Leopards neglected due to focus on more ‘iconic’ animals Daily Telegraph
Pliocene and Eocene provide best analogs for near-future climates PNAS (abstract only). “Geologically novel climates.”
A Terrifying Sea-Level Prediction Now Looks Far Less Likely The Atlantic
The recovery is alive and well. How much longer will it be? WaPo
Banks’ Emerging-Market Boom Leaves a Grim Legacy Bloomberg
Exclusive: California utility PG&E explores bankruptcy filing – sources Reuters
Three benefits of electric vehicles, and how to unlock them World Economic Forum
An Engineering Wunderkind’s Ocean Plastics Cleanup Device Hits A Setback NPR (Furzy Mouse).
Brexit
UK’s May could seek more time before final Brexit vote: paper Reuters
Where ignorant armies clash by night:
Released from Dover council : once opp stack / Brock is FULL trucks sent to manston to sit and rot for days . And redwood claims there will be no delays ? pic.twitter.com/VCUnjSCkOM
— ciaran the Euro courier ????#peoplesvote (@donnyc1975) January 5, 2019
And see the same source for some capacity arithmetic. Readers, plausible?
John LeCarré was an optimist:
So, the Institute for Statecraft's Integrity Initiative wants to ramp up the Russia threat to get the UK military removed from democratic oversight? Leaked minutes of private discussion between II's Chris Donnelly & Gen. Sir Richard Barrons https://t.co/U0VhI4GCKD pic.twitter.com/biDyjglfCd
— Ian Fraser (@Ian_Fraser) January 4, 2019
Syraqistan
Deal with Syria regime ‘inevitable’: Kurdish commander Agence France Presse
Syria – Turkey Fails In Idleb, Is Unwilling To Take The Northeast Moon of Alabama
Why the United States Won’t Be Able to Quit Syria The American Conservative
China?
Chinese President Xi Jinping gives army its first order of 2019: be ready for battle South China Morning Post. Not an order one should have to give, no?
US trade negotiators head to China against gloomy backdrop FT
Chinese scholar offers insight into Beijing’s strategic mindset Asia Times
Is international scrutiny of Japan’s criminal justice system fair? Japan Times
Backstory: A Once-In-Five-Years Chance for Media to Understand India and Its Politics The Wire
New Cold War
What happens if Mueller comes up empty CNN. I don’t see how that can be allowed to happen.
A Qualified Defense of the Barr Memo: Part I Lawfare
Bush Normalized Extraordinary Rendition, Now The U.S. Can Capture Assange Ghion Journal
Exculpatory Russia evidence about Mike Flynn that US intel kept secret The Hill. To the extent that anybody in the U.S. national security apparatus can be exculpated from anything, of course.
Looking ahead: what to watch in Russia in 2019 The Bell
After the Crimean Consensus The American Interest
Trump Transition
The shutdown and IT (DK). Thread:
I figured it was worth a little explainer for the Anti-Deficiency Act and relation to IT operations and shutdown activities. I write as somebody who's been through a few in various roles… (1/12)
— Amélie E. Koran (@webjedi) December 28, 2018
U.S. Senate’s First Bill, in Midst of Shutdown, is a Bipartisan Defense of the Israeli Government from Boycott The Intercept. Ka-ching.
Sisterhood of spies: Women now hold the top positions at the CIA NBC. Shattering the glass ceiling by leaning in with the electrodes, eh Gina?
Can a set of equations keep U.S. census data private? Science
Congressional Staffing for Dummies: The Pay Go Dispute Matt Stoller, Medium. Today’s must-read.
Now If Pay-Go Isn’t Repealed It Will Be All Yertle’s Fault Down with Tyranny (MR).
Democrats in Disarray
Clinton meets individually with potential 2020 Dems: report The Hill
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Should we think of Big Tech as Big Brother? FT (DL). Throwing a flag on the Betteridge’s Law violation, here. “Surveillance capitalists are not only able to monetise our data but can also use it to predict our behaviour and thereby modify it. In mechanical terms, they are no longer just sensors but actuators.”
Curbs on A.I. Exports? Silicon Valley Fears Losing Its Edge NYT. You say “stunt the [AI] industry in the U.S.” like that’s a bad thing.
Neoliberal Epidemics
Why Gout Is Making a Comeback New York Magazine
Guillotine Watch
Super-rich once again dig down into the dark heart of London FT
Class Warfare
Driving the news cycle:
The GOP can attack @AOC all it wants but she just danced her way to the wood of the @NYDailyNews with a proposal the newspaper wouldn’t have even covered before. So troll her at your own risk. She’s a leader who just jumpstarted the conversation on a major issue. pic.twitter.com/lSHC6xhGgP
— Gersh Kuntzman (@GershKuntzman) January 5, 2019
Note, however, how “pay for” gets smuggled in. That needs to be dealt with.
Staffing counts (Riffle being an AOC staffer):
Sorry everyone, my bad. I'll talk her up to 90. https://t.co/gl3VuiGISE
— Every Billionaire Is A Policy Failure (@DanRiffle) January 4, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez’s 70 Percent Top Tax Rate Is a Moderate, Evidence-Based Policy New York Magazine
Sweden Has a 70 Percent Tax Rate and It Is Fine People’s Policy Project (MR).
After Ultima Thule Flyby, New Horizons Hits Pause on Data Dump Space.com
Contest models highlight inherent inefficiencies of scientific funding competitions PLOS
Wielded by a Wizard LRB. Shelley (source of Labour’s “for the many“).
Antidote du jour (MR):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
241 comments
Comments are closed.
On the tax rate, I think we need to change the paradigm of money from a commodity, to mine from society, to the contract enabling mass societies to function. Aka, a voucher system.
Money is a medium of value, not a store. As in the body, blood is the medium and fat is the store, for cars, roads are the medium and parking lots are the store.
Much social and environmental damage is due to this religious belief in storing value as abstractions, rather than public and private tangibles.
Those with the stomach for such things can tune in to 60 Minutes tonight and see AOC man-splained on taxation by the great-great-great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Because Our Famously Free Press is the ultimate meritocracy.
He’s also a spook. He “used” to work for the CIA.
Very Serious People™
https://youtu.be/-MumI6KovUk?t=151
I’ve learned a lot I don’t want to know today about Anderson Cooper. Does he do these late-night piss-takes regularly? I’d rather see Colbert playing Cooper.
“AOC man-splained on taxation”
Sorry, allan, but, God I hate that term. In this case, it’s especially inappropriate because taxation has nothing to do with gender – and I doubt that the great-Vanderbilt is appealing to some sort of gender authority, either.
When it does apply, it’s grossly sexist. Just imagine that we dismiss women’s words as “femsplaining.” And we have better words for the real faults it applies to.
I hate the word too, and cringe when I see/hear it. It’s so sexist and also untrue. People over explain things sometimes, usually trying to be helpful. Gender has absolutely nothing to do with it.
~Ava~
Just because there are other power relations than gender doesn’t mean mansplaining isn’t real.
Maybe we can run a poll on whether or not this Andrew Cuomo gem is mansplaining.
I saw the promo for CBS Sixty Minutes, and I believe it went, “is she an insurgent rebel (I forgot the exact phrase) or dangerously ignorant (not exact).”
I don’t think they would have tried that on a man.
Really? Sounds typical to me.
For one thing, in political terms she IS an insurgent; that’s what we like about her. Remarkably good at it, too.
The quoted bit isn’t explaining; it’s harsh and exaggerated, considering the context – but nothing to the stuff they say about Trump. Granted, he mostly deserves it.
The pay for language comes from AOC, herself. Yes. Someone needs to address it.
I’m not so sure. My interpretation of it is she is taking their dollars out of circulation which defacto gives more weight to government spending. So while it does play into the mentality of the budget checkbook it accomplishes much the same thing.
“Pay for” is a political reality even though it isn’t a financial one. And it’s exactly the fight she’s in the middle of.
The kindest possible interpretation of the “pay for” language, which emanates from AOC and Bernie both, is that without higher marginal income tax rates, the egregious income inequality will persist, and “regulatory capture” of the public policy mechanism by the plutocrats will undermine any good government spending can accomplish.
After all, in 2007-8 the Fed extended $16 – $29 trillion in credit to cure the frauds of the financial sector. No tax hike (and no inflation, either)…so the idea that sovereign fiat money creators are fiscally unconstrained is not exactly new. In this case, however, it gave a boost to the plutocrats rather than rescuing the economy. Heck, for only $9 trillion, the Fed could have paid off everyone’s mortgage.
So “both and” for higher marginal tax rates and more deficit spending.
There has been a very positive response from the dissident / nationalist right to AOC’s tax hike idea. In fact Ann Coulter called to add a French-style wealth tax to it as well, where for example each year the very wealthy have to pay 15% of their fortunes back to the state. Tucker Carlson has started attacking capitalism and Richard Spencer is raving about AOC. Of course the establishment / cuck right are going apoplectic that the populists are abandoning billionaires for the working class. This is all a very positive development. AOC and the populist right will never agree on race or immigration but it is a good sign that they are starting to realize they have a common enemy: the very wealthy.
I would be very wary of ANY conservative/right winger support for one of my proposals. Those dirtbags are always looking to hijack or subvert any “Leftist” ideas before they take hold. Don’t trust those “Righties” at all; not one inch!
> Congressional Staffing for Dummies: The Pay Go Dispute Matt Stoller, Medium
The arcanity, it burns. Thank you, wonderfully clarifying.
I have to say I’m extremely leery of the whole MMT premise. As that article is pointing out, money is a debt of the government, but that doesn’t make it something that can just be printed up, without larger consequences.
It is an accounting device, in that one side is an asset and the other side is a debt, so if the government is handing it out, without very effective methods of keeping them in active circulation and not just piling up in pools, the holders of these pools have large claims to government assets. Basically predatory lending/disaster capitalism. In a nutshell, the government should be taxing excess wealth/money supplies back out of the system, not borrowing it out and wasting it, blowing up other countries, etc. Otherwise a feedback loop builds, as those loaning the money back to the government are paid interest and accumulate more. Think that 20 trillion of government debt; What happens as inflation builds, as the world appetite for dollars slows, interest rates go up and the government has to borrow more, just to cover the debt. It owes obligations to those treasury holders. Sort of like someone living on a home loan suddenly finds they no longer own their home. Money may just be a promise, but be very careful who you makes promises too.
I suggest you read more MMT. The theory does not say this:
“that doesn’t make it something that can just be printed up, without larger consequences”.
There are consequences of government fiscal spending, but a fiscal constraint is not one of them. Real resources are the constraint.
The theory also does not say what you think it does in your second paragraph.
it also overlooks that we now have mmt for chosen industries, just not for the general population, and the feedback loop for that is where we are now, no need to wait for it to happen.
