't read any of his pro-socialist books (but have one on foreign policy called The Terrorist Trap which is quite good and very short. Libertarians and socialists tend to agree on not inviting war and not waging war). But I have listened to his pro-socialist lectures - they're well delivered and impassioned and a person who didn't know any better would easily be tempted. They're worth listening to to use his arguments and twist them to actually make the case FOR libertarianism. He'll use some faulty facts/data that leftists typically do such as "Hoover was an ardent free-market advocate and we can blame him and capitalism for causing the Great Depression" (we can blame him for the depression all right (prolonging it, to be specific), not b/c he was a capitalist but b/c he really started all the policies that FDR continued when he got into office)

u/orionquest2016 · 4 pointsr/conspiracy

Every major war started with a false flag or a lie; this includes the Spanish American War, WW1, WW2, Vietnam, and 9/11. The only concern of the powers at be is to maintain control of the world’s resources and the implementation of the petrodollar to our debt holders. NATO is fighting to fulfill Agenda 21/The 2030 Agenda - the controlling of all land and resources, with a much smaller population. This is a 60-100(ish) year long initiative to create a world that is not "for the people".

This guy gives a quick summary of things - I don't necessary think he's completely legit, but research the things he talks about and the people behind them, and the history of the events.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCzR7NCeMYA /

Most people here didn't see a YouTube video or not take their bipolar medicine, they saw some shit; or experienced something, and began to dig into it; the more they dug, the more their view of reality changed. The thing that kept them from feeling crazy, is they found a place like this with people that were drawing the same conclusions.

A few books...

Behold a Pale Horse

Dope, Inc

[The Creature from Jekyll Island](
https://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/091298645X?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=091298645X)

u/iamcitizen · 4 pointsr/AskReddit

Might as well get this one out of the way --> Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

u/ciaphas22 · 4 pointsr/HistoryPorn

Force is less effective than using more subtle means to control the narrative. See Manufacturing Consent

u/pala4833 · 4 pointsr/Amsterdam

So then the video is meaningless. Great.

My statistics 101 course started with the book "How to Lie with Statistics". This would be an excellent case study.

u/Cpt_Syk · 4 pointsr/india

> The new index, proposed by the Rajan committee, is based on averages of ten sub-components

So an IIT and MIT graduate came up with new index to rank states where 1/6 of the humanity resides with varied demographics and index he comes up with is average of 10 unrelated sub-components. Seriously, Raghuram. You are effing RBI governor. I hope you know more mathematics then grade 3 kids.

I don't even need to go out of my way to see the flaw in his index. Just ask any graduate student who has published a paper in peer reviewed conference/journal.

ps -

http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728

I'll just leave it here if anyone is interested. It's humours,informative, very accessible light read on how statistics is misused by reporters and investigators to further their own agenda.

u/postslongcomments · 4 pointsr/news

It depends on what you're using the data for. Both might seem to measure the same thing, but they don't. I went with a "per capita spending" as it points to consumer spending patterns. Plus, I'd guess that the data is much easier to find than something like "drinks consumed per year." Also, since the OP discusses sales I felt it "relevant" in this context. You're looking at it from a "alcohol consumed" standpoint, my method would look at it from a "money spent on alcohol" standpoint. Both are equally valuable and equally useless - depending on how you use the data. Since I'm a data nerd, I'll share my take on it and try to break it down further.

Let's say you go by per capita consumption (what you're describing). With that data, your goal might be to see how many drinks the average American consumes. That data might be valuable for someone in health services - possibly to suggest physical/mental health concerns regarding alcohol consumption. IE, has the rate of alcoholism increased and in what age group (age, socio-economic). Personally, I think it'd be a far more interesting data-set to look at, as the gap between drinks consumed by casual drinkers and alcoholics would probably be quite large. For instance: low cost, high alcohol content products like Steel Reserve, Wild Rose, and Mad Dog 20/20 - ie your homeless/alcoholic products - and plastic bottle liquor would be more heavily weighted while $200 bottles of wine would be considered only a few drinks. Meaning, $15 of MD 20/20 would be more "per capita consumption" than a $200 bottle of wine. Good data for those in health.

If you go by sales per capita, you're moreso looking at something that is valuable from a capitalist/marketing perspective. Basically, you're trying to answer what percentage of income the average American spends on alcohol. It'd be more valuable for businesses trying to determine pricing strategies. Cheap beers/bum wines/plastic bottle liquors would be less impactful as they're cheap. On the other hand, quality wines, craft beers, and other "luxury" wines would be more telling of your more middle-class purchases. I can see this being valuable for businesses determining which markets to target, legislators trying to add alcohol taxes, or even grocery stores determining whether or not to get their liquor sales license.

That's a perfect example of why I love data and the discussion of "how to lie with statistics".. I don't have enough familiarity with the trends on this topic so I don't want to make any erroneous assumptions, but let's talk hypothetically. Let's assume alcohol sales are on the rise, drinks consumed per capita is stagnant, and drunk driving deaths are falling. As I said, I don't want to make assumptions here, so assume that's all hypothetical. An organization like MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) might site sales increases as "evidence that drinking is a problem and on the rise." Is it actually or is it just using a single metric that contradicts more valuable/specific information? In that scenario, to me it'd reveal that consumers are shifting purchasing habits to middle-priced alcohol and getting less drunk. Once again, I am not promoting a political narrative or accusing them of doing that. I just chose a random acronym people are familiar with.

On the other side of the hypothetical, let's assume alcohol sales are falling, but per capita consumption is significantly rising. Legislators might use sales figures to argue that alcoholism isn't as big of a concern anymore and thus we should cut treatment spending - when in actuality per capita consumption up and the reason sales are down is due to a recession. Once again, great example of lying with statistics.

u/gmarceau · 4 pointsr/science
u/JoeBobson · 4 pointsr/books

I think you have the right strategy with "something for the grandkids." But there is more you can do.

Fallacies and Pitfalls of Language is best posed as a "Hey, you want to know how to catch these lying bastards? Here's how." If he's at all cantankerous, this is the ideal book to fuel that. Once the logical fallacies he confronts daily have labels, it's easier to dispense with them. It's a much more engaging and practical approach than an introduction to formal logic or going for Greek philosophy.

It's an easy work to build on. How to Lie with Statistics is in the same vein if he really likes the format and wants more. If he only digs it, I'd start him on something like Sagan's "Demon-Haunted World" which takes a skeptical, and critical approach to demons, aliens, angels, psychics, and that sort of thing. It's engaging, hopeful, and interesting, and forces us to confront the silliness pandered on the History channel these days.

u/Raju_KS · 4 pointsr/Atlanta

One of my favorite books is How to Lie with Statistics. I think you would like it: https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728

u/lacywing · 4 pointsr/financialindependence

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

How to Lie with Statistics https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393310728/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_-HZ.BbXA1BV68

u/proggR · 4 pointsr/politics

Yup. These guys aren't real Christians. This is their real bible

u/Nostrabrahmus · 4 pointsr/investing

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely understand you are young and need guidance. I was 17 when I started investing as well.

I can give stock recommendations all day but I can give you two really good pieces of advice right now.

1: Read. Read everything you can. The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham is the bible of value investing. Warren Buffet himself said that this was the best book on value investing he's read. Read this book. Also, read Rich Dad Poor Dad This was the single most influential piece of literature I've ever read.

2: Be extremely careful who you take advice from. Just because people are older doesn't make them smarter. You want to find people who have exactly what you want for yourself. These people are worth taking advice from. The average person is an idiot, and they all think they know the right way, and yet they all are slaving away at jobs they hate that "don't pay them enough". This could even be your parents or friends. It may be hard to reject their advice. They may not even realize that they don't know what they are doing. Again, you want to learn from people who have exactly what you want.

u/kitcar · 4 pointsr/TorontoRealEstate

Remember, buying something that is cashflow negative with no guaranteed appreciation is not an investment in the classical sense - it's speculation. See https://www.amazon.ca/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Value-Investing/dp/0060555661.

u/Panasonicy0uth · 4 pointsr/personalfinance

As someone who works in finance for a living, I promise it's not as complicated as it seems. Once you understand the fact that the finance industry intentionally complicates and obfuscates its inner-workings to generate demand for our services and add a little bit more profit here and there, everything will seem a lot less intimidating.

If you're the bookish type and are serious about learning about the markets, I'd recommend checking out The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. I really like this edition because it has summaries after every chapter that ties the concepts presented by Graham to more recent economic developments such as the Dot Com Bubble and The Great Recession, among other things, and attempts to apply them. It's a dense read, even if you have a background in economics or finance like I do, but it's well worth it.

u/Thonlo · 4 pointsr/wisconsin

It was Freakonomics, yes. That chapter was fascinating. I wonder how much of it is accurate.

u/optical_power · 4 pointsr/todayilearned

Maybe. I thought the decline in crime we due to the population changes caused by the liberalisation of abortion in the 70s.

Source: (freakenomics - Amazon)[http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338]

u/Connels · 4 pointsr/Economics

I'd recommend Freakonomics because it shows economics as the awesome discipline it really is.

u/brikis98 · 4 pointsr/programming

Supply and demand works if we are perfectly rational actors. But there is considerable evidence that we're not: see Predictably Irrational and Thinking, Fast and Slow. Salary in particular is known for irrational behavior. See the discussion of motivation in Drive or the short version in Daniel Pink's TED talk. Programmers are already fairly well paid and while I would certainly love to be paid more, I'm not convinced that alone would significantly increase the supply of developers.

The evidence for the talent gap is both anecdotal--every company I've worked at and many others I've interacted with complained extensively about lack of good developers--and some limited data (example 1, example 2), though it's not clear how to properly measure something like this.

Finally, I'm not sure that merely having 10x skill is enough to guarantee 10x pay. Perhaps in a perfect market with perfect knowledge and perfectly rational actors, it might be, but that's not how the real world works. You need not only 10x skill at your job, but also at turning that into money, which may be a completely different set of talents. For example, a 10x writer might make less money than an average writer if that average writer had their book turned into a popular teen movie. Similarly, the way for a programmer to make 10x the money is usually not to focus on salary (although there were some stories of Google and FB offering millions to retain some developers), but equity. And there, an exec-level programmer can get 10x the equity of a normal dev, though there is obviously a lot of luck as to whether the equity ends up paying off.

u/sukeroku · 4 pointsr/funny

I recommend the book: http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0061353248

to understand more about human nature and how our perceptions mold our realities. We all need to understand the other side's perceptions and how they see things in order to understand how to persuade them.

u/hitssquad · 4 pointsr/RealTesla

The power of free has nothing to do with rationality. Read Predictably Irrational.

u/RabidRaccoon · 4 pointsr/NorthKoreaNews

> Hitler was able to build a booming economy off the back of large internal deficits. He leveraged a strong manufacturing sector to build a self sufficient state.

That's not really true

http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages-Destruction-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208

> What does this book say that is different than what has gone before? Heaps. In recent years it has become clear that Germany lost the second world war because the Soviet Union was able to out produce them in the making of armored vehicles. Britain and the United States were able to produce huge numbers more aircraft. The conclusion has been that Hitler's gamble in invading the Soviet Union was the key behind the loss of the war.
>
> What this book suggests is that Germany had lost the war before it invaded the Soviet union and its success up to 1941 had been a lucky break. The author even suggests that Britain alone had some chance of over time developing a preponderance of military force. It also puts paid to what must be now seen as the myth of Munich. Previously it was thought that Britain and France failed to re-arm in time to fight Hitler effectively. What this book shows is that by 1940 Britain and France had armies that were superior in both numbers and equipment. Their navies were vastly superior to Germany's and their air forces at least equal. When France fell, although Britain lost its field army its air force was equivalent to the German in numbers and quality and its Navy vastly superior to anything the Germans and Italians could put to sea. More over the British were able to out produce the Germans in aircraft even prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
>
> The success of the German armies in 1940 was due to the allied command failing to respond to the German strategy. If the allies had been a bit more aggressive they could have fought it out to at least a draw and Germany did not have the resources to fight anything more than a short war. The idea of blitzkrieg was an invention of allied generals seeking to rationalize their defeat rather than a meaningful analysis of what happened. The French never even fully committed their air force to the struggle and most of it was captured on the ground.
>
> The problem was that although Germany had access to the industrial plant of Northern Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands they were not able to use it to match either the Soviets or the British in war production. The reasons are complex but relate to the patterns of European trade and the success of the European blockade. If we take aircraft for example the French production which flowed to Germany was miniscule. France had access to manufacturing plant and supplies of bauxite but it was not able to produce. The reason was that it used to import coal from Britain for its electricity production. With the British blockade the main source of coal became Germany. However Germany was not able to increase its production sufficiently to overcome the short fall. In addition the amount of food produced in Europe fell. Previously the production of meat and dairy products in countries such as Denmark had been dependant on the import of grain and stock feed from South America. That was not available and the amount of food available for the dairy industry collapsed as did food production. In the rest of Europe food production had been based on the widespread use of chemical fertilizer. Apart from the issues of the blockade huge amounts of the chemicals used for fertilizer production was diverted to the making of explosives. In addition to the fact that French workers were moved on to subsistence rations and there was no power available the country had been dependant on motorized transportation. Again most of its oil imports came from abroad. With the outbreak of the war the only available oil products came from Romania or from synthetic oil made in Germany. This was barely enough for the needs of the armed forces (there was in reality not enough to keep the Italian Navy operational) and France reverted to a pre-petroleum transport economy.
>
> It is this economic background that gave rise to Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had the natural resources that would enable European industry to out produce Britain and America. Rather than rashly starting a two front war Hitler knew that he could never develop the naval might necessary to conquer Britain simply by the occupation of Western Europe. The conquest of the Soviets was a key step in Hitler's strategy and not irrational. Of course none of the German general staff thought that the Soviets could stand up to an invasion of over 3 million men. However the Soviets were able to do so and then they were better able to marshal their resources so that they could outlast the Germans.
>
> This is a very good book which will force everyone to re-think their attitudes to not only the second world war but the historical run up to it. It is unusual to have a book which is of such significance.

u/La_Nostra_Bandiera · 4 pointsr/DebateFascism

Read the best book on the German economy:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages-Destruction-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208

It's a bullshit myth that the German Nazi economy was wonderfully efficient. In fact, the overlapping controls created huge inefficiencies that helped doom the nation when it went to war. Albert Speer's flair for spin during and after the war created a myth that the facts don't support.

Both Soviet Communism and USA capitalism (organized for war) probed MUCH more efficient and productive.

u/Schutzwall · 4 pointsr/neoliberal

It's wholesome to spend Valentines Day with my crush

u/Cragsicles · 4 pointsr/AskSocialScience

I'm glad you've become interested in such a fascinating topic. However, it's pretty expansive, so here are some links to books and topics in terms of broad, global, and more specific studies related to the issue of income equality:

Broad Topic/Global:

u/ertiloperta · 3 pointsr/portugal

Seguindo a mote do teu ultimo livro, já leste algo do Dan Ariely

u/AmaDaden · 3 pointsr/todayilearned

This was a study done by Dan Ariely. He's a Psychologist who studies irrational human behavior and has written 3 books on the subject and done several TED talks. He has many results that are just as interesting as this that he talks about

His first bookPredictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

His TED Talks

u/kipkoan · 3 pointsr/PoliticalDiscussion

> Libertarianism is cruel in that if a person does not seek out education, or healthcare, or whatever else, they can fail and even die. But it is the most just system because it treats human beings with respect as individuals capable of making their own decisions.

I agree... and this is why I have mixed feelings about Libertarianism. I start with the idea that what is good is to minimize suffering and maximize wellbeing. I think that usually means letting people make their own decisions. But I think it can sometimes mean acknowledging that we are all predictably irrational, so having some laws that encourage us to make good decisions can be good.


> In short, liberals view humans as stupid creatures unable to do for themselves and conservatives view humans as stupid creatures that refuse to do for themselves.

I think they both are sometimes right and sometimes wrong -- and figuring out when is the hard part. And because figuring out when is very hard, we should err on the side of letting people make their own decisions.


> In reality, laws written on paper do not change human hearts.

Being written on paper doesn't matter (except for the legal system), but enforcing laws can change hearts (desires/aversions), and behaviors. I think punishment is one of the basic social tools we have to change desires and behaviors. It's far more costly than using condemnation (or praise), though, so I prefer using it only for the most important reasons. Punishment is like the burn one feels when touching a hot stove -- one quickly acquires an aversion to touching a hot stove after being burned.

u/Arguss · 3 pointsr/CapitalismVSocialism

In that case, I found a lot of inspiration in the book American Progressivism: A Reader. It's a sampling of formative essays and speeches during the Progressive Era talking about reforming government, reducing corruption, and building a reliable administration. Reading it helps understand how the modern US government got to be where it is, because most of their proposals were eventually adopted.

I also read Leninism by Neil Harding, which went into the detail of the initial Communist revolution in Russia and how Lenin's political theories evolved as circumstances on the ground changed. I think it was helpful both in gaining more understanding of the history of the time and in learning about what Communism came to mean in a Russian context.

I liked Predictably Irrational and Freakonomics for really highlighting 1) economics is about incentives, and 2) our incentives sometimes lead us and markets astray, sometimes even in predictably bad ways.

The Myth of the Rational Market traces a history of financial economics going back to the early 1900s and how we conceptualized the idea of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. It also ends up introducing a lot of basic financial information I had in my finance classes.

The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and the World on Fire goes into specific detail about the financial crisis and how central banks across the world responded to it. Useful if you aren't familiar with the specifics of the crisis.

The Working Poor: Invisible in America helps explore the hopelessness and despair of the working poor, and how a poverty mindset can develop. It also shows how systems of late fees, overdraft fees, payday loans, lack of benefits for part-time workers, the cost of healthcare, etc all combine to really rig the world against the poor succeeding.

That's all I can think of for now.

u/sketchius · 3 pointsr/Frugal

This is a good example of applied behavioral economics. Dan Ariely has written some interesting books on the topic, if anyone is interested:

Predictably Irrational

The Upside of Irrationality

u/rainman_104 · 3 pointsr/canada

I strongly recommend reading this book:

http://www.amazon.ca/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0061353248

It's pretty awesome.

u/selectively_rational · 3 pointsr/NoFap

You might say it's selectively rational.

Sorry. But I agree 100%. The comic may inspire some people, and I don't want at all to get in the way of that, but aside from the fact that the conversation was pretty much just a polemic for the cigarette dude, if you take that philosophy to its logical conclusion you end up being kind of a dick.

Often peoples desires can't be reconciled with reality, and not everyone can find a way to reshape themselves to want different things. People become depressed, and they don't want to be depressed, but they don't know how to be any other way.

The human brain isn't a perfectly rational machine, either, so even when you do know what you want, you can be undermining yourself without realizing it. You don't have one overarching life goal, you have many, and virtually every choice you make involves a compromise between several desires, and compromises are something brains are notoriously bad at making. Predictably Irrational, the Dan Ariely book that inspired my username, is full of examples of this.

What I prefer to do is acknowledge that goals can be hard, and try to find communities (like NoFap) where collectively we are stronger than we are individually. My shortcomings are different than yours, so we can share strategies.

At the end of the day, yes, I have to own up to my decisions. But the relationship between wanting something and achieving it is something I don't fully understand. I just know it's more complex than "A implies B".

u/barkevious2 · 3 pointsr/AskHistorians

Specifically regarding the First World War: Germany's reparations obligations to the western powers - already amended by international agreements reached in the 1920s - were abrogated entirely by the Lausanne Conference in the summer of 1932. For more on this, you might read the first couple of chapters of The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze, which deals with interwar Germany's competing economic philosophies within the context of the transatlantic political economy.

u/Max2000Warlord · 3 pointsr/maninthehighcastle

From Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze:

"Even if the war had not intervened, developments up to 1939 made clear that the entire conception of the 'people's car' was a disastrous flop."

u/cassander · 3 pointsr/PoliticalDiscussion

>No I don't agree with Nazi ideology but their economic system was brilliant.)

astonishingly ignorant

u/Joltie · 3 pointsr/worldnews

> The economy under Hitler prior to the war, and in the beginning years of the war was a hell of a lot better than the Weimer Republic.

Only if you believe Nazi propaganda.

Standards of living had not risen, quite the contrary, as consumer goods demand had been massively shrunk, the State was running a colossal deficit, so that by 1938, the State had defaulted on all foreign loans, and on the internal loans, it was running a pyramid scheme with IOU's, just to keep the economy going without actually putting much wealth into it, had no foreign reserves to import direly needed supplies, and no way of acquiring wealth, save from plundering it from central banks of the countries they invaded. Even before the war, there was already rationing of a number of items.

