Good afternoon. Thank you for coming. Can everyone hear me? I'm Michael Lind, Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation. And it's my great pleasure to welcome you to this event featuring Hajun Chong, author of Economics the User's Guide. Professor Chong is a professor at the University of Cambridge and a frequent consultant with organizations such as the United Nations and other international agencies. He's become very prominent in recent years as a spokesman for what is sometimes called heterodox economics which I would define as, to use another term, real world economics. I am not a PhD economist. Most of what I learned from economics, sadly was from sources other than the current neoclassical economics profession. I discovered in college as an undergraduate in college and in graduate school that if you wanted to learn about business organization or the structure of public utilities or government regulation or social insurance or waves of innovation and technology from the steam engine to the internal combustion engine, the last place you would actually go to learn about these fundamental aspects of the economy would be an economics department. And I thought that was kind of strange. It was sort of an astronomy department and say well I want to learn about stars and sunspot cycles and the rings of Saturn. And they say oh you're in the wrong place. We do orbital mechanics. We map the orbits of hypothetical bodies. But if you want to learn about the rings of Saturn you have to go somewhere else. So I hope that both in his presentation and in our conversation afterwards, Professor Chong will explain why economics in its familiar form in their other schools that he discusses in his very good book, Economics the User's Guide, why there's so little of the economy in economics. Thanks. Well thank you Mike. Well you've already done my talk. That's the summary of it in like one minute. But yeah let me give you a bit more flesh to this. I don't say it explicitly in the book but I sometimes say that I wrote this book in order to if you like democratize economics. Because economics today is an esoteric subject which ordinary people cannot understand. So when it comes to economic discussion people say oh yeah too difficult, too technical, I don't really know. I haven't got a degree. I've never taken a course in economics and so on. But why do people take that attitude? Because when it comes to everything else people are very happy to pound their opinions despite having no qualification whatsoever.  I do the same. I have a strong view on American foreign policy but what do I know about international relations? I took one course in international relations back in 1983 when I was an undergraduate student in Korea and the crusty old professor who used the textbook from the early 60s. International relations theory I know is 50 years old and then I say all kinds of things. I'm sure you are the same. So this curious state of affairs has come to be because my professional colleagues have been fantastically successful in convincing the rest of the world that the stuff is so difficult that you don't understand it even if we try to explain it to you. So no need to sweat over it, just go home, be happy. But why? Why should it be like that? And indeed in my previous book 23 things they don't tell you about capitalism. I wrote a brief professional suicide note and said 95% of economics is common sense which my colleagues hate. Of course common sense but made to look difficult because we use all kinds of jargon and equations and graphs and to scare people off basically. And I believe that even the remaining 5% can be understood in its essence if not in all technical details if somebody bothers to explain it in an accessible way which is what I at least try to do in this book. So I pull all the stops I can think of. I give you Mary Poppins, I give you the Simpsons, or at least Ned Flanders, my favorite Simpsons character. I give you My Fair Lady, I give you Gone with the Wind, you name it. I try. But being accessible doesn't mean that I'm trying to give my readers baby version of economics or dummy's guide to economics. 5 things you need to know about inflation, 3 things that you have to know about the Chinese economy. No I don't do that. I take my readers very seriously and talk about all kinds of serious issues. What is economics? Can it be a science? Can economics and politics be separated? What are the ethical implications of economic discussions and so on? So in this book who's got another reincarnation in the form of the Pelican paperback edition which actually came out a few months earlier in Britain, the book basically tries to offer something completely different as Monty Python used to say. It is really different because as you can see from this table of contents I talk about a lot of things that you don't normally find in economics books these days, especially in introductory economics books. So chapter one has a discussion on what is economics. Chapter two and chapter three are basically history of capitalism. Chapter four different approaches or different schools of economics. Chapter five discusses economic actors. In this standard economics textbook they'll say well there are the households and companies and governments but I actually go into greater detail trying to show you that not all companies are the same. There are cooperatives.  Some of the companies are cooperative rather than corporations and so on and so on. There are quite different stuff there and also in terms of the topics I talk about things like production which are curiously ignored in economics today and I'll talk about at least some of them later so let me move on. And then my book introduces people to lots of what I call real life numbers. Economics can be a number subject and indeed if you open an economic books that you will find lots of numbers except that economists really do not know these numbers. If you have anyone who has graduated with an economics degree, grab him or her and ask do you know what the national output of the United States of America is? Many of them will not know it. Even few of them will know how big the world economy is. Very few of them will know what proportion of that is produced by the US or China and so on. Because these numbers are not taught. Of course at one level why do you need to know any of these numbers? You need to know only one thing, Google. But even to know what to look for you need to know these numbers. Also unless you have some feel about these numbers you can come to a very distorted view of the world. Let me give you a beautiful example which is mentioned in the book but not for this purpose. In the days of the so-called Eurozone crisis the problem economy was Greece. Which was subject to this narrative which mainly came out of Germany saying that Greece's economic problem is because the Greek people are lazy. They don't work hard and then they expect to live like Germans. So they need to shape up. And then the focus was all about belt tightening and living within the means. Actually these people might have thought twice if they looked up the statistics before they formed the view. Because if you go to the OECD website which provides information on annual average working hours of citizens of different member countries you will find that the Greeks work 30% longer than the Germans. And 40% longer than the Dutch who are officially the laziest people in the world. Don't get me wrong, I like it. Why should we work all the time? The Dutch have the right to approach the life. But they work basically only half the time that the Greeks work. So whatever problem Greece might have is not a problem of work ethic. The Greek people work really hard. They're the longest working hour in Europe. Their problem is productivity. So the discussion should have been about investment, innovation, research and development, education skills, infrastructure, not about you are lazy, please work harder kind of moralistic lecture. Well, Americans also should know that Mexicans are the favorite whipping boy when it comes to preaching people to work harder. Mexicans actually work 25% longer than the Americans. Actually they work the longest hours in the OECD. Even longer than my fellow South Koreans who are supposed to be mindless worker ants. The Mexicans took us over a few years ago. Because we started becoming lazy. It's just one small example, but you see what I'm getting at. Unless you have some feel about these numbers, you can develop very strange notions about the world, and then you become very susceptible to outrageous theories and policies. I keep providing many real life numbers, but I also warn my readers that these numbers need to be treated with due skepticism. People who have studied economics probably know, but even basic numbers like GDP, gross domestic product, construction is actually complicated, but very roughly is the total output that an economy produces within a given period. But it doesn't include unpaid household work and care work which is mostly done by women. This leads to a gross undervaluation of women's contribution to the economy. Many estimates this amount to about 30% of our economy. You don't include it. The standard excuse is it's not transacted in the market. How do you know the value of mothers cooking for the child? You can to an extent estimate it by looking at the price of similar services done by higher domestic workers. Of course that domestic worker doesn't provide tender loving care, so that cannot be monetized, but at least you can try to monetize it to an extent. And indeed the statisticians are collecting this data to a great length to well, in technical words, impute market value to other activities that are not transacted in the market. For example, if you live in your house that you own there is no market transaction, but that doesn't mean that you are not consuming housing service. So these statisticians say, okay, I mean that this house is lived by the owner. What would he have had to pay if he didn't own it and went to the market to rent it? You can estimate that. And they added. So why do we not add household work? Okay, the point is not whether this is absolutely right or wrong, but these numbers are constructed on the basis of very particular theories, very particular political and ethical assumptions. This is why Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German writer and scientist said everything factual is already a theory. Okay, let's talk about some of these issues in some depth. First, let's talk about the definition of economics. If you ask non-economists, what is economics? People normally say, oh, it must be the study of the economy. Chemistry is the study of chemicals. Biology is the study of living things. Sociology is the study of society. So economics must be the study of the economy. Unfortunately, they'll be wrong. At least according to some of these books, the most popular economics books over time, according to them, economics is the science of everything. At least one person is a bit modest. Professor Robert Frank of Cornell University doesn't quite say everything. He says almost everything. Yeah, when they hear this, the usual reaction from non-economists is, oh, this guy is megalomaniac. They bungled up their own job. They couldn't explain the economy as proven by 2008 financial crisis and then they claim that they can explain everything. They must be megalomaniac. Well, I think there's a touch of that. But actually, it's not because they are megalomaniac that they make this claim. It's because of this very particular way in which the dominant neoclassical school has defined economics and it goes back to this definition given by Lionel Robbins who was the professor at the London School of Economics in the early 20th century. And his definition is basically the science of choice in the presence of scarcity. Once you define the subject like that it doesn't have to be applied to the economy. So a lot of economists started writing about applying so-called economic logic that is rational choice behavior to non-economic things and the culmination is free economics. If you look at free economics there's hardly anything that has anything to do with the economy. It's about Japanese sumo wrestlers colluding with each other. It's American school teachers cheating about their student marks. It's about British people being horrible to each other in quiz shows. There's nothing about the economy. So in this definition, economics is defined by this analytical methodology that is rational choice theory rather than its objective investigation that is the economy. But when you think about it, this is a very peculiar definition because all other subjects, astronomy, physics, chemistry, they are defined by the area of investigation not by research methodology. So think about the biology department. You go to the biology department there are people studying living organisms using all sorts of research methodologies. So there are people doing DNA analysis, others doing anatomy, people studying bone structure almost as if they are structure engineers. There are people doing nasty experiment with rats people building mathematical models of animal behavior. And there are even people who fly to the jungles of Rwanda, sit with mounting gorillas there all day and record what they do. Yeah, but they are all called biologists. I haven't met the biologists who say, oh, you know, biology can only be done by DNA analysis. That's the fundamental building blocks of life and any other method is wrong. But this is effectively what economists are doing today. Actually, as Mike mentioned earlier the perverse thing is that in this vision of what economics should be, this notion that the less relate to the real world it is, the better it is. So if you are the cleverest in an economics department these days you do not study the real world. You will do mathematical models of the most obscure things which might be related to reality by, I don't know, seven removes, but not immediately like the Turing machine or information cascade and so on. If you are a bit less clever you do econometrics which is analysis of economic data through sophisticated statistical means. If you are less clever than that you do development economics like I do. But if you can't even do that you become economic historian.  