If every dollar spent (either MMT or otherwise generated) indirectly represents hydrocarbons dug up and burned, resources mined, pollution generated, plastic waste generated, species partially exterminated then MMT will only move us closer to the environmental day of reckoning as it apparently incrementally adds to consumption.
As you note, MMT is already in place for chosen industries (maybe these are on the list Medical/pharmaceutical, US military and US surveillance?)
Given that many groups are already benefiting from effectively on-going MMT programs, one might expect other experienced Washington insiders will get in position to grab any new funds arising from MMT.
Maybe the face of the new MMT will be Dick Cheney?
Per https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/07/deficits-dont-matter-so-why-are-democrats-complaining-about-them-216946
“former vice president Dick Cheney once said, Ronald Reagan proved that in politics, “deficits don’t matter””
The best we can hope for is that USA resources (via MMT or otherwise) are allocated wisely to minimize the harmful side effects mentioned above.
But is there any reason to believe this?
That policy tools are now abused by the corrupt is no argument for making those policy tools NOT available to the well intentioned.
Intentions are always negotiable as reality is complex, but the negotiations should be in public by those responsible so arguments can be judged and communicated.
We live with a captured media propagandizing for a largely captured government with the “money men” in the background pulling the strings to their own benefit. We need to cut them loose from the strings and engage in a public debate to define a “public good” that harnesses societies collective power, the secrete to the species success, to address the essential environmental concerns: pay everyone to avoid fossil fuel; pay everyone to cooperate to meet everyone’s needs etc.
The tools of State can be used to address all of the unsustainable practices of our current political economy, but it is only at the State level that adequate public power can be concentrated to overcome the venal interests of the individual private powers that profit, monetarily, from the destruction of the world.
Store value in tangible assets, strong social networks and the healthy environments they require, not abstractions in an enormously bloated financial system.
If the casinos need more chips, let them print their own.
Money isn’t a storehouse of value. The state created money and taxes to make people work in support of the state and to maintain tight control over their activities. As old as civilization.
really? it wasn’t to facilitate trade, for example?
An adaptation. An off label application that eventually took on a life of its own. The Americans didn’t need to kill off the Indians. The most effective way to subjugate hunter gatherers is make them pay taxes.
Maybe we can have the people writing algos to take us to Mars writing algos to more effectively diagnose preventative health care? Or solving for more efficient energy uses? Or, or, or……
That is why those who understand MMT call for a balanced economy, not a balanced budget. Where the money is going needs radical adjustment, not how much.
I don’t think fiscal restraint has ever been more than a fig leaf. The fact remains that money is a promise by the government and when it starts to lose meaning and value, it’s inflation.
Politicians live and die on how much hope they provide. As we experience money as quantified hope, there is a strong incentive by the leadership to print more money, when other efforts are failing.
The dawn of modern capitalism was when the Rothschilds forgave Charles 1 his debts, in exchange for running the royal treasury and the Bank of England was born. Finance and government both serve the entire society, but as different functions, like the head and heart serve different functions. We used to have private government, but monarchies eventually reached their limits. Banking is just having its, “Let them eat cake,” moment.
Not necessarily though that seems to be the universal understanding. Under the Constitution, the government is allowed to issue bills of credit (by Supreme Court decision in the legal tender cases after the Civil War). A bill of credit is a tax credit issued by the federal government but it is issued to the bearer of the instrument, not to a specific person as is the case with most tax credits.
They operate just like coins (according to the Supreme Court in the same cases) which are also essentially tax credits. Coins cost the government the cost of minting and that is all. Bills of credit cost the government the cost of printing and that is all. Printing paper is cheaper than minting coins.
When have coins proven to be inflationary? The government has no incentive to issue tax credits unless it sees some good in doing so. So almost always the government gets something of value when it issues a tax credit and that thing of value is accomplished before the tax credit is given. You don’t get a tax credit for energy efficient windows until you install them, for example.
Out problem is that we do not use bills of credit and coins as currency. We use debt instruments rather than tax credits. Why? The answer is simple. Banks can’t issue tax credits and the last thing banks want is the government issuing something that banks can’t when it to comes to currency.
Lincoln’s greenbacks were bills of credit (said the Supreme Court in the legal tender cases). Lincoln issued 400 million dollars worth of them during the civil war. Did they cause inflation? Not at all. The banks bought Congress and Congress quickly stopped their issuance and then took them out of circulation, impoverishing the whole nation in the process.
So I categorically deny that the government issuance of money always causes inflation. It only does when the government issues debt instruments and may not get anything of value when it does.
My problem with MMT is that there is not a single MMTer that understands what a bill of credit is and how we used them in the past.
Tax credits in bill form work different than debt instruments.
You are confusing the theory and concepts with the potential arbitrary decisions made. Resources are finite. Those that print the money decide who decides what to do with them.
Like Steve Mnuchin?
This is an argument for more effective representational government, not against MMT.
We’ve had expressly MMT GOP policies for the rich and for flexians since Dick Cheney said “deficits don’t matter.”
As Stoller put it, “in other words, money is a made up political commodity”, and pretending that discussions of it don’t have vast political implications is deliberately deceitful and an obfuscation our congresscriters have been using to excuse themselves from responsibility since the 70s.
The cycle is to inflate the bubble and when it pops, buy up the tangibles for pennies on the dollar. Like parks, roads, water, land, mineral rights, etc.
It’s not like the pattern doesn’t have a long history.
Your comment below about the Western tradition being ideals based rather than cyclical is a good one with which I completely agree, that is largely the subject of Michael Hudson’s new book “Forgive Us Our Debts”.
It is about the Old Testament history of the cycle you describe here and why and what the ancient State did to prevent or short circuit it.
Lol. The fallacy of monotheism is that a spiritual absolute would necessarily be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the new born baby, than the wise old man. The Ancients mostly built their religions around this element of emotion and organic nature, but we have this top down, father figure deity and his Ten Commandments. Divine right of kings and all that.
There is an inherent tension, balance and cycle between that bottom up energy and the top down structures defining it, but this relationship has to be kept in balance. Head and heart. Motor and steering.
Not all acorns become Oak trees, but without those acorns, there are no Oak trees.
Mnuchin donated his own money to “Democrat” Kamala Harris’ senate campaign. All you need to know about her.
Money earned for not prosecuting him? She knew it’d come handy one day.
Scratching those phantom crony itches are they ..
So the government hadns out money to the poor and taxes it out of the system when it ia concentrated in individual hands.
Is that what you are saying?
If so, i agree 100%
…experts agree free money is the best kind?
no kidding
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/07/taxpayers-are-still-bailing-out-wall-street-eight-years-later/?utm_term=.78dcb38d8119
It replaces the free land of the homestead acts.
What will they be required to do is the question
Basically. Money is a medium, like blood. What if the body didn’t regulate the supplies and flow of blood. What does blood do? It carries nutrients around the entire body. What we have today is if the heart told the hands and feet they didn’t need so much blood and should work harder for what they do get. As well as telling the head(executive and regulatory function) that it better agree, or else.
Instead we get these enormous stashes of government obligations, that are mostly used to leverage more obligations.
Though I have issues with welfare, as well. I remember when Reagan tried to gut it in 86, one of the primary lobbyists against it was Archer Daniels Midland. Being a food company, the actual people are just pass through for government money into private companies. To actually build up societies, we need to invest in public works as investments in the future. We all save for the same general reasons, from housing and children, to healthcare and retirement. If we invested in these as community assets and not just try saving individually, with our bank accounts as our personal economic umbilical cord, we would have stronger social networks, that would both expect responsibilities from their constituents, as well as granting them rights. Rather than atomistic societies, with banking and government as the medium connecting everyone. Otherwise just giving people money to live, without taking the larger consequences and causes into account, only creates other problems.
Might be all the corn based junk food that food-stamps bought too?
Maybe they didn’t want to lose part of that market.
What happens as inflation builds? The interest that is paid out on bonds increases. And the bond holders more than likely will flip that interest back to buy more treasuries. As they don’t have anything better to do with the money, otherwise they wouldn’t be buying treasuries in the first place. And for those bond holders that do have something better to do with the money (like Soc Sec Trust Fund)? Well they spend the money and it gets hoovered up by somebody else that has nothing better to do with the money, and they buy treasuries with it.
What happens as the world appetite for dollars slow? That means the world will be selling us less goods to buy our currency. So an indirect outcome will be more balanced trade. And as the world gets more out of the game of hoarding (and recycling) our currency (surplus), the remaining players US-based players (the banks and Buffetts) will hoover up that surplus instead (they’ll be more than happy to sell the same goods to consumers to buy their currency). Unlike foreign players, those domestic players can be taxed, assuming the Fed Gov wants to do so. But if not, and the Fed Gov prefers to sell them treasuries to swap for their surplus currency, it’s still a virtuous cycle regardless.
Except when the government starts trading them for actual assets, like highways, waterworks, parks, etc, when they have their own people in those government positions to make the decisions. It’s called disaster capitalism, when we do it to third world countries. Predatory lending, when it’s done to people who don’t understand debt and compound interest as negative feedback.
When a sovereign gov divests itself of assets, my sense is that the sell-job to the public on why to do this is that the private sector can exploit that asset more effectively than the public sector can. Otherwise, the public sector is “crowding out” the private sector, holding back innovation, etc.
That is, it’s not done to pay off debts. That said, there are “countries” that do sell it that way, to pay off debts. But then those are countries in name only. They’ve lost their sovereignty. And my sense is that there are two cases for that: when they’ve built up debts in a foreign currency and are willing to subvert themselves to a foreign authority to make amends. And when they’ve relinquished their sovereignty in the interest of joining a common currency, e.g. the euro.
My suspicion is there are larger agendas at work here and only time will tell.
P.S. what would be preferable would be an outcome where the US not only has balanced trade with the rest of the world, but where domestic US labor has balanced trade with the Buffets. And where domestic US labor has balanced trade with the banks.
But that would subvert the profit motive wouldn’t it. I mean, why would corporations want to trade with labor if they can’t hoard the surplus?
Likewise, it would subvert the fractional reserve lending process, wouldn’t it. I mean, why would banks lend out money if they can’t collect and hoard the interest from that?
Funny how people have the same premise now when it comes to international trade. That is, to have balanced trade is to subvert the process. I mean, why should sovereign countries trade with each other if one of them can’t hoard the surplus? And yet, having balanced trade should be the norm, as one would expect between different entities with different currencies.
Interesting thought experiment. What if each of us as individuals had our own currency? Would we then achieve balanced trade between corporations and banks and labor? Would there even be a need for corporations and banks? Or would that devolve to simple balanced trade between individuals? Makes me wonder how this worked with the british tallystick system. And ultimately, does trade evolve to the more “trad”itional definition of “trade” which is to “deliver” as in a gift. To give so that the other party may in turn give in response.
