#Emerging Market Countries

[rahulp3]

What Are The Major Factors Driving Retinal Biologics Market Growth?

The Retinal Biologics Market is experiencing a surge in demand, fueled by advancements in eye disease treatments and a growing emphasis on vision health. According to a recent analysis by Future Market Insights (FMI), a leading market research firm, the market is currently valued at an impressive US$22.25 billion in 2022. Looking ahead, the market is projected to witness a remarkable Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.1% over the next six years. This translates to a staggering market valuation of US$41.92 billion by 2028, highlighting the significant potential of retinal biologics in revolutionizing eye care.The remarkable expansion of the Global Retinal Biologics sector is fueled by advancements in technology, innovative research, and a growing demand for cutting-edge treatments. As the industry continues to evolve, it presents unprecedented opportunities for stakeholders, investors, and healthcare professionals alike.Key Retinal Biologics Market Insights:

Rising Prevalence of Diabetes-related Eye Disorders and Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) The prevalence of diabetes-related eye disorders and age-related macular degeneration is on the rise, underscoring the growing need for innovative solutions within the Retinal Biologics Industry.Substantial Investment in R&D for Biologics in Retinal Disorders The industry is witnessing a significant influx of research and development resources, aimed at advancing biologics for both infectious and non-infectious retinal disorders. This investment underscores the commitment to addressing unmet medical needs.

Emergence of Specific Biologic Molecules as Therapeutic Targets Specific biologic molecules are gaining prominence as highly promising therapeutic targets, offering new hope for patients with retinal conditions.Gene Therapy as a Solution for Monogenic Retinal Illnesses With a growing number of monogenic retinal illnesses, gene therapy is emerging as a pivotal component of the Retinal Biologics Market, presenting innovative solutions for these challenging conditions.

Request a Sample Copy of This Report Now.https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-8663

[yesornopolls]

The article is under the cut because paywalls suck

This is an edited transcript of an audio essay on “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you want to understand the first few weeks of the second Trump administration, you should listen to what Steve Bannon told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2019:

Steve Bannon: The opposition party is the media. And the media can only, because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time. … All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity. So it’s got to start, and it’s got to hammer, and it’s got to — Michael Kirk: What was the word? Bannon: Muzzle velocity.

Muzzle velocity. Bannon’s insight here is real. Focus is the fundamental substance of democracy. It is particularly the substance of opposition. People largely learn of what the government is doing through the media — be it mainstream media or social media. If you overwhelm the media — if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next — no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently.

Donald Trump’s first two weeks in the White House have followed Bannon’s strategy like a script. The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it’s over.

Or so he wants you to think. In Trump’s first term, we were told: Don’t normalize him. In his second, the task is different: Don’t believe him.

Trump knows the power of marketing. If you make people believe something is true, you make it likelier that it becomes true. Trump clawed his way back to great wealth by playing a fearsome billionaire on TV; he remade himself as a winner by refusing to admit he had ever lost. The American presidency is a limited office. But Trump has never wanted to be president, at least not as defined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. He has always wanted to be king. His plan this time is to first play king on TV. If we believe he is already king, we will be likelier to let him govern as a king.

Don’t believe him. Trump has real powers — but they are the powers of the presidency. The pardon power is vast and unrestricted, and so he could pardon the Jan. 6 rioters. Federal security protection is under the discretion of the executive branch, and so he could remove it from Anthony Fauci and Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and Mark Milley and even Brian Hook, a largely unknown former State Department official under threat from Iran who donated time to Trump’s transition team. It was an act of astonishing cruelty and callousness from a man who nearly died by an assassin’s bullet — as much as anything ever has been, this, to me, was an X-ray of the smallness of Trump’s soul — but it was an act that was within his power.

But the president cannot rewrite the Constitution. Within days, the birthright citizenship order was frozen by a judge — a Reagan appointee — who told Trump’s lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” A judge froze the spending freeze before it was even scheduled to go into effect, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration rescinded the order, in part to avoid the court case.

What Bannon wanted — what the Trump administration wants — is to keep everything moving fast. Muzzle velocity, remember. If you’re always consumed by the next outrage, you can’t look closely at the last one. The impression of Trump’s power remains; the fact that he keeps stepping on rakes is missed. The projection of strength obscures the reality of weakness. Don’t believe him.

You could see this a few ways: Is Trump playing a part, making a bet or triggering a crisis? Those are the options. I am not certain he knows the answer. Trump has always been an improviser. But if you take it as calculated, here is the calculation: Perhaps this Supreme Court, stocked with his appointees, gives him powers no peacetime president has ever possessed. Perhaps all of this becomes legal now that he has asserted its legality. It is not impossible to imagine that bet paying off.

But Trump’s odds are bad. So what if the bet fails and his arrogations of power are soundly rejected by the courts? Then comes the question of constitutional crisis: Does he ignore the court’s ruling? To do that would be to attempt a coup. I wonder if they have the stomach for it. The withdrawal of the Office of Management and Budget’s order to freeze spending suggests they don’t. Bravado aside, Trump’s political capital is thin. Both in his first and second terms, he has entered office with approval ratings below that of any president in the modern era. Gallup has Trump’s approval rating at 47 percent — about 10 points beneath Joe Biden’s in January 2021.

There is a reason Trump is doing all of this through executive orders rather than submitting these same directives as legislation to pass through Congress. A more powerful executive could persuade Congress to eliminate the spending he opposes or reform the civil service to give himself the powers of hiring and firing that he seeks. To write these changes into legislation would make them more durable and allow him to argue their merits in a more strategic way. Even if Trump’s aim is to bring the civil service to heel — to rid it of his opponents and turn it to his own ends — he would be better off arguing that he is simply trying to bring the high-performance management culture of Silicon Valley to the federal government. You never want a power grab to look like a power grab.

But Republicans have a three-seat edge in the House and a 53-seat majority in the Senate. Trump has done nothing to reach out to Democrats. If Trump tried to pass this agenda as legislation, it would most likely fail in the House, and it would certainly die before the filibuster in the Senate. And that would make Trump look weak. Trump does not want to look weak. He remembers John McCain humiliating him in his first term by casting the deciding vote against Obamacare repeal.

That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him.

The flurry of activity is meant to suggest the existence of a plan. The Trump team wants it known that they’re ready this time. They will control events rather than be controlled by them. The closer you look, the less true that seems. They are scrambling and flailing already. They are leaking against one another already. We’ve learned, already, that the O.M.B. directive was drafted, reportedly, without the input or oversight of key Trump officials — “it didn’t go through the proper approval process,” an administration official told The Washington Post. For this to be the process and product of a signature initiative in the second week of a president’s second term is embarrassing.

But it’s not just the O.M.B. directive. The Trump administration is waging an immediate war on the bureaucracy, trying to replace the “deep state” it believes hampered it in the first term. A big part of this project seems to have been outsourced to Elon Musk, who is bringing the tactics he used at Twitter to the federal government. He has longtime aides at the Office of Personnel Management, and the email sent to nearly all federal employees even reused the subject line of the email he sent to Twitter employees: “Fork in the Road.” Musk wants you to know it was him.

