Tag Archives: politics

Would Serious Climate Change Mitigation Policy Increase World Hunger? That’s the finding of a recent study published in Nature Climate Change, “Risk of Increased Food Insecurity under Stringent Global Climate Change Mitigation Policy” by an international team of 22 researchers.  (Coauthorship like this is why god created et al.)  The abstract has made the rounds of the blogosphere, including Marginal Revolution, which is where I found it. The article...

Sleepers in Hong Kong McDonalds I have eaten at the McDonalds in Hong Kong over the years. Just smaller portions and only after I grew tired of fish and veggies. I think I told the story of coming off The Wall, making my way down a road with my Chinese associates towards a Chinese restaurant, and turning the corner to eat at a KFC (their choice). It back upped to The Wall. They loved it. According to a survey, in just five years there has been a six-fold...

Trump’s Illegal Economic Sanctions Against Iran Start Up Today, President Trump’s promised abjuration of President Obama’s hard-negotiated nuclear deal with Iran,the JCPOA, jointly agreed with Russia, China,  UK, France, Germany, the EU, and the Security Council of the United Nations. All parties agree that Iran has held to the agreement, so Trump’s move is completely internationally illegal.  His move is supported by exactly four other nations on the...

Enjoy!

Mush versus Mush on Climate Change The very long New York Times piece on climate change politics in the 1980s by Nathaniel Rich has attracted a lot of critical commentary—justifiably.  To say that the failure to achieve a political response was due to human nature, a genetic defect that prevents our species from planning ahead, is just lazy and wrong.  Were the scientists, environmentalists and other activists that did want to take action a bunch of...

Rude Tipping How to torment the wait staff for their tip. A fun game to play on a night out with your wife or friends. The diner shared the experience on Facebook claiming his methods resulted in “the best service experienced.” Explaining at the beginning of the meal, he would place five single dollar bills on the table for the server to see and not say anything to them. If they messed up, he would take a dollar away and so on. At the end of the dinner,...

Via Truthout: In every community, there are nonprofit charities that serve real needs: local food pantries, programs addressing the opioid crisis, the Red Cross chapters that come to our aid after a storm. Charities provide vital services to the people and places they serve. These organizations lean heavily on volunteers, fundraisers, and donors. And most ordinary donors give without consideration of a tax break — people give their time, treasure, and...

I do not know what generation Maxwell Strahan of Huffpost is of; but if he is of the Millennials, he has it correct in his HuffPost article. . . “The Greatest “Crisis of My Generation is Now a Dystopian Show.” The crisis? Student Loan debt, the penalties associated with it, and the inability to declared bankruptcy are the greatest crises facing younger generations and will also be for this nation when millions of them default. The Show? “Paid Off!”...

Click this link. Data For Progress decided to ask people about policy proposals which very serious centrists consider way too far left for America. American voters respond differently. As should already be clear from existing polls (click and search for “fair”), there is strong support for egalitarian populist redistributive public policy. At Data For Progress, they chose to emphasize the positive — four proposals with overwhelming support, but I think...

The BoE’s decision to raise the Bank Rate to 0.75% is a mistake. It is a mistake comparable to those made by Alan Greenspan’s Federal Reserve in the years between 2003 and 2006.  It is a mistake that must be understood in a wider context. Not just the political context – which promotes ‘monetary radicalism and fiscal conservatism’ – to quote David Cameron and George Osborne. But also in a wider monetary policy context.  As the governor of the Bank pointed out recently: ‘the Bank is the only...