Standardized, obedient, punctual citizens, too.

Some would quibble and say the correct word is "subjects" not "citizens".

Others would prefer "proles". Still others, "serfs".

There is no such thing as "the economy" when used like this in sentences like this.

Artificially-low interest rates tilt the labor-versus-equipment decisions towards equipment. We can expect that sometimes this means money is spent on equipment (or other capital expenses) rather than labor. Quantifying the size of that effect is not something I would care to do. Nor would I trust the conclusions of others -- unless put to the test before the fact in accordance with Allison's Precept.

Regardless of the estimated or actual size of the effect, it's something that shouldn't happen, IMO.

It is bad for "the economy" (in that: people make sub-optimal decisions, which affect people, negatively, overall).

I expect the beneficiaries of this would be people who own businesses (directly, as individuals, or indirectly, as stock or mutual funds or eventual recipients of money from pension funds), and those negatively affected would tend to be people fired or laid off or never hired or put on reduced hours.

The Fed's artificially-low interest rates almost certainly result in a net transfer of wealth and/or income from lower income people to higher income people.

An undocumented ability to spy on NATO countries? Sounds to me like a feature, not a bug.

Correction: spy back on NATO countries. I'm living in one of the snoopiest.

Well, not yet.

Two words: Zimbabwe. Weimar.

Response to the sig line: Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.

Fight for me? I'd be surprised and pleased if they quit fighting *me*.

Or break it.

Or both.

Actually, their real mission is to do things that help ensure funding in the future and to keep and expand their powers, and to avoid doing things that will jeopardize that funding and those powers.

Covering up their misdeeds helps. Attempting to cover up misdeeds but failing jeopardizes.

Yeah! That would get Homeland Security involved.

Because if copyright are infringed, the terrorists win.

In unrelated news, the FBI is seeking to ban opaque envelopes and prohibit folded letters inside transparent envelopes.

Postcards are unaffected by this proposal.

That was sarcasm, I assume. (But thanks to Poe's Law, I don't put much confidence in that assumption.)

We do all know that the movie "Demolition Man" was fiction, right?

For me, it's living people. (In a pinch, living people that I like. I hope I'm never that hungry.)

And I don't even play rugby.