My thought experiment. If the earth's surface is both in Australia and North America at the same time, is that a form of super position?

Here is an interesting article about quantum theory and the "Schrodinger's Cat both alive and dead at the same time" paradox. It was a bit over my head.

I know that a physicist named Richard Feynman said, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." Tho I am not a physicist, I can engage in thought experiments also.

If an electron can both be in one place like a particle and all around the atom like a cloud, isn't that like the surface of the earth being both in Australia and North America simultaneously?

The way each of us observes the earth determines whether the surface is in Australia or North America. Where we are at that moment makes a big difference. We observe it differently depending on where we are.

Our observations create the reality, to some extent depending on where our limited line of vision; so to speak intersects with the bigger reality. Like a line being tangent to a circle. That's about as much as I remember from geometry class.

I'm not ruling out that conscious awareness might have some kind of seemingly magical effect on this, but that's yet another matter. Another tangent in thought. Scientists have been debating that one for decades.

Mutual funds seem more friendly to low income investors than home ownership which requires the high threshold of income to qualify for a mortgage.

I read that 55% of Americans own stock. A lot of people own stock and bonds as part of their retirement plans. On the other hand, most of the total value in the stock market is owned by the wealthiest people.

Home value is most likely the main way that common folks save money, but, like the stock market, home ownership is driving wealth disparity. As home values keep rising, the gap between owners and renters widens.

The gap between long term home owners, who bought at lower prices and more recent home buyers, who are buried under a high mortgage, widens as well.

Ironically, the stock market seems friendlier than home ownership for low income people. One can invest small amounts of money into a mutual fund for stocks. Being a homeowner requires the high threshold of having enough income to qualify for a mortgage.

As asset values, such as homes and stocks, continue to rise, the wealth gap widens.

Low interest rates seem to be adding to this problem. Private enterprise doesn't seem to use the money, from low interest rates, very wisely.

As some folks just sit back and watch their financial assets rise in value (your money working for you), government spending is needed to help people who don't have assets.

I've heard it suggested that government should be able to borrow at zero interest rates. In this way, there would be no interest on government debt. As for paying off the debt, government could just "keep kicking the can down the road," which is what it's doing anyway.

Government spending could create meaningful jobs in infrastructure development. Government seems to work better than the private market in doing the things we need; especially in dealing with the pandemic. Also it seems like government is needed to develop green infrastructure for addressing the global warming challenge.

Private enterprise can still be used to carry out the actual work. Use the private sector to carry out government contracts. In these tasks, private enterprise often does better than government bureaucracy.

Private enterprise can do the work, but government seems to work better as a consumer than just relying on the private marketplace alone.

Elon Musk's Space X is an example of government / private sector partnership. A private company sending rockets into space, but much of the revenue still comes from NASA; a government agency.

Glad I am in subsidized housing.

As business needs to run at low capacity due to pandemic, we need safety net rather than stimulus.

During the pandemic, there is more need for safety net than stimulus. While businesses are being asked to close, or limit capacity, stimulus isn't what's needed. Safety net is what's needed to keep people in their homes and to maintain people's health insurance.

We also need to keep various public servants on the job, such as police officers. Those who wish to defund the police do have a good point about prioritizing other social services, however.

For a lot of renters, who are facing mounting debt, there needs to be things like a rent debt jubilee. This can be funded by the government using printed money from the Federal Reserve. Otherwise a rent jubilee bankrupts a lot of landlords including mom and pops. We are now entering an era where governments and central banks, such as the Federal Reserve, are serving more as backstops to the economy. They are paying for mounting costs, such as the Medicare needs of our aging population.

Here is a link to an interesting article from The Economist. It's about the increasing role of printed money and the need to manage it wisely. Printed money can also create a great moral hazard, distortion, inflation and corruption if managed poorly.

I think Republicans tend to manage the money, as well as government, more poorly.

For the most part, we don't need stimulus in the middle of a pandemic, but we do need safety net.

As for stimulus, there are some things that we do need tho. Things like research on better treatments, testing and vaccines.

