Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 August 1

= August 1 =

Is Boris putting children at risk?
(Banned user, once more. – Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:37, 5 August 2020 (UTC))


 * Hazardous activities are hazardous. Yes. But Corona virus infections are not the only hazard around. Missing school for extended periods of time has implications for the social, intellectual, and in many cases physical well-being of students (think school lunches, physical activity classes, detection of abuse cases). Thus, opening schools is highly desirable. In general, if a society manages to keep the reproduction rate R below one, it is on the right track - that means that the number of infected people is going down. Different restrictions have different effects on R. If opening schools increases R by, say, 0.4 due to increase interaction of pupils, you can have more restrictions in other areas (say close the pubs again) to compensate. It is a matter of politics to weight the different restrictions against each other, and decide what to do. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 13:13, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, but saying that does not mean that all hazards are equal. Merely because we take some risk with any activity does not mean that we should take any risk with every activity.  Covid-19 is a significantly deadlier infectious disease than anything we've seen in recent memory, and the risks to long-term well-being of children may indeed be worse as they watch their classmates and teachers die of the disease.  I've worked in education since 2000, and in all that time I have had 2 colleagues and 4 students die during the school year.  Given what we know about the disease, I could probably expect at least that many during one year, which is a likely unacceptable risk to take at this time.  The emotional and social disruption those deaths will cause is at least equal to, and probably much greater than, the disruption caused by online schooling.  In the US currently, there have been several schools that have opened for in-person schooling, and within days have had to shut down and go fully online due to outbreaks of Covid-19.  It's almost laughably pointless to discuss opening schools at the current infection rates in the US, and the UK is not faring much better currently.  Yes, there will come a time when the discussion of how to open schools, and at what risk level, and how to manage it effectively, will be appropriate.  We're so far from that in August, 2020 that it seems ludicrous to discuss it.  -- Jayron 32 13:25, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, my direct perspective is from Germany, where the situation is somewhat better (so far). On the other hand, looking at Israel is a stark warning. But the general two points are valid and important - yes, you can trade restrictions against each other to keep infection rates at an acceptable level (which, of course, implies that you first need to reach acceptable levels). And restrictions are not "free" - they also come at a significant human cost. Personally, I've thrived so far - I teach from home, with a beautiful view from my private office, I cook at home (and I can cook ;-), thus saving money (and probably calories, if not for ice cream), and I exercise with long bike rides over the local vineyards. My scientific collaboration has been fully electronic for years. But the situation is a lot different for a family with a cramped flat, with parents who may be ill-equipped to home-school, and who may not be able to afford good electronic communication equipment. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:39, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * All of that is true, and none of it goes away if we open schools too early, have a massive outbreak, have to re-close them again, and then that same family has all of those same problems and now has Covid-19. The evidence seems to show that the greatest risks to contracting the disease is close, indoor contact with infected people over long, unbroken stretches of time.  Or exactly what school is.  Online schooling is not ideal, but it's less not ideal than massive outbreaks which overwhelm the healthcare system and cause preventable death. -- Jayron 32 14:48, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I suspect we are in violent agreement. I'm not arguing for opening schools in any particular current situation, I just discuss the general argument. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:16, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

What would happen if some country printed money to pay all his debt under those very specific condintions?
When a country print money, inflation happens (unless he burn or shred some of his money equivalent to the amount he printed).

What would happen if some country calculated his debt, lets say X dollars, and print only exact X dollars (not using this printed money, before it prints all the X dollars needed) and then pay all their debt at the same time and stop printing money for Y years (to not inflate the currency even more, and instead deflate it)?

PS: At this hypothetical situation this trick would be used only once, and the act of spending like hell (knowing you can just ask loans and pay those loans with more loans or printed money) would not be used anymore.2804:7F2:688:3746:80FC:B354:5448:3F3A (talk) 19:35, 1 August 2020 (UTC)


 * In most circumstances, deflation is not desirable in a modern economy. However, your scenario has some similarity to the Plano Real... AnonMoos (talk) 19:47, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The country printed tons and tons of money (because most countries have extremely huge debt), so mega hyperinflation will happen, what I am asking is what would happen if he tried to not print more money to counter all that extreme hyperinflation that he now created. 2804:7F2:688:3746:80FC:B354:5448:3F3A (talk) 19:35, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Is there a list of countries that don't have an extremely high debt? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:48, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * List of countries by public debt --47.146.63.87 (talk) 03:38, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The problem is it would be difficult to get people to trust that the government wouldn't do it again. The value of a fiat currency ultimately rests on how much trust people place in it. Once high inflation set in, unless there are capital controls, people would dump the currency for other currencies or assets. At the extreme people just abandon the currency altogether, which is what happened in Zimbabwe, for example, where the people largely shifted to use of currencies like the U.S. dollar and South African rand. Re-establishing trust usually requires things like a change in government and revaluation of the currency, or replacing it with a new one; this is what happened in Germany post-1923. Also I'll note for the audience that this scenario assumes the government has monetary sovereignty, which is not always the case. If a government has significant debt denominated in a currency it doesn't control, it can't just print money to pay it off. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 00:35, 2 August 2020 (UTC)


