Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 August 2

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August 2

Starving in Britain

I read about someone starving to death in Britain in the early 20th. century. What was the latest date at which a person could starve to death in Britain from lack of money? I also read another book - The South Country, a collection of the prose non-fiction writing of Edward Thomas (poet) - which describes the unemployed starving around the turn of the 19th/20th centuries. I expect when the welfare state was intoduced in the late 1940s, then starvation stopped, but does anyone have more precise details? 2.97.215.11 (talk) 12:46, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

You'll likely find that the rate of starvation just reduced, but didn't end, due to people too proud to accept charity, etc. StuRat (talk) 13:55, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

There is information on poverty and malnutrition in the UK today in this report. There's a narrow line between starvation and malnutrition, and as StuRat says, the availability of benefits doesn't mean that everyone eligible does actually claim them, or knows how to. Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:09, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

English Poor Laws explains legislated "relief" for the poor existed as far back as at least 1536. Moving ahead through history, read Liberal welfare reforms for new laws passed between 1906 and 1914 that did things such as make free school meals compulsory. National Assistance Act 1948 created the modern social safety net. There's also Timeline of the Poor Law system. 67.22.236.140 (talk) 14:22, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Of course, free school meals are no use to people too old to go to school. Pais (talk) 14:40, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

This sort of thing is always caused by alcoholism or mental illness or child abuse or state violations of human rights. No one simply starves to death in the modern West without some other cause than mere lack of abundance of food. μηδείς (talk) 21:15, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

You have not read the question. 2.97.215.11 (talk) 22:47, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I answered you. Never, unless there were some other more fundamental reason. μηδείς (talk) 23:51, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

You have still not read the question, sigh. 92.29.116.165 (talk) 10:02, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Although the Liberal welfare reforms (linked above) provided limited unemployment benefit, old age pensions and sickness pay, there were many who were not eligable for these payments. For them the last resort were the workhouses, which were not finally wound-up until 1929. For those unwilling to submit themselves to such an austere regime, starvation could have been the end result. Alansplodge (talk) 23:12, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

There are reports of death from starvation during the depression of the 1930s, although this was rare.[1]

Generally, England has not suffered serious food shortages for a long time: Famine#England says the last peace-time famine was in 1623-4. As mentioned above, England has had welfare provisions since the middle ages (see English Poor Laws). Depending on your definition of Britain, the Irish potato famine killed a large number of people in Ulster as well as the rest of Ireland in the 1840s, and at that time all Ireland was part of the UK - see Great Famine (Ireland). The Highland Potato Famine in Scotland in the 1840s doesn't seem to have led to significant deaths from starvation, thanks to state aid.[2]

People still die of starvation today, typically through anorexia nervosa and other mental illness, child neglect[3], or the neglect of old people in homes and hospitals who who are unable to feed themselves[4][5][6]. There are reports of an elderly woman dying in 2009 of "self-neglect" after failing to eat enough[7] although poverty was not involved. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:54, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

The amount of food in the economy is not the point, the point is if someone who had no money to buy food would starve. 92.29.116.165 (talk) 10:08, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

That is outright nonsense. Show one documented case since the government-caused Irish famine of a person dying of starvation on the street, asking for food, who was refused charitable aid. Just one case. μηδείς (talk) 20:14, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Medeis, are you perhaps very tired? Other users have repeatedly suggest you reread the question, as you are responding to things that are not there. 86.163.1.169 (talk) 21:06, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

