Monday, August 31, 2020

Renegade Inc - Capital in the 21Century

When economist Thomas Picketty released his book ‘Capital in the 21Century’ people clambered to get a copy. 

The filmmaker Justin Pemberton has since made the film – in it, he points hard to how rentier capitalism has disenfranchised the west. 

Host Ross Ashcroft caught up with the Kiwi director to understand what needs to change if we want 21st Century capital to serve, not enslave us.




Is Success Luck or Hard Work



The Dissolution of Liberal Universalism — Alastair Crooke


Occasionally, Alastair Crooke hits one out of the park and this post is one of those. He reiterates a point that Alexander Dugin ("Putin's brain" NOT) makes foundational in The Fourth Political Theory. He argues that the twentieth century was about fascism and communism, and that that dichotomy no longer exists. Presently, the historical dialectic has shifted to the conflict between liberalism and traditionalism, which will occupy at least the first part of the twenty-first century, as civilizational states assert themselves against liberalism as a homogenizing force based on 18th century Enlightenment European values and ideology that negates the traditions of civilizational states.

I think he is essentially correct about this historical conflict between liberalism and traditionalism, but I disagree that fascism and communism no longer exist as key players on the world stage. Fascism is again on the rise within liberalism as a paradox of liberalism, the illiberalism of demanding that all conform to an "exceptional" way of life. Communism remains an ideal, attempts to actualize it prematurely having failed owing to the level of collective consciousness not being elevated enough to sustain it.

Whatever, Alastair Crooke has put his finger on an underlying dynamic that is shaping world events. While he doesn't mention Alexander Dugin, he does cite Samuel Huntington.
In a way, these woke generations are paraphrasing Samuel Huntington, who writing in his Clash of Civilizations, asserted that “the concept of a universal civilization helps justify Western cultural dominance of other societies and the need for those societies to ape Western practices and institutions.” Universalism is the ideology of the West for confronting other cultures. Naturally, everyone outside the West, Huntington argued, should see the idea of one world as a threat.
There are two sides (at least) in a dialectical argument. I am not taking either side, and personally am happy to see the "conversation" taking place not only intellectually but also in history. I also think that is a transformational process that will extend over perhaps hundreds of years. 

Strategic Culture Foundation
The Dissolution of Liberal Universalism
Alastair Crooke | founder and director of the Conflicts Forum, and former British diplomat and senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy

See also

Open Culture
The Story of Fascism: Rick Steves’ Documentary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Century

Medium
We Don’t Know How to Warn You Any Harder. America is Dying.
Umair Haque

Counterpunch
The Empty Theater
Kenn Orphan

SouthFront — China’s New Carrier-Based AWACS Made Its Maiden Flight


China takes the lead in radar?

SouthFront
China’s New Carrier-Based AWACS Made Its Maiden Flight

Sputnik — Huawei Moves US Investments to Russia to Avoid Sanctions Crackdown

Huawei has dramatically ramped up investment in Russia due to US restrictions against the tech giant, CEO Ren Zhengfei has said.
“After the United States included us in the Entity List, we transferred our investment in the United States to Russia, increased Russian investment, expanded the Russian scientist team, and increased the salary of Russian scientists,” Ren said in a recent speech to Chinese universities, his comments cited by Shanghai Jiao Tong University on Sunday....
Sputnik International
Huawei Moves US Investments to Russia to Avoid Sanctions Crackdown

Research: Knowledge Workers Are More Productive from Home — Julian Birkinshaw, Jordan Cohen and Pawel Stach

In sum, lockdown has been positive for knowledge worker productivity in the short term. But it has also created some concerns and challenges around longer-term effectiveness, creativity, and personal resilience. Let’s consider the findings from the research in more depth, then discuss what the opportunities and challenges are for the months and years ahead....
Harvard Business Review
Research: Knowledge Workers Are More Productive from Home
Julian Birkinshaw, professor at London Business School; Jordan Cohen, executive at Lifelabs Learning, and Pawel Stach, researcher at London Business School

Sunday, August 30, 2020

Bill Mitchell — US Federal Reserve statement signals a new phase in the paradigm shift in macroeconomics

Regular readers will know that for the last few years I have been documenting the way that the dominant paradigm in macroeconomics (New Keynesianism) is slowly disintegrating as the dissonance between its empirical predictions and reality becomes too great to ignore and justify. The once-in-a-century pandemic hasn’t given us much to celebrate in 2020. One cause for optimism, perhaps, is that we might finally jettison the mainstream economics fictions about government deficits and debt, which have hampered prosperity over several decades. Last week (August 27, 2020), the US Federal Reserve Bank Chairman, Jerome Powell made a path breaking speech – New Economic Challenges and the Fed’s Monetary Policy Review – at the annual economic policy symposium sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City at Jackson Hole. On the same day, the Federal Reserve Bank released a statement – Federal Open Market Committee announces approval of updates to its Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy. We have now entered a new phase of the paradigm shift in macroeconomics.
Winning.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
US Federal Reserve statement signals a new phase in the paradigm shift in macroeconomics
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

See also

Prospect
The duel: are tax rises now inescapable? Post-Covid, are taxes hikes essential to fund the future? Or should we abandon “deficit fetishism” and spend our way to prosperity?

Primer: MMT Theory Of Inflation — Brian Romanchuk

The Monetary Monopoly Model (Section 4.3) is a core model of Modern Monetary Theory. If we take it literally, we do not need a theory of inflation, since the price level in some variants of the model is explicitly set as a policy variable. However, reality is far more complex than the model suggests, and if we want to match theory to reality, we are faced with the realisation that governments act in a fashion that sabotages the control of the price level that they do have.
(Note: This is an unedited draft of a section of my increasingly long MMT primer.)
Bond Economics
Primer: MMT Theory Of Inflation
Brian Romanchuk

What We Need is a Theory of Why People Misunderstand Money

A propos our recent discussion of whether MMT is a theory, a dogma, or a description.

I’ve always been baffled why ‘modern monetary theory’ is called a theory. I don’t mean this in a disparaging way. As far as theories of money go, I think modern monetary theory (MMT for short) is the correct one. But having a correct theory of money is a bit like having a correct theory of traffic lights.

Understanding this act of money creation is trivial — much like understanding the creation of a traffic light. Just like we define the rules of traffic, we define the rules of double-entry bookkeeping. We then use these rules to regulate our behavior, creating money as we please.

What’s interesting, though, is that few people misunderstand traffic lights. We all know that traffic lights can be put anywhere we want them, and that they’re based on an arbitrary social convention. Yet when it comes to money, the same is not true. Many people fundamentally misunderstand money. To them, it’s not an arbitrary social convention that can be created/destroyed at will. Instead, they perceive money as a scarce commodity — something that, like water in a desert, must be guarded and conserved.

What we really need, then, is not so much a theory of money, but a theory of why people misunderstand money. 

 Economics from the Top Down -- Why Isn’t Modern Monetary Theory Common Knowledge?

Blair Fix -- Political economist. Blogger. Muckraker. Foe of neoclassical economics.

