Why We’re in a New Gilded Age by Paul Krugman Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 685 pp., $39.95 Thomas Piketty, professor at the Paris School of Economics, isn’t a household name, although that may change with the English-language publication of his magnificent, sweeping meditation on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The result has been a revolution in our understanding of long-term trends in inequality. It therefore came as a revelation when Piketty and his colleagues showed that incomes of the now famous “one percent,” and of even narrower groups, are actually the big story in rising inequality. Still, today’s economic elite is very different from that of the nineteenth century, isn’t it? It’s a remarkable claim—and precisely because it’s so remarkable, it needs to be examined carefully and critically. What do we know about economic inequality, and about when do we know it? Why? Piketty is unconvinced.
Why the Worst Get on Top -- in Economics and as CEOs FDR On American Facism(image by JoeInSouthernCA) Reprinted from neweconomicperspectives.org Libertarians are profoundly anti-democratic. The folks at Cato that I debate make no bones about their disdain for and fear of democracy. Friedrich von Hayek is so popular among libertarians because of his denial of the legitimacy of democratic government and his claims that it is inherently monstrous and murderous to its own citizens. Here's an example from a libertarian professor based in Maryland. "[W]hen government uses its legal monopoly on coercion to confiscate one person's property and give it to another, it is engaging in what would normally be called theft. But von Hayek's critique of democratic government has proven to be the most monstrous blood libel of the post-World War II era -- falsely declaring that democratic government must end in tyranny and the mass murder of its own people. Why the Worst Get on Top -- in Economics
Monsanto Hides Toxicity RoundUp Results, Calls them Secret Talking about Monsanto’s latest attempt to obstruct justice, halt transparency, and prevent people from stopping their seed and herbicide businesses from spreading is starting to seem redundant, but the company just keeps acting in increasingly objectionable ways. Now, the company is refusing to release to the public lab tests conducted in St. Louis, Missouri, which gave them authority to use glyphosate in China. Just months ago, Chinese food safety volunteers tendered a request to China’s Ministry of Agriculture to release the study that justified issuing the safety certificate for the import into China of Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide RoundUp. The test was meant to be an acute exposure toxicity test in which rats were given RoundUp by mouth for several days, and rabbits were exposed to RoundUp by skin. The study results have never been disclosed anywhere in the world, and Monsanto refuses to disclose the results now.
Interne Kommunikation: Wie der BND die “Weitergabe von Rohdaten in großem Umfang” an die NSA verheimlicht Rechtsfreier Raum: Abhörstation in Bad Aibling. Als der Bundesdatenschutzbeauftragte den BND fragte, wie viele Daten er an die NSA übermittelt, war die Antwort: „580 Meldungen“ im Jahr 2012. Tatsächlich werden aber 1,3 Milliarden Metadaten übermittelt – jeden Monat. Das geht aus interner Kommunikation des Geheimdiensts hervor, die wir veröffentlichen. Die BND-Datenschutzbeauftragte kritisierte diese Antwort als „Falschauskunft“ – wurde aber von BND-Leitung und Bundeskanzleramt überstimmt. Letzte Woche berichtete Kai Biermann auf Zeit Online: BND-Spionageaffäre: BND liefert NSA 1,3 Milliarden Metadaten – jeden Monat. Seit dem Sommer von Snowden versuchen vielerlei Institutionen, etwas Licht ins Geheimdienst-Dunkel zu bekommen, darunter auch der/die Bundesdatenschutzbeauftragte. Aber auch schriftliche Anfragen an den BND hat die Datenschutzbehörde gestellt, so beispielsweise zwei im Juli und eine Anfang August 2013. Bundesdatenschutzbeauftragter: „Wie viele Daten an USA übermittelt? Prof.
Rauchen ist gesund! | Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft - IPG Die Vereinigten Staaten und die Welt führen derzeit eine große Debatte über neue Handelsvereinbarungen. Derartige Verträge wurden früher als „Freihandelsabkommen“ bezeichnet; tatsächlich waren es gelenkte Handelsvereinbarungen, die auf die Interessen der Konzerne vor allem in den USA und der Europäischen Union zugeschnitten waren. Heute werden derartige Vereinbarungen häufig als „Partnerschaften“ bezeichnet – wie etwa im Falle der Trans-Pazifischen Partnerschaft (TPP). Doch es sind keine gleichberechtigten Partnerschaften: Faktisch diktieren die USA die Bedingungen. Zum Glück leisten Amerikas „Partner“ zunehmend Widerstand. Es ist unschwer erkennbar, warum. Der vielleicht unfairste – und unehrlichste – Bestandteil derartiger Übereinkommen betrifft den Investorenschutz. Die wahre Absicht dieser Bestimmungen besteht darin, Gesundheits-, Umwelt-, Sicherheits- und sogar Finanzaufsichtsregeln auszuhebeln, die Amerikas eigene Volkswirtschaft und Bürger schützen sollen. (c) Project Syndicate
Sitemap for One Community :: Complete Overview of the One Community Site One Community Terms and Conditions Homepage: This is a great place to startOur Team: This is our amazing team of world-change peopleOverview Page: An overview of One Community and our goalsThe One Community Pledge: Our commitment to making a differenceFor The Highest Good of All: This is our #1 value and the foundation for all we doOpen Source Project Launch-blueprinting: This is how we are changing the worldPurpose, Mission, Vision, and Values: Our Purpose, Mission, and Vision statementsSolutions that Create Solutions: This is the point of why we are doing what we are doing4-Phase Strategy: This is the overview of how we will accomplish solutions that create solutionsMethodology: This is the details page covering how we will accomplish solutions that create solutionsWho We Are and Who We Are Looking For: This is the kind of people we are and are looking forFulfilled Living Page: This is the environment we are purposed to create and create from