The question is based on the false premise that without government involvement, people would routinely be starving to death due to lack of money. The premise is manifestly false. If it isn't, surely we can get some pictures of starving Yorkshiremen or quotes of villagers in Arkansas saying that they knew old man Smith was slowly dying due to lack of food but didn't know how to help him. Except for starvation caused by other problems--mental illness, abuse, government-caused famine--no one has starved to death in the civilized world for hundreds of years. μηδείς (talk) 18:32, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Whole communities were short of food and money, not just isolated individuals. A starving person would be among others who were barely managing to escape starvation themselves. The standard of living in the past was very much lower than what we take for granted today. Food was very much more expensive than it is now, and made up a high proportion of families expenditure, up to 100%. 92.24.179.252 (talk) 18:48, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, people died of starvation in Britain up to and including the 1930s. Starvation is not always straightforward: hungry and malnourished people will often die of a disease that they would be able to fight off in other circumstances. (See, for example, the Hansard record of the Case of Alleged Starvation at Tain (1882).) And the most likely people to die are babies, because their mothers are not well fed, or because there is not enough to wean them on. (Look for stats on infant mortality.) George Orwell documented the starvation conditions under which the poor lived and died before WWII. (See his essay The Politics of Starvation, and much else of his writing.) As for the assertion that "no one has starved to death in the civilized world for hundreds of years", see our List of famines. There is a long extract from The Thirties: An Intimate History Of Britain by Juliet Gardiner here. For a case last year, how about this article from the Scotland Herald site: "Starvation contributed to death of 450 Scots" 10 August 2010. BrainyBabe (talk) 00:05, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Malnutrition is not starvation, sensationalist headlines notwithstanding. Your "quoting" me to point out the existence of famines caused by government policies and war by deleting the beginning of the sentence: "Except for starvation caused by other problems--mental illness, abuse, government-caused famine--" was particularly clever, for which I congratulate you. Special pleading about malnutrition (200,000+ a year dying from diet due to type 2 diabetes yearly in the US) and child abuse, neither of which problems are solved by the welfare state, does not amount to a single case of pure and simple acute starvation without some other pathology in a civilized setting. μηδείς (talk) 16:26, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I point the OP and anyone else interested to our article on starvation, which says the condition can stem from medical conditions or "circumstantial causes: Famine – for any reason, including overpopulation and war; Fasting – done without proper medical supervision and lasting more than a month; Poverty". I make no comment about the welfare state, nor the use of the contentious adjective "civilised" to describe an otherwise unspecified set of places, but certainly there was widespread poverty, deprivation, and malnutrition in Britain in the 1930s. A good resource, looking internationally, is Hunger: A Modern History by James Vernon, professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of its Center for British Studies. The entry on "The Great Depression" in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics says almost in passing, in reference to the United States, that "some people starved". In Canada, still then tightly tied to Britain, people starved for lack of work [8]. Back in England, there is "Urban Famine in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Effect of the Landcashire Cotton Famine on Working-Class Diet and Health" here. The landmark London study Round About a Pound a Week was published in 1913 and is still in print; it describes "details of the division of food within the family, with the breadwinner being given a much greater share of the food than the rest of the family. This was because the other family members were completely dependent on the breadwinner. Nonetheless, this was rarely a sufficient amount". These were not the poorest in society, but still, "one in five of the children died at birth, and another one in ten before they reached adulthood." People (especially babies and children) died from lack of food. BrainyBabe (talk) 18:25, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) and Jack London's The People of the Abyss (1902) describe those who were above starving but are still good non-fiction reads about the poverty of that time. 92.28.252.178 (talk) 15:13, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

First to claim prayer is ineffective?

Who is the first person or philosophy in history to claim prayer doesn't work? --RisingSunWiki 13:32, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

The article "Efficacy of prayer" implies that Francis Galton in 1872 "made the first statistical analysis of third-party prayer". Gabbe (talk) 13:47, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I believe some Enlightenment philosophers questioned the efficacy of prayer in the 17th century, at least 200 years before Galton. --RisingSunWiki 13:51, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

If you define prayer as asking a deity for favours then you could say that The Buddha was the first. -- Q Chris (talk) 14:31, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Later followed by Jesus, when he asked "God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Christians no doubt have a different interpretation of that line, which we're no doubt about to hear.)--Shantavira|^{feed me} 14:55, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I can't see how anyone, Christian or otherwise, could interpret Jesus' quoting Psalm 22 as an assertion on his part that prayer is ineffective. Pais (talk) 15:29, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

The reason he said this is because he was a fervent apocalypticist. He said it in response to realizing that the world was not going to come to an end and that his central message was completely wrong.Greg Bard (talk) 23:24, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

... in that case, his disciples obviously didn't believe him! Dbfirs 00:34, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Possible candidate: Cicero quotes Diagoras of Melos, about 2,500 years ago, as mocking people who had prayed to be saved from shipwreck and drowning and who were now offering prayers of gratitude (see Diagoras_of_Melos#Philosophy). However, note also that History of atheism claims the belief God doesn't exist is at least as old as the belief that God does exist. Presumably atheists have always said prayer is ineffective, so your question may not be answerable. (Another 2,500-year-old text you might look through: Ishvarakrishna's Samkhyakarika.) 207.107.246.140 (talk) 14:56, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

