Economy 7 Quotes

In the United States, government regulations are estimated to cost about $7,800 per employee in large businesses and about $10,600 per employee in small businesses.{662} Among other things, this suggests that the existence of numerous government regulations tends to give competitive advantages to big business, since there are apparently economies of scale in complying with these regulations.

Finally, as 9/11 fell on December 7, 1941, America entered World War II, and wouldn’t you know it, the US actually recovered from the Depression. It turned out that with state control of production and jobs for all, a nation could spend its way out of misery. Of course, this proof of concept of planned economies was instead interpreted as a reason to constantly go to war.

If children of 5 are not taught to obey orders, sit still for 7 hours a day, respect their teacher, and raise their hands when they have to go to the bathroom, how will they learn (after 17 more years of education) to become the respectful clerks, technicians and soldiers who keep our society free, our economy strong, and such inspiring men as Richard Nixon and Deane Davis in political office.

More and more companies will choose to use Network Marketing because it fits the New Economy. They can provide all the corporate support and pay distributors on a purely performance basis to promote their products. It’s extremely efficient because in the New Economy, word-of-mouth advertising continues to work better than any other form of promotion. The company can just take the money they would have spent on advertising and promotion and pay it to their distributors to spread the word.

Yet we promise developing countries that, if they will only adopt good policies, like honest government and free market economies, they too can become like the First World today. That promise is utterly impossible, a cruel hoax. We are already having difficulty supporting a First World lifestyle even now, when only 1 billion people out of the world’s 7.5 billion people enjoy it.

The employment figures released by federal government agencies are fraudulent. Real unemployment in the United States is not under 7 percent; it’s closer to 37 percent, despite what the White House, the Fed, and the U.S. Treasury try to tell you. The Misery Index, a measure of how Americans feel about the economy, is over 14 percent, not at the 8 percent level the government claims.

Principles of Liberty 1. The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law. 2. A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong. 3. The most promising method of securing a virtuous and morally strong people is to elect virtuous leaders. 4. Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained. 5. All things were created by God, therefore upon him all mankind are equally dependent, and to Him they are equally responsible. 6. All men are created equal. 7. The proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not provide equal things. 8. Men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. 9. To protect man's rights, God has revealed certain principles of divine law. 10. The God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people. 11. The majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical. 12. The United States of America shall be a republic. 13. A constitution should be structured to permanently protect the people from the human frailties of their rulers. 14. Life and Liberty are secure only so long as the Igor of property is secure. 15. The highest level of securitiy occurs when there is a free market economy and a minimum of government regulations. 16. The government should be separated into three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. 17. A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power. 18. The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written constitution. 19. Only limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to the government, all others being retained by the people. 20. Efficiency and dispatch require government to operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority. 21. Strong human government is the keystone to preserving human freedom. 22. A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men. 23. A free society cannot survive a republic without a broad program of general education. 24. A free people will not survive unless they stay strong. 25. "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." 26. The core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore, the government should foster and protect its integrity. 27. The burden of debt is as destructive to freedom as subjugation by conquest. 28. The United States has a manifest destiny to be an example and a blessing to the entire human race.

In 1934, when the economy began emerging from the bottom of the Great Depression, it grew 7.7 percent. The next year it grew more than 8 percent. In 1936 it grew a whopping 14.1 percent.

On Rachel's show for November 7, 2012: Ohio really did go to President Obama last night. and he really did win. And he really was born in Hawaii. And he really is legitimately President of the United States, again. And the Bureau of Labor statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month. And the congressional research service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy. And the polls were not screwed to over-sample Democrats. And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad; Nate Silver was doing math. And climate change is real. And rape really does cause pregnancy, sometimes. And evolution is a thing. And Benghazi was an attack on us, it was not a scandal by us. And nobody is taking away anyone's guns. And taxes have not gone up. And the deficit is dropping, actually. And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. And the moon landing was real. And FEMA is not building concentration camps. And you and election observers are not taking over Texas. And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as communism. Listen, last night was a good night for liberals and for democrats for very obvious reasons, but it was also, possibly, a good night for this country as a whole. Because in this country, we have a two-party system in government. And the idea is supposed to be that the two sides both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing our country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems. And we debate between those possible solutions. And by the process of debate, we pick the best idea. That competition between good ideas from both sides about real problems in the real country should result in our country having better choices, better options, than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff. And if the Republican Party and the conservative movement and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum-sealed door-locked spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived as a nation of the constructive debate about competing feasible ideas about real problems. Last night the Republicans got shellacked, and they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them in real time, in real humiliating time, not believe it, even as it was happening to them. And unless they are going to secede, they are going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside if they do not want to get shellacked again, and that will be a painful process for them, but it will be good for the whole country, left, right, and center. You guys, we're counting on you. Wake up. There are real problems in the world. There are real, knowable facts in the world. Let's accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let's move on from there. If the Republican Party and the conservative movement and conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we will all be better off as a nation. And in that spirit, congratulations, everyone!

