Those inflation numbers are hogwash, do not buy into the agenda that government is pushing, the interest rates are at 0% and have been at 0 for 6 years. Never before has this actually happened, never before has anybody tied their economy to 0% interest rates for such a long time. It is not going to be possible to get off the 0% interest rates without an economic collapse (which is inevitable and actually required to fix the issues that have accumulated in the economy since the creation of the Federal reserve and switch to the paper money and paper debt).

As to prices, they are going up, not down. There are no prices that are going down, actually even oil had a steady growth this year, what prices are going down? The only thing that is going down is real employment and productivity.

Also the fake negative inflation rate was used to adjust the GDP in a way that makes it look bigger, all of this is complete propaganda.

AFAIC deflation is not a problem, inflation is. Inflation is what has been killing modern paper money based economies, deflation is a bogeyman that never materialised. The only reason the so called mainstream 'economists' are scaring people with deflation is because there was deflation during the Great Depression, which government fought with gigantic amount of money printing (and farming output purchases with printed money that was ploughed straight into the ground to try and keep prices up rather than allowing people to eat cheaper at lower prices during a depression). Depression was not caused by deflation, deflation was a natural consequence of a post-inflationary collapse and it was proper and necessary but it was fought against with fake money printing the same way they did with QE1, 2, 3 and the next one and the one that will come after, the QE infinity.

There will be no rising interest rates coming out of the Fed, they can't do it, not without crashing the economy and Fed will not be crashing the economy on purpose any time soon (especially not before the coming elections).

Again, the inflation is not negative, it is very much positive and way higher than 2% that the Fed says it wants. 2% inflation rate to be a target.... that's a joke. 2% interest rate target was introduced decades ago in New Zealand I think as a CEILING target, once they hit it, they were supposed to raise interest rates to fight inflation.

Anyway, if you truly believe the government nonsense after decades of lying they have perpetrated upon the people, the false pretences for wars, the false economy, the false money, then I don't think I'll be getting through to you in this comment, but I had to write this as a response at least for myself.

Ok, but look past the initial reaction, what are the next 20 years going to be like past the first shock of a crash? Let's say the dollar and the bond markets collapse, the stock and other asset markets go through the roof as people are fleeing the dollar, but housing market collapses anyway, because almost all of it is borrowed money and almost nobody has real savings to buy a house outright. So money generating ventures gain relative value while money pits (houses) lose value once fiat dies and is displaced by real market money (whatever that may be, but I set my bets in a particular way).

I don't think the next 20 years are going to be about rebuilding socialism, they are going to be rebuilding individual freedoms and thus opportunities, companies will spring out into existence, figuring out ways to help the people that ended up in these conditions, helping them to do something productive and get some payment doing some of those productive things.

I think the next 20 years after the crash are going to be about rebuilding the economy but the only way to do it would be by reducing the role of government to something entirely negligible.

There is no other way to survive when all of the assumptions and basic institutions fall on their face and disappear in the poof of actual logic (can't steal money forever, can't borrow forever, have to pay back at some point).

I think we are going to be moving away from collectivism of all forms (communism, socialism, fascism) and towards freedom again actually, maybe I am a bit premature on this but it is bound to happen in a global economy with at least some entrepreneurial people. The trick is to program the mistakes of the past into machines, who would remember the problems of the past and become certain rule-setters as to what direction any future attempt at setting up a government structure takes.

AFAIC governments should not exist at all, only individuals and their companies should exist and I think the future is going to move in that direction past the inevitable impending self-destruction of the current system.

I think I got modded down at least 2000 times in the last 16 years or so for saying this particular simple thing: capital competes with labour.

Labour and capital are in competition, there is always some price point, where it is cheaper to invest capital to reduce reliance on labour and the opposite is also true, should labour become cheap enough it can win against capital for some time at least.

What are the factors that lead towards labour being more expensive than capital? Well, in the so called 'developed' nations that would be government created inflation (paper fiat printing and interest rate manipulation), business regulations (which are taxes) and other income and wealth taxes.

The price of labour in the free market may or may not in some cases lead to investment of capital in order to displace the said labour but in a non-free market system that the so called 'developed' world is running the price of labour is artificially high, pushed by regulations and laws and taxes high enough for capital to win over and over and over and over.

Companies like Uber and many others will come up with ways to bring down the cost of labour by getting around regulations and laws (and hopefully taxes at some point) in order to make labour competitive again. For now we are not there yet.

