#david ostry

[gameofthunder66]

The Good Student (Trailer) 2006

-watched 9/19/2023- 2 stars- on Tubi (free)

[mhsnetflixblog]

Midnight Horror School (Netflix Jr.) Character Voices

English

Ampoo - Christina Kelly

Anto - April Winchell

Æon - Kelly Sheridan

Bri - Laura Post

Borocca - Rebecca Soler

Chaps - Candi Milo

Dabble - Sarah Taylor

Docky - John Tartaglia

Enton - Tom Kenny

Fonton - Richard Steven Horvitz

Friedi - Fryda Wolff

Furanzo - Maria Petrano

Genie - Simon Hill

Hikky - Madeleine Martin

Inky - Leslie Carrara-Rudolph

Juno - Tabitha S. Germain

Kabo - Hope Marie Segoine

Kami - Cree Summer

Karen - Kira Gelineau

Liddy - Andrea Libman

Magnero - Andrew Sabiston

Noisy - Grey DeLisle

Nonny - Michelle Marie

Onpoo - Abigail Gordon

Œther - Dee Bradley Baker

Oozee - Lizzie Freeman

Piranin - Scott Menville

Quicky - Corinne Orr

Ringring - Michael Kovach

Rosso - Kelsey Painter

Shiro - Tara Strong

Spimon - Annick Obonsawin

Tubee - Pamela Adlon

Usop - Lance Henriksen

Vincent - Vincent Martella

Watt - Jo Wyatt

Mr. X - Jeremy Shada

Yumyum - Katt Williams

Zobie - Donovan Patton

Zuzu - Carla Delaney

Mr. Salaman - Ian McDougall

Mr. Tigerl - KJ Schrock

Ms. Peginand - Julie Sype

Ms. Unirex - Leah Ostry

Mr. Komoika - Shannon Lynch

Lure - Cory Doran

Johnny Crow - Patrick Warburton

Vending Machines - Patrick Seitz, Laura Bailey

Mr. Showtime - Christian Bale

Mr. Book Deposit Machine - Don Brown

Old Owl Sage - Jason Jones

Owl Sage Apprentice - Mariette Sluyter

Principal Kocho - James Hong

Eddy - Meesha Contreras

Vice-Principal Esme & Osma - Samantha Bee & Helen King

Casey - Vegas J Jenkins

Ra - Teala Dunn

Wendell - Brett Bauer

Winifred - Carol Ann Day

Monty Carlo - Joey Mazzarino

Bashful - Roger Rhodes

Pumu - Scott McNeil

Quasar - Lenore Zann

Edgar - Meesha Contreras

Smooch - Patton Oswalt

Kwazii - Veronique Barnard

Dr. Ongo - Park Shin Yong

Bello the Bus Driver - Dave Pettit

Coco the Jinn - Travis Willingham

Motherboard - Kimberly Brooks

Siobhan - Estela Echevarria

Izzy - Winter Murdock

AJ - Bommie Catherine Han

Eli - Sarah Bock

Fiona - Dahlia Lynn

Fred - Nitzan Sitzer

KC - Hope Marie Segoine

Mona - Meghan Strange

Roy - Finn Phoenix

Rudy - Yantzi Michael David (credited as Mike Yantzi)

Tee - Bommie Catherine Han

Zane - Sharon Youngmee Kwon

Japanese

Ampoo - Chiyako Shibahara

Anto - Ai Maeda

Æon - Ai Kayano

Bri - Kumiko Yokote

Borocca - Junji Majima

Chaps - Hisayo Mochizuki

Dabble - Ken Morita

Docky - Takeshi Kusao

Enton - Tarusuke Shingaki

Fonton - Kenji Nojima

Friedi - Azusa Enoki

Furanzo - Miyuki Sawashiro

Genie - Ryuuzou Ishino

Hikky - Hiromi Ohtsuda

Inky - Tomoe Hanba

Juno - Ayumi Kida

Kabo - Etsuko Kozakura

Kami - Nakamura Maiden

Karen - Kaori Yamamoto

Liddy - Etsuko Kozakura

Magnero - Setsuji Satoh

Noisy - Tomoe Hanba

Nonny - Yutaka Nakano

Onpoo - Sakiko Tamagawa

Œther - Kenjiro Tsuda

Oozee - Ayano Yamamoto

Piranin - Eriko Nakayama

Quicky - Takeshi Kusao

Ringring - Yuna Taira

Rosso - Eriko Nakayama

Shiro - Isla Summerhaze

Spimon - Etsuko Kozakura

Tubee - Chiyako Shibahara

Usop - Kosuke Okano

Vincent - Kosuke Okano

Watt - Sakiko Tamagawa

Mr. X - Ayumi Kida

Yumyum - Ryusei Nakao

Zobie - Yusuke Numata

Zuzu - Etsuko Kozakura

Mr. Salaman - Sukekiyo Kameyama

Mr. Tigerl - Kenji Nomura

Ms. Peginand - Hiroko Oohashi

Ms. Unirex - Hiroko Oohashi

Mr. Komoika - Kenji Nomura

Lure - Yuichi Nagashima

Johnny Crow - Kosuke Okano

Vending Machines - Cho, Sukekiyo Kameyama

Mr. Showtime - Kenji Nomura

Mr. Book Deposit Machine - Kenji Nomura

Old Owl Sage - Hiroshi Iwasaki

Owl Sage Apprentice - Yuko Sanpei

Kocho-sensei - Tomomichi Nishimura

Eddy - Kenji Nomura

Esme-sensei & Osma-sensei - Cho & Hisayo Mochizuki

Casey - Kenji Nomura

Bello the Bus Driver - Chafurin

Ongo-isha - Mayumi Tanaka

Coco the Jinn - Kenji Nomura

Ra - Chiyako Shibahara

Wendell - Kosuke Okano

Winifred - Hiromi Ohtsuda

Bashful - Setsuji Satoh

Monty Carlo - Tomoaki Maeno

Motherboard - Atsuko Tanaka

Pumu - Ayumu Murasa

Quasar - Misato Fukuen

Edgar - Kenji Nomura

Smooch - Tomoaki Maeno

Kwazii - Reina Ueda

Siobhan - Nanako Ishizuka

Izzy - Yuna Saito

AJ - Karen Miyama

Eli - Chinami Yoshioka

Fiona - Maika Pu

Fred - Botchiboromaru

KC - NOA

Mona - Ai Kayano

Roy - Isla Summerhaze

Rudy - Yu Fukaya

Tee - Kaori Yamamoto

Zane - Yuna Taira

[compneuropapers]

Interesting Papers for Week 3, 2020

Alpha oscillations and traveling waves: Signatures of predictive coding? Alamia, A., & VanRullen, R. (2019). PLOS Biology, 17(10), e3000487.

Walking enhances peripheral visual processing in humans. Cao, L., & Händel, B. (2019). PLOS Biology, 17(10), e3000511.

Constrained inference in sparse coding reproduces contextual effects and predicts laminar neural dynamics. Capparelli, F., Pawelzik, K., & Ernst, U. (2019). PLOS Computational Biology, 15(10), e1007370.

Spatial Clustering of Inhibition in Mouse Primary Visual Cortex. D’Souza, R. D., Bista, P., Meier, A. M., Ji, W., & Burkhalter, A. (2019). Neuron, 104(3), 588-600.e5.

Bayesian inference of neuronal assemblies. Diana, G., Sainsbury, T. T. J., & Meyer, M. P. (2019). PLOS Computational Biology, 15(10), e1007481.

A perceptual bias for man-made objects in humans. Hussain Ismail, A. M., Solomon, J. A., Hansard, M., & Mareschal, I. (2019). Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 286(1914), 20191492.

Spatial Coupling Tunes NMDA Receptor Responses via Ca2+ Diffusion. Iacobucci, G. J., & Popescu, G. K. (2019). Journal of Neuroscience, 39(45), 8831–8844.

