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Re: [Phys-l] Will the US ever switch to the metric system?



Really now. You think that has much effect?

bc notes Germany has hardly noticed the recession, and some of the Oriental (PIC) nations' economies are growing at a great clip.

p.s. Keynes noted that burying money in bottles that had to be dug up in mines would stimulate quite well -- the stimulus that worked last time was the 2nd world war.


If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/keynes/john_maynard/k44g/chapter10.html


Anyone else read the Report from iron mountain?

The heavily footnoted report concluded that peace was not in the interest of a stable society, that even if lasting peace "could be achieved, it would almost certainly not be in the best interests of society to achieve it." War was a part of the economy. Therefore, it was necessary to conceive a state of war for a stable economy. The government, the group theorized, would not exist without war, and nation states existed in order to wage war. War also served a vital function of diverting collective aggression. They recommended that bodies be created to emulate the economic functions of war. They also recommended "blood games" and that the government create alternative foes that would scare the people with reports of alien life-forms and out-of-control pollution. Another proposal was the reinstitution of slavery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Report_from_Iron_Mountain




On 2011, Jan 13, , at 20:15, LaMontagne, Bob wrote:

Europe is metric - how is their economy doing?

bob at PC