I also think that scientific research, in general, is good. Even something like astronomy can keep great minds engaged and create jobs. It tends to be a safe, social distancing, activity versus something like, for instance, a football game or a casino. Observatories with telescopes aren't usually that crowded.

In the long run, we will need funding to tackle our other big challenge; global warming. We need to keep building green infrastructure.

In early days of easy access to internet publicity, we underestimated how gullible people could be to false information.

In the early days of the internet, I thought the net would be a wonderful thing. Giving ordinary people a voice beyond just what big time media thought was newsworthy.

Little did I know how gullible people could be. Miss-truths spreading like wildfire. I thought that enough folks would take what they read with a grain of salt.

I thought most people would realize that opinion is opinion. Interesting, but still opinion. I thought people would take the time to study things and not be so quick to jump to conclusions.

I thought folks would rely less on sound bytes because on the internet, there is plenty of time and space to explain things more thoroughly. This, versus mass media where where time and newspaper page space is scarce and expensive.

I thought in the mass media of old, the sound byte rules and if it bleeds it leads because the clock was ticking with time and space being so expensive.

I thought individuals, in the internet audience, could be more in control. Things could be more interactive.

I still think the promise of the internet is true, but seems like folks are in such a hurry that they fall for things without taking the time for deeper understanding. People seem gullible.

I wonder why that is? Maybe it's a function of information overload which continues to bombard us more and more. Its been bombarding us since the invention of the printing press, I guess.

So many people's lives are just crammed too full and moving too fast.

Could be that we have needed the gatekeepers of professional media. The journalists to do investigative reporting and fact checking. A lot of ordinary people will often just follow their hunches and biases. They don't have the training that puts the breaks on things spinning into La La Land.

Pressure to reduce police budgets from both the left and the right. From the left for ideology. From the right from tax cuts and loss of local revenue.

On the right, the law of unintended consequences related to tight budgets. From the left, the idealism of transfering resources from police services to a utopia of softer social services.

Seattle City Council is proceeding with a 4 million dollar cut in police budget due to pressure from BLM protesters. Less noticed is an even larger 20 million dollars in cuts that are probably inevitable due to reduced local tax revenue. The second, bigger figure is strongly influenced by reduced local revenue due to the virus situation.

The police are being chopped at from both directions; no pun intended, since there was the "Chop Zone" in Seattle a few weeks back. This is pretty much a worrisome situation for public safety.

Some people on the left want to transfer money from police to other softer and more preventative things such as affordable housing and mental health resources.

Like the phrase an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; cure being calling the police.

As there are problems in society, the police are the one's who get called when things like domestic violence happen. The last resort, versus, for instance, a therapist.

Problem is that just about all services of local government, from police to mental health services, are facing the potential for larger cuts due to the loss in tax revenues.

Tho conservatives tend to oppose this, there still needs to be a financial bailout, or backstop, for local government from the federal government. Yes, it does seem like we just need to keep printing the money.

In an ideal society, there would be more affordable housing and a better social safety net. As funds to provide these things professionally are dwindling, it looks like more services will need to be provided by volunteers. Many of the softer services, such as mental health and housing, could be provided by informal and more volunteer means. Tiny home villages, for instance.

As for volunteer police services, there is the worry about citizen vigilantism.

Like hitting one's head on a brick wall, USA keeps trying and failing to solve race inequality. Maybe addressing income inequality can bring racial equality along for the ride.

There's lots of discussion in the media about racism these days. We've been trying to overcome these problems for decades.

I keep thinking that there are other problems in human culture that are even deeper and racism comes along for the ride. Racism is not necessarily always in the driver's seat.

For instance income inequality is a big problem and it does dis-proportionally effect racial minorities. Racial inequality is one of the effects of income inequality, but it's not the only effect.

I don't suggest that everyone should all be alike and make the same wage, but income inequality has gone to such an extreme that we have billionaires and hoards of totally homeless people. Income inequality has gone too far.

I still think racism is not be the main driver of these problems, but it is one of the results. Also, I'd say that racism was present in the design of much of our society today. Racism in our historic roots, but less present; or at least less explicit, today.

For example, from what I read, the institution of single family zoning has racism at it's core. Early government policies explicitly stated goals of preserving certain neighborhoods for white people.