Saturday, August 29, 2020

New technology export rules in China could affect TikTok sale to a US company — Kim Lyons


Plans for a TikTok sale may have a new obstacle, with China implementing new rules on AI technology exports, The New York Timesreported. The new export control rules, which focus on technology the Chinese government considers sensitive, could mean that TikTok’s parent company, Beijing-based ByteDance, might need a license before it can sell TikTok to an American company.
The updated regulations prohibit exporting technology including text analysis, voice recognition, and content suggestions without a license from the Chinese government. According to The Wall Street Journal, a Chinese government official told state-run Xinhua News Agency that ByteDance should “seriously and cautiously” consider halting talks for a sale of TikTok.…
The plot thickens.

The Verge
New technology export rules in China could affect TikTok sale to a US company
Kim Lyons

How an “Act of God” Pandemic Is Destroying the West: The U.S. is Saving the Financial Sector, not the Economy — Michael Hudson

A socialist government such as China’s can keep its industry going simply by simply writing down debts when they can’t be paid without forcing a closedown and bankruptcy and loss of assets and employment. The world thus has two options: a basically productive public financial system in China, or a predatory financial system in the United States....
Incidentally, I searched on the title in Google search to see whether this site is being deplatformed and came up with nothing. The Unz Review is apparently being censored.

The Unz Review
How an “Act of God” Pandemic Is Destroying the West: The U.S. is Saving the Financial Sector, not the Economy 
Michael Hudson | President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Guest Professor at Peking University

A low dose of lysergic acid diethylamide decreases pain perception in healthy volunteers — Journal of Psychopharmacology


So now they find out.
Journal of Psychopharmacology
A low dose of lysergic acid diethylamide decreases pain perception in healthy volunteers
ht Naked Capitalism

Steve Keen’s lightbulb moment on modern monetary theory — Richard Murphy

But there has been an issue: Steve did not 'get' MMT and its argument that spending creates the money to pay tax and fund what is called government borrowing, but which is actually the redepositing of the excess of government spending over taxes raised back with the government for safekeeping. And that obstacle meant that we could never quite agree.
And then he read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton, which is also essential reading. And he did some double-entry book-keeping to build a Minsky inspired model of the economy, which is available to sponsors of his blog. And the result is that he now gets that what Stephanie says, and what I've been saying for some time, is right: i.e. that the deficit creates money.
Money is not needed to fund the deficit. The deficit makes the money to pay for itself.The bonds just tidy up the private sector, and bank, balance sheets and let it be pretended that the government is not lending itself money when that is what it actually, and inevitably, is doing via its own central bank...
Amazing that it took reading The Deficit Myth for Steve to realize this elementary institutional fact.

Tax Research UK
Steve Keen’s lightbulb moment on modern monetary theory
Richard Murphy | Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London; Director of Tax Research UK; non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics, and a member of the Progressive Economy Forum

Steve keen and Phil Dobbie - Can MMT solve the COVID-19 debt problem?

Governments the world over are spending like crazy to try and steer their economies through the COVID-19 crisis. Whether it’s the fiscal policies of the government or the monetary policies of the central bank, it all still revolves around using money that wasn’t around a few months ago. So how much of what is happening is described by Modern Monetary Theory – and how much more could be done if we accepted that MMT is the way things should really work. And do central banks, or treasurers really understand it? Phil Dobbie asks Prof Steve Keen whether MMT can solve the COVID-19 debt problem?

Richard Murphy summery of the interview 



Debunking Economics was, and is still, the classic book by Steve Keen, which I consider essential reading for all interested in economics. When I first read it I had no idea that one day we would get to know each other and that he would, for example, be a regular re-tweeter of this blog, as I am aware that he is.
But there has been an issue: Steve did not 'get' MMT and its argument that spending creates the money to pay tax and fund what is called government borrowing, but which is actually the redepositing of the excess of government spending over taxes raised back with the government for safekeeping. And that obstacle meant that we could never quite agree.
And then he read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton, which is also essential reading. And he did some double-entry book-keeping to build a Minsky inspired model of the economy, which is available to sponsors of his blog. And the result is that he now gets that what Stephanie says, and what I've been saying for some time, is right: i.e. that the deficit creates money.
Money is not needed to fund the deficit. The deficit makes the money to pay for itself.
The bonds just tidy up the private sector, and bank, balance sheets and let it be pretended that the government is not lending itself money when that is what it actually, and inevitably, is doing via its own central bank.
And because Steve explains this new understanding on his part well in the discussion that takes place it's well worth listening to.
As for me, I'm delighted we're now on the same side.
Now to get Ann Pettifor and Frances Coppola to understand this.
And even Simon Wren-Lewis and Jonathan Portes.
Or is that too much to hope?


A graduate speaks out about her student loan


Friday, August 28, 2020

How Democrats and Republicans made deals to pass Magnitsky Act — Lucy Komisar

As the Democratic Convention is in progress, it is fitting to look at how Democrats in Congress and the White House, with Republican collaboration, were responsible for the Magnitsky Act, the law that protects tax fraudster William Browder and his henchman Mikhail Khodorkovsky by erecting a wall against their having to face justice for their financial crimes. And ramps up hostility to Russia....
Documented.

The Komisar Scoop
How Democrats and Republicans made deals to pass Magnitsky Act
Lucy Komisar

American Fishing Vessels Spooked As Russian Nuclear Submarine Surfaces Near Alaska — Tyler Durden

“We are building up our forces to ensure the economic development of the region,” the Ministry of Defense statement said....
"Freedom of navigation" works both ways.

Zero Hedge
American Fishing Vessels Spooked As Russian Nuclear Submarine Surfaces Near Alaska
Tyler Durden

Also

TASS
Russia’s latest nuclear-powered subs to carry cruise missiles with range of over 4,000 km

The American Way of War, a Required Reading List — Matthew Hoh

The two books I tell people to read to understand not just the United States’ war in Vietnam, but also its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the current world war the US has created and sustained that stretches from western Africa to Pakistan, are David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest and Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie. Both men were New York Times reporters, with extensive experience in Vietnam, and both men reported not only critically on the war, but adversarially, something that any observer of major American media of the last twenty years will note is often missing in US media coverage of the current wars in the Muslim world.* What few examples we have in corporate media these last two decades of critical and adversarial reporting on the wars is fickle and frail when compared to the strength, integrity and depth of reporting and writing produced by Halberstam and Sheehan. Read these two books about the lies, the self-deceptions, the careerism, the group-think, the chauvinism, and the greed of the American Empire and its officers, and you will understand not just the American war in Vietnam, but the wars of this century, wars that continue to devastate and destroy so many.**
I read those two books when I was a junior officer in the Marine Corps in the late 1990s, not because I had some critical perception of the US military or possessed a rebellious intellect, but because those books, at the time, were required reading for Marine officers. So were the works of Mao, Che Gueverra, Bernard Fall, Alistair Horne, Alan Moorehead, Harry Summers and Sun Tzu; and not just one, but two books about General Giap, the Vietnamese military commander who defeated both the French and the US, appeared on the 1998 list, including Giap’s own work, How We Won the War. The commandant of the Marine Corps, James Jones, who became Barack Obama’s national security adviser and then cheer-led for and oversaw the escalation of the Afghan War in 2009, in a message to all Marines in 2000, said A Bright Shining Lie was one of his top 5 most important books. He said that before he had the choice of ...
I read most of the books on this list that were published at time when I was a US Naval Reserve officer on active duty in the Pacific fleet. For example, Bernard Fall wrote about the French experience in Vietnam that led to their ignominious defeat by a tenacious and clever indigenous people improvising guerrilla tactics suitable for conditions there.

