Welcome Vasudha Linden!

welcome

The "real" working class?

What are you doing with your $500 stipend now, giving it away?

coco

The real explanation is one person wants to earn their keep, the other person works fulltime and bought premium to have the stipend to actually purchase on SL, as the avatar's 'paycheck' from whatever work is done while I can't be on. (Stocking Dwellmart?)

Its not being a lazy bum and collecting welfare, its Lindens I pay for with my premium account. Take that away and why should I pay for premium?

Maybe you have the time to spend starting a business here on SL..good for you. I don't because of actual real world work. Imagine that..and I could get more Linden dollars by putting my stipend as just paying for Lindens.. the convenience of the 500 a week has me paying more.

No.. the real definition here is The people who want their stipend want what they've been paying for, and those that want to remove it are bloodsucking leeches who pretend to know what is good for everyone. Alot like a certian unintentional parody, the parasitic legend herself..(can't name names but we all know).

FYI, my stipend is a negative number, because with 20 stores @ 30/week directory fee.

If a person is dependant on the stipend, it's welfare, certainly not middle working class.

I'm not dependent on the stipend, but it -is- the main reason I pay for premium.

If I don't get that 500 a week my money can be better spent elswhere.

Then maybe that's what you should do.

If that is veiled threat to LL, it falls on deaf ears because your tier will instantly be filled by someone else, who is more than willing to pay for premium.

I never thought I'd see the day I agree with Weedy Herbst, but it looks like the Capitalist in her has finally come out!

This is a very encouraging sign... Communists CAN change into productive members of our Capitalist society!!

~scratches a flea away~

I knew Jamie would get here sometime. Now I have to delouse myself again.

Welfare? LOL. All the capitalists are calling for the state to intervene and take away other people's money so their own money will gain in value. I believe there's a word for that, fascism perhaps?

Flattered yes, but no, I will not change the perms of my objects to mod/copy/resell.

In other words, you use it to pay for directory fees.

I am hardly dependant upon stipend. But I'm also not likely to pay $9.95 a month for the dubious benefit of getting tier-free 512 land only. And I'm certainly not going to do it and keep paying tier on all my land.

The person who gets the $500 and uses it to buy new outfits is no more "on welfare" than you are. Or, to put it another way - you are no more NOT on welfare than they aren't. Actually, no one is on welfare, because we all paid for our premium account, and the stipend is a large part of the reason for paying it - probably more attractive than the tier-free 512.

coco

P.S. This notion that there are always jillions more people out there who will be eager to pay the Lindens $9.95 a month just to have 512 worth of land (and, then, hopefully tier up from there) - and so it doesn't matter how many people add up the benefits and teir down to basic - is pretty optimistic, if you ask me.

In any real economy, printing money for nothing is not a good thing. For every real dollar out there, there is a dollar worth of gold in reserve. When you print unreserved money, the value of the dollar decreases.

I think a good analogy for the SL economy is RL tourism. The few people in SL who are here to make money are dependant on the many who are here on "vacation" from real life. Stipends are one of the incentives to spend your lesiure time in SL. Calling your vacationing customers lazy for not getting a job and campaigning to reduce the incentives for them to vacation in SL isn't a smart long term plan.

There will always be many more tourists than entrepreneurs. So, I think it would be wise for all those entrepreneurs to think twice before reducing the incentive of the tourists to spend their leisure hours vacationing in SL, and three times before they start calling them lazy communists for not spending their leisure time working so they can buy some virtual product designed to be used during their leisure time.

Well, no, there's not gold backing it up. I found that out this year.

However, I am not talking about economy. I'm talking about psychology. As regards the economy, I don't think it will work to remove the stipend, because think that will reduce the number of premium accounts.

Psychologically, at some point, there will NOT be jilions more always coming for whatever is offered with a premium account, if what is offered isn't attractive enough.

The upshot of removing premium stipends would be that people like me will start having stores only on rented land, and living only on rented land. While the Lindens would ultimately still get the tier from that rented land, they would get far fewer $9.95's a month. For example, they would get the $9.95 from the LandownerAvatar who owns land 300 people have shops and homes on, but not from the 300 tenants LandownerAvatar is serving.

coco

What decade are you living in Weedy? There is no gold standard anymore. Hasn't been since before the Second World War. No country in the world today has enough gold in reserve to cover the money its printed. And the world economy actually functions.

Weedy keep up the fight. Let the welfare moochers know
they are on notice that their Tuesday Checks might be cut.

As for the blurb about Money and Gold. The United States
got off the Gold Standard in 1972. At that moment, no money
that was printed was backed up by Gold.

In stead of being on the Gold Standard, we have a Fiat Currency.
Meaning that its value is whatever we place in it. Its technically
exactly the same as the Linden Dollar. The only difference is
the Federal Reserve controls the money supply to fight Inflation.
Unlike LL who prints new L$ dollars like water pour out of a
firehose with no regard for inflation. Or should I say (MudFlation).


Night Time Reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard

I love the experts who don't know squat. The US got off the Gold Standard in 1933.
http://www.treas.gov/education/faq/currency/legal-tender.shtml

And here's some of the pro's and con's of the gold standard
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GoldStandard.html

The most commonly used method for controling inflation is through the manipulation of interest rates by a country's central bank. In SL there is no central bank, there is no large scale borrowing of money (no binding contracts, no lending and borrowing). So, despite whatever avatar name you choose, applying RL concepts to SL often doesn't work.