The civil rights movement has removed all this obvious racism from laws, but income inequality continues to bring a result that is still disproportionately effecting racial minorities.

Like with income equality, I'm not necessarily saying that all single family neighborhoods should be abolished. It has kind of worked in protecting quiet neighborhoods. It becomes problematic as population grows in certain areas with a shortage of housing.

I recently listened to a show that was tackling both the issue of racism and the pandemic head on. The show was putting USA and of course Donald Trump to shame. I think Trump's failings are like the tip of the iceberg to a lot of human failings. That show is what got me to thinking.

Being not a typical liberal (tho still considered liberal) I often think about deeper human failings than the show brought up. At one point, they opened the phone lines and one caller brought up some interesting ideas about combating racism. He said legalizing marijuana would cut down on disproportionate incarceration. That's a thought and I'm not really a marijuana person. We have taken that step in a few states; including here in Washington.

He also suggested that job applications should not ask if someone has had a criminal record.

Alarm bells went off in my head related to safety given the fact that some people do commit crimes and not being able to find out about that before one hands the keys to the building over to a new employee could be problematic.

Then I got to thinking about how crazy the job world is, in a way. How hard it is to, for instance, get on the faculty of a university, such as Western Washington University. Why does one need so many credentials?

I can see reasons why, but there sure are a lot of barriers in our whole system of jobs and employment. Somehow, maybe we do need to figure out how to create more rungs to the ladder. More jobs where people could put their foot into the water and gradually build up the skills, as well as the trust that they need to advance.

How about universities creating part time custodial positions where the person could try out teaching one class? How about a custodial / student advisory position?

This isn't just a problem at universities. All of society could become more trusting. Create more rungs on the ladder. Then I got to thinking about social media. Rungs on the ladder is the promise that I thought the internet would bring. Facebook with it's citizen philosophers.

Not everyone can work for NPR or The New York Times, but everyone (pretty much) can publish on Facebook.

That somewhat Utopian dream has had it's problems, however. Consequences never intended in the early days of the internet.

Still I think we are, maybe, gradually making progress as a society. We do have our problems and sometimes the solutions bring new problems.

Given the imperfections in all the things we try, I keep thinking that patience has to be a virtue.

As the rest of the economy tries to catch up with healthcare and home prices

Generous unemployment benefits have given many Americans a taste of higher incomes. Going back to our low paid real jobs is less lucrative.

Maybe the minimum wage should go up to $15 per hour, or even more. Problem is, that doesn't come without consequences. Goods and services, that low wage workers provide, would go up in price. That's okay with me. Let gym memberships go up in price. I work at a YMCA. This could present problems, however.

Food prices would go up so food service workers can make more money. Executives and high paid professionals would have to see their wages go down; or at least their buying power go down. Their taxes would probably have to go up as things like government subsidized healthcare are part of this discussion.

As a society, we have become accustomed to low cost goods and services. It's kind of like being spoiled. Americans have become accustomed to low cost goods and services compared to rising home values stocks and professional salaries at least. Low cost compared to certain services, like medical specialists.

Food is probably too cheap. Gym memberships should maybe be more like $100 per month.

I got to thinking that for many services, like gym memberships, we are not competing with low wage workers in other countries. That argument is used against high wages for manufactured items that can just be imported for cheaper.

Most Americans don't work in manufacturing, anymore. We sell services to the American market. Services, like gym memberships, that are not easy to import.

Problem is, there still is competition. Competition from automation. When labor costs too much, business automates.

For gym memberships, there is competition from the great outdoors; especially during this wonderful weather we are now experiencing in Western Washington.

I do like the idea of a guaranteed minimum income. Just print more money and give it to people; especially lower income people. Eventually the dollar goes down in value so the assets of the rich are taxed anyway. The hidden tax of inflation. Home values, stocks and whatever can come down relative to things like food, for instance.

Some will say that higher wages creates more prosperity due to bolstering the consumer driven market. This may be true; especially when minimum wage laws apply across the board so folks can't just go down the street to another business that's undercutting someone's wage / price formula.

