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What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

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Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#511

Post by NoGravitas »

opo wrote: post #489
NoGravitas wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed hungry person. True freedom can only be where there is no exploitation and oppression of one person by another; where there is not unemployment, and where a person is not living in fear of losing his job, his home and his bread. Only in such a society personal and any other freedom can exist for real and not on paper.” - Ronald Rea…

>- Ronald Reagan For those unaware, the quote is actually from Stalin.

Spoilsport ;-P

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#512

Post by nojs »

This is amazingly accurate. It contains several predictions that would have been very difficult when extrapolating based on life experience at the time.

Consider how difficult it would be to predict how the world will look in 2122. I don’t think I’d be this close to the mark.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#513

Post by Manuel_D »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #501
vkou wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the case, but people keep wringing their hands about how inflation robs the poor of the ~$500 they have in their savings accounts, while ignoring how much it helps the middle-class mortgage owner who is in fixed-rate debt for a million dollars. They get away with it because they don't make the distinction between price inflation and asset inflation. The cost of bread doubling is a huge problem for the poor,…

Let's use an example that might look familiar. If inflation robs the poor person of the $500 and helps the middle class person with a mortgage.... all other things being equal, we transferred wealth from the poor person to the middle class person. yay, with me so far? By the same account, if the middle class person is helped a little bit by inflation, (but also has some cash) the rich person who is leveraged many tim…

But you're missing the bigger picture: the rich who issues mortgages (or more likely, has stake in a real estate company) is having their wealth transferred to the lender. Most wealthy people loan more than they owe. If you owe more than to loan out then by definitely you're not wealthy, your net worth is negative. Similarly, a poor person who owes $20,000 on an auto loan, whose car is now worth $25,000 just saw a significant gain.

Inflation helps people who owe more than they lend out (most poor and middle class people). People who lend out more than they owe, directly or indirectly through stake in companies that do lending, are the ones experiencing less profit because of inflation.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#514

Post by IAmEveryone »

toomanydoubts wrote: post #287
slg wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They can siphon off the wealth of an entire nation by printing money. There are a countless other ways a country can do this and most of those are more targeted. The tax code is the most obvious example. Inflation is a flat tax of a few percentage points. If the goal is to wield power, it is much more important to control the tax code and move the income tax from 0% (generally true before the 16th Amendment in 1913)…

>There are a countless other ways a country A country? The federal reserve is run by private individuals. It is a private bank. Don't let the name fool you.

Your username is incorrect.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#515

Post by Manuel_D »

tantaman wrote: post #479
Manuel_D wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really the case? Inflation favors debtors over creditors, the upper class tends to be the latter not the former. While it is the case that the value of savings goes down, the lower class are much less likely to save.

I'd imagine that wealthy individuals are highly leveraged. In other words, rather than selling assets to buy things they take loans against those assets to buy things. This (1) prevents ever having to pay tax (2) gives them benefits from inflation and (3) gives them benefits from low interest rates as their assets appreciate faster than their interest rate consumes money

Most sources I read indicate the opposite: poor and middle class people are much less likely to be debtors rather than creditors. They're more likely to have an auto loan rather than own a car outright. Likewise, they're more likely to have a mortgage on their home rather than own it. The wealthy, by comparison, are more likely to invest their money, issuing loans to other people.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#516

Post by intrasight »

dougmwne wrote: post #459
ajmurmann wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a great scene in Station 11 which is partially set after civilization-destroying pandemic in which one character who was born before the pandemic explains to someone who was born after how ride sharing apps worked on a cell phone. It's magic of you describe it from scratch. The tiny device has access to a detailed mail of the entire planet, knows where you are and then a car shows up to transport you to you…

Asimov envisioned printers on spaceships and every evening I put on a pair of goggles that lets me interact with an omnidirectional volumetric display with millimeter accurate head and hand tracking. I think we are starting to outrun our own imagination.

Someone clearly is still imaging the stuff - and then building it!

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#517

Post by Spooky23 »

toomanydoubts wrote: post #287
slg wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They can siphon off the wealth of an entire nation by printing money. There are a countless other ways a country can do this and most of those are more targeted. The tax code is the most obvious example. Inflation is a flat tax of a few percentage points. If the goal is to wield power, it is much more important to control the tax code and move the income tax from 0% (generally true before the 16th Amendment in 1913)…

>There are a countless other ways a country A country? The federal reserve is run by private individuals. It is a private bank. Don't let the name fool you.

No.

It’s more akin to a public authority.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#518

Post by Karawebnetwork »

smcl wrote: post #465
Karawebnetwork wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go to work while the sun has yet to rise and when I come back home the sun is already away (at the peak of the winter, the sun is gone around 4pm). If I do go out for a walk, it's behind a heavy coat, scarf and hat. Often with sunglasses to protect against snow blindness and the wind. This means that for about half of the year, my body does not see the sun. Glass windows will prevent vitamin D production so sitting…

Yep it's the same for me - dark when I go to work and after I finish. But I'm not taking any supplements at all so I'm just wondering if you personally notice a difference between when you do and don't take it.

Yes, I am on prescribed Vitamin D due to low results from a blood test. The difference being the dose. I do not see the sun at all for all winter. Difference is night & day (pun intended).

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#519

Post by rbanffy »

aidenn0 wrote: post #507
rbanffy wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find IKEA's materials work remarkable - their materials are finely engineered to be light and pretty enough, and, at the same time, being sufficiently strong to bear the loads it's designed to. I'm writing this on an IKEA desk with 4 big monitors and 2 laptops, plus an assortment of external drives and docking stations. It's certainly not designed to bear my weight on 4 small spots, however, so I wouldn't even try…

I haven't bought IKEA in a while; the last time I did, they used a lot of MDF, which is rather heavy for its strength...

My desk is two thin sheets of MDF with a honeycomb-like structure inside. Thicker wall-mounted shelves are more or less the same, with supports anchoring the top and bottom sheets.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#520

Post by tempestn »

rbanffy wrote: post #383
ghc wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think about what they didn't have in 1822 that they did have in 1922: - Radio - Movies - Motorized Rail Transit - Airplanes - Blimps - Recorded Audio - Electrification (esp. lighting) - Telephony - Cars - Subways - Fax - Early Television - Telegraph - Skyscapers - Underwater tunnels - Air Conditioning - Elevators - Modern Hospitals - Machine Guns, Tanks, Dreadnoughts and other tools of modern war - Stock Ticke…

> I would bet that the people of the 1920s would find the world of the 2020s much more recognizable than the people of the 1820s would find the world of the 1920s. Let's start by explaining smartphones, then Twitter and Facebook and then on how companies used them to hijack elections and destabilize democracies in multiple countries. Or, for an amusing time, try to explain how a cryptocurrency works. My mom, born in…

The internet is a big change. Cryptocurrency is not on the same scale. But I would be inclined to agree that the impact of even computers and internet on the recognizability of everyday life is less than that of eg. telephony and airplanes.
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