There are much deeper issues at work here, such that Western civilization is ideals based, while nature tends to be a cyclical balance of polarities. So while we operate on the premise that if a little is good, more must be better, nature operates under the principle that for every action, there are equal and opposite reactions…
Civilization is narrative based and those stories most repeated are the ones with clear endings and moral lessons, so we think the ends necessarily justifies the means. Since we are also conceptual reductionists, we have reduced all value to the monetary unit, consequently capitalism has metastasized from the efficient transfer of value, to the creation of notational value, as an end in itself.
It’s a large debate…..
You keep shifting grounds when challenged or rebutted. This is bad faith argumentation and a violation of our site Policies.
Yves,
I certainly accept criticism and would value having it pointed out where my arguments conflict. Being from a family with deep roots on east coast society, though being more of the crazy uncle sort, my personal affiliations tend towards wealth, but the way things seem to be going, even the WASPS are going to need a plan B.
Google my name and a particular ancestor will come up. Another, Louis McLane Jr, was first president of Wells Fargo.
Of Ex Parte Merryman?
This comment amounted to doubling down, that we should give you more cred because you come from old money. It’s a weak and unattractive argument from authority.
I don’t go around making a big deal of my (I guarantee more ancient than yours) Yankee roots. It’s unimportant to what we discuss here.
And regarding your fretting about inflation: the biggest wealth destroyers by far are wars and financial crises.
The arguing from/appeal to authority fallacy is the mirror image of the arguing from ad hominem fallacy.
Who you or your ancestors are, while no doubt an illustrious group, does not automatically verify your argument’s conclusions. Arguments must stand or fall on their own terms. (Goodness knows plenty of my arguments have failed the test.)
I knew I had something wrong with me when I discovered that one of my remote paternal ancestors was hanged for being a highwayman.
The Bad Seed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bad_Seed_(1956_film)
I agree that money is not “something that can just be printed up, without larger consequences.” Anything that causes inflation in response, especially resources, will create a problem. Arguments like this one “America can no more run out of dollars than a bowling alley can run out of strikes.” are therefore nonsensical, or at best misleading, because inflation will cause America to “run out of dollars” in the sense that the dollars will lose their “moneyness”. America cannot simply keep printing dollars – there will be larger consequences, period. If money is not a store of value, what is the point of accounting?
As to PayGo, it seems an excellent idea and should first be applied to “Defense” spending, no?
That is not true. A zero inflation policy is a high unemployment policy.
Moderate inflation is not a problem. What is a problem is lack of labor bargaining power, so that wages keep pace with inflation. It used to be normal for union contract to have COLAs and the non-union workers got similar treatment.
Moreover, if inflation is in a predictable range (2-4%), asset prices build in inflation expectations so it all washes out.
The point of accounting, and money, is to keep track of how much one is owed.
In fact modern money is not a store of value, or a medium of exchange, it is a form of accounting.
It is literally true, therefore, that America cannot run out of dollars. It is also true that ‘printing’ them has consequences. By the same logic not ‘printing’ them also has consequences.
How many are ‘printed’ should be determined by the actual performance of the economy—inflation and unemployment—not by arbitrary metrics like ‘deficit’ or ‘debt’.
Like most MMT critics, Mr. Merryman creates a straw man in rejecting it. To hear him tell it, he’s the adult in the room, people. “Consequences! I tell you sirrah! You will feel them!”
Apparently he has not grasped the fact that ALL money is debt (of government or others). You’re familiar with this if you have a checking account. Your account is your asset, but the bank’s liability (i.e. debt). If you write a check, you’re assigning a portion of the bank’s debt to the payee. Dollars are simply checks made out to “cash,” and these appear on the Fed’s books as a liability too. Government debt is *bank* debt, NOT household debt. Reducing government debt means sucking dollars out of the economy. This has not turned out well, historically. (See Randall Wray here.)
Imagine a mob of depositors going down to their bank, demanding that the bank reduce the size of its debt (i.e. their accounts). This is the bizarre spectacle conjured by Merryman’s post.
There’s a case to be made for higher marginal tax brackets, as I’ve said in a previous comment, but the straw man of “Consequences” [harumph!]…in other words, inflation, is one MMT addresses in virtually every publication their economists write. (The best MMT account of the actual possibility of inflation here)
Finally, the idea of government “has to borrow more” to pay off its ‘debt’ is simply bizarre. What does it have to borrow? IOUs? Dollars? And who is the monopoly provider of dollars to the economy? If it’s government, why does it have to borrow them? (Remember: government ‘debt’ is not like household debt, it’s like bank debt.)
Merryman’s stern warning is roughly equivalent to saying “If we allow people too many inches on their tape measures, then things will start to get longer.”
It’s a *fundamental* misunderstanding of the concepts.
I guess you didn’t read all I wrote. The problem isn’t the average depositor. As I observed, money is a medium. We own money like we own the section of road we are on, because its functionality is in its fungibility. The problem is when the system allows large reservoirs of cash and cash equivalents, like treasuries, to accumulate in pools, with little more purpose than accumulating interest. The resulting feedback loops give those pools outsized control. I’m not against wealth, as fairly tangible assets, or currencies flowing through useful businesses. Confusing a medium with a store is like confusing blood with fat, or roads with parking lots.
I suspect the real reason the government borrows as much as it does, is to put under-employed capital to work, as opposed to taxing it. Given those with that wealth already control the system.
Volcker is credited with curing inflation with higher rates, but that only slowed new money coming into the system, obviously to those willing to borrow money and grow the economy, not to those with more than they needed, on which they were gathering interest and appreciated those higher rates. In was Reaganomics, borrowing money and spending it on the military-industrial complex, that put that surplus cash to work and actually drew down the excess in the system.
If they really wanted to draw down the debt, consider the line item veto as a model; Obviously it would never be passed, or work, because it takes most real budgeting authority from the legislature. To budget is to list priorities and spend according to ability, but the government doesn’t do this. They put together these enormous bills, add enough goodies to get the votes and the president can only pass or veto them.
So what they could do, is break the bills into their various items, have every legislator assign a percentage value to each item, put it back together in order of preference and have the president draw the line. “The buck stops here.” Then the legislature is still responsible for setting priorities, while the president is responsible for overall spending levels.
Then instead of borrowing up those trillions, that seem to be just floating out there, waiting for a safe haven, they might tax some of it up. Then people might view other forms of savings favorably, like stronger communities.
First, Adam did characterize your position accurately, despite your hand wave. You keep trying to shift goalposts as you are successfully rebutted and that is not on.
Second, what you wrote about the Volcker Fed is abjectly false. I’m not even going to waste my time debunking your made up nonsense.
Bad faith argumentation and agnotology are against our written site Policies, as is hogging bandwidth. You are rapidly accumulating troll points.
If you are to make ANY further economic claims, you need to provide links. No more fabrications.
I apologize.
John: that’s exactly why the needed funds should be “printed,” rather than borrowed, and any excess taxed out.
Although I think taxation is more useful for regulation than for fiscal damping. Why put it out there if you need to take it back?
It’s not so much taking it back, as keeping it productively circulating.
Yes, a key point of MMT, that John seems to have missed, is that the government doesn’t need to borrow in order to spend. It can just spend.
So why does it borrow? To control the interest rate. It may have other reasons too, but this one has the benefit of being correct and possibly somewhat useful.
The problem remains that money functions as a contract, ie, a legal promise, but we treat it as a commodity. to be gathered up and stored.
If it was actually understood as a contract, MMT would already be normalized, but so would the understanding that all details and fine print better be understood, before being entered into.
Re: Brexit U.K. Ports No Deal Gridlock
Much being made of the U.K.’s accession to the Common Transit Convention https://www.logisticsmanager.com/uk-to-remain-in-common-transit-convention/ or https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/business/uk-to-remain-in-european-common-transit-convention-after-brexit-892655.html and similar reporting. This does appear to remove the necessity to make customs declarations at point of entry and instead allows them to be made at the point of unloading.
But this doesn’t nullify the need for sanitary and phytosanitary checks on animal and agriculture related products.
Authoritative sources of information are hard to come by. No shortage of commentators on either the Leave or Remain sides talking their well-thumbed books. But that’s not the same thing at all as genuine expertise from real-world logistics operators who do it all for real. Strange that in our internet-enabled world where millions of pages pour out into the void daily, there’s such a paucity of trustworthy sources.
I’m wondering about the logistics of parking so many lorries. Who provides security to all that valuable cargo? Who pays for it? How do the lorry drivers get out of that airport? Will there be buses provided? Who retains the keys to the lorries? Will there be mobile canteens and toilets provided for those who stay as well as tents? If the drivers are from EU countries, are they allowed to drive these lorries from the port to the parking area? Will there be onsite fire trucks in case of a fire that might spread from lorry to lorry creating a catastrophe of epic proportions? Who picks up the tab for insuring all these lorries? So many questions. And only 82 more days to find the answer to them all.
Operation Stack is, surprisingly, almost as old as I am. To answer the most pressing point, to quote from a neutral source of information http://www.roads.org.uk/articles/operation-stack
Man, I’d have to be pretty desperate to venture into those. Especially in the summer months. The more secluded parts of the verges would seem not a little bit more appealing.
Clive, not a little or a little more appealing? A secluded verge seems good to me.
One of my tortuous double negatives. Where I might even have tied myself up in grammatical knots! Suffice to say, I, like you, would be looking furtively at the beckoning verges…
Once upon a time I was a young man and took a summer job guarding the site surrounding an airport extension. 300 people on days and 300 on nights and lots and lots of portable toilets. On the first day they were fine but after that not so much to make an understatement. Portable toilets still turn my stomach now more than 20 years later.
I’m almost at a loss for words except to say capitalism is so corrupting. https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/equality-triumphs-women-now-lead-world-in-clubbing-baby-seals-e2537fff9ad2?fbclid=IwAR001LekhMg_zzLmADKZEhiPCfqf8pcrvSQbXozcqjI4sMYtSeWDmzjKPq4
Is this satire? It reads like satire
yes it is.
There was a piece from her recently demolishing the article about how most of the primary military suppliers are now led by women, and the implied definition of success. This is a riff on the same theme.
They are the not-so-pretty iron maidens of the military-stoned age.
You can read the first piece here.
And now we are getting gender parity in torture-
https://www.rt.com/usa/448210-maddow-cia-female-leadership/
One tweet in that article reads: “Really hope that oppressed women in Muslim nations appreciate that the drone above their heads was sent by empowered women.”