No, I'm exaggerating of course, but that strange notion because for most economists today what you study is not what you make an economist. It's how you study it. It's a very purpose thing. So my condition is that economics should become like all other subjects. It should be defined in terms of this area of inquiry. Not most non-economists might say, gosh, that's so obvious. You're wasting time on saying these things. But believe me, this is a heresy in economics development. And unless you break that peculiar view of what economics should be, we will never have what Mike describes as real world economics being taught and learned in university. Now one important consequence of this perspective, the definition of economics is to make neoclassical economists believe that there's only one right way of doing economics or at least one most correct way of doing economics. But in the book I try to explain that there are actually no less than nine major schools of economics. Several more if you divide them up differently or if you include some smaller schools or if you divide the bigger schools into smaller ones so please don't think that this is some scientific taxonomy. But there are nine different approaches and the interesting thing is that there are no less than three different ways of defending the free market. Classical, neoclassical, Austrian. Really, I mean if economics is a science there can't be three correct theories. So they all defend the free market but they are all doing it in very different ways. Classical economists, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mayer these people theorized the economy in a completely different way from today's neoclassical economists because in neoclassical economics there are only individuals. The classical economists talked about classes, capitalists, workers, landlords. They are completely different theories. I mean there are more differences I cannot go into that. Neoclassical school, of course I remember this, is not the same as free market economics. This is a common misconception. No it's not. Neoclassical economics contains the theory called free market failure and therefore you can justify quite a wide range of government intervention. This is why you have left-leaning neoclassical economists like Joe Stiglis and Paul Krugman while you also have people like Bob Lucas and Robert Barrow who are very gong-ho free market economists. So not all neoclassical economists are free market economists but as far as it defends the free market is defense is and I'm grossly exaggerating their defense is that people are rational. People know what they are doing. So just leave them alone. The Austrian defense represented by Friedrich von Hayek in America sometimes called libertarian economics, their defense is completely different. Their defense is no one including the individuals really know what's going on. So how dare you, the government, think you can tell other people what to do. Because the Austrians very much emphasize that the world is complex uncertain and our rationality is very limited. Yeah actually personally I find that defense of free market much more convincing than neoclassical. Maybe just to relearn this totally unrealistic assumption that we can calculate anything, predict everything and so on. But that's not the point. I mean the point is that there are these distinctive ways of theorizing about the economy and kind of defending the particular policy conclusion. We saw that with reference to free market policy but you can do it with all the others. So my contention is that we need all these diverse approaches to economics together because the world is really complex and they do not learn, the world doesn't lend itself easily to explanation by any one single theory. And to illustrate this point I often talk about what I call the Singapore problem or life is a stranger than fiction. Singapore is a highly successful economy and it's that poor capital income today is even higher than that of the United States and it's praised by many people but when you read about it in the standard sources I don't know the Wall Street Journal, the Economics magazine standard textbooks on international economics or development economics, you will only hear about this free trade policy and its welcoming attitude towards foreign investors which it has. But you will never be told that 90% of land in Singapore is owned by the government 85% of housing supplied by government owned housing corporation, most of them subsidized and a staggering 22% is produced by state owned enterprise state owned enterprises including the famous Singapore airline. So I put it to my student, give me one economic theory, it doesn't matter what it is at the New York classical Marxist, Keynesian, they can single handedly explain Singapore there isn't such a theory because it combines features of some extreme free market capitalism and extreme socialism it's just an extreme example but there are other examples Sweden, people think Sweden's some kind of social democratic paradise where everything is equal and no one owns much more than another but did you know that there's one family in Sweden, the Wallenberg family it's spelled Wallenberg but apparently you have to read it as Wallenberg this family owns directly and through a foundation controlling stakes, namely shares more than 20-30% which basically allows the dominant shareholder to control the destiny of the enterprise this family owns controlling stakes in companies whose collective market capitalization is depending on the year between one third and one half of Stockholm exchange do you have any family like that in America? I can keep giving you this kind of example but basically the reality is far too complex to be explained by just one theory so in this book I argue that we should let 100 flowers bloom, let different theories coexist and prosper this is an expression that Chairman Mao Zedong once used to encourage debate in China, of course he had an ulterior motive he wanted all the flowers to bloom so that he can cut the ones that he didn't like I don't have that intention, I don't have the power but genuine plea for economic pluralism I actually go one step further I say that these different theories should be cross-fertilized I mean I cannot go into the details but there are actually surprisingly large scopes for cross-fertilization between different schools which sometimes regard each other as mortal enemies so my advice is that you should try not to be a man or a woman with a hammer well this saying that he who has a hammer sees everything as a nail, often attributed to Mark Twain but I think it's not certain I mean it's the kind of thing that he might have said but you know anyway, so the saying when people acquire one theoretical tool they begin to apply it everywhere sometimes it's applied to the right context for the right purpose but in other times it's not so if you have a hammer and start banging everything it would be great if you are banging a nail it might just about work if you are banging a screw it might be a fracture if you are banging a jelly and it will be a disaster if you bang an egg so we need, as I say here, a Swiss army knife with a range of tools, of course you need the senses to judge what tool to apply when and these senses have to be acquired through the study of, not just economics institutions, ethics and so on okay let me cut out a bit for the sake of time and then in terms of the subject matters I mentioned that I talk about a lot of things that other books do not talk about like production and work, let me just talk about work work is a very interesting subject in economics because it's mainly mentioned only when it is absent on employment and we don't really think about the work itself but when you think about it most of us spend at least half of our waking hours in work unless you are Dutch because they don't work and we definitely spend the majority of working hours if you count in the commuting hours which can be up to six hours if you are some unlucky black guy stuck in one of these far-flung townships that the apartheid regime built and didn't provide any public transportation for these people have to rely on these things called taxes which are really mini buses run by these criminal gangsters totally unreliable so it's overcharging, roads are bad many of these people spend three hours just getting into work three hours to get out they hardly have time to sleep it's not just the simple hours that we are spending a lot of workers in developing countries are engaged in dangerous work the death rate from workplace accident in India is higher than in the United States these people are literally risking their lives to go to work we can find the work really boring like Charlie Chaplin did in modern times we can find it interesting and become more fulfilled it may even form our identity I mean I go into the details in the book basically the point is that the work affects us in so many ways and very often, very fundamentally down to the level of our identity but in today's economics is more or less ignored because the dominant neoclassical theory conceptualizes people basically as consumers so our aim in life is to consume goods and services and work is the convenience or this utility as it is called in the theory that people have to put up with so that they can earn some income with which they can buy those goods and services so basically our work is not a natural concern for this the economists yeah so you know in a lot of countries a good example in the last couple of decades work has become more stressful because work intensity has been cranked up, there's more psychological pressure jobs are more insecure and so on so a lot of people feel less happy but then economists come along and say oh no you guys should be really feeling happy because compared to 20 years ago your income is 20% higher why aren't you happy? but we should know because we are not happy in our work anyway throughout the book I emphasize that economics is a political subject, of course this is another heresy, economists say oh economics is a science New York Times frequently publishes articles written by professors from Harvard and so on trying to tell you why economics is a science and they say oh you know economics does its best not to make a political judgment yeah and this has been a century long project for neoclassical economics because economics in the beginning was called political economy Adam Smith wrote about political economy not economics and in the late 19th early 20th century when the neoclassical school came into being they said no no politics is not subject to scientific analysis we have to get rid of this so they changed the name first of all from political economy to economics and they introduced this allegedly a political criteria to judge what is a better economic outcome and the most important of it those is the political Pareto criterion it's named after Wilfredo Pareto who was a half Italian half French economist who lived in totally in Switzerland Pareto came up with this principle which says that you cannot call a social change an improvement unless it hurts no one while making at least some people better off this is a very serious principle because he was trying to defend individuals against tyranny of the majority and you know to explain this I give you the one finger story which isn't in the book so you at least get something for coming to these talks yeah so the story that I made up is that you know someone knocks on my door tomorrow morning and says oh Dr. Chang we found this wonderful technology that will solve climate change problem overnight and I say wow that's great and they say the machine's been built it's primed up it's ready to go but we need one tiny input which we need to start that machine and we want you to have the honor of providing that input and I say what is it and they say we need one live human finger you know I'll run into my kitchen before they finish