And we'll be keeping up the fight to keep parasitic leeches on note that if the stipend dies, 50% of the premium fees on SL do too. Not to mention the people who paid for lifetime accounts featuring the 500L$ stipend a week. I don't think LL wants to pay back my annual premium account on grounds of contract breach not to mention all the others.

P.S. lets stop this argument here..I won't debate it on this thread any longer- this is suppose dto be a welcoming thread.

Go back to school apprentice.

The Bretton Woods System, enacted in 1946 created a system of fixed exchange rates that allowed governments to sell their gold to the United States treasury at the price of $35/ounce. "The Bretton Woods system ended on August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon ended trading of gold at the fixed price of $35/ounce. At that point for the first time in history, formal links between the major world currencies and real commodities were severed". The gold standard has not been used in any major economy since that time.

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


I do apologize, it wasn't 1973, it was 1971.

Yes, the Central bank controls inflation through interest rates,
when an economy is based on borrowing.

When an economy is based on welfare with a qouta for each
person (ie: Like a Communist State), you have to control inflation
by controlling the money supply. Too many dollars in the economy
causes inflation. Too few and you get deflation. This type of system
of balance is a headache to administer.

This is why I'm an advocate of a Borrowing Based Economy with
a Central Bank who loans money to member banks in the economy.
Maybe a system where each Sim or Region had XX number of banks
licensed to operate. If you needed money, you got a loan from the
bank. Or you got a job and that job paid you via its bank loans.. etc...

Inflation can be kept in check by raising the cost of borrowing, thus
putting the breaks on a hot economy that is borrowing like mad...
And loans can be backed by land. Fail to make a payment 2, or 3,
and your land is revoked.. And while its being used as collateral, you
are unable to sell it.

Just curious if either of you have ever heard of Volunteers.
You know those people that work tirelessly on the Help Lines sorting out all the little problems people in this "non-game" have, or Mentors/Greeters, those players who welcome, teach and show newbies around SL??

By your own definitions these people are obviously the welfare scum of SL, as they don't create content to sell to people. And OMG!!! many of them are dependent on their stipends to buy things, the nerve of them.
Maybe they should all resign their positions as volunteers, and stop being leechers off of LL???
Just, if that happened, well who would answer all the calls for help, or teach newbies how to do things, or show them around???

Ahh, oh expert of all things economic. The Bretton Woods system was not the Gold Standard. Under the Gold Standard a country's bank notes were redeemable in gold at a set rate. So, for every $20.67 in available dollars there was an ounce of gold in the US reserve. In 1933 President Roosevelt nationalized gold held by private citizens and discontinued the practice of trading dollars for gold. That was the end of the gold standard in the US.

In 1946 the Bretton Woods system went into effect, where other countries used the US dollar as a reserve and the USA agreed to set the cost of gold at $35.00 per ounce. The US would redeem dollars for gold held by foreign central banks at a rate of $35.00 per ounce. The problem was that the US printed more money than it could redeem in gold. As the gold flowed out of Ft. Knox to foreign central banks, it became apparent that the US soon would run out of gold.

As you can see, under the gold standard the government could only print as many dollars as it had gold in reserve. Under the Bretton Woods system, the US could print as many dollars as it wanted, because ordinary holders of the dollar couldn't trade them in for gold. Only foreign central banks could, and as long as the balance of payments was positive for the US, the government printed as much money as it wanted. When the balance of payments was reversed it quickly became apparent that the US could not continue the practice.

So, the gold standard is when a currency is directly based on gold. The Bretton Woods system was when the international community based its currencies on the US dollar. The US would redeem the dollars held by foreign central banks at a set rate, but the printing of dollars was not tied to the amount of gold held by the Federal Reserve.

The international gold standard really became the common practice in the 1870's. It collapsed during the First World War, and was reinstated in a modified form from 1925 to 1931. It collapsed again in 1931, and it wasn't until 1946 that the Bretton Woods system went into effect. As long as the US economy was strong and exports high, the system worked. But by the late 1960's it was apparent to many economists that the negative balance of payments was draining the US gold reserves.

So technically I'm still correct. Although the general public
couldn't exchange dollars for Gold, foreign central banks
could. As such, the US Dollar was still on the Gold Standard
until 1971 because the USD had a fixed under pinning of
Gold.

When you said: "but the printing of dollars was not tied to
the amount of gold held by the Federal Reserve". That wasn't
entirely true. The US could increase the number of dollars
it printed, but they still had Gold Backing. Its just the
supply of doillars was increased when the US switched off
the direct gold standard and onto the Bretton Woods Standard.

She's right I left with about 3 sims of land. Did Linden Labs lose out. No, someone else is paying that teir right now. You don't have to pay someone to play a game, and Linden Labs isn't desperate on a few customers, ecspecially if they are someone living off a stipend as has been stated as absolutely neccesary by some.

Y'all act as if "the economy" is something that exists on its own, without any connection to LL.

We don't get $500 for doing nothing. We get $2000 and a small patch of land for giving LL 9.95 a month.

That in turn gets us to want the next patch of land over, and pretty soon we're giving LL $15 a month. And then more, and more. All of which LL pockets.

If that stops, and LL stops getting all those $9.95's a month - not to mention people tiering up, which they do less of when they rent - then they might care, even if some of the residents don't.

Maybe the residents would like to be getting that $9.95 themselves, by selling their own Lindens. Cool. Except then LL won't be getting it. I got a feeling LL would like to get it.

coco