This is kind of interesting – a medical friend of mine a few years ago predicted just this happening due to the popularity of high fat/protein, keto, primal, and meat only diets. Whatever you do, do please eat your greens.
It’s likely the the large majority of human evolution, which was pre-agriculture, took place with a diet composition that did not include the the level of carbohydrate consumption recommended by the infamous ‘food pyramid’. So calling a diet that more closely reflects our ancestral diet a ‘fad’ as this article does is silly.
In any case, their description of a keto diet as high protein indicate a gross misunderstanding of a ketogenic diet. A diet that is high protein is very much not ketogenic since protein will be converted the liver to glucose (thereby preventing ketosis) via the well known process of gluconeogenesis. I won’t go into the strong association of gout with metabolic syndrome but it’s a more compelling, and likely, reason for any recent increase in gout prevalence.
Indeed, the more recent Keto diets specify that you must limit protein as well as be discerning about the types of fat. And also if it’s followed closely, much more water intake is necessary which should also help prevent gout if I understand the disease correctly (I may not).
I think the original Atkins, which was also classified as keto, had too much protein allowed but I heard that they since modified it.
It is the only diet I’ve ever tried that worked.
Sorry…no to keto. It’s harmful to our bodies, *and* (bonus!) harmful to the environment, especially when it required factory-raised animals.
Your ‘no to keto’ link points to an article about high protein diets, which, as explained above, are not ketogenic. What is your point?
My guess, and i suspected this in the original factually-flawed article is that keto-bashing is code for plant-based diet which is code for ‘let’s go vegans!’. And that’s fine if people want to advocate for that, but just say it without using dubious nutritional advice.
I had a brief episode of gout last winter. I don’t drink soft drinks soft drinks or alcohol any more, but having a relative in the fish biz, I over indulged in foods with a high purine content: Dungeness crab, which i find irresistible, and other shell fish. Turkey too is high in purine. In addition to diet, age and genetics are also major contributing factors. Fortunately, I live in the land of fruits, nuts, and greens, which are protective and promote quick recovery. You just have to remember to put them in your mouth, chew, and swallow.
I wonder wether physicians are indicating pain killers rather than diet changes
And drugs of all variations. After all, they are all ingested and digested.
I used an mj suave on my inflamed foot, the last time I experianced a bout of gout .. it seemed to help dull the pain to a somewhat tolerable level. Sour cherries, or the juice from them help, as a preventative .. although I don’t do that as often as I probably should .. I tend to get gout bewteen the months of Oct. and Dec. .. especially during sudden shifts in temperatures, usually going into cold spells.
Pain killers are more profitable than diet changes. Duuhhh
Actually anti inflammatory drugs often work if you recognize the attack. Indocin is commonly prescribed. The uric acid crystals dissolve, but the inflammation stays riled up, so if you suppress it the attack clears up more rapidly. A drug with side effects and interactions, of course.
Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar dissolves uric acid crystals.
Two teaspoons a day in a drink, rinse your teeth afterwards.
The stuff is miraculous in MY experience.
Research it thoroughly.
PlutoniumKun
My problem isn’t gout, it’s grout. I’m getting so old that the cracks don’t fill in anymore.
I like Ike’s 70% (or more tax)
Howard Hughes comes to mind, but w/o resorting to this contraption for answers, can you give me a household name of somebody in the 1950’s or early 60’s that was filthy rich, not including generational wealth via offspring.
*90% (92?)
We can thank JFK for lowering the rate (IMHO this is one of the reasons his fans are so attached to conspiracy theories; he wasn’t the progressive saint they dreamt of). The issue wasn’t that there weren’t wealthy people as much as joining the leisure class and buying a political system weren’t as possible or as easy. If it’s a choice between club dues (my dad caddied at a golf course with hideous fees even for today) and running a pet project to make a libertarian point, what will the choice be?
The ability of the rich to drop loads of cash in an instant at any time is a problem. They had the cash because American politicians are cheap, but it wasn’t as accessible. Credible organizing is based on practical budgeting. The Kochs wielded power because there donations weren’t simply large but done at times where that money was needed. The money can be dropped at any time. They don’t need to hold off to buy a race horse.
Henry J. Kaiser?
IIRC, when asked by a journalist if he ever regretted not having more formal education, he replied that whenever he felt the need for a PhD he’d hire one, or word to that effect.
My mom gave me her checkbook register from mid 1961-62, and there were a number of mostly $6 & $7 checks written to Dr. Evers-our family physician, totaling up to $88 for the year, not including my coming out party, which was $190.
I asked her if we had health insurance, and she told me that nobody had it back then, for the most part, aside from those participating in Kaiser’s plan.
My parents signed up for the Kaiser plan in the 1950s and kept it thereafter, for over 50 years.
Lets start with taking the top 10% off Jeff Bezos.
Instead of trying to get the rich to pay more in taxes, we should be addressing this issue of management taking an increasingly larger share of the pie for themselves at the expense of labor. At least that is true for the hospital industry. And I suspect that is also true for other industries that employ a large number of highly skilled workers in the service economy.
Though I can only speak as an employee of a hospital, it has become perfectly obvious to me that hospital managers, from top to bottom, are not only taking more than their fair share from labor, squeezing the frontlines, so to speak, but they are doing so at the expense to patient care. In fact, the problem has become so widespread in the hospital industry that a fairly well-known hospital consultant named Michael Hyatt looked into the matter and invented a term to describe what’s going on at the managerial level: “ FAKE WORK .” According to him, and from what I gather, there are too many in hospital management that don’t have enough REAL work to do so they find themselves doing a lot of FAKE work. And needless to say, the more fake work management does, the more real work labor has to do. This is why those who do real work, work that can’t be faked, the majority of which deal directly with customers, and in this case, patients are getting squeezed, which in turn means that patient care is getting squeezed.
So instead taxing these overpaid, underworked managers at a higher rate, just address the fact they are doing way too much fake work, which is adding a lot of unnecessary costs to healthcare. Then propose that their jobs be eliminated, or better still, shifted to direct care positions, at lower pay of course. And since the vast majority of healthcare is funded by the taxpayer, we as taxpayers are well within our right to propose this. Cost of care should then drop down to more reasonable levels, thus reducing the tax burden on all of us, rich and poor alike.
Umm, the unfairness of our tax code is one of the things that allows this to happen.
Changing the tax code seems pretty hopeless, IMO. The tax code is either changed so that it favors the rich even more. Or, it’s changed so very little and at the margins that it only adds to the vast complexity of doing taxes. So the next best thing to do is to cut out all of the waste and fraud being done on the taxpayers’ dime.
And since healthcare makes up most of the taxpayers’ dime, second only to defense, cutting healthcare spending should be a top priority. And the spending cut should mostly focus on waste and fraud. Otherwise, necessary and essential costs will be targeted for cuts. I mentioned this issue of “fake work” in my previous post because it does classify as a form of waste, much of which is being done at the managerial level in hospitals. I imagine that there is a lot of fake work going on in the defense industry, but I don’t work in that particular industry so I can say for sure.
Nonetheless, fake work isn’t well defined, yet. Which explain why it remains so prevalent in hospitals. It doesn’t help that productivity isn’t measured at the managerial level, either. Managerial productivity is measured indirectly by measuring the productivity of all the employees underneath them who are doing direct care work. In other word, the productivity of doing direct care work is measured unlike it is for doing indirect care work. Hospitals don’t measure actual managerial productivity because management isn’t viewed as a cost center like it is for labor. Obviously, this is wrongheaded and largely why hospitals have a major managerial bloat problem.
Now I could go on and on about managerial bloat but I will leave it there. The bottom line is that fake work needs to be defined and measured and then factored into the waste problem plaguing healthcare. Unfortunately, saying something like “ I know fake work when I see it” won’t do. It needs to be well defined and measured. I would love to take on that task if given the opportunity. I truly am someone who knows fake work beyond the mere “see it” level.
Prices need to be discussed more than shifting around the burden of higher costs.
I don’t see why we can’t do both. They seem related to me.
+1000 re observations about management
Just noting that just one university (U Mich) has more than 80 well-paid people on the staff with the job description “Diversity Officer”. I’d think that was a job for two or 3 people max
Obviously they need one of every kind.
Not joking here – this group of 80 well-paid people. Do you know if they are a diverse group in themselves?
Anthropologist David Graeber did work with Michael Hudson on the history of debt and was one of the early instigators of Occupy Wall Street. He contends in a new book, Bulls##t Jobs, A Theory, that the productivity benefits of automation have not led to a 15-hour workweek, as predicted by economist John Maynard Keynes in 1930, but instead to “bullshit jobs”: “a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.”
He believes that half the jobs in our society are bullsh##t, mostly in the private sector. I have not read the book but there are several entertaining interviews on YOUTUBE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHx5rePmz2Y
David Graeber: Never heard of the guy. Thanks for introducing him to me.
It gives me a good feeling to know that there is someone else out there besides myself who has thought long and hard about various sorts of jobs throughout the workplace that don’t amount to anything. He has managed to catalog them nicely, something that I have not bothered to do.
Was Graeber really an “instigator”? I thought I remember reading that he was a somewhat later arrival to a Zucotti Park occupation that had “self-instigated” if one wills, and was already there before he got there.
While I agree overpaid managers are an issue, hospital administrators are not making over $10 million a year. The targets are mainly private equity firm and hedge fund partners and public company CEOs.
It’s gotten to the point that there is hardly any difference between for-profit and non-profit hospitals. They both follow the same playbook, which entails siphoning off more and more profits from actual care delivered and giving it to management, top to bottom. No doubt that “private equity firm and hedge fund partners and public company CEOs” are siphoning off an obscene amount of profits for themselves, but their non-profit counterparts don’t deserve a pass on this. They too are siphoning off profits for themselves that might be just as obscene, but we won’t ever know how obscene these profits are since they don’t have to disclose this information to the public.
Non-profits don’t deserve a pass either when it comes to labor relates. For instance, nurses at a non-profit hospital in Montana are trying to unionize. But they are having a hard time doing so because hospital management is trying to reclassify charge nurses as supervisors. Because nurse supervisors can’t join the union, it will greatly weaken the union. This divide-and-conquer strategy being used by management is apparently illegal and the union is taking it to court. A couple of years ago, another non-profit hospital also tried to reclassify charge nurses as nurse supervisors in order to weaken the union, but the California nurses’ union successfully shot it down. I’m not so sure the nurses’ union in Montana is powerful enough to do the same. We can only hope.