The Nazis took power in a country that was finally improving the economy and its living conditions, and managed to spiral it out of control and straight into the ground, by a combination of:

  • Ideology inflexibility (Refusing to devaluate on a principle that a strong currency equates to a powerful country);

  • Populism (Vanity projects like the Volkswagen or the Volksradio and many others, completely out of tune with the realities of the country, where the regime advertised something that would be cheap enough for mass consumption, only to realize, as had been told by the actual industrialists themself, was impossible to build those things at the prices advertised, much less sold);

  • Corruption (A hallmark of dictatorships, so not much expansion needed here)

  • and sheer idiocy (Everyone telling Hitler and the regime that the rearmament was economically unsustainable, to which Hitler and the regime didn't care, which set off a number of massive economic crisises on the handful of pre-war years they were in power.)

    https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208

    Have fun dispelling the myths you've taken to be true about Nazi Germany!
u/CometWhiskey · 3 pointsr/ShitWehraboosSay

Adam Tooze Wages of Destruction. https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208

This is the magnum opus of the Nazi economics. Explaining and eye opening. If there is one book about the Nazi economy it's this. I won't be wasting your time but seriously, order it.

u/SnapshillBot · 3 pointsr/badeconomics



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u/SwissMod · 3 pointsr/neoliberal

>Is social democracy neoliberal

No


>liberal government institutions

  • democracy
  • pluralism
  • rule of law

    etc.

    this book goes into more detail what exactly thoes institutions are and why they're a good thing. If you read it you're probably gonna be more informed than 75% of this sub so I highly recommend you to read it.
u/NikoUY · 3 pointsr/uruguay

Gracias, pensaba leer la parte histórica primero que es lo que más me llamo la atención de la wiki y si me interesaba algo en particular de ahí entonces leer algo más concreto.

Capaz también algo que explique varios modelos sin ser muy denso, algo que este en el tono de la explicación que pusiste acá pero más profundizado, el de Adam Smith parece interesante pero es medio viejo (1776) y capaz es medio denso, hay alguna cosa más moderna?

Este sería el último que recomendaste, ese autor?

u/Semphy · 3 pointsr/neoliberal

Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson.

u/si_sports · 3 pointsr/politics

Should it be 'available' sure! Should the America tax dollars pay for it? No. The America tax dollars should be spend on Americans.

This global village bs doesn't work. We have been giving them money for the last 60 years and much of the world is still a shithole.

You should read "Why nations fail" https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227

u/Soundofawesome · 3 pointsr/Documentaries

Uh... why so aggressive? All most all of these countries, were colonies of western countries for literally hundreds of years.

Most of them, after gaining their independence, under went decades of civil wars. Or were grounds for proxy wars of more developed nations fighting over their natural resources (diamonds, uranium, etc.) and differing political ideological (capitalism vs communism).

Since they were colonies, they typically had restrictions placed in their ability to form legal systems, or they formed some distorted version of a western legal system. These weren't British citizens, with established legal frameworks, rebelling from Britain (like the American Revolution).

The lack of a legal system made it more difficult to form stable governments, or even organize functional economic systems. Typically their citizen lacked basic legal protections, that more developed nations take for granted.

Literally, nothing like a drug addiction, but yea good on them for try.

Maybe read this book. :/

u/rebelrob0t · 3 pointsr/REDDITORSINRECOVERY

I went to one AA meeting when I first got clean and never went back. I understand people have found support and success in it but to me, personally, I felt it only increased the stigma of drug addicts as these broken hopeless people barely hanging on by a thread. It's an outdated system that relies on little science or attempting to progress the participants and relies more on holding people in place and focusing on the past. Instead I just worked towards becoming a normal person. Here are some of the resources I used:

r/Fitness - Getting Started: Exercise is probably the #1 thing that will aid you in recovering. It can help your brain learn to produce normal quantities of dopamine again as well as improve your heath, mood, well being and confidence.

Meetup: You can use this site to find people in your area with similar interests. I found a hiking group and a D&D group on here which I still regularly join.

Craigslist: Same as above - look for groups, activities, volunteer work, whatever.

Diet

This will be the other major player in your recovery. Understanding your diet will allow you to improve your health,mood, energy, and help recover whatever damage the drugs may have done to your body.

How Not To Die Cookbook

Life Changing Foods

The Plant Paradox

Power Foods For The Brain

Mental Health

Understand whats going on inside your head and how to deal with it is also an important step to not only recovery but enjoying life as a whole.

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy

The Emotional Life Of Your Brain

Furiously Happy

The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works

Educational

If you are like me you probably felt like a dumbass when you first got clean. I think retraining your brain on learning, relearning things you may have forgot after long term drug use, and just learning new things in general will all help you in recovery. Knowledge is power and the more you learn the more confident in yourself and future learning tasks you become.

Illegal Drugs: A Complete Guide to their History, Chemistry, Use, and Abuse

Why Nations Fails

Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

The Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

Thinking, Fast and Slow

The Financial Peace Planner: A Step-by-Step Guide to Restoring Your Family's Financial Health

Continued Education / Skills Development

EdX: Take tons of free college courses.

Udemy: Tons of onine courses ranging from writing to marketing to design, all kinds of stuff.

Cybrary: Teach yourself everything from IT to Network Security skills

Khan Academy: Refresh on pretty much anything from highschool/early college.

There are many more resources available these are just ones I myself have used over the past couple years of fixing my life. Remember you don't have to let your past be a monkey on your back throughout the future. There are plenty of resources available now-a-days to take matters into your own hands.

*Disclaimer: I am not here to argue about anyone's personal feelings on AA**







u/emi_online · 3 pointsr/neoliberal

>Do you think there's no middle ground between foreigners showing up with guns and ships and taking your shit, and being separated from world trade?


Yes, I believe trade and foreign investment is that middle ground.

>Despite being grotesquely unequal (as all countries were at the time), India was once enormously wealthy. I cannot help but think that if its wealth had remained in India or been traded for other forms of wealth, rather than just being taken, India might be doing a bit better today.

Read this book it's a great book about the topic at hand.

u/0verlayFaBric · 3 pointsr/personalfinance

I just have a few pointers. Not going to go into verbose explanation.
-IRA will relieve $5500
-401K will relieve up to 17.5K
-Starting your own LLC is tax relief
-Buying a house (Wouldn't recommend this until you purchase in a buyer's market, but that's your choice).
-Invest in stocks (Here's a good book on investing):
https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483895406&sr=8-1&keywords=the+intelligent+investor Just a small thing, but figure out interest rates on savings and checking. If savings for your bank is greater than checking, put the bulk of your money there (If you're not comfortable stepping into investing it yet). Two reasons you want to do this: 1. Better interest is a few more cents returned than in checking. 2. If someone steals your debit card, at least all your money isn't in one place. Last thing, regardless of your field (Because I'm guessing you're not going to be a stripper forever. It's just to pay the bills), get an accountant and figure out how to itemize things. Take their advice. They know how to get you extra money back at the end of the year. If you do things for the company i.e. drive a distance from work, and they don't reimburse you, KEEP RECEIPTS of getting gas. This can be itemized.

u/LineBreakBot · 3 pointsr/personalfinance

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----

> I just have a few pointers. Not going to go into verbose explanation.
>
> - IRA will relieve $5500
> - 401K will relieve up to 17.5K
> - Starting your own LLC is tax relief
> - Buying a house (Wouldn't recommend this until you purchase in a buyer's market, but that's your choice).
> - Invest in stocks (Here's a good book on investing):
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483895406&sr=8-1&keywords=the+intelligent+investor
>
> Just a small thing, but figure out interest rates on savings and checking. If savings for your bank is greater than checking, put the bulk of your money there (If you're not comfortable stepping into investing it yet). Two reasons you want to do this: 1. Better interest is a few more cents returned than in checking. 2. If someone steals your debit card, at least all your money isn't in one place.
>

----

^(I am a bot. Contact) ^pentium4borg ^(with any feedback.)

u/InfectedUvula · 3 pointsr/investing_discussion

There are a multitude of books that have been written and if you ask 100 people, you will get a 100 different answers on the best books to read. My recommendation is ignore all the flashy titles and strategy specific books that promise how to be a billionaire in 5 years or how to retire at age 25. Instead, for anyone just starting out, i recommend going with a solid foundation and once that is achieved, then find your individual specific plan. My three (actually four) books to get started in a serious entry into the investment markets are as follows (in order and assuming a starting point of Extreme Beginner)

  1. Get a "For Dummies Book" on Personal investment and on introduction to Stocks. Many people will drop a big steaming turd on the "For Dummies Book" series for being too basic or simplistic but i have found they are very helpful in introducing the the basic vocabulary and concepts behind many investing activities. Don't try to build a lifelong plan from these books but use them as a primer on terms and ideas.

    https://www.amazon.com/Personal-Finance-Dummies-Eric-Tyson/dp/1119114292/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1518157495&sr=8-2&keywords=personal+investing+for+dummies

    And

    https://www.amazon.com/Investing-Dummies-Business-Personal-Finance/dp/1119239281/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1518157731&sr=8-4&keywords=personal+investing+for+dummies

    2)The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing by Benjamin Graham.

    https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1518157481&sr=8-3&keywords=personal+investing

    This one is much more technical than the first read but I consider it "The Bible" for forming a solid education in value stock investing. Written just after World War 2, this book has been invaluable in understanding how to evaluate good investments in the stock market. I still don't know how investors did it before the internet, but using the principles presented in this book and the resources available online, your stock performance should be far in excess of anything you might do having not read it. Interesting side story: When i was in business school circa 1998-2001, I had a professor of Financial Analysis who introduced me to this book and also called it the Bible. In his lectures he and the students had many heated debates regarding the validity of Grahams teachings and how the investing world had outgrown Grahams views due to the rapidly growing diversity of investments today and the impact technology had on investing strategy. We, the students, were all blinded by the internet boom and all the stories of people who had an IPO for their company and became overnight billionaires, provided the company ended in dot-com. The professor was adamant that every generation was doomed to learn some hard and expensive lessons by thinking the Old masters no longer applied to the "New Reality". As an exercise we spent the following months reviewing many of the skyrocketing stocks that were part of the Dot Com bubble. The professor claimed that, based on his application of Graham's principles the only Dot com stocks he would consider holding for a minimum of 10 years from 1997 were Amazon, Intel, Sony, SAP and Microsoft. By 2000 he had fared much better than many of the students who thought the were going to be Pets.com billionaires.
    Which brings us to the third book:

  2. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay

    https://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Madness-Crowds/dp/1463740514/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518158993&sr=1-1&keywords=Extraordinary+Popular+Delusions+and+The+Madness+of+Crowds+by+Charles+MacKay

    If you though Grahams book was old this one is coming up on its 200th anniversary.
    This one is really not about investing as much as it is about the understanding how social psychology leads to things like, bubbles, panic crashes and fads that leave ruined investors in their wake. Every time I hear the word Bitcoin, I think of this book, just as I did back when everyone of my friends was going to be the next multimillionaire house flipper or day trader ten years ago. I am not saying that these strategies are inherently bad, just that it is important to be able to distinguish the facts from the hype, even when the person hyping it is yourself because you got swept up in the public craze. Read about the Dutch tulip craze and realize that the same forces are in play every day.

    Once you grind through these three, you will be more than ready to start on your individual path and well armed to make reasonable decisions. Good Luck!
u/Djcornstalks · 3 pointsr/StockMarket

The Intelligent Investor is a great beginner's book that Warren Buffet swears by

u/vfxdev · 3 pointsr/politics

If you only ever get 1 book, you can read this in a couple days, and it helps you get started with Vanguard.

https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Investing-Lessons-Every-Investor/dp/1118484878

Once you have a decent amount of money invested, this book will ensure you don't fuck it all up. A much longer read but full of good information on how to take the emotions out of investing, which are basically going to be your biggest foe.

https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661

u/arnexa · 3 pointsr/FinancialPlanning

Ask a 1000 people and you will get more than 1000 answers - this is how varied and complex investing is. If you are a beginner, I would suggest learning about investing first. There are ample materials out there. Concepts you should learn about: asset classes (stocks, options, bonds), diversification (not putting all your eggs in one asset class or stock). Learn too about "valuation" - how much should an asset be valued at. This is a crucial concept that you should understand even if you buy etf/mutual funds. You can, for example, buy the right asset at the wrong valuation and be hurt. Valuation tries to answer the question "Is this asset (class) fairly valued?" Implicit in understanding valuation is "know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em".

I have personally benefited from Warren Buffett's writings and recommendations - so I read his shareholder letters (http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html). And I started with the "Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham (https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661).

Good luck.

u/Atomm · 3 pointsr/personalfinance

Congratulations! You've doing great. I only wish I was as smart as you when I was your age. Heck, you're even ahead of me in some regards and I'm 10 years old than you.

I have not read it yet, but I've seen The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing recommended by others on Reddit as a way to understand investing for us average folks. You might look into it.

u/blaine19 · 3 pointsr/badeconomics

I expected to find Jason Zweig on that episode. That guy is pretty much the poster child of sensible, simple investment advice. His WSJ column is pretty much dedicated to criticizing stuff like high-fee funds and stock speculation. It's named after the bestselling book on investing that Warren Buffet hails as his bible, which has been annotated by... Jason Zweig.

That segment was a great piece, it felt like a chapter out of the aforementioned The Intelligent Investor. Warren Buffet would approve of the investment advice and the rant against companies like John Hancock.

u/moveovernow · 3 pointsr/personalfinance

Read these books, in this order:

Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist
https://www.amazon.com/Buffett-American-Capitalist-Roger-Lowenstein/dp/0812979273/

The Little Book That Still Beats the Market
https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Still-Beats-Market/dp/0470624159/

Margin of Safety (only available in free PDF now, out of print)
https://files.leopolds.com/books/Margin.of.Safety.1st.Edition.1991.Klarman.pdf

Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits
https://www.amazon.com/Common-Stocks-Uncommon-Profits-Writings/dp/0471445509/

The Intelligent Investor
https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661

They'll teach you what's called value investing. As a system it was approximately originated by Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett's mentor. It's the only system of investing that has been shown to consistently work over an extremely long period of time (nearly a century at this point) and anybody can learn to utilize it.

The first book will give you a close-up walk-through of value investing by following Buffett from his earliest days forward, including how he thought about investing (the most important aspect). That'll prime you to more easily be able to understand and digest the next value investing books. Once you have digested enough about value investing, you'll be able to adapt its ways to the things you're particularly good at (there are various styles or approaches to value investing; the best at it all use slightly different custom techniques in how they find stocks, what kind of levels of value they require before they invest, when they prefer to sell or not, risk tolerance, etc). As a system it's fundamentally built around logic / reason as the primary tools of appraising investments and making decisions, it encourages you to push emotion out of the equation of investing as much as possible (and in doing so, you automatically acquire a dramatic leg up over most investors big and small).

Of critical importance: value investing is not about producing small conservative returns. The best value investors have smashed the market's average returns over extremely long periods of time and they have tended to beat all other types of investors. Value investing is about: 1) not destroying capital, so that you can retain and compound it, taking maximum advantage of the extreme power of compounding returns; 2) picking investments that have an appropriate margin of safety (they've been significantly mispriced by the market), that protects your downside, while exposing you to a very large potential upside.

u/All_Business · 3 pointsr/stocks

http://www.amazon.com/The-Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing/dp/0060555661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332351037&sr=8-1

Great book to start with. Also, check out r/investing; it's more active than this subreddit, and there's a nice list of recommend readings, online resources, FAQs, etc on the sidebar.

u/rodbarc123 · 3 pointsr/CanadianInvestor

Start with Millionaire Teacher. Then read The Single Best Investment. Then to understand the business behind the stock, read The Intelligent Investor. This will provide a good start on what to look for individual business. The more you think business like, the better investor you become.

u/TheMightyLizard · 3 pointsr/UKPersonalFinance

Ok, that's basically what I did when I started out. Let me just say, there is a learning curve- and LOTS to learn. However, if investing turns out to be something you enjoy, and you always continue learning, you open the door to higher returns in general (and a very interesting hobby :D ).

At the start, you don't need to know much more than the general facts. Equity, bonds, the market. What the lingo means, and where the resources are. The original book I got for an overview was the following, and I would recommend it: The
The FT Investing Guide - not a cheap book, but will go over the foundational knowledge you need.

I would then follow with The Intelligent Investor, which is THE great value-investment book. It will tell you about how to logically approach investing in companies, and give you a framework for choosing better companies to invest in, and not overpaying for the equity you invest in.

Knowledge of macro economics is also a plus, imo. I started off by reading Economics for Dummies (yes, really).

The basics of accounting is somewhat essential, but it's covered in the FT guide. If you can get to the point where you can understand a typical income statement, balance sheet or statement of cash flows, it should be enough to be a competent investor. It allows you to understand the underlying financial health of a business, which is very important.

Your aim is to find strong companies, with good future prospects, which are undervalued by the market, and invest for the long-term. This will allow you to maximise your returns.

..I was all set to continue writing this wall of text, but I think I'll leave it here for now. If you have any further questions, or would like more clarification on any points, I'd be happy to help. So just let me know.

u/pborowiecki · 3 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

Read this book: The Intelligent Investor

If you're looking for a way to make quick money and become millionaire quick then that book isn't for you.

u/justjacobmusic · 3 pointsr/investing

If you don't want to make a career out of trading, a helpful rule of thumb is a 90 / 10 principle popularized by Andrew Hallam in his text Millionaire Teacher: Stick 90% of your capital in tax sheltered, virtually passive forms of investment like index mutual funds or ETFs with an IRA wrapper and stick the other 10% in whatever investment vehicle you want to learn.

For example, I put 90% of my capital in a batch of index funds and ETFs predicated on John Bogle's suggestion of "your age in bonds, the rest in common stock" index funds and ETFs by way of an account with Vanguard for my IRA and my company's 403(b) program. Vanguard makes this really easy through their target retirement funds, which automatically adjust the ratio of stock / bonds over time. I'm really interested in value investing; so, I take long positions in individual stock that meets the criteria Benjamin Graham identified in Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor with the other 10% of my capital via a brokerage account with TD Ameritrade--this isn't tax sheltered like my retirement accounts but it's basically an ongoing education in investing since TD Ameritrade offers a ton of instructional materials on topics like options, commodities, etc. and I want to see my money grow.

Let's take a look at what this could look like for your situation. Starting with $5k and doing something like what I'm doing, you would:

  1. Open an account with Vanguard or whomever else you want to deal with for your IRA and invest $4500 there. If you follow that same rule of thumb I mentioned from Bogle, you could stick 18% of that in a bond ETF like BND, i.e. $810. Of course, you'll have to purchase in units equivalent to the going rate of the ETF shares, which $83.22 at present. So, you'd have to go with 10 shares for a total of $832.20 invested. Then, you could stick the rest in a total stock market ETF like VTI, whose going rate is $103.50 at present. To invest 82% of your available $4500, or $3690, you would need to buy 35 shares for a total of $3685.50 invested. But maybe all this seems way too complex to keep track of year after year; so, you could instead just invest all $4500 in a one-stop-shop composite index fund like Vanguard's Target Retirement 2035, which currently features a ratio pretty close to what you want between bonds and stock and will automatically adjust for you over time.

  2. Open an account with pretty much any other decent brokerage, study up, and invest your remaining cash in whatever you want to learn how to do. $500 is not going to buy you much stock, but you could pull off a few options plays with that amount of cash. The key here is to provide a context where you basically force yourself to learn how to invest by having an actual stake in the game. A lot of people advocate paper trading, i.e. executing trades with fake money but real stock market numbers, as a way to learn how to invest; however, we all behave differently when our actual money is at stake. It's better to learn with actual money, even if it's not much. As I mentioned before, I personally like TD Ameritrade because they provide a lot of instructional content; however, your mileage may vary.

    Any follow up questions?
u/drivefaster · 3 pointsr/business

A random walk, the intelligent investor, and black swan are all good ones.

Are you looking for trading, internal business, etc? more detailed would be helpful.

u/HowDid_This_GetHere · 3 pointsr/stocks

Since the seems to be a common question I'm just copy pasting some of my older responses.

Books to read:

u/samuraiPraetor7 · 3 pointsr/2ALiberals

Based on your comment, the first thing you should probably do is try and get some cheap textbooks on statistics and probability and work through them. The particular textbook isn't terribly important as the level of statistics you're looking for hasn't changed much over the past 50 years. A good book on formal logic will probably also help as it can help you learn to see if a conclusion is warranted on the premises (hint: it's very rare, even in academia).

If you're not willing to take that plunge with a full textbook, How To Lie With Statistics (https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728) is probably the most popular statistics book in existence and is aimed at a layperson. There's also communities who are have a peculiar dedication to logic and have blogs everywhere.

When it comes to "reading data" it's largely numbers. So if you can get used to doing some mental arithmetic or drawing some quick graphs, you'll go far in "reading" the numbers. For the most part it's just numbers though. If you're trying to really dig into a paper what you want to look for are odd numbers that the authors aren't mentioning or trends that would seem to contradict the authors hypothesis or suggest alternatives. Usually, if there's a mistake or something to be learned, it's going to be buried in the text in a way that's harder to spot.

The big thing to learn in poking holes through a paper is to just be a good scientist. Think of alternative hypothesis, actually read the tables and methodologies (most academics actually don't) and be very skeptical. Pay very close attention to definitions and anything they suggest might have been an anomaly or pre-processed. If you've done any good science work or watched people, you can also read between the lines a bit (if there's 6 subjects in a study, it's probably just people in a research group, which means it's almost certainly a non-representative sample, for example).

u/HerzogZwei2 · 3 pointsr/booksuggestions

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan for general science.

