Longer Step: Ideas for Justice and Sustainability

  Needed help overcoming error messages in self-publishing (on KDP/Kindle). Daughter said "hire an expert on Fiverr." I found two, a guy in India and a woman in Pakistan. They charge $60 and $25, respectively, for what should be (for them; they're experts at this and have done this 100s of times) a job of an hour or so. Sadly, Hareem (woman in Pakistan) hasn't been able to overcome the error messages either, which makes me feel vindicated but also frustrated because we always hope an expert can fix our problem. She is beaucoup hours in, but constant failure. The guy in India is champing at the bit, promising he can fix it easily. One issue here is: This is skilled labor-you need a lot of experience and knowledge, to do this (to fix error messages when the error messages don't say anything about what the problem is). But the pay they ask for is so low that it has the effect of freezing out anyone in the US who might want to run a biz doing this. I bet $25 will bu...

  Highly recommend Lyn Alden ; she (having a rare combination of an engineer's mind and an economist's training) is a national treasure re unlocking the mysteries of the economy; national debt; the Fed; etc. The Fed is trying to increase unemployment (you read that right), in order to reduce demand, which should reduce inflation. But that will also likely cause a recession. So if you need to make a big expenditure, it might be savvy to postpone it IF it is the sort of cost that is unusually high now but normally cheapens during recessions (e.g., using contractors to do some construction work). But if the item is subject to inflation (e.g., a new car), it's anyone's guess how successful the Fed will be in controlling inflation, and when you should buy. This entire mess could become painful and ugly. She makes the point that it's like the 1940s again for the US, except this time we are a debtor nation in decline, with a mostly-aged population demanding a heavy load ...

 A. Macro level : What happened? We have inflation because our government has printed too much new money, compared to the size of the economy and its growth rate.* Recent giveaways (to virtually all taxpayers) have put more money in the hands of consumers, and when they have more money to spend on a limited supply of goods and services, the prices will go up (that is demand-side inflation). And if those goods and services are scarce (because of recent supply chain issues**, then prices go up more (this is supply-side inflation). We're seeing the worst inflation rate since the 1980s.  *The US government has spent itself into a black hole from which there may be no escape: We punish any politician who even timidly suggests a balanced federal budget, and therefore we continue spending more on federal programs than incoming tax revenue can pay for. So we borrow the difference, creating a burgeoning mountain of unpayable debt that will destroy the lives of our future generations. F...