The email offers millions of civil servants a backdoor buyout: Agree to resign and in theory, at least, you can collect your paycheck and benefits until the end of September without doing any work. The Department of Government Efficiency account on X described it this way: “Take the vacation you always wanted, or just watch movies and chill, while receiving your full government pay and benefits.” The Washington Post reported that the email “blindsided” many in the Trump administration who would normally have consulted on a notice like that.

I suspect Musk thinks of the federal work force as a huge mass of woke ideologues. But most federal workers have very little to do with politics. About 16 percent of the federal work force is in health care. These are, for instance, nurses and doctors who work for the Veterans Affairs department. How many of them does Musk want to lose? What plans does the V.A. have for attracting and training their replacements? How quickly can he do it?

The Social Security Administration has more than 59,000 employees. Does Musk know which ones are essential to operations and unusually difficult to replace? One likely outcome of this scheme is that a lot of talented people who work in nonpolitical jobs and could make more elsewhere take the lengthy vacation and leave government services in tatters. Twitter worked poorly after Musk’s takeover, with more frequent outages and bugs, but its outages are not a national scandal. When V.A. health care degrades, it is. To have sprung this attack on the civil service so loudly and publicly and brazenly is to be assured of the blame if anything goes wrong.

What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them.

I had a conversation a couple months ago with someone who knows how the federal government works about as well as anyone alive. I asked him what would worry him most if he saw Trump doing it. What he told me is that he would worry most if Trump went slowly. If he began his term by doing things that made him more popular and made his opposition weaker and more confused. If he tried to build strength for the midterms while slowly expanding his powers and chipping away at the deep state where it was weakest.

But he didn’t. And so the opposition to Trump, which seemed so listless after the election, is beginning to rouse itself.

There is a subreddit for federal employees where one of the top posts reads: “This non ‘buyout��� really seems to have backfired. I’ll be honest, before that email went out, I was looking for any way to get out of this fresh hell. But now I am fired up to make these goons as frustrated as possible.” As I write this, it’s been upvoted more than 39,000 times and civil servant after civil servant is echoing the initial sentiment.

In Iowa this week, Democrats flipped a State Senate seat in a district that Trump won easily in 2024. The attempted spending freeze gave Democrats their voice back, as they zeroed in on the popular programs Trump had imperiled. Trump isn’t building support; he’s losing it. Trump isn’t fracturing his opposition; he’s uniting it.

This is the weakness of the strategy that Bannon proposed and Trump is following. It is a strategy that forces you into overreach. To keep the zone flooded, you have to keep acting, keep moving, keep creating new cycles of outrage or fear. You overwhelm yourself. And there’s only so much you can do through executive orders. Soon enough, you have to go beyond what you can actually do. And when you do that, you either trigger a constitutional crisis or you reveal your own weakness.

Trump may not see his own fork in the road coming. He may believe he has the power he is claiming. That would be a mistake on his part — a self-deception that could doom his presidency. But the real threat is if he persuades the rest of us to believe he has power he does not have.

The first two weeks of Trump’s presidency have not shown his strength. He is trying to overwhelm you. He is trying to keep you off-balance. He is trying to persuade you of something that isn’t true. Don’t believe him.

You can listen to this conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.

[haqiqaglobalbusiness]

Ethiopia's Debut at the BRICS Summit 2024: A New Chapter in Global Diplomacy

Ethiopia's historic debut at the 2024 BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, marks a significant milestone. Discover the key discussions, outcomes, and implications of this event for Ethiopia and the global stage.

Ethiopia’s participation in the 2024 BRICS Summit, held in Kazan, Russia, marked a significant milestone in the country’s foreign policy. Ethiopia is a newly inducted member of the influential bloc. It joined Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa to shape the global economic landscape. It also contributes to the political landscape. This blog post delves into the key discussions,…

[developmentinformationday]

Unlocking the power of public investment to foster economic growth.

Progress toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires urgent and substantial scaling up of investment. While the estimates of the funding required to bridge these investment gaps in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) vary across studies, they generally amount to trillions of dollars per year. Thus, UNCTAD’s latest estimate of the aggregate investment gap faced by EMDEs to meet SDGs stands at a staggering $4 trillion per year.

Low-income countries (LICs) have particularly hefty investment needs because of their enormous infrastructure gaps in areas critical for sustainable development. For instance, in the past decade, less than one-third of the population in LICs had access to electricity and basic sanitation (figure 1.A).

These countries also face greater challenges in building resilience to climate change and meeting the green transition objectives. By some estimates, an average annual investment of as much as 8 percent of GDP through 2030 is needed to address these issues in LICs—significantly more than in other EMDEs (figure 1.B).  

Figure 1. Investment gaps in EMDEs

Sources: World Development Indicators (WDI), World Bank; World Bank (2022). Note: AEs = advanced economies; EMDEs = emerging market and developing economies; LICs = low-income countries. A. 2013-23 averages. Bars show percent of the population with access to electricity, minimally adequate drinking water, basic sanitation facilities, and the number of hospital beds available per 1,000 people. B. Estimates of the annual investment needs to build resilience to climate change and put countries on track to reduce emissions by 70 percent by 2050. Compounding these challenges, domestic investment—gross fixed capital formation—in EMDEs has been in a prolonged and broad-based slump over the past decade. Average annual growth of investment in EMDEs halved, decelerating from 10 percent per year in the 2000s to just 5 percent in the 2010s (figure 2).

Figure 2. Average annual investment growth

Sources: Feenstra et al. (2015); Haver Analytics; World Development Indicators (WDI), World Bank. Note: EMDEs = emerging market and developing economies. Investment growth averages are calculated using GDP weights at average 2010-19 prices and market exchange rates. Sample includes up to 103 economies, of which 68 are EMDEs.

Public investment can play an important role in mobilizing private capital and facilitating economic growth.

Public investment can be a powerful policy lever to help ignite growth. However, these positive effects are not guaranteed. They critically depend on conducive structural conditions. In particular, new empirical analysis suggests that the effects of public investment depend on government spending efficiency and availability of fiscal space—government’s budget resources that can be spent without jeopardizing a country’s fiscal sustainability and macroeconomic stability. While scaling up of public investment in EMDEs by one percent of GDP can increase output by up to 1.2 percent over five years, on average, in countries with ample fiscal space and efficient government spending the effect is much greater, reaching up to 1.6 percent over the same period (figure 3.A).

What’s more, public investment can play a pivotal role in catalyzing private investment and boosting productivity. In response to an increase in public investment by one percent of GDP, private investment in EMDEs can increase by up to 2.2 percent and total factor productivity by up to 0.8 percent over five years, on average (figure 3.B). This is particularly important for promoting long-run (potential) economic growth in EMDEs, which has slowed sharply and is expected to remain weak over the rest of this decade.

Figure 3. Macroeconomic effects of public investment in EMDEs

Sources: Adarov, Clements, and Jalles (forthcoming); World Bank. Note: Responses of macroeconomic variables to a public investment equivalent to one percent of GDP. Bars indicate peak responses at the 5-year horizon. A. Increase in the level of real GDP relative to the year before the shock, in percent. *** indicates statistical significance at the one-percent level. Large-fiscal space and small-fiscal space responses are based on local projections with the smooth transition function that uses the public-debt-to-GDP ratio as the conditioning variable. High-efficiency and low-efficiency samples are based on the top and bottom quartiles of the public infrastructure efficiency index (IMF 2021). B. Bars show increase in the level of private investment (gross fixed capital formation), potential output, and total factor productivity relative to the year before the shock, in percent. Whiskers indicate 90-percent confidence intervals.