the sentence and chop my little finger off and give it to them you know I'm saving the world but what if it's one arm I think I should do it but what if it's my life life of my whole family life of all 49 million South Koreans you know where do you stop it's an important principle however the flip side of this is that once again extreme example self if you suppose one country where one guy has a lot of money and everyone else is starving and you ask this guy will you pay some taxes equivalent to I don't know the 5% of your income so that everyone else can actually don't have to suffer from malnutrition after a guy says no then that's it according to Pareto Craterion you cannot push this guy further because it hurts one person I'm not saying that the answer to this dilemma is easy you know if you push it to the extreme both become really barbarous principles that I'm trying to make is that whether you like it or not Pareto Craterion Pareto principle is a political doctrine it's not neutral it's not apolitical it makes a particular stand it basically accepts the status quo as given and then within that you try to find a way to improve things without hurting anyone which in practice is often impossible I actually argued that the political nature of economics goes even deeper so in my previous book 23 things they don't tell you about capitalism I made this point at some length in the first chapter called there's no such thing as a free market and to discuss that I discussed the example of child labor in the 19th century when some social reformers were agitating for regulation of child labor most free market economies were up in arms this is going to undermine the very foundation of a free economy namely the freedom of contract these children want to work these people want to employ them what is your problem it's not like these factory owners kidnap these children and use them as slave labor it's a voluntary contract and who are you the government to say they shouldn't do it so at the time a lot of respectable people were totally in favor of child labor because it was consistent with this view that freedom of contract is the most important thing fast forward 200 years later I really haven't met anyone who says we need to bring back child labor to the United States to make it a truly free market economy one person almost said it didn't he some of you are laughing probably you know Newt Gingrich who in 2012 presidential election campaign said poor children should work as janitors in their schools apart from him I don't know anyone who makes this kind of point today and this change has happened not because economic history has changed but our political and ethical standards have changed as simple as that so when the very boundary of the market when the very boundary of the economy is drawn through politics how can you say the economy cannot or should not at least be entangled with politics okay let me move to the conclusion well my book is not just an explanation of economic theories and facts it's also about the role of economics in public life and in that regard I have about three sets of observations to make the first one never trust an economist and that includes me now this creates the kind of paradox that the ancient greek philosophers used to love because if you don't trust any economist how can you trust this economist don't trust any economist well I'll let the Greeks worry about it you know they are not my ancestors the point I'm trying to make is that professional economists do not have a monopoly of the truth and it is entirely possible for people who are not professional economists to have sound judgments on economic issues and indeed sometimes their judgments may be even better in reality and they may have a less narrow perspective now I'm not saying that they are necessarily better but there could be more importantly I would argue that the willingness on the part of ordinary citizens to challenge professional economists and other experts is really a foundation of democracy when you think about it all you have to do is to hire the most technocrat I don't know the economist with the phd from MIT the Oxford or wherever what's the point of having democracy the whole point of having democracy is that ordinary people can challenge these people and for that reason I would even argue that we all have the ability to learn some economics of course we are busy with other things so we cannot learn much but at least some economics so that you can have an opinion about these things and sometimes if necessary challenge the experts the next point is I'm not even going to pretend that I can read Latin so just look at it Gouda the Dutch city famous for cheese making I don't know how they managed to come up with this power of wisdom in the middle of all that cheese making but somehow they managed and I think it's a great sentence I'm not saying that we shouldn't have an opinion no no we all should have an opinion we all should have a position but in the end we have to have the humility to accept that all theories are partial including my favorite one probably you believe in it because you think it's less partial than others but it's still partial and the world is complex and I could be wrong or maybe my theory was right when I adopted it but then things have changed so much that now I have to revise my opinion or whatever and finally throughout the book even while I constantly make reform proposals I emphasize how difficult it is to change the economic reality sometimes the difficulty is due to the active attempts by those who benefit from the current arrangements lobbying, bribing, media propaganda, even violence we all know this the status quo gets defended sometimes even without some people being actively evil you don't need Dr. Evil sitting in the Starbucks tower for the world to be evil because the world is built in such a way that the status quo gets naturally defended one reason is that in the capitalist economies where markets are not the only economic institutions of capitalism but the most prominent institutions markets run on the basis of the principle of one dollar, one vote so this drastically reduces the ability of people with less money to turn down undesirable options so a lot of poor Indian workers voluntarily choose to work in a toxic factory but what is this choice you will accept the choice only when you think the underlying socio-economic order is A just and B cannot be changed in this context that I'm always reminded of things that was said by this Brazilian Bishop Helder Kamara who was one of the leaders of the left wing Catholic theology that was popular in Latin America in the 50s, 60s and 70s called Liberation Theology and Helder Kamara said when I give food to poor people people call me a saint but when I ask why these people do not have enough to eat they call me a communist and in that sense we should all become a bit of a communist so if you are making choices that you would not make you have to ask why are they making those choices and then you will find out why by looking at the underlying distribution of income power and wealth and then you may still conclude that this is why they are doing it but realistically speaking this is not going to change, we can never change this is even worse or whatever but without that deliberation you will accept anything that the status quo throws at you of course like Ronald Reagan said these people choose to sleep on the street it's a lifestyle choice, if they want to sleep on the street let them be like some people want to have a pink green phones and lime green phones and so on another reason why the status quo gets more easily defended is that people are susceptible to beliefs that go against their own interests, this used to be known especially among Marxists that the false consciousness after the 1999 movie call it the matrix I'll give you a perfect example from this country following the debate on so-called Obamacare, I saw this incredible footage of some people demonstrating against Obamacare there were a lot of those photos but it's not the demonstration itself in which there are two old, a couple, pensioners were demonstrating with this placard that said government hands off my Medicare isn't Medicare a government program these people are so brainwashed by the insurance industry that government programs never work that they thought because Medicare works this can't be a government program so the government is talking about some health care reform they must be trying to rate Medicare and destroy it let's go out and demonstrate against it when you have that level of false consciousness it becomes very easy to defend this status quo anyway I thought I made you too pessimistic while the difficulties involved in changing this status quo we should not give up the fight to create a better economy and better society yes changes are difficult in the long run when enough people fight for them many impossible things happen 200 years ago if someone advocated the abolition of slavery in this country the best description that the person who they've got is unrealistic unrealistic in the sense that at the time the U.S. economy was totally dependent on the export of tobacco and cotton to Europe which was produced by slave man plantations in the south 100 years ago Britain and many other countries put women in jail for asking for vote actually at the time a lot of women themselves said we don't need votes why do we need votes when we have our husbands and fathers and brothers who can represent our views but today no serious country that says only men should have voted 56 years ago most of the founding fathers of post-World War II nations including Israel were hunted down by the British and the French as terrorists but now we have all these countries that have become independent and these people are reviewed as founding fathers so these things have happened and these kind of things will keep happening if enough people fight for their causes and this is why I called Antonio Gramsci the Italian Marxist political thinker that we need to have pessimism of the intellect but optimism of the will you have to be realistic about the power of status quo and the scope of changes that you can make in your own time but in the long run a lot of changes can be made and I'm going to give you from Nelson Mandela to describe that when he said it always seems impossible until it is done. Thank you. Let me begin by recommending the previous book among Dr. Chong's many books this one he did mention kicking away the ladder which is an excellent history of how industrial countries like the United States, Germany, Japan actually developed it was largely by flouting what modern development economics says you should do one of the basic themes I drew from your presentation was that instead of being a single methodology with everything as its subject matter economics should be a defined area of investigation which is studied through various different methodologies let me just press you a bit further on that even if you define it that way I think most people would say well economics is the study of markets in modern industrial societies like the United States which are called capitalist countries on average between 40 and 50% of GDP is the government sector. In the United States we pretend that it's a little above 30% of GDP but that leaves out tax expenditures of tax breaks you know which most economists think are subsidies through the tax code once you add them in we're up there with Germany and France it's above 40% so just by my own rough calculations you then add the non-profit sector of which things like the New America Foundation are a few percent of GDP there's home production which you mentioned so that leaves you by my guess I've never seen a calculation of this the actual private sector which is not non-profit and non-government is a minority of economic activity even in so-called capitalist countries you can then divide the private sector at least three ways you have regular price regulated public utilities like PEPCO which are not free market they're privately owned but they're not free market there are industries with increasing returns to scale monopolies or oligopolies you know Google or Boeing or whatever and they're not truly competitive markets in the way that you're taught Ecom 101 so my guess is not having done the math and you haven't counted cooperatives cooperatives that's right so that adds a couple of percent so you end up with maybe 15 or 20% of the economy which is actually a free competitive market with lots of small firms which are price takers not price makers and so on so that just I just want you to respond to how weird this is so instead of having a textbook which spends half of its pages on the public sector and then maybe 15 or 20% on competitive markets it's all about competitive markets yeah no you're absolutely right first of all you have to remember that the economy is not the same as the market market is only a small portion of the economy the father of behavior economics and father of artificial intelligence and father of operation research I mean he has so many children he once estimated that only