Somatosensory cortex participates in the consolidation of human motor memory. Kumar, N., Manning, T. F., & Ostry, D. J. (2019). PLOS Biology, 17(10), e3000469.

Spectral tuning of adaptation supports coding of sensory context in auditory cortex. Lopez Espejo, M., Schwartz, Z. P., & David, S. V. (2019). PLOS Computational Biology, 15(10), e1007430.

Dimensional reduction in networks of non-Markovian spiking neurons: Equivalence of synaptic filtering and heterogeneous propagation delays. Mattia, M., Biggio, M., Galluzzi, A., & Storace, M. (2019). PLOS Computational Biology, 15(10), e1007404.

Multiple Nonauditory Cortical Regions Innervate the Auditory Midbrain. Olthof, B. M. J., Rees, A., & Gartside, S. E. (2019). Journal of Neuroscience, 39(45), 8916–8928.

Categorical encoding of decision variables in orbitofrontal cortex. Onken, A., Xie, J., Panzeri, S., & Padoa-Schioppa, C. (2019). PLOS Computational Biology, 15(10), e1006667.

The folded X-pattern is not necessarily a statistical signature of decision confidence. Rausch, M., & Zehetleitner, M. (2019). PLOS Computational Biology, 15(10), e1007456.

A neural ensemble correlation code for sound category identification. Sadeghi, M., Zhai, X., Stevenson, I. H., & Escabí, M. A. (2019). PLOS Biology, 17(10), e3000449.

Action potential propagation and synchronisation in myelinated axons. Schmidt, H., & Knösche, T. R. (2019). PLOS Computational Biology, 15(10), e1007004.

Functional Logic of Layer 2/3 Inhibitory Connectivity in the Ferret Visual Cortex. Scholl, B., Wilson, D. E., Jaepel, J., & Fitzpatrick, D. (2019). Neuron, 104(3), 451-457.e3.

Paradoxical Rules of Spike Train Decoding Revealed at the Sensitivity Limit of Vision. Smeds, L., Takeshita, D., Turunen, T., Tiihonen, J., Westö, J., Martyniuk, N., … Ala-Laurila, P. (2019). Neuron, 104(3), 576-587.e11.

From space to time: Spatial inhomogeneities lead to the emergence of spatiotemporal sequences in spiking neuronal networks. Spreizer, S., Aertsen, A., & Kumar, A. (2019). PLOS Computational Biology, 15(10), e1007432.

Simple models of quantitative firing phenotypes in hippocampal neurons: Comprehensive coverage of intrinsic diversity. Venkadesh, S., Komendantov, A. O., Wheeler, D. W., Hamilton, D. J., & Ascoli, G. A. (2019). PLOS Computational Biology, 15(10), e1007462.

A computational account of threat-related attentional bias. Wise, T., Michely, J., Dayan, P., & Dolan, R. J. (2019). PLOS Computational Biology, 15(10), e1007341.

[blackfreethinkers]

by JOELLE GAMBLE

The dramatic effects of deindustrialization, automation, 
globalization, and the growing disparities of wealth and income—including by race and region—are undermining political norms in much of the West.

Activists and academics alike have linked these trends to the neoliberal ideology that has guided policy-making over the past several decades. This ideology has resulted in pushing the widespread deregulation of key industries, attempting to solve most social and economic problems through market competition, and privatizing public functions like the operation of prisons and institutions of higher education. Neoliberal ideas were considered such common sense during the 1980s and ’90s that they were simply never acknowledged as an ideology. Now, even economists at the International Monetary Fund are willing to poke holes in the ideology of neoliberalism. Jonathan Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Davide Furceri wrote in 2016: “The costs in terms of increased inequality are prominent. Such costs epitomize the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda.”

We know that neoliberalism has now provoked populist responses on the left and the right. But are either of them sufficient to end its rule?

The left needs to stop playing defense. This means enacting policies like universal health care, free college, and ending the private-prison industry.

Left populism, if organized, could end the neoliberal order: As espoused by leaders like Pramila Jayapal and Keith Ellison, left populism demands public control as well as redistribution; it is pro-regulation, pro-state, and anti-privatization. These values are inherently at odds with the small-government, anti-regulatory tenets of neoliberalism. If an aggressive left-populist agenda is successfully implemented, neoliberalism would be defeated. The barrier to implementation is the left’s inability to be consistent and organized.

Populism on both the left and right has proved difficult to organize and suffers from a lack of leadership. On the left, the struggle for organization has been playing out in the Democratic Party’s leadership fights. Politicians and activists are attempting to close the ideological gap between the party’s base and its leaders. Without enough trust to allow leaders to set and execute a well-resourced strategy—to say nothing of the resources themselves—the left faces huge obstacles to actually implementing an agenda that spells the end of neoliberal dominance, despite having an ideology that could usher in a post-neoliberal world.

Left populism can technically end neoliberalism. But can right-wing populism?

One should hope that right-wing populism doesn’t become organized enough to end the neoliberal order. Public control is not a cogent ideology on the right. That leaves room for privatization—a main pillar of neoliberalism—to continue to grow. Only if right-wing nationalism turns into radical authoritarian nationalism (read: fascism) will its relationship with corporate power turn into an end to the neoliberal order. In the United States, this would mean: 1) the delegitimization of Congress and the judicial branch, 2) the increased criminalization of activists and political opponents, and 3) the nationalization of major industries.

Right-wing nationalism seems to be crafted to win electoral victories at the intersection of protectionist and xenophobic sentiments. Its current manifestation, designed to win over rural nativist voters, appears to be at odds with the pro-free-trade policies of neoliberalism. However, the lines between far-right nationalism and the mainstream right are blurring, especially when it comes to privatization and the role of government. In the United States, Trump’s agenda looks more like crony capitalism than a consistent turn from neoliberal norms. His administration seems either unwilling or incapable of taking a heavy-handed approach to industry.

As with many of his business ventures, we’ve already seen Trump-style nationalism fail in his nascent administration. The White House caved to elite Republican interests with the attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and with Trump’s decision to stack high-level economic-policy roles with members of the financial elite. Trump’s proclaimed nationalist ideology seems to be a rhetorical device rather than a consistent governing principle. It’s possible that the same might be true for other right-wing nationalists. France’s Marine Le Pen has cozied up, though admittedly inconsistently, to business interests; she has also toned down her rhetoric, especially on immigration, over the years in order to win centrist voters. Meanwhile, Dutch nationalist Geert Wilders notably lost to a more mainstream candidate in March’s general elections. Yet the radical right is more organized in Europe than in the United States. We may not see the same level of compromise and incompetence as in the Trump administration. Moves toward moderation may only be anomalous and strategic rather than a sign of a failing movement.

So what does all of this mean for the future of neoliberalism, particularly in the American context? I believe there are two futures in which neoliberalism’s end is possible. In the first, the left decides to stop playing defense and organizes with the resources needed to build sustained power, breaking down the policies that perpetuate American neoliberalism. This means enacting policies like universal health care and free college, and ousting the private-prison industry from the justice system. In the second future, a set of political leaders who have been emboldened by Trump’s campaign strategy gain office through mostly republican means. They could concentrate power in the executive in an organized manner, nationalize industries, and criminalize communities who don’t support their jingoistic vision. We should hope for the first future, as unlikely as it seems in this political moment. We’ve already seen the second in 20th-century Europe and Latin America. We cannot live that context again.

PAUL MASONTake the State

I wrote in Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future that if we 
didn’t ditch neoliberalism, globalization would fall apart—but I had no idea that it would happen so quickly. In hindsight, the problem is that you can put an economy on life support, but not an ideology.

After the 2008 financial crisis, quantitative easing and state support for banks kept the patient alive. As the Bank of England governor Mark Carney said last year at the G20 summit in Shanghai, central banks have even more ammunition to draw on should they need it—for example, the extreme option of “helicopter money,” in which they credit every bank account with, say, $20,000. So they can stave off complete stagnation for a long time. But patchwork measures cannot kick-start a new era of dynamism for capitalism, much less faith in its goodness.