Since the President’s 2016 election, the economy has added over 6.7 million jobs—more than the combined populations of Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Montana in 2018. Additionally, this total is 4.8 million more jobs than the Congressional Budget Office projected would have been created in its final forecast before the 2016 election. . . . Most notably, the unemployment rate for African Americans reached a new low of 5.4 percent, falling 2.6 percentage points since President Trump’s election.”12 For anyone with a brain, that is a big deal.

Empirical evidence suggests that the relationship between the profitability of larger share and smaller share depends on the industry. Exhibit 7-1 compares the rate of return on equity of the largest firms accounting for at least 30 percent of industry sales (leaders) to the rate of return on equity of the medium-sized firms in the same industry (followers). In this calculation small firms with assets less than $500,000 were excluded. Although some of the industries in the sample are overly broad, it is striking that followers were noticeably more profitable than leaders in 15 of 38 industries. The industries in which the followers’ rates of return were higher appear generally to be those where economies of scale are either not great or absent (clothing, footwear, pottery, meat products, carpets) and/or those that are highly segmented (optical, medical and ophthalmic goods, liquor, periodicals, carpets, and toys and sporting goods). The industries in which leaders’ rates of return are higher seem to be generally those with heavy advertising (soap; perfumes; soft drinks; grain mill products, i.e., cereal; cutlery) and/or research outlays and production economies of scale (radio and television, drugs, photographic equipment). This outcome is as we would expect.

An attention economy dissolves the separation between the personal and professional, between entertainment and information, all overridden by a compulsory functionality of communication that is inherently and inescapably 24/7. Even as a contemporary colloquialism, the term “eyeballs” for the site of control repositions human vision as a motor activity that can be subjected to external direction or stimuli. The goal is to refine the capacity to localize the eye’s movement on or within highly targeted sites or points of interest. The eye is dislodged from the realm of optics and made into an intermediary element of a circuit whose end result is always a motor response of the body to electronic solicitation. It is out of this context that Google and other corporate players now compete for dominance over the remains of the everyday.

In 1770, for instance, a famine in Bengal clobbered the company’s revenue. British legislators saved it from bankruptcy by exempting it from tariffs on tea exports to the American colonies. Which was, perhaps, shortsighted on their part: it eventually led to the Boston Tea Party, and the American Declaration of Independence.7 You could say the United States owes its existence to excessive corporate influence on politicians.

Have you ever been lying in bed in the morning and out of nowhere you’re reminded of all the mistakes you made yesterday and all the problems in your future? That’s the enemy trying to set your mind for a negative, defeated, lousy day. Don’t fall into that trap. The Scripture says, “Set your minds and keep them set on what is above (the higher things)” (Colossians 3:2 AMP). Be proactive. Take the offensive. When you get up in the morning, say along with David, “This is another day the Lord has made. No matter how I feel, no matter what the economy looks like, no matter what the medical report says, I am choosing to rejoice. I choose to live this day happy.” Do you know what you’re really saying when you take that approach? You are proclaiming: “I will not allow anyone to steal my joy today. I will not allow disappointments and setbacks to discourage me. I will not focus on my problems and my mistakes. I’ve made up my mind to enjoy this day.

The only solution was to tie the hands of macroeconomic policy makers.7 Instead of giving the Federal Reserve discretion to trade lower unemployment for higher inflation, the central bank should be forced to accept the fact that a certain amount of unemployment was necessary to keep inflation stable. As we will see, MMT contests this framework.

[He] did not understand women. It wasn't the way bartenders or comedians didn't understand women, it was the way poor people didn't understand the economy. You could stand outside the Girard Bank Building every day of your life and never guess anything about what went on in there. That's why, in their hearts, they'd always rather stick up a 7-Eleven.

Dreams give birth to passion and passion produces action. Your work ethic, consistency and determination deliver excellent results.

Until you consciously employ the brain it will go to sleep on you. You must feed it, challenge it and use it. That is the way to get it fully engaged in life.