To the OP: Define what you mean by "doesn't work". If I pray for a new car, I'm not likely to be handed one. However, if I pray for spiritual strength, I'm very likely to receive it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:40, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

For example, "Dear God, please cure my cancer", or "Dear God, please protect me while I drive on the freeway". --RisingSunWiki 16:52, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

From a theological point of view, the idea that God is omniscient is very hard to reconcile with the idea that human prayer can cause God to change his mind. This has been a sore point for the Catholic church for hundreds of years, which they have mainly resolved by ducking and weaving. The official doctrine since the middle ages, I believe, has been that the proper function of prayer is not to influence God's actions, but to bind oneself more tightly to God. But it is not considered heretical to ask God for something, only misguided. Looie496 (talk) 16:59, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Who was the first to claim that prayer does work? It is possible that the claim that prayer doesn't work preceded the claim that prayer does work. Do we have a historical record of the earliest claim that prayer does work? Bus stop (talk) 17:01, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

So, Looie, if it's misguided to use prayer to ask God for things, what's "Give us this day our daily bread" all about? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 03:15, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

It seems foremost like a metaphor; that forgiveness is as vital to the spirit as food to the body. Wnt (talk) 14:12, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

It's rarely used as a metaphor, though. Drought-affected communities pray for rain, often led by their local Christian clergyperson. People pray that their child/parent/relative/friend survives the major surgery they're undergoing. People go to Lourdes and other places to get the sacred water and pray for cures for incurable diseases, and there's a whole industry that's grown up around this, fully sanctioned by the Church. How does that work if it's considered theologically misguided to pray for such things? -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 23:23, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. This view may be Looie's, but it is not the view of the Catholic Church. While the Catholic Church doesn't require belief in any post-Apostolic miracles or revelation, it does clearly endorse the idea of prayer being answered, and of God continuing to have a robust presence through the physical world. I have never understood why people think God being omniscient poses a problem for prayer: I am currently training a toddler to be polite and considerate, as much as a toddler can be. I know that this toddler wants to eat fruit, and I can be certain that they want cherries if I am eating cherries. But I wait for them to ask properly, because it is important for them to learn how to communicate properly with others. I know that they will, eventually, ask properly, but that doesn't mean they don't need to actually remember and decide to do so. And just because they ask for something properly, doesn't necessarily mean they get it: if they ask for something too bad for them, or (if you like) too 'outside my will', I will not allow it no matter how nicely they ask. When they are older and more mature, they will be able to identifiy these situations for themselves. 86.161.210.242 (talk) 13:22, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Epicurus properly held that if the gods exist they are perfect, and hence not concerned with our affairs. Unfortunately for Bugs' theory above, the belief that prayer can give one spiritual strength is based upon a false notion of the later, and if it succeeds, it only does so accidentally. You cannot petition the Lord with prayer.

μηδείς (talk) 20:43, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm with Bus Stop above. I like to think that man was rational before someone tried to fool him with religion. Not praying (i.e. having no faith in prayer) would have come before believing in it. HiLo48 (talk) 20:50, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

No, HiLo48. Dominant male chimps pound their chests at the sky and shake the trees when it rains, constituting a divergent branch of the priesthood of the primate rain god. Video.

μηδείς (talk) 21:09, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I think you missed an "Original research"-template. --Saddhiyama (talk) 21:48, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

If that comment was meant for me, you obviously didn't follow the source I gave. Others are available. Sweep your own stable before sniffing mine. μηδείς (talk) 23:54, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

There's no reason to think that humans were "reasonable" and were then "fooled" by religion. Human beings seem to create folk religions almost spontaneously. We're clearly hardwired to do it. (Probably because we're hardwired to make meaning out of the world, and our brains are wired to accept bad or partial answers pretty readily.) "Rationality" or "reason" much less "empiricism" has not been our lot's default state, something which is stressed implicitly by the amount of training it takes to become a reason-machine (philosopher, scientist, logician, what have you). I suspect most people's experience backs this up. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:34, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes. The so-called "pagan" religions, or "folk" religions have been around forever, i.e. the tendency to anthropomorphize (sp?) natural phenomena. Listen to descriptions of weather events, and you'll observe that paganism is alive and well. And there are countless folks who will tell you that any given event "happens for a reason". The notion of atheism, at least as an overt "anti-religion", is relatively recent. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:09, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Prayer is mostly effective in guiding action, or changing non-personal probability from 49% to 51%. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 22:25, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

