Read me >>> sharing illuminating journalism

[ides1056]

I think this is clear as a bell.

Opinion | Defenders of a Racist President Use Jews as Human Shields - The New York Times

[guido]

Opinion | How Democrats Defeat Donald Trump - The New York Times

[vertical_doug]

Mauritius Leaks exposes tiny tax haven's role in vast offshore system - ICIJ

Surprised Bono is not named here ...

[vertical_doug]

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

one more on racial resentment


Many conservatives in the U.S. believe that poverty is mainly a result of bad personal decisions. African-Americans are especially likely to be blamed for their own poverty -- an attitude that some political scientists call racial resentment. Stereotypes of so-called welfare queens have been a staple of Republican messaging for decades. But conservatives also attribute similar failings to poor white people. In a memorable 2016 article, National Review writer Kevin Williamson blamed divorce and substance abuse for the despair of the white working class:

[The white working class] failed themselves…Take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy [and] you will come to an awful realization…The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles.

According to this perspective, if people were just to work hard, avoid drugs, alcohol and violence, and stop having children out of wedlock, poverty would be rare.

But there is at least one rich country where people follow all of these prescriptions -- where they work hard, avoid risky, self-destructive behavior and make wise life choices. That country is Japan. And it still has plenty of poverty.

Violence is exceedingly rare in Japan. The murder rate is so small as to barely register:


Japan's crime rate was always low, but it has fallen even further in recent years, leaving some police departments with little to do.

Japan also has very little illegal drug use. After World War II there was a problem with methamphetamine addiction (which did lead to some violent crime), but this has largely disappeared. Despite the country’s draconian drug laws, narcotics prosecutions are only about 13,000 a year, with about 3,000 being for marijuana. Very small percentages of Japanese people report ever having used drugs.

And the country has very little single parenthood. Although the rate has risen by about 50% since the country’s economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, there are still only about 712,000 single mothers, or less than 2% of all households. This is compares to roughly 8.5 million in the U.S., which has about 2.7 times Japan’s population.

Finally, Japanese people almost all work. The working-age employment rate, at more than 77%, is higher than the 71% rate in the U.S.

Given all of this good behavior, conservatives might expect that Japan’s poverty rate would be very low. But the opposite is true; Japan has a relatively high number of poor people for an advanced country. Defined by the percentage of the population earning less than half of the median national income, Japan’s poverty rate is more than 15% -- a little lower than the U.S., but considerably higher than countries such as Germany, Canada or Australia:......

see link for entire article

[guido]

He Was the Face of a Bike-a-thon to Fight Cancer. He Was Also a Fake. - The New York Times

[monadnocky]

^^^^Just read that.
I suspect this is far, far more common than people realize.

[guido]

The El Paso Shooting and the Virality of Evil | The New Yorker

[ericpmoss]

[guido]

Speak Up Now to Save Our National Forests | Outside Online

[Scott G.]

A Transparent U.S. Congress Helps Lobbyists and Hurts the Public

Worth registering to read.

[ericpmoss]

A Transparent U.S. Congress Helps Lobbyists and Hurts the Public

Worth registering to read.

Wow, I think those authors took the wrong lessons from this. If the problem is lobbyists poisoning government for the people, we need to tackle it head on, not shut out the public. It reeks of trickle-down democracy, so to speak.

I would start with Citizens United and McCutcheon, which give money itself the rights of citizenry. I would make elections 100% publicly funded, and close the revolving doors between government and industry. I would make a "Clean Bills" rule that disallows poison pill amendments. Making government less transparent for the people to keep out creeps who can be kept out by other means is a bad idea, IMO.

[ericpmoss]

Speak up now or forever lose your voice in decisions about wilderness.

[caleb]

Is anyone else following Ryan Avent on twitter? Ryan Avent (@ryanavent) on Twitter

The ideas are coming in pieces, but the gist of it is that we're really under-appreciating the significance of government involvement in the currency markets right now.

- We're in a politically charged moment where the latest expansion has only now started to benefit the middle class.
- The public is not ready to deal with a recession economically or politically.
- Central banks don't have much room in monetary policy.
- Governments can't/won't use fiscal policy to keep the expansion going.
- So countries are turning to currency devaluation as a last ditch effort to prop up domestic production.
- The geopolitical problem emerges because propping up domestic production comes at a direct cost to competitors who also want to prop up their production, and who also have a restless population. You can see the potential for this to go badly.

In the past, the world has had a mix of countries with an excess of supply (low growth) and an excess of demand (inflation). But modern technology multiplying labor power means the industrialized world now has an excess of supply, and so there are too many sellers and not nearly enough buyers. To put it more simply, if rich countries are no longer ready or willing to run trade deficits, that changes everything.

If Avent is right, what's going on in the currency markets is a sign that we've transitioned to a new financial world that we don't understand because it's only now coming into existence.

[guido]

Opinion | C.E.O.s Should Fear a Recession. It Could Mean Revolution. - The New York Times

[BBB]

Denmark Offers to Buy U.S. | The New Yorker

A touch cheeky...

[guido]

Denmark Offers to Buy U.S. | The New Yorker

A touch cheeky...

Andy Borowitz is a genius.

[jclay]

Is anyone else following Ryan Avent on twitter? Ryan Avent (@ryanavent) on Twitter

The ideas are coming in pieces, but the gist of it is that we're really under-appreciating the significance of government involvement in the currency markets right now.

- We're in a politically charged moment where the latest expansion has only now started to benefit the middle class.
- The public is not ready to deal with a recession economically or politically.
- Central banks don't have much room in monetary policy.
- Governments can't/won't use fiscal policy to keep the expansion going.
- So countries are turning to currency devaluation as a last ditch effort to prop up domestic production.
- The geopolitical problem emerges because propping up domestic production comes at a direct cost to competitors who also want to prop up their production, and who also have a restless population. You can see the potential for this to go badly.

In the past, the world has had a mix of countries with an excess of supply (low growth) and an excess of demand (inflation). But modern technology multiplying labor power means the industrialized world now has an excess of supply, and so there are too many sellers and not nearly enough buyers. To put it more simply, if rich countries are no longer ready or willing to run trade deficits, that changes everything.

If Avent is right, what's going on in the currency markets is a sign that we've transitioned to a new financial world that we don't understand because it's only now coming into existence.

It's news to me but very interesting. Thanks for the post.

[guido]

The Rich Can’t Get Richer Forever, Can They? | The New Yorker

[BBB]

Andy Borowitz is a genius.

Very much so, but there is a lot of material to work with.

When Grandpa starts talking about buying abother country and calling himself the chosen one, you'd probably, at the very least, think about taking the car keys off him...

[BBB]

The Rich Can’t Get Richer Forever, Can They? | The New Yorker

Very interesting. Thanks.