“Leopards neglected due to focus on more ‘iconic’ animals”
Maybe not so much neglected as remembered all too well for what leopards were like in former times in places like India. A different sensibility like. You could have a leopard, under the right circumstances, turn man-hunter and then it was game on. The worst one on official record is the Leopard of Panar which went on to kill 400 people before he was brought down by the hunter Jim Corbett who also killed the Leopard of Rudraprayag which killed 125 people. I have his book on the later and it is surreal to read how the Indians had to barricade themselves into their homes each night while this leopard tried to smash through windows, doors and even the walls to get to the people huddled up inside. Imagine that happening now. Maybe some Indians recall these incidents all too well from old stories and so leopards are not exactly at the top of their list. Personally I quite like leopards but for more on these man-hunting leopards, see-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_attack#Notable_man-eaters
I was looking up humans killed by bears in North America, and oddly enough, nobody has been dispatched by a bruin in California since the 1870’s, and a Grizzly did the deed.
Black Bears in Canada are homicidal in comparison to ours here, yikes!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_bear_attacks_in_North_America
Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance by Stephen Herrero is definitely worth a read if you live in or intend to visit bear county. An understanding of the differences between black bear and grizzly behavior is essential and the discussion of the evolutionary forces that shaped those behaviors is also quite interesting.
Generally, if a black bear stalks you it’s probably starving and intends to eat you and you should fight back. If a grizzly attacks you, it’s probably because you are perceived as a threat by infringing on its defensive proxemic buffer, which can be as much a 100 yards, depending on its mood, in which case you should curl up and pray that it is well fed and so will be content to just bap you around a bit as a show of dominance. Fighting back will just piss it off. Both species will attack if startled, or to protect a kill or their cubs. I like my bears best at a distance through a good lens.
Forgot to add: you cannot outrun a bear.
therefore, you must train to outrun cletus. wonder if bear spray would work against a starving black bear.
Quite possibly. If your aim were good you could temporarily blind it and interfere with its sense of smell. You could try it and let us know how it works out. Mind the wind direction. ; )
i think i will leave that experiment to cletus. i get that defending yourself is a good idea against a starving black bear, as opposed to a pissed off grizzly, just idly wondering how you do that.
“go away! shoo!”
fortunately with all the garbage strewn over national parks the bears may be relatively well fed.
Lee
Also, if in a group, you cannot afford to be the slowest runner.
American black bears at least don’t like trouble. When one was rooting through my recycling (because house-sitters hadn’t believed they had to rinse their cans) at 3 in the morning I shouted and growled and he moved away–but was dragging one of my garbage cans with him! Barefoot in my bathrobe I ran to the rescue. He dropped the garbage and climbed back over the 6-foot fence I had just repaired into the woods. At least now I knew why he’d dropped in on the house-sitters. You don’t have to be afraid of wildlife, but you should show proper respect.
I’ve had a bear investigate my chicken coop every year around the beginning of May for the last 3 years. I throw rocks at it and yell. Takes about 3 rocks to get it moving, and about 2 days of this for it to look for easier pickings. That said, the bear started out as a yearling, and by last year was of a pretty good size. Last year wasn’t a good year for bears, food wise, so I’m planning to put up the electric fence as soon as the snow is gone.
Tried to get the dogs to bark at it but they only bark at leaf ninjas.
Oh, how we miss John Wooden.
That was uncAlford.
(I live in Bloomington, Indiana.)
man-eaters of kumaon was one of my favorite books as a kid.
great as an adult, too
Jim Corbett wrote a few books and his Wikipedia entry makes fascinating reading. After being a successful hunter of man-eaters, “Later on in life, Corbett became an avid photographer and spoke out for the need to protect India’s wildlife from extermination and played a key role in creating a national reserve for the endangered Bengal tiger, by using his influence to persuade the provincial government to establish what was called Hailey National Park.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Corbett
ummmm….
The first designated man-eating tiger he killed, the Champawat Tiger, was responsible for 436 documented deaths
oh and one of my friends named their cat chowgarh, a really good cat name if you ask me
And the rest of it. Over his career, he took out big cats that had killed about 1,200 men, women and children. Other places had their own killers like the Tsavo man-eaters in Africa. Those two lions are on display now in Chicago but it must have been a nightmare living in an area under attack for years by these man-hunters. It got so serious in some areas in India that they even tried to send in the Army but without success.
1,200? That is almost unbelievable. I think I would have died of starvation after never leaving home.
Should have made that clearer. The figure of 1,200 people was the total killed by all the man-eaters that he killed added up altogether. You do wonder though about other man-eaters in India’s past that might have racked up higher kills but that are unknown to us because the records are not there.
Personally I would be crapping myself if I had one of these big-cats prowling outside trying to get through the windows or doors or even trying to tear through the walls to get inside. Can you imagine the sounds of the cat and the screams of the people inside?
From the little I understand or know, before Homo sapiens arrived all the previous varieties of humans were prime cat food. The further back you get the more we were preyed upon even though (arguments and screaming and the wide range of dates aside) stone tool use starting several million years ago and fire use started more than a million years ago. However the big cats seem to like us just fine unlike wolves. Maybe why we like house cats so much. We still feed them but not ourselves.
keep your friends close, and your enemies closer?
so what is the logic here, if both Bernie and AOC understand MMT? that if they were to tell the public (and somehow make them understand, after mass propaganda from all corners for 40 years–quite a feat) how FedFunding works, then taxes on the rich (which are necessary for other reasons having to do with social goals) would be impossible?
why don’t we rewrite the danged tax code and REVERSE FICA, have fhe Fedgov pay the state taxes of anyone making below a basic middle class income (about $80k by my calculations) and only have taxes start kicking in when someone starts making over $120k, progressively ramping up to the virtual infinity that a Bezos makes? how many people would that net, and would it do enough to start fixing the inequality problem, and would people making that much be able to _itch that the government was being essentially run on their backs, while the rest of us were moochers?
since everyone here understands MMT, and we know what the actual purpose of the taxes are for, then what social goals can be met with them and how to implement them should be almost more important than whether AOC can properly educate the entire propagandized american public via tweet about fedfunding. has anyone run the numbers?
Taxing income is taxing labor. Tax wealth instead.
There are people who fall below your proposed minimum income who would refuse to accept payments from the fund because they are too proud to accept what they would consider welfare. The fact that everyone who works pays into the Social Security fund is precisely why it maintains its popularity when most other entitlement programs have withered and died.
Your suggestion also leaves open the means-test door, which is inevitably applied unless strictly prohibited in perpetuity. As we speak, Joe Biden is gearing up to convince people the fund can be saved by applying same.
I concur the tax code desperately needs fixing, but FICA definitely falls into the “if it ain’t broke” category. The best way to ensure its survival is still raising the cap another $150K—or more.
And applying it (FICA) to unearned income – capital gains, interest above a certain amount, and so on.
The rate could be considerably lower.
Yep, AOC’s and Sanders’ political instincts are 100% on target and Elizabeth Burton eloquently expresses why.
We need to have a consensus that means-testing is anathema, we need to know that “programs for the poor are poor programs,” and as well means-testing is a huge amount of intrusive bureaucratic overhead that provides a place where huge amounts of mischief can occur. It is against all principles of solidarity, community, and respect.
And people sense correctly that there ARE constraints on what the government can spend and that it’s related to people’s work. It would be nice if people understood this was about societal resources and production of goods, but MMT can sound like “it’s all free” and people don’t believe it — correctly — even though they are all wrong on getting hysterical about running deficits.
“Wielded by a Wizard”—so, Shelley was his era’s JIm Morrison, is what i’m getting.
his wife suffered endlessly, is all i know. her famous book is a parable for the modern age. perhaps the true origins of “sci fi” rather than that clumsy Gulliver’s Travels.
I’ll suggest that the Ur document of Science Fiction in the Western Tradition is the “Apocalypse of Saint John,” otherwise known as “The Book of Revelation.”
“clumsy Gulliver’s Travels.”
I know Swift’s book, but not the one you seem to be referring to here.
“Curbs on A.I. Exports? Silicon Valley Fears Losing Its Edge”
Maybe the US could to declare AI to be munitions in the same way that they tried to have PGP cryptography classified as such back in the early 90s. And I quote: “Cryptosystems using keys larger than 40 bits were then considered munitions within the definition of the US export regulations; PGP has never used keys smaller than 128 bits, so it qualified at that time.” Maybe the US could thus declare AI to be munitions too under the US export regulations as a cheap work around.
Having been in the software industry since the 1980’s, I have been through more than one “AI” wave and also have a realistic understanding of the fragility of complex computer systems. It seems to me that the US military is setting itself up for the biggest embarrassment possible by being so gung-ho about computerizing the military – the F35 and Littoral Class ships are good examples of such overcomplexity. The possibilities of system failure, jamming, hacking and EM pulsing etc. are just too great. What happens when the soldiers trained with all the high tech stuff suddenly lose it?
Reminds me of the 2002 US military exercises where the general given the job of being Iran beat the pants of the one given the job of being the US, by using low tech solutions (see links below). Rather than learning the lesson, the higher-ups changed the rules to stop him winning the next time!
A great quote “In fact, the three-star general had been retired for some five years by the time he led the Red Forces of Millennium Challenge. He was an old-school Marine capable of some old-school tactics and has insisted that technology cannot replace human intuition and study of the basic nature of war, which he called a “terrible, uncertain, chaotic, bloody business.”
https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/that-time-a-marine-general-led-a-fictional-iran-against-the-us-military-and-won
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/04/04/why-sticks-and-stones-will-beat-our-drones/
Ah yes! General Paul Van Riper.
The leaked pdf is that Fraser tweet is astounding. You think if the Romans had fiber and Anonymous it would have turned out any differently?
By raiding the Social Security trust fund through means testing or cutting retirees benefits, of course.
good tweet re Sisterhood of Spies
https://twitter.com/RaniaKhalek/status/1081626147379691522
Was Maddow always like this? I know she went full Obama in 2009 and largely devoted her show to republican state legislator updates, or is she angling for more MIC ad money?
Looking back I think Maddow was always a cheerleader for the neoliberal crowd. When I did watch her most was during the Bush years, and I was in the process of figuring out that ‘the opposition’ wasn’t so opposed but what I remember fits the meme.
I didn’t really get how embedded she was until she was on the ground for the faux Iraq war pull out and how willing she was to cheerlead and spout the BS about that whole PR show which was an Obama production. I do recall that during the 2008 primaries being massively disappointed in how little time she gave to Edwards’ economic messaging, as I thought that was a natural fit for the supposedly more progressive MSNBC primetime (daytime always being notoriously
corporate right wingcentrist).I was also disappointed in the coverage of Edwards, but came to realize that his positions were those of a pre-Bernie economic populist whose message was too dangerous to the profit margins of corporate interests; so understandably, coverage of his campaign was marginalized.
Her father was a former US Air Force Captain. That’s a fairly high status im the MIC.
Not really. It’s an officer’s second promotion. An officer who hasn’t done better than that well before 20 years doesn’t have a career period.