about 20% of the US economy actually is organized through the market there's a lot of sorry the rest of it is either government or command within cooperation when companies run their affairs I mean yeah they buy and sell from each other but a lot of time what they do is to Toyota headquarters in Japan tells this engine factory in Thailand to sell X number of engine to his car factory in Pakistan that's not a market transaction Toyota decides how many will be sold at what price but John Kenneth Galbraith described corporations as islands of socialism and a sea of capital oh absolutely yeah so the way you put it is another way of putting it government is huge many private sector companies are either regulated or monopolized or cooperative or non-professed and then really the kind of market economy populated by little consumers and little companies that you see in economic textbooks is 10, 15, maximum 20% of the economy so yes I mean this is a very important point I mean you should remember that and then I partly talk about it in chapter five where I discuss who are the real economic actors you have to realize how the economy is really organized as opposed to organizing this fairy tale that you see in the standard economic sex world and let me also give you another example that we also get to see by names quite easily so I mean the United States has hardly any state-owned enterprise as we normally classify but I would say that it has a state-owned enterprise that has been the most successful in human history that is the military yeah I mean without the US military we will not have the information age the computer the semiconductor the internet they were all developed through military research and Americans think that they don't have a state-owned enterprise and they don't have industrial policies so that the real nature of the economy is vastly different from the one you see but this changed in our lifetime I remember even in the 60s and 70s when I was young it was commonplace to describe the US and Western Europe as mixed economies there was a blend of capitalism socialism utilities and then after Reagan and Thatcher and then Clinton and Blair suddenly we became market economies mixed economy was not just a description but a philosophy which was developed during the New Deal and post-war reconstruction the world that neither pure capitalism nor pure socialism is good you need different elements deliberately mixed to have a more balanced society of course the exact balance will differ across countries because they have different political values and the moral codes and culture and so on but everyone agreed that we have to mix these things and then yes in the 1980s Reagan Thatcher revolution we were told that we have to become as pure as possible a market economy we'll take some questions do we have someone with a microphone back there if not just we'll start in the front row please speak up here comes Robert Schroeder with international investor thanks for your talk and I look forward to reading the book I want to get to this point of I think one of the benefits of what you're doing and others who ask these questions is by comparing nations around the world perhaps we should all be picking up better ideas of how to run our own affairs should we be doing more to make those comparisons more vivid in terms of the reality on the ground for most people and let me get to my specific question here we have what seems to to us at least an obsession with GDP growth constant and it's not just in the US but World Bank and IMF everybody seems to are there better measures that translate more to what's really best for most people yeah on the first point yes I mean that strangely we have lost this ability to or even the desire to learn from real life experiences and we all try to learn from some textbook which doesn't even half correctly reflect the complexity and nuances of the reality so you know I mean just to give you a random example I just remembered in the early 20th century when the US small farms in the United States were really getting destroyed and suffering the government that tried to improve farmers access to credit and in order to do that they actually repeatedly send missions to Germany and Sweden and so on to find out how those countries are actually doing this thing but now I mean that you look up some textbook written by some professor somewhere and you think that's the reality so yes I am a great fan of us learning about the real economy and you keep finding shocking things I already gave you Singapore and Sweden but I can give you many more examples where the Khumbesha economic theories that turned upside down and what you thought was a regularity turns out to be a regularity and so on so I really encourage you to learn about the real world economies now as for GDP yes I mean probably if someone presses me I would say that despite all these problems GDP that is income is still the single best measure of our welfare but then why should we use just one measure so actually now a lot of people are advocating using multiple measures for example if you go to the OECD website that is an interesting initiative called Better Life Index try to look at 48 different things work like balance, income, quality of education, crime, to judge how different nations are doing and I think messy as it is that's the only way that you can make a balance judgment because if you pick just one thing I mean it just that makes your whole perspective look sided and lead to wrong policies. At one point in relation to your first question there's a very well-developed scholarly literature about comparative capitalism it's called The Varieties of Capitalism School and it looks at the Anglo-American model at the Scandinavian social democracies at the corporatist Franco-German model it is written by political scientists not by economists right here third row Norman Kerland from the Center for Economic and Social Justice and my question relates to the system that fails to produce enough so that we have poverty, the tax system particularly central banking and the credit system and the inheritance system but these systems are all created by people and therefore can be recreated by the people and what I am not hearing is the fact that we need new capital formation we add roughly two to three trillion dollars of new capital formation every year in both the public sector and the private sector and the issue what seems to me to be missing is who's going to own it, why can't it be owned by the people, why can't there be equal opportunity to own and some of the laws are moving in that direction and that was for workers in this country it is possible to become owners of companies without putting up your own money, borrowed money paid for out of future savings should I collect a few questions a gentleman in yellow shirt my name is John Sturzak and I'm a retired patent examiner so my formal background is in science and engineering and I think part of the big part of the problem is there's been a number of economists who are trying to set forth the idea that economics is a science much like physics and chemistry and what they say is correct now two examples I would give is if it were say thermodynamics was like economics you could pick up eight different thermodynamic books that would say fundamentally different things but of course you pick up any thermodynamics book and they basically say the exact same thing and similarly you know there's been much talk about GDP as if it's like similar to voltage or amperage it's farther from the truth there's no thing GDP meter when I weigh something on a balance if I say I've got a hundred milligrams of something I've got a hundred milligrams in my opinion GDP they have the theoretical but GDP is really just the numbers that they add up and they could be wrong they could be further from the truth we'll take one more question about the policy council I would like to ask about something that I think is central to economics employment and unemployment and in doing so might like to push back and defend South Koreans contrary to what you suggested that is when you compare South Koreans to the more industrious Mexicans you seem to conflate hours at a place of work and so in terms of trying to assess employment and unemployment I would like your views about how economists should go about doing that for four groups of people the very wealthy Mitt Romney, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates intellectuals, academics and non-academics entrepreneurs who are innovating and people who work for family firms how do we figure out whether they're employed or unemployed and is there any difference between South Korea and England in these four categories well on the first point yes I completely agree with you that all these economic rules, institutions laws I mean they are human creations and they can be and should be and have been changed the only thing I want to add is that you don't necessarily need ownership to be able to influence for example your enterprise different countries have found different means so in Germany they have so called core determination system where they have two layers of board one is managerial board which is same as other countries board of directors and the other supervisory board and in supervisory board workers have that kind of representation I'm not saying that that's not necessarily the correct model for everyone but so in that way they exercise influence on enterprise management in Japan they don't even have that kind of formal representation but they have developed these customs at least full time workers have some influence in the management of the company so yes I mean there are lots of different ways we can do this and of course not to forget about trade unions so let's explore these diverse possibilities yes you know I often joke that numbers in economics are like societies you don't know what's going into them you don't want to know what's going into them so yes I mean if you ask businesses they'll say even they are not 100% objective but in physics you can calculate things down to 17th decimal point you know in economics you just can't do that because the data itself are generated in a very dubious way now yeah implement and unemployment well I keep I would just mention that yes measuring productivities actually a very difficult thing especially when so much of our economic activities are done in a collective way if one person is I don't know making a chair it's pretty easy to see how productive or unproductive that person is but we are living in a world where a lot of production is done in a very complex factory with minor division of labor so how do you really know that this guy who I don't know designed the door handle for General Motors made exact contribution equivalent to the salary he got paid you know you cannot know so a lot of economic productivity and therefore compensation are results of social arrangements rather than pure physical productivity so all those categories that you pointed out that these are especially difficult categories because I mean entrepreneurs how can we exactly calculate the contribution of a steep job you know it's impossible so let me just leave it at that well on that point the classical economists tended to be quite hostile to capitalists who were passive investors John Stuart Mill described such people as people who make money while they sleep that was not intended as a compliment and Cain spoke about the euthanasia of the Brontier which wasn't very friendly let's get some from the back Bruce first both of you Bruce do you have a question? Well we've got 10 gazillion studies correlating with GDP with all kinds of things such as interest rates and the money supply and various other things that we know are more or less true so whatever GDP measures is a useful measure for a lot of things and I think you know coming up with all these critiques that have been around you know ever since the idea came up I mean I was just mentioning to Pete Oscar Morgenstern's great book The Accuracy of Economic Observations you know made many of these art points ages ago so it's not new stuff and I just feel like it's a little bit like beating up somebody who's you know not there to defend themselves oh okay yeah Piketty I haven't read him so I'm not willing to comment on him but you know I mean I think from the things I've read about him I think this is a position that he would probably accept himself you know people don't often realize that inequality can be changed hugely through public intervention so if you go to the OECD website you will find two sets of income inequality data genicoefficient data one is before tax and transfer and the other is after and from there you will find that many European countries Sweden Germany Belgium not every year but in many years will have higher income inequality than the United States before tax and transfer so these people do a lot of things to change that and of course I mean even in those countries that those with policies have become a bit weaker and so on but you know it's not a foregone conclusion that you have to accept whatever market throws at you in terms