Harnessing the benefits of public investment requires a comprehensive policy effort.

In EMDEs, especially in LICs, public investment efficiency tends to be substantially lower than in advanced economies (figure 4.A). With the government debt escalating to the levels above 60 percent of GDP over the last several years, their fiscal space has also decreased significantly (figure 4.B). To enable public investment and maximize its positive effects, EMDEs need to undertake wide-ranging policy reforms. While specific policy interventions depend on individual country circumstances, three overarching policy priorities are relevant for all EMDEs: expansion of fiscal space, efficiency of public investment, and enhanced global support. The latter is crucial for LICs with deep structural challenges, vast infrastructure gaps, limited fiscal resources and capacity to undertake the needed reforms on their own. Coordinated financial support and technical assistance are both needed to accelerate structural reforms in these countries and help them build robust foundations for sustainable economic growth and development. These policies are discussed in detail in Chapter 3 of the June 2024 Global Economic Prospects report.  

Figure 4. Fiscal space and spending efficiency

Sources: International Monetary Fund; Kose et al. (2022); World Bank. Note: EMDEs = emerging market and developing economies; LICs = low-income countries. A. Bars show group medians of the IMF (2021) public infrastructure efficiency index. Sample includes 27 advanced economies and 93 EMDEs, of which 15 are LICs. B. Aggregates are computed as weighted averages with nominal GDP in U.S. dollars as weights. Data for the 2020s cover 2020-23. Sample includes up to 153 EMDEs, including 23 LICs.

Unlocking the power of public investment to foster economic growth

[sindoshipping]

How the Development of Luxury Goods Thrifting Culture in Europe?

The development of luxury goods thrifting in Europe has seen a remarkable transformation over the past decade, evolving from niche market segments into mainstream shopping phenomena. This growth can be attributed to several factors, including increased environmental awareness, economic factors, and the rise of digital platforms dedicated to this sector. The market for second-hand luxury goods in…

[ozzgin]

Yandere! Yakuza x Reader

I've been plagued by this idea for a while, so let me know what you think! This is just the character introduction. Your new landlord is a Yakuza boss, and his scary looking underling has been tasked to deal with your tenant needs! Although he didn't expect you to be this cute. And you didn't expect him to be this unhinged.

Content: female reader, violence, mentions of stalking

[Part 2] | [Yakuza Masterlist]

This was the last straw.

You're angrily stuffing your suitcase with necessities before the moving company arrives. Each glimpse around the cramped apartment fills you with outrage, as you're still heavily shaken from the events of last night. 

You first begun to suspect you might have a stalker when you found your outer lock with a fresh dent in it. You then picked a small scrap from the ground nearby and assumed it was leftover damage, but upon further inspection you discovered, disgusted, that it was part of your peephole. Someone must've fiddled with your door a fair amount. You tried to approach your immediate neighbors for help, but they either refused to answer your persistent knocks or downright scurried away when faced with your questions. They didn't want to deal with a foreigner. 

You tried to put it behind you. The police advised you to be cautions, as there was nothing else they could do without concrete evidence. And thankfully, you had several peaceful weeks following the incident. Last night you were suddenly awakened by faint scratches coming from your balcony. You groggily got up and wondered if your recently added bird feeder was attracting nocturnal visitors. You got up without turning on the light, hoping to catch a glimpse of the mysterious animal. As you pulled the drape, however, you were met with the large frame of a man plucking your laundry in a hurry. 

A panicked scream erupted from the depths of your chest and you slapped the light switch, erratically searching for your phone. By the time you dialed emergency, the intruder had vanished. You were sobbing against the wall under the fake reassurances of the operator, eyeing the sliding door that had no lock. Had he wished, the masked man could've easily invited himself in. You were at the mercy of a lunatic and no one seemed to be impressed by your situation. 

No more. Ideally you'd go back to your home country and forget about your plans to build yourself a life in Japan. What were you even thinking? A lonely girl, low on funds, signing a contract to be relocated across the ocean for work. You barely scraped the first months of a mandatory year. 

You close your suitcase with a satisfying click and on your way out you wipe the table of all the newspaper clippings. You've been scanning the potential offers on the market. The ones within your budget, of course, which means you don't have to worry about being picky. Until you find a new place, your belongings can wait in storage. Dusty furniture is a better prospect than waking up with a pervert looming over you. 

By the time the clock hits evening hours, you're sipping on your iced coffee with a defeated sigh. Most of the cheap apartments seem to be given to locals. Not outsiders like you. At least they spared you of the false hopes and curtly told you to not expect any call back, so you can swiftly move on to the next circled address. You pull out the crumbled sheet of paper from your pocket. Reading over your list of crossed out lines like this deflates you greatly. At the very bottom lies your final hope: the ad you'd stumbled upon this morning was too good to be true and the realtor was available for viewing at any time, so you're almost certain it's some sort of scam. Yet you can't afford to skip it, can you? You stand up, pat your jeans and take a deep breath in. 

As you check your phone to confirm the location, you begin to doubt your decision. It's hard to believe no other potential renters have showed up. The apartment is in a convenient area, very close to public transport, at a great price, on what looks like a busy street. Isn't it the dream? So why? You glance around, examining the surroundings. The shops are bustling with people. You try to come up with possible explanations, when a deep voice startles you.

"You must be (Y/N), right? You sure are easy to spot."

You turn around to greet the person. Although the second you spot him, you take an unconscious step back. You'd expected a middle aged man dressed in formal attire with a shy bow and clumsy movements. The one standing before you resembles none of that. He's imposingly tall, with a muscular built and slicked back hair. You can discern the tattoos peeking out from under the rolled up sleeves. His face has multiple deep scars and you can only assume that the pale, discolored eye that's transfixed in one direction is a fake made of glass. One might call him handsome, if you're into the kind of appearance you see in documentaries about the mafia. 

"Y-you're the landlord?" You stutter, immediately covering your mouth and regretting your lack of tact. 

"Nuh uh, Boss sent me to deal with it." He flashes you a genuine grin, completely unperturbed by your offhanded implication. "I'm Daitou."

He continues towards the entrance and you follow behind, too awkward to back down now. He describes the living quarters with surprising enthusiasm. If you were to close your eyes and disregard his heavy Kansai accent, you could very well be convinced it's a professional real estate agent hard at work. 

"Excuse me for asking, but..." Once he finishes his marketing presentation, you cannot help the increasing anxiety. "What's the catch?"

"Huh?"

"For something like this to be so cheap...and no one else being interested...may I be frank and ask what's wrong with it? Please understand, I just left my previous apartment because of a stalker. I don't want to be packing again anytime soon."

"Well, isn't it obvious?" He searches your gaze for a moment, before gasping as if remembering something. "Wait, you're a foreigner, so I guess you don't know. Ah, that explains it." 

He lets out a hearty laugh, satisfied with his conclusion. 

"You didn't notice anything strange outside?"

You ponder his question before slowly shaking your head in denial. 

"Really? A bunch of heavily tattooed guys with family pins on their suits...This is a yakuza quarter. Our Family owns most businesses here. But lately we've had a lot of police on our backs, ya know? Bound to happen when the street is swarming with us. So Boss had this great idea - he's smart like that, ya know, I've never been the bright one - anyways, he suggested we rent some of our housing to regular civilians. Less suspicious that way." 

