Divemedic

Financially Inept

Modern monetary theory, the idea that the government can print all of the money it needs, is the pet idea of the left. MMT theorists explain that debt is simply money that the government put into the economy and didn’t tax back. That’s how you get morons who can’t explain how the economy works running the country, for example the Biden administration’s chief financial advisor:

This is who is running the country- leftists with as much understanding of how economics works as a child who thinks money comes from the ATM at the bank. I can explain MMT in their terms better than they can.

The adherents of MMT believe that the government can print all of the money it desires, without consequence. Bonds and taxes are the means with which the government controls inflation and levels the playing field. If the economy gets too hot and inflation results, all the government has to do is sell more bonds. This reduces the money supply and cools the economy. If this causes too many people to get rich, raise taxes on the rich, and that levels things back out.

Stupidity. It hurts me to even type that drivel. The simple fact is this- the left has little to no understanding of how economics, or even money, works. That’s why so few of them run businesses, why so many of them are struggling financially, and why our nation is in the financial crapper.

By Divemedic, ago

Hurricane Interruptions

I was trying to get some solid data on the performance of my solar array, but we were interrupted by Hurricane Debbie. Still, negative data is still data.

  • When it’s a typical Florida sunny day with sunshine until the arrival of our typical afternoon thunderstorms, my 10 kWDC array generates about 58 kwhAC per day.
  • Two days before Debbie arrived, it was getting quite cloudy. We only generated 32 kwh.
  • As the rains began to arrive on Sunday, our output dropped to 18 kwh.
  • It rained all day on Monday, and we only generated 17 kwh. Still, generating that much power while simultaneously getting more than 3 inches of rain is a feat.

It’s sunny today, so we are back to full power. I want a week of solid, typical weather before I lay it all out.

We lost power once for about 15 minutes, in addition to a handful of blips, where the power was out for less than a second. The Powerwalls transferred us to battery power in about 1 or 2 seconds. Just long enough that we had to reset the clocks.

More data to come.

By Divemedic, ago

This Week in the ED

I had a few notable events happen in the ED this week.

  • A man was brought in by EMS who was gorked out of his mind and was under arrest by the local gendarmes. He was tweaking hard. Unsurprising to anyone who saw him, his urine tested positive for amphetamines. It seems that he used some meth, beat up his elderly roommate, stole the roommate’s gun, and walked around the neighborhood firing off shots. I spoke with the first cop to arrive, and he told me that he ordered the man to drop the gun, and was only going to tell him once. To treat him, all I could do was give him 2mg of IV Ativan every hour to keep him calm. Two days later, he was still in the PCU and still feeling the effects of the meth.
  • A woman came in with abdominal pain and symptoms that made me think she might have COVID. I tested her for it, and she did in fact have COVID. When the results of her abdominal CT came back, she had a large mass in the head of her pancreas that was consistent with cancer. There were also masses in her liver and lungs. The Dr and I had to tell her and her husband that she likely won’t live to see Christmas.
  • A 95 year old woman came in after driving her car through the front of a store. She got the gas and brake pedals confused. In her defense, when she learned to drive, there was no brake pedal. All you did was say “Woah.”
  • Had a 16 year old with mono, and another one who had spinal meningitis.
  • A 30 year old jumped out of the car he was riding in and attacked a motorist in an apparent case of road rage. The target of his ire put the car in drive and ran over his ass. He became my patient, and it took up more than two hours of my time getting IVs, X-rays, giving pain meds, and all of the other things needed to treat an idiot with a blood alcohol of over 300 and a pair of broken legs. He is going to need surgery.
  • We got a new director for the ED last month, and she announced that nothing would change. This week, she laid off 25 nurses. The very next day was my day off, and they called me at home to ask me to come in and work a 12 hour shift for overtime.

Posting has been and will be thin. I have a major project coming up that I need to work on.

By Divemedic, ago

This Is Me Not Caring

When we last heard from the Eustis police, they were being tyrannical pricks*. So the news that an ambush style attack was carried out against police in that area doesn’t surprise me. It doesn’t look to me like it was a deliberate ambush, but an impromptu one. The article also doesn’t mention whether the other people who were killed in the shoot out were bystanders or were involved in the ambush.

It could be that the two people killed in the house were victims of the original nutball who prompted all of this, or it could be that they were struck by bullets fired by the “brave” cops who were indiscriminately firing at the sound of gunfire in a “spray and pray” tactic.

Either way, I don’t care about the cops who were killed, and I don’t care about the crazy bitch who likely bought it. I will reserve my sympathy for any innocent bystanders. To anyone reading this who is a cop- stop being tyrannical cowardly assholes that slap unarmed citizens around, toss grenades into baby cribs, arrest parents who are demanding that you do your jobs, and rid your profession of the dead wood, and maybe I will care again.

It’s really a shame, because I used to have lots of love and respect for a profession that has lost its way.

* On a side note, the driver in the original Eustis case does not have any record of charges actually being filed against him in that county at any point this year. I am guessing that the State Attorney didn’t think that his behavior warranted criminal charges, still it cost him money to get his car out of impound. All for telling a cop that where he worked was none of his business. I would consider an attorney, were I in his place.

By Divemedic, ago

We Are Screwed

This is what a Harris rally looks like:

It’s obvious what her plan for getting elected is, and there is nothing that Trump can offer to people who are entertained by this. It’s all about “vote for me because I am black.”

Idiocracy is here.

By Divemedic, ago

Bears Repeating

Let’s say that you are making and selling a product. You sell that product for $4 each, but no one really wants it. You won’t sell any. What to do? You change the product you are making to one that people actually want, and now you can sell them at $4 each all day long.

Until someone sees how much you are making on it and offers a similar product, but for $3 each. Your sales drop as customers buy your competitor’s product. So you make changes to make it even better, and now everyone wants it. The problem is that you can no longer keep up with demand, so people who NEED that product offer you $5 each. A bidding war ensues, and eventually you are offered $100 each. Do you turn it down? After all, that would be price gouging…

Of course you take the money. All transactions are a combination of a willing seller and a willing buyer. All sales of all products are negotiable.

That happens every day with your labor. The labor that you perform is the product you are selling. Michael Jordan played basketball like no one else, so he made millions. When people saw the shoes he wore, they wanted to be like Jordan, so millions bought his shoes. He added hundreds of millions of dollars of value to the Air Jordan brand, so they paid him.

Robert Downey Jr made the Avengers movies what they are. Few people would pay $20 to see a movie starring Steve Smith. However, tens (hundreds) of millions of people did so to see RDJ in the Avengers movies. That’s why he makes $40 million per movie. Without him, that movie is a losing proposition. Without RDJ, this movie isn’t going to be made at all. This makes RDJ’s value in the movie industry sky high. No one goes to see a movie because some rando that no one has even heard of was 1 of 40 other nobodies in the costume department. That’s why jealousy fueled rants like this are stupid.

If you aren’t happy with the money you are making, you need to find a way to make your labor more valuable. No one is going to pay you $50 an hour for labor that literally anyone can do, because there will be a line of people behind you who are willing to do that job for $40, $20, or even $15 an hour. In order to make more, the value that you add to the deal dictates how much you will make. Simply saying that the employer owes you “a living wage” as you whine and complain on Social Media isn’t helping.

That goes for literally any job. That’s why Gordon Ramsey makes what he does- he adds enough skill to the deal that people are willing to pay $40 for a hamburger (not me, but people). Find a skill that is valuable and become good at it. It may take some time, but the money will follow.

We can’t all be Robert Downey Jr, Michael Jordan, or even Steve Jobs, but all of us don’t have to be making minimum wage, either.

By Divemedic, ago