of income inequality because there are a lot of things you can do to change that as for my comment on GDP yeah of course it's not new you know I didn't claim that it is new but you know that sometimes people don't know these things and please don't forget that this was written for people who have very little knowledge of economics but I kept saying that I said earlier that GDP is probably the single best measure still so I'm not rejecting it's used please read the book if you're interested in finding out exactly what I think about it we've got time for one more round of a few questions Steven Schafferman with the Basic Income Guarantee Network and I'd just like hear your comments about the idea of basic income which is getting a lot of attention now in England and Switzerland and even in the US mainstream media updating the negative income tax guaranteed income debates from the 60s and one more right here in general do you think that bailout of the banks in 2008 and 2009 was actually worth the effort or not yeah one one does okay you want one more there's one more I noticed on your list of economics different styles of economics there was no mention of energy economics or biophysical economics or some of the other names that that has the thrust of which is running out of fossil fuels and we're going to be a whole lot more when we do yeah all right thank you yeah basic income well I my view is that you know actually all countries with some degree of welfare state and some degree of labor regulation actually have an implicit basic income I mean only that you're not allowed to take it in cash so you could say that on average British person gets X amount of health benefit through the nationalized national health system X amount of education benefit through the nationalized school system and so on and you could turn it into cash and give it to people and make it basic income that's one approach but you know some people who might agree the notion of basic income might say that however there are certain things that we all agree that should be consumed by everyone to an extent and you know there's always a danger that if you give people things in cash that they might be spending it in the wrong things so I'm not taking any side in this but I think we need to carefully think about it I think that this idea that we need to give people things only in kind is too paternalistic on the other hand giving it all in cash that you know when you give that to vulnerable people they might expose to you know loan sharks and so I don't know I mean I want to think about it a bit more carefully bank bailout yes I do wonder whether we should have done that I think given the circumstances I think that was inevitable but then I think what we should have done is to put a lot of conditions on this bank it's quite amazing when you are giving tiny bit of money to the poor people for welfare you put all kinds of conditions when you are giving billions to a bank there's no condition yeah this is why Gore Vidal once famously said that American economic system is socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor so I think that's what went wrong because at that time if you didn't bail out these banks probably the whole system would have collapsed the American government the British government they went out on a limb to deny public any say in this so for example American government when it bailed out General Motors it took preferred stock meaning that you get a higher dividend but you have no voting rights I think that this was a serious dereliction of duty on the part of Obama administration billions of your money to this company and voluntarily chose not to exercise any control you've been swindled British government when it poured in billions of pounds into banks decided that these banks will be controlled by this semi-public company managed arms length from the government thereby diluting its ability to control its affairs that's that same example well the reason why I didn't mention ecological economics and biophysical economics and those things I mean I was just trying to explain the main ones I mean the main ones do not necessarily mean they are more important or better but from a professional view there are these things that have appeared more frequently in economics than others and I didn't get to include those because they were less prominent so I mean I am happy to get criticized for that but I do have a little bit of discussion on the issues of climate change and environment in the chapter I discussed production because a lot of people think that we are basically running on the planet and how can we then reconcile with the economic growth and I have something to say about that if you're interested you can look at that the book is economics the user's guide by Ha-Jong Chung you can buy copies outside after you join me in thanking Dr. Chung


The Ministry of Agriculture and FAO presents World Food Day 2022 CMOS Fiesta Sunday October 16th for Door Park in Dennery. This is a food and nutrition strategy. CMOS Fiesta features lots of CMOS products, delicious healthy meals, snacks, nutritious beverages, beauty and health care products and an array of CMOS brands. It's a family day with a kids zone and a wide range of fun-filled activities for the entire family. Lots of entertainment, cultural performances, the legendary jazz icons Ronald Buhingsen and Jabu Placy, the big bad DYP band, T-Blacks, Umpa and lots more. Your security is our pledge. Eat to live, not live to eat. Food is health, health is wealth. Food is essential for living as air is for breathing. Food security for surety. The Ministry of Agriculture has done it again. World Food Day 2022 CMOS Fiesta Sunday October 16th for Door Park in Dennery. See you there.


Hello, everyone, and welcome. This is Melissa Armo with a Stock Swoosh and I'm reviewing here a option trade I called The Diamonds this week, and actually it was a very good one. Actually, it was last week, I'm sorry, but the exit was this week, unless you're holding it for longer. But I think it was a good exit actually yesterday. So if you'd like more information, you can email me at Melissa at thestockswoosh.com or call me at 929-3200 Gap. And you can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Skype. So again, call this on November 1st. So let's go find the first here in the chart here. Call this this day, it went straight up. Now this one day it did fall, it gapped up, so it was positive. You could have got out of it here with nice money. It was about 50% there, dropped, fell. You could have retaken it here or you could have just held the trade. So you could have exited it yesterday, you could have exited it today. Either way, this is out to the 16th, so I mean this could continue higher, but when you have a big move like yesterday, you have to be very conscious of it. And I gotta be honest with you, this market has had very little follow through. So when you have a big move in something, which the market did have yesterday, I do think it's important to take some profits, whether it's half, whether it's the whole thing, something. You don't wanna let positive trades get away from you. So here was the call. If you're on the options letter, you got this trade. If you wanna sign up for the options letter, I'll talk about it at the end of this lecture. But it was on the first in the afternoon, late one here. But it was the 262.50 calls to buy, and obviously 1116 seems far away, but here's what it did. So when I called that one, it was here, and it went up here. Do you see this here? So when you take a trade, you can make money in a trade even if it's not through the strike, because this was profitable even before yesterday, all right? Anyways, you could have paid around 57 cents for it, with seven contracts, a beginner risk would have been $399. Sale price would have been 225, we're a little bit higher than that. And again, this still has plenty of time left, a week and a half, but I think a good exit was this big push up in the last 24 hours. Profit would have been $1,176, return investment 295%. Now, not every trade will be like that, but a lot of trades do have big moves. You must wait for the good ones if you're gonna hold them. You cannot hold every single trade. You're looking usually for one turnover, but if you would exit this trade with 50% profit within a day, that was actually a good exit too, because you could have retaken it. But in the case of this one here, if you did take it and you did hold it, it was nice money, 295, and if you are still in it, you're gonna wait a little bit. It's obviously still up, but you're gonna wait a little bit for it to turn around again, which I don't know when that happens in today is Wednesday. So, if you had an advanced risk, again, same cost to the price, $4,560, if you could have risked that in this 80 contracts, that's a big position, but in the diamonds, you certainly can take it and get filled and get it in and get out. $2.25 within the exit, $13,440 profit, a really nice profit, and again, 295% return investment. So if you could have afforded to risk $4,500 in this trade, you could have made over 13 grand, and that is in less than a week. I called the trade in the first, you would have exited in less than a week. So the big move up really was yesterday, it was the day after the election. So what are some of the benefits of trading options versus equity trades, although I think you should do both if you wanna actively trade, especially gaps. No margin requirements, no day trading margin requirements. You don't have to have 25,000 in a retail account. You can open up a trading account to trade options with less than 25,000 at a retail place, and the only cost you have is the price you pay for the trade. So even if you have something like this that is trading at 250, you're not paying 250 per share quantity or contract. You are paying whatever cost, in this case it was 57 cents for these contracts. So you don't have to worry about whatever you're trading, whether it's Disney, whether it's the spy, whatever stock it is, whatever ETF it is, you don't have to worry about what it actually trades at on the market. The stock price, you're just paying the cost of the option trade. So that is very, it's something that a lot of people actually find very attractive about trading options. But you can make money doing equity trades all the same, in and out very quickly in minutes. These you have to hold a couple of hours or a couple of days. But you can make active money trading just like equity trades and options, and you can make a good return investment, whether it's 50% or 100% and then you will have some trades that move a lot like this one did. So options are a way though to make money in the trading room if you can't be in my live trading room daily. And you must take my golden gap course as a prerequisite for the room.  So I teach a class, it's called the golden gap course. And the next class for November is November 17th, 18th, and 19th. This is the, I'm only doing two more classes for the end of the year, November and December. And this is in November one. Cost of the class is $59.99, six grand. US dollars, you pay with the credit card and you would email me if you wanna sign up. The class is online. You could be anywhere in the world and take it. And if you wanna do the class, then you have the option of joining the live trading room. And then you would learn how I make these option calls. And you can do the trades with options or day trades. Now, if you wanna just subscribe to the letter, you can do that too. I offer an annual subscription only to the letter. There's no month a month for this. It's five grand, $49.99, and you sign up, you get the emails, email to you exactly. The letter is emailed to you, take the trades, and you just take them when you get the email, okay? So you would email me at Melissa, thestockswish.com to register, and you would sign up early to secure your spot. You know, options work for a lot of people because they can't be in the trading room. They just can't, they can't because of their job or whatever. I still think the class is very important to learn how to trade the strategy and how to do it. But it is one of these things where if you wanna trade and you can't be in the live room, you don't have the time to do whatever, then you just sign up for the letter. At least you'll find a way to make money using gaps doing this. Now, there's a particular, there's a gentleman that is on the letter list. He has not done the class yet. He sent me a very nice text today. Thank you so much for the S&P 500 on the Down Jones trade that sold him yesterday, made about three grand, thank you so much.  You can always email me if you have questions, but I did send three alerts out, I think, yesterday about the market to hold it into the close, if you could, because a lot of people were in this still from last week. So, hopefully everybody made out on this big. If you have any questions, wanna sign up for the Golden Gate course in November, or if you wanna sign up for the letter and not miss any more trades, email me at Melissa at thestockswish.com to sign up for both, and have a great day.