At the same time, these complex situations also vary from region to region. $15 may still not be enough to live in Seattle; land of million dollar fixeruppers, but this could have a totally different effect in a place like Pomeroy, Washington. Who's ever heard of Pomeroy? I have, I grew up in Pullman, not far from there.

Some of my thoughts related to reading this article from Salon. Why the idea of jobless benefits scares the conservative mind The pandemic has allowed us to conduct an experiment on how government assistance is good for the economy.

US not doing well in pandemic, but better than Iran. Can we trust China? Canada and most of Europe do much better.

I heard on BBC that the pandemic is a lot worse in Iran than the Iranian authorities have let on.

Makes me think about the different outcomes in various countries related to the pandemic. USA isn't doing very well either, but some other countries seem to be doing much better.

I would guess that countries, like Iran and maybe China only looked like they were doing better as we can't trust the figures. Others, like Canada, really do put USA to shame.

It would be interesting to explore why USA has fallen down compared to Canada, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan and many countries in Europe. Everyone has their own opinions, of course and I have mine.

In a nutshell, I think much of USA's problem relates to our worship of money and our overworked society. Americans have worked themselves into poor health.

Low taxes have lead to a tattered safety net. High rents and cost of essentials has lead to the pressure for going back to work when much of the work people do, like working in bars, is hazardous. Health insurance is based on employment for many people.

Then you have our lack of trust in one another, here in USA. There's rebellion against solutions such as masks. This makes doing things like contact tracing difficult. People fear that it's "Big Brother" watching. Some people will be wary of a vaccine when and if it becomes available.

I think our tendency toward lack of trust and an adversarial culture, in general is a problem. It's a problem from both the left and the right.

Also life should not be such a rat race. One shouldn't have to be a "financial high achiever" to survive. Quality of life, in other ways besides money, should be the bottom line.

Of course there will be shining examples of success, in society. People like Bill Gates and Elon Musk.

There will be high school kids that become millionaires just by cleverness, or being so lucky as to stumble upon a "killer app" before the age of 18. Kids that are already CEOs at age 22. We all know the stories and we ask, why didn't I think of that?

This does push society forward. Yes, I am happy that Space X, owned by Elon Musk, has just accomplished the first "private enterprise" trip to the International Space Station. We can be proud, as Americans. Great things can be accomplished. Science and engineering can move forward. Tesla electric cars; for instance.

Technological progress can lead to a greener future. Other countries have scientific progress as well. Look at Europe. The rest of the world may be leaving us behind, or at least we are not the "undisputed leaders." American Exceptionalism isn't the truth anymore; if it ever was. We are still in the game, however.

My main point is that everyone shouldn't have to be like Elon Musk for a few people to lead the way. There will always be the over achievers. Without that, society would be less interesting.

The rest of us don't have to be all stressed out; like we are all working for Elon Musk.

I hear rumors that Musk is hard to work with. I'm happy that Space X is making interesting news, but I don't think I could work there. I'm proud to be able to watch on the internet.

Maybe the rest of us need to learn to slow down a bit. To take better care of our health. Then, ironically, the whole country would be better off. Less people crashing and burning.

We have a lot of cultural problems and expectations, in America, that have made us more vulnerable to this virus. The rush to keep up with the Jones's. This makes us less likely to address global warming as well.

Many other countries are doing a lot better than us, but not all other countries are doing better.

Sweden has a higher per capita death rate than USA in spite of having a robust social safety net. It's experiment in staying open doesn't look like a good idea in hindsight.

China may be doing better due to being an authoritarian society. Contact tracing to the hilt. Maybe they go too far, but we may need a little more trust of government, in our society, to control this virus.

China takes it too far. Also one can't really trust the numbers from China. Are the authorities, in China, allowing the truth to be known?

Brazil, of course, is doing badly. Their leader has been referred to as "The Trump Of The Tropics." I don't need to go further. I do trust Canada, for the most part. We don't look very good compared to Canada in controlling this pandemic.

On Facebook, one of my readers summed it up well. He wrote:

There does seem to be a significant correlation between bad handling of the pandemic and paternalistic leadership.