He crosses his arms and nods to himself proudly. 

"I myself think it's a great deal. You won't find anything cheaper for the kind of stuff you're getting. All you have to do is, you know, mind your business. If some weasel questions you, no Sir, you haven't seen or heard anything suspicious. That's all."

You can only stare wide eyed, somewhat taken aback by his honesty.

"Uh...Are you sure you were supposed to tell me all of this? I feel we're skipping some steps before admitting to organized crime."

Now it's his turn to consider your inquiry. 

"Probably not, but I'm not good with words. You look like a smart girl, so I thought I won't sugarcoat it. I'm sure you already know that if you leave and rat us out I'll be throwing your chopped up remains in the nearby river. Or would you want to be shipped home instead? I'm a nice guy like that, hehe."

You return a crooked smile and purse your lips in the process. You'd rather not learn the percentage of truth in his humor anytime soon. 

"You mentioned a stalker? I can guarantee you he won't follow here, miss. And if he's that dumb to wander on our turf, well, me and my guys always hang around the block. Leave him to me and I'll bring you his teeth in a box." 

"I-...Why teeth of all the things?"

"Just easier to pull out, ya know." He winks and reaches for his back pocket, revealing an old pair of pliers with childish delight. "See, I'm a bit of a handyman, so I always have some tools on me."

Strangely enough, you're not as terrified as you would expect from someone in your shoes. Certainly your knees are weaker when compared to your pre-encounter state, but there's something about his demeanor that doesn't feel malicious or threatening. Like conversing with an old friend at a pub. 

"Will I truly not get in trouble? You guys do your thing and I'm 100% not involved?"

"You have my word." And with that, as if closing the sale of his lifetime, he confidently slaps a stack of papers on the nearby counter and hands you a pen. "You already have my number, if anyone pisses you off just hit me up and I'll be at your service. Boss left everything to me."

No perverts and less of your monthly allowance going towards rent. Maybe it's your despair talking, but you've been persuaded nonetheless. You scribble your name in the designated field and shove the documents towards your new acquaintance. 

"Pleasure doing business with you, miss (Y/N)." He cheerfully dangles the keys before dropping them in your hand and heads for the door.

"Oh, is shipping included in the rent?"

He stops and turns to you, mildly confused.

"You said if I mess up you'll ship my remains home. Do I pay for the postage myself, or is that part of the monthly tax?" You ask with a cheeky grin. 

His eyes narrow in delight and you can tell he's greatly amused by your words. 

"Nah, consider it a gift from me. Gotta treat a lady nice, 'specially if it's a pretty one like you."

And with that, you're alone again. You look around the room, trying to visualize your new home. It's already getting dark outside. Now that you've had the situation explained to you, you can definitely see what Daitou meant. There's the occasional police officer patrolling the street, and plenty of men dressed in similar fashion walking in small groups. 

"And?"

Outside the building, a young man is leaning against the wall with a cigarette in his mouth. He seems to have been waiting for Daitou. 

"It's done. Some cute foreigner is moving in." He lifts an arm in a flexing motion, patting his bicep in a congratulatory manner. "Boss will be surprised, eh?"

"You're fucking with me."

"What? You wanna go back upstairs and check?" He responds, appalled. "Might've taken longer than expected, but I told ya I can manage!"

"Are you sure you didn't threaten her or something? I still don't know what Boss was thinking when he asked a nutcase like you to deal with the civvies." 

"Hey hey hey, I may not be all fancy speaking like you or Kazuya, but I'm not dumb. Matter of fact, she already signed the papers."

"I never said you're dumb. Just batshit crazy." The young man sighs and flicks his cigarette butt away, stomping on it.

"Let's go and tell the others."

[greenthestral]

UIIC (USA, Indonesia, India, China): Four Countries Make Up Half the World's Population

In a world where countries are diverse and cultures vary greatly, there are four nations that stand out due to their sheer population size. The United States, Indonesia, India, and China, collectively known as the UIIC countries, are home to approximately half of the world's population. This article delves into the significance of these nations, their impact on global demographics, and the unique challenges and opportunities they face.

The United States: A Melting Pot of Cultures and Ideas

The United States, with a population exceeding 330 million people, remains one of the most influential and economically powerful countries in the world. Renowned for its "melting pot" of cultures and diverse demographics, the U.S. has been a beacon of opportunity for individuals from all walks of life. People flock to its shores in pursuit of the American Dream, seeking better opportunities, freedom, and a chance to contribute to its vibrant society.

Beyond its vast population, the United States has left an indelible mark on global culture, politics, and technology. It has been at the forefront of scientific and technological innovations, fostering advancements in fields such as space exploration, medicine, and information technology. Furthermore, its entertainment industry, centered in Hollywood, has captivated audiences worldwide, shaping popular culture and influencing trends in music, film, and fashion.

Indonesia: A Rising Economic Power in Southeast Asia

With a population of over 270 million people, Indonesia stands as the fourth-most populous nation on the planet. Spanning thousands of islands, Indonesia boasts a rich tapestry of cultures, languages, and traditions. Its diversity is a testament to the country's vibrant heritage and harmonious coexistence.

In recent years, Indonesia has experienced significant economic growth, propelling it to become a rising star in Southeast Asia. The nation's abundant natural resources, strategic location, and young and dynamic workforce have attracted substantial foreign investment. Indonesia's economic trajectory, coupled with its commitment to sustainable development, positions it as an important player in regional and global markets.

India: A Land of Diversity and Rapid Development

India, the world's second-most populous country, surpasses the 1.3 billion mark in population. This vast and diverse nation is a tapestry of languages, religions, and cultural practices. Its ancient civilization and rich history have contributed to a deep sense of cultural pride and identity.

In recent decades, India has undergone remarkable economic growth, transforming itself into one of the fastest-growing major economies. The country's demographic dividend, characterized by a large and young workforce, has been a driving force behind its economic rise. India has emerged as a global leader in the information technology and services sectors, with its bustling cities serving as hubs for innovation and entrepreneurship.

Despite its rapid development, India faces unique challenges related to poverty, inequality, and infrastructure development. However, the government and various stakeholders are actively working towards inclusive growth, social welfare programs, and sustainable development to address these issues.

China: A Giant on the Global Stage

China, with a population approaching 1.4 billion, stands as the most populous country in the world. Its ancient civilization, remarkable cultural heritage, and rapid economic rise have captivated the attention of the international community. China's influence extends far beyond its borders, impacting global trade, geopolitical affairs, and technological advancements.

China's manufacturing capabilities have been unparalleled, making it the world's factory. Its infrastructure development projects, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, have linked nations across continents, fostering connectivity and enhancing global trade. Moreover, China has made significant investments in emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, renewable energy, and space exploration, positioning itself as a formidable player in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Challenges and Opportunities for the UIIC Countries

While the UIIC countries collectively represent a significant portion of the world's population, they also face unique challenges and opportunities:

Managing Urbanization and Infrastructure: As these countries continue to experience population growth and rapid urbanization, managing sustainable infrastructure development becomes paramount. Balancing economic progress with environmental considerations and social stability poses a complex challenge that requires innovative solutions.