my name is Denea and I'm from the Long Beach Public Library. Welcome to today's summer reading program SRP for short baby time. We're going to sing about the color of the day and have some fun but don't forget at the end of the story time there will be a code to add to your Beanstack SRP. Before we start I'll be using a shaker and bubbles today so keep those handy and I'll let you know when we'll be using those. Let's get our babies ready so you can do our hello song and in the song we're going to wave and we're going to bounce and we're going to blow a kiss. Good job. In five four three two one. We're going to do the hello song and in our hello song we're going to bounce our baby. We're going to clap their hands and we're going to wave their arms and no no no in five four three two one. We'll be doing the hello song and in the hello song we're going to wave and sing hello. We're going to bounce and sing hello and we're going to clap and sing hello and we're also going to blow a kiss and sing hello. Can everybody blow a kiss? Good job. Okay we're going to start. We wave and sing hello. We wave and sing hello with our friends at story time. We wave and sing hello and now we're going to bounce and sing hello okay. We bounce and sing hello. We bounce and sing hello with our friends at story time. We bounce and sing hello and now we're going to clap. Let's clap our hands for our babies. Okay and you can clap their hands. Use your hands too. Okay we clap and sing hello. We clap and sing hello with our friends at story time. We clap and sing hello. Good job and now we're going to blow a kiss. Can everybody blow a kiss? We kiss and sing hello. We kiss and sing hello with our friends at story time. We kiss and sing hello. Good job everybody. It's time for us to get our babies ready to do some stretches. You can either lay them on their back or you can have them sitting in your lap. So now that they're comfortable let's bring their arms up high. Good job. Bring their arms out wide and bring it out to the front and bring their arms back up and give them a little tickle.  Bring their legs out. Bring it back together and put them on down. Okay so now we're going to do our head, shoulders, knees and toes and we're going to point out the body parts before we sing the song twice. So let's point to their head, to their shoulders, to their knees, to their toes, to their eyes, to their ears, to their mouth and nose. Good job. Okay we're going to do head, shoulders, knees and toes twice. Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.  Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes. Good job. Let's do that again. Let's point to their head. Okay. Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.  Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes. Good job.  We're going to do this twice. So it's a bounce and then when we count to five we're going to go one, two, three, four, five, down, down, down, down, down. It's really fun. So let's get them bouncing. All right good job. Let's go riding on an elevator. Elevator, elevator, elevator. Let's go riding on an elevator. One, two, down, down, down. Okay let's do that again. Let's get them bouncing. All right. Let's go riding on an elevator. Elevator, elevator. Let's go riding on an elevator. One, two, three, five, down, down, down, down, down, down. Good job. It's time for us to do some songs about rainbows. I have one on my head and I have one on the board but before we start singing about rainbows let's look at the colors of the rainbow. I'm going to take apart my rainbow and this is the color red and this is the color orange. Very good. This color is yellow and this color is green. This color is blue and this color is purple. Very good. So I have a song to help you remember the colors of the rainbow. We'll sing it twice and it's to the tune of Hush Little Baby. So we're gonna start with a color purple. Okay so everyone's gonna be rainbow purple, rainbow blue and and then the last line is rainbow smiling overhead. Okay so we're gonna start with a color purple. Okay rainbow purple, rainbow blue, rainbow green and yellow two, rainbow orange, rainbow red, rainbow smiling overhead. Let's do that again. Okay rainbow purple, rainbow blue, rainbow two, rainbow, rainbow smile. Good job and now we're gonna count rainbows. So we're gonna imagine that we see ten rainbows in the sky.  Okay so we're gonna sing that song twice. Alright let's get started.  Let's do that again okay.  Alright that was a great job and let's all count to ten again. Okay one two three four five six seven eight nine ten. Good job. We'll be doing a song where we're gonna be bouncing our babies, clapping our hands and we're gonna rock our babies from side to side. So the song title is bouncing, bouncing baby on my knee. We're gonna do this song twice. Okay so let's get our baby bouncing on our knee. Okay bouncing, bouncing baby on my knee. Bouncing, bouncing one two three and now we're gonna clap our hands, clapping, clapping baby on my knee, clapping, clapping one two three and now we're gonna rock, rocking, rocking baby on my knee, rocking, rocking one two three. Let's do that again. Okay let's get our baby bouncing, bouncing, bouncing baby on my knee, bouncing, bouncing one two three and now we're gonna clap, clapping, clapping baby on my knee, clapping, clapping one two three and now let's rock from side to side, rocking, rocking baby on my knee, rocking, rocking one two three. Good job and I'm gonna put my baby away and we're gonna do rollie-poly so I can show you the movements and we're gonna rollie-poly we're gonna go up up up and we're gonna go down down down we're gonna go out and in and fast and slow. Okay ready? So let's get our baby's arms rolling or you could do this in front of them.   We're gonna go fast and slow now. Rollie-poly rollie-poly fast fast fast.  Okay let's see that again. Okay so let's get our arms just roll it. Okay rollie-poly rollie-poly up up up rollie-poly rollie-poly down down down. Now we're gonna go out and in rollie-poly rollie-poly out out out. Rollie-poly rollie-poly in in in. And now we're gonna go fast and slow. Rollie-poly rollie-poly fast rollie-poly rollie-poly slow slow slow. Good job. Today we will be reading My Magical Dragon. You can go ahead and repeat after me when I'm done reading a part. Let's get started. My Magical Dragon. A dragon who was kind and strong watched over a palace all day long. One day the prince and princess cried, won't you take us for a ride? At grandma's castle they stopped for tea which dragon helped make magically. And when they got home safe and sound he took a long snooze underground. Today we read My Magical Dragon. Let's take a walk through the barnyard and see some fun puppet friends that are gonna come out when we hear their sound that they make. So we're gonna walk through the barnyard and start patting our our lap. Good job. We're gonna walk you through the barnyard. What do you see? Do you hear a sound? What could it be? And I'll make it sound and I'll bring out my puppet friend, okay? So let's start patting our lap. Good job. Okay, we're gonna go walking through the barnyard. What do you see? Do you hear a sound? What could it be? It was quack, quack, quack, quack. What is it? It's a baby duck. Can you all quack again? Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack. Oh, that was really good. Okay, we're gonna say goodbye, duck. Goodbye, duck. Okay, so now I'm gonna bring out my next friend, but we're gonna have to figure out what it is. Okay, so let's get ready to start slapping our legs. Good, like we're walking. Good job. Okay, so walking through the barnyard. What do you see? Do you hear a sound? What could it be? It's a horse. Very good. Can we all nae like a horse again? Nae, nae. Good job. We're gonna say goodbye, horse. Goodbye, nae. Okay, let's see what our last one is gonna be. Okay, so we're gonna start. Let's start hitting our laps or slap our laps with our hand. Good job. Okay, walking through the barnyard. What do you see? Do you hear a sound? What could it be? It goes, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack. It's a can we all gobble like a turkey again? Gobble, gobble, gobble, gobble. Very good. You guys are really great. Okay, it's time for us to get our shakers out. If you don't have any shakers, hopefully you have something that'll make some noise while we sing the ABCs or I'm gonna shake our shakers, okay? So let's test out our shakers or anything that makes noise. We're gonna go all in the circle. We're gonna shake it really fast. Shake it really slow. And we're gonna shake it really quietly. Can you do that? And shake it really loud. Very good. And now we're gonna do our ABCs. We're gonna sing this song twice, okay? So let's get the rhythm going. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and V. Now on. ABCs. Next time, I'll choose sing with me. Shake it all around. Shake it really fast. Shake it slow. And let's go do it one more time. ABC, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and V. Now on. ABCs. Next time, I'll choose sing with me. Good job. And now we're gonna shake our shakers. We're gonna do this song twice, okay?  Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake your shakers. Good job. And now we're gonna shake it high, high, high.  And now we're gonna shake our shakers low. We're gonna do it below our head, okay? So now we're gonna start.  Good job. Do you want to do that again? Okay. Shake your shakers, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, Shake, shake, shake your shakers. Now we're gonna shake it high, high, high. We're gonna shake it above our head, okay? All right. Shake your shakers high, high, high. High, high, high. High, high, high. Shake your shakers high, high, high. Shake your shakers. And now we're gonna shake it low. So we're gonna shake it below our head, okay? So we're gonna start.  