The human brain demands coherence—and a certain amount of optimism. The neoliberal story became incoherent the moment the state had to take dramatic steps to support a failing financial market. The form of recovery stimulated by quantitative easing boosted the asset wealth of the rich but not the income of the average worker—and rising costs for health care, education, and pension provision across the developed world meant that many people experienced the “recovery” as a household recession.

The one big cause that needs to animate us in the future is a systemic project of transition beyond capitalism.

So they began looking for answers, and the right had an easy one: Ditch globalization, free trade, and relatively free migration rules, as well as acceptance of the undocumented migrants who keep the economy working. That’s how we get to Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Viktor Orbán, the Law and Justice party in Poland, and UKIP in Britain. Each of them has promised to make their country “great again”—by diverting growth toward it and migrants and refugees away.

For 30 years, neoliberalism taught national elites that they were better off collaborating in the creation of a positive-sum game: Everybody wins, ultimately, even if your factory moves to China. That was the rationale.

Economic nationalism is logical if you believe that stagnation will last a long time, creating a zero-sum or even a negative-sum game. But the projects of economic nationalism will fail. This is not because economic nationalism has always been a losing strategy: Adolf Hitler practically abolished German unemployment within five years, and Franklin Roosevelt triggered a spectacular recovery and reindustrialization with the New Deal. But these were programs of another era, in which business models were primarily national and monopolies operated in the sphere of one big nation and its colonies; where the state was heavily enmeshed in the national economy; and where global trade was puny and economic migration low compared to now.

To try a repeat of autarky in the 21st century will trigger dislocation on a large scale. Some countries will win: It’s even feasible that, although led by an imbecile, the United States could win. However, “winning” in this context means bankrupting other countries. Given the complexity and fragility of the globalized system, the cities of the losing nations would resemble New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

In the long term, for the left, the transition to a system beyond capitalism must be based on the possibility of a low-work, high-abundance society. This is the essence of the postcapitalism project that I proposed: automate work, replace wages with a basic income and heavy state provision of services, and enforce competition among the rent-seeking monopolies in order to force the price of their goods so low that people can survive scarce and precarious work.

As Manuel Castells’s research group in Barcelona has found, as the market staggers, more and more people actually begin to adopt nonmarket survival tactics, mechanisms, and institutions like informal lending, co-ops, time banks, and alternative currencies. And that’s the basis for an economic counterpower to big capital and high finance.

But in the short term, a whole generation of the left that reveled in aimlessness and horizontality needs to split the difference between that and effective, organized politics. Call it “diagonality,” if you want: Without ceasing to care about the 100 small causes that have animated us in the past, the one big cause that needs to animate us in the future is a systemic project of transition beyond capitalism. For now, that project has to be pursued at the level of big cities, regions, states, and alliances of states—that is, at scale.

The hardest thing for the old left to accept will be that this means using the existing, oppressive, imperfect state while simultaneously trying to democratize it. Street protests, mass resistance, strikes, and the occupation of squares are great ways to assemble the forces. But the arc of the story from 2011 to 2015—Occupy, the Indignados, and the Arab Spring—shows that we have to do more than simply create a counterpower: We need to take power and diffuse it at the same time.

BRYCE COVERTThe Crisis of Care

American parents are being crushed between
 trying to care for their families and working enough hours to survive financially. This problem plagues parents of both genders, up and down the income scale, and it is upending the way Americans view the capitalist system. This crisis of care is fostering solidarity among the millions of Americans who share this challenge, as well as support for solutions that will end the reign of neoliberalism.

Among low-income Americans, especially people of color, both parents have often worked outside the home to make ends meet. Nonetheless, the ideal has been, until very recently, a stay-at-home mother and a father working for pay outside the home. World War II undermined this idyll, pushing women into factories as men went to fight abroad. The gauzy 1950s dream of single-earner families masked the reality that women continued to pour into the workforce.

Today, women make up about half of the paid labor force in the United States, including more than 70 percent of women with children. This means that in about half of married heterosexual couples, both the husband and wife work. This has given women far more access to the public sphere and, with it, greater status and equality both inside and outside the home.

But it’s also meant a crunch for families. There is no longer a designated parent to stay home with the kids or care for aging relatives, and the workplace isn’t designed to help with that predicament. Instead, work is devouring people’s lives.

You can see this problem in the rising number of Americans who worry about their work/life balance. About half of parents of both genders say they struggle to reconcile these competing demands. Fathers are particularly freaked out: More than 45 percent feel they don’t spend enough time with their children, compared with less than a quarter of mothers (probably because more women reduce their paid work to care for children). As the baby-boomer generation ages, a growing elderly population threatens to trap even more working people in the predicament of caring for aging parents, raising young kids, and trying to make a living.

The result has been that more and more people are being forced to reckon with the fact that capitalism’s unquenchable thirst for labor makes a balanced life impossible. This, in turn, is fostering a greater sense of solidarity among them as workers struggling against the demands of corporate bosses. This growing crisis has already led to some policy-making. The expansion of overtime coverage by the Obama administration means that workers will either be better compensated for putting in long hours or have their schedules pared back to a more humane 40-hour work week (though it remains to be seen what will happen to the overtime expansion under President Trump). Legislation guaranteeing paid time off has swept city and state governments. These are policies that challenge the idea that we should give everything of ourselves to our jobs.

The crisis of care has also revived the notion that the public should deal with these shared problems collectively. While other developed countries have spent money to create government-funded solutions for child care over the past half-century, Americans have insisted child care remain a private crisis that each family has to solve alone. The United States provides all children age 6 to 18 with a public education, but for children under the age of 6, it offers basically nothing. Head Start is available to some low-income parents, and a smattering of places have started experimenting with universal preschool for children ages 3 and 4. Outside of that, parents are left to a pitiful private system that often doesn’t even offer them enough slots, let alone quality affordable care.

Americans have increasingly come to recognize that this situation is ridiculous and are throwing their support behind a government solution. Huge majorities support
spending more money on early-childhood programs. American parents haven’t yet gone on strike against capitalism’s endless demands on their time or the government’s failure to provide public support. But the crisis is reaching a boiling point, and it’s transforming our relationship to America’s neoliberal system.

WILLIAM DARITY JR.A Revolution of Managers

Marx’s classic law of motion for bourgeois 
society—the tendency of the rate of profit to fall—was the foundation for his prediction that capitalism would die under the stress of its own contradictions. But even Marx’s left-wing sympathizers, who see the dominant presence of corporate capital in all aspects of their lives, have argued that Marx’s prediction was wrong. It has become virtually a reflex to assert that modern societies all fall under the sway of “global capitalism,” and that a binary operates with two great social classes standing in fundamental opposition to each other: capital and labor.

Suppose, however, that Marx was correct in his expectation that capitalism, like other social modes of production before it, will wind down gradually, but wrong in his expectation that it would be succeeded by a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” a civilization without class stratification. Suppose, indeed, that the age of capitalism is actually reaching its conclusion—but one that doesn’t involve the ascension of the working class. Suppose, instead, that we consider the existence of a third great social class vying with the other two for social dominance: what was seen in the work of such disparate thinkers as James Burnham, Alvin Gouldner, Barbara Ehrenreich, and John Ehrenreich as the managerial class.

Suppose, indeed, that the age of capitalism is reaching its conclusion—but one that doesn’t involve the ascension of the working class.

The managerial class comprises the intelligentsia and intellectuals, artists and artisans, as well as state bureaucrats—a credentialed or portfolio-rich cultural aristocracy. While the human agents of global capital are the corporate magnates, and the working class is the productive labor—labor that is directly utilized to generate profit—the managerial class engages comprehensively in a social-management function. The rise of the managerial class is the rise to dominance of unproductive labor—labor that can be socially valuable but is not a direct source of profit.