Tôi còn nhớ một thí nghiệm bạn tôi đã làm ở đại học 45 năm về trước: một con chó bị nhốt lại trong chuồng và bịt miệng không cho sủa trong 7 ngày. Dù vẫn được cho ăn uống đầy đủ, sau khi thả ra, con chó bị những triệu chứng biến thái về tâm lý: trở nên hung dữ, thích cắn và sủa, bị táo bón, sức đề kháng yếu hẳn và không còn trung thành với chủ như trước. Xã hội nào cũng có những bức xúc giận dữ của người dân khi nhìn những cảnh trái tai gai mắt hàng ngày. Ở các xã hội được cơ hội bày tỏ sự bức xúc này bằng lá phiếu hay tự do ngôn luận, người dân thường thoải mái và hành xử văn minh hơn trong các giao tiếp. Có lẽ vì nhu cầu phải 'sủa' là một đòi hỏi của tự nhiên cho tất cả mọi sinh vật, không chỉ riêng cho loài chó? - Một tư duy khác về kinh tế và xã hội Việt Nam

Time and again I am asked why no one has successfully replicated Trader Joe’s. The answer is that no one has been willing to pay the wages and benefits, and thereby attract—and keep—the quality of people who work at Trader Joe’s. My standard was simple: the average full-time employee in the stores would make the median family income for California. Back in those days it was about $7,000; as I write this, it is around $40,000. What I didn’t count on back there in the 1960s was that so many spouses would go to work in the national economy. When I started, average family income was about the same as average employee income. The great social change of the 1970s and 1980s moved millions of women into the workplace. Average family income soared ahead. But we stuck with our standard, and it paid off.

The ARM, Adjustable Rate Mortgage, was invented in the early 1980s. Prior to that, those of us in the real estate business sold fixed-rate 7 or 8 percent mortgages. What happened? I was there in the middle of that disaster of an economy when fixed-rate mortgages went as high as 17 percent and the real estate world froze. Lenders paid out 12 percent on CDs but had money loaned out at 7 percent on hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages. They were losing money, and lenders don’t like to lose money. So the Adjustable Rate Mortgage was born, in which your interest rate goes up when the prevailing market interest rates go up. The ARM was born to transfer the risk of higher interest rates to you, the consumer. In the last several years, home mortgage rates have been at a thirty-year low. It is not wise to get something that adjusts when you are at the bottom of rates! The mythsayers always seem to want to add risk to your home, the one place you should want to make sure has stability. Balloon mortgages are even worse. Balloons pop, and it is always strange to me that the popping sound is so startling. Why don’t we expect it? It is in the very nature of balloons to pop. Wise financial people always move away from risk, and the balloon mortgage creates risk nightmares.

New Rule: Republicans must stop pitting the American people against the government. Last week, we heard a speech from Republican leader Bobby Jindal--and he began it with the story that every immigrant tells about going to an American grocery store for the first time and being overwhelmed with the "endless variety on the shelves." And this was just a 7-Eleven--wait till he sees a Safeway. The thing is, that "endless variety"exists only because Americans pay taxes to a government, which maintains roads, irrigates fields, oversees the electrical grid, and everything else that enables the modern American supermarket to carry forty-seven varieties of frozen breakfast pastry.Of course, it's easy to tear government down--Ronald Reagan used to say the nine most terrifying words in the Englishlanguage were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." But that was before "I'm Sarah Palin, now show me the launch codes."The stimulus package was attacked as typical "tax and spend"--like repairing bridges is left-wing stuff. "There the liberals go again, always wanting to get across the river." Folks, the people are the government--the first responders who put out fires--that's your government. The ranger who shoos pedophiles out of the park restroom, the postman who delivers your porn.How stupid is it when people say, "That's all we need: the federal government telling Detroit how to make cars or Wells Fargo how to run a bank. You want them to look like the post office?"You mean the place that takes a note that's in my hand in L.A. on Monday and gives it to my sister in New Jersey on Wednesday, for 44 cents? Let me be the first to say, I would be thrilled if America's health-care system was anywhere near as functional as the post office.Truth is, recent years have made me much more wary of government stepping aside and letting unregulated private enterprise run things it plainly is too greedy to trust with. Like Wall Street. Like rebuilding Iraq.Like the way Republicans always frame the health-care debate by saying, "Health-care decisions should be made by doctors and patients, not government bureaucrats," leaving out the fact that health-care decisions aren't made by doctors, patients, or bureaucrats; they're made by insurance companies. Which are a lot like hospital gowns--chances are your gas isn't covered.