It was clear from this that the US was making the same mistakes, unable to comprehend what was going actually on and always seeing victory around the corner by upping the ante (American soldiers lives).

This woke me up to the folly of the Vietnam War, which I actively opposed after my tour of active duty was up. And it was not just the senior military that was blindsided but also the senior civilian leadership, both political and administrative. And yet it goes on.

Please read this post.

Strategic Culture Foundation
The American Way of War, a Required Reading List
Matthew Hoh
Originally posted as Counterpunch

The Social Fabric of the U.S. is Fraying Severely if not Unravelling — Glenn Greenwald

Why, in the world’s richest country, is every metric of mental health pathology rapidly worsening?
The Intercept
The Social Fabric of the U.S. is Fraying Severely if not Unravelling
Glenn Greenwald

Fighting Russia has become an existential necessity for NATO, if tensions are reduced alliance has no purpose – Russia FM Lavrov

There are lots of people who would lose their well paid jobs if peace were ever to break out. Posh houses, fancy cars, the best restaurants, status: these people would sooner risk WW3 than lose any of those things.

The above was a tweet of mine that Oliver Stone liked.

Confrontation with Russia has become the sole reason for NATO’s existence, and this encourages instability in Europe, creating artificial dividing lines on the continent. That's according to Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.
The veteran diplomat told the Moscow daily Trud that everyone knows there are no real threats to security in Europe but that NATO needs to invent them in order to keep itself relevant. Lavrov also drew attention to the fact that Russia has repeatedly proposed measures to reduce tensions and reduce the risk of incidents on the continent.
“Now, just like during the Cold War, fighting Russia on all fronts, including information and propaganda, has become the alliance’s reason for existence,” he explained. “NATO has deployed extensive resources on the eastern flank, near our borders, including conducting exercises and improving military infrastructure.”

 Fighting Russia has become an existential necessity for NATO, if tensions are reduced alliance has no purpose – Russia FM Lavrov

The TikTok Ban Should Worry Every Company — Stuart Madnick


Smoot-Hawley?

Harvard Business Review Blog
The TikTok Ban Should Worry Every Company
Stuart Madnick

See also
During the news conference, the spokesman also referred to a survey, conducted by the Chinese social media platform Weibo, which indicated that about 95 percent of respondents were ready to give up the use of their iPhones if WeChat was blacklisted by the US.
Tim Cook has warned the president that banning American support of WeChat would end Apple in China , which would drop Apple device sales 30%.

Again, Smoot-Hawley?

Sputnik International
Beijing on Possible US Ban of WeChat: 'There'll Be No Reason Why Chinese Should Keep Apple Products'

Zero Hedge
Top Beijing Official Warns: Chinese Consumers Will 'Abandon' iPhones If US Bans WeChat
Tyler rdenDu

You Know In Your Heart That the Day of Real Resistance Is Coming — Yves Smith


Comparison of today's resistance with the countercultural revolution and anti-war protests of the Sixties. Those began in 1964 with the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley. They lasted over a decade, and included the civil rights movement as well.

 On this analogy we are at the beginning of a decade long resistance that could transform the country in many ways. However, the resistance of the Sixties did not result in systemic change, and Ronald Reagan was elected president, beginning another conservative era, this time a neoliberal one.

As you may have noticed, I am not posting on US partisan politics in this election cycle. I don't consider this issue partisan. It is a socio-economic phenomenon akin to a "spiritual awakening" that portends to affect the entire culture and influence just about all American life. Especially interesting is the demographic shift that the US has begun to go through that is bound up in this dynamic and foundational to it.

In the historical dialectic that is unfolding, the old system, the old guard, and the existing cultural worldview are all being challenged by a demographic force that promised to engulf the status quo and usher in a new era. This is intensified by the dichotomy between those that grew up in an analog world and those that are growing up in a digital world. 

The historical dialectic is grounded in conflict. The conflict here is different factions living in different world based on the lens of life experience and its interpretation though ideology.

Naked Capitalism
You Know In Your Heart That the Day of Real Resistance Is Coming
Yves Smith

Thursday, August 27, 2020

Greyzone - Col Lawrence Wilkerson: US protects global empire during pandemic, not its own population

A good interview.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, discusses the connections between the global US empire and the record US death toll during the coronavirus pandemic. "We're really not doing anything very well or right, and that's a consequence in part at least of our fascination with an attempt to maintain and even expand this empire that we've created since 1945," Wilkerson says. He also discusses the breakdown of US-Russia talks on expanding a key nuclear weapons treaty, and new revelations about the Bush administration's drive to invade Iraq. 

Guest: Col. Lawrence Wilkerson. Former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell; currently a distinguished professor at the College of William and Mary.




Southfront — New Models Of Small Arms Of Chinese Special Forces


Imitate and innovate. Nothing about the export market but that is sure to follow, since chinese manufacturing is highly competitive with respect to both price and quality.

Southfront
New Models Of Small Arms Of Chinese Special Forces

Robert Parry - A Family Business of Perpetual War

The bipartisan Military-Industrial Complex in action.


Exclusive: Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan have a great mom-and-pop business going. From the State Department, she generates wars and from op-ed pages he demands Congress buy more weapons. There’s a pay-off, too, as grateful military contractors kick in money to think tanks where other Kagans work, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan and his wife, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, run a remarkable family business: she has sparked a hot war in Ukraine and helped launch Cold War II with Russia and he steps in to demand that Congress jack up military spending so America can meet these new security threats.

This extraordinary husband-and-wife duo makes quite a one-two punch for the Military-Industrial Complex, an inside-outside team that creates the need for more military spending, applies political pressure to ensure higher appropriations, and watches as thankful weapons manufacturers lavish grants on like-minded hawkish Washington think tanks

Corsortinum News

Robert Parry - A Family Business of Perpetual War

GM Sells 15,000 Low-Cost EVs For China In First 20 Days — Raphael Orlove


Automobiles with Chinese characteristics — functional and  low price point. They will likely never be seen in the US. The down market in the US is used.

Jalopnik
GM Sells 15,000 Low-Cost EVs For China In First 20 Days
Raphael Orlove

See also

A Chinese company ventures where GM is so far reluctant to go. The vehicle built to US standards are far more expensive than the models built for China.

Oilprice
China Looks To Dive Into The American EV Market
Safehaven.com

Definitive Eurasian alliance is closer than you think — Pepe Escobar

We have seen how China is meticulously planning all its crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic moves all the way to 2030 and beyond.

What you are about to read next comes from a series of private, multilateral discussions among intel analysts, and may helpfully sketch the big picture.…

Walmart Says It’s Partnering With Microsoft on a TikTok Deal — Tom Warren


ROFLMAO!

The Verge
Walmart Says It’s Partnering With Microsoft on a TikTok Deal
Tom Warren

Chris Hedges — How Corporate Tyranny Works

Those, like environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, who fight the corporate control of our society on behalf of the vulnerable find the institutions of power unite to crucify them.
Ambassador Craig Murray is similarly on trial for contempt of court.

Sputnik — Iran Used Russian Radar to Track US F-35s After Soleimani Killing, Firm's Deputy CEO Says


Talking his book, or not?

