Hungary's Needy Given Money to Burn 95
Knowing that ideas are a dime a dozen and eager to think outside the box, Hungary's central bank is burning old currency to help the needy. The bank has found that the 40-50 tons of currency that needs to be burned every year is a blessing in disguise for people caught between a rock and a hard place due to the extreme cold sweeping across Europe.
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Rick is that you?
I hope they don't steak the dump truck. (Score:2)
Why not? (Score:3)
If it just got T-Boned, it might make a delicious meal
Re:Shades of Depression-era Germany (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolutely. this image [blogspot.com] immediately came to mind.
Re:Shades of Depression-era Germany (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure if you ignore that they are the exact opposite situations.
One is burning currency because the government is printing so much that it's worthless.
the other is burning currency because the government doesn't want to increase the supply of currency (and hence make it worthless) as it produces new notes.
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Far more likely they are replacing them with newly printed currency - currency does wear after all.
If they aren't then it's even more the opposite - they are activiely trying to create deflation and really punish those who have taken out loans.
Of course that ignores the not physical currency part of the money supply.
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Have you seen the exchange rates?
They are not affected by QEs and that's an objective fact.
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Well, Australia actually is a great example.
It has implemented aggressive fiscal stimulus (fueled by deficit spending) from the very start averting the severe recession. Total amount of stimulus measures was about $60 billions in 2 years which works out to about $3000 per individual, mostly in direct spending.
In comparison, US had implemented $787 billion stimulus which works out to about $2300 per individual. Unfortunately, more than a half of that amount was in tax cuts which are MUCH less effective than
Re:Shades of Depression-era Germany (Score:5, Informative)
Not really a great analogy.
Firstly, any government can build a mandate partially on dubious slogans. There's already plenty of people in the US who want compensation against the ills brought onto them by conspiring bankers, so a party that adopted that mandate would probably be radical, but at least get some votes.
Secondly, just because the fellas are burning money doesn't mean they are burning money like Germany. Any central bank destroys money each year when the money is too old to use. Bills deteriorate, become obsolete due to no security features etc. Hungary's inflation has been around 3-4% for several years so no need to fear hyperinflation just yet.
Up in smoke (Score:5, Interesting)
Watched the video. Not sure how much energy it takes to process the currency into briquets, but it is certainly one of the most innovative "Recycling" programs I've seen, and from the looks of it, one that actually benefits all parties involved (Central Bank gets to destroy old currency, Poor get free fuel).
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Something similar was done when they retired the old Deutschemarks in favor of Euros some years ago. Old currency was fed into a gasifier and passed over catalysts to make methanol.
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Not sure how much energy it takes to process the currency into briquets, but it is certainly one of the most innovative "Recycling" programs I've seen, and from the looks of it, one that actually benefits all parties involved (Central Bank gets to destroy old currency, Poor get free fuel).
I doubt it takes more energy to process to briquets than they were already using to dispose of this stuff. In fact I suspect they are using off the shelf industrial grade shredder/balers that are already in use in places like military bases and embassies (and other high security sites) have to burn the waste on-site. These machines have metal separation built in so what you get is paper and plastic out. (Or in this case just paper).
There are commercial grade shredder/balers [officezone.com] that make rather small bales, a
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Well, presumably they'd be burning wood or paper in those stoves anyway, so I doubt it makes a difference whether the fuel used to be money.
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No, they would probably be burning something else, perhaps coal which might be more of a pollutant. There is not enough wood in the country to serve as fuel source for the entire populace. In some cases they may be simply using fireplaces rather than stoves.
But the point remains that wood, and coal aren't composed of a billion tiny slivers of paper that can smolder and fly out the chimney. And combustion is bound to be incomplete, lots of fragments lifted by the updraft. potentially plugging any spark ar
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No, they would probably be burning something else, perhaps coal which might be more of a pollutant. There is not enough wood in the country to serve as fuel source for the entire populace. In some cases they may be simply using fireplaces rather than stoves.
But the point remains that wood, and coal aren't composed of a billion tiny slivers of paper that can smolder and fly out the chimney. And combustion is bound to be incomplete, lots of fragments lifted by the updraft. potentially plugging any spark arresters in place.
Seems to me that blowing the shredded paper (not bales) into large coal fired electric generation facility might yield more clean and complete combustion, and electricity to boot.
I think you are onto something. Electric vehicles are not powered by coal; they are powered by money.
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Second: Some countries (maybe not Hungary) have special papers used in their currency. (little blue and red threads in US, other special plastics used in Australia, etc). You don't want tons of this stuff roaming around for counterfeiters to pick up for free off of the back of a truck.
You wouldn't want to burn aussie money though, it's actually worth something now.
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Can we recycle politicians the same way??