A navy captain is a different matter, as its equivalent to an army or air force full colonel.
Thx. I had the military hierarchies confused.
MSNBC is now owned by Comcast and run by a conservative
Not for nothing, but before that MSNBC was owned by GE. Even in the run up to the Iraq invasion, there was distinct support for the military industrial complex in addition to their usual corporate kiss ass daily programming.
Long before Comcast bought it, Joe Scarborough headed their morning show and Mrs. Alan Greenspan was the daytime political expert. And in the run up to the Iraq war they cancelled their highest rated program because Phil Donahue was actually doing a decent job of destroying the tenuous case for invasion (the idea that he/it was too expensive was bull shit – see Scarborough above).
In many ways MSNBC supposed left tilt was merely Zucker counterprogramming Fox, and even it wasn’t that lefty except maybe Donahue and Ed Schultz who really only earned that by being truly labor friendly (RIP).
i think maddow used to get outraged at some of the bush lies justifying iraq 2, but her outrage at lies justifying wars turned out to be very selective.
Before the Comcast purchase, it was owned by GE, so it wasn’t exactly a bastion of decency.
They fired Donahue for opposing the Iraq War, and my suspicion is they fired Olbermann because he would do what he wanted after raising the profile of the network.
I just wonder if Maddow’s full on Beck mode was always there.
I don’t remember Maddow being so 100% pro war in the past as she has become. Now she is a full time Russiagate believer and promoter plus MIC shill. I’m guessing the large amounts of money she makes from Comcast was the price she paid to no longer have any integrity. A real shame as I used to watched her show nightly but after one to many pro war segments in recent years I stopped. On occasion I run across video clips of her and see that she has changed for the worse.
Senate #1
The Senate considers its first priority to be a bill to make it illegal to boycott the products of the illegal settlements on Jordanian territory occupied by Israel since 1967? Am I mad or do the Geneva Conventions not forbid colonizing occupied territory? I am shocked, shocked, that the Senate would so openly declare its first loyalty to AIPAC, the Likud government of Israel and it donors. Declaring such loyalty to AIPAC, the Likud government of Israel, and it donors in a sneaky underhanded manner, that I would understand. It would be in keeping with the character of those in favor of Senate #1.
Get it through your heads. Israel is a client state. The donors may be your masters but trust me, you could survive and get re-elected without them. Isn’t it at least a bit uncomfortable to be appear so nakedly bought and paid for; trussed up like the Christmas goose?
Lemme get this straight:
The Knesset is in Jerusalem…
…and the Kneelsset is in Washington DC
I have pissed off more than a few people by my stand on foreign interference in our elections. If we were to really go after foreign influence in our elections we should start with and focus on Israel, and not just the open bribery with AIPAC.
A good start would be to make AIPAC register themselves as an agent of a foreign government like all others have to do. Same with anybody spruiking for the Saudis too.
even some of the donors had problems with it
https://forward.com/news/416030/revealed-secret-adl-memo-slammed-anti-bds-laws-as-harmful-to-jews/
As usual, Schwartzbaum’s article “After the Crimean Consensus” totally misunderstands the foundations of Putin’s domestic political support. Putin is popular because Russians deeply appreciate that their country is no longer unstoppably descending into social catastrophe and strategic irrelevance, like it was doing after a decade of US-supported FreeMarketDemocraticDeforms that had Russians dying off by a million a year.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/05/russia-is-finished/302220/
And the turnaround sparked by the very instructive example Putin made of flagrant tax fraud Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whom the Anglosphere Foreign Policy Elite & Punditocracy then tried to transform into the 2nd Coming of Andrei Sakharov. Clueless. But Russians aren’t.
And so American writers will continue to obsess over every dip in Putins poll numbers, mouths watering at the thought that the Russian people will rise up in their majesty, overthrow Putin & all his works, and elect a Yeltsin clone who’ll sell off Russia’s natural resources sector to Anglosphere investors for a song.
I too was puzzled by the shallowness of this article and the writer – who supposedly is a Russian expert. Few in the west understand the Putin appeal. There simply is no equivalent – and so it may be that understanding the VVP phenomenon is just too, too hard for the westerners.
Name one politician in the oh-so-enlightened west who can give you milk production stats, recite poetry, crack jokes (even self-deprecating ones), respond to questions about marital plans, discuss nuclear submarines and the latest developments in the R’s arms industry, opine about rap music, express regret about the US plans to abandon arms treaties, give the audience a historical perspective on sanctions, comment on UK’s mis-behaviour (i.e., Skripal – and where is he, BTW), worry and warn about the possibility of a nuclear war, be critical – yet indulgent- of the country’s unsavoury neighbours, respond to personal appeals from citizens, and lay plans for an ME peace and peace with Japan – and do it all in one day, over a 4hr presser, and with a certain bonhomie and a smile. No wonder he gets demonised. A rational and competent politician – can’t have that… unheard of…
Pulled from headlines of the near future…
“Uppity Congresswoman Is Down On Net Income”
The establishment on AOC tax fairness:
“People look: she’s trying to help the people! Seize her you fools!”
This seems to be totally their argument. To be fair, I think this latest, most clueless wave of anti-aoc jabs, have come from repubs obsessed with her, not from the rightwing dems who might see her as a more immediate threat. I don’t know why the repubs don’t just ignore her. But I’m glad they don’t.
This is why I laugh when I hear the scare stories about how clever and cutthroat the repubs are, how “good” they are at the game of politics. They have been very lucky in their enemies as well. As we replace mice with lions, if we can, you might be surprised at how stupidly repubs act, and how they begin to leak votes like crazy.
Not that I am dem. But if the right people controlled that party, the repubs would stop seeming so smart instantly.
AOC is living rent-free in a lot of conservative heads. It’s fun to watch, at the very least.
An example of this phenomenon:
Been Shapiro complains that the media thinks that he is obsessed with AOC, meanwhile he tweeted about her 21 times in 48 hours.
It’s been interesting doing my informal office polls around my office’s house republicans. They’re not uniformly against her at all. Some of them think her policy ideas sound batty, but many like her bold, unapologetic style and that she’s making heads explode around DC.
People often respect strength, clarity and sincerity.
With that tax policy of 70% on the rich of hers, tell your friends that she wants to bring back the best policies of Dwight Eisenhower! Better yet, ask them if instead it would be better taxing the rich at the rate of 50% like Ronnie Reagan did would be acceptable to them. Then step back and watch the fun.
I hope she sent a nice thank you card to whatever genius initiated the dancing line of attack. She couldn’t have drawn attention to that video herself without having to take flack for perceived vanity.
Maybe they have something of her winning a spelling bee when she was 9. That would be even more devastating.
She looks like Secretariat out of the gate to me. Still a long way to go but tone, topic and content have been spot on.
Headed to Tahoe for the 1st ski trip of the year and Monday’s forecast calls for “Damaging Winds” as snow is falling sideways.
I’ve never experienced such dramatic climatic verbiage as that, it’s essentially a left coast way of describing an all terrain hurricane.
And there’s a bowling alley @ Squaw Valley, with a forecast of central heating inside, with my name on it.
last night we in the san juans got hit with a massive out of nowhere westerly that smith island called 45 mph but it felt like twice that at 3 am with pelting california style rain (30 seconds to soaked to the bone) along with thunder and lightning, a rare occurrence around here. I went to the smith island station at weather.gov and it had hourly readings, but no combined plot of wind speed, gust, and pressure…drat!cheated by the shutdown! Damn you trump, you hate science!
They’ve closed I-80 from Colfax to the Nevada state line on account of zero visibility-a stretch of around 60 miles, and we’re holed up in Citrus Heights, where it’s wet and so windy, tree tops on high are swaying 5-10 feet from center to and fro. You can only imagine what it must be like 7,000 feet higher?
Not a good time to emulate the Donner Party…
and how can you not think of the donners when you’re crawling up the pass with the cadillac suv’s and the like spinning out on the right and left of you, just get behind a truck and figure it’ll be over, at some point…inandout in auburn is a good place to decompress because there’s like 30 cars in the drive thru so you have lots of time, but that’s for the way back…oh wait citrus heights? well…
https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lon=-120.40331628173588&lat=39.321241794856775#.XDKvqHbYrnE
drive safely…
I had the immediate image of Clinton as a female version of the Godfather for her meetings with the 2020 candidates after reading that headline.
“Nice little campaign you have there, be a shame if anything happened to it,” while holding out the ring to be kissed. Right after making it clear that if she comes back they kiss more than that.
I suspect Clinton may be angling for the “savior” nomination on second or third round of voting. As in “please step in and take the nomination to save the party.”
Someone please fact-check me. Is such a nomination even possible?
It’s their party.
The DNC has taken the position in at least one legal prodeeding (re 2016 pres. primary voter purge in Brooklyn) that their organization is private, not public, and that for “internal” matters such as primaries and nominations, they can count the votes however they want. Wish I had the link; wasn’t much reported at the time and I remember it being hard to find on DDGo. But J. Dore reported it at the time, and I looked because I thought “they can’t have actually admitted that in court”, but sure enough, they had.
They are a private party and as long as they were picking candidates in private caucuses that was probably legal. The problem began when they started having their candidates picked in public elections. And so the issue is a very complicated one because of state involvement and state expenditure. It seems to me that it should not be able to control their primaries without government intervention when they have so much government involvement.
Hubert Humphrey 1968
Thanks for fact check
I would not be surprised to see Clinton/O’Rourke or Clinton/Harris in 2020.
Clinton/Obama 2020, more popularly pitched as Hillary/Michelle 2020.
“America has two mommies.”
I just ‘fixed’ a typo in the first line and realized that my subconscious was trying to tell me something. It originally typed ‘Cloneton/Obama 2020.’ If H. Clinton does angle for “Mover and Shaker” “Fairy Godmother” of the Democrat Party, she would push a ‘copy’ of herself. Thus, I look for a big surge in Identitarian Neo-Liberal Pro Wall Street candidates in the next years Democrat Party ‘official’ sweepstakes.
Hopefully, the upcoming probe into the financial misdeeds of the ‘Clinton Foundation’ will send Bill and Hillary to prison. Then we may well see the spectacle of an incarcerated politician running for office from their jail cell.
One of the most recent examples: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/11/08/jailed-texas-state-representative-victory/1927974002/
Identitarian Neo-Liberal
I think the identitarian part is important to the neo-liberal project. Divide and conquer. The natural beneficiary of this, aside from some politicians, are multinational corporations working toward public/private partnerships, or outright privatization of govt services. Citizens who expect the govt to perform the duties and obligations it is elected to perform are far less likely to agree to privatizing the govt, imo. One way to seduce people away from thinking of themselves as American citizens is to subdivide and address groups as xyx-Americans, as if the xyz is more important than the American part. Interesting the Dem estab has started referring to voting groups divided by Dem classifications identity as ‘tribes’. I don’t recall the Dem estab referring to Wall Street interests or Silicon Valley or Hollywood or MIC interests as ‘tribes’.