That is what is called thought, not "prayer". μηδείς (talk) 03:55, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Observing a scientific study on prayer that finds it isn't an effective sort of magic is a little bit like watching a caveman beating a wildebeest over the head with a pistol and deciding it isn't a very good weapon ... or perhaps sniffing a dispenser for intranasal flu vaccine and deciding that there's nothing special about it. An unusual but invaluable practical use, as described in the article about the Diocletianic Persecution, concerns therapy against precognition using the sign of the cross. Absurd, absolutely, but not if you've had occasion to use it... Wnt (talk) 06:19, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Hair removal in ancient time

How did men and women remove body hair in ancient time? What were the tools used by them? --Cosmic Cosmos (talk) 14:52, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by ancient? The razor dates back to the Bronze Age. Before that I would guess they didn't bother.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 14:57, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I recall reading that in Roman times (when being hirsute was not in style), they were plucked by slaves. (Brief mention in Plucking (hair removal).) Tweezers are a simple enough concept that I would not doubt they had them in ancient times. -- 174.24.213.112 (talk) 16:26, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Actually, while our article states that razors date back to the Bronze Age, it also states that before the Bronze Age sharpened flints, clamshells, and other objects were used as razors. So it is likely that hair removal dates back well into prehistoric time. Still, I don't think we can assume that the removal of body hair was necessarily practiced in every past culture. Hair removal is a matter of fashion, which changes over time. Marco polo (talk) 17:20, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Tweezers also date back many millennia. Pais (talk) 17:35, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Scissors actually seem more complex, so I wonder how people cut their hair before that. StuRat (talk) 17:47, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

You only need one blade to cut your hair (it's easier with two blades, but it's possible with one), so anything sufficiently sharp that can be used as a knife can be used to cut hair. Pais (talk) 18:12, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Having had haircuts before with nothing but a straight razor and a comb, a skilled barber doesn't need scissors. A properly sharpened razor blade works fine. You use the comb to guide the blade to cut the hair to the proper length. --Jayron32 19:44, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Pumice stones ,sugaring ,and I believe the Egyptians used honey in some way but I can't find a decent link right now. Hotclaws (talk) 21:19, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I have read of native Americans plucking hairs with clamshells. Edison (talk) 01:43, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Aristophanes mentions at least three techniques in his plays. In Assemblywomen, Praxagora celebrates her lantern, among other with "Thou alone shinest into the secret recesses of our thighs and dost singe the hair that groweth there, and with thy flame dost light the actions of our loves.". Another woman states: "I began by throwing away my razor, so that I might get quite hairy, and no longer resemble a woman." ([9]). (technique mentioned above). In Lysistrata, the protagonist's words "with our dear Venus-plats plucked trim and neat" [10] refers to a third technique (also mentioned above). ---Sluzzelin talk 02:38, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

This blog post may be interesting. It also mentions threading (which according to that article dates back to ancient Persia) and primitive depilatory creams, for which the Romans used quicklime or arsenic[11][12] (modern depilatory products typically use calcium hydroxide rather than sodium hydroxide, according to Chemical depilatory). --Colapeninsula (talk) 10:07, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Status quo

I fully understand why kingdoms etc.Have a two tier system of government,but I do not see why former communist countries and America/s have adopted such an undemocratic form when the idea was to be governed by the majority and not a load of rich,appointed farts who only wish to maintain STATUS QUO for their own advantage !! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.135.76.4 (talk) 17:50, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Hey, don't be rude about the Royal Family. British people are proud that they waste our money. 2.97.215.11 (talk) 19:24, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Is this supposed to be a question? AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:53, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I think you are asking why representative democracy is almost universally practiced over direct democracy. Is this correct ? If so, here are a couple reasons:

1) It historically wasn't logistically possible for everyone to vote on every issue, as this would involve them physically going to voting booths on a daily basis, or voting via mail, which wouldn't work well for the illiterate and would slow things down considerably. Modern technology now makes this possible, however.

