Monday, March 6, 2017

Fend For Yourself

Unendowed,

There is a lot of basic income for the rich, already. It's their little secret, and it is "guaranteed-basic-income".
In 2015, according to PSZ, the richest 1% of people in America received 20.2% of all the income in the nation. Ten points of that 20.2% came from equity income, net interest, housing rents, and the capital component of mixed income. Which is to say, 10% of all national income is paid out to the 1% as capital income. Let me reiterate: one in ten dollars of income produced in this country is paid out to the richest 1% without them having to work for it.

Market Anthropology overlays 1987 stock and bond market graphs and current stock and bond market graphs, and expects history to rhyme again this year. 
The stock crash of Fall 1987 was pretty impressive. I'm sure that's all under control, now. No disruption in the basic income of the 1% need happen this time.

An English Sheep-Farmer visits rural Kentucky on a book tour and observes the consequences of our "modern agricultural system". Thanks Charles.
The future we have been sold doesn’t work. Applying the principles of the factory floor to the natural world just doesn’t work. Farming is more than a business. Food is more than a commodity. Land is more than a mineral resource. Despite the growing scale of the problem, no major mainstream politician has taken farming or food seriously for decades. With the presidential campaign over and a president in the White House whom rural Kentuckians helped elect, the new political establishment might want to think about this carefully. Suddenly, rural America matters. It matters for the whole world.

America's Miserable 21st Century (Hey, look at how the economy fell off around 2005 when "conventional oil" peaked and prices shot up.)
Health has been deteriorating for a significant swath of white America in our new century, thanks in large part to drug and alcohol abuse. All this sounds a little too close for comfort to the story of modern Russia, with its devastating vodka- and drug-binging health setbacks. Yes: It can happen here, and it has. Welcome to our new America... Disability checks and means-tested benefits cannot support a lavish lifestyle. But they can offer a permanent alternative to paid employment, and for growing numbers of American men, they do... With the election of 2016, Americans within the bubble finally learned that the 21st century has gotten off to a very bad start in America. Welcome to the reality. We have a lot of work to do together to turn this around.
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The government doesn't actually want housing to be more affordable. From Australia, but same thing. Must keep housing buble inflated, then blame collapse upon others...

China expects to increase military spending by a modest 7% this year. China is #2 and gets more bang-for-the-buck/yuan. Maybe we can all back off soon!

Oh, now it makes sense: Saudi Arabia is stealing 65% of Yemen's oil. Gotcha. (and there is that Bab al-Mandab Strait to the Red Sea, then Suez Canal...)

Making friends; influencing people: 
"Erdogan said he could travel to Germany himself to rally support for the constitutional changes to grant him greater power. “Germany, you have no relation whatsoever to democracy and you should know that your current actions are no different to those of the Nazi period,” Erdogan said at a rally in Istanbul."

Bush Attorny General, Michael Mukasey, says that President Trump is probably right about Trump tower being wiretapped under a national security warrant.

It's all routine, the NSA wiretaps every future president, "national security", ya'know?

FBI Director Comey, in a published statement, asks the Justice Dept. to reject Trump's claim that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the election. 
No investigation, just a public refutation, please. 
Trump admin calls for a Congressional investigation, please. 
The deep-state has never been completely comfortable with Congressional investigations...

"The EU demands the UK pay Brexit costs of €60 billion." 
Mish figures that's not going to happen. The UK will be negotiating with what, again?
"The EU nannycrats have long insisted they have the upper hand in negotiations. The reality is the UK is not obliged to do anything, including a filing Article 50. The UK can tear up the treaty tomorrow and be done with it."

Brexit as a safety-valve, assuring democratic process flowers, instead of autocracy (Trump, Wilders, LePen f'rinstance...)

The Donbass is breaking away from Ukraine pretty decisively. The Ukrainian nazis have clamped an illegal embargo on it, blocking Donbass coal from Ukrainian power plants that need it, which is "succeeding". Poroshenko's government forces sit and watch. 
Donbass is using Russian Rubles, and Russia accepts government papers from Donbass. 
Ukraine is expected to fragment further, due to regional power and ethnic politics, and lack of anything but NATO/World-Bank to hold it together. 
This is "together"... Odessa leaves next, then?

Permafrost the size of Alabama, frozen since before the last ice age, is "melting, melting, melting..." in Canada.
"There’s twice as much carbon in the permafrost as there is in the air today. Let that sink in. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is 400 ppm (parts per million by volume). Pre-Industrial atmospheric CO2 was 280 ppm. There’s enough carbon in the permafrost to more than double today’s 400 ppm number before natural processes start to remove it — and that net-removal of CO2 assumes that humans stop adding their own, something we show no sign of doing... (Update: The sudden-change stories just keep coming in. As I write, a science station on the Antarctic peninsula has just recorded a record-breaking high of 63.5° Fahrenheit, or 17.5 degrees Celsius. Ninety percent of the earth’s fresh water is locked up as ice in Antarctica, the melt of which would raise sea levels a stunning 200 feet.)"

Moving Inland

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