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Created
Mon, 30/10/2023 - 20:27
So in what sense is this “dynamic stochastic general equilibrium” model firmly grounded in the principles of economic theory? I do not want to be misunderstood. Friends have reminded me that much of the effort of “modern macro” goes into the incorporation of important deviations from the Panglossian assumptions that underlie the simplistic application of […]
Created
Mon, 30/10/2023 - 18:00
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October 30th, 2023next

October 30th, 2023: Two comics in a row

Created
Mon, 30/10/2023 - 13:29
On October 26, 2023, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis published the latest US National Accounts figures – Gross Domestic Product, Third Quarter 2023 (Advance Estimate) – which showed that “Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter of 2023”. The June-quarter 2023 growth rate was…
Created
Mon, 30/10/2023 - 11:28
(14 Nov update) I got this badly wrong. Johnson followed the same path that doomed McCarthy, passing a short-term fix with Democratic votes. It’s hard to see why the Republicans went through all these contortions to end up where they started. Government shutdowns, and threats of shutdown, have become routine in the US, with the […]
Created
Mon, 30/10/2023 - 08:33

When humans embrace the dehumanization of others, we release our ugliest, most destructive selves. Dehumanization is a perverse force that propagates violence and justifies the lust for war and its atrocities. On August 6, 1945, Sakue Shimohira was 10 years old when an atomic blast obliterated her home in Hiroshima, Japan, burning her mother into an unrecognizable block of ash. Afterward, the only feature that could identify her was a single gold tooth. Sakue struggled to survive in Hiroshima’s post-apocalyptic, postwar landscape, while her older sister soon fell into despair and threw herself in front of a train. When the American soldiers of the occupying army arrived, Sakue remembered that they constructed an airstrip in front of the shack where... Read more

Source: The Dehumanization of War appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Created
Mon, 30/10/2023 - 04:59
The US is the ‘essential nation’, the ‘indispensable nation’, its leadership ‘holds the world together’. This is the boastful humbug that President Biden gave us on his return from Israel, where he again affirmed his complicity with Israel in its decades of occupation, ethnic cleansing and genocide in Palestine. The US assumes a moral superiority Continue reading »
Created
Mon, 30/10/2023 - 04:58
Today’s Melbourne Herald Sun carries a story that, along with other former Australian Prime Ministers, I will be a signature to a statement drafted by The Zionist Federation of Australia, condemning the attack by Hamas on Israel. This report is without foundation and is untrue. Mark Leibler contacted me earlier last week proposing the prospective Continue reading »
Created
Mon, 30/10/2023 - 04:57
Industrial transformation has accelerated China’s rise as a global power. In the New Era, which was officially recognised in the Chinese national constitution in 2017, the narrative of national rejuvenation is writ large: it underpins the Community of Shared Future, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and China’s various soft power campaigns. Cultural and media Continue reading »
Created
Mon, 30/10/2023 - 04:56
It is now the case that Australia’s alliance with the United States is best described as the Great Harmonisation. On all principal matters of strategic interest – especially in all fundamental aspects of China as the “pacing threat” – the overwhelming impression is that, though Washington and Canberra are spatially separated, they nevertheless speak and Continue reading »
Created
Mon, 30/10/2023 - 04:55
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released its latest health expenditure data last week showing the Commonwealth share of government public hospital funding has declined to 41%. This will fuel state anger and make negotiations for a new funding agreement, to take effect in mid-2025, that much harder. A constant of Australian health policy Continue reading »
Created
Mon, 30/10/2023 - 04:54
Any talk about disability in Australia is very likely to quickly lead to mention of ‘the System,’ which controls everything in the lives of People With Disability. This phrase comes from Australia having started its European settlement period as a British penal colony, so we inherited ‘the System’ as a foundation stone of our society. Continue reading »
Created
Mon, 30/10/2023 - 04:51
The elephant can only be ignored for so long: we need to talk about academics. Rather like journalists, academics exhibit a profound mismatch between self-image and reality. Everybody has heard by now that British higher education is in a parlous state. Indebted students. Overworked staff on squeezed pay. Misery all round. The question is who Continue reading »
Created
Mon, 30/10/2023 - 04:50
On Valentine’s Day next year, Indonesia will go to the polls for its most important election in ten years. The incumbent president, Joko Widodo (known as “Jokowi”), has built a broad supporting coalition of political parties and oligarchs, which has delivered stability but also power and wealth for a small elite. He has also presided Continue reading »
Created
Mon, 30/10/2023 - 03:30
Protest votes are not. They only help the worst people. To anyone contemplating not voting for Biden over the Israel war, it’s probably a good idea to also contemplate what will replace him if you do that: Trump: All the resident aliens that joined in the pro jihadist protests this month.. Come 2025, we will find you and deport you. pic.twitter.com/n00sGlzSnH — Acyn (@Acyn) October 28, 2023 Trump on murdered Israels: “They’ll be avenged even beyond what you’re thinking about” pic.twitter.com/gIFcOvxSLa — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 28, 2023 Trump brags about cutting off all aid to Palestinians while he was president pic.twitter.com/bOtvT3DcKV — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 28, 2023 Trump promises to cancel student visas of Hamas sympathizers pic.twitter.com/3uN6dgCuxN — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 28, 2023 To all those who say that it’s simply too painful for them personally to vote for the lesser of two evils, I’ll just quote that old establishment puppet Noam Chomsky who famously said, “of course you should vote for the lesser of two evils — you get less evil.”