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There is a genre of population decline doomerism. An example:

Three terrifying charts about Japan’s demographics.

1) Japan’s population is shrinking. It decreased by 850,000 last year. pic.twitter.com/HOKijFWRdx

— S.L. Kanthan (@Kanthan2030) December 21, 2024

Here’s the thing, Japan imports about sixty percent of its food. Japan is, by any reasonable measure, over-populated.

If you can’t feed your population and if there is no reasonable prospect that you could feed your population, perhaps you have too many people?

Another country for which this is true is Britain, which imports about 80% of its food. Yet the British have also been importing over a million people a year.

. Entertaining and informative at the same time. Great! In case you know some Python you could try this little code snippet that yours truly wrote to simulate and plot a special kind of random walk called ‘Brownian motion.’

Fed by an irresponsible media, neither voters nor political leaders are willing to accept the trade-offs inherent in fiscal choices, writes Chris Grey in his monthly column for the Byline Times print edition

About The Job

The Maccabees are a small, start-up militia charged with defending the holy temple from the invading Greek army. Our rockstar candidate should be a motivated, goal-oriented self-starter, because we don’t have the bandwidth or manpower for micromanaging.

You’ll be leading a team of five employees meant to maintain stability and longevity while upholding the core values and integrity of the overall organization. It should be noted that there have been several hostile takeover attempts, and we do not expect them to cease anytime soon. So, if a fast-paced, high-stakes environment is not for you, this may not be a great fit.

Along with heading the group and taking ownership of accomplishments, this is not purely a managerial oversight role, as you will be working with your team to ensure streamlined efficiency in operations. This is not a sit-by-and-run things job; you’ll need to be right there with your team, in the trenches, for what may or may not end up lasting eight workdays.

The Biden administration just delivered a sweetheart deal to its friends at McKinsey, letting the consulting giant off the hook for helping to “turbocharge” disastrous OxyContin sales.

In his monthly column, John Mitchinson explores why so many Christmas rituals boil down to fun and money

Last week I noted in my review of the Australian government’s Mid-Year Economic and Financial Outlook (MYEFO) – Australian government announces a small shift in the fiscal deficit and it was if the sky was falling in (December 19., 2024) – that the forward estimates were suggesting the federal government’s fiscal deficit would be 1…

It’s not beyond the realm of possibility I don’t mean to give you nightmares but no matter how much we may want to ignore how close we are to something very dark, we really shouldn’t. Mother Jones’s Pema Levy lays out what could happen if the Supreme’s follow the lead of the 5th Circuit. It’s Leonard Leo’s dream: Imagine Obamacare is dead and millions of Americans have lost health coverage. Abortion is illegal nationwide, pills to end pregnancies are off the market, and doctors wait until the mother’s death is imminent before attempting lifesaving care. Domestic abusers freely carry guns and government attempts to stop untraceable homemade semiautomatic rifles have been quashed, rendering gun licenses and background checks useless. Environmental regulations founder as climate change worsens. With the sidelining of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Wall Street has returned to its greediest days, making bets that threaten economic stability and preying on consumers with predatory loans and hidden fees.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Everyone’s been saying that Elon’s really in charge. And it stands to reason. Poor Trump is obviously past his prime. He’s 78 and fading fast. It happens. But he’s not happy about it: He’s rattled. And I don’t think he got quite the crowd reaction he was expecting… Trump most definitely does not like having smart people around him and he certainly doesn’t like having someone who take the spotlight as Musk does. It’s bothering him. But I don’t know if he can get rid of him. He’s scared of Musk’s money and the fact that Musk is now a MAGA leader means he is a competitor. He showed that this week with the wrecking ball he took to the continuing resolution that Trump had signed off on. And yes, he did sign off on it, despite what the Trumpers are saying. The Washington Post has a good tick-tock on how it all fell apart (gift link): Several people close to Johnson say the speaker talked frequently with the president-elect and kept him abreast of ongoing negotiations. But another Trump adviser described him as blindsided by the bill’s contents and furious.