A surplus population under capitalism has a purpose: It exists as a reserve army of the unemployed, which can be mobilized rapidly in periods of economic expansion and as a source of downward pressure on the demands for compensation and safe work conditions made by the employed. Therefore, capital has little incentive to eliminate this surplus population. In contrast, the managerial class will view those identified as surplus people as truly superfluous. The social managers consider population generally as an object of control, reduction, and demographic administration, and whoever is assigned to the “surplus” category bears the weight of the arbitrary.

To the extent that identification of the surplus population is racialized, particular groups will be targets for social warehousing and extermination. The disproportionate overincarceration of black people in the United States—a form of social warehousing—is a direct expression of the managerial class’s preferences regarding who should be deemed of low necessity. The exterminative impulse is evident in the comparative devaluation of black lives that prompted resistance efforts like the Black Lives Matter movement. The potential for black superfluity in the managerial age is evident in prescient works like Sidney Willhelm’s Who Needs the Negro? (1970) and Samuel Yette’s The Choice (1971), both published almost 50 years ago.

The assault on “big” and invasive government constitutes an attack on the managerial class by both capital and the working class. Despite endorsing military spending, receiving lucrative government contracts, and enjoying the benefits of publicly provided infrastructure like roads, highways, and railways, corporate capital calls for small government. This is a strategic route to slashing social-welfare expenditures, with the goal of reducing the wage standard and eliminating all regulations on corporate predations. Despite benefiting from social-welfare expenditures, the working class gravitates to a new brand of populism that blends anticorporatism with anti-elitism (and anti-intellectualism), xenophobia, and a demand for a smaller and less intrusive state. Since “big” government constitutes the avenue for independent action on the part of the managerial class, an offensive of this type directly undermines the “new” class’s base of power.

Calls for smaller government are a strategic route to slashing social-welfare expenditures, wage standards, and regulations on corporate predation.

But the managerial class also possesses another attribute that is both a strength and a weakness. Unlike capital and labor, whose agendas are driven to a large degree by the struggle over the character of a society structured for the pursuit of profit, the managerial class has no anchor for its ideological stance. In fact, it’s a social class that is wholly fluid ideologically. Some of its members align fully with the corporate establishment; indeed, the corporate magnates—especially investment bankers—look much the same as members of the managerial class in terms of educational credentials, cultural interests, and style. Other social managers take a more centrist posture harking back to their origins in the “middle class,” while still others position themselves as allies of the working class. And there are many variations on these themes.

Depending on where the ideological weight centers most heavily, the managerial class can take many directions. During the wars in southern Africa against Portuguese rule, Amílcar Cabral once observed that for the anticolonial revolution to succeed, “the petty bourgeoisie” would need to commit suicide as a social class, ceasing their efforts to pursue their particular interests and positioning themselves fully at the service of the working class. One might anticipate that the global managerial class will one day be confronted with the choice of committing suicide, in Cabral’s sense, as a class. But the question is: If such a step is taken, will they place themselves fully at the service of labor… or capital?

There is no single solution to economic
 inequality and insecurity in America, but there’s one that could go further than any other. It’s a universal base income, as distinct from a universal basic income.

A universal base income of a few hundred dollars a month is not the same as a universal basic income of, say, $1,000 a month. The latter, at least in some places, is enough to survive on; the former decidedly is not. And while the latter is the dream of many, it is far too expensive—and threatening to America’s work ethic—to be enacted anytime soon. If a universal basic income ever happens here, it will be because it was preceded for many years by a universal base income, gradually nudged upward like Social Security and the minimum wage. So let’s take a look at that.

A universal base income is both a springboard and a cushion for every participant in our fast-changing market economy—like giving everyone $200 for passing “Go” in a game of Monopoly. It supplements, but does not replace, labor income (which for the last 30 years has stagnated or declined), and it does so without judgment or stigma. It is grounded on the principle that, in a prosperous albeit volatile and increasingly unequal economy, everyone has a right to some cash flow they can count on.

In practical terms, a universal base income would be simple to administer. Eligible recipients (anyone with a valid Social Security number, which can include legal immigrants) would receive an equal amount of money every month, wired to their bank accounts or debit cards. The system would look and feel like Social Security, or a monthly version of the dividends that all Alaskans receive. People who don’t need the extra income would be enabled by a check-off option to donate it to any IRS-approved charity.

A universal base income, I should note, has nothing to do with automation, robots, or artificial intelligence. It has a lot to do with enhancing every American’s security, reducing their stress, and giving our poor and middle classes a leg to stand on—the very opposite of what our economy does now.

A universal base income would have other benefits as well. It is an answer—perhaps the answer—to long-term economic stagnation, a trickle-up form of Keynesianism that would stimulate our economy through increased household spending. Moreover, if funded by fees on unproductive activities like pollution and speculation, it would help solve two other deep problems of 21st-century capitalism: climate change and financial instability. And it wouldn’t need to replace or reduce spending on current programs that benefit the poor, a regressive trade-off that conservatives favor but most progressives oppose.

There are six large demographic groups (with some overlap) that could form the core of a movement for a universal base income: millennials (the first generation of Americans destined to earn less than their parents), low-wage and on-demand work­ers (the so-called precariat), women (who still earn less than men and aren’t paid at all for much of the work they do), African Americans (who suffer from past and present injustices), retired and near-retired workers (who can’t live on Social Security alone), and poor people of all colors. Environmentalists might also link arms with the cause if one of the revenue sources is a tax on pollution. It will, of course, be no simple feat to persuade these diverse groups that what they can’t achieve separately they may be able to achieve together. But it has happened before, and, in the post-Sanders era, it could happen again.

In the political realm, a universal base income would bring our nation together by affirming that we are all in the same economic boat. It would unite our desperate poor and our anxious middle class, young and old, women and men, white people and people of color. It would make millions of Americans less stressed, healthier, and perhaps even happier. And it could make many of us proud to be American.

Fourscore and two years ago, Franklin Roosevelt’s Committee on Economic Security produced the classic report that led to passage of the first Social Security Act. The report itself went beyond security for the aged. It proclaimed: “The one almost all-embracing measure of security is an assured income. A program of economic security, as we vision it, must have as its primary aim the assurance of an adequate income to each human being in childhood, youth, middle age, or old age—in sickness or in health.”

The committee added that, for reasons of political expediency, it was proposing only an assured income for the elderly, but it hoped that the rest of its vision would be implemented in the not-too-distant future. Much of it has been, but not all. A lifelong base income, along with health insurance for all, are the next pieces.

[denisehil0]

Another Glass Box: The Stalinist “Bunker” Edition

March 26, 2018 at 7:40 pm

cityscape

Another Glass Box: The Stalinist “Bunker” Edition

Mayoral foibles, Google's urban charm offensive, finalists for George Brown's new wood building, and how many avocado toasts will you need to give up?

By Dan Seljak

1

The Stalinist “bunker” in question.

Please don’t poke the mayor – Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson found himself criticized in light of calling George Bemi’s award-winning Ottawa Library a “Stalin-ist bunker”. Watson’s rebuke wasn’t so elegant, but the following debate explored how contemporary ideas of wellness and accessibility requires real investment in restoration and renovation.

Here in Toronto, Mayor John Tory was sent an open letter by a large contingent of the city’s urbanist intelligentsia, protesting his decision regarding REimagining Yonge, a proposal that would see changes to the streetscape in North York Centre. In short, the Mayor Tory has suggested a scheme that costs approximately $20 million more and retains the current number of car lanes, while the recommended plan (that has the support of city staff and the local councillor) removes one lane in each direction to add things like wider sidewalks and bike lanes.

2

A rendering of Google’s plan for Quayside. Image courtesy of Sidewalk Labs.

Big data city – Sidewalk Toronto, the massive project from Alphabet (aka Google’s parent company) proposed for the Waterfront, held two public roundtables late last week. It’s the first of many such meetings, where the public’s input will help shape the face of the development. For some context, over on Spacing, John Lorinc broke down the history of consultation on Toronto’s Waterfront.