Sputnik International
Iran Used Russian Radar to Track US F-35s After Soleimani Killing, Firm's Deputy CEO Says


TASS
Russia’s latest Hermes supersonic missile can wipe out any Western tank, designer says

Trespassing should certainly not be a criminal offence — Peter May

George Monbiot has been writing in a similar vein:
The Book of Trespass, by Nick Hayes, is massively researched but lightly delivered, a remarkable and truly radical work, loaded with resonant truths and stunningly illustrated by the author.
It shows how the great estates, from which we are excluded, were created by a combination of theft from the people of Britain (the enclosure of our commons) and theft from the people of other nations, as profits from the slave trade, colonial looting and much of the £30tn bled from India were invested into grand houses and miles of wall: blood money translated into neoclassical architecture.
"Primitive accumulation."

Progressive Pulse
Trespassing should certainly not be a criminal offence
Peter May

Defend Democracy Press — US Sanctions Russian Defence Ministry Research Institute That Worked on COVID-19 Vaccine

The US has gone as far as to claim that the listed institutions are working on chemical and biological weapons.…
Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko stated that all the foreign criticism was provoked by the fear of fair competition and slammed the accusations as unfounded.
 National security or anti-competitive?

Defend Democracy Press
US Sanctions Russian Defence Ministry Research Institute That Worked on COVID-19 Vaccine

See also

Sputnik International

Three More COVID-19 Vaccines Being Registered in Russia, Health Minister Reveals

Vladimir Putin Reveals His Daughter Developed COVID Antibodies After Taking Russian Vaccine

Putin: Russia Will Have Second COVID-19 Vaccine in September

Observers: US Sanctions on Russian Institute Working on Sputnik V Caused by Fear to Lose Leadership

US Decision to Blacklist Russian Institutes 'Seems Confusing', No Proof Provided, Diplomat Says


TASS

COVID-19 vaccines by Gamaleya Center and Vektor to compete against each other, says Putin

Putin says his daughter feeling well after coronavirus vaccine injection

‘Theater of the absurd’: Kremlin lambasts US sanctions against Russian research institutes







Beijing's decades-long policies in Xinjiang, CIA interference, funding of separatist and terrorist groups — Shane Quinn


Backgrounder.

Geopolitika.ru (Russia)
Beijing's decades-long policies in Xinjiang, CIA interference, funding of separatist and terrorist groups
Shane Quinn

The Triumph of Monopoly Capitalism is Hurting American Workers’ Life Expectancy — John Buell

Miller concludes, “The best way to get astronomically rich in America is to acquire monopoly power to extract wealth from workers, consumers, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and, through tax breaks, subsidies, and contracts, our government itself. Monopolies are powerful generators of the inequality that progressives decry.”
The chief weakness of capitalism under bourgeois liberalism is government capture, e. g., through legalized bribery (lobbying and campaign finance) and the revolving door. The ultimate reason that republics are subject to capture by special interests is class power. This version of oligarchy is the liberal side of feudal aristocracy resulting from the 18th century Enlightenment out of which bourgeois liberalism grew.

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Who pays the lowest taxes in the US?

When you look at all the different taxes, the combined effect results in the US almost having a flat tax overall, with the super rich paying the smallest percentage of tax to income.

There's a common myth about who pays their fair share, and who doesn't.

Subscribe to our channel! http://goo.gl/0bsAjO

You might have heard that the poor in America barely pay any taxes. And if you look at a chart of how much every American pays in income taxes, that seems basically true. But income taxes are just one type of the many taxes we pay. So what happens if we add them all up? A new analysis by the economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman did exactly that. And it shows that the American tax system might not be as "progressive" as many people believe.

Read more about that analysis in an op-ed Saez and Zucman wrote for the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/11/op...

All of their data, which we used to produce this video, is available on their website: https://taxjusticenow.org/

Their full research is presented in their book, the Triumph of Injustice: https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Injust...

And if you want to watch a bunch of economists debate this research (economists got very fired up about this!), watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUGpj...

But if you don't want to watch this long debate, Vox's Matt Yglesias explains what it's all about: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...





My new podcast episode is out. Poker and trading. The mental game aspects are the same.

A Mathematical Model Of Modern Monetary Operations - 2: Simulating MMT — Steve Keen

The previous post finished with the observation that, since the sum of all Equity is zero, and the banking sector must be in positive equity, part of the remainder of the economy - the government, or the non-bank public - must be in negative equity. So which sector is better equipped to handle that: the non-bank public, or the government?…
In the next post, I'll consider what the impact is of different fiscal regimes: the government running a deficit (as the USA has for most of the last 120 years - roughly of 2.5% of GDP); the government running a surplus; the government running a surplus and the private sector borrowing from the Banking Sector; the government running a surplus and the private sector reducing its debt to the Banking Sector; and the government running a deficit while the private sector reduces its debt to the Banking Sector.

Bill Mitchell — Presentation to the New Zealand Fabian Society, August 16, 2020


Video.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Presentation to the New Zealand Fabian Society, August 16, 2020
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Combating the market power of U.S. corporations over workers and consumers — Equitable Growth

Recent economic research establishes that the United States suffers from a growing market power problem. Market power, often referred to as monopoly power, means consumers pay more for the goods and services they need. Workers earn less. Small businesses have a harder time succeeding. Innovation slows. Market power exacerbates wealth inequality, too, because those who benefit from monopolies—the high-paid executives and stockholders of corporations—are wealthier, on average, than the consumers, workers, and small businesses who bear monopolies’ costs.
U.S. antitrust laws, as interpreted and enforced today, are inadequate to confront and deter growing market power in the U.S. economy. To restore a fair and competitive market, we need legislation that strengthens the law and counters growing corporate power, enforcers who are willing to aggressively enforce laws, and increased fiscal resources to enforce the law.
Workers getting paid less and consumers paying more than they would in a symmetrical market as a result of market power is rent extraction, in this case, monopoly-monopsony rent. The genuine economic meaning of "free market" is symmetrical market, aka perfect market. That is to say, in perfect markets having no asymmetry, prices reflect costs vertically and horizontally, and there is no opportunity to extract economic rent.

Econ 101 is based on the ideal of a perfect market, which does not exist in the real world owing to many factors, one of the primary ones being class structure and power in bourgeois liberalism, where "capital" (property ownership) is privileged. The result is structural inequality of power, income and wealth, skewing economic distribution toward the top. It is as endemic to "capitalism" as business and financial cycles.

WCEG — The Equitablog
Equitable Growth

See also

Neoclassical economics deconstructed. The foundation turns out to be power rather than supply and demand as claimed.

Real-World Economics Review Blog
Supply and demand deconstructed
Blair Fix

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Is Modern Monetary Theory useful for developing countries? — Adam Aboobaker and Esra Nur Ugurlu


Academics take on MMT wrt development economics. 

This is an early sign of informed and open debate based on the MMT framework by up-and-comers. Positive development.

Open Democracy
Is Modern Monetary Theory useful for developing countries?
Adam Aboobaker and Esra Nur Ugurlu, Ph.D. candidates in the Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Zero Hedge — Treasury Sells A Record $50BN in 2Y Notes At A Record Low Yield In Blockbuster Auction


Deflationary expectations.

Zero Hedge
Treasury Sells A Record $50BN in 2Y Notes At A Record Low Yield In Blockbuster Auction
Tyler Durden

RT — UNSC ‘not in position to take further action’ on US push for ‘snapback’ of sanctions on Iran


UNSC pokes the US (Mike Pompeo) in the eye. He will be duly enraged and reacted predictably.