Stuff by James Randi, Michael Shermer for general stuff about new age crap.

The Panic Virus by Seth Mnookin and Deadly Choices by Paul Offit on the Anti-Vaccination movement.

Damned Lies and Statistics by Joel Best and How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff (Also see How to Lie with Maps by Mark Monomonier for a similar subject) for questioning stats and graphics used in the news.

Is there anything specifically you're interested in?

u/darkaceAUS · 3 pointsr/AustralianPolitics

I had no idea think tanks were meant to do this: https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728

u/avnerd · 3 pointsr/redditoroftheday
u/StoKasTicK · 3 pointsr/atheism

517 missions raising hundreds of millions of dollars. This equates to close to 2 million dollars per mission at most. This article is slightly disingenuous in that it only gives proportions and no real numbers, i.e. "Two-thirds of the people coming to these missions hoped to a find a doctor to treat them, while the other third lay dying without receiving appropriate care." So without any substantial figures, people here are up in arms without any baseline knowledge of the real numbers.

For those interested, you should read a book called How to Lie with Statistics.

u/brock_lee · 3 pointsr/politics

So... you showed "Democratic control of the Senate" when unemployment was going up, but you showed "Republican control of the House" when it's coming down?

Here's a book you'd like:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728

u/moorakh · 3 pointsr/Sikh

some books never get old. a must read for everyone.

u/minnend · 3 pointsr/Libertarian

I agree that those requirements were well-intentioned (at least from the perspective of the legislators) but fiscally foolish. Nonetheless, the crisis had more to do with collaterialized debt obligations (CDOs) and especially credit default swaps (CDSs) than with the home loans per se.

If it were just about the home loans, banks would have foreclosed, people who couldn't afford their house would lose them, and the broader economy would have been fine. The crisis was caused by many factors, but the dominant one was the huge derivative market that magnified the problem. Big banks don't fall because people can't pay their mortgage. They fall when they underwrite cheap, pseudo-insurance policies on risky / poorly-rated derivatives that generate orders of magnitude more debt.

So not only is there a debate, but the CRA stuff (laws requiring loans to unqualified borrowers) is considered a relatively small contributor.

Sources: Economist, Big Short, Wikipedia, This American Life

u/kfun123 · 3 pointsr/politics

> Is there a comprehensive list somewhere of the loan types, lenders, loan amounts floating around?

Do you mean in general like kinds of loans and lenders, etc... Then I would start somewhere like investopedia or google.

Alt-A Loans, but it links to a number of other good definitions

Private Mortgage Backed Securities

CBO Report on GSEs

Banking and Finance Law Commons


If you mean in reference to the financial collapse there are lots of books and blog posts.

  1. Tanta at Calculated Risk had a great series on mortgage/ finance issues. The Ubernerd Collection, Compendium of Tanta's Posts, sadly she passed away in November of 2008.

  2. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission - Congressional Report on the financial crisis, FCIC Conclusions Excerpt, The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report , Wikipedia Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission

  3. ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism

  4. Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves

  5. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

  6. Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy
u/xcrunna19 · 3 pointsr/finance

For questions 1 and 2.

  1. If you are packing the loans into a CDO, they are being sold on the open market. Once it achieves a AAA rating, as most did even though they were mostly subprime, alt a, or arm, it is sold and shipped off the originator's books (While the originator of the CDO collects X% in fees)

    Basically how the originator makes their money is by X amount of CDOs they sell. There was no incentive to pick and choose the best borrowers to sell a loan to because how the CDOs were sold they achieved the best rating regardless of the borrowers credit risk.

    Due to this model, people are going to try and get as many people into the homes and sell the CDO asap. This caused questionable lending practices to result, NINJA (no income, no job, no assets) loans, manipulating borrowers income, assets, etc.

    Things that could be changed to help not have this occur again:

    a) Feds monetary policy was pretty meh during this period, due to low interest rates the banks had pretty much an endless supply of money and when all the reasonable ventures dried up they had to explore other opportunities to lend.

    b) Ratings agencies need an overhaul in how they receive their commission, preferably they should be being paid by the investor not the person issuing the security. This will help to eliminate the bias that results.

    c) Having X% (2-5) remain on the institutions books who created the CDO will help to make them responsibly lend. This is because if they are required to have it remain on their books, they will make better longer term decisions in who to lend to.

    I'm pretty sure all of these issues are discussed in Nouriel Roubini's book Crisis Economics

    Another Great book already mentioned in this thread is by Michael Lewis The Big Short

    If your interested in the European Crisis Michael Lewis also just came out with Boomerang
u/RIL567 · 3 pointsr/LawSchool

The Big Short by Michael Lewis was an easy and interesting read

u/poopascoopa69 · 3 pointsr/movies

Same author. Guy also wrote The Flash Boys, a book on high frequency trading firms. The Big Short is what this movie is based on. Michael Lewis is really knowledgeable of the financial industry.

u/Winking-Cyclops · 3 pointsr/IWantToLearn

Start with this one:

how economies grow and why they fail




This next book is a bit more cerebral but you understand the world if you read it

Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics

u/Polarisman · 3 pointsr/GoldandBlack

> can i ask for a source on that?

Basic Economics

u/PluviusReddit · 3 pointsr/Conservative

Go pick this up at your library.

u/Erumara · 3 pointsr/btc

Value does not magically appear.

Bitcoin derives its scarcity and value from Proof of Work, Nano derives its value from "something for nothing" economics and a transaction system that is economically unviable from bottom to top.

Read a book. I always suggest:

Basic Economics
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0465060730/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_aQgDCb1NAPF63

u/confusedneuron · 3 pointsr/JordanPeterson

As far as the book recommendations go, it would be good if you could qualify what kind of books you're interested in (e.g. philosophy, psychology, history, science, etc.).


Books I recommend:


Psychology (or: On Human Nature)

The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime

Thinking, Fast and Slow (my personal favorite)

The Undiscovered Self

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

History

Strategy: A History

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism

Economics

Economics in One Lesson

Basic Economics


Politics

Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government

As always, the list of books to read is too long, so I'll stop here.

u/xilex · 3 pointsr/personalfinance

I consider myself a novice investor (started about 5 years ago), but I would recommend you start reading a few books to be more familiar with types of savings accounts you have access to, types of funds, etc. The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing was the first book I read and found it very essential. It will explain to you why going for individual stocks is difficult and not the best or appropriate way to invest.

I would opt to build an emergency fund first, because it is for unexpected expenses, even if you have food/bills/rent taken care of already. What about medical expenses, other things that happen. And I think a high-yield savings account would be perfect for this purpose (GSBank is my go-to, but there are others).

u/YOCJDD · 3 pointsr/personalfinance

Yes, nothing with 5% annual returns in the US is low risk. Anyone who is telling you the returns will be 5% is not someone to listen to.

Investing in real estate is a good way to give yourself very little diversity. If you don't mean, "Operate rental property" but mean "speculate on real estate prices", then you're naive to think that you are making better predictions than professional speculators.

Read some books on investing. http://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0470067365 might be interesting to you

u/nandemo · 3 pointsr/japanlife

I should write a guide about this... the outline is:

0. Don't be American.

  1. Get educated: I recommend this book plus a good amount of reading on the net.
  2. Set your goals (whether you're going to spend some of your invested funds in the short term vs just retirement fund, when do you want to retire, acceptable risk, etc). 2a. Determine your asset allocation from that (mainly % of stocks vs. % of bonds). 2b. Calculate how much you need to save per month.
  3. Get an account at a Japanese online brokerage, and select the mutual funds that correspond to the previous step.
  4. Transfer a % of your income every month to that account and then into the funds.
u/ryuns · 3 pointsr/Sacramento

No specific recommendations (sorry), but will second the recommendations to use a fee only planner, and use a tool like Mint to track your spending. Since this is something that will pay dividends (heh) for the rest of your life, I'd suggest finding a good book to go over as well. This is my favorite.

u/sarinis94 · 3 pointsr/Blackfellas

The Bogleheads Guide to Investing. Now that I can save more with a new job, I thought it was a good idea to get a start on my retirement fund.

It's basically an introduction guide to investing and a type of investing centered around low risk and steady growth over a long time. It's surprisingly not dry yet very informative. I'm hoping to use this book and others to learn how I might be able to retire early. I recommend it to anyone who needs to learn exactly what the core stuff like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, IRAs, annuities, ETFs, etc., are and what you should probably do with them.

u/adonzil · 3 pointsr/portfolios

An important note to what /u/satansbuttplug mentioned, you can ONLY invest $5500 in an IRA or your earned income. Which ever is higher. Since you make ~$1k from your job, in all likelihood you only have an earned income of ~1.2k at the most. This limits your contribution to ANY type of IRA to that.

Like /u/satansbuttplug said, it is more important to save than focus on rate of return. Alternatively, like you mentioned OP, you risk tolerance may be high because he wont be crushed if this money loses its value, just remember to stomach to loses and stay in the market. Learn to bear the markets ups and downs with 3K so that later you can keep your 401k and other assets invested during down turns. Market volatility isnt going anywhere.

There is very little black and white, right and wrong in investing, whatever works for you is probably the best approach for you. Most important is making a plan and sticking to it. Head to the school library and read some investing books, this will help guide your decision. A widely recommended book is this book

u/ssbr · 3 pointsr/financialindependence

The #1 criterion that always matters: fees. Vanguard is well known for its low fees, and for a corporate structure that incentivizes low fees. They're good people. You could consider their ETFs, which mirror their mutual funds. (Their mutual funds usually have a $3K starting requirement, but the equivalent ETFs have no minimum and can be purchased in small increments.)

Also strongly consider using index funds (which try to match the market by copying it) instead of managed funds (which try to beat it, and usually fail to, especially when fees are taken into account). But even if choosing a managed fund, fees matter and make a big difference to returns.

Other than that it depends on your goals and time horizon. I'd really encourage you to read some guides to investing -- they're usually pretty short, actually. The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing would be a good investment, if your library doesn't have it.

u/TheSubterfuge · 3 pointsr/personalfinance

Exactly, there is no way her entire balance should be invested in something like this. I second the idea of putting it into a Vanguard Target Retirement Fund immediately. Then once she has more to invest and you have both done some research, you can start branching out into other investments.

Also, if you're interested in learning more, this is the best $15 you'll ever invest: http://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0470067365

u/Black_Light · 3 pointsr/AusFinance

Feel free not to answer if you don't want to talk about it, but how'd you lose $17850?

In your defense, last week wasn't a particularly good week anyway ... my small portfolio dropped by over 2k

As for the books and stuff, I started by reading this: http://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Larimore/dp/0470067365

The amazon description hits the nail on the head:

> The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing is a slightly irreverent, straightforward guide to investing for everyone.

It's very basic, but a good foundation if you really don't know anything.

u/calcium · 3 pointsr/personalfinance

OP, if you're interested in learning about investing and finances, I'd recommend picking up The Boglehead's Guide to Investing. It's a pretty easy read and covers a lot of subjects that you probably have questions about. I'll even go back and read it every couple of years to make sure I'm following its principles which encourages low cost index funds.

u/m1garand30064 · 3 pointsr/personalfinance

This is a good answer.

The reason you'll see so much talk about Vanguard funds are because they are ultra low cost and Vanguard is mutually owned. USAA is a great company and I use them for insurance and banking, but I use Vanguard for all my investing because their funds are lower cost.

If I were you I'd move all the retirement accounts to Vanguard as you wont suffer tax consequences for moving them, and consolidate your holdings into a simple 3 or 4 fund portfolio. You have enough money to tilt (or overweight) your portfolio with higher risk/higher returning asset classes (small cap value, emerging markets) and still have access to the lower cost admiral share mutual funds. I'd recommend reading this book and this book to develop a solid investment plan.

u/Homebrew_ · 3 pointsr/FinancialPlanning

One word: Vanguard (www.vanguard.com)

Resources I've found helpful for learning purposes:

Bogleheads (www.bogleheads.org)

The Boglehead's Guide to Investing (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0470067365)

Good luck.

Tip: first thing, do a google search on the power of compound interest and tax-free growth. That should keep you motivated to get going and start saving now.

u/RDMXGD · 3 pointsr/personalfinance

> am ineligible for Roth IRA due to higher income

If you do not have money sitting in a Traditional IRA, you can still contribute to a Roth IRA using the "Backdoor Roth" loophole. To do so, what you do is (a) contribute to a Traditional IRA (the income limit for contributions to a Traditional IRA is for deducting, not contributing--you can contribute but not deduct it from your taxes) and then (b) roll over the funds into a Roth IRA. There is no income limit for rollovers.

(If you have funds sitting in a Traditional IRA, this is trickier.)

> What do I do next in this market ?

Making decisions based on current market factors is difficult, and plenty of highly-skilled, very-studied, well-paid professionals are clearly not so good at it. Studies show among regular folk investors, those who try to react more to market conditions on average do worse.

One popular resource at a very high level is [https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Asset_allocation](this article). These people buy this guy's ideas.

> Would hiring a personal advisor be worth it?

You are not apt to find someone smart, especially without educating yourself a lot more first.

> I'm looking for long term returns and am comfortable with significant short term fluctuations. I've somewhat dabbled with individual stocks in the stock market over the last year but have seen mostly losses(yet unrealized).

Individual stock investing is usually a losing proposition. Unless you have an insight for why a stock will move that is more accurate than the people with the resources to keep buying/selling until the good deal is gone (prices move to balance supply/demand), you don't have an edge.

What you do have is (a) lots of exciting rides (either direction), and (b) lots of commissions.

Many people restrict their equities investment to low-expense-ratio index funds, on the theory that they have no edge, so their only goal is to have a broad portfolio. This broadness helps reduce the swings while, on average, following the movement of the market in general.

u/SagaciousSteve · 3 pointsr/fiaustralia

First up take your time, a few months to get comfortable with what you'll be doing is well worth it now. Although 2.9% isn't a fantastic return, be thankful you've got the money and you're not losing money. If possible, treat the money as if you don't have it, don't dip into it to help out with this thing, or that thing.

I'll echo the below items that talk about learning. learn what shares and stocks are, the little book of common sense investing is a pretty good book to read about index investing.

(edit: removed barefoot investor link as you've already mentioned it)

u/pf_ftw · 3 pointsr/personalfinance

Before you do any investing, I'd suggest you check out the flowchart first: https://i.imgur.com/lSoUQr2.png

You should only start investing in your ROTH once you have a solid emergency fund and no high interest debt. And if you have any student loans, you might want to pay those off first depending on the interest rate.

If you have an efund and no high interest debt, then you can invest - but before you do, I'd recommend reading The Little Book of Common Sense Investing. It's a short read so it shouldn't take you long.

u/generalcatman · 3 pointsr/financialindependence

Read up on it and manage your own money. Read this book http://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101

I invest in the entire economy for the lowest rates available, with one of the most, if not the most, trusted company in the game. And I only do so with a small portion of my total net worth; I don't put all my savings into index funds. Despite what others say I put a lot of money into savings just like you. I could live for years off of savings alone and guess what I like it! I don't care what others say. I have a very unstable job situation, I'm actually self employed right now. I will keep growing that savings account at the same time I invest in index funds.

And yeah, I will never ever ever pay someone to "help" me with my money. Seriously, read that book, he talks all about these "helpers" we hate.

u/arkanus · 3 pointsr/FinancialPlanning

>Second of all, I appreciate that the DOL and IRS have made it easy for "shortsighted people" to save, but I don't appreciate the assumption you make about me not ever being able to save so much.

It was a deduction based on the facts presented.

>I don't have significant debt (less than $1,000 owed in total), and I don't have or use credit cards.

If you don't have CC debt then what is the $1,000? If it is mortgage, student loans or even a car loan then that is one thing, otherwise it probably is a bad sign.

>I just paid for a 12 day cruise with money I saved up over a couple of months. So, despite your assumptions, I assure you that I have the ability to save and am fiscally mature.

How much money do you have total? You just said that you have $1,000 in debt. You also have only listed $10,000 in retirement assets. I am glad that you could save up to go on a cruise, that puts you ahead of many people, but I still would wonder if you are saving enough for the future.

>Then the whole stock market mashup with guy who typed a b instead of an m made everything go tits up. I went from $7,900 ish to $7,000 ish.

Are you talking about the flash crash? You (almost certainly) did not lose 10% of your fund during the flash crash. When it happened the market recovered most of the loss before the end of the day. Since it is nearly impossible to do an interday trade in a 401(k), it is highly unlikely that you actually sold during the crash. In fact since 401(k) balances are typically updated at the end of the day you would not have even seen what the value of your account was at the low period.

If what you are talking about is the flash crash, then you are blowing a lot of smoke up my ass because it just didn't go down the way that you describe for a 401(k) participant.

>I realize that financial advisers tell us (me) that "it's not really money until you cash it out", except that's not entirely true. If I see a deduction from my paycheck for $110 per pay period, that's real fucking money.

They are generally right. The issue is that your time horizon is far too short for this money. You should not care what your 401(k) does in a month, in a year or even a few years. You should be investing with a time horizon of decades so these short term fluctuations will (probably) wash out in time. If your time horizon is really this short or you really are so risk averse then there are more suitable investments under your plan that you could move your money to.

>That's money I could have had in MY savings account NOT being arbitrarily messed with because some financial institution can't account for mistakes/fluctuations, etc.

Then you can always trade to an investment option which better suits your risk profile. Call your plan and find out what is available. They might think that your foolish for putting everything into a conservative investment at 29, but ultimately it is your choice.

>I find that I a) don't love seeing money I've earned through my hard work being put in an account and then disappear. I'd rather invest it myself.

It sounds like you would rather spend this money than invest it. In any case if you are so financially unsophisticated that you have to come onto Reddit to ask what would happen if you took a distribution from your 401(k) what makes you think that you will do any better investing your money than your current 401(k) plan? From your above attempt to (inaccurately) describe how the flash crash impacted you I get the feeling that you think you know a lot more than you actually do.

>I just wonder if I can find a better alternative than stocks that I don't understand in a mutual fund I share with people in my company.

What are you going to do, invest it in gold? What in the world makes you think that you know the first thing about investing. Do you realize that most of the people running those mutual funds have PhDs from ivy league universities and decades of experience? While there is some serious academic doubt that even with all of their knowledge that they can beat the market, what makes you think that you have the first clue about how to proceed?

I know that I may seem to be coming off as somewhat brash with my post. The reason for that is I really don't like seeing people throw their money away. I see a lot of terrible advice on Reddit by people that don't have any idea about how stocks actually work, but they are damn sure that it is all a scam and the only place to invest is (gold, property, tech stocks or whatever the scheme of the moment is).

There is a really good forum for educating yourself about investments here. You might also want to consider picking up some investment literature so that you can learn about the topic. If you really hate your 401(k) you could look at contributing, with future money, to a Roth IRA instead, which gives you more control.

Ultimately though it is your money and the decision is yours. No one on Reddit can give you personal financial advice because we don't know your full situation. Whatever path you take, I wish you luck and hope that it ends well for you.

u/ShadowHunter · 3 pointsr/financialindependence

you need to read the FAQ, wiki, or a book. You can start with https://www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Common-Sense-Investing/dp/0470102101

u/pfdean · 3 pointsr/PersonalFinanceCanada

Hey dude, kind of in a similar position as you. Started reading about PF a little more than 2 months ago and wish I had started 10 years earlier, haha!

Take some time and read before jumping into anything! Here's what I started with:

Wealthy Barber

then read

Millionaire Teacher

and now I'm working through

Guide to Investing

and

Random Walk Down Wall Street

You will learn a crazy amount about investing with these few books.

I also keep my eye on the RFD Personal Finance forum along with Canadian Money Forums, the latter being a lot more mature.

Cheers!

u/0ttervonBismarck · 3 pointsr/CanadaPolitics

You managed to write an awful lot there without explaining how the Liberals giving Honda $82 million somehow ensures that they will remain in the country when they were investing billions into their plants without that grant. You said yourself that it hasn't stopped companies packing up and leaving the province. There is simply no evidence that this money is keeping them here.

The negative economic effects of subsidies for private business are well documented and not a matter of ideology. I encourage you to read about them. Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt and Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell are good places to start.

u/satoshistyle · 3 pointsr/Anarcho_Capitalism

I'd start with [Economics in One Lesson by Hazzlit](
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232/ref=sr_1_1)

It's easy to read, easy to understand, no strange jargon, puts things very simply, primarily using logic and examples.

And try to thoroughly understand:

1.) Benefits of voluntary exchange

2.) Law of Comparative Advantage

3.) Broken Window Fallacy


For further reading, I'd try Ayn Rand's collection of essays called Capitalism the Unknown Ideal - that was a huge influence for me, again, quite readable and easy to understand. And finally Ludwig von Mises's The Anti-Capitalist Mentality.

u/Xab · 3 pointsr/askscience

There are several reasons that many of us in the strength and conditioning field outright avoid all grains.

