Michael Keating’s response to the P&I article series on growth – GDP and population – is very welcome as it provides a condensed summary of what has befuddled Australian political economy in recent decades. Problem one is his seeming complete unfamiliarity with post-growth scholarship: the problems it identifies, the causes of the problems, and the Continue reading »
Reading
There are three main steps needed to calculate a consumer price index.
- Determine weightings based on consumption.
- Go out and measure prices in the economy.
- Aggregate the measured prices into sub-indices which are in turn aggregated into an overall price index.
Statistical issues ensue.
Pearls and Irritations comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. Pearls and Irritations is an immensely valuable contribution to understanding major public issues. Every morning five or six challenging articles arrive in my Inbox, delivered without charge and without sponsors. (I have written some myself). Pearls and Irritations comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. Continue reading »
Jingjing Li of China Global Television Network joins Lee Camp to uncover the truth about the representation of China in US media.
The post You’re Being Lied To About China – Lee Camp Talks to Jingjing Li appeared first on MintPress News.
In his post on 7 January Lawrence Freedman concluded that “The question of what it takes to get Russia to abandon its war of conquest remains unanswered.” The answer, at least in part, has to be a change of leadership – most likely a generational change. For Putin this is a war, not about territory, but about Continue reading »
Days after the war in Ukraine began it was reported by The New York Times that “President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has asked the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, to mediate negotiations in Jerusalem between Ukraine and Russia.” In a recent interview, Bennett made some very interesting comments about what happened during those negotiations in Continue reading »
Aaron says this is Trumpesque, which it is on one level. But really, this is Viktor Orban all the way: Note the Orwellian “Truth” running behind him.It’s very creepy. Orban’s method of media dominance probably wouldn’t work here in the US with our media system but the intent is the same. And I could easily see President DeSantis trying some of these tactics. If they can simultaneously weaken the judiciary some of them could work: As Orbán has consolidated his grip on Hungary, his control of the media is now nearly absolute. In 2010, he cut all state advertising funds to critical news outlets and threatened to sever contracts with private advertisers that continued to support targeted media. The following year, he established a Fidesz-controlled media council with the power to levy bankrupting fines against news outlets that did not favor the Fidesz worldview. Hit on all sides by financial attacks, independent and opposition media began to fail just as news media across the globe were struggling financially to adapt to the online world.
Op-ed by MMT economist Yeva Nersisyan.
The Hill
Lowering inflation isn’t a job for a one-trick pony
The Hill
Lowering inflation isn’t a job for a one-trick pony
Yeva Nersisyan | Associate Professor of economics at Franklin and Marshall College
I use an eBike to commute 2.5 miles to work most days. It is faster than driving and parking, and much cheaper than Uber/Lyft. A few details: Uber/Lyft costs $12 each way, so $5/mile Uber/Lyft takes 20 minutes: 10 minutes … Continue reading
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I don't even trust MYSELF to catch my wife, even if I'm intending to.
Today's News:
Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf discusses his just-released book, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, which explores the reasons why Liberal democracy is threatened by authoritarianism and what needs to be done to resurrect democratic capitalism.
Software giant Oracle, whose CEO Larry Ellison has troubling ties to the Israeli government, just signed a massive deal to store the UK's most sensitive military data.
The post Openly Pro-Israel Tech Group Now Has Control over UK’s Most Sensitive National Security Data appeared first on MintPress News.
How the investigation into The Nation magazine’s pro-Russia bias was canned by ‘press watchdog’ the Columbia Journalism Review
You mean not start with hostility? Efforts to reform policing in this country usually involve reworking the training, more of it, eliminating qualified immunity, or technical solutions like body cameras. Mona Charon offers a novel start at police reform that requires politeness. The first thing the Memphis “Scorpion Unit” did when it stopped Tyre Nichols before beating him to death, Charon writes, was to curse at him. Over alleged reckless driving. Why? In a society as gun-saturated as ours, I can understand an order like Let me see your hands, or if the police are planning a roadside sobriety check, a request to Step out of the car. But there is no reason that both of those orders cannot be preceded by Sir or Please or both. Our judicial system is founded on the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Yet our police interactions with citizens too often seem grounded in the opposite assumption. Obviously, in the Nichols’ case, the profanity was the least of the offenses the cops (and others) committed, but it seems that some police lapse into profanity with citizens regularly.