This could be the beginning of the end game as the US struggles to maintain position as geopolitical hegemon in a unipolar world.

RT
UNSC ‘not in position to take further action’ on US push for ‘snapback’ of sanctions on Iran

Reflections after a Post Keynesian Workshop — Jessica Finnamore


Why Post Keynesianism at all?

Naked Keynesianism — Hemlock for economics students
Reflections after a Post Keynesian Workshop
Jessica Finnamore (Guest blogger)

Rashomon American Style–Truth is somewhere in between — Philip Giraldi

One is reminded of the Japanese book and movie Rashomon. The story was written by Akutagawa Ryunosuke in 1922 and the film, directed by Akira Kurosawa, followed in 1950. The tale, set in 8th Century feudal Japan, involved a rape and a murder with each of the four principal characters providing his and her own version of what had occurred. The murdered samurai speaks through a Shinto psychic, while a bandit-witness in the forest, a traveling monk, and the samurai’s wife, who was the rape victim, all provide alternative versions of what had taken place. The story reveals how all of the contradictory testimony was fundamentally dishonest, in that each participant was interpreting events to support his or her self-interest in the outcome of the tragedy.
Obvious maybe, but someone needed to say it and draw the parallels.

There are, of course, ideological differences between the parties in the US that shape perception of events and circumstances. Ideological differences are also intensified by feelings. My sense is that one party is dominated by anger bordering on rage, while the other is dominated by hatred, motivated to a degree by fear. The situation has devolved from talking past each other to shouting past each other.

Is this situation reminiscent of Germany prior to Hitler's rise to power? (rhetorical question) Or is it just Americans being Americans? (culturally adolescent)

The Unz Review
Rashomon American Style–Truth is somewhere in between
Philip Giraldi, former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer, now Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest and founding member of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Sputnik International — From Sputnik I to Sputnik V: Russia Won the COVID Vaccine Race and Changed History, Again, Prof Says

By registering the world's first anti-coronavirus vaccine, Russia has confirmed its scientific superpower status, says Dr. Heinz Dieterich, coordinator at the World Advanced Research Project (WARP), explaining why Sputnik V is a worthy competitor to any of Big Pharma's new COVID vaccine candidates.
(In case you were wondering, "sputnik" means satellite. Sputnik I (4 October 1957) was the first satellite to be launched into orbit, beginning the space race.

Sputnik International
From Sputnik I to Sputnik V: Russia Won the COVID Vaccine Race and Changed History, Again, Prof Says

To Capture and Subdue: America’s Theft of Syrian Oil Has Very Little To Do With Money — Steven Chovanec

Answering questions from Senator Lindsey Graham, Secretary of State Pompeo confirmed that the State Department had awarded an American company, Delta Crescent Energy, with a contract to begin extracting oil in northeast Syria. The area is nominally controlled by the Kurds, yet their military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), was formed under U.S. auspices and relies on an American military presence to secure its territory. That military presence will now be charged with protecting an American firm from the government of the country that it is operating within.

Pompeo confirmed that the plans for implanting the firm into the U.S.-held territory are “now in implementation” and that they could potentially be “very powerful.” This is quite a momentous event given its nature as a blatant example of neocolonial extraction, or, as Stephen Kinzer puts it writing for the Boston Globe, “This is a vivid throwback to earlier imperial eras, when conquerors felt free to loot the resources of any territory they could capture and subdue.”
Indeed, the history of how the U.S. came to be in a position to “capture and subdue” these resources is a sordid, yet informative tale that by itself arguably even rivals other such colonial adventures.
Neo-imperialism no longer. Now naked imperialism.

Mint Press News
To Capture and Subdue: America’s Theft of Syrian Oil Has Very Little To Do With Money
Steven Chovanec

Laying The Base For A Hydrogen Economy In The U.S. — Alan Mammoser


It's happening.

I recall listening to a panel on alternative energy some time ago, maybe around fifteen years ago. One of the panelists was a VP of Exxon. He said that Exxon was "an energy company," and it was already preparing for hydrogen back then (Toyota had shown an experimental engine).

He said that the obstacle is not tech but rather cost. He also said that the switchover would be expensive and people would be unlikely to pay higher prices. Therefore, without government mandating a switch, it wouldn't happen soon. And  if the mandate was partisan, then that party would suffer a big hit politically.

They had clearly gamed this.

Oilprice.com
Laying The Base For A Hydrogen Economy In The U.S.
Alan Mammoser

US-China decoupling is hard to do — MK. Bhadrakumar


Stepping back from the brink, or just pausing the hybrid war on the economic front? I suspect the latter, since DJT needs the votes of folks with an interest in dealing with China, like farmers and tech.

India Punchline
US-China decoupling is hard to do
MK. Bhadrakumar | retired diplomat with the Indian Foreign Service.

What Is Yield Curve Control? Kevin L. Kliesen and Kathryn Bokun


Yes, we can.
Similar to a policy rate, YCC aims to control interest rates along some portion of the yield curve. The yield curve is usually defined as the range of yields on Treasury securities from three-month Treasury bills to 30-year Treasury bonds. However, YCC targets longer-term rates directly by imposing interest rate caps on particular maturities. Because bond prices and yields are inversely related, this also implies a price floor for targeted maturities. If bond prices (yields) of targeted maturities remain above (below) the floor, the central bank does nothing. However, if prices fall (rise) below (above) the floor, the central bank buys targeted-maturity bonds—increasing the demand and thus the price of those bonds.
The minutes of the FOMC meeting on June 9-10 noted that the staff highlighted three examples of YCC policies: Federal Reserve policy during and after World War II, the Bank of Japan’s policy adopted in 2016 and the Reserve Bank of Australia’s policy adopted in March 2020.
FRBSL — On the Economy Blog
What Is Yield Curve Control?
Kevin L. Kliesen, Research Officer and Business Economist, and Kathryn Bokun, Research Associate

A new real-world economics text book — John Komlos

This textbook demonstrates how misleading it can be to apply oversimplified models of perfect competition to the real world. The math works well on college blackboards but not so well on the Main Streets of America. This volume explores the realities of oligopolies, the real impact of the minimum wage, the double-edged sword of free trade, and other ways in which powerful institutions cause distortions in the mainstream models. Bringing together the work of key scholars, such as Kahneman, Minsky, and Schumpeter, this book demonstrates how we should take into account the inefficiencies that arise due to asymmetric information, mental biases, unequal distribution of wealth and power, and the manipulation of demand. This textbook offers students a valuable introductory text with insights into the workings of real markets not just imaginary ones formulated by blackboard economists.
Amen.

Getting to an understanding of MMT is going to require undoing the nonsense. This looks like a step in that direction.

And, of course, asymmetry in markets underlies extraction of economic rent by those who control the balance of market power in capitalist economies.

Real-World Economics Review Blog
A new real-world economics text book
John Komlos |  former Chair of Economic History at the University of Munich

See also

Peter Thiel argues that success in entrepreneurship hangs on being able to create market power and rise above commodity markets in which there is more market symmetry.

In this sense, "free market" means that owners of capital are free to create asymmetric market power without government interfering. The basis of neoliberalism is government not only not interfering with market asymmetry but cooperating to create it, e.g., by creating artificial scarcity through law and regulation.

