Good morning.
- Of climate, fools and scoundrels.
- A patron saint of entrepreneurs for the Orthodox.
- Noting the passing of an economist.
- Hmmm.
- Bang bang tech.
- Beggars and pretend begging.
- On the Afghan conflict.
- The UK financial situation considered, in brief.
- Can’t imagine why.
- Culture notes.
- Not caring about who wins?
- Giant rats? As pets?
- Of evil and eternity.
The UK financial situation considered, in brief.
I think the use of the word ‘considered’ here is disrespectful to the nature of the word. Considered implies some type of serous attempt to analyze the situation.
So here we get ‘consideration’ of the UK’s financial situation and even speculation that it should ‘declare bankruptcy’. Yet the only actual fact given is that the UK is running a big deficit during this very deep recession. Try to imagine working for, say, Warren Buffet and telling him some company he wants to buy is near bankruptcy. What is its total net debt? What is its ratio of cash flow to interest expense? You shrug and say you don’t know…..so much for consideration.
Of course this isn’t just blogging, I’d say maybe 7 out of 10 regular articles about anything budget related are like this. You’ll read a horror story about some state having to borrow $3B. Yet the article won’t tell you what the states annual tax revenue is, what its total net debt is, won’t even tell you if the borrowing represents new spending or rolling over old debt at lower rates or both.
Of evil and eternity.
Interesting…..
But our memories are mostly illusions. Or more precisely, you as 40 year old guy remembering the fun you had in high school is, in reality, a 40 year old guy remembering the fun he had in high school. You’re not a high school kid having fun and, while it may seem counterintuitive, you once being a high school kid has little to do with it. Your enjoyment of those memories comes from who you are now….namely a 40 year old guy whose far removed from high school but not so old that he is completely disconnected from the ability to enjoy the things someone in high school enjoys.
An entity that is thousands of years old, on the other hand, would have a different relationship to memories of their late teens. This is an aspect about the latest crop of vampire fiction (see the Twilight series) that I don’t like. Ann Rice knew an entity hundreds or thousands of years old would have a different relationship to its memories than one only decades old. A 100 year old vampire in the body of an 18 year old man would have different interests than a teen ager.
Which brings me to some other questions/thoughts about infinite life. The blogger you quote seems to take a very deterministic view of the consquences of ones actions. In your 20′s you climb Mt. Everest and in your later decades your memories of that experience (filtering out the bad memories) leads you to become a better person.
That’s well and good but isn’t this a choice made in each and every moment? If morality and goodness is simply achieved by a brain that has a habit of forgetting bad experiences then we can replace religion and philosophy with some pointed reasearch in pharmacology (pot smoking I understand can inhibit long term memory, if it inhibits bad more than good it could be a good start).
This inclines me to think that the emphasis should be centered more on the moment. The 40 year old having fond HS memories is a 40 year old in this moment and he is a good person because he is having fond memories. If he was stewing over the things he has lost since those days of HS he would be a 40 year old being a bitter person. Fond person or bitter person isn’t caused by the memories but by what he is choosing to be at the moment.
Even worse, we loose our memories. Maybe we won’t catch ourselves ‘airbrushing’ some of our memories to make it net happier but anyone who is even halfway aware of themselves realizes we loose a lot of memories both good and bad. Basing so much of your happiness on having memories (distorted or not) sounds like a sure way to set yourself up for failure. There’s a good chance you will loose a lot of that memory before you end up in the pine box just as sure as you’re going to loose a lot of your physical attributes you enjoy.
As for infinite lifespans, this raises more questions about memory and its relationship to it. The blogger seems to assume that an infinite life means our current nature of forgetting the bad and recalling the good (or recreating the good) would go on forever. But what if an infinite life meant perfect memory. All the crap you forgot is now remembered. Climbing Mt. Everest may have been a fond and positive memory between ages 40 and 70….would it be between 70 and 1.25 Billion if you have perfect recall? Seems like one can’t be so certain right?
Boonton,
On the latter comment, I’d recommend looking to see if you can get book on tape (or at the library) Miroslav Volf’s The End of Memory.
On the former, there are four links, the pdf on casual inspection has the details for which you are looking (GDP to debt compared for example right off the bat). So before you dismiss that link as without value, check the four links found at the filter.
errr http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=277
The UK budget deficit is running just a bit north of 7% of GDP but has averaged under 3% between 2005-2008. Total debt is 55.5% of GDP.
http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_20th_century_chart.html shows that for the last 20 years or show their spending as a % of GDP has been kept under 40% with the current increase happening very rapidly with the onset of the financial crises (and even so spending as a % of GDP doesn’t top the 70′s and 80′s). (NOte that ‘total’ is toggled so you’re looking at central and local gov’t combined (I don’t know what ‘Gen. Gov.’ is).
Toggling to http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchart_ukgs.php?year=1900_2010&view=1&expand=&units=p&fy=2009&chart=G0-total&bar=0&stack=1&size=m&color=c&title=UK%20Public%20Spending%20As%20Percent%20Of%20GDP we see net public debt as a % of GDP peaked right before 1950 just below 250% and was well above 100% all the way down to the 1960′s and didn’t come below 50% until the mid 1970′s.
Ok so without taking the time to read the pdf files and links your source provided, why are we talking about UK Bankrupty?
Boonton,
OK, you spent 10 minutes reading through other sources, spend 5 minutes perusing this. I’m not a financial person and don’t know the lingo.
I did notice that the pdf linked refers both to combined government and private debt which total about 3 trillion which is just shy of twice GDP. That would seem somewhat, uhm, alarming if not controlled. The paper also looks askance at UK government projections of rosy GDP growth to offset debt in the near term future (10 years).