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I kind of like the idea of toasting my toes to the crackly warmth of tens of thousands of ex-bank-notes, but I already don't respect the notion of "money" as anything other than a abstract place-holder f
Re:Up in smoke (Score:5, Insightful)
[rhetorical]Is the shredding/compaction process along with the delivery by trucks and collection by individual citizens truly superior to simply sending the unprocessed notes off to be burned in great, big boilers to generate steam-powered electricity for wider, cheaper distribution of power?[/rhetorical]
I know you said rhetorical, so you probably know the answer, but:
Sure, burning it in one place for power generation would probably be a more efficient use of the "disposable cash", assuming that is the problem they are trying to solve. In this case though the problem is: "We have these poor people who are freezing in the winter." and someone else noticed "Hey, we're going to burn this used money we took out of circulation. If we can process it a little more, maybe we can give it away to the poor and kill two birds with one 1,000 Euro brick."
Doesn't make it the MOST efficient way of doing things, just a better use of the resources they had available.
To make everyone happy, those who disapprove of the solution can complain that "They just keep throwing money at the problem and expect it to go away".
Yeah...thanks, I guess (Score:1)
Wouldn't they be a lot better off with wood or coal, something that would actually burn for a WHILE? Paper is only useful as kindling.
Re:Yeah...thanks, I guess (Score:5, Insightful)
Providing wood or coal would be an extra cost to the government. If they already have the paper and are already destroying it why not compress it into a useful brick for burning. I'd imagine it wouldn't burn that fast if compressed enough.
Re:Yeah...thanks, I guess (Score:5, Informative)
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It's more cotton and denim than wood-pulp paper IIRC.
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It's more cotton and denim than wood-pulp paper IIRC.
Denim is cotton that is dyed in one direction with indigo.
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Depressing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Depressing (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it would be more depressing to know they are burning the money somewhere else and I am still cold. I mean the currency at that point has no real value and putting it back into circulation would cause insane inflation. This is really the best possible outcome.
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Oddly cruel. It is a bit like letting homeless people crowd around a burning house instead of demolishing it. I imagine they see a lot of tears there.
Re:Depressing (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really.
If you watch the video you will see that they aren't giving out stacks of bills in bank bands, but rather shredded note stock compressed into highly dense bricks and mortared together with a flammable medium.
According to the video they burn with roughly the same intensity as brown coal (AKA: Lignite). It's not the greatest fuel ever, but in a country where most homes are still heated by either steam boilers or coal/wood burning stoves, it's an acceptable alternative to either re-circulating the notes and causing hyperinflation (thus worsening the poor's problems by many times over) or having the poor denude the countryside looking for wood to burn. Hungary controls it's money supply AND the poor get free fuel to get them through the winter. Sounds like a good deal to me.
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I'm not a, ummm, whatever the banknote equivalent of a philatelist is, but aren't they worth more than face value as collectibles? I'd just hang on to them as curios because I like shit like that.
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FWIW... (Score:4, Informative)
FWIW, this is apparently about destroying old worn out bills, a routine practice, as opposed to inflation gone wild
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Money Expiration (Score:2)
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Is that what I think it is? (Score:2)
At around 1:30 into the video you can see this in the background: http://i.imgur.com/J2SZ1.jpg [imgur.com]
I can't imagine what else passes for autism therapy in former Soviet bloc countries.
fool (Score:2)
that's some device gymnast's use. you can see it in olympics. you hold those and do stuff.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_(gymnastics) [wikipedia.org]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_(gymnastics) [wikipedia.org]
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You shouldn't have skipped the part at 0:26 then.
The part where in the background a woman gives a young man, who clearly displays a lack of concentration and of motoric skills, a basketball to hold up in the air while leading him in a walk on a raised platform of some kind.
I'm guessing the platform is a bench and they are doing a balance exercise.
That might have clued you in that the room is a small gym.
Then again, since your prejudice prevented you from realizing that on your own, seeing there is a girl le
There is a more obvious source of fuel (Score:3)
a blessing in disguise for people caught between a rock and a hard place
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Actually, if all the poor would simply kill the rich and redistribute their wealth, everybody would be better off except 5% of the population.
Maths always win.
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Actually, if all the poor would simply kill the rich and redistribute their wealth, everybody would be better off except 5% of the population.
I wonder how the people in the 10%-6% slot will feel about your plan, when the 5%-1% folks are dead, and they've just been promoted to the new top 5%. Obviously the only solution is to tax everyone as needed until everyone lives at exactly the same level of prosperity. Also, since some people will be at a disadvantage for having been born without working arms and legs, or with severely limited cognitive function, it will only be reasonable to surgically render everyone as invalids, and lobotomize them to m
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I wonder how the people in the 10%-6% slot will feel about your plan, when the 5%-1% folks are dead, and they've just been promoted to the new top 5%.
Very true [wikipedia.org].
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Obviously the only solution is to tax everyone as needed until everyone lives at exactly the same level of prosperity. Also, since some people will be at a disadvantage for having been born without working arms and legs, or with severely limited cognitive function, it will only be reasonable to surgically render everyone as invalids, and lobotomize them to make it all fair. Wow, someone should write a cautionary short story about that scenario or something.
If you're referring to Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut, the author himself said the story was not about wealth.
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/may/05/vonnegut_lawyers_could/
"It's about intelligence and talent, and wealth is not a demonstration of either one," said Vonnegut, 82, of New York. He said he wouldn't want schoolchildren deprived of a quality education because they were poor.
