Because the military doesn't have any assets to speak of. It's a government program funded each year by taxes.
The social security program is separate from the federal budget [0], and that's why you see it as a separate tax on your paycheck (if you're American). Every dollar you pay into it, goes into a trust fund, whose sole asset is US Government bonds.
Social security can go bankrupt if the US defaults on it's debt, which although almost unthinkable (see Russia as a recent example of paying bonds despite being under heavy sanctions, and having to pay them in another currency) comes up every few years [1].
As near as I can tell from the wikipedia link in the comments below, it's because the ship is perpendicular to the water and the light just happens to be being refracted to that particular observer right at the water line.
> A sports team has a play book, does your team? A sports team practices together, does your team? A sports team works as a unit, does your team?
This is why I like XP. Their teams really are teams like you say.
Though I think in many dev shops you can be team like. Someone might like refactoring and cleanup. Someone else is good at rapid prototyping. Another architecture. Sometimes a great dev is just the one who can take the unglamorous tickets and get them done at a sustainable pace. Or someone who is good at devops, teaching, or morale building. Sometimes just communication.
Everyone has different strengths. No one would ever say "who's the best (American) football player?" because you'd have to ask "who's the best kicker, tight-end, defensive lineman". They are all different roles.
To think that football would have the level of awareness that it cannot be measured as a single dimension makes it sad and laughable that people reduce programming skill down to one most of the time.
It took me a while to get it, but this all works in the opposite direction as well.
The time value of money can be negative: A dollar today can be worth more than a dollar tomorrow.
It's not pretty. When the pie is shrinking the incentives get ugly rapidly.
Let's hope this can be a "good" deleveraging, we fix metrics that don't positively correlate with non-zero-sum productivity growth, and on top of that pull the next rabbit out of the hat where we can keep exponential growth happening for another cycle (spacex, EVs, etc).
Otherwise, we'll be fighting over a shrinking pie, which is nature's way of adjusting the population to the modified carrying capacity.
We're going to have to, at some point, stop relying on exponential growth, and move to a sustainable (i.e. 0% rate of return) environment. For the biosphere's sake that ought to happen sooner rather than later.
If we continue growing the economy at 2-3% YoY we will be extracting all energy from the Milky Way in 1000 years and applying it to the economy. Not probable!
Clearly there is some transition to the upper part of this S-curve and things need to change when we get there. I wouldn't be surprised if we already are there for most sectors.
>If we continue growing the economy at 2-3% YoY we will be extracting all energy from the Milky Way in 1000 years and applying it to the economy. Not probable!
gdp growth =/= energy consumption growth
Also 1.03^1000 = 6.810^12, but wolframalpha says the number of stars in the milky way is 310^11. Considering that we're nowhere close to capturing even 1% of the energy output of energy that reaches the earth, let alone all the energy that the sun emits, your estimate of 1000 years is probably off by a few orders of magnitude. Finally, if we're actually capturing all the energy of the milky way, presumably we'd be a space faring civilization and can therefore colonize other galaxies, making that a non-issue.
It's interesting to see how world trends look as more and more of the world ends up in the position the US was in 20 years ago in terms of economic mix.
> If we continue growing the economy at 2-3% YoY we will be extracting all energy from the Milky Way in 1000 years
That argument is built on the fact that we don't find efficiencies. A lot of economic growth is simply much more efficient use of resources, ie less resources and much greater return. A couple of decades ago you needed a lot of expensive copper to connect a city with phone and slow internet access. Now all you need is cheap thin plastic for gigabit+ speeds.
A computer 70 years ago was an enormous contraption made of of literally tons of expensive metal components, while a raspberry pi zero has a tiny bit of copper, resin and silicon. The latter is vastly more powerful and cheaper.
Sure, growth can't last forever, but we have a long way to go.
The time value is positive by definition, unless you somehow get penalized by having money in the future. Inflation and purchasing power is a separate phenomenon.
Negative interest rates is entirely artificial. Not in any way a market phenomenon.
Yeah, I do think we're just using different sign conventions here, because of inflation and opportunity cost a dollar today should be worth more than a dollar tomorrow.
I would think a dollar today is necessarily at least as valuable than a dollar tomorrow, since a dollar today can either be a dollar tomorrow or a dollar today - i.e. it has optionality built in.
What is a dollar worth besides what it can purchase?
Put another way, if the number of dollars is constant in your account between today and tomorrow, but you can purchase less with it, you've lost wealth.
I understand but given the OPs comment, I would think it's always the case. Given the choice between a dollar today and a dollar tomorrow, you should always choose a dollar today since you can choose not to spend it. So it's strictly better than a dollar tomorrow.
The only time I see that it wouldn't be true is if there was risk in carrying it - taxes, negative interest rates, or theft. I could see for example a tonne of gold tomorrow being more valuable than a tonne of gold today since you'd have to deal with storage and security and such.
Everyone is right, there is a marginal bias so that the natural rate of interest is always positive but when storage costs and risk and fungibility/hedges/insurance are factored in the rate can be positive or negative. Like when the cost of oil was positive recently last year.
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The social security program is separate from the federal budget [0], and that's why you see it as a separate tax on your paycheck (if you're American). Every dollar you pay into it, goes into a trust fund, whose sole asset is US Government bonds.
Social security can go bankrupt if the US defaults on it's debt, which although almost unthinkable (see Russia as a recent example of paying bonds despite being under heavy sanctions, and having to pay them in another currency) comes up every few years [1].
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-column-miller-socialsecur... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/16/biden-signs-debt-ceiling-inc...