Worthless and Weak

Of the 31 highest grossing films of the year so far, a full 16 of them are unoriginal, (either a re-make, a sequel, or based on a TV show or video game).

Of the remaining 15 films, a full five of them are comedies, which are sort of immune from the re-make and adaptation craze. (the only unoriginal comedy on the list was Sex and the City 2). At least one of these originals (Percy Jackson) was surely made with the concept of creating a series.

Looking at the unoriginal films, half of them just scream "what's the point?" Now, some of the sequels are understandable, I mean, of course Twilight and Iron Man are getting sequels, Hollywood cleaned up on those, but not all of them. Many of these seem to have the same plot and title as another film. (The Karate Kid, The Wolf Man, Clash of the Titans, Nightmare on Elm Street, etc).

Now, credit where credit is due, at least Alice in Wonderland, Robin Hood, and Sherlock Holmes seem to do something new with the material, but come on, do we really need another Robin Hood movie?

What really gets me is that virtually any comic book is now made into a movie. And ones that nobody has every heard of and bomb at the box office. I mean, how many people know about "Kick Ass" or "The Losers?" Or for that matter Jonah Hex? Or even Watchmen?

It wasn't always like this, in 1995, only 7 of the top 31 movies were unoriginal. And of those, half of them were sequels to really popular movies, (a Batman Movie, a Bond Movie, and a Die Hard Movie). So what happened? Are they really making more money like this?

Labels: fall, scooters, vacation

Step 1: Think of a deeply held belief of yours that is at least somewhat controversial (or at the very least, of which other people disagree with you).

Step 2: Imagine that you get a visit from your future self, from say 5 or 10 years from now. Your future self tells you that you were wrong about your aforementioned deeply held belief.

Do you believe your future self?

Labels: fall, scooters, vacation

So here's an economics puzzle for you...

So we all know that Savings - Investment = Exports - Imports

Savings = Personal Savings + Taxes - Goverment Spending

Therefore we can expand the formula to be:

S - I + T - G = X - M

This has to hold for all economies.

So how is a stimulus possible?

If we increase G then...

Either (personal) Savings increases by the same amount; (Ricardan equivalence holds)

Or Taxes increase by the same amount (which means we aren't even increasing the deficit; at this point we're barely even Keynesians)

Or Investment falls (crowding out)

Or imports increase

Or exports decrease

Or some combination of all

Likewise, if we decrease taxes, somewhere else something has to increase/decrease by the same amount, canceling out the stimulus.

There has to be a flaw here somewhere; if it is true then wouldn't everybody who's against stimulus use this argument? And I can't possibly be the first person to have thought of this; surely somebody else must have an answer somewhere...

Labels: economics

Wow, what a weekend. Friday night seems like forever and a half ago...

Labels: fall, scooters, vacation

Me and Casey in a "myspace" type photo...

Labels: fall, scooters, vacation