See my reply down below.
This was LBJs dream in 1956, making him the front runner for 1960. Of course, he wasn’t a two time failure and didn’t expect to beat Ike just raise his national profile and break free of the perception he was a classic Southern Democrat which he expected would be a detriment to any campaign because who would feel positive about voting for a Southern Democrat.
You make me laugh!
Allen & Parnes have added a new Afterword to the trade paperback edition of Shattered. I highly recommend anyone pondering next year’s rodeo read it ASAP.
I’ve done so, and after reading as well an alleged conversation between Robert Reich and one of his GOP acquaintances from the Hill, I’m thinking there will be a move to oust Trump before next spring from his own party, overt or covert, and that they’re willing to go nuclear if he’s asked to resign and refuses. They’re fully aware that “oust Trump” is the sum and substance of the Democrats’ strategy at this point, and would like to see Pence running in his stead.
Given their proven record of getting their base to the polls, Pence as Prez would kill any chance the Democrats have if they rerun 2016, yet that seems to be exactly what their Clinton lord and master has decreed. And like it or not, they don’t have time to come up with proof he, too, was a Russian collaborator in time to prevent yet another rout. That’s likely why one of the first resolutions they introduced in the House was to abolish the Electoral College and turn the race into a straight popularity contest.
The Republican “Establishment” might well salivate at the prospect of ousting Trump, but they would definitely split the Republican Party in doing so. Trump has basically succeeded in pulling off a ‘hostile takeover’ of the Republican Party. In so doing, he dangled the prospect of re-empowerment before the tired eyes of the American Lower Middle and Working classes. Smart opponents of Trump would do better to sit back and let Trump damage himself with unforced errors. The removal of Trump, by anyone, will alienate a huge swath of the American populace. There then might well be an “Establishment” figure swearing the Oath of Office in January 2021, but he or she would be taking the reins of an essentially delegitimized government.
trump could easily save himself with all the power that’s been left lying in the street, 100 million people didn’t vote. So from the “only nixon could go to china” perspective I hope they back him into the corner
Yes. I’ll accept Trump doing the right things for the wrong reasons.
I might agree, but I have yet to see anyone other than the anti-Trump media claim he’s inviolate because of his “base.” The last I heard, his “base” was the Republican party, which he is essentially trashing as we speak. The million or so “racist white rednecks” who supposedly put him over the top are barely a blip on the radar, if that’s what’s being touted as said base. The GOP could make that up just by drawing back their disaffected members.
And how many “Trumpsters” are there in Congress, really? We have no way of knowing because the only thing we’re hearing is any Republican who doesn’t vocally oppose him is lumped into that category.
The one thing the GOP does miles better than the Democrats is get its registered members to the polls. Women abandoned them this year because of Trump, so if he’s gone it’s a given many if not all will come back to the fold. Which brings us to my original premise that if they ain’t got Trump, they got nothin’. And the GOP knows it.
re: Congressional Staffing for Dummies: The Pay Go Dispute – Matt Stoller
Stoller article is a great read. Recommended. Thanks for the link.
seconded.
don’t worry, our government is protecting us from foreign interference.
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/05/u-s-senates-first-bill-in-midst-of-shutdown-is-a-bipartisan-defense-of-the-israeli-government-from-boycotts/
Now seems like an excellent time to share the response I received from one of my lamentable senators, Maggie Hassan. She was an original co-sponsor of S720. I let her have it then, and wrote to her recently after the attempt to sneak the anti-boycott language into the appropriations bills.
“I strongly oppose the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel and believe that it harms our efforts to secure enduring peace through bilateral negotiations toward a two-state solution. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act was introduced by Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) with the bipartisan support of 46 cosponsors, including myself. The bill builds on existing law — the Export Administration Act from the 1970s, which prohibits U.S. companies and their subsidiaries from complying with an unsanctioned foreign boycott imposed by foreign countries – by expanding the prohibition to unsanctioned foreign boycotts imposed by international organizations such as the United Nations or European Union.
Nothing in this bill is intended to infringe upon the constitutionally protected right to free speech, but I understand that some have suggested that the language should be clearer to address concerns with the existing law. I am open to changing the language of this bill as it moves through the legislative process in order to clarify existing law, and I will continue working to oppose the BDS campaign against Israel.
Thank you again for writing to share your thoughts, and I hope that you keep in touch with me. Though we may not see eye to eye on this issue, I hope this letter reflects the careful consideration that went into developing my position. ”
Lovely.
Concerning Article about 70% tax rate, this is no pancea on its own. Trade policy and tax policy would have to be aligned to prevent the continued offshoring of production and profits (via transfer payments or shell companies and whatever new schemes the accountants think of).
Nonetheless, this is a good start for Ms Ocasio-Cortez.
Between Sanders, Warren and Ocasio-Cortez it is about time for the Democrats to advocate policies of a party worthy of governing the US.
It’s not the tax rate, it’s the write offs that matter.
OAC might consider this meme:
If corporations are “people,” then subject them to the personal tax rate–Or–allow people, of any income level, to use all the same tax exemptions, write offs and other tricks that corporations use to avoid taxes.
Corporations are people; but people aren’t corporations.
France: ‘Yellow vest’ protesters storm ministry in Paris
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/france-yellow-vest-protesters-storm-ministry-paris-190106110957370.html
France’s Macron reeling as tough stance against ‘yellow vests’ backfires
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-protests-macron/frances-macron-reeling-as-tough-stance-against-yellow-vests-backfires-idUSKCN1P00KG
I hope he didn’t mean L’Etat, c’est moi..
“With no clear leader, negotiating with the group is hard.”
Exactly. That’s not a bug.
They’re running an auction: how much does it take to make us stop rioting? You’ll know when we stop. Interesting how the casseurs have been backing them up while taking much of the blame.
Incidentally, it was a spokesman named Griveaux, not Macron himself, who was forced to evacuate – it never said exactly which ministry.
Macron did stay out of his royal residence for quite a while when the demonstrations started, though. Not the bravest Frenchman.
Unfortunately, I think he may have been thinking just that.
(Although, he rather reminds me of a diminutive Napoleon – and we know how that ended!)
With a whiff of grapeshot?
Hence my name for him: Macroneon
Our local news has been downplaying the yellow jackets saying numbers are down. Idiots don’t recognize how the jackets are deploying elsewhere. I too noted how any attack on him or the government is an attack on the Republic. I would have thought that the people themselves were the actual Republic. Or maybe it is a matter of worldview.
July 3rd, 2019 – Robert Mueller presents his public findings…
RM: My fellow Americans, this will be a short presentation as we prepare for our most sacred national holiday…
After a complete and extensive review of all available information, we have bad news and good news.
Many questioned the enormous time, energy and resources expanded reviewing the pre-campaign historical business activities of Donald Trump.
This was not a fishing expedition bit simply an honest review of a man with many peaks and valleys in a somewhat complicated financial life of his choosing.
In that review we confirmed he has been an extreme opportunist who will tell anyone and everyone any thing to obtain some short term goal, and after an exhaustive analysis dating from his pre-school years, we can unequivocally confirm President Trump has double crossed everyone he has ever dealt with and come across leading to a lifetime of publicity seeking to find new victims. That was the good news…
The good bad news is there is no question his Russia contacts in the United States and abroad were encouraged by his words to do “anything” they can to help him in his renegade quest to sit in the oval office and they communicated those opportunities for “future goodwill” to parties well enough connected to extend that invitation to the highest reaches in Russia.
We now know Putin is much stupider than we realized, as he imagined there was some form of honor among thieves at the top of the food chain, but our thorough and complete review of President Trump and his actions and intents without question clearly alude he absolutely intended to rip off Putin in the same manner he has ripped off everyone, including his family, since before kindergarten…
As such, with full faith in these findings, we can report Putin is a bigger idiot than we thought…
Report on Trump, indeed.
Is AOC focused solely on Income Tax? Not some kind of wealth tax, like a proper estate tax? Just asking.
As I recall one explanation in the old days (granted, maybe a just-so story) for the difference in European and American economic dynamism, and hardened class structure in Europe, was that the Europeans, including the Brits, protected wealth and taxed income more than the US did. Hence the Duke of Wellington was supposedly still the biggest landlord in central London in the 1990s.
Seems to me that focusing on Income Tax alone would be admitting the ‘American elites’ horse long left the barn.
Estate taxes were pretty steep in the UK up to the 80s or so. Hence the decline of many of the big estates.
I think you mean the Duke of Westminster, rather than the Duke of Wellington.
The current Duke of Westminster turns 28 at the end of January, is not yet married, and is reputed to be the richest person under 30 in the world.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Grosvenor,_7th_Duke_of_Westminster
RE: Pliocene and Eocene provide best analogs for near-future climates — This link’s abstract concluded with the following interesting little observation:
“Both the emergence of geologically novel climates and the rapid reversion to Eocene-like climates may be outside the range of evolutionary adaptive capacity.”
Don’t you just love the art of academic understatement, the description of the possible end of human civilization as we know it flows so beautifully while having no real impact!
Don’t forget the rest our fellow creatures along for the ride! — and already falling off the cart. That old Star Trek joke “Beam me up Scotty …” doesn’t seem so funny any more.
Roger Boyd, Jeremy Grimm,
First sentence of Abstract: “…the Earth system moves toward climate states without societal precedent, challenging adaptation.” “Adaptation” here could be read as referring to human adaptation.
Last sentence of Abstract: “Both the emergence of geologically novel climates and the rapid reversion to Eocene-like climates may be outside the range of evolutionary adaptive capacity.”
The authors state in the Abstract that in the study they quantitatively assess the similarity of future climate states to six geohistorical benchmarks.
They are studying the climate of the Earth system–the whole planet–and looking to find analogs in the past for two projections of the future state of Earth’s climates, working from changes underway now.
RB: Your remark does not refer to the Abstract. The authors are not describing the possible end of human civilization as we know it. They are very clear about the results they are presenting in the paper and why they did the work. The paper is a contribution to an ongoing effort to understand what we will be dealing with in terms of future climate.
JG: “…the range of evolutionary adaptive capacity” refers to capacity for adaptive evolution of all organisms on the planet, ours and that of all our fellow critters. The key word is “evolutionary”.