Also released as a component of the meeting was a new app that maps historical photographs from Toronto’s archives all over the city. The initial reaction was largely positive, but as people used it, glaring errors and other issues provoked questions as to whether an incomplete but high profile app devalues the hard work of Toronto historians.

Google’s use of data on the site also came under scrutiny. Their mission is a bit of a tough sell as the public comes to terms with the Cambridge Analytica big data manipulations and Uber’s self-driving fleet killing its first pedestrian. I predict there will be some sort of larger reckoning as North American cities come to terms what it means to be part of a living lab. Arguably, social and economic theory has been tested in a living lab since organized government has been able to mandate policy, but I concede that argument is hard to make when crushed under 5,000 lb of autonomously propelled steel.

Now I’m truly on a tangent – but ICYMI here’s a compelling New York Times’ visual opinion piece on why autonomous vehicles may not benefit city design.

3

Shigeru Ban and Brock McIlRoy’s proposal for the new George Brown campus building, to be made from wood.

TIMBER!!! – George Brown has released renderings of the four designs proposed for a wood structure at its Waterfront campus. Contenders will present their designs on April 27. Early reactions on Reddit featured the eminent authority of internet commenters who worry this building is going to be destroyed by an errant cigarette butt before cooler heads prevailed – the entire thread is interesting exercise in individuals educating each other on a new building type.

Who are the players?

Moriyama & Teshima and Acton Ostry: Moriyama Teshima has historically provided Toronto with solid institutional design dating back to the Toronto Reference Library – a project that is still capturing cultural imagination. Acton Ostry is BC based and  recently completed an 18-storey wood tower there.

Patkau and MJMA: Patkau is BC based research/design firm, with a focus on institutional work like the recently completed Audain Art Museum. You might know MJMA for their community and athletic centres locally. MJMA won RAIC’s firm of the year in 2016 and has been putting out consistent institutional work for some time now.

Provencher Roy (this is a link to ArchDaily; as of this writing the firm’s website appears to be down and redirecting to ads) and Turner Fleischer: Provencher Roy is a Montreal-based firm and I personally am stoked to see some representation from Quebec. They recently won the National Urban Design Award from the RAIC in 2016. To my knowledge, Turner Fleischer is known for condominiums and big retail (like high profile Loblaws projects). Not to speculate too much, but their newly rebranded website and presence on this team might signal something.  

Shigeru Ban and Brook McIlroy: Arguably the team with the highest profile international firm on it. Shigeru Ban is a Japan-based firm with wood and design accolades – here’s their design for the Aspen Art Museum.  Brook McIlroy has done a lot of institutional and urban design work, and recently got a nod from the Wood Design and Excellent awards for their work on The Orillia Waterfront Centre.

Michael Green Architecture had some big news earlier this week with a mass timber complex being proposed stateside. Green set the record for largest mass timber project with T3 at 220,000 sq ft – this one more than doubles that. For those who don’t know him, Michael Green’s work has created a lot of momentum for tall wood buildings, with a popular 2013 TED talk that still inevitably comes up every time you mention the subject.

If you want to see some engineered wood here in Toronto relatively soon, The Star recently published an opinions piece by Christopher Hume featuring 80 Atlantic and its developer, Hullmark (full disclosure: I work at Quadrangle, the firm designing this project). The project is currently a hole in the ground but the structure is coming soon. And, while not wood, just a down the street Sweeney and Co. has another commercial complex coming.

4

Run the numbers – Realtor David Fleming broke down the costs and profits of the average Toronto developer. It’s a thorough take and worth reading. If you scroll down to the comments and you can see for yourself that the results basically proved what many already know: some people think developers make too much money and other people don’t think they make enough.

Mike Rosenburg, out of the Seattle Times, took a shot at patronizing millennial financial advice by noting that Seattle housing has gone up $266/day on average, meaning you’d have to give up 33 pieces of avocado toast every day to keep up. Apparently Curbed has also been at it with an entire instagram devoted to the subject. How does Toronto fare? Using TREB’s data from Dec 2017 and April 2016 in this CBC report, it looks like home prices across all types, on average, $521 every day. Assuming avocado toast is about $12, in that time period that’s:

43 avocado toasts/day

(Please check my math.)

Filed under urban design, Another Glass Box, Architecture, avocado toast, George Brown campus, Jim Watson, Ottawa Public Library, Sidewalk Labs, timber, wood, wood buildings

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[kovalcharacters]

16) The Monks - określani mianem mnichów na rekordowych rękawach, byli amerykańskim garażowym zespołem rockowym utworzonym w Gelnhausen w Niemczech Zachodnich w 1964 roku. Zgromadzeni przez pięciu amerykańskich GI stacjonujących w tym kraju, grupa zmęczyła się tradycyjnym formatem rocka, który zmotywował ich do opracowania wysoce eksperymentalnego stylu, który kładzie nacisk na hipnotyczne rytmy, które minimalizują rolę melodii, a dodatkowo wspomagane są przez techniki manipulacji dźwiękiem. Niekonwencjonalne połączenie przenikliwego wokalu, sprzężenia zwrotnego i sześciostrunowego gitarzysty Davida Daya zaskoczyło publiczność, ale historycy muzyczni określili Monks jako pionierską siłę w muzyce awangardowej. Teksty zespołu często wyrażały sprzeciw wobec wojny w Wietnamie i odczłowieczonego stanu społeczeństwa, a jednocześnie zapowiadały ostry i tępy komentarz ruchu punk rockowego lat 70. i 80. XX wieku. Wygląd zespołu uznano za równie szokujący jak jego muzyka, gdy próbowali naśladować wygląd katolickich mnichów, nosząc czarne nawyki z symbolicznie związanymi wokół szyi kosami i włosy noszone w częściowo ogolonych tonsurach. Pod koniec 1964 roku, znany jako Torquays, zespół wydał samofinansujący się singiel „There She Walks”; jednak wydawnictwo ledwo wskazywało na muzykę, którą grupa nagrałaby w następnym roku. Z pomocą niemieckiego zespołu zarządzającego postanowili zmienić nazwę na Monks i wydali singiel „Complication”, który zbiegł się z dystrybucją ich jedynego albumu studyjnego, Black Monk Time na Polydor Records, w marcu 1966 roku. Album i dodatkowe single wydane w latach 1966 i 1967 osiągnęły w tym czasie ograniczony sukces, stały się bardzo cenione wśród entuzjastów muzyki i komentatorów. Kilka dni po wydaniu Five Upstart Americans w 1999 roku wszyscy pięciu pierwotnych członków zespołu odbyło koncert zjazdowy, a następnie inną serię sporadycznych tras koncertowych w 2000 roku. Zespół zyskał kultowych zwolenników w wyniku nowo zainteresowanego Black Monk Time i występów na kilku albumach kompilacyjnych, w szczególności rozszerzonej wersji Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968. Zespoły punkowe i  innych gatunków z lat 80. i 90., takich jak Dead Kennedys i Beastie Boys, przypisują The Monks wpływ na ich własne style muzyczne.                                                                                                 Członkowie:

1. Gary Burger - gitara prowadząca, wokalista

2. Larry Clark (Lawrence Spangler) - organy, wokal wspierający, fortepian

3. Eddie Shaw (Thomas Edward Shaw) - gitara basowa, chórki, trąbka, instrumenty dęte

4. Dave Day (David Havlicek) - banjo, gitara rytmiczna, gitara banjo, chórki

5. Roger Johnston - perkusja, chórki                                                                 Dyskografia:                                                                                                 Albumy:

a. 1966 Black Monk Time                                                                                   EP:

b. 2017 Hamburg Recordings 1967 Single:

c. 1964 "There She Walks" "Boys Are Boys" Late 1964 Tonstudio H. Scherer [jako 5 Torquays]

d. 1965 "Complication" "Oh, How to Do Now" March 1966 International Polydor Production

e. 1966 "Cuckoo" "I Can't Get Over You" 1966 International Polydor Production

f. 1967 "Love Can Tame the Wild" "He Went Down to the Sea" April 10, 1967 Polydor

g. 2009 "Pretty Suzanne" "Monk Time" May 2009 Red Lounge Records

[berniesrevolution]

The dramatic effects of deindustrialization, automation, 
globalization, and the growing disparities of wealth and income—including by race and region—are undermining political norms in much of the West.

