Except that most gold being traded under the "store of value" premise doesn't exist, it's "paper gold".
Also, gold is the one most manipulated market in the world, having both banks, central banks and governments actively interfering in its price discovery.
Sweden doesn't "manage" Covid-19 according to the expectations of whoever wrote this article (no lockdowns, no masks, no "social distancing" rules, etc.).
Is Sweden "threatening the world" as well?
Or is this the usual political narrative the left-wing press uses to bash right-wing politicians?
Edit: since this account has been repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, including using this site primarily for flamewars and ideological battle, I've banned it. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. It will eventually get your main account banned as well.
There's definitely an element of truth to that. For example, Italy's mismanagement of Covid-19 probably did immense damage to the world - early on the European outbreaks were basically a gradient radiating outwards from there, there's some evidence that even the US's outbreak came from Italy, and it seems they somehow managed to report zero cases right up until the point a significant proportion of their population was infected which would require really, spectacularly screwing up their testing program - but that narrative never made an appearance in the media because it'd make it harder to blame right-wing politicians in countries like the UK and US which the media dislikes. Instead, the narrative around Italy is that actually, it was the other countries like the UK and the US which screwed up worst because they should've learned from Italy, as though there was something meaningful that could be learned from a country that collected so little useful data. On the other hand, Bolsonaro was really pally with Trump and gets the full blame for everything. I wouldn't even be surprised if there was some mutation during the first Italian outbreak which made Covid-19 more of a danger; there's not really any way we could tell.
(This also basically completely doomed contact tracing in every other western country, because they had no reason to be looking for cases related to people who'd travelled from Italy until it was far too late to start. It's probably not a coincidence that all the countries which made it vaguely work were ones that were close to China rather than Europe.)
There was so much to learn. When the hospitals in northern Italy were being overwhelmed the UK prime minister was telling us to wash our hands more but continue business as usual. This probably cost UK around 50k deaths.
How do you define mismanagement when state and politicians can lie? I doubt COVID-19 stats are 100% reliable and true in any country in the world starting with China. 5 000 people died in China of COVID-19 I mean c'mon.
Yes, Sweden is quite infamous for its own mismanagement of Covid19, it has been attacked for this everywhere in the press often. However, Sweden is a tiny country with a very good hospital system and a relatively wealthy and healthy population, which has compensated somewhat for the incompetence of its government (they still have several times more dead people on their hands than most comparable countries).
Brazil is a huge country in every sense of the word, with a much poorer population, a much worse hospital system, a much kore important role in the world economy, and so it is perfectly poised to become a breeding ground and reservoir for many new strains of Covid19.
And you must be laughably far right to call The Economist left wing. Marine Le Pen would call it a right wing paper.
> And you must be laughably far right to call The Economist left wing. Marine Le Pen would call it a right wing paper.
I'd consider The Economist neoliberal rather than right-wing, as they have a pretty clear editorial bias in favor of free trade and globalization, but also tend to lean left on social issues. That puts the magazine opposite Le Pen on most issues, given her nationalist positions. Trying to lump them together as "right-wing" is incredibly reductionist.
You can go back and read The Economist's opinion of Le Pen if you'd like, and it's distinctly not charitable.
Right-wing and left-wing are always somewhat reductionist terms. I would say though that Le Pen and the Economist would find much more common grlund in practice (and lerhaps Le Pen is a relatively bad example here, Bolsanaro or the Polish right or Modi would be even better) than The Economist and Jean-Luc Melanchon or Jeremy Corbyn or even Bernie Sanders.
Sure, there are specific social issues, mainly related to personal liberties, where they would disahree (and Le Pen's populism is always unpleasant to business interests). But the broader topics of interest to the Economist, the improtance of business interests and using the state to further them internationally, are quite aligned. Perhaps Le Pen really believes and would have put her populist promises in action, but I think its far more likely that she would have done just like Trump - spout populist promises but govern with business interests at the forefront.
Yes, it is a completely non-partisan article. It doesn't even mention Bolsanaro's political affiliation, it just accuses him of coming up with quack cures and dirrctly opposing efforts to contain the pandemic.
It reads like a completely business-like, dispassionate take on the situation in Brazil, appearing in one of the most respected and well-known right-wing newspapers in the US.
If you want something more comparable, how about this: as far as we can tell, pretty much the entirety of Africa completely failed to manage Covid-19. Infection rates there as measured by antibody testing were massive, the population was more than than enough to produce mutations, and it has already resulted in a mutation that's been confirmed to evade at least one crucial vaccine. Yet we haven't seen this kind of narrative about Africa.
If you say so. Here Brazil has always been of particular interest due to our close historical relationship, so nothing has changed (e.g. "Lava Jato" was also covered much more closely than corruption cases in other countries, left or right-wing).