Some 2,000 years ago, an itinerant preacher, Saul of Tarsus, was writing to a wayward congregation in Corinth, Greece. Curiously enough, his words still capture the epochal change that may await us just over history’s horizon. “For now we see in a glass, darkly,” he wrote. “Now I know in part, but then shall I know fully.” Indeed, mesmerized by a present filled with spellbinding events ranging from elections to wars, we, too, gaze into a darkened glass unable to see how the future might soon unfold before our eyes — a future full of signs that the four empires that have long dominated our world are all crumbling. Since the Cold War ended in 1990, four legacy empires —... Read more

Source: The World’s Four Legacy Empires Going Down appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Check out what #WhoSpy had to share about the Ncuti Gatwa and Nicola Coughlan-starring Doctor Who Christmas Special, "Joy to the World."

The Bulwark’s Tim Miller went to the TPUSA pre-Christmas “Gathering of the MAGAlos” as he does every year. He’s very brave: I was standing beside the step-and-repeat at James O’Keefe’s annual AmFest afterparty nursing a bourbon and coke when out of the corner-of-my-eye emerged a face that was mostly familiar, minus the signature sepia blur. The face was approaching fast. Wide TV anchor smile. Caked on make-up. Main-character energy. I quickly realized I was in its sights. Immediately I’m greeted with the familiar booming, midwestern-announcer voice. Knowing that I was on enemy turf I attempted a pleasant return greeting, hoping to disarm and signal that I came in peace. “DON’T TOUCH ME,” Kari Lake screams in my face, I assume in reference to a bit of discomfort with mid-interview physical contact that I had expressed in our last encounter. “YOU ARE A PIECE OF SHIT.” The face briefly collects itself and appears to look back and see if her husband was taping the exchange.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 22, 2024

By Tony Wikrent

 

Strategic Political Economy

From the Middle Out and Bottom Up: The president of the United States outlines his economic principles, and his record.

Joe Biden, December 16, 2024 [The American Prospect]

The Washington Post sounds an alarm about the erosion of press freedom. They outline all the cases that are pending and the collapse of the ABC case, all of which sounds pretty bad when you see it all together. They seem to be serious. It is hardly unusual for a president to clash with the press. Richard M. Nixon kept journalists on his enemies list, while his vice president, Spiro Agnew, dubbed them “nattering nabobs of negativism.” Bill Clinton griped about coverage of his White House sex scandal, and Barack Obama’s administration brought a record number of prosecutions against journalists’ sources for leaking government information. But legal experts say Trump has taken attacks on the press to an entirely new level, softening the ground for an erosion of robust press freedom. “The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country,” Trump posted on Truth Social in September in an attack on NBC News. Experts in polarization said that Trump’s posture toward the press has eroded trust in the Fourth Estate. From the Oval Office, he can do even more.

The Labor Party is a long way from done but at the moment it is mired in mediocrity. We need a Labor Party agenda in which the big issues are confronted, writes Bill Kelty. A repost from Oct, 05, 2024 It is a sad day for me in some ways. I remember coming back from Continue reading »

One of the fondest memories we carry is of how when we were young, the world was infused with magic, especially at Christmas. We would wake on Christmas Day surrounded by the gifts Santa Claus had mysteriously placed there. As we grew the magic died, yet so drawn are we to it, we wish we Continue reading »

When Prime Minister Netanyahu expressed his disdain for international law and his contempt for the leadership of the United Nations, he implicitly recalled an ancient tradition of the origins of Israel. He asserted that Modern Israel was not formed in 1948 by the United Nations, but by the Israeli war against the Arabs, in the Continue reading »

Australia is often celebrated as a wealthy nation, with a prosperity that is purportedly shared across its population. However, such assertions crumble under scrutiny. According to the 2021 census, 122,494 Australians were denied the basic right of shelter due to their inability to afford housing. This stark reality reveals the vast and growing chasm between Continue reading »

Michael Lester in conversation with Professor Ian Chubb AC—policy adviser at the Australian Academy of Science (AAS), former Chief Scientist of Australia, and former Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of several universities—now appointed to lead a once-in-a-generation review of Australia’s faltering research and development funding and efforts. The recently announced national science and research priorities are Continue reading »

Again, the question arises: could Francis retire? If he were to do so, it would make papal resignations normal. Pope Francis turns 88 on Dec. 17. Depending on how one keeps score, that will make him something like the fifth or sixth oldest man ever to occupy the Chair of Peter. According to legend, Pope Continue reading »

What has gone wrong for the Cultural revolution of the 60s-70s? Is it Trump and the MAGA movement as Robert Manne posits, or is it identity politics out of control, as Nicholas Gruen argues — the extremity of political correctness, me-tooism, cancel culture, social tribalism and wokeism — weaponising discourse and driving us apart. There Continue reading »