Good job. Let's get our hands ready for if you're happy me know it. So let's rub our hands together really fast and let's start. If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. If you're happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it. If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. If you're happy and you know it, stomp your feet. Stomp, stomp. If you're happy and you know it, stomp your feet. Stomp, stomp. If you're happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it. If you're happy and you know it, stomp your feet. Stomp, stomp. If you're happy and you know it, shout hooray, hooray. If you're happy and you know it, shout hooray, hooray. If you're happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it. If you're happy and you know it, shout hooray, hooray. Good job. It's time for some bubbles. I hope you're ready. And you have your bubbles ready to go. I have two songs for you. We counting our bubbles. We're gonna do one little, two little, three little bubbles. And then there we're gonna sing, there are bubbles in the air. And there are bubbles in your hair. So we're gonna start. So let's get our fingers ready and our bubbles. So let's start blowing our bubbles and have them all floating around us. And then now we're gonna count. Okay, let's start. One little, two little, three little bubbles. Four little, five little, six little bubbles. Seven little, eight little, nine little bubbles. 10 little bubbles go, pop, pop, pop. Good job, let's blow a little bit more. Ooh, those ones are big. And then we're gonna do, there are bubbles in the air. There are bubbles in the air. There are bubbles in the air. There are bubbles in the air. There are bubbles in your hair. There are bubbles in the air. Good job, let's blow some more. I'm missing this last song again. There are bubbles in the air. There are bubbles in the air. There are bubbles in the air. There are bubbles in your hair. There are bubbles in the air. Good job, everybody. I hope you enjoyed today's Storytime, and I look forward to seeing you guys again soon. But don't forget, there's a code at the end of the Storytime to add to your Beanstack summer reading program. Keep reading.


In the first video, I mentioned a system for adding arguments to relations with an example. I am a cat sent by the authorities in order to arrest you for crimes against the Internet. Now, it sure would be convenient if Mlatu had a position structure for this. Mlatu, x1 is a cat of breed x2 sent by x3 to do x4 because of x5. Alas, we don't have that, nor would we want that. Instead, we use modal tags. Modal in Lujban just means a place that isn't in the place structure and has nothing to do with the linguistic jargon word modal. A modal tag is a schmavo that not only indicates that the next sumti belongs with that modal tag, but also conveys exactly what kind of place is being added. Modal tags are a subset of the more general sumchita, which is any schmavo that can tag the next sumti with extra information. Modal tags are derived from certain gizmu. For example, kihu is derived from krinu. Then, the sumti following the modal tag is the thing that would fill the x1 position in that relation. The grammatical class, or selmaho, for modal tags is by. There are several lists of schmavo in selmaho by in the latest version of the language reference link down below, and also in the previous version, section 9.17 has a nice table. Before I continue, I need to talk about events. An event is just a breedy with the schmavo new prefix to it, terminated if necessary by the schmavo k, and that turns it into a selbrey, meaning x1 is the event where the breedy happens. Let's take a look at the gizmu krinu. The event x1 is a justification for causing event x2. So I might want to say, lomlatu shukrinu la internet. Cats are the justification for the internet. But that doesn't make sense because krinu requires events, and neither cats nor the internet are events. To construct an event, we first need a breedy. We could just use mulatu, there are cats. Then we stick new in front of it, numlatu, x1 is the event where there are cats. And now we can put the whole thing together, lomlatu, k, krinu, lomla, internet. Cats are the justification for the internet. And it's true. Link down below. Okay, back to kihu and krinu. Again, the sumti following a modal tag is the thing that would fill the x1 position in that relation. In the case of kihu, we see that lomlatu, k, krinu means that there are cats is justification. So kihu, lomlaatu, k, would be a modal, meaning with justification that there are cats. Used in a full breedy, mishmila, kihu, lomlaatu. I laugh with justification that there are cats. Or in internet speak, I laugh because cats. In the first video, I briefly mentioned se, which has the effect of swapping x1 and x2 in a relation. So se, krinu, would be the event x1 is justified by the event x2. And so lomlaatu, k, krinu means that there are cats is justified.  And so se, kihu, lomlaatu, would be a modal, meaning with justified result that there are cats. For example, mounje, se, kihu, lomlaatu, there is a universe with justified result that there are cats. Put another way, there is a universe. Therefore, justifiably, there are cats. So let's try to piece together the first part of my silly example. Mimlaatu. I am a cat, sent by the authorities. Now, I know that there is behi, which is a modal for benji, which has to do with sending. But I tried a few things and it just wouldn't work. So instead, I'll use our friend poi. Mipoimlaatu, shuse benji, lei shatni, I, who is a cat, am sent by the authorities. Remember that lei is for a group, so authorities as a group. Why se benji? Because benji means x1 sends x2, but we need to swap x1 and x2, so se benji, x1 is sent by x2. Now, poi is a restrictive relative phrase indicator used when there are several things around and you want to restrict the thing you're talking about. In this case, there's only one mi. Using poi is like saying, the mi who is a cat. So instead, we can use the non-restrictive relative phrase indicator, noi. Minoimlaatu, shuse benji, lei shatni, I, a cat, am sent by the authorities. What's next? We need to tack on in order to arrest you. Ki-hu, justification, is perfect for this. The event we're looking for is I arrest you, which is mi-pi-fi-gao-do. So the event would be new mi-pi-fi-gao-do. x1 is an event where I arrest you. And the sumti would be lonu mi-pi-fi-gao-do, an event where I arrest you. And so, ki-hu lonu mi-pi-fi-gao-do would be with justification that there is an event where I arrest you. In other words, in order that I arrest you. Let's just put that in the future tense with ba, ki-hu lonu mi-ba-pi-fi-gao-do in order that I will arrest you. Now, if I just add that modal to the sentence, we have mi-noi-mi-laatu, shuse benji, lei shatni, ki-hu lonu mi-ba-pi-fi-gao-do. I, a cat, am sent by the authorities in order to arrest you. Now, why am I arresting you? For crimes against the internet. Sounds like we need a justification for arresting you. So, we want a modal that is something like, justified by the event that you committed crimes against the internet. We can use zer-gao, x1 commits crimes against culture, x2, so do-pu-zer-gao-la internet. You committed crimes against the internet. And now we just turn this into an event and add it using ki-hu. Ki-hu lonu-do-pu-zer-gao-la internet. With justification that there was an event where you committed crimes against the internet. In other words, four-year crimes against the internet. So, finally we have mi-noi-mi-laatu, shuse benji, lei shatni, ki-hu lonu mi-pi-fi-gao-do, ki-hu lonu-do-pu-zer-gao-la internet. I, a cat, am sent by the authorities in order to arrest you for crimes against the internet. Notice that we used ki-hu twice, but they translate differently. This is because in colloquial English we can say with justification in many different ways, but they all mean why an action justifiably happened. In fact, ki-hu is just one of four modal tags for different types of causes, ri-ha, ki-hu, mu-hi, and ni-hi. For ri-ha we're talking about mechanistic cause and effect. Ki-hu is for an effect caused by moral justice. Mu-hi is for talking about human reasons for things that don't have to do with justice, and ni-hi is for logical reasoning. All of these can be translated as because in English, but they all have different connotations and different colloquial translations. Se, swaps cause and effect for these modal tags. All of these can be translated as therefore, but again they all have different connotations and colloquial translations. Ri-ha and ki-hu are very common modal tags. Again, there's a fuller list in the link down below. Usually when I post a video I'll watch it all the way through to pick up anything I might have screwed up. Really, I need to start doing that before I post the video. Anyway, last time I picked up a mistake where I said that, shi-mi-shu-khab-shu-la-kum-uz-da, three of me live in the apartment, didn't make much sense. Aside from getting the text itself wrong, as with doh, mi is a prosumpti which doesn't have number attached, so it could mean mi, or it could be us. So in fact it makes perfect sense to say that three of us live in the apartment. Ahusai, back in the first video I pulled up some definitions for Persian languages. Ban fu-hasu, x1 is the language with iso-639-3 code fas, Persian. Ban pu-hesu, x1 is the language with iso-639-3 code pes, Iranian Persian. What I didn't realize at the time is that there is an algorithm for constructing this type of fu-hi-vla for any iso-639-3 language code. For English, the algorithm yields ban genugu, x1 is the language with iso-639-3 code eng, English. Of course there are non-algorithmic words for some languages, glibao, x1 is the English language used by x2 to express x3. Lojban is supposed to be culturally neutral, but alas, some cultures are more equal than others. Nevertheless, I really like the sound of ban genugu. The algorithm also generates words for countries and currencies since those also have iso codes. In the next video, I'll talk about ii, which is used to not only separate breedy from each other, as when you put one sentence after another, but also connect them in various ways. Kihero kinsga, ban genugu, ban genugu, ban genugu, ban genugu.