"Kansas is apparently handicapping schoolchildren, no matter how gifted and talented, with lousy educations if their parents are poor," he said.
So it seems Vonnegut would support a certain leveling of the economic playing field, if not necessarily to the extent that you sarcastically proposed.
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We know that a few people having all the resources doesn't work. Look to feudalism and the reason the Magna Carta was signed. We also know that everyone sharing resources doesn't work. Every large-scale attempt at communism fails in some way due to corruption and greed.
Thus, there must be something in between where we have some richer people and some poorer people. In an ideal society, how would resources end up being distributed? We have made absolutely awesome advances in technology and production in the
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Where did all this extra production go?
It went into standard of living. A family of fifty years ago would have considered today's medicine, communications technology, textiles, entertainment, and the instant availability of unthinkable amounts of information to be the purest fantasy. Lower income homes with multiple televisions? Cars with airbags? Mobile phones that help you find your teenage kid on a Saturday night? Forums like this, used by people all over the globe, in real time? Living so long that cancer eventually gets you, instead of a s
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Alas, I have to agree with you that this is where at least some of the production went. (Looking at real income rates however shows that richer people have benefited much more from the amazing increase in production.) So what can we do to change it? How can we
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I was doing a completely over-the-top reply to the troll parent post, obviously. Sorry you took me seriously.
Selling Money (Score:1)
The only disadvantage .. (Score:2)
.. is that one, inevitabl,e Godawful pun. Sigh.
For the rest I think it's not a bad idea at all.
Well, Hungary, you asked for capitalism... (Score:1)
...you received capitalism.
The minority who say that things are better under capitalism are as much exploitative liars as those who said things were perfect under the Soviets. But, for the average working man, things are much worse. And I say this as a Russian emigrant who left the USSR a few years after the drunk puppet Yeltsin was installed and the only significant increase for the average man was in the number of destitutes, drug addicts and suicides.
You want to see what an old Western democracy turns in
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Oh please. As a 1st gen immigrant from Romania, an eastern european soviet block country crushed by first the Nazis and then the Soviets, capitalism as done in the US is a godsend compared to the bullshit of Marxism. What you have in Russia and Romania is the result of years of devastating communism, where there is no incentive to work, everyone steals from their employer (the state). The same people are in power now as before, they're just "capitalists" by name. I have family that went back after the revo
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Agree. Similar things happened with the Birds ;), but it was worse in Romania.
However I can't accept the fact that a lot of the Eastern block countries are finding it so hard to create a democratic government. I think a lot of the older population still yearn for the security of the old system - so my aunt tells me.
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Of course capitalism isn't going to solve everything overnight, and is still quite shitty for many people who have kept the communist attitude of "daddy state will provide".
And I won't even get started on the rampant lack of any basic lib
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Capitalism is when one man exploits another man, socialism is the other way around
I'm from a polish background, and i particularly despise hearing from people like the AC OP who yearn for their old system, yet somehow, find themselves in what they consider to be the worst place. Ironic huh. Fact of the matter is, lots of people benefited under communism (sad thing is that they were actively benefiting from the poverty and exploitation of others), when the cracks in the eastern block was starting to show in
Like the old saying goes... (Score:3)
Provide a man with fire and he keeps warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm the rest of his life. Something.. something.. something.. soviet Russia.
They don't need no water... (Score:1)
How much? (Score:1)
C'mon, any Hunkies reading this? Post a reply if you can score me some!
PS: I'm an American of Hungarian decent, not insult intended calling you a Hunky & even if I wasn't, if you were offended, you should lighten up
So Hungary has only 10 poor people? (Score:3)
Heating a house in the US Northeast with anthracite takes between three and six tons per year.
So a mere 40-50 tons? Even keeping the house so cold you can see your breath, the amount of these briquettes they need to get rid of will, quite seriously, only heat 10-15 homes.
I truly applaud the vast improvement over burning their retired currency as mere waste, but this has zero impact on keeping a nation's poor from freezing to death in the winter.
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First, it's not necessary to heat the entire house, especially if you're worried about making your fuel last as long as possible. Heat a room and keep everyone there unless they NEED to be somewhere else. Second, burning 50 tons of banknotes saves a lot more than 50 tons of trees, considering most of a tree's weight is water. It also saves the energy of drying said wood (even if that energy would be solar, laying the wood out to dry on its own), and the cost of fuel to move it from the forest to the lumber
It could be like the poormans lottery (Score:2)
I wonder if any notes survived the shredding and compacting process to be salvagable...
100 households (Score:1)
40-50 tons may sound like a lot, but I burn around 20 tons of wood to (mostly) heat my (admittedly large) house, with maybe 10 rooms. Supposing you could fit an entire family in something like a room, and the shredded bills really do have the heat content of brown coal (which is something like 2x wood per mass), and further supposing they are using a modern heating system (like an apartment block with a big gasification boiler) that's 2x more efficient than mine, that's still only like 100 households.
That'