Activists and academics alike have linked these trends to the neoliberal ideology that has guided policy-making over the past several decades. This ideology has resulted in pushing the widespread deregulation of key industries, attempting to solve most social and economic problems through market competition, and privatizing public functions like the operation of prisons and institutions of higher education. Neoliberal ideas were considered such common sense during the 1980s and ’90s that they were simply never acknowledged as an ideology. Now, even economists at the International Monetary Fund are willing to poke holes in the ideology of neoliberalism. Jonathan Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Davide Furceri wrote in 2016: “The costs in terms of increased inequality are prominent. Such costs epitomize the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda.”

We know that neoliberalism has now provoked populist responses on the left and the right. But are either of them sufficient to end its rule?

 The left needs to stop playing defense. This means enacting policies like universal health care, free college, and ending the private-prison industry.

Left populism, if organized, could end the neoliberal order: As espoused by leaders like Pramila Jayapal and Keith Ellison, left populism demands public control as well as redistribution; it is pro-regulation, pro-state, and anti-privatization. These values are inherently at odds with the small-government, anti-regulatory tenets of neoliberalism. If an aggressive left-populist agenda is successfully implemented, neoliberalism would be defeated. The barrier to implementation is the left’s inability to be consistent and organized.

  Populism on both the left and right has proved difficult to organize and suffers from a lack of leadership. On the left, the struggle for organization has been playing out in the Democratic Party’s leadership fights. Politicians and activists are attempting to close the ideological gap between the party’s base and its leaders. Without enough trust to allow leaders to set and execute a well-resourced strategy—to say nothing of the resources themselves—the left faces huge obstacles to actually implementing an agenda that spells the end of neoliberal dominance, despite having an ideology that could usher in a post-neoliberal world.

(Continue Reading)

[edglings]

In sum, the benefits of some policies that are an important part of the neoliberal agenda appear to have been somewhat overplayed. In the case of financial openness, some capital flows, such as foreign direct investment, do appear to confer the benefits claimed for them. But for others, particularly short-term capital flows, the benefits to growth are difficult to reap, whereas the risks, in terms of greater volatility and increased risk of crisis, loom large.­

In the case of fiscal consolidation, the short-run costs in terms of lower output and welfare and higher unemployment have been underplayed, and the desirability for countries with ample fiscal space of simply living with high debt and allowing debt ratios to decline organically through growth is underappreciated.

Moreover, since both openness and austerity are associated with increasing income inequality, this distributional effect sets up an adverse feedback loop. The increase in inequality engendered by financial openness and austerity might itself undercut growth, the very thing that the neoliberal agenda is intent on boosting. There is now strong evidence that inequality can significantly lower both the level and the durability of growth (Ostry, Berg, and Tsangarides, 2014).­

The evidence of the economic damage from inequality suggests that policymakers should be more open to redistribution than they are. Of course, apart from redistribution, policies could be designed to mitigate some of the impacts in advance—for instance, through increased spending on education and training, which expands equality of opportunity (so-called predistribution policies). And fiscal consolidation strategies—when they are needed—could be designed to minimize the adverse impact on low-income groups. But in some cases, the untoward distributional consequences will have to be remedied after they occur by using taxes and government spending to redistribute income. Fortunately, the fear that such policies will themselves necessarily hurt growth is unfounded (Ostry, 2014).­

**Finding the balance**

These findings suggest a need for a more nuanced view of what the neoliberal agenda is likely to be able to achieve. The IMF, which oversees the international monetary system, has been at the forefront of this reconsideration.­

For example, its former chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, said in 2010 that “what is needed in many advanced economies is a credible medium-term fiscal consolidation, not a fiscal noose today.” Three years later, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said the institution believed that the U.S. Congress was right to raise the country’s debt ceiling “because the point is not to contract the economy by slashing spending brutally now as recovery is picking up.” And in 2015 the IMF advised that countries in the euro area “with fiscal space should use it to support investment.”

[nedsecondline]

How the Great Lockdown Saved Lives

How the Great Lockdown Saved Lives

By Pragyan Deb, Davide Furceri, Jonathan D. Ostry and Nour Tawk Jun 3 2020 (IPS)

Since the COVID-19 outbreak was first reported in Wuhan, China in late December 2019, the disease has spread to more than 200 countries and territories. In the absence of a vaccine or effective treatment, governments worldwide have responded by implementing unprecedented containment and mitigation measures—the Great…

[salecheapggdb-blog]

Scarpe Golden Goose Donna Saldi I miei sei consigli per il lavoro di successo

Lezione: di solito è troppo imbarazzato per un completo aiutare l'azienda. Vedo costantemente persone dire | by | per esempio | come | room) | / | through | as | - perché dovrei dare $ 50 al mese a eProfits quando riuscirò a capire questo eccellente attraverso il mio. Buona fortuna con quello visto che non è dovuto al fatto facile, quasi come visualizzi. Abbiamo condiviso 2 generazioni armeggiando dentro e intorno e prendendo una possibilità su un infortunio finanziario fino a quando ognuno di noi ha trovato il consumatore che è disposto ad aiutarci. $ 50 $ al mese per fornitore e il modo è ridicolmente economico. Probabilmente sono un po 'affidabile dalla nostra cronologia, tuttavia sembra che sia stato in relazione a 2 anni di barcollamento in avanti e offline, facendo un paio di grandi grandi qui insieme a lì. I Golden Goose Donna Scarpe ostri risparmi diminuivano ulteriormente, ma era diventato un momento di paura nel momento in cui i consumatori consideravano di rinunciare. Poi un Scarpe Golden Goose Donna Saldi iorno, il mio partner di settore mi spiega, David, collegato a questo tizio che ha portato una fortuna online. La maggior parte della testa che può il suo ufficio, è stata davvero questa eccezionale tecnologia a sognare insieme a una sala dispositivi e quindi a Internet in fibra ottica. È stato incredibile. QUESTO è sempre stato dove volevo davvero quale può essere. I suggerimenti erano il suddetto dopo il primo incontro. Chi ti porta a credere che ti interessi della tua buona educazione | 1) | 2. | (Spazio | * | da |> | da | - tuo marito o tua moglie o una scuola? I tuoi veri educatori falliscono. Includono tutte le informazioni su come preservare il regno personale delle aziende: gli sforzi per insegnare ai giardini la loro scatola ideologica sono quasi sempre accompagnati dalla violenza dei podi d'avorio di una persona del mondo accademico, ma quelli che sembrano non essere d'accordo scopriranno che sono censurati lasciare e non c'era molto rischio di cambiamento principale nel futuro più vicino.I sindacati degli insegnanti sono uno dei più un gran Golden Goose Donna Outlet umero potente negli Stati Uniti.Essi sono le code che agitano i nostri cani governativi.L'influenza politica personale su è semplice e come tutto meglio è sicuramente sul proprio potere personale e sul denaro. Le società su cui Internet guarderà sicuramente una relazione sentimentale con i fornitori e se stessi, tagliando in fuori l'uomo della struttura e questo wil Sostegno a ciascuno degli acquirenti. A meno che i clienti non siano strutturati per inserire le carriere in fase preliminare, allora non c'è nessuna opportunità in cui si sta muovendo per dimostrarti che consiste di soldi facili. In un semplice lavoro per la ragione che un Marketer su Internet Tutti noi veniamo durante un ampio numero di persone individuali stanno guardando per fantastica automobile facile. Possono essere trovati cercando di ottenere effettivamente un programma specifico per virtualmente! O stanno cercando di trovare perché io possa iniziare a fare la loro carriera per l'intero gruppo. Anche se io e il mio partner amiamo mostrare qualcuno che cosa farebbe quando hai bisogno di fare risorse finanziarie online e non dovresti mai fare tutto il lavoro per trovarle. Il metodo farebbe entrambi automaticamente un disservizio se lo facessi. Quindi, subito dopo esserci ramificati, stavamo estendendo un sacco di soldi, reinvestendoli saldamente in strumenti oltre all'outsourcing per aiutare gli Stati Uniti. Continuiamo a crescere e mantenere. Siamo forti sul marketing di internet marketing online, inoltre, un sito di palestra. Il vero sito di risorse per i soci è diventato ben presto il nostro familial 'golden goose shoes'. Abbiamo modificato la maggior parte del nostro focus principale. Quindi stiamo lavorando per costruire l'articolo di appartenenza dell'autore e arrampicarlo potremmo forse far esplodere la tua crescita insieme allo stesso tempo riducendo il loro carico di lavoro! E dopo quello sarebbe dove sin da quando sto bene. Questo potrebbe essere l'impostazione di una buona storia. Chi sa dove si trova originariamente da qui. A volte ho intenzione di mettere tutte le mie ricchezze extra in spesso il barattolo PLAY. Allo stesso modo, questo comporterà il mio processo di prospettiva sul modo di trovare le mode per investire denaro durante il gioco. Questo è come una sorta di gioco. Una volta che il mio partner e io abbiamo messo la pasta in uno dei suoi barattoli, la mente e la mente lavoravano per trovare davvero dei modi per Golden Goose Donna Prezzo pprezzare quel profitto. Questa progressione è un ottimo mezzo per migliorare la pratica di gestione del guadagno monetario. Evidentemente, il tuo timido Docente è di conseguenza emotivamente paragonato a quel Secondo Alter che molto probabilmente era disposto a ignorare il nostro Primo Tweak per chiuderlo. Qualunque sia la posizione personale dell'emendamento fresco, prendi un minuto questa sera e leggi l'emendamento giusto per aiutarti nella nostra struttura. Allora vedermi meglio che i nostri college o università sono arrivati ​​alla censura dei dintorni fino ad arrivare nelle aree delle piste? Condurre i nostri fornitori di variazioni in realtà prendere in considerazione che possono decidere che cosa si può dire, quando un individuo può esprimerlo e quindi dove gli individui possono rivelarlo! razionalizzazione contorta ha fatto questi impiegano per infine venire insieme con la politica idea?