We need to get beyond our ignorance of the other. We need to move beyond the thinking that white privilege means that all whites live a privileged life. This perspective ignores the reality of class in this country. The plight of poor whites was largely ignored until the last presidential election. According to the 2013 data from the US Department of Agriculture, 40.2 percent of food stamp recipients were white; 25.7 percent, black.4 What’s Their Story? We would do well to hear and learn from the stories of whites, especially those who share the common struggle of poverty and marginalization. In Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance shares his story of growing up poor: “To these folks, poverty is the family tradition—their ancestors were day laborers in the Southern slave economy, sharecroppers after that, coal miners after that, and machinists and millworkers during more recent times. Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family.”5 When we understand the details of the other’s story we realize that we have much more in common than we ever imagined.

Think about ethanol again. The benefits of that $7 billion tax subsidy are bestowed on a small group of farmers, making it quite lucrative for each one of them. Meanwhile, the costs are spread over the remaining 98 percent of us, putting ethanol somewhere below good oral hygiene on our list of everyday concerns. The opposite would be true with my plan to have left-handed voters pay subsidies to right-handed voters. There are roughly nine right-handed Americans for every lefty, so if every right-handed voter were to get some government benefit worth $100, then every left-handed voter would have to pay $900 to finance it. The lefties would be hopping mad about their $900 tax bills, probably to the point that it became their preeminent political concern, while the righties would be only modestly excited about their $100 subsidy. An adept politician would probably improve her career prospects by voting with the lefties. Here is a curious finding that makes more sense in light of what we‘ve just discussed. In countries where farmers make up a small fraction of the population, such as America and Europe, the government provides large subsidies for agriculture. But in countries where the farming population is relatively large, such as China and India, the subsidies go the other way. Farmers are forced to sell their crops at below-market prices so that urban dwellers can get basic food items cheaply. In the one case, farmers get political favors; in the other, they must pay for them. What makes these examples logically consistent is that in both cases the large group subsidizes the smaller group. In politics, the tail can wag the dog. This can have profound effects on the economy.

To eat responsibly is to understand and enact, so far as one can, this complex relationship. What can one do? Here is a list, probably not definitive: 1. Participate in food production to the extent that you can. If you have a yard or even just a porch box or a pot in a sunny window, grow something to eat in it. Make a little compost of your kitchen scraps and use it for fertilizer. Only by growing some food for yourself can you become acquainted with the beautiful energy cycle that revolves from soil to seed to flower to fruit to food to offal to decay, and around again. You will be fully responsible for any food that you grow for yourself, and you will know all about it. You will appreciate it fully, having known it all its life. 2. Prepare your own food. This means reviving in your own mind and life the arts of kitchen and household. This should enable you to eat more cheaply, and it will give you a measure of “quality control”: You will have some reliable knowledge of what has been added to the food you eat. 3. Learn the origins of the food you buy, and buy the food that is produced closest to your home. The idea that every locality should be, as much as possible, the source of its own food makes several kinds of sense. The locally produced food supply is the most secure, the freshest, and the easiest for local consumers to know about and to influence. 4. Whenever possible, deal directly with a local farmer, gardener, or orchardist. All the reasons listed for the previous suggestion apply here. In addition, by such dealing you eliminate the whole pack of merchants, transporters, processors, packagers, and advertisers who thrive at the expense of both producers and consumers. 5. Learn, in self-defense, as much as you can of the economy and technology of industrial food production. What is added to food that is not food, and what do you pay for these additions? 6. Learn what is involved in the best farming and gardening. 7. Learn as much as you can, by direct observation and experience if possible, of the life histories of the food species. The

American politicians had done little through the years to stem the flood. Hispanic voters wanted their kinsmen to be able to enter the United States regardless of their ability to contribute to the economy or pay their own bills, yet this wasn’t the decisive factor. Farmers and small-business men wanted a source of cheap labor, and were content to pass the true costs, the social costs, on to the taxpayers. Generous public welfare programs also drew millions of Mexicans, more than small business or agriculture could possibly use. Even draining off an eighth of the population didn’t really help Mexico, which found itself racked by turf wars between vicious criminal gangs that smuggled drugs into the United States to supply the richest narcotics market in the world.

There are about 1,800 billionaires in the world as of 2015, with more than $7 trillion between them.58 The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) calculated that it would take roughly $30 billion a year to solve world hunger through mostly agricultural development in poor regions. These billionaires could provide this direct aid for 200 years and still have about $550 million each, on average.

Superusers …   1. Check in frequently and consistently—not just once a year for an intense engagement.   2. Create content that others can access.   3. “Police” the community and ensure that cultural norms that strengthen the group are enforced.   4. Have a two-way relationship with the organization itself—providing feedback and suggestions.   5. Demonstrate genuine desire to help other members.   6. Attract new members.   7. Aid in the onboarding of new members.

