You're right that a business wouldn't lower prices if customers keep showing up. The basic causes of prices falling amount to two: increased supply, and decreased demand.
On the supply end, if competitors enter a given market and take some of your customers, you might lower prices to lure them back. And if people just can't afford (or otherwise don't want) to go to your salon/restaurant as often, then you might lower prices to lure them back.
As far as the current environment, we've got student loan payments restarting in a couple months after a three-year hiatus. A good number of folks who had some disposable income are going to have less. That'll impact the demand end of the equation. Won't necessarily cause deflation, but will at least lower inflation.
> The question is if you think "most recent college graduates without wealthy parents" are a population worthy of government assistance.
And, quite frankly, I'd gravitate towards a "no" on this. When taken as a group, I'd expect college graduates to be able to pull off an income stream sufficient to pay down the student loans.
Of course there are individuals for whom student loans pose a real problem. There should be some realistic provisions for discharge in bankruptcy.
Considering our recent/current environment of low unemployment and high inflation, broad-based loan forgiveness is simply the wrong choice from a Keynesian economics perspective. The same is true of continuing the payment pause.
> I'd expect college graduates to be able to pull off an income stream sufficient to pay down the student loans.
Based on what?
The way it worked 40 years ago? Or even 20?
Costs—for college, but also for other very essential things like healthcare and housing—have ballooned extravagantly for some time, while pay has remained relatively stagnant.
Or is this just based on some kind of just-world theory? "People who go to college are educated; education deserves better pay; therefore, people who go to college are well-paid"? It's a nice thought, but it's not reality.
The fact is, a huge number of people have staggering amounts of student loan debt, and very little ability to repay that debt—and a legal prohibition on discharging it.
What does this situation gain us that would be lost if we simply cancelled all that student loan debt? Some very wealthy companies that made these loans would be somewhat less wealthy. The horror. How could we ever recover.
Someone with a high school diploma will earn on average $1.3 million over their lifetime. Someone with a B.S. averages $2.3 million. The college degree is thus worth, on average, $1 million in lifetime earnings.
> The fact is, a huge number of people have staggering amounts of student loan debt, and very little ability to repay that debt—and a legal prohibition on discharging it.
I believe I acknowledged that. Making provisions for discharging student loans via bankruptcy would be a really good idea. Much better at targeting student loan relief to those who need it.
> What does this situation gain us that would be lost if we simply cancelled all that student loan debt?
Cancelling all student loan debt would lead to some combination of higher taxes and inflation. No matter how you slice it, that would be a redistribution of wealth from the uneducated to the educated. That redistribution of wealth therefore goes the wrong way -- the uneducated are more likely to be poor, and the educated more likely to be rich.
> No matter how you slice it, that would be a redistribution of wealth from the uneducated to the educated.
That's simply not true, at least not in any meaningful sense.
It would be perfectly straightforward to fund that entirely by raising income taxes on the highest earners.
I'm sure some of them count as "uneducated", in the technical "did not go to (or dropped out of) college" sense, but once you're selecting specifically for the highest earners, that ceases to actually matter.
> It would be perfectly straightforward to fund that entirely by raising income taxes on the highest earners.
Even if you do that, you're still getting inflation. That'll hit everyone -- not just high earners. Loan forgiveness and payment pauses free up a fair bit of middle class budget and therefore increase the velocity of money.
The idea that reducing inequality by redistributing the massive gains of the very wealthy to those who actually produced them will raise inflation by a degree that makes it hurt people more than it helps is propaganda with no basis in fact.
So sure, maybe there will be some inflation. But having a $150,000 debt canceled, while seeing 0.03% additional inflation, still nets out positive.
> Or is this just based on some kind of just-world theory? "People who go to college are educated; education deserves better pay; therefore, people who go to college are well-paid"? It's a nice thought, but it's not reality.
It is reality. Those with college degrees earn more.
> The fact is, a huge number of people have staggering amounts of student loan debt, and very little ability to repay that debt—and a legal prohibition on discharging it.
Student debt for undergrad is capped at around $10k per year (depending on which year the student is in). As a result, universities tend to offer generous scholarships that put the total amount students have to spend within that limit.
The only people with staggering amounts of student loan debt are people who take out uncapped loans for a graduate programme in film studies at Columbia.
The length of the burst tells us the maximum size of the event. Imagine the event takes place instantly at the source, and that the source has some size. If we observe the event over two minutes, then the event size was two light-minutes.
In reality, these aren't completely instantaneous events. But any event duration at its source is going to decrease the event size. Take the extreme case: the event actually took place at its source over the course of two minutes. And we observed it over two minutes. We would have to conclude that the event had zero size.
Of course, the reality is that we have no idea how long the event took place at its source. All we know is that we observed it over two minutes. But that's enough information to conclude that the event we're seeing certainly occurred within a two light-minute sphere. If it had occurred over a larger sphere, we would have observed it over a longer period of time because of the time light takes to traverse the length of the source.
I have a macbook air with an egpu connected by a thunderbolt 3 port. I unplug the gpu when I want to take the laptop somewhere, and plug in back in when I'm at my desk.
The issue with schools is that they're daily large gatherings where the virus can be transmitted. Children can be carriers with schools providing the network effect for spreading covid-19.
So, 500 million metric tons sounds like a lot, doesn't it? But there's the fact that it's getting dumped into an already big system: the atmosphere at large.
Let's check it out it percentage terms. According to wikipedia, the mean mass of water vapor in the air is 1.27 * 10^16 kg. To get the units correct, that aviation contribution is 5 * 10^11 kg. Dividing the latter by the former, we find that the annual commercial aviation water vapor represents 0.004% of the mean mass of water vapor.
FL300 is very cold and very dry, and bears almost none of the "atmospheric water". Your estimation of impact is not correct. This is not a linear system.
FL300 (30,000 feet) is usually within the troposphere. And that's highly relevant, because the troposphere is well-mixed. Water vapor emissions at 30,000 feet are going to come back down, for the most part.
Erm... I feel like you're maybe projecting and/or arguing a strawman. Acknowledging that humans are causing the climate to change is quite a far cry from demanding actions from China's population.
Good question! It means that the probably of finishing in the next increment of time is always the same. Just got up to the teller? There's, say, a 20% chance that you're done within the next minute. Been at the teller's desk for 30 minutes already? Still a 20% chance that you're going to be wrapped up in the next minute.
This might be saying the same thing in a slightly different way. But does it also mean that if we plot "service times" on the X axis and frequency on the Y, then in the first quadrant we get something high on the left, getting lower as it goes right, and asymptotically approaching zero as it goes to infinity on the right?
On the supply end, if competitors enter a given market and take some of your customers, you might lower prices to lure them back. And if people just can't afford (or otherwise don't want) to go to your salon/restaurant as often, then you might lower prices to lure them back.
As far as the current environment, we've got student loan payments restarting in a couple months after a three-year hiatus. A good number of folks who had some disposable income are going to have less. That'll impact the demand end of the equation. Won't necessarily cause deflation, but will at least lower inflation.