I can and did read and interpret the abstract. Guessing from your comment and what I believe you are intimating, I am far less optimistic than you seem to be about “the possible end of human civilization as we know it” [Roger Boyd’s words]. Frankly I am skeptical that our agriculture, which is the basis of human civilization as we know it, could be adapted to the much milder Paleoclimate shifts of the more recent Eemian interglacial period which Hansen et al. 2016 describes in some detail. And ignoring the ongoing Climate Chaos, I am also skeptical that our agriculture will adapt to an age without petroleum, and little things like readily available phosphorous.
As for your quibble about: “…the range of evolutionary adaptive capacity”. The phrase does indeed clearly refer to evolutionary adaptation and just as clearly does not suggest that all creatures will be unable to adapt or that humans will not be able to adapt or that human civilization as we know it might not adapt. I believe this phrase from the abstract has definite implications I am quite willing to draw from it.
Whether human civilization survives or not and whether some creatures do not survive … some creatures will survive as they already have through several past geologic ages to the present. You should think more broadly about the further implications of the use of the word ‘evolutionary’ in the abstract. Most, I do not believe all, evolution is a relatively slow process which requires an acumulation of gradual changes over many generations. Humankind has changed the climate in less than 200 years which is like the blink of an eye in geologic time. A sudden shift to Pliocene — or worse — Eocene climate in a few more centuries is a shift too rapid for the relatively slow processes of evolution to successfully adapt many perhaps most of the creatures and plants we know and love. If you want to look on the positive side, humans might be able to help their favorites creatures and plants make it through the transition by some doing some truly inspired GMO and helpful plantings and animal husbandry, as long as our kind is able to retain the sufficient knowledge, and tools to do inspired GMO. I believe the more intelligent species are better equipped adapt to change. We may need to help a selection of other creatures and plants.
I believe neither my understanding of this abstract, nor Roger Boyd’s, really differs all that greatly from what seems to be your understanding of this abstract.
Jeremy Grimm,
There’s no call to “interpret” the Abstract, and I’m not intimating anything including optimism or lack of it about the survival of human civilization as we know it–Roger Boyd brought it up, not I.
We have the abstract of a paper in the natural sciences written for submission to a peer-reviewed journal, the PNAS which is one of the best. The approach is simply put: The paper must be clear, concise and complete. Once the paper is brought to that point, or as close to it as the authors can manage, the abstract is written. It contains what most readers will want from the paper and for non-specialists in particular the abstract is all that will be read.
Clear / concise / complete is required by the editors of the journal; they will enforce the approach and they have hearts of iron; they need to have because of the large number of papers submitted. The paper will be sent to reviewers who write clear / concise / complete reviews and recommend that the paper be accepted, accepted after recommended changes have been made, or rejected.
The paper will say “This is what we did and why we did it; these are our results and we discuss them here; these are our conclusions.” Other researchers will read the paper and attempt to check the accuracy of the results in the paper and some will try to reproduce the work. Forget interpretation or intimation–there’s no place for them in the original paper and they’re guaranteed not make it past the editors.
Again, this is the way it works in the natural sciences. It’s not always that well done in related fields such as archaeology for instance and by the time you’ve moved into the social sciences there can be little trace of it at all, depending on the journal, and that is a tragedy that really needs to be addressed.
If you’d like to see clear / concise / complete in the Humanities, read a few essays by C S Lewis on Medieval and Renaissance literature. They show beautifully that it can be done.
I am remotely familiar with the review process for scientific and technical papers. Your excellent description of the process portrays what could be lost through so-called “Open Science”, which has come up from time to time in the Links and posts. I remain confused as to what you disagree with in my comments or Roger Boyd’s comment. I hope you aren’t suggesting that we must read a scientific abstract without drawing any conclusions from it. I would go so far as to say Roger Boyd was suggesting the scientific review process reduces alarming results to reductive hyperbole.
I once subscribed to Science Magazine and later Nature and stopped my subscriptions as it grew more and more difficult to figure out what was being studied, why, what exactly had been discovered, and what questions the result raised, settled, or contributed to. In other words, I looked for exactly those things you elaborated: “The paper will say “This is what we did and why we did it; these are our results and we discuss them here; these are our conclusions.”
Consider your assertion — “Forget interpretation or intimation–there’s no place for them in the original paper and they’re guaranteed not make it past the editors.” I cannot agree more with what I view as a damnation of the state of scientific literature — a damnation I saw writ large every time I read through the interpretive essays at the front of Science Magazine in the “Perspectives” section. I viewed these little essays as attempts to give some context and intent to the articles which I believe nonspecialists in the particular field — I might push this to nonspecialists in the special research area of a paper — find a little too concise, exact, and non-inferential to hold any meaning. [And no I do not support “Open Science”.]
Jeremy Grimm,
A peer-reviewed paper in the natural sciences presents the results of research focused on a topic or a set of related topics. It can be used as a starting point for further work; it can be the answer to the question “What’s the evidence?” It is a contribution to a body of knowledge, an addition to our understanding. The stripped-down focus is the response to what Asimov called The Sound of Panting some fifty years ago: How to keep up with the staggering amount of information that is coming in every day of the year.
The articles in the front of Science and Nature, for example, can put a paper or papers in an issue of the journal into a wider context, by comment and by bringing in other papers that help to give a wider view. Sometimes a review article appears in an issue of a journal and it can be a godsend because it gives an overview of a whole field and ties together a significant part of what we know about it; it will draw on sometimes hundreds of published papers and provide a great place to begin finding your footing in an area that interests you and is new to you. Each–the paper, the comment, a review paper–is a step up in context and breadth and each has its use, each is a possible point of attention depending on how much information and breadth you need. Each provides access at a different level. And it’s those editors with hearts of iron that hold the structure up.
In my own case, the journals I read regularly are Nature, Nature Geoscience, and PaleoAmerica. If I could I’d read Nature Ecology and Evolution, PNAS, AGU Reviews, Science, Cosmochemica et Geochemica Acta, Quaternary Research, and half a dozen others but that isn’t possible. That’s where tightly-focused abstracts come in, and sites such as EurekAlert.
“Let them eat training,” Chicago edition:
Rahm Emmanuel proposes Free Community College
The Atlantic articles linked to in that opinion article are classics too (“America Wakes Up from it’s Dream of Free College”). I’m fascinated reading these kinds of things. It’s like our elites are nominally aware of things like the Yellow Vests but they don’t really think they need to do anything beyond vague gesturing in the direction of popular opinion. US citizens don’t seem to be in the mood to put up with this status quo much longer. I guess we’ll see what happens when the next downturn hits and more jobs are shed.
Chris
It’s the Obama solution: All we need is better PR (propaganda), (messaging), (faux sincerity).
I hate Rahm Emanuel more than almost anybody. Recommend the twitter account @Mayor_1Percent .
I think he may be thinking of throwing his despicable hat in the ring too.
RE: “Contest models highlight inherent inefficiencies of scientific funding competitions” —
This long highly mathematical demonstration based on economic theory, of the stupidity of the current methods for funding research is truly scary on its face. This impresses me either as evidence for some kind of strange Stockholm syndrome working on scientists or a curious attack on Neoliberal economic rationales for the allocation of research funding by a Neoliberal economist. Maybe it’s an argument for repairs to the Market mechanisms used to allocate research funding? Are there no other ways to question the way the US funds research except through the ‘Truth’ revealed by the mechanisms of the all-knowing Market and its ‘Wisdom’ for maximizing ROI for some economic definition of the ‘R’ — and monetary is ‘Best’?
Perhaps this link is a harbinger for progress in construction of a Market for the best ‘science’ money can buy. [I hope a ‘/s’ is unnecessary]
some capacity arithmetic.
500 spaces x 30 min = 1000 trucks/hour. By that measure, ideally, the port could clear the 12000 trucks in around 12 hours. If the drivers have to fight over the spaces first, it could take longer.
Wonderful piece, good example of strategic application from operational analysis (the proposed tool is an analytic strategy, not an app or algorithm):
A new tool can help us determine which conspiracy theories are false and which might be true.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2019/01/04/a-new-tool-can-help-us-determine-which-conspiracy-theories-are-false-and-which-might-be-true/
I do think it’s important to see this analytic approach as a tool rather than a rigid rule (set). Rules tell us what to discard or assume, tools suggest where/how we should look.
What’s the tool think of our Decca-Trillion$
military and intelligence apparatus’
defeat by19 guys with box cutters?
Conspiracy theory or not?
Just askin’
GIGO.
The wapo piece on how well the recovery is going:
Does anybody recall seeing articles in the 90s about how the recovery from the 1981 recession was going? Or in 2005 about whether recovery was on track from the early 90s recession? Or….
The very fact that articles are still having to frame the economic environment in terms of the 07 crash indicates all by itself that things aren’t as grand and glorious as all that.
That’s a good point.
I think the reason behind it is the average data indicates that a lit of things are going right. But so many people’s lived experiences are evidence that so much is still very wrong.
I believe on this site and others we’ve seen graphs and collections of charts that show how skewed the recovery has been. Both in terms of who has benefited, which industries have benefited, and which regions of the country have benefited. Roughly 50% of GDP “created” in the US occurs in 12 metro areas. That means all the all the rest of the country gets what’s left. That wasn’t true when the country had a bigger share of farming and manufacturing in our economy.
That probably explains why all those privileged white people are drinking themselves to death in flyover country :/
Well that kind of perspective would show recoveries of diminishing returns. Fewer people “recover” each time even if the numbers from their formulas are big. Hence the growing wealth gaps.
You ain’t kidding. Even in the supposedly wealthy areas in California, getting a job is not the problem. It is getting a job that will pay the cost of living especially for the bottom half while the top say 20 percent are doing just fine, even great. Hence all those news stories about our “recovery.”
Identitarian Neo-Liberal
I think the identitarian part is important to the neo-liberal project. Divide and conquer. The natural beneficiary of this, aside from some politicians, are multinational corporations working toward public/private partnerships, or outright privatization of govt services. Citizens who expect the govt to perform the duties and obligations it is elected to perform are far less likely to agree to privatizing the govt, imo. One way to seduce people away from thinking of themselves as American citizens is to subdivide and address groups as xyx-Americans, as if the xyz is more important than the American part. Interesting the Dem estab has started referring to voting groups divided by Dem classifications identity as ‘tribes’. I don’t recall the Dem estab referring to Wall Street interests or Silicon Valley or Hollywood or MIC interests as ‘tribes’.
This comment is meant as a reply to ambrit at 8:32.
I hear you loud and clear. The ‘tribes’ nomenclature is interesting as it suggests an academic, detached anthropological attitude towards the people the politicians should be identifying with, much less working for. It presupposes some nebulous ‘superiority’ inherent in the political class. In Anglo-American usage, at least, the word tribes carries a stigma as if it describes ‘inferiors’ and ‘savages,’ etc.
I have heard the financial elites referred to as “interests.”