A Test of Financial Literacy

@hartfire Yes, Yes, Yes, Possibly and Almost certainly not without a massive upheaval.😷

@whowasthatmaskedman Thank you! :)
I like the metaphor of the anti-virus mask in this context. Sharp wit. :)

@hartfire Do you mean a gold standard? That went away almost a century ago during the depression. And President Nixon stopped redeeming dollars (silver certificates) for silver in the late sixties.

@hartfire @hartfire I emphatically agree!

@Crazywaterspring Gold might not be a bad standard - but perhaps no ideal either. Once it was mostly just pretty and durable. But now it has far more practical uses in IT circuitry and may reach a point of running out.
Land might not be a bad standard - since land is pretty much where we derive most of our primary resources. I'm sure there would be all kinds of problems with that - like different types of land having different values and the need to ensure national parks, forests and ecosystems are protected. But it would be achievable.

@hartfire been thinking even kilo joules of energy might even work! 😆

Energy is a very necessary thing for any country in this world.

@hartfire The $US was fixed to the gold standard, making the currency literally as good as gold. The limiting factor being that the nation had to have gold to back the currency. That put an upper limit on spending. FDR suspended the standard for a while in the depression to fund employment and support (the new deal) But oddly enough WW2 put America back into the game with the wind at its back. It stayed that way until Nixon abandoned the Gold Standard so he could fund the Vietman War with a deficit budget.. And that was the star of the slippery slope. Now the Fed and the government (two different things,) have effectively weaponized money to entrench the rich..Using it to widen the gap between rich and poor.😷

@whowasthatmaskedman
Modern History, at school in Australia, gave kids a brief history of North America but omitted the economic picture.
So thank you for filling me in. It prompts me to search a bit further.
Perhaps the reactive and divisive nature of politics in the USA is related to that gap.
I see Australia starting to go that way. I think we need to learn our lessons from the US by encouraging and practising respect for differing views.
Rather than sloganeering, it's better to ask people what issues they care most about and what kind of world they want to vote for or help create, and how it would work.

@DeWayfarer Slippery.
Energy from the Sun is almost infinite in terms of solar power - limited only by numbers of solar voltaic systems and long power lines from sunny climates.
When renewables become plentiful energy will be so cheap that it won't stand a chance as currency.
In Australia, energy companies are starting to decommission our aging coal-fired electricity plants because they are not worth the cost of repairing or replacing. Solar power is already the cheapest and most effective way to produce power. Coal and gas prices are still very high because Europe is desperate for it - but that won't last.
Europe has already been rapidly increasing its wind power and this current oil crisis will only drive it faster towards renewables.

@hartfire I have my own views regarding the competitive nature of how America kids are raised that winning is everything.. But its an opinion. I was bought up more "Fair go for all" But again. Thats just me..😷

@whowasthatmaskedman It's not just you mate. If I have to kick someone to win, I would consider myself a loser, a lesser person for it. If people don't have the skills and abilities to make it - particularly when for our lifetime unemployment in Australia has been a deliberate economic policy to help the wealthy end of town - a decent society creates safety nets.

@Abstraction Absolutely!! And not just because its the right thing to do.. It is simply less costly to support a person who it barely getting by than it is to recover them when they hit rock bottom. Just as it is less costly to treat someone with a health issue before it becomes chronic and requires more intensive treatment for longer. The numbers back me up.. Selfish people are costing themselves in the long run.😷

@hartfire thing about energy is there is never enough.

It's not about the sources it's about how energy can be made to be useful.

If you really think about it everything is made up of energy.... E=mc². Yet what is anything but a mass with all kinds of energy as it's components.

Yet how do you utilize that energy and make it useful. The ways to do so are limited. Especially if you want to do so in a ecological way.

Solar panels actually are inefficient compared to say fusion power which is truly on it way soon. Even that won't be enough.

We must look to far more than just energy for personal needs, which we are barely touching the surface.

We must look to energy for industry which requires ten times more than us.

We must look to energy for shipment of goods, not just locally yet all across the world and into space.

The needs for energy (demand) far far out out weights the supply.