Income tax 2021-2022, child tax credit part 1b, filers who check a box on line 13, refundable child tax credit, other dependent credit. Get ready to get refunds to the max diving into income tax 2021-2022. Most of this information can be found on the Schedule 8812 Instructions 2021 Tax Here IRS website irs.gov irs.gov income tax formula down here in the credit area, noting that credits and deductions both good credits. However, if you had $1 worth of credit versus $1 worth of deduction, credit basically being better because you generally get to take the full amount of that dollar worth of credit as opposed to a deduction which would be reducing your taxable income on which the tax would then be applied. Also, note that we can think about the credits in two general categories, those which are going to be non-refundable and the refundable credits. The non-refundable credits mean that they don't take the tax liability below zero. The refundable credits may take the tax liability below zero, and if so, then any receipt that you'd get from it wouldn't really be a refund, even though it would be called a refund still, but really it would be kind of like a benefit program in that instance. We can have some credits that might have a non-refundable and refundable portion to them. We're looking at the second page of the form 1040. We're looking at line 919, non-refundable child tax credit or credit for other dependents from Schedule 8812 line 28, refundable child tax credit or additional child tax credit form from Schedule 8812. So now we're considering the Schedule 8812 and the instructions for it and kind of dissecting it. So now we're on part 1A, filers who check box on box on line 13. That's the refundable child tax credit and the additional of the other dependent credit. So if we look at the form then we're looking at, we looked at the last section, we looked at part 1A in general and then we're considering specifically this box 13 which says check all the boxes that apply to you. Box A is check here if you or your spouse if married filing jointly had a principal place of abode in the United States for more than half the year. That would be most people. Box B check here if you or your spouse if filing jointly were a bona fide resident of Puerto Rico. So either of these boxes being checked off we would then move on down here to part 1B. If neither of those boxes were checked off then we that would be a different we'd go to the 1C which we'll talk about in a future presentation. So now we're down here in part 1B in essence of the form. That's going to help us with the calculation of the amount that the prepayment that we had already received the advanced credit that we received taking that into consideration. So if you did not check a box online 13 do not complete part 1B instead skip to part 1C. So most people would be going to part 1B if you're in the United States. So only filers who check a box online 13 should complete this part. Do not complete parts 1C, 2A, 2B or 2C. If you enter 0 on line 14G also complete part 3 otherwise did not complete part number 3. So then we got line 14C, line 14C, if line 14A is 0 enter 0 otherwise enter the amount from the credit limit worksheet A. If you enter 0 you are not claiming the ODC and do not need to use the credit limit worksheet A for part 1B. So that's here on our worksheet we're looking at line 14C where it says if line 14A is 0 that's when we're going to say enter the smaller of line 7 or 12 which we're looking at 7 or 12 which has to do with the other dependent and we're only looking at this case at the child. So we don't have any in the other dependent because we're looking at the child tax credit in just this example we might run different examples but that's just the idea at this point in time and so then if you checked a box on line 13 you do not need to complete credit limit worksheet B. So here's the credit limit worksheet and once again if you checked a box on line 13 you do not need to complete the credit limit worksheet. So line 13 you will recall is right here for the A and B checking one of those boxes most people checking box A there. Line 14F enter the aggregate amount of advanced child tax credit payment you receive for 2021 as reported in box 1 on letter 6419. So that's the letter that you're getting from the IRS to give you the information for the advanced child tax credit that you would receive and if everything was correct you would think that would be basically half of the child tax credit. Now if you're in income phase out limitations it's quite possible the IRS got it wrong or didn't get the exact half because because the phase outs that they based it on the estimates in the prior year would be different than your actual income in 2021. So if you didn't receive any advanced child tax credit payment for 2021 enter zero. So we're looking at 14F here and obviously software helps us out with the calculations because you'd have an interview type of process but I'm putting 1,175 for F says enter the aggregate amount of the advanced child tax credit payments you and your spouse if filing jointly received for 2021. You can see the letters 6419 for the amounts to include in this line. So I put this amount here and then obviously they're going to be subtracting the two out in essence and in general it would be like half generally if everything kind of went well you would think and the difference would be the benefit that you'd still possibly be able to get the credit for in the when filing the tax return. So married filing jointly if you are married filing jointly add the amount reported in box one on your letter 6419 and your spouse's letter 6419 and enter the total online 14F example in 2020 Roger filed a file as single with two qualifying children in 2021 Roger received advanced child tax credit payments of 3,000 based on two qualifying children in 2020 Tiffany filed as head of household with one qualifying child in 2021 Tiffany received advanced child tax credit payments of 1,500 based on one qualifying child both Roger and Tiffany received letter 6419 Roger's letter reports advanced child tax credit payments of 3,000 in box one and two qualified children in box two Tiffany's letter reports advanced child tax credit payments of 1,500 in box one and one one our qualifying child in box two so that's the information you're going to get you're going to get the amount that you got in advanced payments and the number of children that are qualifying Roger and Tiffany were married in 2021 so now they're filing a joint return and the advanced payments were based on on them individually when they were filing separate or as individuals in the prior year and file as married filing jointly on their 2021 tax return Roger and Tiffany will add the amounts from box one of their letters 6419 and enter 4,500 which is the 3,000 plus the 1,300 on line 14 f example 5 in 2020 John and Susan filed a married filing joint return with four qualifying children in 2021 John and Susan received advanced child tax credit payments of 6,000 based on four qualifying children both John and Susan received letter 6419 now they're married they both get the letter but the two letters that go to both of them are for the for the one return that they're filing because they filed joint return John letter reports advanced child tax credit payments of 3,000 in box one and four qualifying children in box two Susan's letter reports advanced child tax credit payments of 3,000 in box one and four qualifying children in box two so basically they still have the four qualifying children on both of the letters so they're not duplicating the children you can see there but they then they allocated three to one spouse three thousand to one spouse and three thousand to the other spouse so the full amount that was received was the 6,000 in that instance for the four children for the married filing joint return which they applied on the letters three and three to the two spouses involved John and Susan file a married filing jointly on their 2021 tax return John and Susan will add the amounts from box one of their letters 6419 and enter 6,000 3,000 plus 3,000 on line 14f example six in 2020 Jane filed a single with three qualifying children in 2021 Jane received advanced child tax credit payments of 4,500 based on three qualifying children Jane received letter 6419 reporting advanced child tax credit payments of 4,500 in box one and three qualifying children in box two in 2020 Tony and Ivy filed as married filing jointly with one qualifying child in 2021 Tony and Ivy received advanced tax credit payments of 1,500 quote for qualifying child both Tony and Ivy receive letter 6419 Tony's letter reports advanced child tax credits of 750 in box one and one qualifying child in box two Ivy's letter reports advanced child tax credit payments of 750 in box one and one qualifying child in box two Tony and Ivy divorce in 2021 and Tony marries Jane later that same year things are getting complex so on their 2021 tax return Tony and Jane file as married filing jointly Tony and Jane will add the amounts from box one on their letters 6419 and enter 5,250 which is the 4,500 plus the 750 on line 14f so you can see how they're they're trying to allocate between the married couples with when they basically fill out these letters to kind of compensate for these for these things that could happen like a divorce and a remarried kind of situation in that instance so so generally hopefully everything you need will be provided to you with the letters that will be provided so that you can get those advanced payments that letter being the 6419 filled out properly even under you know changing circumstances and the life situation