I shopped for home insurance and pants, and the Feed

Oh, the horrors! I went shopping for homeowner’s insurance today and then went and bought pants. I shall swoon soon! Actually I need a bit of a lay down because my foot started to swell and pinch inside my shoe and triggered a “phantom pain” incident. Basically my foot feels like I’m squishing it in a vice with the pain being all out of proportion to the swelling and any pressure it may have caused. I know this because I can feel that pain separately from the phantom pain, and it is just a minor pinch. The insurance shopping was about as enjoyable as root canal work and then having to pull the tooth anyway, but the worst thing about the pants shopping was going through pile after pile of nearly identical pants trying to find the right size. Once found a quick test fit showed them to be the correct size, thank [$DEITY] for accurate labelling of men’s clothing. Unlike women’s clothing, men’s sizes don’t get larger as the cost of the brand increases. /snark sorta

Up first Jaguar has a cyclist early warning system for drivers that does not require cyclists to have a cell phone with the required app loaded and running to warn drivers about cyclists in the area. Will Jaguar save lives? Firm unveils Bike Sense system that alerts drivers to oncoming cyclists and even brakes if they come too close and the same story with no Daily Mail bike haters filling the entire comment section. New Jaguar safety system will save lives of cyclists

A bit of good Infrastructure! news from CT. Malloy unveils more transportation projects for Connecticut Bicycle infrastructure creates jobs because bicycle riders spend their transportation dollars on things that stay in the local economy longer, and because bicycle projects use more labor and less materials than motor vehicle projects.

The wheels of American Justice grind exceedingly slowly. Trucker Who Killed Cyclist In Williamsburg & Fled Scene May Finally Lose His License and Family of slain cyclist fighting to get trucker off the road Almost 4 years it has taken and who knows how many more have come close to death… More Turning Traffic Grief Into Action

Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: Rolls Royce driver shot by bike rider, Times looks at North Fig politics, NFL bike victory lap

Bikes are back to being mere decorations at the Detroit Auto Show, with a few exceptions. The Bicycles of the 2015 Detroit Auto Show One of the more glaring exceptions was the Shinola company who make bicycles in Detroit.

And I have run out of links again so this is the end, my friend.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Poet

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What LOTR and The Hobbit tells us about economic theory.

In a nutshell, it’s all about churn.

Tax breaks for the rich have much the same economic benefit as giving gold to Smaug. Smaug gets richer, but never spends any gold as he already has far more gold than he can possibly spend for his needs or even for his future needs, so it just sits there doing nothing except being dragon bedding. Likewise giving people who already have too much money than they can possibly spend on their needs more money just results in the money sitting there doing nothing. Taxing that money and using it on infrastructure and social programs results in that money being churned through the economy and growing the economy so that the rich still get the same amount of money, it just has to pass through a few more poor people’s hands before the rich get it, making everyone a little richer.

In order to stimulate the economy you have to develop churn, putting the money in as many hands as possible so that it then passes through as many hands as possible and creates growth. Savings that just sit in a bank or under a mattress don’t create any churn, and “investments” barely ruffle the surface of the water in creating churn. What has been shown to make churn on the federal level has been Food Stamps and infrastructure projects. Food Stamps go from the recipient to the grocery store and pay for the employees at the store as well as the people who transport the food (and other things) and the people that create the food. There are at least 4 stages of economic churn created by Food Stamps that can be easily identified and tracked.

Tax breaks for people who already have more money than they can spend on their needs or even on non-need items like TVs and computers (although I would put computers in the “need to work” category because I use one for work every day) is not the way to grow the economy. I mean how many new cars can one person buy in a year? How many boats? Unless you are out there spending money, you are an economic dead weight no matter how big your checking account is. Rich people don’t create jobs, poor people with jobs create jobs because they are the ones out there spending most of their money. Aldous Huxley had the right idea when he coined the term “conscripted consumption” in the book Brave New World . If you have a consumer economy, you have to get people consuming things to grow the economy.

And because I am not an economist by trade (I am a technical writer who translated jargon into plain English so that people in other fields can understand it) I will let real economists pick it up from here. Go for it guys.

PSA, Opus the Poet

I am going to be boring on NYE, and the Feed

Yep, I’m doing an “old folks” NYE tonight. Not even any carbonated apple cider tonight to toast in the New Year. Just watching the TV and kissing Mrs. the Poet at midnight. Yep, that’s real exciting…<yawn> Not many links today but I’m going to get through this as fast as possible so I am not at the computer when 2014 ends and 2015 begins.

Opening up with Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: Fat tire biking the Iditarod trail, Aussie ped safety video and best wishes for a happy New Year

An infrastructure related wreck shows why people at the front of a group ride it’s better to alert trailing riders. This one was sent to me on Facebook. Expect the Unexpected on a group ride! It takes a quarter of a second for your average human to see and identify a potential threat and begin to react to it, and you can see that was about the same amount of time the second rider had to see the debris after it came into view around the lead cyclist.

Once again the “justice system” fails to ensure justice in the Great White North. Day parole continues for drunk driver who killed cyclist The driver was sentenced to 6 years and a lifetime driving ban, now I wonder how “lifetime” that ban will be in light of how little time he actually spent in prison. It’s looking like he will be driving about the time he was supposed to be walking out of prison.

To solve a problem you first must define the problem. This is a major step towards defining the problem in DC. Map: Here’s Where Pedestrians and Cyclists Were Struck This Year The standard technique is to look for “clusters” of wrecks and see what the infrastructure looks like, then identifying potential sources of conflict that might lead to wrecks, then systematically removing those sources of conflict. It doesn’t always work that way, because many times there are certain parameters that can’t be violated, usually causing any disturbance in vehicle speed is verboten.

Some fun news from the UK. Worthing chosen to host cycling series Yep putting steeply banked turns facing each other on opposite sides of the street looks like more fun then the law allows.

And another link to the story that bikes make more jobs than cars in Europe. Cycling Is Creating More Jobs in Europe Than Automakers Are in the U.S.

And that’s it, I’m outta links.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Poet