Progress in Political Economy (PPE)
Peter Thiel’s Zero to One explains why ‘big tech’ dominates
Seb Wrangles

Replicating MMT In A Neoclassical Framework? — Brian Romanchuk

One of the standard criticisms raised by many neoclassical economists is that there is nothing new to MMT. Given that neoclassical economists and MMT proponents have been arguing loudly online for over a decade, it seems hard to support the view that MMT is a subset of neoclassical economics. (Another weak point in the argument is that the person making it rarely has read any MMT academic work, so the critic is not exactly sure what features are part of neoclassical economics.)
A slightly less adversarial stance taken is that MMT insights can be replicated by adapting neoclassical methods. I think the answer to that question is: yes and no. Although it seems possible to get parallel results to parts of “narrow MMT,” but the integration with broad MMT does not appear to be possible. This is more plausible, and the subject of discussion here.
(Note: This is an unedited draft section of my MMT primer. It is part of a chapter discussing common critiques of MMT.)
Bond Economics
Replicating MMT In A Neoclassical Framework?
Brian Romanchuk

Modern money and deficit myths — Neville Spencer


Interesting from the perspective of a "progressive" criticism of MMT. It worth looking at to see how difficult it is going to be to get beyond ideological preconceptions.

The author has taken the time to read The Deficit Myth and the recently published MMT macro textbook. The criticism is not that MMT is "wrong," but rather than it misrepresents some things that "progressives" get right. The author also thinks that the foundation for MMT's theory of money in Knapp's chartalism is "implausible." This criticism is based on a superficial view of the origin of money as commodity money, which the author views as being obvious.
 
Green Left
Modern money and deficit myths
Neville Spencer

What's Next For The U.S. Economy: Jeffrey Sachs

Jeffrey Sachs says China is not the enemy, or the dark, evil communist power that many in the US say it is. He's says China is just trying to do its best for its people and the US should do the same by adopting the Swedish model. He says that too many people in the US just want to dominate the world and remain on top rather cooperate with foreign powers to everyone's benefit, including America's.


Economist and best-selling author Jeffrey Sachs says a geopolitical Cold War with China would be a “dreadful mistake.” He explains how globalization will persist as societies and workplaces move online and urges policymakers to come together to tackle issues like climate change. Sachs says the U.S. economy won’t have a “v-shaped” recovery because of he country’s failure to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.




Monday, August 24, 2020

China: everything proceeding according to plan — Pepe Escobar


Important. China prepares for decoupling (and WWIII).

The Vineyard of the Saker
China: everything proceeding according to plan
Pepe Escobar

TASS — Over 80% of China's Unicorn Companies Practice a New Economic Model

In his role as Secretary-General of the Global Sharing Economy Alliance, Ge gave a presentation entitled "The Great Sharing Economy Gives Birth to Unicorns". He pointed out that traditional sharing economy models that share small property rights on commodities such as cars, bicycles, and home rentals is transitioning to a model where larger business assets such as capital, production capacity, and intellectual property rights are made available for sharing.
TASS
Over 80% of China's Unicorn Companies Practice a New Economic Model

See also

Mixed economy with strong central government planning economic policy for public purpose.

Counterpunch
Socialist or Capitalist: What is China’s Model, Exactly?
Richard D. Wolff

Bill Mitchell — More political interference from the central bank – oh but its independent!

At last week’s National Cabinet meeting (August 21, 2020), the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia continued to play a political role in the economic debate despite hiding behind the veil of ‘independence’ from such matters. A few weeks ago, the federal government claimed the state and territory governments were not doing enough by way of fiscal stimulus to reduce the job losses associated with the pandemic. The Federal government is essentially trying to force the political consequences of its own failure to increase its net spending by enough and the resulting real economic damage that has resulted onto the states and territories. The RBA governor seems to be playing along with this agenda. Last Friday, he called for the states and territories to double their fiscal stimulus outlays (by $A40 billion) and stop fussing about credit ratings. The problem is that if they did that, the conservatives would immediately start claiming the debt was unsustainable and would damage the states’ credit ratings. Just as they regularly do to advance their political agendas to cut the size of state governments. While the mainstream economists urge ‘fiscal decentralisation’ they do so because they know states are not currency issuers and will then be open to attacks about tax burdens etc, which then bias the political debate towards cutting services etc. In general, the spending responsibilities should be at the level of the currency-issuer. And, the RBA governor should get back to fulfilling the legal charter of the RBA – to ensure there is full employment and price stability. His institution is achieving neither – with negative inflation and massive labour underutilisation. If he really wanted to increase job creation he could signal that the RBA would purchase any debt issued by governments at all levels who announced, and, made operational, large scale job creation programs. That would work....
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
More political interference from the central bank – oh but its independent!
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Wall Street Is Looting the American Retirement System. The Trump Administration Is Helping

The Trump administration is opening up retirement funds to private equity — at workers’ expense


The way I see it, this is all part of America's decay. There's a moral decay here, but also an economic one. If retirees become less wealthy because of this, then the economy could be affected.

Democracy just means rule by the rich.

 The Trump administration is pushing dramatic changes to the American retirement system that will benefit Wall Street but push average citizens into plans that are riskier, less profitable, and loaded with high and hidden fees.

In the past two months, the Trump’s Labor Department has introduced two pending changes to deregulate vulturous private equity firms and multi-trillion dollar retirement managers like Vanguard, Fidelity, and BlackRock. A third proposed change would restrict retirement investments with an underlying environmental, social, or governance mission — mainly to boost the struggling fossil-fuel industry.

If finalized, the result will be death by a thousand cuts to Americans’ diminished retirement nest egg, amounting to an all-out Wall Street looting of American retirement.

Rolling Stone

Wall Street Is Looting the American Retirement System. The Trump Administration Is Helping

Sunday, August 23, 2020

America’s Ageing Nuclear Fleet Underprepared For Climate Change — Haley Zaremba


News you don't want to hear. Many American nuclear facilities are vulnerable to emergent challenges of climate change. These plants were not designed with unprecedented change in mind. Like NOLA.

Oilprice
America’s Ageing Nuclear Fleet Underprepared For Climate Change
Haley Zaremba

$40 Oil Isn’t High Enough For Indebted U.S. Shale Drillers — Rystad Energy

The Covid-19 pandemic has added severe financial strain on a North American upstream industry that was already reeling under billions of dollars of debt. With WTI climbing past $40 a barrel, most exploration and production firms (E&Ps) have been able to keep their head above water, but unless prices strengthen further about 150 more E&Ps will need to seek Chapter 11 protection through 2022, a Rystad Energy analysis shows. So far this year, according to Haynes & Boone, 32 E&Ps have already filed for Chapter 11, recording a cumulative debt of about $40 billion. On the oilfield services (OFS) front, 25 companies have filed for Chapter 11. If WTI remains at $40, Rystad Energy estimates 29 more E&P Chapter 11 filings this year, adding another $26 billion of debt at risk.
In a scenario with WTI continuing to hover around $40 over the next two years, we can expect another 68 Chapter 11 filings from E&Ps in 2021, and 57 more in 2022, adding $58 billion and $44 billion, respectively, of more debt at risk. That would bring the total amount of E&P debt at risk from now until the end of 2022 to $128 billion....

