#karl smith

[idepict]

BBC Stories Documentary “The Stranger at My Brother’s Grave” - Cinecelluloid

BBC Stories’ documentary “The Stranger at My Brother’s Grave” brings the story of boy scout Karl Smith who died of drowning back in 1947 during a camping trip, and how an anonymous visitor keeps visiting his grave.

[arcticdementor]

My longer thesis is that the rising return to unskilled labor is a function of industrialization and that industrialization is unique in this. The wage rate on unskilled labor never benefited before and its not immediately clear that it will ever benefit again. This is because rents always accrue to the scarce factors of production. Industrialization meant that the only thing we were short on were “control systems” everything else in the production process was effectively cheap. However, any mentally healthy human being is a decent control system. So, this meant huge returns to being a human. It also meant collapsing returns to being a horse. Though, people think of this as a difference in kind, I urge you not to. Horses are not so different than you and I. As it so happened the wage rate for horses fell below sustenance and they died off. There is simply no basic reason this cannot happen to humans, save for the fact that other humans will enact policies to stop it. The market itself will not differentiate.

Karl Smith

[arcticdementor]

My longer thesis is that the rising return to unskilled labor is a function of industrialization and that industrialization is unique in this. The wage rate on unskilled labor never benefited before and its not immediately clear that it will ever benefit again. This is because rents always accrue to the scarce factors of production. Industrialization meant that the only thing we were short on were “control systems” everything else in the production process was effectively cheap. However, any mentally healthy human being is a decent control system. So, this meant huge returns to being a human. It also meant collapsing returns to being a horse. Though, people think of this as a difference in kind, I urge you not to. Horses are not so different than you and I. As it so happened the wage rate for horses fell below sustenance and they died off. There is simply no basic reason this cannot happen to humans, save for the fact that other humans will enact policies to stop it. The market itself will not differentiate.

Economist Karl Smith

[karlsmithworld]

It's really important to understand the #KingsNewClothes of Technology the #IoT. A description of what the IoT is by Karl Smith part of the IoT Design Principals talk with Thom Heslop and Karen Smith.

[giveitaspin]

I Want You is the first single from Karl Smith's forthcoming debut album - Kites.

[whitemask-wonderland]

#27.05.13

Helena Bonham Carter by Tim Walker

“I’m the sort of photographer who won’t ‘finish’ a picture until I’ve taken it as far as I can take it…but with every picture you have to force it to be the best picture it can be, in the situation that you’re in.”

TIM WALKER (The White Review by Karl Smith)

[idisapproveofyouropinion-blog]

If much of what people do is seek status then shouldn’t our concern as economists be about which systems efficiently allow people to indulge their status pursuits?

Karl Smith, Overcoming Robin Hanson: Status and Income Inequality

[spongedinosaur-blog-blog]

A happier conversation at Thanksigiving dinner

Starts with checking up on everyone's second-favorite economist/blogger, Karl Smith (Krugman's mastery of the op-ed format, and, ok, his Nobel, break the tie). Today, we have a fairly straightforward post about T-bills, and, by implication, the sustainability of federal debt. Ten-year rates are as follows:

Basically, people are paying the US Treasury their hard-earned money for the right to get most of that money back (in inflation-adjusted dollars) ten years from now. Kind of a great deal, and admittedly available in part because other assets (e.g. Euro-denominated bonds) have a higher degree of perceived risk.

But that's not really relevant at a Thanksgiving dinner-table conversation. All you need to do is print out a copy of this graph, so when some Baby Boomer starts to talk about the US budget deficit or fiscal responsibility, you can brandish it and note that an entity that prints its own currency doesn't work like a checking account. Frankly, any business that is even remotely well-run, if offered this price for their debt, would sell bonds until there weren't any more buyers.

And of course, if one of them has the audacity to start talking about Paul Ryan's ruin-Medicare-for-anyone-who-isn't-55-yet schemes or, worse, a plan to balance the budget that rejects any increase in taxes, you can always fold the printout into an airplane and throw it at them.