Economy

When you use a debit or credit card, the bank takes a cut, for example 3%.

The remaining is then passed on to other people who in turn also spend it with a card which takes another 3%.

If you apply this logic, a $50 purchase over 100 transactions will result in about only $2 remaining while the bank soak up $48 of those original $50.

In societies heavily based on cards (eg: australia), it would seem that banks soak up most of the money.

If my logic is correct, how does it even work and how is this even allowed?

It would seem that the banks are soaking up all the money over time.

What does it imply to the economy as a whole? Apart from the government printing money, would this also be a big source of inflation?

I don't have that much information about the economy of other countries.I've heard it a lot in my country(in government related or government supporter medias) that the western countries have a pretty bad economy. They say that they must work 24/7 to just be able to eat and pay rent. They live in small 10-meters houses with a high rent. The Water and electricity bills are expensive. The living costs are a lot and etc. I wanted to know the truth. So I'd like to hear it from real people, not medias. Tell me about your country and your economy :) "English is not my language. Sorry for any mistakes"

According to The Gaurdian: "The bulk of the funding was awarded to 5GW of offshore windfarm capacity, or enough to generate clean electricity for more than 3m UK homes before the end of the decade. The nine projects were awarded a lower than expected contract price of between £75 a megawatt-hour and £82/MWh in today’s prices.

These prices are below the typical price of electricity in the wholesale power market, which now stands at £84/MWh – and well below the guaranteed price of £128/MWh for new nuclear plants."

Renewable energy is going to be cheaper than fossil fuels. Especially with high oil prices due to geopolitical tensions. Why are they paying such high prices for nuclear? Nuclear is the safest source of energy, maybe that is part of the reason. Oil is the most dangerous source of energy.

Over 4 million people die each year due to pollution, where much of it is caused by burning fossil fuels. Nuclear disasters are like airplane crashes. Rare. When it happens, it makes for a good story. But even the UN reported that the total number of direct and indirect deaths due to Chernobyl, was about four thousand. Car crashes cause more deaths annually.

Reference: https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/sep/03/renewable-energy-auction-windfarms-tidal-power

According to Reuters: 'France has long fallen foul of EU rules requiring member states to keep budget deficits to less 3% of economic output, and Paris has not booked a surplus since 1974, three years before Macron was born. Its total debt of 110% of GDP also violates EU rules."

After Macron came into power, he cut taxes on households, companies, and capital income. Should France cut government spending, or raise taxes? I think that they should do both. But this risks making enemies of both the left and the right.

Most people have to choose sides. To choose neither, can leave you friendless. Macrons background is in Finance. So he chose the right. But it is in contradiction with EU rules. With a growing debt, France is borrowing from the future, to fund the present. He should focus on increasing taxes for the top one percent, on large companies, and capital gains. While mantaining social welfare for the most vulnerable in society.

Reference: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/french-finance-ministry-warns-deficit-risk-tax-shortfall-media-2024-09-02/

https://preview.redd.it/rz2lsp0n7lmd1.jpg?width=304&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=725606e8b68cd38bb6bc43d9953b580f9996424d

Photo above - Lost in Space. Astronauts Butch and Suni are stranded aboard the ISS. The vehicle that brought them has been grounded due to uncontrollable hydrogen leaks. The SpaceX mission in February to return them has been scrapped, when the rescue vehicle blew up in a fireball while attempting to land

The latest big idea: send endangered species to the moon, to “save” them. How many endangered species are we talking about? Um . . . 43,500. The list gets longer every day. See link below.

Of course, most endangered species turn out to be inconsequential worms or mollusks. I’m willing to let these invertebrates die in peace, if we could actually save some of the important animals. White Rhinos. Amur Leopards. Sumatran Orangutans. Pink Brazilian River Dolphins. Habitat loss and poaching by starving indigenous peoples are why they're endangered.

But the plan isn’t actually to save the dolphins. Scientists want to capture a few, extract DNA samples, and send THOSE to a new (as yet unbuilt) Lunar Antarctic base for cold storage/safe keeping. Then our descendants could return centuries from now, and clone the dolphins and rhinos, long after they went extinct. Stop laughing . . . that is EXACTLY what these scientists are begging for money for. This is a plotline MGM or Paramount will greenlight for a film, I betcha.

In a previous column, I was called out for questioning our obsession with having the worlds largest space telescope (size matters). Trying to gaze back in time to the first few nano seconds after the big bang (spoiler alert - it was silent. No bang involved). Or how about catching neutrinos in a vat of plasma in at the south pole? It turns out neutrinos are NOT the elusive dark matter we've been searching for. But it still might be important to capture a few in those vats. How about a new particle accelerator? The old one is too small - it's barely 17 miles in diameter.

I think these are all interesting questions. I just don’t think the answers are worth hundreds and hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars. We didn’t pay for these things with taxes, or go fund me pages. The government borrowed the money.

NASA fan boys are convinced that without the Apollo missions we wouldn’t have modern necessities such as Velcro, microwave ovens, and integrated chips. They should read more – chips have been around since the 1950s. Microwave ovens were a spin off from radar used in world war 2. Velcro would certainly have been invented by some company like North Face or Columbia, with or without space suits.

As I write this, we have 2 NASA astronauts stranded in space. On the International Space Station, which was launched 25 years ago. They can’t get back. ALL of the US spacecraft have been grounded due to technical reasons.

What was technology like 25 years ago when the ISS was launched? Google didn’t exist yet. CDRW disks were the latest thing in data storage. Apple wasn’t even making smartphones. Yet now we can’t even bring our astronauts home.

What would I have spent some of the NASA money on? For a measly hundred billion dollars, we could buy a LOT of stuff:

1 – fix thousands of crumbling and decaying schools

2 – health care that delivers what Obamacare over-promised

3 – affordable housing

4 – repair or replace the 17,000 US bridges which are rated unsafe for traffic

I have no issues with Velcro, or bragging rights to the best lunar rock collection in the neighborhood. I just think these are poor excuses to keep spending gazillions of dollars we don't have.

Your turn, space fanboys. Let me have it. Tell everyone how great it’s going to be when we finally discover a fossilized microbe on Mars. Or find some even smaller particles that are the building blocks of the Higgs Boson. Then please drive by your local high school and take a close look at the problems around the block.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Could a lunar Noah's Ark preserve species facing extinction? These scientists think so. (yahoo.com)