Russia is Willing to Cooperate With China, Huawei on 5G Tech, Foreign Minister Lavrov Says — Andrei Dergalin


Does this mean. cooperate on chip design and manufacture?

Sputnik International
Russia is Willing to Cooperate With China, Huawei on 5G Tech, Foreign Minister Lavrov Says
Andrei Dergalin

Saturday, August 22, 2020

Lars P. Syll — MMT — debunking the deficit myth


More on the loanable funds fallacy in economics and finance.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
MMT — debunking the deficit myth
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Quantum Mind: Is quantum physics responsible for consciousness & free will?

Arvin Ash has always tended towards reductionism in his videos in the past, and while he did embrace some metaphysics at times, he always stuck to the hard science in the end. But in this video he's open minded to the idea that consciousness maybe not just the result of cause and effect - where there is no free will, and everything is determined by what preceded it - but that there maybe self determination and free will after all. If that's true, then we are not merely just very advanced biological machines, and that there could be something mystical about us, maybe even supernatural.


Quantum consciousness. Is quantum mechanics responsible for consciousness and free will? There is a reductionist claim that the universe is a sophisticated kind of clock ruled by the laws of physics. Are we sophisticated automatons?
But doesn’t this unpredictability of natural laws via quantum mechanics give us free will?

Sir Roger Penrose tried to tackle this. Is there a quantum physics connection to consciousness that ensures that we have free will? 

Reductionism is the idea that any complex system is the sum of its simpler fundamental individual parts. Matter, energy, and the laws of physics that determine how they interact is all there is. 

Counter argument is that consciousness is somehow different. If a human being was nothing more than matter and energy, then what would be the difference between a person who is alive, and the same person immediately after his death. All the matter and energy of the person would not have changed. There seems to be one main difference – consciousness. 

Rene Descartes proposed the idea of a malicious demon. Such a demon could take over his mind to create a delusion about the reality, that nothing may actually exist. Descartes said, there is one thing that even the evil demon could not delude me of, and this is my sense of existence. He said, “I think, therefore I am.” I can only be fooled if my mind exists, If my mind cannot be fooled about my existence, then my mind must be separate from my body. And this idea of mind-body dualism, is sometimes used to justify free will.

There are 3 choices for how consciousness could arise. One is dualism. Free will is explained, but this would by definition, be supernatural since it is not subject to physical laws. 

Second is the materialism. Consciousness is a direct consequence of physical laws. But this view cannot explain free will. 

Third is that consciousness results from physical processes that are not yet fully understood, but is ultimately scientifically explainable. 

Roger Penrose embraced this third idea. He partnered with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff to show that some brain functioning is non-determinable based on the laws of quantum mechanics. Microtubules, made of proteins called tubulin, facilitate the delivery of neurotransmitters in the neurons of brain cells. Tubulin can switch between two states of phosphorylation and be in a superposition. If this is true then each tubulin molecule could act as a quantum bit or qubit. Consciousness is the result of the collapse of the superposed states of this tubulin. Penrose and Hameroff theory is called Orchestrated objective reduction, or the Orch OR theory.  

MIT physicist Max Tegmark said that the brain is too wet and warm for delicate quantum effects. Tegmark showed that any superposed state in microtubules would decohere within 10^-13 seconds. This is 10 orders of magnitude faster than the time it takes for any known brain process to occur.  

Matthew Fisher, physicist at Univ of California, Santa Barbara also showed that the temperatures needed to maintain superposition based on the frequency of neuronal firing is about 10^-7 kelvin, which is much higher than body temperature - 310 kelvin or 98.6 F. 

Fisher proposed a theory where quantum superposition could be maintained in the nucleus of atoms. Certain chemical reactions can produce spin correlated nuclei, where the spin of one nucleus is dependent on another. Since nuclei tend to be more isolated being in the center of atoms, the quantum correlation or entanglement, can be maintained for longer periods of time.  He found that the decoherence time for phosphate ion is about 1 second, which is enough time for it to have an effect on brain processing. Such ions are found in ATP. Quantum behavior in the phosphorus nuclear spins could be protected from decoherence if the phosphate ions are incorporated into larger molecules called "Posner molecules." 

The main theoretical argument against the quantum consciousness theories is that quantum states in the brain would lose coherency before they reached a scale where they could be useful for neural processing.
#quantumconsciousness
#penrosehameroff
#orchor
Physicists opposed to the idea point out the evidence from brain fMRI. We still need to explain what Australian Cognitive scientist, David Chalmers calls the "hard problem" of consciousness, the subjective quality of the experience that you have. This subjective conscious experience is qualia. 



This Twist on Schrödinger’s Cat Paradox Has Major Implications for Quantum Theory

A laboratory demonstration of the classic “Wigner’s friend” thought experiment could overturn cherished assumptions about reality




At a quantum level observation brings reality into existence, but what happens when the observer also gets observed, well, it seems there can be two different realities, so one scientist may see an electron spinning up, while the other sees it spinning down.

Does an objective world actually exist, and will quantum physics need to be abandoned?

The second article is a bit easier to understand. 


Now Tischler and her colleagues have carried out a version of the Wigner’s friend test. By combining the classic thought experiment with another quantum head-scratcher called entanglement—a phenomenon that links particles across vast distances—they have also derived a new theorem, which they claim puts the strongest constraints yet on the fundamental nature of reality. Their study, which appeared in Nature Physics on August 17, has implications for the role that consciousness might play in quantum physics—and even whether quantum theory must be replaced.

Scientific American 

This Twist on Schrödinger’s Cat Paradox Has Major Implications for Quantum Theory


Quantum reality is either weirdly different or it collapses


This is a relatively simple experiment to do, so Wigner grabs his friend, Alice, and places her in a sealed laboratory. Alice measures the spin of a stream of electrons that are prepared in a superposition state. Wigner is outside the laboratory and will measure the entire laboratory. Alice, before passing out, determines that an electron is spin-up. But Wigner hasn’t made a measurement, so he sees Alice in a superposition of having measured spin-up or spin-down. When Wigner makes his measurement, hypothetically, he could end up with a result where Alice measured spin-down when in fact she measured spin-up.

Quantum reality is either weirdly different or it collapses

Monetary Theory Explained - Is MMT Right or Wrong?

A really good introduction to MMT with no ifs and buts. It's very positive.

In Modern Monetary Theory Explained, I simply lay out the key principles of MMT and look at what some of the arguments are for and against it.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) may have been around for many years but it has recently gained in popularity with the advent of Stephanie Kelton's book, The Deficit Myth, and the way in which it accounts more elegantly for debt dynamics and inflation over the last decade





Friday, August 21, 2020

The Grayzone's Anya Parampil rips "criminal neocons" in Biden & Trump camps

The Grayzone's Anya Parampil joins Tucker Carlson Tonight to address the revival of Iraq war neocons and militarists by both the Biden campaign and Trump White House.




This surprised me, Tucker Carlson interviewing Anya Parampil, and they were both in agreement too.




Thursday, August 20, 2020

Simon Jenkins - The links between politics and banking are desperately unhealthy, for all of us

Between Whitehall and the City there is a revolving door of co-dependency


An excellent article from Simon Jenkins. In the UK there is a revolving door between politics and banks. Socialism for the bankers (state hand-outs and soft touch regulation) and capitalism for the rest of us.