[mikemortgage]

As income pie shrinks, Ottawa and business community talk past each other

Our collective share of the pie shrunk last year.

You might have seen reports that the trade deficit remained an expanse of misery in January. The same day that Statistics Canada released those dreary numbers, it also published its annual report on the distribution of household wealth, or, if you prefer, “Distributions of household economic accounts for income, consumption, saving and wealth of Canadian households, 2018.”

The net worth of households was $10.7 trillion in 2018, compared with $10.9 trillion in 2017; the first decrease since at least 2010, which is when Statistics Canada began publishing this particular set of data.

Collectively, we’re 60 per cent richer than we were a decade ago, so keep that in mind before you take to Twitter to vent about Stephen Harper’s austerity or Justin Trudeau’s taxing of the rich. Still, the good times rolled a little slower last year. That’s partly because the housing bubbles in Toronto and Vancouver started to deflate. But it’s also because a group of wealth creators on which the country has relied since the Great Recession had a tough time in 2018.

Statistics Canada diced household wealth into five income segments. It also divided the aggregate data into five regions. There wasn’t a lot of change in distribution. Nationally, the richest 20 per cent of households controlled about 55 per cent of total wealth, roughly the same as 2010. One shift stood out, however.

In the Prairie provinces, the richest quintile’s share of total household net worth in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba dropped to about 56 per cent, compared with about 57 per cent in 2017 and almost 64 per cent in 2015. The share of Prairie wealth held by the four poorer groups increased by about two percentage points each compared with three years earlier. So far, it’s the richest who have absorbed the biggest blow from volatile commodity prices and the inability of Canada’s politicians to clear the way for more pipelines.

Trudeau’s government doesn’t say so explicitly very often, but the central theme of its economic policy is narrowing income inequality. Just like Jean Chrétien’s and Paul Martin’s quest to eliminate the deficit, and Stephen Harper’s attack on excessively high corporate taxes, there are good economic reasons to focus on inequality. Unfortunately, the tendency of Trudeau and his ministers to justify everything they do as necessary to help the middle class has made it difficult for thinking people to take them seriously. Team Trudeau always looks like it’s shopping for votes, even when it might not be.

Some wealth disparity is necessary to ensure dynamism; even left-wing economists accept that economies work better when entrepreneurs and other ambitious types are allowed to satisfy their greed.

But over the past decade, the economics profession has concluded that big gaps between the richest and the rest could be a cause of all sorts of chronic problems. High levels of income inequality correlate with corruption and regulatory capture, as the wealthiest outspend others to ensure the playing field tilts in their favour. Societal and political unrest also flare in places where the majority feels left behind by an elite majority.

And if all of that is too fuzzy for your liking, Jonathan Ostry, the deputy director of research at the International Monetary Fund, found a link between inequality and economic growth: Economies with narrower gaps between the top of the income scale and the bottom grow for longer stretches and are less prone to crises.

Deficit-financed ‘investments’ in the middle class are meant to avoid political turmoil such as France’s ‘gilets jaunes’ movement.

“Inequality and fragile growth may be two sides of the same coin,” Ostry, a Canadian who trained at Oxford, the London School of Economics, and the University of Chicago, says in Confronting Inequality: How Societies Can Choose Inclusive Growth, along with co-writers Prakash Loungani and Andrew Berg.

Bill Morneau, the finance minister, has been using his post-budget tour to try to coax business leaders to think about his policies in these terms. On March 28, he told an audience assembled by the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal that his deficit-financed “investments” in the middle class are meant to avoid the political turmoil that has roiled the United States (Trump), the United Kingdom (Brexit), France (gilets jaunes), and elsewhere.

“We aren’t there, but there is a feeling among some Canadians that they aren’t doing well,” Morneau said. The Trudeau government’s spending is meant to relieve that “anxiety,” he said numerous times. In other words, spending that keeps Brexit-like chaos out of Canada is as beneficial to the economy as a tax cut.

It’s unclear whether Corporate Canada buys it. After the speech, Morneau took questions from Michel Leblanc, the Montreal chamber’s president and chief executive officer. Leblanc asked the finance minister about eight things, and not once did he mention the middle class.

The Trudeau government and the business community keep talking past each other. The latter should recognize that the federal government’s coddling of the middle class isn’t entirely about electioneering. And Trudeau and Morneau should be wary of taking the leaders of the country’s biggest companies for granted. As David Lipton, one of Ostry’s bosses at the IMF once said, “a larger slice of the pie for everyone calls for a bigger pie.”

Trudeau needs Corporate Canada’s help to achieve his goals as much as it needs his. The data prove it.

• Email: kcarmichael@postmedia.com | Twitter: CarmichaelKevin

from Financial Post https://ift.tt/2CKJiPs via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

[dariusblogpl]

Klipy muzyczne: David Guetta, Calvin Harris, Cardi B, Meghan Trainor ...

David Guetta nowa premiera teledysku do swojego singla "Flames", współpracą z Sią. 50-letni francuski DJ i reżyser klipu Lior Molcho. Guetta, uzbrojony w ogniste moce i grupę zabójców ninja, atakuje dom Danny'ego Trejo, który gra mistrza. Na nieszczęście napotykają trzy kobiety. Zobacz, jak panie kopią tyłek. Nic dziwnego, Sia jest MIA w klipie.

David Guetta i Sia ‘Flames’

Calvin Harris zadebiutował swoim nowym singlem "One Kiss" z utalentowaną Dua Lipą. Jest to jego drugi singiel w tym roku, po PARTYNEXTDOOR "Nuh Ready Nuh".