The primary concern with grains is the presence of lectins, which are proteins that are only present in grains and have unusual qualities. Normally, when you ingest proteins from a meat source, the enzymes in your stomach cleave apart the peptide bonds that hold the proteins together, and you then easily absorb chains of 3 to 10 aminos, which are used throughout the body. Lectins, however, are of a design such that they aren't readily digested and are absorbed in their full state. Now, here's where the science gets somewhat cutting edge, but from what I've read, here's what happens: Once floating around in the blood, the body has a hard time recognizing them for whatever reason. They then readily bind to all sorts of tissue, inhibiting cellular turnover, most especially in the intestines (keep in mind that the intestinal lining replaces itself very rapidly). Plus, while only about 1% of the US population has Coeliac's disease (a genetic disorder which produces a marked autoimmune response in the gut leading to pain and GI issues due to a sensitivity to wheat and other grains), there's evidence to suggest that a majority of people in the US have minor autoimmune reactions to wheat and other grains. Constant autoimmune reactions to what is supposedly the basis of our diet is certainly not conductive to good health, and after all, lectins are classified as an anti-nutrient.

Another aspect is that, to me at least, it's a junk carbohydrate. It provides almost nothing other than carbohydrates. The fiber in wheat isn't nearly as high-quality as the fiber in actual vegetables, and I believe the FDA is even moving to classify grain fibers differently than vegetable fibers for that very reason. Other carbs like sweet potatoes and white rice are much more superior, in my opinion. For those that just can't get away from bread though, there is an option called Ezekial bread, which is sprouted grain bread. Sprouting doesn't get rid of all the anti-nutrients, but it does eliminate many of them.

Last of all, the evolution argument is one I find interesting but one that is difficult to consider anything more than psuedo-science without more hard data. In short, agriculture has only existed for roughly 10,000 years. Humans have existed for around 200,000 years, and during that time, they thrived on a diet of meats and vegetables. Even before that, pre-human ancestors maintained a similar diet as well. While anthropologists do note that life expectancy increased with agriculture, general wellness decreased pretty drastically using a measure of pelvic depth and height of the human. Between humans that were hunter-gatherers and humans that were farmers that lived at the same time, the hunter-gatherers were on average taller, had greater pelvic depth, and lower body fat. Agrarian cultures saw a drastic reduction in quality of life based on those biological markers.

If I may suggest, there is an incredible book that talks at length on this subject called The Vegetarian Myth. I don't think I could do the author's work justice by trying to repeat it, but she's certainly done her legwork on the topic.

u/ranprieur · 3 pointsr/AskReddit

Your wife has done research slanted toward what she already believes. Check out these books:

The Vegetarian Myth

Nourishing Traditions

u/RightfullySqualid · 3 pointsr/AntiVegan

On youtube, Cultivate Health and Beauty. It's targeted towards women and their channel is not about being anti-vegan, but they are pretty anti-vegan. Also Primal Edge Health. I watch Sv3ridge for the exvegan videos and the Epitomy of Malnourishment videos but be careful in venturing to anything outside of that. For podcasts, listen to Bulletproof Radio, Fitness Confidential, The Paleo Solution, Primal Blueprint Podcast. For books, The Vegetarian Myth and the works of Weston A. Price. Look for people with an internet presence who are paleo. Most a very educated about veganism. Nina Teicholz work is worth mentioning too. She did a great breakdown of all the problems with that piece of propaganda "documentary" What the Health.

u/not_entertained · 3 pointsr/loseit

You can always comment stalk him in the meantime ;) http://www.reddit.com/user/fatmalcontent - I think most of what you need to know is already there in his comment history.

About returning to my omnivorous ways: this was not an easy or quick decision, I had been thinking about this for at least a year now. I had ben a vegetarian for 15 years, it was a big part of who I was and I did not want to give it up. One problem were my iron levels (I'm female, from what I've heard males tend to have less problems with iron) that I barely managed to keep at a good level by using supplements. But since iron supplements tend to cause a permanent state of constipation that was just a temporary workaround but not a solution. But this was only what started to get me thinking, not the only problem, otherwise I would have done this years ago. Even with good iron levels I was still tired and pale. The fact that I was using a lot of carb heavy stuff (lots of grains and legumes) to make up for meat was not helping either. After noticing a couple of problems with supplements I started to be very suspicious about them, wondering how many other side effects they had that I did not even notice yet. So I decided that I did not want to keep taking various daily supplements, wanted to get most of the stuff mainly from my diet and started to have a detailed look at my vitamin and mineral intake (I use a software called "cronometer" for this; screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/YWUCk/cronometer_screenshots_2). I noticed after a while that I wasn't meeting many of my nutritional goals (mainly B vitamins and of course also iron) even though I was trying my best to do so.

Based on that I started to question my belief that being a vegetarian is a perfectly natural and healthy way for humans to live. I had always used the typical "no short intestine, no claws,.." arguments to defend my position. I did not want to see that you could also turn these around just as well (we don't have the long intestines of plant eaters either, but we lie somewhere in between which would make us an omnivore if you take this as a sign; we don't have claws and sharp teeth but an essential part of us being human has always been tool making so there was no need to keep wasting energy on building them).

Have you heard about the Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith? From the reviews I've seen that it is a bit controversial (veganism and vegetarianism tend to be very emotional subjects and I definitely understand why that is) but I've talked to quite a lot of people who found it very interesting and who stopped being a vegan or a vegetarian afterwards. To be honest I haven't read it since my decision was already made before I stumbled across it but if I decided to stay vegetarian I would have read it. I think it's always better to be able to consider aspects that one didn't know about before and then decide whether one wants to take them into consideration or not.

You might also have heard about the voraciouseats girl who stopped being a vegan: http://voraciouseats.com/2010/11/19/a-vegan-no-more/ she also links to a couple of other blogs of former vegans who made the same decision. In case you are interested in health related concerns I would at least have a look at these.

My personal compromise is that I am now even stricter when eating at a restaurant or party than I used to be (which is also a result of cutting out all grains). I still don't eat meat and most of the time I just have a salad, sometimes just water if I don't feel like eating (which is a completely new experience for me...). When I'm at home I cook meat for me but only when I know it has been grass fed and raised in the best way possible which I think is best for me but also the comparably best thing for the animal. There are a couple of local farmers who stopped producing milk and who instead let their cows live together with a bull on the pasture. Their calves are slaughtered at the farm and only afterward transported to a factory for processing. I also know where my eggs come from and I don't consume any dairy. This is of course more expensive but it's not like I eat nothing but meat now, it is just a small part of my diet. And I also eat much less than I did before. Upping fat & protein and cutting out anything that causes cravings (for me that unfortunately currently also includes fruits and nut butter) has helped me a lot already and so I need smaller amounts of food now. Sorry for the long comment. I've thought about this a lot and thus obviously like talking about it....

---
Edit: there was one thing that I forgot to mention. I've read this so many times and I remember when I first heard it: around 10 years ago when my doctor had checked my iron levels for the first time he looked me in the eyes and said "not everyone of us is born to be a vegetarian, you know". I did of course ignore him back then and only now remembered this. Not everyone might have the same problems when being vegan or vegetarian and as far as I know we have absolutely no idea why that is the case. So if being vegan works for you, you feel and look "alive" and if there is nothing that is missing or wrong with you then of course do whatever you believe is right. The question might however be how many people are indeed not having any problems and how many just ignore them. I always thought that I was "just pale" and that was just the way I am. Thinking about it, I have lots of pale, thin vegan friends who don't look very good but who are probably in denial just as I was. I do in fact not have a single vegan friend that looks really healthy but at least from what I've read online they might be out there.

u/refanius · 3 pointsr/news

Here's a book from an anthropologist who has studied the evolution of economies throughout world history. Humans are actually much more likely to simply use a debt-based system instead of bartering for exchanges when they do not have money to represent transactions. Bartering never happens in real time as you described. You don't wait for me to actually go get the roof fixed before you fix my PC. You just do the favor, and I owe you one.
https://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290

u/autark · 3 pointsr/worldnews

I think you would get a lot out of reading Debt: The First 5,000 Years... It speaks to "nation that is built on money that I will never be able to make" and your feeling of defeat being by design... I found the conclusion surprisingly hopeful/helpful.

u/ottilie · 3 pointsr/Portland

I like this book by David Graeber where he talks about whole economic systems are necessary to support civilizations with technologies. The pattern has been that they unwind on a multicentury cycle when too many people get into deep debt to the point that they can't support themselves enough to efficient work or participate. Rome is just one example - there were a striking number of advanced technologies during that time, but after the empire fell apart, society couldn't use them even though they were still described in books. So during Rome they had technology but also slavery, debt etc. During the middle ages they were illiterate but there was less prostitution and slavery. https://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1612191290

u/shoryukenist · 3 pointsr/europe

Mortgages on houses are a special situation, and treated differently then all other debts here. And what you are saying about just walking away from houses is only the law in a few states, and in those states, the worst of the housing bubble happened (Florida, Nevade, etc.). So I agree with you on that count. Here in New York, if I stopped paying my mortgage and walked away, the bank would sell my house, and if they didn't get all their money back, they would sue me for the rest.

With regard to other debts however, it isn't that you just walk away, and they are gone. You file for bankruptcy, and then a judge takes over your money situation to settle debts the best way possible. So the court will sell all your stuff to pay you creditors, and then they will work out a reasonable payment plan where a reasonable portion of your income goes to pay more of your debt. You will also not be able to borrow any money for at least 8 years. If there is just simply too much debt, some of it will get discharged. But since lenders are aware that this is how the system works, it should make them be careful who they lend to, so that they don't lose money.

So it isn't that you just get away with not paying, it is just worked out so you can not end up homeless and a permanent debt slave. Think about someone who bought a house in Spain a few years ago, and now their house is worth 1/3 what is was. The economy is terrible, and you lose your job. You want to do the right thing, and try to sell your house to pay the bank back, but you still end up owing them hundreds of thousands. Because you can not get a good job again, you end up cleaning toilets for very little money. The bank will keep taking your paychecks for the rest of your life, and you will never recover. Your family will have no future, your kids will be screwed and the whole lot of you will end up on welfare, costing the government money. The whole time this is going on, the bank barely gets paid anything, because you make so little money, so it isn't like they will ever get paid back.

In this scenario, everyone loses, the bank, the family and the government. And it isn't like this person did anything wrong, they bought a house for their family, and then the economy went terribly bad. This person would be much happier being employed and paying his mortgage, but he just can't.

This permanent indebtedness is what gave birth to the feudal system, where people ended up trading their lives and land to the lord of the manner. If you would like to read up on it, I suggest this http://www.amazon.com/dp/1612191290

I also should have mentioned that the bankruptcy court will take into account if someone did try to just walk away or commit fraud, and will impose very harsh terms on them. The whole point of American bankruptcy is not to punish people literally forever, who were making sounds choices, and taking reasonable risks in good faith. It has really prompted entrepreneurship, and been very benfical to us.

u/theching14 · 3 pointsr/austrian_economics

This looks like it's exactly what i'm looking for!

u/saMAN101 · 3 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

I would recommend Economics in One Lesson (which you can also buy here) because it teaches you how to use reasoning in economics and figure out where people are using bad logic in their economic thinking.

I would definitely recommend this as one of the first books you read because there are a lot of economic fallacies out there put forth by pundits, talkshow hosts, and even some economists; this book will allow you to see whether or not their economic thinking and logic is sound.

On a personal note, this is one of the first books on economics that I read, and I absolutely loved it. While it might not be the most entertaining read, it is certainly more interesting than your standard economics textbook.

After you finish that book, I would recommend you read How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes because it explains, in a way that even a child could understand, why an economy grows. The overall concept is fairly simple, but it is vital to fully understand it before trying to understand more important concepts.

u/Fella151 · 3 pointsr/suggestmeabook

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt

u/mrhota · 3 pointsr/politics

> there are other people that don't have money because you have so much.

This is a common and unfortunately persistent misunderstanding of economic action, but it's easily remedied! Try Economics in One Lesson, which is also available for free all over the internet.

u/hyperqube12 · 3 pointsr/Romania

>Dude, nu vreau sa apar pe nimeni in acez caz dar ai niste surse pentru "a ucis zeci de milioane de oameni"? Sincer, e prima data cand aud asa ceva si pe internet nu am gasit multe surse care imi zice cate a omorat el.

Desigur. Incepi cu Wikipedia.

>> In the 2008 Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism it was stated that crimes committed under communism were often crimes against humanity, according to the definition developed in the Nuremberg Trials, and that the crimes committed under communism and National Socialism were comparable.

O Declaratie a crimelor comunismului exista si ea, dar e mai putin cunoscuta, din pacate. Parlamentul European nu a condamnat niciodata nici crimele regimurilor comuniste (avem nevoie de China si Rusia) nici pactul Ribbentrop-Molotov.

Pentru a citi despre crimele comunismului in cifre, incepi tot pe wikipedia, aici, unde este data o estimare (destul de vaga din pacate).

>>The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.

Fiecare articol are zeci de referinte care pot fi consultate, pentru documentare mai adanca. Mai exista si o semi-faimoasa Carte Neagra a Comunismului, care ofera detalii referitoare la atrocitatile comise in variatele regimuri comuniste.

Pentru referinte literare, cred ca Arhipelagul Gulag ofera o imagine de ansamblu asupra modului in care comunistii identificau "dusmanii de clasa" si in care se faceau arestarile "la norma". Literatura e vasta, poti adauga si Vasili Grossman, Paul Goma, Augustin Buzura (Fetele Tacerii in special), pentru a intelege cumva efectele comunismului la nivel uman, emotional, al vietii de zi cu zi.

In fine, avem si un Institut pentru Cercetarea Crimelor Comunismului, pe situl caruia se mai gasesc oarece informatii, legate strict de spatiul romanesc.

> Apropo. Chiar daca Che Guevarra era un comunist, la fel de bine poti si spune "Nu inteleg cum microbul asta (Nixon, Georg Bush, etc.) asta capitalist poate infecta minti, chiar daca a ucis zeci de milioane de oameni".

Desigur ca poti spune, dar asta nu este un argument. Aici discutam despre comunism si impactul lui devastator atat la nivel social cat si la nivel individual. Nu a luat nimeni apararea capitalismului, nazismului, etc. Te rog sa nu aduci "argumente" de genul "da de ce numai pe mine ma vezi si pe ala nu ?" , pentru ca asa ceva nu e rational, e o forma de manipulare.

Mai este, desigur inca o diferenta intre Capitalism si Comunism / Nazism. In timp ce primul este un model pur economic, ultimele doua sunt socio-economice, au o componenta sociala extremista. Nazismul era mai degraba pur social, economic fiind capitalism in toata regula. Aici nu luam apararea niciunuia, discutam doar despre comunism. Si oricat de rau este capitalismul (si este), nu a lasat zeci de milioane de morti in urma, si razboaie mondiale, precum nazismul si comunsimul. Asta nu inseamna ca imi doresc neaparat o societate cu capitalism salbatic, asa cum e cea americana.

> Zic doar asta pentru ca lumea nu e impartita intr-o parte buna si una rea, nu e impartita intr-o lume comunista rea si una capitalista buna, etc.

Daca ai fi citit comentariul la care ai dat reply, ai fi vazut ca discutam despre tarile nord-Europene care au reusit sa imbine o doza de capitalism (economie de piata) cu protectie sociala (doctrina de stanga). Exact despre faptul ca lumea nu e in alb si negru am scris.

u/HorrorAtRedHook · 3 pointsr/centerleftpolitics

Rickrolling, but linking P_K here instead.

u/dankneolib · 3 pointsr/neoliberal

Here, try this. Let me know if you need help affording it.

u/SteadilyTremulous · 3 pointsr/ShittyDebateCommunism

> everytime purges, stalin, human nature, works on paper is mentioned we take a shot

This is actually how communists take care of dissenters.

Source

u/vakerr · 3 pointsr/TheRedPill

> what they've become, considering their Marxist leanings.

You shouldn't be surprised. Marxists have always been intolerant. Stalin, Mao, Khmer Rouge murdered ~100 million people (book). Modern western Marxists just don't have enough power (yet).

u/geezerman · 3 pointsr/Economics

The economics in it is totally obsolete, still "labor theory of value", pre-marginal analysis, e.g. leaving as a mystery why diamonds have a higher price than water, even though they have a much lower value for staying alive.

For the "development of thought" it is significant, but you should read it in historical context, getting the thoughts that led into it, or you'll miss the boat in that regard. For that consider getting Mark Blaug's Economic Theory in Retrospect, which works through the entire chain of development of economic thinking. If you are a student it is in the library. (Or even if you aren't!)

Oh, and for the practical after-effects of the "masterpiece", do also read The Black Book of Communism.

u/artisanalpotato · 3 pointsr/CanadaPolitics

Counter point.

I have not read the book, only a review of the book. I would be interested in hearing someone with an actual factual background in econ discuss the practical implications of both in a Canadian context.

u/pomod · 3 pointsr/CasualConversation

Neo-liberalism's been an ecological and social disaster. IMO; Read Naiomi Klein's Shock Doctrine for a critical POV

u/ewokjedi · 3 pointsr/politics

Way to plagiarize and spin Naomi Wolf's recent book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, into a right-wing screed.

What is both sad and laughable about this is that the basic premise may be sometimes true--that governments use crises (imaginary, real, or real but inflated) to motivate their citizens to support their policies--but attempts to suggest, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that it is only those on the political left that use this "road map."

EDIT: Adding a link to Wolf's book on Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999


u/Slightly_Lions · 3 pointsr/australia

Reminds me of the 'The Shock Doctrine'. http://www.amazon.com/The-Shock-Doctrine-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999

The idea is that you push through unpopular reforms in a time of crisis, with minimal scrutiny. Apparently it doesn't even have to be a real crisis to work in Australia.

u/Thurkagord · 3 pointsr/Libertarian

I did actually, back when I didn't pay attention to how the real world worked, and just thought that the general, vague concept of "more freedom" sounded good. Maybe I didn't go full tilt into internet Libertarian where the closest thing to a structural critique comes down to "taxation is theft!!" and "Dale gets it!" and all real analysis is predicated on thought experiments, hypothetical fantasy worlds, and have no real foundation in the reality in which we live. Like honestly, if you do any actual examination of how society is structured, and you STILL think that government and taxation, as a concept, are the most oppressive forces in the world keeping you from success rather than the moneyed interests that manipulate and fuel legislative policy, then your vicious meme takedowns are going to contribute nothing to discussion or understanding beyond giving yourself a temporary right-wing dopamine rush of 0wn1ng the l1bz.

If you'd like a chance to broaden your understanding of some of the structural concepts I am referring to, rather than just a general title of "liberal" or whatever, here are just a couple pretty basic reading options to get you started.

​

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn (1980)

The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem (1968)

The Shock Doctrine: Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein (2006)

​

​

u/the_big_wedding · 3 pointsr/politics

You have not been paying attention:

Read Naomi Klein's book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism".

http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214151920&sr=1-1

You will read how Friedman's economic/political theories are implicated with current foriegn policy events starting with the assassination of Allende and the coup that brought Pinochet to power in Chile.

Friedman's theories and practices, taken together with Leo Strauss's political views of the world (neoconservativism), American foreign policy of interventionism, low-intensity conflict (dirty war) and Christian Zionism, Israel's Zionist Likud party's adoption of the Trans-Jordan Clean-break strategy has created a murderous toxic brew that has led to the current state of affairs both here and abroad.

Ultimately, 911 can be seen as an offensive counterintelligence operation (THE BIG WEDDING), an act of the deep state government that has run the United States since the JFK assassination, the purpose of which was to use the fear generated to create the security state, within which these criminal cabals have acted to carry out its agenda alluded to in my original post above.

u/big_red737 · 3 pointsr/suggestmeabook

You might be interested in the books of Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine and her latest This Changes Everything

u/cheap_dates · 3 pointsr/atheism

He was really upset when he "came of age" and realized that our "wars" have little to do with being the leader of the free world and more about conquering new consumer markets.

My daughter said that one of the most popular languages in college today is Arabic. We are going to need people who speak Arabic to run those Mc Donalds and Starbucks one day, in the Middle East.

A good book if you have time: https://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=shock+doctrine&qid=1573402046&sr=8-1

u/jb4647 · 3 pointsr/houston

Read that series on private equity the NYTimes has been doing that I linked earlier.

Shit's more of "nefarious plot" than I realized. Another good read is "The Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein.

u/ButtFuckYourFace · 3 pointsr/Showerthoughts

You may enjoy this book detailing the sociopathy of the boomers

https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

u/Numero34 · 3 pointsr/canada

Possibly related A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

Besides the eye-catching title, the author, Bruce Gibney one of the guys that made it big off of paypal, goes into some interesting aspects of policies that have directly favoured the boomers at the expense of everyone else. This article goes into some details

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/02/26/how-baby-boomers-destroyed-everything/lVB9eG5mATw3wxo6XmDZFL/story.html

u/freakwharf · 3 pointsr/videos

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316395781/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_3Kl8CbG4JW3ZT

u/photototothroaway · 3 pointsr/rawdenim

Oh wow lots of cool info about how the current generation sucks but nothing about how the boomers have left the planet in shambles and have pissed away any morality that the greatest generation gave them. Any decent psychiatrist will tell you narcissism peaked in the 80's/90's - when greed was good and celebrated - and we're in the age of the schizoids now. That said, where do you think people got the idea that who they are is connected to what they own? Where do you think this really took off? And who do you think let it grow unfettered to profit it off it every chance they could with no consideration about the effects down the road. Your argument is akin to throwing a can of tear gas into a room and then blaming people for tearing up. We were brought up with this shit. You'll need to give the young ones some time to realize their parents had fucked up values and forge their own paths...which they are actually starting to do.