Healthcare and Social Welfare: With large populations comes the responsibility of providing adequate healthcare and social welfare services. Ensuring access to quality education, healthcare facilities, and social safety nets is essential to promote overall well-being and reduce disparities within these nations.

Technological Advancements: The UIIC countries are at the forefront of technological innovation and advancement. Embracing emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, renewable energy, and digital connectivity can drive economic growth, increase productivity, and improve the quality of life for their citizens.

Global Cooperation and Diplomacy: As influential nations, the UIIC countries play a vital role in global cooperation and diplomacy. Collaborative efforts in addressing global challenges such as climate change, cybersecurity, and economic inequality are essential for a sustainable and prosperous future.

Conclusion

The UIIC countries, comprising the United States, Indonesia, India, and China, collectively represent an astounding portion of the world's population and exert immense influence on the global stage. Each of these nations brings unique characteristics, challenges, and opportunities to the table, and understanding their significance and fostering cooperation among them can pave the way for a more prosperous and inclusive world. As these countries continue to evolve, their impact on global demographics, economy, and culture is set to be profound.

United States: As the third most populous country globally, the United States holds a prominent position in shaping the global landscape. Its democratic values, entrepreneurial spirit, and cultural diversity have made it a beacon of opportunity and innovation. The United States has long been at the forefront of scientific research, technological advancements, and economic prowess. It boasts some of the world's leading universities, research institutions, and corporations, driving breakthroughs in various fields, including healthcare, information technology, and renewable energy. Additionally, its robust entertainment industry has garnered a global following, exporting music, movies, and popular culture that resonate across borders.

Indonesia: With the fourth-largest population in the world, Indonesia is an archipelago nation that spans thousands of islands, each contributing to its rich cultural heritage. As a rising economic power in Southeast Asia, Indonesia's vibrant markets and burgeoning middle class present significant opportunities for both domestic and international businesses. The country's young and dynamic workforce, coupled with its vast natural resources, make it an attractive destination for foreign investments. However, Indonesia faces challenges in infrastructure development, poverty alleviation, and maintaining environmental sustainability. By addressing these issues and promoting inclusive growth, Indonesia can harness its potential and become an even stronger player in the global economy.

India: As the world's second-most populous country, India's cultural diversity, ancient history, and rapid development make it a force to be reckoned with. India's large and youthful population has propelled it to become one of the fastest-growing major economies. The country has embraced information technology and services, with cities like Bangalore emerging as global technology hubs. India's robust startup ecosystem has given rise to innovative solutions in various sectors, including fintech, e-commerce, and healthcare. However, India grapples with challenges such as poverty, infrastructure gaps, and social inequalities. By addressing these issues, investing in education, and leveraging its demographic dividend, India can chart a course towards sustainable and inclusive development.

China: With the world's largest population, China's rise as a global economic powerhouse has been nothing short of remarkable. Over the past few decades, China has experienced unprecedented economic growth, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Its manufacturing capabilities, infrastructure development projects, and investments in technology have made it a major player in the global market. China's Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious infrastructure program, aims to enhance connectivity and promote economic cooperation across continents. The nation's commitment to research and development has propelled it to the forefront of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence and renewable energy. However, China faces challenges related to environmental degradation, social inequality, and human rights concerns. Addressing these challenges while continuing to foster innovation and sustainable development will shape China's role in the global community.

The significance of the UIIC countries extends beyond their sheer population size. Their collective influence spans across various domains, including trade, politics, culture, and technological advancements. Cooperation among these nations can drive progress in addressing global challenges such as climate change, cybersecurity, and economic inequality. By sharing best practices, collaborating on research and development, and promoting cultural exchange, the UIIC countries can foster a more interconnected and harmonious world.

Furthermore, the UIIC countries' impact on global demographics cannot be overstated. Their population dynamics, urbanization patterns, and social trends shape global migration, labor markets, and cultural exchanges. As these countries continue to evolve, their demographic shifts will have ripple effects on regional and global economies, healthcare systems, and social welfare policies.

In terms of the global economy, the UIIC countries serve as major engines of growth and consumption. Their domestic markets and investments influence industries ranging from technology and finance to manufacturing and entertainment. Moreover, their economic policies, trade agreements, and geopolitical relations have far-reaching implications for global trade and financial stability.

Culturally, the UIIC countries contribute to the world's cultural tapestry through their arts, languages, cuisines, and traditions. Their vibrant cultures and diverse populations enrich global cultural exchanges, promoting understanding, tolerance, and appreciation of different perspectives.

In conclusion, the UIIC countries - the United States, Indonesia, India, and China - collectively represent half of the world's population and play a pivotal role in shaping the global landscape. Their unique characteristics, challenges, and opportunities present a rich tapestry of potential for collaboration and progress. By understanding their significance, fostering cooperation, and addressing shared challenges, we can work towards a more prosperous, inclusive, and interconnected world. The impact of the UIIC countries on global demographics, economy, and culture will undoubtedly be profound as they continue to evolve and shape the future of our interconnected world.

[teknojiler]

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[metamatar]

Employers desire foreign workers who are accustomed to the hazardous work sites of industrial construction; in particular, they specifically solicit migrants who do not have a history of labor organizing within SWANA. In response, labor brokerage firms brand themselves as offering migrant workers who are deferential. Often, labor brokers conflate the category of South Asian with docility; [...] as inherently passive, disciplined, and, most important, unfettered by volatile working conditions. "We say quality, they [U.S. employers] say seasoned. We both know what it means. Workers who are not going to quit, not going to run away in the foreign country and do as they are told.” [...]

For migrants, the U.S. oil industry presents a rare chance to apply their existing skill set in a country with options for permanent residency and sponsorship of family members. Migrants wish to find an end to their tem­porary worker status; they imagine the United States as a liberal economy in which labor standards are enforced and there are opportunities for citizenship and building a life for their family. [...] What brokers fail to explain is that South Asian migrants are being recruited as guest workers. Migrants will not have access to U.S. citizenship or visas for family members; in fact, their employment status will be quite similar to their SWANA migration.

While nations such as the Philippines have both state-mandated and independent migrant rights agencies, the Indian government has minimal avenues for worker protection. These are limited to hotlines for reporting abusive foreign employers and Indian consulates located in a few select countries of the SWANA region. [... Brokers] emphasize the docility of Indian migrants in comparison to the disruptive tendencies of other Asian migrant workers. [...] “Some of these Filipino men you see make a lot of trouble in the Arab countries. Even their women, who work as maids and such, lash out. The employer says one wrong thing and the workers get the whole country [the Philippines] on the street. [...] But you don’t see our people creating a tamasha [spectacle] overseas.” [...] Just as Filipinx migrants are racialized to be undisciplined labor, Indian brokers construct divisions within the South Asian workforce to promote the primacy of their own firms. In particular, Pakistani workers are racialized as an abrasive population.