Calvin Harris ft. Dua Lipa ‘One Kiss’

Kiedy Cardi B wydała "Bartier Cardi" w grudniu, natychmiast popiła listy przebojów. Klip był gotowy, aby stać się Top 10 hitem, ale tylko znarazł na nr. 14. Teraz z nową piosenką, może da singiel drugi wiatr i wprawić przepić powyżej dziesiątkę listy przebojów.

Cardi B ft. 21 Savage ‘Bartier Cardi’

Meghan Trainor naprawdę chce zrobić "No Excuses". Jest nieustępliwa w promowaniu wiodącego singla na jej najbliższego trzeciego albumu studyjnego. Ona już wydała oficjalny teledysk i losowy klip zumby. Teraz nadchodzi kolejny wideoklip.

Meghan Trainor ‘No Excuses’

Flo Rida wydał nową piosenkę ‘Sweet Sensation’ od 38-letniego rapera zawiera w sobie wzmiankę o Marky Mark i kultowym hitem Funky Bunch z 1991 roku "Good Vibrations". Jeśli podobało wam się oryginalny hit z lat 90., spodoba wam się również ten. Swobodny nowy rytm Flo w połączeniu z chwytliwym haczykiem z oryginału to absolutna perfekcja.

Flo Rida ‘Sweet Sensation’

Kiedy Taylor Swift miała premierę jej najnowszego singla "Delicate", natychmiast otrzymała ostry sprzeciw. Wiele oskarżyło ją o kopiowanie reżysera Spike Jonze Kenzo reklamy. Zdecydowanie były pewne podobieństwa, w tym losowe śmieszne twarze i beztroski taniec.

Jest wystarczająco uroczy, ale nie sądzę, że potrzebny był inny element wizualny "Delicate". Pierwszy był wystarczający. Taylor Swift ‘Delicate’

[bobnorthway]

Neoliberalism: Oversold? -- Finance & Development, June 2016

Neoliberalism: Oversold? — Finance & Development, June 2016

Neoliberalism: Oversold?

FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT, June 2016, Vol. 53, No. 2

Jonathan D. Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Davide Furceri

PDF version

Instead of delivering growth, some neoliberal policies have increased inequality, in turn jeopardizing durable expansion

Milton Friedman in 1982 hailed Chile as an “economic miracle.” Nearly a decade earlier, Chile had turned to policies that have since…

[metalshockfinland]

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Norwegian extreme metal titans ANCIENT are getting ready for the Gothoom Festival in Slovakia, taking the stage today, July 20th, at 21:00. Get more information here. http://www.gothoom.com/festival/en

Furthermore, ANCIENT Frontman Zel is proudly presenting for the first time his brand new custom made bass, the “Zel Impaler 1” designed by Zel himself. The bass was recently made by Savvas Glykis at Guitarnomicon Custom Projects, Athens, Greece. Watch more photos here.

Just recently ANCIENT announced their Latin American Tour dates and cities, kicking off on September 7th in Mexico. Check out the tour dates below.

September 7 Mexico – Merida Yucatan September 8 Mexico – San Luis Potosi September 9 Mexico – Mexico City September 10 Guatemala – Guatemala City September 12 El Salvador – San Salvador September 13 Costa Rica – San José September 15 Colombia – Cali September 16 Colombia – Bogotà September 17 Ecuador – Quito September 19 Lima – Peru September 20 Chile – Santiago September 21 Argentina – Buenos Aires

Upcoming ANCIENT Festivals:

Festivals 2017: July 20 – Gothoom Festival Ostry Grun – Slovakia December 2 – Into Darkness Festival IV – Leeuwarden – Holland December 3 – Baroeg Rotterdam – Holland

2018: May 12 – Under The Banner of Black Light Fest – Graz – Austria

More shows TBA.

Just recently ANCIENT re-released their “Trolltaar” EP (1995) by Sleaszy Rider Records! This 2017 edition includes 3 live tracks from Norway in 1993, and not only.. The vinyl will also soon be available. For more information and orders, go here. http://www.sleaszyrider.com/

ANCIENT released their long awaited 7th studio album, “Back To The Land Of The Dead” on September 16th in North America via (Megadeth bassist David Ellefson’s) EMP Underground/EMP Label Group, and in the rest of the World by Soulseller Records.

Check out the album teaser here:

Order “Back To The Land Of The Dead” in various CD, LP and bundle configurations at: EMP Underground/EMP Label Group: http://empmerch.com Soulseller Records: http://www.soulsellerrecords.com/mailorder

“Back To The Land Of The Dead” is a comeback for ANCIENT, 12 years after the previous release “Night Visit”. The album was recorded in 7 different locations, in Norway, Denmark, Italy and Greece, mixed in Elfo Studios in Italy, and mastered by Mika Jussila at Finnvox Studios. The album was produced by Ancient.

With Nick Barker behind the drumkit, the album is, as expected, the most aggressive and fastest album of ANCIENT, yet still with a good amount of clean guitars, and various dark atmospheres as the band is known for. The music was composed by Zel and Dhilorz. The lyrics on the album are all written by Zel, many of them speaking about the devil, the spirit of the devil and how it influences us in various devastating and destructive ways, as well as some fantasy lyrics, still somehow connected with the “old Nick subject”. The album cover shows a hooded figure coming back to “the land of the dead” to wake up the “spiritually dead people there”. The album is 66 minutes long and has 13 tracks, including a cover of Bathory “13 Candles”.

ANCIENT frontman Zel stated: “Death is just the beginning… “

The track listing is as follows : 1. Land of The Dead ( Music by Dhilorz, lyrics by Dhilorz and Zel) 2. Beyond The Blood Moon (Music and lyrics by Zel) 3. The Sempiternal Haze (Music by Dhilorz, lyrics by Zel) 4. The Empyrean Sword (Music by Dhilorz, lyrics by Zel) 5. The Ancient Disarray (Music and lyrics by Zel) 6. Occlude The Gates (Music by Dhilorz, lyrics by Zel)

The Excruciating Journey

7. Part I Defiance and rage (Music by Dhilorz, lyrics by Zel) 8. Part II The Prodigal Years (Music by Dhilorz, lyrics by Zel) 9. Part III The Awakening (Music by Dhilorz, lyrics by Zel) 10. Death Will Die (Music and lyrics by Zel) 11. The Spiral (Music and lyrics by Zel) 12. Petrified By Their End (Music by Dhilorz and Zel, lyrics by Zel)

Bonus track : 13. 13 Candles (Music and lyrics by Quorthon)

ANCIENT line-up: Zel (aka Aphazel) on vocals/guitars/keyboards Dhilorz on guitars/bass Nick Barker on drums

Live sessions: Ghiulz Borroni (Bulldozer) on guitars

For more information: ANCIENT: http://www.facebook.com/ancientband | http://www.ancientband.net EMP LABEL GROUP: http://empmerch.com – http://emplabelgroup.com SOULSELLER RECORDS: http://www.soulsellerrecords.com MANAGEMENT: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialAlphaOmegaManagement

ANCIENT Playing Gothoom Festival Today, Presenting Custom Made Bass Norwegian extreme metal titans ANCIENT are getting ready for the Gothoom Festival in Slovakia, taking the stage today, July 20th, at 21:00.

[bobnorthway]

Neoliberalism: Oversold? FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT, June 2016, Vol. 53, No. 2 Jonathan D. Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Davide Furceri PDF version Instead of delivering growth, some neoliberal policies have increased inequality, in turn jeopardizing durable expansion Milton Friedman in 1982 hailed Chile as an “economic miracle.” Nearly a decade earlier, Chile had turned to policies that have since been widely emulated across the globe. The neoliberal agenda—a label used more by critics than by the architects of the policies—rests on two main planks. The first is increased competition—achieved through deregulation and the opening up of domestic markets, including financial markets, to foreign competition. The second is a smaller role for the state, achieved through privatization and limits on the ability of governments to run fiscal deficits and accumulate debt