Here, I can link articles explaining why the boomers pissed away everything and are clutching their gold watches to their graves with no consideration for future generations, only their own kids hoarding wealth for them and fucking up any sense of meritocracy for up and comers.

https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/01/15/a-generation-of-sociopaths-rich-barlow

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/gene-weingarten-millennials-maybe-youre-right-about-us-baby-boomers/2016/11/16/a1e1a394-9d14-11e6-9980-50913d68eacb_story.html

https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/people-who-stole-the-world-alvarez

https://www.amazon.com/Generation-Sociopaths-Boomers-Betrayed-America/dp/0316395781

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/why-the-boomers-are-the-most-hated-generation/276368/

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-baby-boomers-became-the-most-selfish-generation-2016-11

See, totally describes every boomer right? Nah, course not...but easy to assemble a bunch of generation bashing material that has some basis in...what's happening.

I'm sorry you're so miserable with the next generation, luckily you won't have to deal with us for as long as we'll have to deal with ya'll. I don't entirely blame you, coming of age in a time of material wealth, not having any morale building, unifying war experience, embracing consumer capitalism and perpetuating it like the world has never known before that - looking at the mess left behind, the current political environment, environment environment, rising income inequality - yea, that has nothing to do with governmental and corporate leadership of the past 40 years lolol.

u/JawsJVH · 3 pointsr/occupywallstreet

Thank you for your response! I am glad at least one person read the link.

If you want to watch the documentary, here's a link. Its a bit old (1992), and Chomsky is sometime difficult to keep focused on with his style.

If you want to go all out, here is a link to the book on Amazon.

u/AlabasterPelican · 3 pointsr/atheism

Your every welcome, feel free to ask any more if you wish. As far as Rand Paul goes he's got a few good takes but he does this weird thing where he puts nonsense into a hat shakes it up and pulls it out into a convincing sentience. For a comprehensive analysis of how this gets done in the media by not just Rand Paul and other conservatives but everyone I would suggest the book (or documentary) Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky & Edward Herman. It was published in 1988 but the core of their argument is still open relevant today. Here's the Amazon link: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media https://www.amazon.com/dp/0375714499/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_M-dHDb9W0NBBH

Here's the YouTube link to the 1992 documentary: https://youtu.be/AnrBQEAM3rE


And here's a short intro to it produced by Al Jazeera with voice over by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!:
https://youtu.be/34LGPIXvU5M

u/jddrummond · 3 pointsr/booksuggestions

Manufacturing Consent:The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky

This book provides a model for how the news media is used (and has been used) as propaganda for the political elite. The model is presented with multiple case studies. Very eye opening.

u/cylon56 · 3 pointsr/investing

I see that Intelligent Investor by Graham has already been posted but that's certainly a good one. However it can be a bit dry for most readers and if you would prefer something a bit fresher I would read Deep Value by Toby Carlisle. He discusses and critiques Graham's teachings along with the strategies of other notable value investors such as Buffet, Icahn, Greenblatt and many others all in a more modern tone. It's been the bible for my own value investing strategies.

Other books to look into are:

  • Dhandho Investor by Monish Pabrai (lots of simple strategies and examples for small risk - big payoff investments)
  • Education of a Value Investor by Guy Spier (good for understanding the discipline and mental state of a good value investor)
  • Michael Lewis books such as Big Short and Flash Boys (These are less for learning investing and more for generating your own interest in finance with some fantastic writing. It's also good for learning what the reality of the markets and Wall Street are.)
u/wipny · 3 pointsr/investing

I just started reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham.

So far, I've found it relatable and informative. The book can get a little technical, but it offers solid, practical advice that anyone can learn from.

One of the lessons that stood out to me was the difference between investing and speculating.

Investing is making informed, long term decisions based on objectivity and sound financial principles with an emphasis on risk aversion.

Speculating is making short term decisions based on groupthink and emotion, with a focus on taking advantage of short term price fluctuations.

If you do decide to speculate, make sure you treat it as such and do not ever confuse it with investing.

He goes on to list the ways speculating can be unintelligent.

  1. Speculating when you think you are investing;
  2. Speculating seriously instead of as a pastime, when you lack proper knowledge and skill for it; and
  3. Risking more money in speculation than you can afford to lose (no more than 10% of your "investment" reserve).
u/jeffrey4044 · 3 pointsr/phinvest

I'm one of those Robinhood users but I can't complain about much it's not a bad way to start learning how to trade and buy stocks. I contribute every payday into my account it's currently around $5,000. Not much but it's decent. For the last two-and-a-half years I've been investing a portion of my paychecks to the stock market I spent about four months losing a lot of money trying to follow all these YouTube gurus advice. I lost about $1,500 trying to do that. Eventually though I decided I should just teach myself the ropes instead of taking somebody else's word for it. I purchased 4 books from Amazon and these books are great they teach you a lot of stuff about the stock market how to value companies and ideas to help you grow your portfolio over time I just wanted to recommend these books if somebody is just starting out it's not that much money it's about $45 worth of investment it has been great for me since reading them. I also have to recommend a YouTuber that I follow quite closely his name is Jeremy and his channel is called financial education. I like his investment style and I try to do very similar things myself.

.https://amzn.to/2mnwnOg The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

https://amzn.to/2nVmy A Random Walk Down Wall Street by  Burton G. Malkiel

https://amzn.to/2nfkfiE Irrational Exuberance by Robert J. Shiller

https://amzn.to/2nn7imH The Bogleheads’ Guide to the 3 Fund Portfolio by Taylor Larimore

u/Rootlx · 3 pointsr/portugal

Não tens de agradecer, my pleasure. Assim de repente, alguns clássicos e outros livros que possam ser úteis:

- Rich Dad Poor Dad

- One Up on Wall Street

- The Intelligent Investor

- Everyday Millionaires

- Your Money, Your Life

- Side Hustle

- Motley Fool for Teens - não leves a mal ter escolhido a edição "for teens" - é só porque é um excelente guia para quem está a começar e vai investir quantias pequenas só para molhar o pé. Se quiseres algo mais completo, tudo o que é do Motley Fool (incluindo o site, newsletters e podcast) é bom.

Em português não conheço muito e o único que me vem à cabeça é este do Pedro Queiroga Carrilho.

u/Vicariousjake · 3 pointsr/csgomarketforum

The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition) (Collins Business Essentials)

Link: http://amzn.com/0060555661
Though it is for the real life investing, most theories still apply.

To answer your questions:

  1. Don't bother buying Fnatic ,NV,C9, VP, or probably LG this major, there will be a huge amount of these for sale as they are the peoples favorites and will take FOREVER to get to a worthy profit, assuming all stickers will be 75% off after the final. Small teams that will most likely never return to the major are a no go as well, like spylce, gambit, etc. So choose the teams in the middle, their sticker prices will usually increase 100% within about 6 months and that's about as fast a turnaround you can hope for.

  2. Like others have said stickers will most likely never go to the price they were in 2014 due to the size of the audience and the abundant knowledge that there is a possibility the stickers could be the next 2014 Kato Titan Holo. So will it take time ,yes.

    You could go for the gamble and try to buy stickers of teams who you may think will have a roster change like C9 or VP after the major. As we have seen in the past with G2,Titan,Fnatic a roster change directly affects the price of stickers.
u/lechnito · 3 pointsr/AskReddit

Economics:

u/SlothMold · 3 pointsr/suggestmeabook

I'm getting a fast-paced, usually humorous vibe from your likes.

David Sedaris' humor essays have a difficulty level similar to Mary Roach, though he does daily life more often than science. Start with something like Me Talk Pretty One Day rather than his latest where there's useless filler pages. In a more data-driven vein, Freakonomics might make for a good read.

My Date With Satan is an oddball short story collection (about fucked up characters) with enough gems to make the book worthwhile. And Chuck Palahniuk should always be considered in the same vein as Christopher Moore.

If you want something humorous but more light-hearted, maybe A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears. Add philosophy to the mix and you get The Phantom Tollbooth.

Also, Feed and The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm should be considered as short reads if you liked World War Z and Neil Gaiman.

u/TrapWolf · 3 pointsr/entj

Ain't No Makin' It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood

u/LiveLongAndFI · 3 pointsr/UkrainianConflict

If you enjoy statistical analysis in this article you might like book Freconomics. It has two chapters dedicated to spotting fraud using statistical analysis.

u/LawyeredOp · 3 pointsr/opiates

The drug game is greatly romanticized in our culture, but the reality is a stark contrast.

Freakonomics (I think it was this book) had a chapter exploring the drug game and found only lucrative at the very highest positions.

And that doesn't even touch on the risk of law enforcement involvement. Baltimore may have its hands too full go hammer lower-level drug dealers, but in the South we defense lawyers have a saying: sale means jail. 2-5 years to serve (though parole eligible fairly quickly), and if you're not facing it, someone that could flip on you is. On a long enough timeline, everyone's survival rate drops to zero.

In fact, in Georgia, a second sale of a schedule I or II is life eligible. On life, parole isn't even considered until 14 years in on non-violent offenses.

I'm not trying to shit on your dream, but the reality of the thing is vastly different from the average perception of the thing.

u/redalastor · 3 pointsr/elm

If you were to divulge more speculative information about 0.19 I'd definitely jump on it. But the size of the gzip bundle of a SPA done with Elm that is quite competitive with the other frameworks now feels bloated since 0.19 will have dead code elimination. It's not rational.

Emotionally, I'm with the sibling comment. But intellectually, I know I'm biased.

There's an awesome book called Predictably Irrational about that kind of phenomenons, I highly recommend it!

u/kevad · 3 pointsr/booksuggestions

I enjoyed Predictably Irrational, which is in the same style as Freakonomics. Interesting results that you wouldn't necessarily expect.

u/droptune · 3 pointsr/tipofmytongue

The book Predictably Irrational takes a look at this, most notably in the chapter about beer. They set up several tests to see when the beer is labeled in different ways, how this reflects the outcome of the survey.

This has also been tested a lot recently in the "organic" field, where people are told to choose between organic food and traditional foods using pesticides or chemicals. Almost every time people choose the organic item IF its labeled organic. They choose the organic item even if its not really organic, its just labeled that way. One of my favorite versions of the test is to use non-organic for both items, but label one as organic and watch people describe how much better the organic item is, even though they are exactly the same. Penn and Teller did version of this test. I am not saying that the most scientific test, but its fun to watch the organic hipsters squirm when they realized they actually liked the non-organic food.

In closing though, no, I don't know the exact term for this.

u/jollybumpkin · 3 pointsr/askphilosophy

Marx's theories were highly speculative, based on some historical examples, and some contemporary examples. He had limited access to data. His most important idea was that wealth inevitably accumulates in the hands of a few. He reasoned that such a system is not sustainable in the long run because eventually one person would hold all wealth and everybody else would be wage slaves. Accordingly, he concluded, revolutions are inevitable.

The idea that wealth tends to accumulate in the hands of a few can be tested empirically. Some philosophers are sympathetic to empirical philosophy, others are doubtful. Thomas Piketty has made a very serious attempt to test the suggestion that wealth inevitably accumulates in the hands of a few. It looks like Marx's main idea might be right. Hence, Bernie Sanders. Of course, controversy remains.

A little off topic, but of possible interest.

u/ja524309 · 3 pointsr/changemyview

I'd be interested to hear what /u/HealthcareEconomist2 has to say in regard to Thomas Piketty's new book.

u/HandyMoorcock · 3 pointsr/australia

Just sayin... I suspect the wholesale adoption of neoliberal economic policy from the mid 70s onwards might be somewhat more responsible for the erosion of the western middle class than television.

A couple of books give pretty compelling evidence of this:

https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Neoliberalism-David-Harvey/dp/0199283273

https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1499813570&sr=1-1&keywords=capital

u/MadCervantes · 3 pointsr/lostgeneration

Oh that's cute. You linked me Sowell. Now try reading a big boy economist: https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496878948&sr=8-1&keywords=Capital+in+the+Twenty-First+Century

I know the math looks really hard but trust me, it won't be so bad.

u/CaptainChaos87 · 3 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

What are your thoughts on Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century ? I haven't read it yet but have been encouraged to.

u/DevilishRogue · 3 pointsr/ukpolitics

There are no books that can adequately cover British politics to the extent that you're asking. Also, politics and economics are intertwined to the point that you cannot understand one without the other. Freakonomics, for example explains how the two cannot be meaningful separated and is an interesting place to start any political journey.

Depending on your background knowledge 30-Second Politics can give you a grounding of what all the different terminology means and Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box provides useful insight as to the difference between how politics is preached and practiced. Also, The Plan is essential reading to understand our current government.

You've already mentioned Douglass Murray's Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, which I would also thoroughly endorse. Further to that I'd recommend Thomas Pikkety's Capital in the 21st Century which although about economics is so closely tied to current political thought that it really is extremely useful reading

u/RealFreedomAus · 3 pointsr/Anarchism

Holy crap.

The amazon reviews are hilarious.

http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/product-reviews/067443000X/ref=dpx_acr_txt?showViewpoints=1

There's mostly 5-star reviews, but then a bunch of 1-star reviews from right-wingers who don't seem to have read anything more than the blurb. Sure looks like brigading.

'hurr durr communism has never worked' 'you'll all be equally poor' 'commie bullshit' etc etc (paraphrased quotes, sorry)

Ah well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXWzQW0jV3o Ain't Done Nothin' If You Ain't Been Called A Red

u/conn2005 · 3 pointsr/Libertarian

Democracy is the God that Failed, it's very unlikely that after the current Turkish revolution that anything will look any different in a decade or two regardless of the regime or who is in power.

u/Throwahoymatie · 3 pointsr/technology

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-The-God-That-Failed-Economics/dp/0765808684

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CGGuZLjy1E

There are superior alternatives to democracy. Don't fall for the myth that "it's the best thing we've got".

u/maszyna · 3 pointsr/MGTOW

No one mentioned dictatorships. A highlt individualistic society with a polycentric law system is far better than both dictatorships and democracy.

Democracy is the rule of the mob and a spiral towards communism. The reason you're paying that many taxes for all the "free" shit the government gives out to "needy" people is democracy. It's because women got to vote and voted for shit that women like.

Reading tip: https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-God-That-Failed-Perspectives/dp/0765808684

u/Tenhats · 3 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

> no, that would mean, there are market opportunities to improve something there

How so?

> That would be feudalism or maybe some sort of pure version of utilitarianism like Mill.

What I described is what many prominent right-libertarian thinkers, for [Rothbard] (https://mises.org/library/ballots-and-bullets) to [Mises.] (https://mises.org/library/mises-fascism-democracy-and-other-questions) Pretty much the entire [austrian school of economics really.] (https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Perspectives-Democratic/dp/0765808684) I can get you specific relevant quotes from any of the above if you need them.

I do agree with you though that a market completely free of government interference would rapidly turn into fuedalism, but that's not the baseline libertarian position.

Regarding the system you're describing, I would wager that the regulations you call for alone create a market that isn't truly free, but also where does the government obtain the funds to carry out this role? If it's through taxation then we're again drifting away from a free market and we bump into that taxation is theft bit too, if you believe in that. These not-for-profit government services as well, you're describing social services and or a public option, again, no longer a free market. Also, what's to stop especially rich companies from buying out the government and using these regulations and taxes that you're cool with for their benefit?

I mean, what you're describing is essentially just Keynesian social democracy.

> There is no social Darwinism here, govt ensures base survival and rights of people.

Social darwinism needn't be life or death, just a sorting of society through competition with the idea that the best folks would end up on top and the worst at the bottom, that the most innovative, intelligent, and productive companies will overtake the others. The wealth the CEOs of that company obtain is justified and right, and so is the poverty of those who go fail and go bankrupt. The market working as intended.

u/chewingofthecud · 3 pointsr/AskLibertarians

It's a pretty big tent. It's hard to point to one place.

There's a good community here in r/DarkEnlightenment. The learning curve for DE (AKA "neoreaction") is pretty steep, so perhaps a good place for the libertarian to start is From Mises to Carlyle.

There's also Hoppe. Many libertarians get skeptical about democracy and venture beyond libertarianism via him. Even Rothbard, in his later writings, started going in a somewhat Hoppean direction. Maybe try Democracy: The God That Failed. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn is another along these lines.

Bertrand de Jouvenel is another gateway drug. He's a classical liberal whose description of how power works utterly undermines classical liberal ideas of sociology and anthropology. Try his On Power, and then follow it up with The Patron Theory of Politics for a tour through the illiberal consequences of his ideas.

Jonathan Bowden was a great English intellectual who gave a series of lectures on various illiberal thinkers such as Heidegger, Evola, Carlyle, Spengler, Pound, Nietzsche, and even Marx and other socialist thinkers. He functions as a sort of TL;DR for the illiberal right, and so makes for a very good introduction. His lectures are engaging and can be found on Youtube, but probably the best of them is a Q&A he gave about his own views.

u/allaboutthebernankes · 3 pointsr/Libertarian

I don't find this argument very compelling - he basically just tries to form a link between progressive taxation and concepts that he assumes will elicit a favorable response from the listener (democracy and free market thinkers).

The first link is to democracy. Let's grant that progressive taxation and democracy go hand in hand. Even then, you'd still have to prove that democracy is inherently good. Which is difficult to do.

The second link is to free market thinkers. Even if we ignore the fact that he misrepresents the support of progressive taxation by free market thinkers, such support doesn't necessarily mean it's right. Just because Adam Smith or George W. Bush (really?!) spoke favorably of progressive taxation, we shouldn't take those ideas as truth. Heck, Smith and Ricardo believed in the labor theory of value, but that doesn't mean that we should too.

u/PanqueNhoc · 3 pointsr/greentext

>at the end of the day if you can convince enough people to think the way you do all the reasons in the world doesn't matter anymore.

And that's the issue with democracy. Well, one of them at least.

Recommended read

u/Caltex88 · 3 pointsr/Libertarian

Sure.

Property rights include the right to own your self, your labor, real property and personal goods. Property rights mean that one has the right to sell, trade, buy, lease property with other consenting parties at their own discretion.

Democracy is a system where your neighbors claim to have the right to take your property or restrict your use of your property without your consent. To vote themselves into your pocket, and steal from you or place you into indentured servitude based on the arbitrary results of a popular vote.

Democratic government subjects free individuals to the tyranny of others. Persons holding no valid claim to the property of others vote to steal, appropriate or restrict the rights of free individuals and take their property without their consent.

Democracy in essence is a soft variant of communism. It is the belief that our property rights are subject the the whims of our neighbors, who can magically vote themselves the right to steal our property without our consent.

Edit: For the full breakdown, written by someone smarter than myself: https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-God-That-Failed-Perspectives/dp/0765808684

u/phor2zero · 3 pointsr/philosophy

You might enjoy Democracy - The God that Failed by Hans Hermann Hoppe

u/Crazybluecat · 3 pointsr/CBTS_Stream
u/kazakoman · 3 pointsr/Libertarian

I don't even know what this question means. Its clear you don't have enough understanding of all of the relevant content required to debate these topics.

2008 unprecedented central bank action drove the time value of money (interest rates) down to all time lows.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS10

This is allowing us to spend wantonly and basically have no consequence from it since the debt is nearly free.

If the US has to issue more debt, all else equal, they have to pay more in interest rates.

Once the amount of interest takes over an outsized part of the debt (See Detroit, Chicago, etc), investors stop buying it and it starts a death spiral as they cannot pay the already issued debt coming true. The problem with sovereign debt is we can just print more, which makes each outstanding dollar worth less.

Whether or not being the "reserve currency" does much for the US is a topic of debate as well. However, as a libertarian, you should hate the central banks most of all for allowing this mess to go on. A great book on the topic, if a little over the top:

https://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/091298645X

u/th1nkpatriot · 3 pointsr/btc

Just like HSBC. That's how these banks roll. Hypocrisy to the Nth degree.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-02/hsbc-judge-approves-1-9b-drug-money-laundering-accord

Anybody that knows anything about how the current monetary system was put into place knows it's the de facto standard of fraud.

The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve

https://www.amazon.com/dp/091298645X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_E.PdAb0FX3GJ2

The bankers just don't like what's happening and Jamie and Co. are realizing that they will become, in this analogy, the Blockbuster of banks to cryptocurrencies' Netflix.

u/scotty321 · 3 pointsr/btc

Happy New Year to everyone at r/btc! May we finally slay the Creature from Blockstream Island in 2016! :)

u/BasedKeyboardWarrior · 3 pointsr/conspiracy

The creature from Jekyll Island

Just finished this. Also would recommend John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit man if you want something easier to read. Not sure if he is telling the truth about his life but its an easy way to get into the paradigm to understand more complex books.