[...] While the public image of the South Asian American community remains as model minorities, presumed to be primarily upwardly mobile professionals, the global reality of the population is quite to the contrary. [...] From the historic colonial routes initiated by British occupation of South Asia to the emergence of energy markets within the countries of SWANA, migrants have been recruited to build industries by contributing their labor to construction projects. Within the last decade, these South Asian migrants, with experience in the SWANA oil industry, have been actively solicited as guest workers into the energy sector of the United States. The growth of hydraulic fracturing has opened new territory for oil extraction; capitalizing on the potential market are numerous stakeholders who have invested in industrial construction projects across the southwestern United States. The solicitation of South Asian construction workers is not coincidental. [...] Kartik, a globally competitive firm’s broker, explains the connection of Indian labor to practices of the past. “You know we come from a long history of working in foreign lands. Even the British used to send us to Africa and the Arab regions to work in the mines and oil fields. It’s part of our history.”

Seasoning Labor: Contemporary South Asian Migrations and the Racialization of Immigrant Workers, Saunjuhi Verma in the Journal of Asian American Studies

[tomorrowusa]

People need to be reminded of Trump's woeful incompetence which came to a head during the pandemic emergency and resulted in the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The Obama administration successfully dealt with the threats from swine flu and Ebola. There was no swine flu disaster, there was no Ebola disaster, and there was even no Zika disaster because competent people were running the US. Near the end of Obama's term, his National Security Council staff put together a 69-page playbook on how to deal with pandemic emergencies. It's called "Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents". Of course Trump ignored the document and plunged the nation into COVID hell.

Trump team failed to follow NSC’s pandemic playbook

Michelle Obama, in one of her best speeches ever in Kalamazoo this weekend, excoriated Trump's incompetence.

Michelle Obama laced into Donald Trump in a searing speech in Michigan on Saturday, accusing the former president of “gross incompetence” and having an “amoral character” while challenging hesitant Americans to choose Kamala Harris for US president. “By every measure, she has demonstrated that she’s ready,” the former first lady told a rapt audience in Kalamazoo. “The real question is, as a country, are we ready for this moment?” [ ... ] In raw and strikingly personal terms, she asked why Harris was being held to a “higher standard” than her opponent. Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and his failed attempt to cling to power after losing the 2020 election should alone be disqualifying, Obama argued. But now the people who worked closest with him when he was president – his former advisers and cabinet secretaries – had stepped forward with a warning that he should not be allowed to return to power.

ICYMI, here is Michelle Obama's speech in Michigan.

Too many people have been afflicted by Trumpnesia. They seem to have forgotten the catastrophe that happened starting on 22 January 2020 when the first COVID infection was discovered on US soil. On that day Trump told CNBC: "we have it totally under control" and "it's going to be just fine".

Instead of following Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents, Trump did the usual bullshit Trump things like criticize the Oscars and rage-tweet from the bathroom. He belatedly declared a state of emergency on Friday the 13th of March – the day after the stock market crashed.

Don't let anybody in real life get away with describing the Trump years as some sort of utopia.

Some people disingenuously claim they don't know enough about Kamala Harris despite her 20 years in public service. We all know more than enough about Trump's egregious ineptitude which turned a national emergency into a prolonged national nightmare.

[communist-ojou-sama]

I saw how you said that describing the PRC as capitalist betrays a lack of understanding of capitalism and I actually really liked how well you explained that being against capitalism isn't proper Marxism/communism so I was wondering if you could open that post on understanding capitalism a bit more! Only if you're okay with it, of course!

Eventually I should do a real proper Effortpost on this with all the graphs and figures to really drive home the point that I'm making, but very briefly since it's getting late here:

In Marx's time, capitalism was an emergent societal mode of production that was closely entertwined with the enclosure movement and the industrial revolution. On the level of labor, it saw the decline of peasant and artisan labor and the rise of proletarianization, and with it the tendencies of mechanization and rationalization of production (e.g. de-skilling of manufacturing and measurement of efficiency by the labor-hour)

On a consistent historical level, from Marx's time to ours, capitalism has been characterized by the role of liquidity holders (e.g. banks, joint stock companies, investment funds &c) in investigating growth industries and investing in them for the purpose of greater profit. Notably: the demand from financial actors for returns on their balance-sheets is constant, regardless of the state of the development in any given productive market. Meanwhile the nature of industrial development is that it happens in fits and starts, in great surging advances followed by relatively stagnant plateaus. The results of this mismatch are twofold:

First, as Lenin chronicled, it leads for a demand to engage in imperialist expansion to open new markets and seek new profits that way. The other, arguably larger and more important frontier however is that of speculation. Because the inflation of the value of an asset creates purchasing power in and of itself in the short term, which is maintained on balance sheets so long as the arrears on credit derived on it keeps getting paid on a notional path to amortizaiton.

The tendency in capitalism since Marx's time has been the ever-growing importance of these two dynamics and the gradual receding of the importance of low-elasticity economic activity like manufacturing goods.

The tendency of imperialist expansion within capitalism has created a networked global bourgeoisie throughout the financial capitals of the world who extract rentier profits from the various rural peripheries of the global south, and the speculative nature of investment capital in the late 20th and early 21st century defines the quality of the "capitalist develpment" we see in bourgeois states in the contemporary global south: namely, extremely uneven development between rural and urban, trapping of the labor force in a holding-pattern of low-pay low-skill work such as textile production or low-end manufacturing (e.g. Bangladesh and Malaysia) while their capitals enjoy wealth near that of the imperial core, with relatively very high-paying jobs in the knowledge industries (this should ring a bell with India lol). Any country that is actually ruled by its bourgeoisie will follow this pattern, because financialized paper profits are larger (in nominal terms) than the highly investment-intensive industrial development that has gone on in the PRC under the stewardship of the Party. However the result is that the PRC has relatively low inequality among middle-income countries and the technological benefits of the industrialization led by cities is beginning to flow to rural China, which is what allowed them to lift 800 million people out of extreme poverty, something that has yet to happen in actually capitalist bourgeis states like India.

[haqiqaglobalbusiness]

BRICS Summit 2024 in Kazan, Russia: A New Era of Global Cooperation

The 2024 BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, marked a significant milestone for the world's leading emerging economies. This blog post delves into the key discussions, outcomes, and implications of this pivotal event. Learn how the BRICS nations are shaping th

Welcome to Haqiqa Global Business‘s blog, your go-to source for the latest insights and developments in the world of global business. Today, we’re diving into the significant outcomes and discussions from the BRICS Summit 2024 in Kazan, Russia. This landmark event has the potential to reshape the global economic and political landscape, offering exciting opportunities for entrepreneurs and…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The housing emergency and the second Trump term

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveill ance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/11/nimby-yimby-fimby/#home-team-advantage

Postmortems and blame for the 2024 elections are thick on the ground, but amidst all those theories and pointed fingers, one explanation looms large and credible: the American housing emergency. If the system can't put a roof over your head, that system needs to go.

American housing has been in crisis for decades, of course, but it keeps getting worse…and worse…and worse. Americans pay more for worse housing than at any time in their history. Homelessness is at a peak that is soul-crushing to witness and maddening to experience. We turned housing ��� a human necessity second only to air, food and water – into an asset governed almost entirely by market forces, and so created a crisis that has consumed the nation.

The Trump administration has no plan to deal with housing. Or rather, they do have plans, but strictly of the "bad ideas only" variety. Trump wants to deport 11m undocumented immigrants, and their families, including citizens and Green Card holders (otherwise, that would be "family separation" and that's cruel). Even if you are the kind of monster who can set aside the ghoulishness of solving your housing problems by throwing someone in a concentration camp at gunpoint and then deporting them to a country where they legitimately fear for their lives, this still doesn't solve the housing emergency, and will leave America several million homes short.

