Mike Norman Economics

[embedded content] Loneliness shouldn’t be seen as a strange aberration; it’s a basic feature of life we should make our peace with in good time. According to Alain De Botton, it's sadness that causes addiction. [embedded content] Porn addiction has turned into a major societal problem. At its root, the issue isn’t about excessive horniness; as with all addiction, it’s about sadness.

                                                                            *** [embedded content] Larry Wilkerson says the US government is raising the danger of nuclear war by spending more than a trillion dollars to upgrade the American nuclear arsenal, with no real objective other than money making - with host Paul Jay

An argument for the Basic Income. [embedded content]

This discussion has foundered on the rocks of semantics. The assertion is that imports are a real benefit and exports are a real cost. This is means that real resources are being transferred from domestic use in the case of exports, which is a real cost domestically, and real resources are being received in the case of imports, which is a real benefit domestically.Countries trade with each other either to obtain goods less expensively than they can be produced domestically, or to obtain...

Dances with BearsOPERATION INTEGRITY INITIATIVE — BRITISH INTELLIGENCE CELEBRATES A CENTURY OF RUSSIA LIES AND SELF-DECEPTION John HelmerTom LuongoRussia Announces New Monetary SystemRussian and Eurasian PoliticsRussia’s Quiet Revolution – Update 2018Gordon M. Hahn, analyst and Advisory Board member at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, member of the Executive Advisory Board at the American Institute of Geostrategy, a contributing expert for Russia Direct, a senior researcher at the...

Favorable post on Fadhel Kaboub's presentation of the MMT JG. There is a bit of confusion in the post, however. The presentation is worth watching in full, not least because it contains a fairly straightforward explanation of MMT, and because, in a brief aside, Kaboub takes issue with the term Modern Monetary Theory, because, as he rightly points out, it is not a theory but a description of how money creation actually occurs in countries that enjoy full financial (monetary) sovereignty...

Important. This is the future. Resistance is futile. (Listen up Washington, London, and Paris. The colonial period is over. You are now irrelevant. Get used to it. The alternative is WWIII and MAD.) Incidentally, the post accounts for Chinese opposition to the spread of Christianity in the Central Realm, since it is a vehicle for Western global domination.Asia TimesAll under Heaven, China’s challenge to the Westphalian system Pepe EscobarSee alsoWhat the aftermath of a nuclear WWIII...

The "debt" of the government is the asset of the non-government. Translation: not something to worry about. Better translation: it's a good thing.

In the specific context of a Green New Deal, the most important demand should be a reduction in working hours, with no offsetting change in wages. That amounts to taking the benefits of increased productivity, and progressive redistribution, in the form of increased leisure rather than increased consumption. It goes along with research findings suggesting that experiences, rather than material goods, are a better source of lasting happiness. To make the argument work completely, we need the...

Prediction: This is going to backfire big time. The boy has cried wolf too many times. I  for one will be looking for the red flags to identify the real news.Mint Press NewsHow a NeoCon-Backed “Fact Checker” Plans to Wage War on Independent Media Whitney Webb