BBC Chairman Richard Sharp's hidden involvement in arranging a £800,000 loan for the former PM exposes the gilded upper circles of politics and media in the UK, writes Adam Bienkov
Story details and cover artwork are today revealed for a brand-new full-cast audio adventure, Torchwood: Launch Date, due for release in April from Big Finish Productions. In this Torchwood rom-com, Launch Date, there’s an alien threat looming and the only way to defeat it is unusual, to say the least. Ianto Jones (Gareth David Lloyd) […]
The post BIG FINISH: Torchwood: Launch Date – Ianto plays Cupid appeared first on Blogtor Who.
A few weeks ago, the world’s power brokers — politicians, CEOs, millionaires, billionaires — met in Davos, the mountainous Swiss resort town, for the 2023 World Economic Forum. In an annual ritual that reads ever more like Orwellian farce, the global elite gathered — their private jets lined up like gleaming sardines at a nearby private airport — to discuss the most pressing issues of our time, many of which they are chiefly responsible for creating. The 2023 meeting was organized around the theme of “Cooperation in a Fragmented World” and the topics up for debate were all worthy choices: climate change, Covid-19, inflation, war, and the looming threat of recession. Glaringly missing, however, was any honest investigation of the... Read more
Source: Poverty Amid Plenty appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
State of the Union preview. I go off on a tangent. It’s tonight at 9:00 p.m. ET. Pfeiffer: Tonight, Joe Biden will stand before Congress and the nation to give what will almost certainly be his most important speech of 2023. Last year, 38 million people tuned in to watch President Biden deliver his constitutionally mandated report on the state of the union. A similar number will watch tonight’s speech. Absent a major national event on par with the Space Shuttle Challenger crash or the operation to take out Osama Bin Laden, the audience tonight will be more than ten times larger than that of any other speech Biden will give this year. The speech will also receive a ton of press attention. It has already been the subject of approximately one million thumb-sucking think pieces. The State of the Union really is a tradition like no other. The State of the Union is also a weird speech. It’s a grand venue with a big audience in the room and across the nation. Even the least presidential Presidents look somewhat presidential giving the speech. In many ways, the State of the Union is a high-floor, low-ceiling speech.
If writers write about what puzzles them, Ross Gay is puzzled by joy. His oeuvre is a gorgeous, open-hearted, lyrical response to that puzzlement. Joy, by the way, that’s always in the context of suffering, in the context of pain. His style is a kind of restless exuberant unfolding, a thinking and feeling that feels like it’s happening as you read it, like an ice cube melting on a stovetop. You can hear it in his debut collection, Bringing the Shovel Down, which comes with an epigraph from Audre Lorde, all the way through his most recent book-length poem on and around and about the late great Dr. J, who conducted on basketball courts around the country “his extended course of study / on gravity and grace, / which has so enthralled the throngs.” That book is called Be Holding, probably the best long poem on sports since Kenneth Koch’s Ko, or a Season on Earth. Many people are familiar with Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. That book of poems, published in 2015, includes such wonders as “Feet”:
TO: Household members
FROM: Human Resources/Leadership
SUBJECT: Dinner Policy Changes
The Human Resources/Leadership committee has enacted a new one-bite rule. All household members with 4+ years experience are now required to take one bite of the prepared meal at the dinner table before additional food options are enabled.
Please note that no requests for alternate meals or meal components will be approved until the requirement is met.
We appreciate your cooperation in this matter.
Thank you,
Human Resources/Leadership
- - -
TO: “Heinous” Resources/Dictators
FROM: Reese, Star Employee and “Best Girl”
RE: Dinner Policy Changes Memo
I am writing in response to this egregious policy change. I, for one, am immensely disappointed you made a decision like this without employee consideration.
I absolutely refuse to comply with this preposterous demand and loudly request further explanation.
Sian Norris speaks to The White Helmets about the challenges Syria faces in rescuing and supporting survivors of the devastating earthquake that hit the region
In a rare turn up for the books, the head of state of Latin America's largest economy just accused three of the country's four richest men of engaging in blatant accounting fraud.