2) There's concern that the "uneducated masses" might not vote logically. For example the Tea Party movement in the US might just choose to default on the US debt, regardless of the dire consequences. StuRat (talk) 17:56, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

The majority do not possess the necessary skills to make many decisions directly, so they appoint representatives. The results might be more disastrous if every individual had a direct say in almost everything. Bus stop (talk) 17:57, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah -- just look at Wikipedia. Looie496 (talk) 18:02, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

That's probably a good comparison. It was once thought that only "professionals" could write an encyclopedia, and that the anarchy resulting from everyone writing one would make it useless. However, that hasn't turned out to be the case. Sure, there are idiots out there who contribute, but the majority quickly revert their edits. Would the same lessons apply to direct democracy ? That is, no doubt there are morons who would just vote to "nuke the foreigners" on every international issue, but presumably the majority is intelligent enough to vote them down. I'd also suspect that most people would abstain from voting in areas outside their expertise, so, for example, we might get public school systems designed by teachers and parents, not by politicians, which might be a good thing. StuRat (talk) 18:07, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Our dignified representatives already voted to "nuke the foreigners". Bus stop (talk) 18:17, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure, and our article says also, that was by executive order so there wasn't much voting.... Nil Einne (talk) 02:51, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

That seems to be somewhat contradictory. If most people abstain from voting in areas outside their expertise, then it's easy for the 'nuke the foreigners' or whatever crew potentially without the expertise but who do care in whatever way to overule the teachers and parents. Although I'm not sure the majority of parents will always make the best decision anyway, look at creationism (including its recent intelligent design and 'teach the controversy'/'academic freedom' iterations in the US or whatever else. There is also the infamous South Dakota resolution [13] which was originally going to suggest the teaching of 'astrological' effects on climate change (but was changed I believe by the SD senate), this was from politicians but are such things less likely if it was only parents voting? I'm not convinced.... Of course 'abstain' is perhaps a little generous anyway. Sure some people may abstain but more likely many people just can't be bothered to vote. The Minaret controversy in Switzerland may be one example where the a lot of people didn't really care and so didn't vote so resulted in a decision which may not have had the support of the majority of the voting population even if it gained the majority vote of people who voted because they came out to vote. I'm sure of course these and plenty of other risks of direct democracy are discussed in the appropriate articles and in other external sources I won't comment more. Nil Einne (talk) 02:47, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

My perception is that the average total moron doesn't want anything to do with voting, but, if forced, is likely to vote to nuke anybody who annoys him. StuRat (talk) 04:07, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

One area where direct democracy doesn't help is with what I call "temporal bias". That is, either people or their representatives will vote themselves benefits now, and freely borrow money to do so, not worrying about the negative consequences which occur later, quite possibly to subsequent generations. I suppose we need to invent a time machine, so that those affected in the future by our current actions can also have a say. StuRat (talk) 18:16, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

See Tyranny of the majority. Just as applicable to Wikipedia. Schyler (exquirere bonum ipsum) 20:29, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

See also minoritarianism, social inertia and tipping point (sociology). ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 22:23, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Also, wikipedia has been around for less then a decade and really hasn't had a real crisis. The fact that it is a model of direct democracy that has not really been tested, and that no one is forced to live with does not really instill much additional credence to the direct democratic model for a government. Googlemeister (talk) 20:08, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Job Creation

In the history of the United States who has created the most jobs- Government or the Private Sector — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.65.250.106 (talk) 20:57, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, the U.S. Federal government is the largest single employer in the United States. They directly employ 2 million people. That doesn't include people who work directly for State governments or county governments or municipal governments. According to Economy of the United States, 22 million people are employed in public sector jobs overall, accounting for about 8% of all jobs. Now, this does not include contractors and other people who's jobs depend on the government, including people who work in the defense industry, infrastructure maintenance and building (like road crews), garbage collection, etc, a whole slew of industries that are privately owned but which contract from the government. Indeed, it is probably almost impossible to "parse out" which individual private sector jobs are dependent on the government and which aren't; a paving company has to pave both public roads and private parking lots; and it would likely employ less people if it had no roads to pave at all, but it makes calculating which specific people owe their jobs to paving roads, and which to paving driveways. The same is true of lots of "private" industry: Boeing builds planes for private airlines, but also builds military planes. The government at all levels (federal, state, county, and municipal) has an important role in creating lots of jobs in the United States, and not just because of people it employs directly. On raw numbers, over the course of history since 1776, one would have to say that most people have been employed by the private sector; but in the modern economy (as I outlined above) extracting who is responsible for those jobs is a tricky thing; it's tricky enough that it allows both political parties to create bullshit statistics to demonize their opponents with. --Jayron32 21:37, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