 * If I were a major creditor of that country, I would not accept cash but require the money to be transferred to my bank account. In the case of the US, the government cannot just print extra dollars; the power to do that is in the hands of the Federal Reserve. The US government can mint coins, though: see Trillion-dollar coin. --Lambiam 14:28, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The Federal Reserve is the U.S. central bank, which is part of the government. It's just autonomous, because it's generally believed central banks should have "operational independence". This means the authority to create dollars is not directly in the hands of Congress or the President; they can't just say, "print $50 billion". The platinum coin thing was not really related to any of this; it was a proposed way of getting around the government's self-imposed "debt ceiling" limit on borrowing, because the Republicans didn't want to raise or remove it, in order to force cuts in government expenditures. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 18:44, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * "I would not accept cash but require the money to be transferred to my bank account." How would that help? The "money" transferred to your account would then just be electronic impulses that could be manipulated by anyone with sufficient programming skills and access to the computers of either bank and could just be imaginary. --Khajidha (talk) 14:18, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Start with the assumption that printing money causes inflation. Here's data for the USA:

Turns out that in the absence of demand, printing money does not cause inflation.

Next, repaying debt. It is difficult to see any reason why a country would want to pay off all of its national (government, public sector, whatever) debt, so we're just into hypothetical. Top question: what currency is your debt in? If you're the USA, it's in dollars; if you're Indonesia, there's some in dollars, some in yen, and some in other currencies. If you print rupiah to pay yen debt, the rupiah-yen exchange rate is going to tell you exactly how stupid it thinks you are, right down to the penny. DOR (HK) (talk) 16:03, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Do Social Security Applications exist online for people who died in 2010?
Do Social Security Applications exist online for people who died in 2010? For instance, I want to try verifying this male supercentenarian claimant:

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JGRY-8JQ

John H Jones

United States Social Security Death Index

Name:

John H Jones

Given Name:

John

Surname:

Jones

Event Date:

12 Feb 2010

Event Place:

Broward, Florida

Event Place (Original):

Broward, Florida

Age:

111

Birth Date:

06 Feb 1899

But in order to have any chance of doing this, I must first find out his birth place and the names of his parents--and acquiring this information can only be achieved by accessing this man's Social Security Application, correct? Futurist110 (talk) 23:31, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Without any information about this man, I don't have a chance in hell of verifying him since his name is so common. Futurist110 (talk) 23:37, 1 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Didn't you just ask this question a couple weeks ago about a different person? The actual applications are not available anywhere online. Certain records may be available via FOIA from the SSA. From the SSA's FAQ, answer to Question 9: "Other records potentially available from SSA include the Application for a Social Security Number (form SS-5). To obtain any information from SSA you will need to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request." 199.66.69.67 (talk) 01:06, 2 August 2020 (UTC)


 * What about the SS-5 form for this man? Is it available on Ancestry.com? Futurist110 (talk) 02:22, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You might be able to get a "trial" membership at Ancestry, and then you could look up these questions yourself. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:46, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * As I told you last time you asked for a social security application from Ancestry, they do not have those. As the Social Security Administration's FAQ indicates, the data they provide to outside vendors is limited to things like SSDI. If you want the SS-5 for this person you need to use FOIA like everyone else. 199.66.69.67 (talk) 05:25, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

belief in water one's reflection
I've been told interpretation on Gideon story in the bible, that there were people who believed in their reflection visible in the water to be God. Do we know such tradition nowadays or then from other sources? Do we know about nations who believed in a reflection in water and worshipped it? --ThePupil (talk) 23:54, 1 August 2020 (UTC)


 * There's the legend of Narcissus... AnonMoos (talk) 02:22, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
 * A more obvious interpretation on Gideon Ch. 7 is that those who drank using their hands would have to put their weapons aside first, thus leaving themselves vulnerable. This article suggests that "Those who were too fastidious to fling themselves on the ground and gulp the water may have shown insufficient adaptability, a reluctance to face discomfort" or that "Those who lay full length on the ground offered the enemy a reduced target, perhaps a signal that they have faced an enemy before and learnt the hard lessons of war". Another alternative from this article is that there was no advantage to drinking without hands; "it was probably the most unlikely who were chosen, to make it even clearer that the victory was no human achievement". I haven't found any theories about reflections. Alansplodge (talk) 10:45, 2 August 2020 (UTC)