Reading

I.

You enter a tavern. The crackling hearth warms your bones after trudging for weeks through the wet and windy mountains of Avanste. The place is a little run-down, but it was either here or the village Applebees, and you’re not in the mood for a Captain Bahama Mama.

“Two meads,” you call out to the elf polishing glassware.

He pulls out a couple of bottles and pops the tops. You take a sip while pushing the other bottle back toward the elf. You’re in search of the lost Amulet of Lucien, and befriending a barkeep never hurts the quest.

He accepts your gift, taking a gulp, but offers no information.

The elf gives your total—fifteen gold.

Your heart rate quickens. You should have seen this coming. What have you walked into?

Choose:
Tip (Go to section II)
Don’t Tip (Go to section III)

II.

You proudly toss down your total, including a hefty tip.

I saw a comment about the drop in the U.S. Federal debt-to-GDP ratio, which reminded me that I wanted to discuss it once the data started to settle down. As can be seen in the above chart, the public debt-to-GDP ratio went from 135% in 2020Q2 to 120% in 2022Q3 (latest figure on FRED). A drop of (roughly) 15% in the ratio without some kind of “austerity” policies might seem surprising — but it is only surprising if you look at debt dynamics the wrong way. That wrong way is relying on “real” variables — real GDP growth, real interest rates — as well as thinking too much about long-term “steady state” or “equilibrium” values.

The reliance on “real analysis” (ha ha) leads to silly things like charts of the U.S. debt/GDP ratio marching in a straight line towards 200%. (Yes, CBO, I am not laughing with you.) This framing also leads to neoclassical economists going on about the question: is r greater or less than g?...

Maggie Millner’s debut, Couplets, is a novel in couplets, but also a lyric in lithe but taut paired lines. Better maybe to say that it gestures at the novel, particularly the great love stories—and misadventures—of the nineteenth-century novel. It’s not so much a narrative as the remains of a narrative, as if the set-up and emplotting have been removed, as if the sentences had been stretched sometimes, or compressed, working their way into a long-lined rhythm that suits the rhyming couplets well. The rhymes are often muted, made so by their off-kilter relationships, like “sex” and “transgress” or “husband” and “Casaubon.” There are occasional prose poems, too, but mostly what unfolds unfolds—and disintegrates—across this book-length sequence of two-lined stanzas: a voice detailing its own undoing. The voice tells of a relationship with a man that falls apart as the speaker falls in love with a woman, first with the man’s encouragement, then despite his resistance.

So many crises — from war to mass species die-offs to climate meltdown — afflict our world that we often don’t take time to draw insights from what generally passes for the small stuff, the things that happen all too close to home, including aging. Most of us don’t relish the prospect of getting old, much less watching our parents approach their deaths, something that’s even worse if you’re dying poor.  Having a parent die, whatever the circumstances, is bound to be wrenching. The best we daughters and sons can hope for is that our parents finish out their lives on their own terms and where they want to be — with loved ones nearby and suffering as little as... Read more

Source: A Tale of Two Mothers appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

After years of corruption scandals and concessions to the auto industry, the UAW finds itself on the precipice of radical new leadership.

The post United Auto Workers on Brink of Unprecedented Leadership Upset appeared first on The Intercept.