(ec) What are you defining as "creating a job"? If you mean, do more people work not directly as government employees than not, then yes, clear the private sector taken as a whole dwarfs the public sector. But many government "job creation" programs are not directed at direct employment: they are in the form of stimulus funds, contractors, or tax rebates that incentivize jobs in the private sector. So I'm not sure how you'd count that sort of activity in a systematic way. (We may also consider, perhaps, which sector has "destroyed" more jobs — at least national ones ones. How many U.S. jobs did the automobile industry dis-create when they decided to relocate their production facilities abroad?) --Mr.98 (talk) 21:38, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

The American debt

Hi. This may seem ignorant or insensitive, though I'm not trying to post a diatribe nor start a debate, but is there any specific reason the United States cannot send $15 trillion USD to China all at once to settle the debt problem? Thanks. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 22:19, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

China only owns something like 11% of the US's debt, for one thing. For another, yes, the US could "print" US$15 trillion of money, but this would be a very inflationary move — this Federal Reserve link seems to say the M2 money supply measurement is only about half that amount. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:45, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

As an example, take Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, and this image, of what a local newspaper in Zimbabwe did as a publicity stunt. And yes, those are actual bills. -- Zanimum (talk) 23:21, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

That looks like London to me, not Zimbabwe. Its probably a newsdpaper published in Britain for Zimbabwean ex-pats. Besides which if they made comments like that in Zim, they'd get arrested and disapear. 92.28.249.101 (talk) 22:48, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

The 'US debt problem' is not related to China at all. The US has set its debt limit by law. It's a completely different situation from countries like Greece, which cannot take more debt because no one would lend to them (at a reasonable rate). Quest09 (talk) 23:40, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

While the current US debt isn't yet at the point where the US can't "borrow from Peter to pay Paul", it may be at the tipping point beyond which this will one day inevitably occur. StuRat (talk) 00:03, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Besides the other objections that have been mentioned, China wouldn't have anything to do with that money except use it to buy US government bonds anyway. That's the only thing they can think of to do with the trade surplus they run with us. What China would really like to do, I believe, is simply throw our debts to them in the trash -- they're really just a nuisance both to them and to us. Looie496 (talk) 03:01, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

To explain a bit more what Looie496 means: China has a trade surplus with the U.S.; that means that lots of Chinese goods go to the U.S., and to buy those goods lots of cash goes to China. Now, as an individual, what do you do with excess cash? You don't keep it under the mattress; you probably want to invest it, and usually in something low risk. Most people keep their excess cash in a savings account at the local bank. Now, lets say you have a metric shitload of excess cash lying around: What is the safest investment vehicle in the entire world for excess cash? Like, literally the safest investment you can make (assume, for a second, we're talking 10 years ago, just for the sake of arguement). It's United States Treasury securitys. As Looie496 indicates: China doesn't buy U.S. debt for any nefarious purposes, it buys it because it has to do SOMETHING with the cash we keep sending them; they can't just keep piles of greenbacks lying around, so they invest it in something safe, which happens to be U.S. debt. That's all that's going on here. --Jayron32 03:10, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

One possibly paranoid allegation being made in my country, Australia, these days is that China is buying up lots of our land. I guess that's a fairly reliable investment. Don't know if it's happening in the USA. HiLo48 (talk) 03:55, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

It's actually a fairly shitty investment in the U.S. of late, given what happened in the real estate bubble of 2008. It started as overinflated housing prices, but that sort of thing infects the entire real estate market: not only is no one building houses, but commercial properties lie vacant, and undeveloped land now stays undeveloped, depressing its value. That shuttles you back into Treasury securities for safety... --Jayron32 03:58, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

That means it was a bad investment prior to the collapse of the bubble. Now that prices have bottomed out, it's a good investment again. StuRat (talk) 04:02, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Sort of, except that there's an oversupply of real estate on the market still. As would be expected, construction didn't stop the second the bubble burst; so before prices start going up we're going to need to see all the excess supply get taken care of. The real estate market hasn't bottomed out like a "V", it has bottomed out like an "L", real estate prices have been flat for a while, and are likely to remain flat for a long time to come. That makes real estate still a pretty lousy investment when compared to the bond markets, which generally have a guaranteed rate of return (excepting the rare possibility of default). There's no real sign of a genuine recovery in real estate prices for a long time; meaning that while they may become a good investment in the future, they probably aren't right now. --Jayron32 05:15, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah, but Americans have an ingenious solution to that. First the homeowner can't pay the mortgage some scammer sold him that has its rate explode unexpectedly. So the police throw him out of his home and give it to whatever company eventually turns out to own the mortgate. This company tears down the house and gives it to the local government to use for "open space" (which incidentally means no more taxes are paid on it; what's curious is how doggedly a local government in this free society will fight any attempt to build a church let alone a mosque because it would take land off the tax rolls). The company gets a tax writeoff for their charitable gift (I think that actually means they get a negative income tax subsidy, assuming they didn't really make money any other way, but I could be wrong) And we get more and more homeless people to pretend to care about while viciously kicking them from place to place until someday they learn dignity in jihad. If Americans were any cleverer, we'd be too stupid to breathe... [14] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wnt (talk • contribs)

