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What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

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Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#141

Post by pier25 »

beloch wrote: post #112

"while the flood of gold into Spain in the 16th century seemed like a big haul at the time, by modern standards it was a trivial amount. Total world gold production during the 1500s is estimated to have been around 36 tons;" -------------- World silver production during the 16th century was around 23 thousand tons[1]. Silver was closer in value to gold back then too, at around one tenth the value per weight. The econ…

Zacatecas (Mexico) is mostly a desert now but it used to be covered with forests. The wood was used as fuel for smelting silver during the colonial period.

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#142

Post by potato3732842 »

CTDOCodebases wrote: post #115
colechristensen wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And people won't point to the actual causes: - The COVID free-money needed to be less and to end sooner - The COVID restrictions needed to be less and end sooner The disease didn't go away, we just at one point decided we were done with restrictions even though conditions didn't change. We needed restrictions ONLY during spikes and more consideration needed to be given to the long term economic effects of COVID polic…

Everything is easier in hindsight isn't it? Especially with such a complex problem. > The COVID restrictions needed to be less and end sooner What would we have been optimizing for here? GDP? Deaths? ICU Capacity? Lifestyle? Or would we weight them? If so would we take 2nd and 3rd order effects into consideration? > An example graph, when restrictions should have been on or off left as an exercise to the reader I liv…

>Everything is easier in hindsight isn't it? Especially with such a complex problem.

These sorts of statements are far too often as a justification to dodge responsibility used by those who at the time just poured more virgins into the volcano in a obviously vain attempt to change the weather (or whatever metaphor for "clearly not gonna work but ideologically convenient" you want to use).

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#143

Post by TrololoTroll »

colechristensen wrote: post #138
CTDOCodebases wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so much hindsight as "what I've been saying all along". It was a dynamic situation and it sounds like the only things that you were optimizing for in your mind was inflation and covid deaths whiles ignoring second order effects and data that likely wasn't available to the public. You are like a person who kept telling everyone it was 12:00am but it wasn't, then when it finally became 12:00am and everyone agreed y…

>It's a bit rich to blame all the inflation on the financial response to the pandemic without taking into consideration the effect the pandemic had on logistics or considering what would have happened if the government didn't spend enough. Also it's probably worth mentioning that the Fed operates independently and is tasked with only financial functions. The treasury spent an extra $2 trillion which the Fed facilitat…

[dead]

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#144

Post by wkat4242 »

ares623 wrote: post #110
colechristensen wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And people won't point to the actual causes: - The COVID free-money needed to be less and to end sooner - The COVID restrictions needed to be less and end sooner The disease didn't go away, we just at one point decided we were done with restrictions even though conditions didn't change. We needed restrictions ONLY during spikes and more consideration needed to be given to the long term economic effects of COVID polic…

I was in NZ during COVID. I was adamantly pro-lockdowns. In hindsight, it was a very selfish view. It benefitted my family directly and I was more than happy to follow the rules and scoff at those that didn’t. I won’t claim to know what the appropriate response level should have been back then. But it is very clear that the whole affair has hurt and damaged people and society irreparably. The only winners are the wea…

Yeah the lockdowns have really damaged my mental health. And the mask mandates even more so due to ancient trauma (where I nearly suffocated and have very bad associations with breathing that feels obstructed). But that's a very personal reason that I understand couldn't be accommodated for back in those days.

I don't know if it was worth it or necessary but tbh I just try to forget the whole phase ever happened. For me it was a few lost life years and I'm still trying to get back to where I was mentally.

I do feel those things were really overlooked back in the day. But I'm also glad I'm not the one making such decisions which can't be easy.

The only thing I have an outspoken opinion about were the curfews we had here. Meaning the available time for things like shopping was more compressed and thus the shops were a lot busier than normal which was super counterproductive. And it didn't stop partygoers because they simply slept over.

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#145

Post by marcosdumay »

colechristensen wrote: post #140
marcosdumay wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are talking about the US, the COVID money needed to be distributed to the people, not to rich investors to buy stock and land.

... $900+ billion dollars in the US were given directly to the people.

If you use the most restrictive definition of money available, they printed 16 trillions:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#146

Post by [deleted] »

pier25 wrote: post #141
beloch wrote: post #112

"while the flood of gold into Spain in the 16th century seemed like a big haul at the time, by modern standards it was a trivial amount. Total world gold production during the 1500s is estimated to have been around 36 tons;" -------------- World silver production during the 16th century was around 23 thousand tons[1]. Silver was closer in value to gold back then too, at around one tenth the value per weight. The econ…

Zacatecas (Mexico) is mostly a desert now but it used to be covered with forests. The wood was used as fuel for smelting silver during the colonial period.

[deleted]

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#148

Post by colechristensen »

skybrian wrote: post #137
colechristensen wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside influence heavily distorts local economies and needs to be done extremely carefully or you end up making a few people rich and starving everybody else.

Maybe, but not in this case: > Early data from a sub-district pilot showed sharp reductions in extreme poverty and improved wellbeing with minimal inflation, showing direct cash is a scalable tool to accelerating the end of extreme poverty. https://www.givedirectly.org/district-scale/ Perhaps things are different in Malawi?

That is an organization judging it's own success while a program is accelerating.

And if you measure poverty by how much money someone has and then give them money saying you've fixed poverty is tautology.

If your plan is to build a client state on perpetual welfare, well sure it's easy to be successful. But you can never leave and it's very possible that if you do leave things will be worse than if you had done nothing at all.

Whereas if you distribute a bunch of goats and chickens among a community and spread some education about raising goats and chickens, there's a good chance you've made a one shot permanent improvement to the quality of life of a community.

The criticism for giving direct aid in food and cash isn't that things are worse for the people you're giving them to while you're giving it to them... it's that you wreck the local economy for food and everything else because nobody can sell food when food is free and you can't price things correctly when money is pouring in. The money always stops and the aftermath is a disaster.

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#149

Post by colechristensen »

TrololoTroll wrote: post #143
colechristensen wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a bit rich to blame all the inflation on the financial response to the pandemic without taking into consideration the effect the pandemic had on logistics or considering what would have happened if the government didn't spend enough. Also it's probably worth mentioning that the Fed operates independently and is tasked with only financial functions. The treasury spent an extra $2 trillion which the Fed facilitat…

[dead]

The biggest number for total global fiscal support I found was $14 trillion, but that was only from before mid-2020.

Most countries created a whole lot of new money and even if yours didn't, unless you're very economically isolated from the rest of the world the inflation hits you just the same.

Re: What happened to all the gold Spain got from the New World? (1985)

#150

Post by gtech1 »

caminante wrote: post #139
gtech1 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. You use 'ex' to mean except ? In common parlance ex means 'example'. So your phrase becomes: National treasures (example gold) were returned in '35 and '56. Which is what I responded to. Gold was part bars and part rare historical coins. Also still unreturned, which is extremely valuable: Queen Marie’s jewels were not returned The Romanian Crown Jewels were not returned Royal and dynastic archives Private deposits…

>In common parlance ex means 'example'. This claim is wrong. You meant to say "ex." is common, noting the period for the abbreviation. Whereas ex is commonly used (See "ex dividend".) as I did above. I'm skipping the rest of your reply because it's a waste of time after you loaded up with a spiteful tone -- "you don't know what you're talking about"-- only to be wrong about language and somehow you dispute the Wikipe…

it's ok, I know you meant for this thread to diverge into pointless arguments. But for everyone else reading:

1. https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=ex

2. "Bolsheviks" aren't a nation.

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