Posts by elder-schmelder

30

Where was the last assembly you attended?

by Little Imp in

jw
friends

we last went to one in 2006 - it was the channel islands.

can't remember whether it was jersey or guernsey as they alternate, have been to both as we went to the channel islands in 2005 too.

li.

so last night my 6 year old tells me that her dad said to her while tucking her in at night "mama is going to die because she caused the divorce, and grandpa wanted mommy to divorce me all the days of his life.".

(my dad left the lie when i was 5, and i left a year ago... and subsequently am almost through with the divorce and the ex is a bitter, ignorant, crazy tempered jw).

so its all our fault, and i am going to die, makes sense.. last night i called up the ex and told him that he was nothing short of a mental pedophile, that you don't tell your daughter her mother is as good as dead, and he needs to knock it off and he is in violation of our anti-disparagement agreement that the courts have insisted on due to the religious and personal strife between us.

elder-schmelder

That is Child Abuse !!!

I grew up the same way thinking that my mom would be killed because she never went out in service with us.

elder-schmelder

8

Meaning of "Generation"

by brotherdan in

i'd like to give my opinion on what jesus use of the word "generation" means, and then ask all of you to post what you think it may mean.. the wt seems to be obsessed with the concept of a scripture having multiple meanings.

while i think this can be true, they go overboard with the concept.

primarily matthew 24 was speaking of the events that took place in 70 c.e.

elder-schmelder

I agree with cantleave and notverylikely. That is what the evidence shows.

elder-schmelder

10

Ray Franz books hard to find

by mamalove in

so i guess his books are collectors items!

if anyone has any they would sell me or loan me, please pm me.

thanks!.

elder-schmelder

http://www.deepdiscount.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/product.detail/productID/BC97D8E7-231C-44FC-8C0E-F6E135A7EBC5/

www.deepdiscount.com has both of the at great prices with free shipping.

elder-schmelder

33

Nobody else on earth ever even noticed JOSHUA'S long day!!

by Terry in

joshua 10:12-14 (new international version) .

12 on the day the lord gave the amorites over to israel, joshua said to the lord in the presence of israel: .

"o sun, stand still over gibeon, .

elder-schmelder

JWoods - Very funny !!

http://www.progressivetheology.org/principles/Missing-Day.html

9

Great Watchtower quote

by 5thGeneration in

just stumbled on this looking up medition because of another post.. you just gotta laugh and cry at the same time.. http://www.watchtower.org/e/20020401/article_01.htm.

should faith be based on reason?

"there are too many 'religious' people who become religious precisely to avoid having to think," writes the dean of a theological seminary in the united states.

elder-schmelder

I love it !!

elder-schmelder

20

Small ebay sellers, can you make it work?

by ballistic in

jw
friends

hi guys.

i know there's a few ebay sellers on here, so sorry for the totally non jw themed post... but.... i am out of work at the moment and the job situation is quite bad here in the uk for it workers so i decided to start selling small items on ebay.

with uk amounts in pounds sterling, this is how selling a 99p item with 91p postage breaks down:.

elder-schmelder

I sold DVD's and CD's

elder-schmelder

20

Small ebay sellers, can you make it work?

by ballistic in

jw
friends

hi guys.

i know there's a few ebay sellers on here, so sorry for the totally non jw themed post... but.... i am out of work at the moment and the job situation is quite bad here in the uk for it workers so i decided to start selling small items on ebay.

with uk amounts in pounds sterling, this is how selling a 99p item with 91p postage breaks down:.

elder-schmelder

I was a very large seller on ebay 2 years ago. My sales were about $40,000 per month with a profit of about $4,000 per month. I was selling about 50 to 100 items per day with a low profit margin, and I was happy with it. It all changed when eBay changed the seller requirements for feedback, and then they Double/Tripled the final value fees. I am mad at eBay because they had a good thing and then messed it up.

elder-schmelder

20

Overlapping Generations

by elder-schmelder in

i think that this explains it best !!.

one of the critical and most debatable assumptions we have maintained thus far in our arguments is the assumption of successive generations.

in other words, we have assumed that, every period, a new generation arises and the old one dies off.

elder-schmelder

I am glad that we finally got it right this time. I don't that they will have to change it again.

elder-schmelder

20

Overlapping Generations

by elder-schmelder in

i think that this explains it best !!.

one of the critical and most debatable assumptions we have maintained thus far in our arguments is the assumption of successive generations.

in other words, we have assumed that, every period, a new generation arises and the old one dies off.

elder-schmelder

I think that this explains it best !!