Also the documentary Money Masters by Bill Still.

u/adarkmethodicrash · 3 pointsr/zerocarb

https://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

It's written by a former avid Vegan, and covers what she's learned about how Vegtarianism/Veganism affects health, the environment, and animal rights. It's not a hard scientific study, but covers a wide range of topics to enough of a degree to possibly reshape your thinking. I suggest reading it as a overview, and then start digging into select areas that concern you more deeply.

She didn't go ZC, but instead is omnivore with a focus on fresh unprocessed food.

u/squintinginthelight · 3 pointsr/unpopularopinion

Absolutely, supporting farms who treat their animals well is an active vote against meat from a factory farm. Money talks.


Agriculture is also hugely deadly to animals and bad for the environment. There's a whole book about this written by a woman who was vegan for 20 years. The Vegetarian Myth

u/hexapus · 3 pointsr/Paleo

Reminds me of some of the material in this book

u/herman_gill · 3 pointsr/loseit

Krill, Shrimp, and Sardines are each one of the largest biomasses on the planet. They're actually more sustainable than most plant and vegetation which we have to actually actively grow to get enough of. Those farming practices actually help destroy the planet even worse than krill, shrimp, and sardine fishing do. This is because these three species are pretty much as the bottom of the food chain in the ocean. We couldn't actually wipe out any three of these populations from fishing practices if we actively tried to.

The same isn't true of salmon though, which is why it's often farmed (or because it's difficult to catch large amounts of in places like Alaska where there is still an abundance of it).

Have you ever heard of this book?

u/Zain88 · 3 pointsr/history

Following up on this, do yourself a favor and read Chomksy's Manufacturing Consent. There's also a youtube documentary/movie with excerpts from his lectures to help give you a feel for his ideas.

Lastly, I'm currently in the middle of reading Jason Stanley's book "How Propaganda Works." I like it so far; I'm about 1/2 way through it.

u/bengalsix · 3 pointsr/CollegeBasketball
u/lordkrike · 3 pointsr/TumblrInAction

Just as an aside, you should read How to Lie with Statistics.

I need to re-read it. It never hurts to learn how to spot bullshit statistics.

u/The_Sven · 3 pointsr/Christianity

There's a whole book about that. How to Lie with Statistics.

u/siml · 3 pointsr/BuyItForLife

This sounds exactly like something that would be in How to Lie with Statistics.

u/dwf · 3 pointsr/science

Which is why you ought to read this book. It's a classic, but that doesn't stop people from practically using it as an operating manual.

u/ForeverAlot · 3 pointsr/programming

Even ignoring maliciousness, which is certainly an element of underhanded politics, it's just very easy to do accidentally; or to not realise it's being done to you. How to Lie with Statistics is basically a collection of (authentic) examples of accidental and deliberate deceit.

u/zyme86 · 3 pointsr/politics

An oldie but a goodie How to Lie With Stastics

u/hoijarvi · 3 pointsr/math
u/UseWhatName · 3 pointsr/Portland

I completely agree that taking away one device does not solve a problem. I'd also argue that "solving" depression is a complex issue that won't be as immediately enforceable as a gun policy.

So, why not both?

Surely there's some good reason for a Republican to back the bill, no?

ps, you might really enjoy reading "How to Lie with Statistics" (non affiliate link).

u/flopsweater · 2 pointsr/AskAnAmerican

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media https://www.amazon.com/dp/0375714499

edit: the above is a New York Times bestseller, and considered by many to be an Important Book.

u/SteveBule · 2 pointsr/ChapoTrapHouse

Yeah no problem. While Blum's work shows the effect of anti-communist efforts and policies by US, it's not really a guide on ideology; it's an account of what happened and why. If you are interested in leftist ideology i would recommend the ABCs of socialism which provides laymen's terms answers to questions of socialist government structure (e.g. how authoritarianism can find it's way into the fray) and economics.

Also, anything by Noam Chomsky, Mike Davis, or Naomi Klein are usually very insightful for modern day analyses of power, politics, and economics. I've got a long list if you want anymore suggestions, mostly from the perspective of critiquing power (from the right or the left) and it's effects on societies

edit: also check out the Chapo Trap House podcast for cathartic sessions of shitting on asshole politicians across the spectrum and highlights of funny/bizarre political takes

u/Bill_Murray2014 · 2 pointsr/LimitedHangouts

You need to go to the library and read up on the structure and history of the mainstream news media. I would start with this book, and then move on to this one.

And then rethink how the media works and where whistleblowers fit into all of this. I guarantee your views will change.

See what you are failing to understand, or ignoring is that the mainstream media is a complex topic and saying things like, "it's corporate media, it's there to disperse propaganda and control what Americans think" is to miss so much of what has been written about all aspects of the workings of the media industry.

Sure, the mainstream news media disseminates propaganda. But my guess is that you have a default position whereby quite literally everything is propaganda designed to control what people think, as opposed to informing people on current affairs.

u/beeftaster333 · 2 pointsr/canada

The following is necessary to understand the politics of the modern world. These links will take a while to digest, but if you want to understand what's going on in the world, you owe it to yourself to become informed about the true state of the world.

Our brains are much worse at reality and thinking than thought. Science on reasoning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Education as ignorance

https://chomsky.info/warfare02/

Overthrowing other peoples governments

http://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-other-peoples-governments-the-master-list

Wikileaks on TTIP/TPP/ETC

https://youtu.be/ABDiHspTJww?t=17

Energy subsidies

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2015/NEW070215A.htm

Interference in other states when the rich/corporations dont get their way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mxp_wgFWQo&feature=youtu.be&list=PLKR2GeygdHomOZeVKx3P0fqH58T3VghOj&t=724

Manufacturing consent (book)

http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499/

Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

Manufacturing consent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwU56Rv0OXM

https://vimeo.com/39566117

Testing theories of representative government

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

Democracy Inc

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalitarianism/dp/069114589X

From war is a racket:

"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]

"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]

"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]

General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of traumatized soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/dp/0922915865/

Blum:

http://williamblum.org/aer/read/137

US distribution of wealth

https://imgur.com/a/FShfb

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

The Centre for Investigative Journalism

http://www.tcij.org/

Some history on US imperialism by us corporations.

https://kurukshetra1.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/a-brief-history-of-imperialism-and-state-violence-in-colombia/

The real news

http://www.therealnews.com

u/talanton · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

Just like in Asimov's Foundation series, psychohistory relies on large groups acting on instinct and existing without any knowledge of psychology or sociology. By acquainting yourself with the tools of persuasion from rhetoric and oratory to propaganda and public relations, you inoculate yourself against them.

u/JudgeBastiat · 2 pointsr/Libertarian
u/voodoochile78 · 2 pointsr/samharris

Broke: Manufacturing Dissent

Woke: Manufacturing Consent

u/oroyplata · 2 pointsr/conspiracy

Odd, this story is coming from a news outlet owned by Newscorp, but fails to parrot the corporate narrative that Russians are once again the bad guys.

Remember when we used to call the bad guys Terrorists? And before that, we called them Russians?

u/foodforthoughts · 2 pointsr/politics

If you suspect that you're not getting the whole story from television, I'd suggest picking up Noam Chomsky. He literally wrote the book, Manufacturing Consent, on the propaganda model for analyzing the media. Maybe start with The Common Good or What Uncle Sam Really Wants. That last one was one of the catalysts that started my own ideological transformation around your age that led me to becoming a conscientious objector and leaving the USMC.

Admittedly, Chomsky is a leftist intellectual, a self described supporter of anarcho syndicalism and libertarian socialism, but then, a lot of thinking people gravitate to leftism. Einstein wrote a letter entitled, Why I am a Socialist-

>'The oligarchy of private capital cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organised political society. The members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties financed or influenced by private capitalists. Moreover, private capitalists control the main sources of information (press, radio, education).'

u/syscofresh · 2 pointsr/pics
u/mcmk3 · 2 pointsr/socialism

I'd personally start with a few videos, then work your way into literature. The literature I suggest below is intentionally easy to read.

u/Pie_Gun · 2 pointsr/enoughpetersonspam

Manufacturing Consent by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky.

It's basically arguing that the profit motive of capitalism has caused the "free press" to act as state propagandists. It sounds crazy, but they go into a lot of detail proving their point.

It's not specifically about capitalism vs socialism, but I think anyone who reads it would come out a little bit more skeptical of the narratives about capitalism we've grown up with.

u/UserNumber01 · 2 pointsr/Anarchism

I'm not exactly an Anarchist, per say, though I am a strong ally, so I'll offer up my 2 cents here.

As far as general radicalizing, accessible texts by Anarchists go? Gotta be Chomsky, dude.

Requiem, Manufacturing Consent and Who Rules the World? are excellent introductions to deconstructing mainstream hegemony- step 1 towards radicalization.

(edit: and Requiem for the American Dream even has a documentary based on it, so that makes it even more accessible if your friend doesn't feel like diving into a massive swathe of books right away. You can even watch it for free online!)

Now general anti-capitalist work? That's more my speed. Here's a reading list I made a while back of books that I've enjoyed which are both socially radical and operate within a Marxist (or at least socialist) framework. Some on specific social issues, others addressing Capitalism directly.

u/SlovenianCat · 2 pointsr/redslovenija

Članek: http://www.openculture.com/2017/03/an-animated-introduction-to-noam-chomskys-manufacturing-consent.html

An Animated Introduction to Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent and How the Media Creates the Illusion of Democracy

in Media, Politics | March 13th, 2017 3 Comments

9.3kSHARESFacebookTwitterRedditAdvertisement

For nearly as many years as he’s occupied the public eye, famed linguist and anarchist philosopher Noam Chomsky has made claims that might have discredited other academics. Perhaps his many books, articles, lectures, interviews, etc. carry such weight because of his “famed linguist” status and his longtime tenure at MIT. But there’s more to his longevity as a respected critic of U.S. state power. His voice also carries significant authority because he substantiates his arguments with erudite, granular analyses of economic theory, history, and political philosophy.

We’ve seen him do exactly this in his fierce opposition to the Vietnam War at the beginning of his activist career, and in his critiques of proxy wars, imperialistic repression, and corporate resource grabs in Latin America and Southeast Asia in decades since.

​

When it comes to the U.S. domestic scene, one of Chomsky’s most pointed and continually relevant critiques addresses the way in which we’re led to believe the country’s actions overseas justify themselves, as well as its actions upon its own citizens. We might debate whether the U.S. is a democracy or a republic, but according to Chomsky, both notions may well be illusory.

Instead, Chomsky argues in Manufacturing Consent—his 1988 critique of “the political economy of the mass media" with Edward S. Herman—that the mass media sells us the idea that we have political agency. Their “primary function… in the United States is to mobilize support for the special interests that dominate the government and the private sector.” Those interests may have changed or evolved quite a bit since 1988, but the mechanisms of what Chomsky and Herman identify as “effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function” might work in the age of Twitter just as they did in one dominated by network and cable news.

Those mechanisms largely divide into what the authors called the “Five Filters.” The video at the top of the post, produced by Marcela Pizarro and narrated by Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, provides a quick introduction to them, in a jarring animated sequence that’s part Monty Python, part Residents video. See the five filters listed below in brief, with excerpts from Goodman’s commentary:

>1. *Media Ownership**—The endgame of all mass media orgs is profit. “It is in their interest to push for whatever guarantees that profit.”
2.* *Advertising**—Media costs more than consumers will pay: Advertisers fill the gap. What do advertisers pay for? Access to audiences. “It isn’t just that the media is selling you a product. They’re also selling advertisers a product: you.”
3.* *Media Elite**—“Journalism cannot be a check on power, because the very system encourages complicity. Governments, corporations, and big institutions know how to influence the media. They feed it scoops and interviews with supposed experts. They make themselves crucial to the process of journalism. If you want to challenge power, you’ll be pushed to the margins…. You won’t be getting in. You’ll have lost your access.”
4.* *Flack**—“When the story is inconvenient for the powers that be, you’ll see the flack machine in action: discrediting sources, trashing stories, and diverting the conversation.”
5.* *The Common Enemy**—“To manufacture consent, you need an enemy, a target: Communism, terrorists, immigrants… a boogeyman to fear helps corral public opinion.”

Chomsky and Herman’s book offers a surgical analysis of the ways corporate mass media "manufactures consent” for a status quo the majority of people do not actually want. Yet for all of the recent agonizing over mass media failure and complicity, we don't often hear references to [
Manufacturing Consent](http://amzn.to/2mZ49rH) these days. This may have something to do with the book’s dated examples, or it may testify to Chomsky’s marginalization in mainstream political discourse, though he would be the first to note that his voice has not been suppressed.

It may also be the case that media theory and criticism like Chomsky's, or the work of Marshall McLuhan, Theodor Adorno, or Jean Baudrillard (all very different kinds of thinkers), has fallen out of favor in a 140-character world. In the late-80s and 90s, however, such theory received a good deal of attention, and Chomsky appeared in the many venues you’ll see in the short video above, excerpted from an almost 3-hour 1992 documentary called [
Manufacturing Consent*](http://amzn.to/2mYRSDj), a film made by “die-hard fans,” wrote Colin Marshall in an earlier post, that “curates instances of Chomsky going from interview to interview, debate to debate, forum to forum, making sharp-sounding points about the relationship between business elites and the media.”

Our desire for instant reward and settled opinion may have overtaken our ability to subject the entire phenomenon of mass media to critical analysis, as we leap from cliffhanger to cliffhanger and crisis to crisis. But should we take the time to watch this film and, preferably also, read Chomsky’s book, we may find ourselves somewhat better equipped to evaluate the onslaught of propaganda to which we’re subjected on what seems like an hourly basis.

u/SuperConfused · 2 pointsr/suggestmeabook

How to Lie with Statistics
By Darrell Huff

Read this book in 1990. Taught me more about how to consume the news and what politicians said than anything I learned in school. Should be required reading. The message has not changed since Huff wrote it in the 50s.

u/BentGadget · 2 pointsr/Libertarian

You may be interested in the book How to Lie with Statistics. This and other techniques are discussed in depth.

u/eperdu · 2 pointsr/xxketo4u2

There’s plenty of data to indicate climate change is real yet look how many people don’t believe it and further, don’t get me started on flat earthers.

If interested, this is an excellent book: How to Lie with Statistics

Edit: I realize it sounds like I’m dismissing the role and the possibilities of it, but that’s not the case. It’s just a tough row to hoe. :)

u/traibanh · 2 pointsr/australia

> Statistics are oppression.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728

Any idiot can regurgitate statistics.

u/OnlyFactsNoContext · 2 pointsr/CanadaPolitics

It's important to understand that lying with statistics is so prevalent that the primer on how to learn statistics is called "How To Lie With Statistics", so I'd be careful about seeing the framing of the question, sample size, sample randomness and polling method before taking anything statistical with more than a grain of salt.

I'm an engineer and I've wasted quite a bit of my company's money (in the past, not this company) on using failure modes analysis with garbage input values.

Edit: Book link

u/antitoffee · 2 pointsr/ukpolitics
u/Sappow · 2 pointsr/Planetside

VS maxes were crap at AI before the max pass. I used em, I had both cosmos and blue shifts, etc; they really weren't good. The max pass made them a bunch better.

If the statistics they're using indicate that they were good before the big max pass, they're using problematic statistics or statistics with an explanation other than "X is OP", because the VS maxes objectively weren't good, by the numbers or by play experience.

It's also worth noting that we were only given two KD ratio numbers; if pre-max pass VS maxes had a high KDR, it could easily have been because they were never pulled for AI duty, only AA, even moreso than the TR and NC maxes were; the result of that would be an inflated KDR because burster maxes tend to be secure and safe and would get a lot of kills without really being in danger ever, back then. They could have a dramatically higher KDR than the others via that, but that doesn't mean that they were OP in all roles; it meant no one used them on that faction except for the one very high return role, which inflated their overall performance. Presumably if that were the case it would show by being able to filter performance by weapon.

There's a reason the saying is "lies, damn lies, and statistics". Giving partial statistics, without any context or crosstabs, really makes me feel very suspect about the validity and usefulness of the argument being made. Darrell Huff's book is relevant there... http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728

u/desOne · 2 pointsr/Economics
u/shinypretty · 2 pointsr/Conservative

Errbody ought to read this. You can buy it, or a PDF is available online.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728

u/A_Light_Spark · 2 pointsr/truegaming

After reading the link to [sciencedaily] (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111130095251.htm) by Dr. Yang Wang, I smelled red herring. The research makes little sense in terms of 1) research sample size (only 28 adults), 2) tasks selection (in this case, why does it have to be violent games, not brainy games like Echo Chrome or Trine or Portal?), and 3) the duration of the test itself and post-mortem followups. For example, if someone is to do a research on marathon running/training, you'd need to have the sample group doing the exercise/training for at least 3-4 months+ before you can confidently suggest any significant "short-term" effects; and 1-2 years+ before any real long-term effects are shown. Besides, long-living creatures like humans generally require more time for biological reaction to take full effect because cell regeneration and metabolism rates are different from amoebas.
Let's examine the marathon running hypothesis again - the week after your training begun, you've got to feel sore! Worst is that the research ONLY picked people who don't usually exercise. So, if I were to conclude from one week of resting after one week of marathon training, I would call it "mentally draining, physically damaging, and can lead to outbreak of heart problems and even fatal." See the problem here? Not to mention - how do you get from "the cognitive control is regained after gaming stopped" to "long-term effect on cognitive control?" Am I reading gibberish or am I crazy? In addition, the age selection is also very problematic - 19 year-old brains are not fully matured, so that can complicate things. The best is to use a sample size of the same age group - 25 exact, or older groups -30~40.
Check out [this article] (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15720178) and its [link 1] (http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v1/n11/full/tp201153a.html) and [link 2] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4682801.stm) and see what you think. Here's an extract from the "Discussion" part of the research paper (link 1):
>Individuals with higher ventral striatum volume might experience video gaming as more rewarding in the first place. This in turn could facilitate skill acquisition and lead to further reward resulting from playing.

And lastly, the golden rule of statistics - [correlation doesn't imply causation] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation) (It's importantly enough to have its own wiki page).
If you are interested in how statistics can be altered to support shrewd ideas, there's [this book.] (http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728)
As for my personal opinion, I'd have to agree with some researchers - the problem is too complex with too many variables. It'd be hard to determine exactly what effect long-term gaming has on our brains (of what types of games played). Until we have a sample size of 1,000+ from around the world, and doing a long term study with 30 yrs+ monitoring with strict rules/conditions, we can never be sure. It's possible, we've done similar research for the effect of exercise on the elderly before, we can do it again on other theories (i.e. can gaming help/prevent Parkinson's?).

u/taRxheel · 2 pointsr/pharmacy

I used to feel that way too. Depending on your preceptor, it might feel like a fun discussion or like they're just tearing you apart. I think what changed for me was when I actually started to understand statistics on a deeper level and also when I started precepting myself and had to lead journal clubs.

It can be an exercise in misery if your article is well done or you're not into the subject matter. But when you realize how flimsy a lot of "Bible truths" in medicine are - studies choose their methods and statistical tests poorly, conflicts of interest, and especially intentionally-withheld negative studies - it gets more interesting. There's just something satisfying about ripping apart a bad piece of primary lit.

Here's an exercise: pick your favorite pharmacotherapy dogma from school or rotations, then dig into it and see what the evidence base really is. You may be surprised how little it takes to become accepted as a cornerstone of medicine.

It's still early in your year, so likely you have more journal clubs ahead of you. Do yourself a favor and drop $7.50 on How to Lie with Statistics. For less than a meal out, you'll at least be more prepared to approach the literature.

u/hkrob · 2 pointsr/australia

Statistics never lie - or do they?

> It's all a little like the tale of the roadside merchant who was asked to explain how he could sell rabbit sandwiches so cheap. 'Well,' he said, 'I have to put in some horse meat too. But I mix 'em fifty-fifty: one horse, one rabbit.'
>

  • Questioning Statistics
  • Who Says So? (check for bias)
  • How Does He Know? (check the method, e.g. sample size, selective sampling)
  • What's Missing (Probable, Standard Error rates)
  • Average (what kind of average? mean/median/mode?)
  • Did Somebody Change the Subject? (does the conclusion directly relate to the data?)
  • Does It Make Sense?

    How to Lie with Statistics by by Darrell Huff
    http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728
u/2_Spicy_2_Impeach · 2 pointsr/politics

Looks like they're following this book pretty well so far.