Oubliez Airbnb : l’économie du partage va s’étendre bien au-delà - L'Obs Airbnb, qui a révolutionné l’hébergement, approche le million d'"hôtes" (640.000, au dernier décompte) louant leur appartement. La bête noire des taxis, l’application Uber, qui permet à tout le monde de devenir chauffeur, est valorisée 40 milliards de dollars. Les plateformes de financement participatif ("crowdfunding"), comme KissKissBank, explosent. "Pourtant, vous n’avez encore rien vu", lance Jeremiah Owyang, à l'ouverture de la conférence sur l'innovation Le Web. "2015 sera l’année de la foule." Pour ce gourou de l’économie du partage, ou plus précisément "collaborative", de nouveaux acteurs vont bouleverser d’autres secteurs, plutôt inattendus : Santé et bien-être. Et encore : Bannerman vous permet de "louer" des gardes du corps comme une voiture.Un premier rendez-vous avec un inconnu ? En 2014, le secteur de l’économie collaborative a levé 8 milliards de dollars. La présentation complète (en anglais) : Aurélien Viers - @aviers
Paper-thin printed solar cells could provide power for 1.3 billion people The cost of solar power has declined dramatically over the past few decades, from $40 per watt in 1977 to $0.74 per watt in 2013. This trend is expected to accelerate as improvements in efficiency and new technologies come online. This is good news for citizens of developed countries who want to make the switch to a cleaner and increasingly cheaper energy source. Paper-thin solar cells require only an industrial printer to manufacture and are inexpensive to produce. Related: Maasai women are the new solar warriors of Africa However, the mass production and distribution of printed solar cells is not without its obstacles. Via SciDevNet Images via NPL
Fracking poses 'significant' risk to humans and should be temporarily banned across EU, says new report - Environment The damning report by the CHEM Trust, the British charity that investigates the harm chemicals cause humans and wildlife, highlights serious shortcomings in the UK’s regulatory regime, which the report says will only get worse as the Government makes further budget cuts. It also warns of severe risks to human health if the new Conservative government tries to fast-track fracking of shale gas across the UK. The “scale of commercial fracking” unleashed by the Government’s eagerness to exploit the technique “should not be underestimated”, it cautions. Read more: Lancashire fracking in doubt following critical reportFracking turning US into bigger oil producer than Saudi Arabia The report is due to be published tomorrow – in the week that Lancashire county council votes on two highly contentious planning applications to frack in the county by the company Cuadrilla. If approved, they will be the first commercial fracking sites in the UK. Loading gallery 1 of 22
How Tesla Will Change The World This is Part 2 of a four-part series on Elon Musk’s companies. For an explanation of why this series is happening and how Musk is involved, start with Part 1. A Wait But Why post can be a few different things. The way I approach a post like that is I’ll start with the surface of the topic and ask myself what I don’t fully get—I look for those foggy spots in the story where when someone mentions it or it comes up in an article I’m reading, my mind kind of glazes over with a combination of “ugh it’s that icky term again nah go away” and “ew the adults are saying that adult thing again and I’m seven so I don’t actually understand what they’re talking about.” For example, I kind of got the Iraq situation, but there was a lot of fog there too—so when I wrote a post about it, one fog-clearing rabbit hole took me all the way back to Muhammad in 570AD. Hitting the floor is a great feeling and makes me realize that the adults weren’t actually saying anything that complicated or icky after all.
The Real Story Behind the Oil Price Collapse » Page 2 of 2 Read page 1 Under Hayward’s leadership, BP largely discontinued its research into alternative forms of energy and reaffirmed its commitment to the production of oil and gas, the tougher the better. Following in the footsteps of other giant firms, BP hustled into the Arctic, the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico, and Canadian tar sands, a particularly carbon-dirty and messy-to-produce form of energy. In its drive to become the leading producer in the Gulf, BP rushed the exploration of a deep offshore field it called Macondo, triggeringthe Deepwater Horizon blow-out of April 2010 and the devastating oil spill of monumental proportions that followed. Over the Cliff By the end of the first decade of this century, Big Oil was united in its embrace of its new production-maximizing, drill-baby-drill approach. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Current indications suggest that consumption will continue to fall short of expectations in the years to come.
Death toll among Qatar’s 2022 World Cup workers revealed Nepalese migrants building the infrastructure to host the 2022 World Cup have died at a rate of one every two days in 2014 – despite Qatar’s promises to improve their working conditions, the Guardian has learned. The figure excludes deaths of Indian, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi workers, raising fears that if fatalities among all migrants were taken into account the toll would almost certainly be more than one a day. Qatar had vowed to reform the industry after the Guardian exposed the desperate plight of many of its migrant workers last year. But human rights organisations have accused Qatar of dragging its feet on the modest reforms, saying not enough is being done to investigate the effect of working long hours in temperatures that regularly top 50C. The Nepalese foreign employment promotion board said 157 of its workers in Qatar had died between January and mid-November this year – 67 of sudden cardiac arrest and eight of heart attacks.