Their other solution? Deregulation and tax cuts. We've seen this movie before, and it's an R-rated horror flick. Financial deregulation created the speculative mortgage markets that led to the 2008 housing crisis, which created a seemingly permanent incapacity to build new homes in America, as skilled tradespeople retired or changed careers and housebuilding firms left the market. Handing giant tax cuts to the monopolists who gobbled up the remains of these bankrupt small companies minted a dozen new housing billionaires who preside over companies that make more money than ever by building fewer homes:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91198443/housing-market-wall-streets-big-housing-market-bet-has-created-12-new-billionaires

This isn't working. Homelessness is ballooning. The only answer Trump and his regime have for our homeless neighbors is to just make it a crime to be homeless, sweeping up homeless encampments and busting homeless people for "loitering" (that is, existing in space). There is no universe in which this reduces homelessness. People who lose their homes aren't going to dig holes, crawl inside, and pull the dirt down on top of themselves. If anything, sweeps and arrests will make homelessness worse, by destroying the possessions, medication and stability that homeless people need if they are to become housed.

Today, The American Prospect published an excellent package on the housing emergency, looking at its causes and the road-tested solutions that can work even when the federal government is doing everything it can to make the problem worse:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-tackling-the-housing-crisis/

The Harris campaign ran on Biden's economic record, insisting that he had tamed inflation. It's true that the Biden admin took action against monopolists and greedflation, including criminal price-fixing companies like Realpage, which helps landlords coordinate illegal conspiracies to rig rents. Realpage sets the rents for the majority of homes in major metros, like Phoenix:

https://www.azag.gov/press-release/attorney-general-mayes-sues-realpage-and-residential-landlords-illegal-price-fixing

Of course, reducing inflation isn't the same as bringing prices down – it just means prices are going up more slowly. And sure, inflation is way down in many categories, but not in housing. In housing, inflation is accelerating:

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-03-08/inflation-housing-shortage-economy-cpi-fed-interest-rate

The housing emergency makes everything else worse. Blue states are in danger of losing Congressional seats because people are leaving big cities: not because they want to, but because they literally can't afford to keep a roof over their heads. LGBTQ people fleeing fascist red state legislatures and their policies on trans and gay rights can't afford to move to the states where they will be allowed to simply live:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/business/economy/lgbtq-moving-cost.html

So what are the roots of this problem, and what can we do about it? The housing emergency doesn't have a unitary cause, but among the most important factors is fuckery that led to the Great Financial Crisis and the fuckery that followed on from it, as Ryan Cooper writes:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-housing-industry-never-recovered-great-recession/

The Glass-Steagall Act was a 1933 banking regulation created to prevent Great Depression-style market crashes. It was killed in 1999 by Bill Clinton, who declared, "the Glass–Steagall law is no longer appropriate." Nine years later, the global economy melted down in a Great Depression-style market crash fueled by reckless speculation of the sort that Glass-Steagall had prohibited.

The crash of 2008 took down all kinds of industries, but none were so hard-hit as home-building (after all, mortgages were the raw material of the financial bubble that popped in 2008). After 2008, construction of new housing fell by 90% for the next two years. This protracted nuclear winter in the housing market killed many associated industries. Skilled tradespeople retrained, or "left the job market" (a euphemism for becoming disabled, homeless, or destroyed). Waves of bankruptcies swept through the construction industry. The construction workforce didn't recover to pre-crisis levels for 16 years (and of course, by then, there was a huge backlog of unbuilt homes, and a larger population seeking housing).

Meanwhile, the collapse of every part of the housing supply chain – from raw materials to producers – set the stage for monopoly rollups, with the biggest firms gobbling up all these distressed smaller firms. Thanks to this massive consolidation, homebuilders were able to build fewer houses and extract higher profits by gouging on price. They doubled down on this monopoly price-gouging during the pandemic supply shocks, raising prices well above the pandemic shortage costs.

The housing market is monopolized in ways that will be familiar to anyone angry about consolidation in other markets – from eyeglasses to pharma to tech. One builder, HR Horton, is the largest player in 3 of the country's largest markets, and it has tripled its profits since 2005 while building half as many houses. Modern homebuilders don't build: they use their scale to get land at knock-down rates, slow-walk the planning process, and then farm out the work to actual construction firms at rates that barely keep the lights on:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/its-the-land-stupid-how-the-homebuilder

Monopolists can increase profits by constraining supply. 60% of US markets are "highly concentrated" and the companies that dominate these markets are starving homebuilding in them to the tune of $106b/year:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3303984

There are some obvious fixes to this, but they are either unlikely under Trump (antitrust action to break up builders based on their share in each market) or impossible to imagine (closing tax loopholes that benefit large building firms). Likewise, we could create a "homes guarantee" that would act as an "automatic stabilizer." That would mean that any time the economy slips into recession, this would trigger automatic funding to pay firms to build public housing, thus stimulating the economy and alleviating the housing supply crisis:

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialHousing.pdf

The Homes Guarantee is further explained in a separate article in the package by Sulma Arias from People's Action, who describes how grassroots activists fighting redlining planted the seeds of a legal guarantee of a home:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-why-we-need-homes-guarantee/

Arias describes the path to a right to a home as running through the mass provision of public housing – and what makes that so exciting is that public housing can be funded, administered and built by local or state governments, meaning this is a thing that can happen even in the face of a hostile or indifferent federal regime.

In Paul E Williams's story on FIMBY (finance in my back yard), the executive director of Center for Public Enterprise offers an inspirational story of how local governments can provide thousands of homes:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-fimby-finance-in-my-backyard/

Williams recounts the events of 2021 in Montgomery County, Maryland, where a county agency stepped in to loan money to a property developer who had land, zoning approval and work crews to build a major new housing block, but couldn't find finance. Montgomery County's Housing Opportunities Commission made a short-term loan at market rates to the developer.

By 2023, the building was up and the loan had been repaid. All 268 units are occupied and a third are rented at rates tailored to low-income tenants. The HOC is the permanent owner of those homes. It worked so well that Montgomery's HOC is on track to build 3,000 more public homes this way:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/business/affordable-housing-montgomery-county.html

Other – in red states! – have followed suit, with lookalike funds and projects in Atlanta and Chattanooga, with "dozens" more plans underway at state and local levels. The Massachusetts Momentum Fund is set to fund 40,000 homes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/business/affordable-housing-montgomery-county.html

The Center for Public Enterprise has a whole report on these "Government Sponsored Enterprises" and the role they can play in creating a supply of homes priced at a rate that working people can afford:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-fimby-finance-in-my-backyard/

Of course, for a GSE to loan money to build a home, that home has to be possible. YIMBYs are right to point to restrictive zoning as a major impediment to building new homes, and Robert Cruickshank from California YIMBY has a piece breaking down the strategy for fixing zoning:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-make-it-legal-to-build/

Cruickshank lays out NIMBY success stories in cities like Austin and Minneapolis adopting YIMBY-style zoning rules and seeing significant improvements in rental prices. These success stories are representative of a broader recognition – at least among Democratic politicians – that restrictive zoning is a major contributor to the housing emergency.