Various economic indicators in the USA are showing a significant slow down in the economy, it's systemic but the TV will make you think this is all weather related, which is pure nonsense. Weather happens, so do other things, these things shouldn't cause the so called 'economists' miss their targets all the time by such huge margins. The USA (and some other) economy is dying the death of trillions of cuts administered by the government and various 'progressive' agenda but also by the mix of corporate/state agenda that prevents free market from working. Free market is then blamed, the idiots say: 'free market fails' or whatnot, when the reality is that it is their system of government that fails to protect individual liberties and freedoms required for the free market to exist.

There will be no easy fix for this failure to protect individual liberties, it will be a painful and very expensive crash, the question is what do you do after that crash?

- once you get big enough and can successfully deal with governments what you do is you pass certain types of legislation that you personally can live with but that will without doubt kill any smaller competing businesses.

I completely disagree with every business regulation by any government, this is not a problem that government needs to be involved with at all.

Of-course in Canada Bell is a 'crown corporation', an oppressive concept that is incompatible with individual freedoms of people, creating pseudo-government agencies that are imposed upon individuals and that prevent and destroy competition (that's the only way monopolies are dangerous - when they are government created and protected monopolies), so where it comes to such monstrosities as far as I am concerned the only correct course of action is to disband them, liquidate the assets and let the market deal with the industry that the monstrosity was involved in.

Once you have government created, imposed, protected monopolies no amount of regulation will help to fix the underlying problem: they should not exist, the market cannot function with them around. But the same problem (only to a much greater extent) exists in every transaction, half of every transaction is money and government controls/prints money, which is the real issue for the economies around the world.

The real writing is on the wall of-course, that writing being that as long as people don't learn from history and don't stop governments from meddling with business, their economies will be inefficient and their living standards will suffer.

If it is a higher percentage you are after may I suggest a simple and quick solution to this 'problem'? Just shoot most men engineers, enough to get to 50/50 men to women ratio. You will have to keep shooting to keep the ratio at the same level though but at least it would actually get you to the place you are aiming at.

Driver: "Open the door, car."

Car: "I can't do that <insert name here>. You're too stupid to let behind the wheel."

Problem solved.

Cheers,
Dave

I have no contract with anybody on any of my phone numbers and haven't had a phone contract since about 2005, is that satisfactory for you? Now go away, troll.

- Ok, I disagree, I am a person "who doesn't want it" and I am not buying it.

I also disagree with all the ACs posting comments, saying how I am irrelevant since I am not the target audience since I stopped watching TV a while back. That's also incorrect, anybody is a target audience, the question is are you selling something that people are willing to buy or not? If you are not selling a product I am interested in, then you are preventing me from being target audience.

Well, aren't you a swell troll? In my comment I am talking about myself (such pronouns as 'I' and 'My' and a clear lack of 'you' and 'your' should have made it clear, but obviously not for trolls) and not about you, so get your head out of your ass (now you see, I used 'you' and 'your' there, that is a call to action) and go troll somebody else.

Wrong. Anybody is a potential client, voting with your money to cancel a service you don't like is the best way to let a company know they may want to look at what they are selling and figure out why they are losing clients and revenue.

- yes.

My phone is unlocked, I use it in many different countries, it runs exactly what I allow it to and at the end I need it to talk to people.

I don't need a TV, it's an optional entertainment channel, it's not the primary one, so I don't see how it is the same thing at all. If I had to use the TV to talk to people and had no choice but to pay for some idiotic football game I would never watch and have 0 interest in, that would be one thing, but I don't have to use my TV to talk to people! I use a phone to do it and I have many choices in phones, carriers, services I buy and programs I run.

Wrong, maybe I would subscribe and watch TV if and only if it was something I found entertaining, convenient and at a correct price.

Give me a service I want to buy and then I can be a customer again, but I voted with my money, so don't you fucking tell me what I can and cannot say.

If Verizon is in fact breaking a contract it has with ESPN then all I can say is that it is a horrible contract.

I don't watch TV, haven't for more years than I can remember, I don't care for commercials and I don't care for the content. I have 0 (zero) interest in watching any sports on TV whatsoever, never had any interest in watching sports, never will have any interest in watching sports.

Just saying, forcing somebody like me to sign up for a service that provides sports information as part of the package is a 100% way to have me avoid that service.