Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Friday, July 27, 2018
Nietzsche on Democracy, Christianity and Decay (Prof. Stanley Rosen)
Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Sunday, July 22, 2018
Economics
From: John Coffey <john2001plus@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Jul 22, 2018 at 1:18 PM
Subject: Re: Korea
To: Albert Nelms
Cc: Steve
I am going to address several
On Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 10:48 AM, Albert Nelms <alnelms@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> We need to have minimum wage keep up with inflation. However, any politician suggesting such a thing would be run out on rails.
I don't see why this is politically impossible. Any party that suggests an increase in the minimum wage, perhaps moderate, would likely get votes.
This makes certain assumptions. What business is it of the state to say what kind of wage people agree to work for? If I choose to work someplace for $5 an hour, it is because I can't get anything better. Maybe my circumstances are so bad that nobody will hire me at minimum wage. It is like the application at Taco Bell that says, "What drugs have you done?", as to opposed to asking if you have done drugs
The purpose of minimum wage is not to provide a living wage. It is for unskilled workers who might in time develop skills and be worth more. It is intended for entry level jobs.
In reality, many places pay more than minimum wage. People at Burger King told me that
>
> There was a time when a person could graduate from high school and get a job in which he was able to support his family and eventually enter middle class.
That time seems to have passed
If a person can not make enough to support a family, then they shouldn't start a family. Should there be a safety net for people who otherwise would not survive on low wages? I think so. We might need more of this if automation takes away jobs
>
> Today, college degrees are tied into student loans which in turn ties the graduate down to long term debt right off the bat. So, if the college grad has student loans he may never get to middle class. Now with internet degrees diluting the on campus degrees salaries for college graduates are dropping.with a few exceptions like doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
The problem is that the government is spending over $200 Billion a year on higher education. When you subsidize something, you get more of it, whether you need it or not. When 40% of
>
> The solution? Good question. There was a time when Americans who bought goods from say Japan or Germany were considered traitorous.
I think that international trade is vastly misunderstood. When you buy something from Japan ...
1. You do so because they can make it cheaper or better than the equivalent thing made in America. In economics they talk about comparative advantage, where you might be really good at doing one thing, which is highly profitable for you, so you would rather somebody else do the thing that is less profitable for you.
2. The dollars you send to Japan are no good to them unless they can exchange them for yen or buy our goods, and the currency exchange market only works if goods are going both ways.
Friday, July 20, 2018
Korea
With some 2.6 million forced laborers, North Korea is world's leading villain in modern day slavery, according to estimates in a new report.
One in 10 people live under modern slavery in the secretive nation, with the "vast majority being forced to work by the state,"
http://www.nydailynews.com/new
Fwd: ISIS inspired Berkeley graduate plotted to kill 10,000 in San Francisco
Sunday, July 15, 2018
Friday, July 13, 2018
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Friday, July 6, 2018
Thursday, July 5, 2018
Sunday, July 1, 2018
In China, 'Free Trade' Means Steal What You Want
Not a minute too soon. The stealing is getting worse. Politicians naively said admitting China to the World Trade Organization in 2001 would push it toward a free market economy observing the rule of law. Magical thinking.
From the start, China violated WTO rules, knocking off American products and selling them as the real deal. A staggering 88 percent of counterfeit goods seized are from China and Hong Kong, according to Homeland Security. It's like the Chinese thought "free market" meant steal what you want.
Steal it or extort it. American companies doing business in China are pressured to transfer proprietary technology to a local partner. China promised to stop that arm-twisting but broke its word.
Now China is abandoning any pretense of respecting intellectual property. President Xi Jinping's official economic policy, called Made in China 2025, elevates technology theft to official status. The government politely calls it "the assimilation and absorption of imported technology." China plans to steal its way to economic dominance and end dependence on foreign suppliers.
American companies can't thrive under this threat. Our advantage in world markets isn't cheap labor or cheap materials. It's ideas
American Superconductor Corporation was almost put out of business, its stock value driven down 96 percent, when a Chinese wind turbine maker stole its technology and flooded the Chinese market with copies.
But if Beijing's plan proceeds, these U.S. companies will be shut out of China in a decade, and will have to compete in the rest of the world against Chinese companies that stole their technology and enjoy low-cost financing from Chinese state banks
Liberal says build the wall...
And there is clearly an adamant, persistent segment of the public that sees the crisis of illegal immigration as a vital one. They're not alone. Cast an eye at Brexit Britain, newly populist Italy, Macron's France, and even Merkel's Germany as it heaves in response to mass immigration from the developing world. This is a huge force in Western politics in every country. It may be the primary one. Millions of people are on the move right now, fleeing war and poverty and persecution. The vast migration from south to north, from poverty and chaos to opportunity and order in the West may be just beginning. Climate change will surely only make it worse. Finding the right balance between reason and compassion is essential if we are not going to further tear this country apart, or witness ever more humanitarian catastrophes, or see what's left of the West go under
So give him his fucking wall. He won the election. He is owed this. It may never be completed; it may not work, as hoped. But it is now the only way to reassure a critical mass of Americans that mass immigration is under control, and the only way to make any progress under this president. And until the white working and middle classes are reassured, we will get nowhere. Don't give it to him for nothing, of course
If all this sounds like appeasing a bigot, I understand. But better to see it, I think, as a way to address the legitimate concerns, fears, and worries of a large number of Americans who feel like strangers in their own land.
And equally, the Democrats who are currently posturing are playing a good card badly. They give off the appearance, as Hillary Clinton did, of making no distinction between legal and illegal immigration, favoring de facto open borders, and calling anyone who disagrees with them a white supremacist. Until they recognize that illegal immigration is a huge and legitimate problem, and until they propose a set of actual policy proposals to end it humanely and efficiently, they run the risk of another 2016 in 2020.
And this is what Miller and Bannon want. They want to turn the fall elections and the next presidential contest into a polarizing, fearmongering referendum on illegal immigration
Fwd: Isis zealot killed 8 on nyc bike path
Sayfullo Saipov, 30, raised his hand to speak out immediately after U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick set an Oct. 7, 2019, date for the Uzbek immigrant's trial.
He said he cared about "Allah" and the holy war being waged by the Islamic State group
"So the Islamic State is not fighting for land, like some say, or like some say, for oil. They have one purpose, and they're fighting to impose Sharia (Islamic law) on Earth," he
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/06/22/suspect-in-nyc-bike-path-killings-invokes-allah-defends-isis-in-court.html
Fwd: Political hatred
Sanders confirmed the events on Twitter, saying she was told to leave by the owner because she worked for the president.
"Her actions say far more about her than about me," she said. "I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so."
Fwd: Active Antarctic Volcano
But as the team conducted its research, it found high quantities of an isotope of helium, which comes almost exclusively from mantle, Loose said.
"When you find helium-3, it's like a fingerprint for volcanism. We found that it is relatively abundant in the seawater at the Pine Island shelf.
"The volcanic heat sources were found beneath the fastest moving and the fastest melting glacier in Antarctica, the Pine Island Glacier," Loose said. "It is losing mass the fastest."
He said the amount of ice sliding into the ocean is measured in gigatons. A gigaton equals 1 billion metric tons.
https://today.uri.edu/news/