Wnt, if you're going to engage in hyperbolic demagoguery, you could at least sign it to claim it... But it isn't particularly helpful to try to explain general trends using a highly specific example. In the article you cited, this is not being used as a widespread policy by the banks; rather it is being used in specific cases in really bad neighborhoods in rust belt cities like Cleveland and Detroit where the reposessed homes are valued at less than a used car. The banks aren't bulldozing $150,000 homes, they are bulldozing $1,500 homes; I daresay they probably have a lot of homes on their books that they are NOT bulldozing because they still have value; but if the sale price of the home doesn't even cover signing costs, the bank really has no options. Yes, it is happening, but it doesn't mean that one can extrapolate those specific examples into a nationwide policy. --Jayron32 05:31, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

To answer the original question, as others have said, the debt problem is not simply the amount that the United States owes to China. It is the total amount owed, and the ongoing deficit, which requires continued borrowing. Printing money to pay off the debt might be part of the solution, but printing money to pay off only China's debt would mean that China would probably just buy up the remaining debt and/or the newly issued debt. This would drive up the price of US Treasury bills and further lower interest rates, to negligible levels. Such a move would greatly reduce the appeal of holding assets denominated in US dollars, causing the relative value of the dollar to fall sharply. Such a sharp drop in the dollar would almost certainly lead to consumer price inflation, as it would push up the cost of any imported goods or goods whose price reflects imported inputs (such as the cost of petroleum-fueled transportation or production, e.g., food products). To truly monetize the debt, or pay the debt off through money creation, and truly "solve" the debt problem, the United States would first need to eliminate its deficit and its need to borrow through some combination of cutting expenditures and raising taxes. Then money could be printed to pay off the outstanding debt. Of course, if creditors such as China had no option of rolling over the cash that they received into new or recycled US debt, they would be forced to convert their US dollars into other currencies and/or use the dollars to buy up other assets, such as agricultural land in Australia or other places. The effect of such a large increase in the money supply would be a drop in the relative value of the US dollar and very high inflation. Conceivably, eliminating US debt could end the role of the US dollar as the world's chief reserve currency. This role has played a key role in supporting the relative value of the dollar. Ending this role and flooding world markets with dollars that have little remaining intrinsic value could cause the value of the dollar to plummet and dollars held worldwide to flow back to the United States, causing galloping inflation or even hyperinflation. Solving the debt problem in this way would create a set of new problems. Marco polo (talk) 13:16, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Copyright, Canada: can this image be made PD?

A newspaper takes a photograph of a costumed character of Winnie the Pooh (the official costume), in a mall, at a public event. The newspaper has:

• the permission of Disney to take the image,
• the permission of the mall,
• the permission of the kids in the mall,
• full copyright on the image, as the photographer was staff.

Can they choose to release this 1970s image as public domain (or CC-BY 3.0, or something else free), now? Similarly, they have a photo of amateur curlers on Halloween. The curlers (that's a sport, FYI) are wearing handmade costumes of McDonaldland characters, similar to cosplay. Again,

• permission of people in the photograph,
• permission of venue,
• staff photographer,

... but this one is unofficial characters. Note that the M on Ronald's outfit is just a Roman alphabet M, not the golden arches, so that's one trademark gone, it's just the fan-made characters. Each costume is clearly not official. Can the newspaper release that image as PD? -- Zanimum (talk) 23:16, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

You should ask this exact same question at WP:MCQ. --Jayron32 00:28, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

This is unfortunately, I think, a bit too close to legal advice for the Reference Desk. I would scrutinize closely what the permission of Disney to take the image says (assuming it is in writing). Barring something obvious there, I would check in with the newspaper's legal counsel. --Mr.98 (talk) 00:25, 3 August 2011 (UTC)