How to Lie with Statistics

u/reality_boy · 2 pointsr/gamedev

If we’re going for quirky one off books thenhow to lie with statistics is a great one.

u/Steinrikur · 2 pointsr/Iceland

Svarið við spurningunni er já, en það sannar bara að vinstri endinn á Laffer kúrvunni er í núlli og segir ekkert um restina.
Og hvað í ósköpunum á þessi mynd að sýna? Þetta er beint upp úr How to Lie With Statistics (skalinn byrjar ekki í núlli, mismunandi prósentur á 2 ásum, ómögulegt að vita hvað er hvað).

u/AKAlicious · 2 pointsr/news

There's tons of information out there that can be easily googled, so I contest your statement about hearing sides of the story because the science is not hard to find. The problem, as I see it, is that the general population (which sounds like it includes you, no insult intended) does not have the critical analysis skills that help one to distinguish good sources from bad and where representations of data are manipulative. Those who have been fortunate enough to go to excellent universities have learned this skill, and some people are lucky enough to develop it on their own. So the more you develop your critical analysis skills, the more you'll be able to distinguish good information from bad. (And the more quickly you will be able to see through supposedly scientific articles, and the more quickly you will realize how bad at reporting scientific information the media is). I reiterate my suggestion to begin with "How to Lie With Statistics". It's hilarious, a quick read, and will truly enlighten you - it's a fantastic starting point. Beyond that, there are numerous books that teach critical thinking and writing. The more you develop those skills, the more easily you can assess the information coming your way. It's unfortunate that it's hard to assess information, but science especially is not easy, and people who want to manipulate it to fit their arguments are skilled at making their representations seem accurate. A healthy dose of skepticism is your friend in this respect.

u/Scrivver · 2 pointsr/liberalgunowners

I determined a while back that either my basic morality must change (unlikely), or my political position must shift to agree with it. That's how I ended up voluntarist (anarchist) today. I stopped advocating for policies based on what I thought of them at first glance in a vacuum, and started seriously examining my own basic morality, and consequently whether any policies were in conflict with it. Only then did I move on to studies of economics, with which I've become fascinated. For a thorough, yet layman-accessible examination of ethical/moral principle and the legitimacy of the state, I highly recommend Prof. Michael Huemer's The Problem of Political Authority. It is very dispassionate like a good academic publication should be, but I still found it riveting.

So I don't advocate the Libertarian party either, though in my studies I see significant merit to the associated economic policies even aside from their moral benefits. I highly recommend Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson.

I am also against taking one's shirt off on stage during a political convention. However, I of course will not try to stop anyone from becoming as nude as they wish. ;)

Haha, alright, my pitch is over. :)

u/Stubb · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

I periodically seek out opposing views to challenge my confirmation bias. But when the topic is economics and the source is Reddit, the result generally involves reading a heap of full retard. I could get that more easily by reading Krugman. These people would do well to contemplate Economics in One Lesson in that they're completely failing to consider the unintended consequences of the policies they advocate.

u/Spellersuntie · 2 pointsr/Libertarian

Not everything I'm going to list is really libertarian per se but I think they do give important context for the libertarian/broader right wing movement

Economics in One Lesson. It's repetitive but gets the point across

Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a philosophical perspective

IThe Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It's difficult to call Heinlein a libertarian but this book definitely is. Also where the 'rational' part of my flair comes from!

There is No Alternative. I'm not sure how many people would consider Thatcher a libertarian but she's an important part of the history of the modern struggle against socialism that I think is overlooked in the United States

The Fatal Conceit. One of Hayek's must read works. A much shorter one that is I think just as important, Why I Am Not a Conservative

Atlas Shrugged. I'm not saying it's a good book or that you don't know of it but it's worth thumbing through just to see what all the hubbub's about. Prepare yourself for a latent S&M fetish.

Capitalism and Freedom. Maybe reading this will help you figure out why Naomi Klein seems to hate Friedman so much. Also very good and much more digestible is his television series Free to Choose and the similarly titled book

The Communist Manifesto. Provides good context. And maybe a chuckle.

u/NewbombTurk · 2 pointsr/changemyview

May I recommend Henry Hazlitt's excellent Economics in One Lesson? It's a short, timeless explanation of the basics.

You can find it here.

u/facereplacer3 · 2 pointsr/Austin

> But we already have a system where some people benefit without contributing. Why does it matter where they were born? I don't see why giving a Mexican immigrant money is worse than giving some guy born in Kentucky money.

The left likes to blame all white people for slavery. Many of these people are first or second generation immigrants. Still, these people and their families contributed to the tax codes (Social Security/Medicare/FederalStateCity Income tax). They contributed. This would be like rowing a boat with 10 people across the Atlantic and picking up 5 or 6 people who just want to jump on. The don't really row or care to, but everyone who does row should feel guilty about the people not rowing.

And let's look at this... We have an entire welfare system that punishes everyone via taxes to support people who can't provide for themselves vs. a cake. Look how far the muck of leftist, emotional insanity has taken us. Read Henry Hazlitt. You can do it in a day.

u/MaunaLoona · 2 pointsr/austrian_economics

https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232

Everyone recommends this one as a starting point. It's even listed on the sidebar (though the link appears to be down).

u/pizzaface18 · 2 pointsr/BitcoinMarkets

We fundamentally disagree.

I just finished reading this book. Check it out. It's simple.

http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232

u/hammy3000 · 2 pointsr/ColinsLastStand

Unbelievable work. One of my all time favorites.
I'd recommend checking these out as well:

Modern Macroeconomics by Brian Snowdon (Really good historical overviews of Economic thought)

Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles by Jesus Huerta de Soto

Man, Economy, and State by Murry Rothbard

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt (EXCELLENT if you are just beginning to study Economics)


u/giangi862 · 2 pointsr/italy

> Quest’ultima infatti nasce proprio dalla separazione tra forza lavoro e mezzi di produzione, quindi tra produttore e proprietario, la cui identità è invece la premessa necessaria del liberalismo

la dottrina liberale prevede l'interazione tramite contratti, attraverso cui un soggetto può condividere il proprio capitale senza doverne cedere in toto la proprietà.

Si confonde forse con il mutualismo ?

> Perciò nel passaggio da un modello economico all’altro cambiano le dimensioni dello scambio: orizzontale nel caso della società individualistico-proprietaria; essenzialmente verticale nel caso dell’economia capitalistica

È impossibile avere proprietà privata e impedire l'accumulo di capitale.
Peraltro c'è tutta la questione relativamente ai prezzi su cui questi glissano pateticamente.

Prima di parlare di liberalismo e capitalismo occorrerebbe averne studiato le basi, e.g.

http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232

, magari usando prospettive diverse da quella marxista

u/HelmSplitter · 2 pointsr/pics

In a business environment, lenders will very rarely take a risk like we saw with the recent financial crisis. Have you ever applied for a loan at a local credit union? They have strict standards for giving out loans because they need to mitigate risk and return a profit or at least break even. Since US banks are subsidized and bailed out , they have far less incentive to make rational bets on loans.

It is true that profit is the bottom line in a a capitalist environment, but it's erroneous to think that the only force that affects profit is direct cash inflow. There are also factors like savings (to cushion financial loss), investment (e.g. loans), advertising, and public reputation. People tend to have this vision of business where people simply grab money until their business falls apart; this doesn't reflect realistic business practices.

If an area of the economy is under-performing, it is probably doing so for a reason. "The economy" is really just an aggregate idea of how individual businesses are performing within an arbitrary area (usually geographic or political). If, for example, people are buying less salt, then the salt industry will loss jobs and/or reduce wages. This isn't a bad thing. it simply means that there is less demand for salt, or that the price is too high, and the market will balance itself.

By infusing wavering or failing industries with either taxed (i.e.: stolen) or borrowed (i.e.: debt) money, the government is artificially propping up something that the market does not realistically support. This is a waste of money. A key point to understand about economics is that there is no "superior knowledge of the market" that the government can possess. Most people think that the government is responsible for the economy, and they're right in-so-far that the government constantly regulates and props up industries. The only way to efficiently regulate an economy would be to have real-time data of everyone's wants and needs and all of their incentive and disincentives.

Magically, there is a way for this information to efficiently manage the economy: for everyone to be able to spend their money how they please.

If you're interested in a short but invaluable economics book, I recommend Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt.

u/brien23 · 2 pointsr/IndiaSpeaks

I concur and wanted to say this. Generating employment - should never be the only consideration before initiating a project of such magnitude. Puhlease. We must take into account the "opportunity cost" of such project as well.

read 'economics in one lesson' by Henry Hazlitt.

Given that you might not have that book available to you I am copy-pasting certain section to help you understand the vacuity of the argument they are putting forward:

>A bridge is built. If it is built to meet an insistent public demand, if it solves a traffic problem or a transportation problem otherwise insoluble, if, in short, it is even more necessary than the things for which the taxpayers would have spent their money if it had not been taxed away from them, there can be no objection. But a bridge built primarily "to provide employment" is a different kind of bridge. When providing employment becomes the end, need becomes a subordinate consideration. “Projects” have to be invented. [..] Those who doubt the necessity are dismissed as
obstructionists and reactionaries. [..]

>If the bridge costs $1,000,000 the taxpayers will lose $1,000,000. They will have that much taken away from them which they would otherwise have spent on the things they needed most. Therefore for every public job created by the bridge project a private job has been destroyed somewhere else.

>[..] They are the jobs destroyed by the $1,000,000 taken from the taxpayers. All that has happened, at best, is that there has been a diversion of jobs because of the project. More bridge builders; fewer automobile workers, radio technicians, clothing workers, farmers.

>[Suppose,] The bridge exists. It is, let us suppose, a beautiful and not an ugly bridge. [..] They can see the bridge. But if they have taught themselves to look for indirect as well as direct consequences they can once more see in the eye of imagination the possibilities that have never been allowed to come into existence. [..] The same reasoning applies, of course, to every other form of public work.


This statue will NOT address any insistent public demand or solve a problem or even yield revenue unless they imposed a cost on the entry to the memorial (Ticket system). Even then it will take 3 or more decades just to recover the manufacturing cost, let alone security, maintenance cost and the opportunity cost. This project is more than likely to be glorious-looking white elephant. Maybe fishermen will like it.

u/SwedishSalsa · 2 pointsr/btc

The reason you don't see much debunking is because those who really understand economics (Austrian economics that is) are busy accumulating Bitcoin.
If you want to read up on it there's nice chapter on inflation in this book: Economics in one lesson - Henry Hazlitt

https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504879697&sr=8-1&keywords=hazlitt+economics+in+one+lesson

It's an easy to read book I recommend everyone.

u/fancy_pantser · 2 pointsr/books
u/diogenesbarrel · 2 pointsr/politics

Some of their evil stuff was even highly publicized by the Soviet Govt. The Western media was invited.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

Some things were kept secret but transpired anyway. The Western left wing intelligentsia was ordered to attack and defame those who spoke about that. The very same intelligentsia wrote the history books and made the movies about that period and now those who were horrified seeing FDR supporting Stalin are branded as Fascists.

More here

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Book-Communism-Crimes-Repression/dp/0674076087

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4758sBZLC5k&feature=related

make sure you watch this documentary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcQ2t5ix4Ug&feature=related

http://www.sovietstory.com/

u/eat20hamburgers · 2 pointsr/Cascadia

> It's about getting rid of the people who have actually robbed and killed people

So you admit it is about "getting rid" of people. Who determines guilt? Or should people be murdered for the mere "crime" of property ownership.

If you don't think communism is about mass murder you need to study up on your history. Start here

u/MicDrop2017 · 2 pointsr/Libertarian
u/HomesteadGeek · 2 pointsr/Conservative

This UBI crap was posted to /r/Futurology a while back as Canada is dabbling with the idea. They act like Marxist redistribution of wealth is some new groundbreaking idea never considered before rather than the century old debunked economic model based on Marx; whose government model is responsible for more poverty and mass murder than any ideology in history before it. The author of that article seems to believe that adopting Marxism will reduce the size, scope, and cost of government. That's rich.

Over 100 million murdered by their own government detailed in the Black Book of Communism.

Buy the book here:
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Book-Communism-Crimes-Repression/dp/0674076087

Or download it here:
http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/blackbookcommunism.pdf

u/Zoomerdog · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

[1 edit to add links]
Why on Earth should the hired help (cops, etc.) be armed but not their employers -- the mass of citizens themselves?

Given the long history of mass-murder and war by governments, it is the height of insanity to let a heavily-armed government disarm the people it supposedly works for.

Refs: Death by Government by R. J. Rummel (or see his website, with updated figures showing 262 million murders by government in 20th century, in ADDITION to war) and The Black Book of Communism (100 million murders by Communist governments in the 20th century; see p. 4) -- by a group of left-wing European scholars, not Rush Limbaugh.

u/6ames · 2 pointsr/news

is this a book?

it might not require a police state, but it sure does seem to enjoy having one

u/TJWataman · 2 pointsr/mildlyinteresting

Maybe another way to think of it is in terms of return on capital vs return on labor. If producing a certain good takes equal units of capital and labor, but the capital is rewarded 90% of the value of producing that unit, then the "return on capital" is significantly higher than the return on equally priced labor. Hence the providers of capital benefit much more than the providers of labor, even though both "input" the same value.

Here's where I've got the idea from:

http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X

u/Logan_Chicago · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

You're looking for this: Capital in the Twenty First Century

As long as those with money make more off of interest (money earned by having money) than the rest of us can through labor, money will coalesce near the top.

r > g

u/getElephantById · 2 pointsr/suggestmeabook
u/dougmc · 2 pointsr/Austin

> Not significantly (8% in 2000 vs 7.4% in 2010) but it gives more context than just "there are more in 2010" in my opinion

If you torture the statistics enough, they'll generally confess to whatever you want them to. There's even an entire book on this sort of thing. (To be fair, the book's intent isn't so much to teach you how to do it, but more to teach you how to spot it and make you think about such things when reading other people's work. That said, reading it would probably help you do it better if that was your goal.)

That said, this particular example is a relatively mild one (and may even be accidental rather than intentional) -- there are much, much worse abuses out there.

u/mild_resolve · 2 pointsr/news

http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728

Having a link to statistics doesn't make the point valid. Try applying critical thinking to it and it doesn't really hold up.

u/InAFakeBritishAccent · 2 pointsr/DeclineIntoCensorship

> The easiest people to scam are those that think they are too smart to be scammed.

Heh yeah, I like to call it "advanced stupid". This is a whole nother ball game I like to rag on when I'm knee deep in university people. For as much as I go on like a pedantic scientist twat, those guys can drive me nuts.

>The easiest people to subjugate are those that fear losing what they might have,

Yuuup. And what better way to do that than keep people dumb and dependent and take away their self sufficiency?

Really depends on our dictator tactics--we can exploit people in many styles. But one example that comes to mind for me: so long as the public doesn't know statistics for shit, it's proven we can use all the old school advertising lies and pump them for money. It gets a little more grave when we apply those tactics to political spin. Right, left, middle, you name it.

u/PilgramDouglas · 2 pointsr/TalesFromThePizzaGuy

I read through your entire response before I replied. But I replied as though I was replying as I read it (does that make sense?) So you may think I am poking you by saying the same thing over and over again; its not meant to poking, but reinforcing.


> Where else would my mileage reimbursement come from though?

To understand this you have to also understand the following:

My commentary is in italics

> Service Charges: A compulsory charge for service (the delivery fee), for example, 15 percent of the bill, is not a tip. Such charges are part of the employer's gross receipts. Sums distributed to employees from service charges cannot be counted as tips received, but may be used to satisfy the employer's minimum wage and overtime obligations under the FLSA. If an employee receives tips in addition to the compulsory service charge, those tips may be considered in determining whether the employee is a tipped employee and in the application of the tip credit.

Ok, this is where you may get confused, I know I did until a real attorney, multiple ones, explained this to me.

> Sums distributed to employees from service charges cannot be counted as tips received, but may be used to satisfy the employer's minimum wage and overtime obligations under the FLSA.

Now remember... from... 29 CFR 778.217 - Reimbursement for expenses.


> (a)General rule. Where an employee incurs expenses on his employer's behalf or where he is required to expend sums solely by reason of action taken for the convenience of his employer, section 7(e)(2) is applicable to reimbursement for such expenses. Payments made by the employer to cover such expenses are not included in the employee's regular rate (if the amount of the reimbursement reasonably approximates the expenses incurred). Such payment is not compensation for services rendered by the employees during any hours worked in the workweek.

What the statute refers to as "regular rate" is the same as saying "the employer's minimum wage and overtime obligations"

If the employer gives you any portion of the delivery fee, then that portion is considered part of your "regular rate" or "wage".

If your employer gives you a portion of the delivery fee, say $1.25 per delivery, then that amount is part of your wage, not reimbursement for expenses.

> I think I would have noticed if I didn't receive the "($1.25*#deliveries)" part of my take home pay.

I would like you to take a look again at 29 CFR 778.217 - Reimbursement for expenses.. The only time the word "pay" is used is here in section (d) and it is referring to the "regular rate of pay" which means "wages".

> So I received $1.25 per delivery but it didn't come from the delivery fee?

That is correct, usually.

> Why wouldn't it come from the delivery fee?

Because if it came from the delivery fee than it would be part of your wages, not a reimbursement for expenses.

> Where did it come from? Explain that to me.

It came from the employer's gross receipts. Already explained.

I know where you're going to go next. "But the delivery fee is part of the gross receipts, so I did receive part of the delivery fee!! Ha, got you!"

No, you did not get me. Once the delivery fee is part of the gross receipts it stops being a delivery fee. I know that does not make sense, but in the eyes of the law it does.


> Off topic but that is people making mistakes or lying. Math can be done incorrectly and misconstrued but it can not lie.

How to Lie with Statistics. One of the required reading when I had to take Statistics.

> My point here is that it is easy to check the numbers every night to see if you're getting screwed.

Yes, it is easy. But if you're inputting your mileage reimbursement as a portion of your wage, then you're calculating incorrectly.

> Ok, so we agree they legally owe drivers money for driving.

Maybe, it depends on the specific facts. In most cases, employees driving for any of the Pig 3, or their franchises, the employer will owe the employee mileage reimbursement. Whether they do or do not is an entirely different conversation.

>> Can you point to any verbiage that tells you how much of the delivery fee you receive? You cannot.

(3) The actual or reasonably approximate amount expended by an employee, who is traveling “over the road” on his employer's business, for transportation (whether by private car or common carrier) and living expenses away from home, other travel expenses, such as taxicab fares, incurred while traveling on the employer's business.

> It would be impossible for the law to state exact amount because of to many variables.

No, it would not. No where in 29 CFR 778.217 - Reimbursement for expenses does it say you receive a portion of the delivery fee. Do you see the words "delivery fee" in that statute?

> I seem to recall a piece of paper the drivers have to sign at the end of their shift that states what was claimed and mileage paid. I know Jimmy Johns does this and they have their mileage rate in the employee handbook.

Yes, I have seen similar types of notices. These are simply an attempt by the employer to cover their asses. They have no importance to this discussion. I understand that people think they are important, but they are not.

The "employee handbook" and what it says is meaningless if the terms violate the law. An "employee handbook" is not an employment contract.

> I suppose your right that I don't know where it comes from exactly but it doesn't make sense to receive exactly $1.25 a delivery and it not come from the delivery charge.

I know. It makes things easier, that's what the employer wants. The employer wants you to become complacent and accepting that everything they do is done in the correct manner. Your employer (in the form of management, any level) can say a lot of things; just because they say something does not mean it is true, legal, or fact. Most managers don't know shit beyond how to do the paperwork they were trained to do, they are not lawyers, they do not receive training on minimum wage laws. We, employees, have to educate ourselves so we can protect ourselves.

> I don't like being wrong as much as the next guy and I am usually a stubborn person but I am genuinely curious where you think the reimbursement comes from.

I know reimbursement comes from the employer's gross receipts

> The only thing I can think of is that is the strictest technical sense the store reimburses out of their "pocket" and is then themselves reimbursed by the delivery charge.

Nope. In the strictest technical sense the store reimburses the employees for their expenses out of the employer's gross receipts. The delivery fee is just a small part of the gross receipts.

Just for fun... let's take a look at what amounts make up the employer's gross receipts.

  • Sales Tax

  • Each itemized product sold on that bill

  • Delivery fee

    Would you say that you receive the sales tax as reimbursement? No, you would not.

    Would you say that the 2 liter of Pepsi that was delivered was part of the reimbursement? No, you would not.

    If you've gotten this far: Congratulations, you've learned something today!! Hopefully.

    Now that I've typed all this out, I am going to really piss you off... I know delivery drivers that actually do receive a portion of the delivery fee; they are rare. They are usually not employees though, they are usually independent contractors and that's a whole other conversation.
u/widmerpool_nz · 2 pointsr/books

Fifty years later, the same book is written again...

Darrell Huff wrote How to Lie with Statistics in 1954. This book doesn't add much.

u/AskMeAbout_Sharks · 2 pointsr/AMA

Have you ever read the book, How To Lie With Statistics? Really, the only part of college statistics that I have retained is how to lie with numbers, while still being technically mathematically correct. You should step up your lie game. Practice makes perfect! https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526650890&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+lie

u/Snarfler · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

Statistics are really good for lying or backing up points you want to make.

amazon link

u/futant462 · 2 pointsr/books

Michael Lewis The Big Short

u/monkeypickle · 2 pointsr/politics

Why don't you start with this.

The blame the government holds? In not being involved ENOUGH, not for getting involved in the first place. In not being aggressive enough with regulation, and not just assuming from the get-go that the big banks were flat out lying to them.

The banks, who thought they could make a killing better against bad mortgages, put pressure on lenders to create MORE bad loans to bet against. That's how you get Countrywide giving a sharecropper with 13K in income a 450K loan.

Hell, when they ran out of junk debt to bet against, they simply repackaged existing loans and sold them again.

