I think it very much depends on your situation. I had a bad side effect to the second and the risk increase of *not* getting the booster is minimal in my age bracket.
Look at the Israeli data - currently about 3/100k people under 60 are getting seriously ill per day with 1 or 2 shots. With 3 shots, it goes down to about 0.5. This is a big boost, or so it seems. But flip the numbers. For the average person, it would take 30,000 days to get seriously ill (82 years). With the booster, this improves to about 500 years. The problem is I know people who have gotten very ill or even been hospitalized with the vaccine.
The odds, if you are under 60, seem to be higher of getting seriously ill with the booster than with the virus.
In my case, having had a side effect, the choice is clear.
Non-vaccinated people under 60 have averaged around 15 serious cases a day/100k (or 20 years). For people 40-50 (like me), I'd assume the numbers are higher - still, there's a fair amount of wiggle.
From past data and my impressions, initial vaccination makes sense and if you have no side effects or have diabetes or severe obesity then boosters do too.
Not tremendously well. The vaccine improves serious outcomes - certainly. Interestingly, a single dose seems to work as well as two. But there are still a lot of serious outcomes because Delta spreads so fast and so easily. The Israeli government dashboard is in Hebrew, but very very good... and Google will translate it.
Wow. Probably not the best baseline in that case :) I guess the 'net exports' part of GDP might end up with those earnings being appropriately tiny but also volatile.
I forgot about El Salvador's government.. whoops. China's GDP isn't exactly transparent either. This would limit markets where you could pull this off. The US is a good one then - this is like the USD but more fiscally stable.
"What's the incentive for politicians to reduce monetary inflation tho. Also, part the argument for monetary inflation is to lessen the impact of economic shocks by flighting what would be deflation in a shrinking economy. If you're in debt, the value of that debt increases with deflation, making it harder to service and often creating a feedback loop or deflationary spiral"
I'm not suggesting replacing the currency, just providing people with an alternative to protect against monetary inflation. This would be a private exchange.
The attempt to lessen economic shocks by issuing more money is a black art in the extreme as revealed by the namby-pambyness of currency trading - which is just trading on expectations of expectations and is totally untethered to any 'real' value. Especially since Bretton Woods.
I, of course, am very anti-debt. But the debt only increases with deflation if your debt is fixed. In parts of Europe, banks are paying mortgage holders for holding mortgages.
If your debt moves with LIBOR, it's replacement, Fed target rates or whatever you actually end up with all sorts of manipulations you can't begin to understand are changing the price of your debt. The most dangerous is popular demand - keep interest rates low so people can borrow ends up being a formula for runaway monetary inflation.
Again, you can choose to price debt using a currency like this, but it isn't a replacement currency. The old options remain. This would be akin to people in developing economies pricing transactions in USD because their own currency is unreliable. Well, really, USD are unreliable too.
We just use USDs as the benchmark because nothing else is more reliable.
The benchmark is important because it actually sets what the currency does. In this case it means the currency always represents a fixed slice of economic production - almost like shares in a company. No matter what the economy's actual currency does, this remains stable against the economy. If the economy actually grows - however you define it - this is more valuable. If it shrinks, this is less valuable. Either way it is tied to that economic productivity. There could easily be other benchmarks to use - measurement and frequency are the challenge.
In reaction to an offline question about automation impacting the price of labor...
I'm not concerned about inflation per se. I'm concerned about a particular kind of inflation: monetary inflation.
You pump up the money supply and erase people's savings.
In order to counteract this, people invest in things meant to give a return or they try to benchmark against a cost of goods measure which is hopeless in a world in which the definition of a good is constantly changing.
By tying to GDP you are looking at the production side of the equation.
Automation doesn't matter. Total per capita income would remain the same or even rise with more efficiency - you'd just end up with dumb jobs priced out.
They key is the currency is tied to the size of the economy and doesn't become worth more or less without the economy growing or shrinking.
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It's Good To Be A Guinea Pig
I'll write a piece on this!
It's Good To Be A Guinea Pig
I think it very much depends on your situation. I had a bad side effect to the second and the risk increase of *not* getting the booster is minimal in my age bracket.
