Canada - Page 3

Topic: Canada (Read 24528 times)

Re: Canada

Reply #50 – 2025-03-05, 08:57:41

In other words:
Models only say what you tell them to say...^[1]
So: Why should we cite them as reasons to do either this or that?

Because people want to believe. They want to believe that the game is fixed; and anyone who claims to know how it's fixed (and, potentially, how to beat the odds).^[2] can give them an edge. Alternately, people believe that the game is fair; and if they lose often enough then they think they're being cheated!

The Stock Market is a creature of mostly irrational actors — responding emotionally to information they don't understand...

¹Hat tip Wm. Briggs, Statistician to the Stars!↵

²"The odds" does apply to casino games. It does not -as a sensible concept- often apply to reality at large.↵

Re: Canada

Reply #51 – 2025-03-05, 21:21:10

Economic models tend to be what is possible to set up in MS Excel, so that economists, political advisors and policymakers can send it to each other by email. I happen to know that some economic models used by the ECB are, "for simplicity", rigidly linear: As you set e.g. VAT higher, you get more revenue into government budget, invariably. You can set taxes to several hundred percent and the expected government revenue will look absolutely fabulous. It does not consider that people would go broke and definitely start circumventing taxes. This is not an idle isolated anecdote.

One would hope that more serious analysts use more sophisticated models. More sophisticated models are more likely to be outside MS Excel, in some proper programming language.

Trump's advisors expect enormous returns from tariffs on a linear basis, expecting the rate of trade and volume of transactions remain the same. In reality, there is a difference between necessities and other goods/commodities.

The rate of trade of necessary commodities may be stickier, but of other goods/commodities would plummet instantly with the introduction of tariffs, and a sophisticated economic model would account for this. Without any model, we saw the reaction of stock markets. The forecast of America's economy taking a nosedive upon introduction of tariffs as opposed to an earlier expectation of regular fattening without tariffs would be an output of a modern standard sufficiently sophisticated economic model.

Edit: By the way, here is an example of an "economic computer" built as an analog mechanism. An analog computer for an economic model is good because the quantities in it (meant to indicate resources available to the economy) are relatively fixed, which is quite true (relatively). When this basic premise is gotten right, the remainder to get right is the relations between the quantities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAZavOcEnLg

When modelling in a modern programming language you would have to pay special attention to fix the quantities, so that they would not fly towards infinity.

Re: Canada

Reply #52 – 2025-03-06, 01:03:33

For too many people, a modern standard sufficiently sophisticated economic model becomes a substitute for reality... Hence engendering a lot of head scratching!

GIGO

Re: Canada

Reply #53 – 2025-03-10, 12:29:57

Canadian cafe serves 'Trump sandwich' filled with 'Russian dressing and small pickle'

Quote from: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/canadian-cafe-serves-trump-sandwich-34828242

Details of its contents were advertised on a blackboard by the eatery's entrance, with a snap of it making its way to social media platform X. It read: "Trump Sandwich – White Bread – Full of Baloney – with Russian dressing and a small pickle."

X users on both sides of the border saw the funny side, including one American who penned in response: "Love that Trump Sandwich wit from Canada, sharp, funny, and oh-so Canadian! Standing tall against tariffs with humor and heart. Cheers to our northern neighbors for keeping it real!"

A second added: "As an American I absolutely love this!" A third person agreed: "Canada y'all made my darn day lol. I feel the exact same way about him too." Whilst a fourth in the US said: "I’m a Trump guy, but I’ll give it to you, this is solid."

https://twitter.com/sillyrabbitfafo/status/1897473312584061058