Please tell me you're not blaming this on the Fair Housing Act. You know, that little piece of legislation that's been around since 1968? How the hell is that to blame for this? If you're referring to the adjustments to the CRA in the mid 90's, I defy anyone to find the sections of that bill that force banks to give bad loans, or even reward them for doing so.


u/twinspop · 2 pointsr/economy

When you're done, order The Big Short. Absolutely fascinating read. It goes into plenty of detail re: CDOs and the rest of the alphabet soup surrounding the meltdown.

u/admiralkit · 2 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

If you get a chance, read The Big Short by Michael Lewis. Fascinating book about the people who saw the fiasco coming.

u/Alien_Evidence_Tech · 2 pointsr/UFOs

You know what is harming UFOlogy? Ignoring the damn evidence. There is enough evidence here for people to stand up and demand disclosure. And what happens? 'meh'.

Apathy.

> It seems that he has gone down the route of a conspiracy theorist.

Oh wow, gee whiz. He should be tarred and feathered, what a kook!

In this world where we watched billions upon billions siphoned out of the housing market, by a literal, fraudulent market in operation, which was covered up for a long time so more money could be made.

When the 'canaries in the coal mine' should've alerted people, Moody's and Standard & Poor refused to downgrade anything. They downgraded AAs before they would BBBs because they wanted the house to stay up. When it was entirely apparent it was collapsing, the banks again, siphoned money out, and the traders who should've been capitalism all stars for calling it out, 1 was audited 4 times and investigated by the FBI. Michael Lewis - The Big Short

Did anyone go to jail? No. Of course not. 1 person did. And a year later they went after the bottom rung, the poorest in the scheme who were being encouraged to take loans. Aka: the people, not the criminals in charge. (Like charging a street vendor or courier after busting the Mob Don)

We live in a world of corruption. There's enough on Hillary and The Clinton Foundation to implode the government, but no worries, no indictment.

If you haven't noticed, we live in a conspiratorial world influenced and run by conspiracies by rich influential people in back room meetings. And if anyone has put even a modicum of effort and actually looked over UFO files themselves, they'd see a documented cover up, and a shit load of evidence staring them in the face. Not to mention the whistleblowers.

Yes there is disinformation, and yes, even good-natured or honest people fall prey to it. But that is far more destructive, and so is "insta-debunking" and pathological skepticism-in-the-face-of-evidence.

The only positive, is maybe Basset is actually on to something this time and if this is an actual leak from an FBI analyst, then Hillary's info can "implode the government" and Trump may leak it. Apparently it wouldn't be the first time leaked to /pol/ or that Trump did it

If the info is as classified and 'world imploding' as they claim, Trump & Hillary will be indicted and about the only thing that will get America out of that slump is Aliens...so.

Note: An FBI analyst likely wouldn't have had the access the leaker is claiming. More likely ISOO or someone leaked it to Trump from ISOO and the guy venting is from the campaign.

u/monsieur_le_mayor · 2 pointsr/Accounting

You've probably seen the movie, but The Smartest Guys in the Room book is a cracking read. I was engrossed the entire time by how fucked up Enron was and what the wall street mania was like in the late 90's. Superbly written, richly detailed look into how corporations go off the rails and how accounting practices and corporate culture and ethics (or lack thereof) intersect. It's a total page turner - even though I knew Enron collapsed and Skilling and others went to jail.

In a similar vein, The Big Short is a great movie and an even better book. Probably less accounting stuff than The Smartest Guys in the Room, but an engaging, informative and personal look at the sub-prime housing clusterfuck of 2008. Anything by Michael Lewis is a good read generally.

Other random books I've enjoyed recently:

  • East of Eden by John Stienbeck
  • Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
  • The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Airley

u/hoveringlurker · 2 pointsr/personalfinance

Actually He's right. The Bank has the right to lend It to other people, Invest It and pretty much do whatever they want. What you have is the promise they'll give you back If you ask for It.

What regular people don't know is that the Bank has the right to take a USD100,00 deposit and basically lend those USD100,00 to about eight (E-I-G-H-T) different people. The law only makes them actually hold like, 20% of the money they put around.

That's why Bank runs are so frightening. If everybody wants to take their deposits out of the bank, the whole house of card.... err.. Bank collapses.

That's the world banking for you, normal folk. They are too big to fail.

Lesson 1 - The world financial system is designed to fuck with people's money and let them pay if something goes wrong.
Lesson 2 - That's why they don't teach financial education to the people, they only teach spending and debt.

Recommended reading: Griftopia and of course The Big Short. Please don't be a lazy man and just watch the movie (also awesome btw).

u/PM_ME_BOOBPIX · 2 pointsr/investing

> understanding mortgage backed securities

The Big Short

u/Commodore_Tea_Leaf · 2 pointsr/Economics

He's referencing, I believe, a Michael Lewis book, my guess being The Big Short. It's a narrative-style journalistic piece. Personally, I'd recommend looking to more sources than this if you want to really get into a Glass-Steagall (or other financial reform) debate, this one is very much told as a story.

u/yellowstuff · 2 pointsr/finance

The situations you mention were all fairly different. No short explanation will give a good sense of what happened. I don't know that much about Amarath, but there are good books written about the other two.

There's an excellent book about the rise and fall of LTCM.

I don't think the definitive book on the mortgage crisis has been written yet, but Michael Lewis wrote one I thought was pretty informative.

u/zingibergirl · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis. Fantastic book. Edited to add Amazon link.

u/blazinghand · 2 pointsr/rational

This is a film adaption of the novel, which is excellent (amazon link) and worth a read. You'll learn more than you ever thought you'd know about the subprime mortgage crisis.

u/chrissundberg · 2 pointsr/Accounting

I'm not aware of a whole lot of books specifically about accounting, but here are a few recommendations of books about finance, economics, business or that I just think might appeal to /r/accounting.

Anything by Michael Lewis. Liar's Poker has been mentioned elsewhere, but The Big Short is excellent as well.

Ben Mezrich has written some good books about business, but not really accounting specifically. He's most famous for The Accidental Billionaires which is about Facebook (I believe it, along with The Facebook Effect were the main sources for the movie The Social Network) and Bringing Down the House which was about the MIT card counting team and inspiration for the movie 21. You might be interested in Ugly Americans or Rigged though.

Here's a few more that are a little less fiction-y:

Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin

Traders, Guns and Money by Satyajit Das

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It) by William Poundstone

EDIT: Now with links!

u/MobiusCube · 2 pointsr/technology

> Everyone needs broadband internet. Fiber is the future. It's infrastructure. Building better infrastructure now benefits everyone.

If they need it, then they'll choose to buy it. You mandating them buying it is useless. If they decide they don't need it, then you'll put a gun to their head and make them buy it. Why do you want to put guns to people's heads and force them to live their life like you? You build infrastructure because you need it, not because you want to spend money on infrastructure. You keep ignoring the costs. You realize buying and maintaining things costs money right? Why don't you own a 5,000sq ft house? It's better than the one you have now. According to you, everyone has to purchase a 5,000sq ft house as their next house. If they can't afford it, they'll just have to deal with their crappy house until they can afford the best house.

> Everyone needs high speed internet.

Have you spoken with everyone on the planet? Why aren't you demanding Nicaragua and Zimbabwe also adhere to your decree?

> And?

So you don't care if poor people can afford the basics of society. Got it.

> Why are you assuming that better internet connection won't improve their lives?

I'm not, but you are just assuming the opposite. Internet isn't free you know? People only pay for thing if they feel it's worth the price. Are you going to force the Amish to have internet? What will you do if they refuse?

> No that's just hoping that people down the road will be able to shoulder the slightly higher cost. This idea would better connect rural communities, make it easier for private or municipal ISPs to offer competitive service and save everyone money.

No, it's not. Buying new, more expensive roads funded by municipal debt is making future generations pay for it. Again, have you done the cost benefit analysis over the next 10 years for every community in America, or are you demanding that people do as you say because you feel like someone might benefit eventually? If people need internet and roads, they'll do it anyways, but if they don't roads AND internet, then you just forced them to waste money, or deal with shitty roads longer than they otherwise would have. You are ignoring the costs, and just hoping and assuming everyone will benefit.

​

Further reading if you're interested.

u/qazwsde · 2 pointsr/PoliticalCompassMemes

https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730

It should cover some basics. The reason why corperations currently can do a bunch of bullshit is due to the regulations and the bribing of politicans that hinders the free market from working.

u/elduckbell · 2 pointsr/news

You need some Basic Economics in your life

u/classicalecon · 2 pointsr/austrian_economics

It would be way too difficult and there's a very good chance you wouldn't come close to finishing it.

If you really have no background in economics whatsoever, the best introduction is Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics, assuming you don't want to buy an actual college textbook. It's a great combination of explaining the intuition of economic principles and illustrating them with numerous real world examples.

u/GoodGuyTR · 2 pointsr/The_Donald

Sure!

This is kind of long, but it's the first video I watched. It gives you a nice intro into his thoughts, his style, and who he is. It's from the 1990's, but a lot of it still utterly relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2hPQ86lGV0

If you want something a little bit shorter, this is very good recent one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SDLBqIubCs

Also, it's a thick book, but Basic Economics is mind blowingly good.
https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491578598&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+economics

Sowell covers a lot of issues, and I don't always agree with him, but he is highly intelligent, he makes very logical and persuasive arguments. When I was more left leaning, one of the things that started to change me was the examination of economics. I watched Sowell and found that I could not disagree with him, hence the red pill.

Interestingly, when I debate friends who are form the left, usually referencing Sowell's point stumps people. I don't know why, but a lot of people seem to have shaky basis for their economic positions, but economics is very important when taking into account who we are (and have been) as a nation, and what's in the national interest.

u/NihilisticHotdog · 2 pointsr/Libertarian
u/lifestuff69 · 2 pointsr/TheRedPill

Watch The Rubin Report on YouTube. Dave Rubin interviewed both Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, as well as MANY of the other names I see posted by others here. He interviews people from different political, social, and economic philosophies. I even fund him on Patreon because his channel is great (and important).

 

If I had to pick three people that made the most dramatic impact on my life in terms of how I think, seek and evaluate evidence, and use reason, these people would be at the top. While the people on my list did not always agree on everything, I do believe that they are/were intellectually honest:

 

Thomas Sowell

u/Hipster_Dragon · 2 pointsr/Libertarian

Basic Economics https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465060730/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_yEyPCb84S1TQ4

This economics book by a previous Harvard professor and well known economist.

u/-t-o-n-y- · 2 pointsr/userexperience

If she's interacting with a lot of users I would suggest reading Practical Empathy. Observing the User Experience is another great resource for learning about user research. User experience is all about people so it's always a good idea to read up on human behavior, psychology, cognition, perception, learning and memory etc. e.g. books like Hooked, Bottlenecks, Design for the mind, Designing with the mind in mind, 100 things every designer needs to know about people, 100 more things every designer needs to know about people, Thinking fast and slow, Predictably Irrational and I would also recommend Articulating design decisions and Friction.

u/StrayK · 2 pointsr/intj

Movie: Enter The Void - About a drug dealer in Japan (not a Japanese movie though, main language is English) and a psychedelic experience of a soul in the immediate afterlife. Trigger warning: possible motion sickness and plenty of strobing.

Song: Prophecy (YK2000 Mix) - Front Line Assembly - If you like industrial sort of stuff.

Book: [Predictably Irrational] (http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0061353248/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413578786&sr=8-1&keywords=predictably+irrational) - By behavior economist Dan Ariely who argues that humans are not fundamentally rational but systematically irrational.

u/kumiorava · 2 pointsr/gaming

Dan Ariely wrote a book, Predictably Irrational, about this sort of irrational behavior. Absolutely fascinating read.

u/aronnyc · 2 pointsr/booksuggestions

I've read a few books that might cover these:

u/grepcdn · 2 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

I've read thinking fast and slow, it's a great book.

Also interesting and along the same lines is Predictably Irrational

u/rez9 · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

On Combat by Dave Grossman is an amazing book. It's about what (likely) goes on in your mind, and how your body will (likely) react, in a life-or-death situation. As Grossman puts it "Forewarned is forearmed." People need to know this.

Mindfulness by Ellen Langer is about life on autopilot. How it happens and how we can live to avoid falling into routines and such. People need to know this.

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely is clever stuff.

u/gjahnke · 2 pointsr/WTF

I recently read this book Predictably Irrational where they talk about how given 3 options the human brain immediately wants to pick the one in the middle.

In this case, the real winner here is 750GB hard drive for $440. Dell has tricked you into thinking this is a deal.

Much like a restaurant will put a ridiculously high priced item on their menu to make it seem the rest of the menu is reasonably priced.

u/yo_soy_soja · 2 pointsr/vegan

Yeah, I was atheist for ~ 4-5 years during college. I'm 23 now and consider myself a nonaffiliated theist.

I grew up vaguely Christian. My father and mother had, respectively, been raised in Protestant and Catholic churches and had had issues with their practices. My brother and I were never raised in any church, but were told that God exists.

I also had a number of "spooky" experiences growing up. Ghosts. A dead great-aunt maybe visiting me before family deaths. These mainly occurred during my high school years. They make me strongly believe in some sort of afterlife. I describe them here.

In college, I grew skeptical of God -- Problem of Evil, the incompatibility of free will and "a divine plan", and whatnot. I adopted a materialistic worldview, and my spooky past experiences were essentially ignored because they couldn't be reconciled. But they humbled me and made me a bit skeptical of my own worldview.

I graduated this year in March with a BA in philosophy. I needed some sort of direction/purpose, but, after reading Change of Heart and Predictably Irrational I grew skeptical of human reasoning. And of course our senses and memories are flawed. Of all the animals in the world, from worms to cows, with all their limited perceptions of the world, why do we humans assume that we have a correct perception of the world?

I concluded that we can't have a firm, certain grasp on anything. And so my endeavor to live the best life was impossible. And my reliance on science and reasoning were shattered because humans and their reasoning are flawed.

  • Note that science is built upon theories/principles of knowledge founded in empiricism, a school of metaphysics. Science uses metaphysical and epistemological principles and applies them to the world. But science isn't capable of looking at its foundational principles. That's a job for philosophers.

  • And science makes only objective observations, not normative ones. Science can't make moral claims. It can inform morality, but it can't arrive at moral conclusions alone.

  • On top of that, we have no fucking clue what consciousness is or how it arises. The Problem of Other Minds reminds us that we can't be sure of who or what is also conscious. We just do our best to make sense of how something acts and how much its anatomy resembles ours (because I know that at least I'm conscious.)

    On top of that, as a graduate, I no longer had college professors telling me what to do. I had no clear goals in life to work towards. And so now, post-college, all the responsibility was on my shoulders to choose what to do and pursue with my life. That's a big responsibility. But how do I make decisions if I have no certain grasp on anything? I spiraled into depression.

    So I sought wisdom.

    I talked to friends and family about wisdom. I looked at the Greek philosophers who spoke of wisdom and virtue.

    I looked at all the major religions to see what wisdom they might hold. I looked for patterns between them in hopes of finding something universal that they all described.

    I also became increasingly focused on immediate sensory and intuitive knowledge as opposed to the theory and abstract nature of science and philosophy. I started reading from NDERF's archives of self-reported near-death experiences to look for patterns.

    -----

    ....

    Anywho, I've arrived at the conclusion that everyone does their best to make sense of the world. I try not to judge others. Even if they're Mormons or Scientologists or Wiccans. I have my spooky history. I've come to believe that an afterlife exists. I see what others think about the supernatural, and I see if it appeals to me. I think Sikhism is pretty reasonable and beautiful, and I think my attachment to the afterlife belief almost obligates me to believe in a higher power. Sikhs seek to create and maintain chardi kala, a happiness in life by being content and thankful, which greatly appeals to me. But Sikhism does have a fair bit of ritual (albeit with legitimate purpose) and some guru praise which, given my history, seems a bit too much of a commitment.

    What I can say with some certainty is that it's good to live a life of virtue. It is good and feels good to help others. It's good to enjoy life and not take it for granted. Everyday, I consciously make an effort to be virtuous and to be thankful for my blessings. Veganism and activism are obvious applications of virtue and helping others. If God exists, I thank It everyday for all the good I experience. I thank it for the beauty in the world. As flawed as the world is, it's certainly more wonderful than horrible.
u/bannercoin · 2 pointsr/Entrepreneur

People are also predictably irrational - a good book, by the way for Entrepreneurs - https://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Decisions/dp/0061353248/

u/granty3 · 2 pointsr/psychology

Pretty much anything in this book

u/Enginerdiest · 2 pointsr/pics

Predictably Irrational is an excellent book on the subject.

u/burrit0s · 2 pointsr/videos

If anyone is interested in more of this, a great book I read called Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely dives deep into the irrationality of human psychology. Here it is on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0061353248

u/ObviousSubtlety · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

A whole chapter about that ad in Dan Arielys Predictably Irrational.
http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Decisions/dp/0061353248

Actually, if you click to "look inside" you can read it in chapter 1, The Truth about Relativity.

u/DECAThomas · 2 pointsr/unpopularopinion

In Economics, right wing is capitalism, left wing is a centrally planned government, and than there is mixed economy approaches which encompasses a large majority of economic systems. You said that the National Socialist Party was "inhereny right wing" economically. To anyone who studies economics and has taken beyond an introductory class, that means a capitalist system. Not a mixed economy. I have said this multiple times.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2597802?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

This is Peter Temin's original paper on the topic which led to all the pushback your papers were referring to. While I don't stand by 100% of what he says in here, he is one of the top economists in the world for a reason. This is the basis of where the socialist vs communist discussion in the academic community is founded upon.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1830929?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

This is a good paper analyzing the leviathan state and destruction of the free market and eventual civil liberties through Nazi Germany. This paper I have not combed through myself but a colleague of mine presented it's research at a conference I was at last year and this was the link on his LinkedIn profile so I presume it is the right one. I believe it also addresses the proposed inability to seperate social atrocities (in this case the Holocaust) and macroeconomics which while you didn't bring up, some people do. If this is the wrong paper, let me know and I will send him an email and ask for a link to the correct one.

The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143113208/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_QHH6CbMGJCNCQ

While Temin's paper focuses mostly on pre-war, this is the best research done into the wartime economy of Nazi Germany. It discusses in extreme depth the command economy of the party and how the seeds of the wartime command economy were planted in the centrally planned economy pre-war and how that transition came to be. It is extremely fascinating but is a slow read.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24563068?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

This paper goes through a lot of the misconceptions that you have presented and while isn't the best written, fits your particular view point quite well. It makes a few overreaches into modern day political times but if you take it for its historical analysis it is a decent article.

Listen dude or dudette. This is something I have studied a lot. Once I get my undergraduate, I likely will shift my focus towards microeconomics (if I don't end up in Law School) but this is something I have spent a sizeable portion of my life studying. I've given an academic presentation at a conference on this topic. I've heard every arguement possible. You can accept the fields opinions or not. It isn't as cut and dry as something like vaccines, but it's an issue with little wiggle room.

While the Nazi party may have claimed to be against socialist policies, they certianly enacted them. Even in the best light possible you can only really argue it is an extremely left leaning mixed economy. Vox tried to make this arguement quite well earlier this year for what it's worth.

If research by some of the best economists in the world, that has been defended for decades at this point, doesn't convince you, than I can't conceive of what possibly could. As far as I'm concerned this conversation is over. You can remain unconvinced but these are the conclusions people much more versed than you or I have reached.

Edit: Grammar

u/hga_another · 2 pointsr/KotakuInAction

But they also seized, for example, a big aircraft company. Source, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, very highly recommended, especially about exactly what they ended up doing.

u/Samuel_Gompers · 2 pointsr/history

I was lurking in the backlogs of r/history when I saw this.

Make sure to read The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze. It is absolutely amazing.

u/murl · 2 pointsr/newzealand

> I suggest one of the reasons there was a WWII was to destroy Hitler for successfully challenging the private foreign Central Bank, for restoring economic prosperity to Germany through Germany being able to issue it's own currency.

Counter-suggestion.

There is a very informative book you might enjoy,

http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages-Destruction-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208

Recommended.

u/jaredislove · 2 pointsr/AskEconomics

I would recommend Acemoglu and Robinson's book Why Nations Fail on this topic. Expands on the other answers already given.

u/kwanijml · 2 pointsr/Anarcho_Capitalism

I mostly agree with you, of course. But I'm not always sure how to parse through the issue based on historical data.

>In the last 30 years freedom has increased in the developing world and gains are economic gains increasing in the last 30 years in the west freedom has decreased and gains are slowing.

That's likely more to do with what economists call "convergence" (diminishing returns to capital). Also, what we've seen increase in these developing countries over the last 30 years has not been just freedom (not in the voluntaryist/ancap sense of the word); it's been more a shift of better property rights and more inclusive institutions, which is dominated not by lack of government, but more democratic forms of governance and all the public goods via the state that comes with this; a la Acemoglu and Bueno de Mesquita.

So, in other words, what is the relative magnitude of "freedom" as a factor in producing growth and prosperity, as opposed to the natural march and progression of technology and our evolution from bacteria into 4-dimensional beings of light?