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A Plan to Add 12 Points to Everyone's IQ with Food Additives
San Francisco, 12:41 AM
Sat Dec 5
24 posts in the last 24 hours
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A Plan to Add 12 Points to Everyone's IQ with Food Additives |
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12/06/08
12/07/08
12/07/08
They do, but ideally you should be getting 8x as much potassium as sodium (4000mg/day vs 500mg/day), and people get a lot more sodium in general because table salt is pure NaCl.
And sea salt still has more sodium by a hefty margin than potassium, but it does have a mix. Added to that, though, the Morton iodized sea salt that I buy uses potassium iodide as the source of iodine, so it helps improve the ratio a bit. I know there are some people who are on a sodium-restricted diet, and one person I know gets special salt because of that, but I don't know if he's using a potassium-rich sea salt, a pure potassium-chloride, or some other type of salt.
Regardless, potassium serves a vital function to your nerve cells, where I believe sodium is only useful in salt form, and that it's more the salt than the sodium itself that you need.
12/06/08
12/06/08
Our current woes are the direct result of government interference in the free market mechanics that made us the primary engine of wealth in the modern world. The entire world will suffer due to this interference.
12/06/08
12/06/08
12/06/08
12/06/08
@Purple Dave: An increase of 10% in pay literally means everyone will be able to consume 10% more goods. This reinforces the point above: If everyone is able to consume 10% more, then a lot of jobs will be created, because there will be demand for 10% more goods overall. This is economic growth. As an economy contracts (recession), there is less demand, less jobs, less production, and reduced consumption.
12/07/08
You're assuming that prices won't change. If your local store has to pay all of its workers 10% more, that cost will get passed on to you. And it won't just be their workers. All of their utilities will be more expensive (gotta pay those people 10% more too), all of their merchandise will be 10% more (gotta pay all the people who make and transport them 10% more).
There's a myth that politicians keep promoting because it gets them elected. You cannot get rid of poverty. Poverty first, wealthy second, middle-class third. That is a fundamental basis of economy. And all those times they've increased the minimum wage have not really raised anyone's spending power, since all that extra money that they're getting on their paychecks doesn't just magically appear. It comes out of someone else's pocket.
No, the only way to increase the amount of goods that everyone will be able to consume is to get them to buy more and save less. Movement of money is what makes the economy healthy, not increasing pay rates.
12/07/08
The point of the article is that if your IQ goes up, you tend to be more productive, so you can get more stuff. It's that simple. If everyone in an economy becomes more productive, that economy as a whole produces more goods, and everyone in it becomes better off. Yes, there will still be poor people, but they will be at least a bit better off than the poorest people in that society were before.
This is not about money as such. Your IQ does not increase your pay check. It means you might have more opportunities to get a better job and be more productive, thus benefiting both yourself and the whole economy.
Dr. Who: There are non-renewable resources that are limited, but that's not what we're talking about. The total economic output of the world economy is not a zero-sum game. A given economy can build more stuff without another economy having to build less. Eventually stuff like oil will get more expensive, and we'll have all sorts of problems, but this is much more complex than the sort of zero-sum game you seem to be thinking of. Purple Dave: You are thinking of money, not real terms. It's not "everyone gets paid 10% more money," it's "the economy produces 10% more stuff (food/equipment/cars/whatever), and everyone gets a bit more stuff to one extent or another."
12/08/08
The article contains a quote that pointedly assumes a 1% increase in pay for every additional point of IQ. It's kinda hard to argue that it's not about a physical increase in your paycheck when the article pointedly says it is. It's even harder to do so when you basically said the same thing.
Regardless, it still ends up being a bust in the long run. To give you an example, people in the UK often complain about how much more they have to pay for a given LEGO set than we do here in the US. If you really pay attention to the numbers, though, you'll notice that when they walk into a store to buy that set, all the local store clerks get paid a much higher relative wage than the same clerks would in the US. All the people who helped to transport that set to the store get paid a higher wage than their American counterparts. And pretty much all across the board, everyone gets paid a higher wage than we do here. That's all compared to American jobs, though. If you compare them by ratio within the UK vs the same thing within the US, they all make more money than we do. And they pay higher prices as a result. Once the poor become well-off, it just means they have more money that they can spend on the bare essentials, leaving them poor again. And meaning that the pie doesn't change size, but it now costs a buck fifty a slice instead of just one dollar.