My guess is they’re saying if you have a population of 20, you have 20 chances of mutation. If you have a population of 200M, you have 200M chances of mutation. Size matters.
Following that logic China and India should be a lot more problematic than Brazil. As a matter of fact, both of those countries "mismanage" Covid-19 as well.
Yes, and for a fixed mutation chance, the bigger the population, the greater the likelihood that a mutation will happen. Say a mutation has a 1 in 1000 chance of happening. For a disease that infects 1000 people, you would expect 1 person to end up with some mutation. If the same disease infects 1,000,000 people, you would expect 1000 mutations to occur.
You are inferring. I am saying precisely what I am saying. Nothing more.
Dictators and right wing populists are bad at solving humanitarian crises and pandemics which require care, because it is not possible for these leaders to project the strong man image they cling to.
Just look at Bolsonaro and Trump's absymal performances in keeping the covid virus at bay, thus allowing the pandemic to flourish.
This is by the way factual, objective truths not my point of view.
Lol, covid is been managed by the state level in Brazil. The worst states in covid cases and deaths are the ones that are left-leaning and have the hardest lockdowns. This is the worst take I've seen in this website by far
> The shock of the second wave is changing people’s behaviour. Governors and mayors are now tightening restrictions and people are obeying them more. From March 22nd a nightly curfew in Bahia begins at 6pm rather than 10pm. Bahians have recently cut in half the distance they travel, according to mobile-phone data. This is slowing covid-19’s spread. Dr Vilas-Boas estimates that the number of active cases in Bahia has dropped from 21,000 to 17,000. The number of patients waiting for beds in icus fell from 513 on March 12th to 280 ten days later.
> The virus that causes COVID-19 hasn't been detected in drinking water. Water treatment facilities have processes to filter and disinfect water before it goes into your home.
[...]
> There's no evidence that the virus that causes COVID-19 spreads through swimming pools, hot tubs and water playgrounds.
No, I did not "appeal to authority." I showed you where the Mayo Clinic documented that COVID is not spread by water. You can believe them or not, but they are considered a reliable source of medical information, so, the burden is on you to provide a more reliable source saying otherwise. You telling people to "go back to middle school" does not count as a reliable source.
Again, less snark, more substance, please?
BTW, your comments here are nothing but ad hominem and unsourced assertions. Try a little harder, please?
This paper talks about different government interventions and their effectiveness and there is no analysis of US states. There is no control group here and this is just bad science
Not dismissing her accomplishments or anything, but to keep things in perspective, do understand that NASA is a government organization, and the incentives for vertical growth within government organizations are quite perverse, as they are not meritocratic and mostly related with politics.
Does that mean more energy will be used to mine Bitcoin and more carbon will be emitted in the atmosphere, killing turtles in the oceans and burning the remains of the Amazon forest?
No, it is the opposite. Low CPI is a curse, something that has to be combated by creating more money. It's not an excuse, you really don't want your economy to suffer deflation.
You are free to criticize ineffective central bank policies that drive inequality though.
With "low CPI" the government doesn't have to update government workers' salaries to compensate for real inflation.
In the US, 1/6 of the workforce is paid directly by the government, which indirectly generate something in the range of 30-50% of all economic activity in the country.
Hence why it's in the best interest of the government to state there's "low inflation": it doesn't have to spend too much with its payroll, while it can "profit" more from the money it prints.
Government-mandated minimum wage is effective price control, which never works. It has the effect of taking people who are not qualified to produce enough value to justify the minimum wage out of the job market. It's a mechanism to keep poor people poor.
CPI barely reflects the actual inflation of the currency. Whatever it doesn't cover in its calculation tends to get overinflated. The government designs the CPI to be low in comparison to "real" monetary inflation so that it can get away with printing more money.
This is why the raise in minimum wage should be compensated by also offering government jobs that do pay minimum wage or slightly less. Given enough time people will actually end up getting their minimum wage or even more than minimum wage.
However the talks about a $15 minimum wage actually have one very interesting detail. There are no plans for an immediate hike. It's going to be raised over time which means companies have enough time to adapt. It also sends a clear psychological signal to everyone that the times of cheap labor are going to be over because it is something that is happening year by year.
Don't give the HN crowd any insight on what Bitcoin really is.
They have been bashing Bitcoin for a long time, and they still don't get it. They downvote and fight whoever tries to bring some different perspectives to the discussion.
HN people are the types who believe they're "saving the planet", and they're fixated on the idea that Bitcoin is evil due to its energy consumption.
Let them learn the hard way. If they get any clue on what Bitcoin is, there's the risk they may get rich and attain some power in the future, which will only make matters worse.
We'll talk again in 5 years time.