Much attention has since focused on the inadequacy of regulation. Sputtering reforms have tried to curb the more outrageous tax dodges, offshore shelters and “London laundromats”. But money has talked: money from Russia, the Gulf, the far east, from anywhere. No one asks why serious regulation never bites.

The answer is that between the City and Westminster there is a revolving door of co-dependency. As we scroll back through the past 20 years, we see a procession of Treasury permanent secretaries passing from Whitehall to commanding heights in the City. Lord Burns goes to chair Santander, Sir Peter Middleton to chair Barclays, Lord Macpherson to chair Hoares. All are of impeccable rectitude. But it is not the actual jobs that matter, rather the knowledge at the back of every Whitehall and Westminster mind that a mile up the road lies a warm refuge in troubled times. Look after the banks and they will look after you. Whitehall grandees do not join the boards of Shelter, Action on Poverty or the RSPB.

Study confirms vitamin D protects against colds and flu


Daily or weekly dose had greatest benefit for those with significant deficiency



A new global collaborative study has confirmed that vitamin D supplementation can help protect against acute respiratory infections. The study, a participant data meta-analysis of 25 randomized controlled trials including more than 11,000 participants, has been published online in The BMJ.

The Harvard Gazette 

Bill Mitchell — Tracing the roots of progressive views on the duty to work – Part 3

This is the third part in my historical excursion tracing where progressive forces adopted the idea that it was fair and reasonable for individuals who sought income support from the state to contribute to the collective well-being through work if they could. As I noted in Part 1, the series could have easily been sub-titled: How the middle-class Left abandoned the class fundamentals, became obsessed with individualism, and steadily descended into political obscurity, so much so, that the parties they now dominate, are largely unelectable! Somewhere along the way in history, elements of the Left have departed from the collective vision that bound social classes with different interests and education levels into a ‘working class’ force. In this Part, we disabuse readers of the notion that the ‘duty to work’ concept was somehow an artifact of authoritarian regimes like the USSR. In fact, we find well articulated statements in official documents in most Western democracies.


The earlier parts in this series are:

1. Tracing the roots of progressive views on the duty to work – Part 1 (August 4, 2020).

2. Tracing the roots of progressive views on the duty to work – Part 2 (August 11, 2020).
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Tracing the roots of progressive views on the duty to work – Part 3
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

The Real Reason Why Blackstone Is Courting The Pentagon — Whitney Webb


Steve Bannon vs. Steve Schwarzman — who wins? (

Yeah, Blackstone. But Steve Schwarzman is actually "the good guy" in this fight.

The Last American Vagabond
The Real Reason Why Blackstone Is Courting The Pentagon
Whitney Webb

See also

Counterpunch
Why 5G is the First Stage of a Tech War Between the U.S. and China
PRABIR PURKAYASTHA

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

WUPPERTAL [60 fps] The Flying Train, Germany, 1902




🎞 Upscaled with neural networks footage of  "Wuppertal Schwebebahn" shot in 1902. Btw, the train system hasn‘t changed much and still functional. The "Schwebebahn" was built mostly over the river to save space.
M

✔ Upscaled to 4K;
✔ FPS boosted to 60 frames per second, I have also fixed some playback speed issues; 
✔ Stabilized;
✔ Colorized – please, be aware that colorization colors are not real and fake, colorization was made only for the ambiance and do not represent real historical data. 

ℹ Note: Contrary to the text at the beginning, the city "Wuppertal" didn't yet exist in 1902. Back then, these were a handful of seperated cities and towns called "Elberfeld", "Ronsdorf", "Cronenberg", "Vohwinkel" and "Barmen". These cities were united in 1929 under the name "Barmen-Elberfeld" and were renamed into "Wuppertal" in 1930, according to the fact that the cities are located around the Wupper river.

🎀 An interesting fact about that train system:
Tuffi was a female circus elephant that became famous in West Germany during 1950 when she accidentally fell from the Wuppertal Schwebebahn into the River Wupper underneath.
On 21 July 1950 the circus director Franz Althoff had Tuffi, four years old, to travel on the suspended monorail in Wuppertal, as a publicity stunt. The elephant trumpeted wildly and ran through the wagon, broke through a window and fell ~12 meters (39 ft) down into the River Wupper, suffering only minor injuries. A panic had broken out in the wagon and some passengers were injured. Althoff helped the elephant out of the water. Both the circus director and the official who had allowed the ride were fined. 
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi


My new podcast is out.

Lindsey Metrus - Turns Out Drinking Too Much Green Tea Can Be Seriously Harmful

I knew about this and only drink one or two mugs of green tea a day, but I might have to cut back to one as they are large mugs.


But it turns out there can be too much of a good thing in this case. For some, drinking excess amounts of green tea can lead to iron deficiency—and for one 16-year-old, drinking three cups of green tea per day as part of a weight-loss plan led to herb-induced hepatitis—yikes! To find out why these things can happen, we chatted with NYC-based nutritionist Jennifer Maeng and NYC-based gastroenterologist Niket Sonpal. Keep reading to learn why they say drinking large amounts of green tea can be harmful

Brydie 

Turns Out Drinking Too Much Green Tea Can Be Seriously Harmful

Carl Zha - Covid-19 Wuhan Concert Tweet

I had them all raging at me on Twitter yesterday, including Peter Hitchens, because a Carl Zha tweet I tweet I put out about a rave concert in Wuhan.

The anti-China xenophobes then started really attacking me, but I had loads of twitter videos and pre-written articles in my files folder to counter them with.

Many accuse China of causing the Covid-19 outbreak, and some said China created the virus, but I was able to show them a Reuters article where researchers had found Covid-19 in a drain pipe sample which came from Spain in March last year. Some people came back at me saying that Chinese put it there, and that they designed Covid-19 in a lab, so I showed them articles and videos about the secret American biolabs that the US has surrounded China and Russia with.

Some people said, what about the Uighurs, so I put out videos of Uighurs having fun days out at the market and at shopping centres? They got to see real people, who were friendly, relaxed, and happy, not the dark evil enemy they conjure up in their tiny, paranoid minds.

Some said that China stole American technology (IP theft), so I tweeted them the article below.

Huawei sues Verizon for alleged patent violations

US carrier accused of using 12 patents without authorization

Huawei has announced that it’s suing Verizon for alleged patent violations, marking the latest twist in the Chinese tech giant’s adversarial relationship with the US. The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern and Western district courts in Texas, claims that Verizon is using 12 patents owned by Huawei without authorization.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21125997/huawei-verizon-patent-violation-lawsuit

I showed them the stunning beauty of Shenzhen, against two decrepit run down US cities

Carl Zha Tweet

Young people having fun at a concert in China

Wuhan is what happens when a central gov act decisively to crush COVID19: whole city lockdown, hospital build in 7 days, 11 million tested, life returns to normal aft 3 month
This could be you had your gov acted effectively 



                           Shenzhen



California 

                   


The most beautiful metro line in #Nanjing China 


                   


A day out at a Uighur market




Vietnam has zero coronavirus deaths. Here’s why.

Vietnam is among a handful of countries to have reported no fatalities from the coronavirus pandemic. Timothyna Duncan reports on how the country, which shares a porous land border with China, defied the odds.




The Mystery of Why Zebras Have Their Stripes Has Baffled Scientists – Now a Dazzling Answer

The mystery of why zebras have their characteristic stripes has perplexed researchers for over a century.




ABC News