Repeating these successes in the rest of the country will take a long time, and in the meantime, American tenants are sitting ducks for predatory landlords, With criminal enterprises like Realpage enabling collusive price-fixing for housing and monopoly developers deliberately restricting supplies to keep prices up (a recent Blackrock investor communique gloated over the undersupply of housing as a source of profits for its massive portfolio of rental properties), tenants pay more and more of their paychecks for worse and worse accommodations. They can't wait for the housing emergency to be solved through zoning changes and public housing. They need relief now.

That's where tenants' unions come in, as Ruthy Gourevitch and Tara Raghuveer of the Tenant Union Federation writes in their piece on the tenants across the country who are coordinating rent strikes to protest obscene rent-hikes and dangerous living conditions:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-look-for-the-tenant-union/

They describe a country where tenants work multiple jobs, send the majority of their take-home pay to their landlords – a quarter of tenants pay 70% of their wages in rent – and live in vermin-filled homes without heat or ventilation:

https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/terms-of-investment/

Public money from Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac flood into the speculative market for multifamily homes, a largely unregulated, subsidized speculative bonanza that lets the wealthy make bets and the poor pay their losses.

In response, tenants unions are popping up all across the country, especially in red state cities like Bozeman, MT and Louisville, KY. They organize for "just cause" evictions that ban landlords from taking their homes away. They seek fair housing voucher distribution practices. They seek to close eviction loopholes like the LA wheeze that lets landlords kick you out following "renovations."

The National Tenant Policy Agenda demands "national rent caps, anti-eviction protections, habitability standards, and antitrust action," measures that would immediately and profoundly improve the lives of millions of American workers:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JF1-fTalW1tOBO0FhYDcVvEd1kQ2HIzkYFNRo6zmSsg/edit

They caution that it's not enough to merely increase housing supply. Without a strong countervailing force from organized tenants, new housing can be just another source of extraction and speculation for the rich. They say that the Federal Housing Finance Agency – regulator for Fannie and Freddie – could play an active role in ensuring that new housing addresses the needs of people, not corporations.

In the meantime, a tenants' union in KC successfully used a rent strike – where every tenant in a building refuses to pay rent – to get millions in overdue repairs. More strikes are planned across the country.

The American system is in crisis. A country that cannot house its people is a failure. As Rachael Dziaba writes in the final piece for the package, the situation is so bad that water has started to flow uphill: the cities with the most inward migration have the least job growth:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-10-18-housing-blues/

It's not just housing, of course. Americans pay more for health care than anyone else in the rich world and get worse outcomes than anyone else in the rich world. Their monopoly grocers have spiked their food prices. The incoming administration has declared war on public education and seeks to relegate poor children to unsupervised schools where "education" can consist of filling in forms on a Chromebook and learning that the Earth is only 5,000 years old.

A system that can't shelter, feed, educate or care for its people is a failure. People in failed states will vote for anyone who promises to tear the system down. The decision to turn life's necessities over to unregulated, uncaring markets has produced a populace who are so desperate for change, they'll even vote for their own destruction.

[sindoshipping]

What is Haute Couture in Luxury Brand World?

Haute couture, a French term meaning “high sewing” or “high dressmaking,” epitomizes the pinnacle of luxury fashion. In the world of luxury brands, haute couture represents the epitome of bespoke fashion, characterized by meticulously handcrafted garments that cater to an elite clientele. The market for haute couture, although niche, plays a significant role in defining trends, influencing the…

[collapsedsquid]

And so that brings me to a useful piece of advice for any readers who are aspiring dictators, one that the Communists knew, Suharto knew, but that some modern day tyrants seem to have forgotten. There is always a level of civil unrest that outstrips the capability of even the most loyal and largest regular armed forces to deal with. In all likelihood, as a medium sized emerging market, you will have a capital city with a population of about five or six million, meaing potentially as many as three million adults on the streets in the worst case. Your total active-duty armed forces are unlikely to be a tenth of that. When it becomes a numbers game, there is only one thing that can save you. And that is, a reactionary citizens' militia, to combat the revolutionary citizens' militia. Former socialist republics always used to be fond of buses full of coal miners from way out the back of beyond, but the Iranian basijs are the same sort of thing. Basically, what you need is a large population who are a few rungs up from the bottom of society, who aren't interested in freedom and who hate young people. In other words, arseholes. Arseholes, considered as a strategic entity, have the one useful characteristic that is the only useful characteristic in the context of an Egyptian-style popular uprising - there are fucking millions of them. This is my advice to any aspiring dictator; early on in your career, identify and inventory all the self-pitying, bullying shitheads your country has to offer. Anyone with a grievance, a beer belly and enough strength to swing a pickaxe handle will do. You don't need to bother with military training or discipline because they're hopefully never going to be used as a proper military force - just concentrate on nuturing their sense that they, despite appearances, are the backbone of the country, and allowing them to understand that although rules are rules, there are some people who just need a slap. The bigger and burlier the better, but when the time comes they'll be fighting in groups against people weaker than themselves, often under cover of darkness, so numbers are more important than anything else. The extractive industries are indeed often a good source, as are demobbed veterans (Zimbabwe) or the laity of an established religion.

I thought it was well-understood that you need both the military and paramilitaries to carry out a successful coup but both the South Korean president and online commentators don't seem to recognize this

[seat-safety-switch]

In my neighbourhood, people are busy. Every morning, they get up, and hop in their big cars to drive to their jobs. Sometimes they're too busy for coffee, so they all clog the main road outside my place waiting to turn into the Tim Hortons drive thru. After waiting there for way longer than it takes to make coffee, they're on their way to the office parking. In their haste, they have left something very valuable behind.

No, I'm not talking about the human soul. That kind of romantic shit is obsolete, save it for the next time the stock market implodes. What all these go-go careerists have abandoned in their homes is their dogs. Dogs that need to be walked. Dogs that need to be played with. Dogs that need to pee. To this problem have emerged the unique class of "dogwalkers."

When you pay a dog walker, they come to your house during the day, let themselves in, and extract your dog. Then, they enjoy the company of that dog, returning it once your pup is happy and tired out. For this, they charge you money. It is the perfect job, perhaps, except for the inconvenient fact that I don't like picking up poop. However, while I was cleaning my rusty subframe, a recent inhalation of some extremely warned-against solvents told me another idea: I could do this for cars.

You see, a lot of very rich people have very nice cars, ones that I could never afford. Porsches. Lamborghinis. Jaguars. Ford Focuses. And they let them sit. Sit and rot. This kind of boredom is not good for the car, whose rubber seals go dry, whose batteries go flat, and whose tires get vaguely square and unpleasant. They, too, need to be exercised. And that's exactly where I come in. For just fifty bucks an hour, I will let myself into your palatial mansion, beat the shit out of your sports automobile, and then put it back with the tank filled up (you're paying, of course.)

Trust me, too, that there will be plenty of "enrichment activities," such as taking the car to a race track or to heads-up no-prep drags in Mexico. This will help the car learn proper behaviour and socialization around other rich people's cars, which will reduce the chance that the valet at the country club will scoff at how you have ten-year-old tires on your exotic seven-figure race car and no evidence of having bombed an FIA curb at the better part of two hundred kilometres an hour.

Sign up with me today, and I might even drive you to work in your own car once or twice. That's the kind of experience that usually costs double – and it will for you, too.