Look at the Israeli data - currently about 3/100k people under 60 are getting seriously ill per day with 1 or 2 shots. With 3 shots, it goes down to about 0.5. This is a big boost, or so it seems. But flip the numbers. For the average person, it would take 30,000 days to get seriously ill (82 years). With the booster, this improves to about 500 years. The problem is I know people who have gotten very ill or even been hospitalized with the vaccine.
The odds, if you are under 60, seem to be higher of getting seriously ill with the booster than with the virus.
In my case, having had a side effect, the choice is clear.
Non-vaccinated people under 60 have averaged around 15 serious cases a day/100k (or 20 years). For people 40-50 (like me), I'd assume the numbers are higher - still, there's a fair amount of wiggle.
From past data and my impressions, initial vaccination makes sense and if you have no side effects or have diabetes or severe obesity then boosters do too.
It's Good To Be A Guinea Pig
Not tremendously well. The vaccine improves serious outcomes - certainly. Interestingly, a single dose seems to work as well as two. But there are still a lot of serious outcomes because Delta spreads so fast and so easily. The Israeli government dashboard is in Hebrew, but very very good... and Google will translate it.
קורונה - לוח בקרה
A Golden Bridge For Gaza
Freeing them from Hamas wouldn't deliver that either.
The People's Currency
Wow. Probably not the best baseline in that case :) I guess the 'net exports' part of GDP might end up with those earnings being appropriately tiny but also volatile.
The People's Currency
this doesn't have to be crypto to work.
The People's Currency
I forgot about El Salvador's government.. whoops. China's GDP isn't exactly transparent either. This would limit markets where you could pull this off. The US is a good one then - this is like the USD but more fiscally stable.
The People's Currency
@[Sarbelio](user:99439)
An offline counterparty says:
"What's the incentive for politicians to reduce monetary inflation tho. Also, part the argument for monetary inflation is to lessen the impact of economic shocks by flighting what would be deflation in a shrinking economy. If you're in debt, the value of that debt increases with deflation, making it harder to service and often creating a feedback loop or deflationary spiral"
I'm not suggesting replacing the currency, just providing people with an alternative to protect against monetary inflation. This would be a private exchange.
The attempt to lessen economic shocks by issuing more money is a black art in the extreme as revealed by the namby-pambyness of currency trading - which is just trading on expectations of expectations and is totally untethered to any 'real' value. Especially since Bretton Woods.
I, of course, am very anti-debt. But the debt only increases with deflation if your debt is fixed. In parts of Europe, banks are paying mortgage holders for holding mortgages.
If your debt moves with LIBOR, it's replacement, Fed target rates or whatever you actually end up with all sorts of manipulations you can't begin to understand are changing the price of your debt. The most dangerous is popular demand - keep interest rates low so people can borrow ends up being a formula for runaway monetary inflation.
Again, you can choose to price debt using a currency like this, but it isn't a replacement currency. The old options remain. This would be akin to people in developing economies pricing transactions in USD because their own currency is unreliable. Well, really, USD are unreliable too.
We just use USDs as the benchmark because nothing else is more reliable.
The People's Currency
The benchmark is important because it actually sets what the currency does. In this case it means the currency always represents a fixed slice of economic production - almost like shares in a company. No matter what the economy's actual currency does, this remains stable against the economy. If the economy actually grows - however you define it - this is more valuable. If it shrinks, this is less valuable. Either way it is tied to that economic productivity. There could easily be other benchmarks to use - measurement and frequency are the challenge.
The People's Currency
In reaction to an offline question about automation impacting the price of labor...
I'm not concerned about inflation per se. I'm concerned about a particular kind of inflation: monetary inflation.
You pump up the money supply and erase people's savings.
In order to counteract this, people invest in things meant to give a return or they try to benchmark against a cost of goods measure which is hopeless in a world in which the definition of a good is constantly changing.
By tying to GDP you are looking at the production side of the equation.
Automation doesn't matter. Total per capita income would remain the same or even rise with more efficiency - you'd just end up with dumb jobs priced out.
They key is the currency is tied to the size of the economy and doesn't become worth more or less without the economy growing or shrinking.