One of the critical and most debatable assumptions we have maintained thus far in our arguments is the assumption of successive generations. In other words, we have assumed that, every period, a new generation arises and the old one dies off. Generations precede and follow each other, but they do not overlap at any point. This is a very restrictive and unrealistic assumption but one that, unfortunately, is difficult to dispose of.

Models which allow successive generations to overlap with each other were first proposed by Maurice Allais (1947) and, independently, Paul Samuelson (1958). They noticed immediately that such a structure has some intriguing implications for intertemporal social welfare.

There are many ways of modeling overlapping generations. The simplest is the "two-period-life" version. In this case, each generation lives for two periods -- call it "youth" and "old age". At any time period, one generation of youths coexists with one generation of the elderly. At the beginning of the next period, the elderly die off, the youths themselves become elderly and a new generation of youths is born. Thus, there are two "overlapping" generations of people living at any one time.

Although we cover this in more detail elsewhere, our interest is in the social welfare implications of overlapping generations. To see this, let us attempt to construct a social welfare function when generations overlap. We assume a generation born at time period t (call it "generation t") lives for two periods: t and t+1. Let c t t and c t+1 t denote the consumption in periods t and t+1 respectively by generation t. Let us denote by u t (c t t , c t+1 t ) the intertemporal (two-period) utility function of generation t. Allowing for additive separability utility and personal myopia, we can write:

u t (c t t , c t+1 t ) = u t (c t t ) + b u t (c t+1 t )

where b is the personal discount factor. Now, this is for a single generation that is born at time t. As a new generation is born every time period t, then the intertemporal social welfare function is:

S = u 0 (0, c 1 0 ) + å t=1 ¥ u t (c t t , c t+1 t )

where u 0 (0, c 1 0 ) is the utility of the first generation of elderly people (born at t = 0), who have had no "youth". Notice that this is intertemporal, so every generation, present and future, is given equal weight in this social welfare function (there was a small controversy between Abba Lerner (1959) and Paul Samuelson (1959) over this). Thus, assuming the same personal discount rate across generations, we can plug in our explicit form:

S = b u 0 (c 1 0 ) + å t=1 ¥ [u t (c t t ) + b u t (c t+1 t )]

or, rearranging:

S = å t=1 ¥ u t (c t t ) + b å t=0 ¥ u t (c t+1 t )

By the Benthamite "equal capacity for pleasure" argument, let u t (?, ?) be the same across generations. This permits us to drop the t superscripts and rewrite the social welfare function simply as:

S = å t=1 ¥ u(c t ) + b å t=0 ¥ u(c t+1 )

This is revealing. For any positive consumption path, this social welfare function S is not a finite sum, i.e. S = ¥ for any {c t } > 0. Thus, not only are paths "non-comparable", but we cannot find a "social optimum". The old problem re-emerges.

The overlapping generations construction yields interesting implications. Firstly, even when we incorporate personal myopia, we do not end up with finite social welfare sums. We cannot appeal to the reality of individual discounting to solve the incomparability problem. To make the sums finite, to make consumption paths comparable, we require that the social planner start making evaluations of the relative social worth of different generations. Personal discounting will not do as a substitute. Thus, letting g be the social planner's discount rate per generation, then we end up with:

S = å t=1 ¥ g t-1 u(c t ) + b å t=0 ¥ g t-1 u(c t+1 )

where, assuming 0 < g < 1, then S becomes finite and paths are now comparable. But g is an explicitly unethical discount. There is nothing obvious we can pluck out of society that can justify it. We must simply accept that our social planner is "morally challenged".

Secondly, the decentralization thesis does not hold in overlapping generations. Specifically, it can be easily shown that in an overlapping generations model, the competitive equilibrium is not Pareto-optimal. This means that a social planner (or a government) can achieve a superior allocation than that yielded by the market. The social planner's solution (if we can find one) will be different from the market solution. The decentralization thesis breaks down.

However, there is a trick that is possible: namely, if we follow the "dynastic" logic employed earlier. Including intergenerational altruism and "bequests" in an overlapping generations model, as Robert Barro (1974) did, we can effectively replicate the traditional Ramsey-style infinite-horizon problem with successive generations and restore the decentralization thesis.