Even the most recent IPCC report, dire as it is, spells out solutions of a sort. There are ways to mitigate things, there are ways to fix them. Ban fossil fuels. Stop eating meat and dairy; according to an IPCC report from 2014, animal agriculture contributes at least as much to global greenhouse gas emissions as the combined exhaust of all the world’s vehicles. What’s that you say? Too difficult? Can’t switch to an oil-free economy overnight? Okay, here’s something that’s effective, simple, and as convenient as a visit to the nearest outpatient clinic: stop breeding. Every child you squeeze out is a Godzilla-sized carbon bootprint stretching into the future—and after all, isn’t 7.6 billion of us enough? Are your genes really that special? If even half the men on the planet got vasectomies, I bet we could buy ourselves a century—and as an added bonus, child-free people not only tend to have higher disposable income than the sprogged, they’re also statistically happier.

What is this kind of vandalism? There is little public discussion of it, but vandalism is an increasingly serious scourge, as damaging as violent crime. Let us not talk only of the countless vehicles set on fire, but also of the destruction of gymnasiums and public swimming pools, acts of arson against public buildings, the massive theft of materials, the damage inflicted on public buildings, and so on. These acts have multiplied significantly over the past three years and so has their cost. Let us take the example of Marseilles: according to La Provence (7 October 2003): ‘The bill has arrived for the municipality: about 1.86 million euros a year, or 12.5 million francs’, drawn from the local taxpayers, without counting the expenses of guards and security of 140,000 euros. The local press obviously does not bother to mention the ethnic origin of these ‘vandals’ other than with the expression ‘urban youth’. This criminal activity, which is increasing all over France, represents a growing burden for the French economy.

Much of the so-called environmental movement today has transmuted into an aggressively nefarious and primitive faction. In the last fifteen years, many of the tenets of utopian statism have coalesced around something called the “degrowth” movement. Originating in Europe but now taking a firm hold in the United States, the “degrowthers,” as I shall characterize them, include in their ranks none other than President Barack Obama. On January 17, 2008, Obama made clear his hostility toward, of all things, electricity generated from coal and coal-powered plants. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, “You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal . . . under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. . . .”3 Obama added, “. . . So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”4 Degrowthers define their agenda as follows: “Sustainable degrowth is a downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions and equity on the planet. It calls for a future where societies live within their ecological means, with open localized economies and resources more equally distributed through new forms of democratic institutions.”5 It “is an essential economic strategy to pursue in overdeveloped countries like the United States—for the well-being of the planet, of underdeveloped populations, and yes, even of the sick, stressed, and overweight ‘consumer’ populations of overdeveloped countries.”6 For its proponents and adherents, degrowth has quickly developed into a pseudo-religion and public-policy obsession. In fact, the degrowthers insist their ideology reaches far beyond the environment or even its odium for capitalism and is an all-encompassing lifestyle and governing philosophy. Some of its leading advocates argue that “Degrowth is not just an economic concept. We shall show that it is a frame constituted by a large array of concerns, goals, strategies and actions. As a result, degrowth has now become a confluence point where streams of critical ideas and political action converge.”7 Degrowth is “an interpretative frame for a social movement, understood as the mechanism through which actors engage in a collective action.”8 The degrowthers seek to eliminate carbon sources of energy and redistribute wealth according to terms they consider equitable. They reject the traditional economic reality that acknowledges growth as improving living conditions generally but especially for the impoverished. They embrace the notions of “less competition, large scale redistribution, sharing and reduction of excessive incomes and wealth.”9 Degrowthers want to engage in polices that will set “a maximum income, or maximum wealth, to weaken envy as a motor of consumerism, and opening borders (“no-border”) to reduce means to keep inequality between rich and poor countries.”10 And they demand reparations by supporting a “concept of ecological debt, or the demand that the Global North pays for past and present colonial exploitation in the Global South.”11

As an aside, Sheldon Rovin in his first draft of a guide to Systems Thinking, repeated this old chestnut: The often-quoted tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that, ‘When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.’ However, in government more advanced strategies are often employed, such as: 1. Buying a stronger whip. 2. Changing riders. 29 3. Appointing a committee to study the horse. 4.    Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride horses. 5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included. 6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living impaired. 7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse. 82 8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed. 9. Providing extra funding/training to increase the dead horse’s performance. 10.  Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance. 3 11.  Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than live horses. 12.  Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses. And, of course… 13.  Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

For most of human history, when you were born you inherited an off-the-shelf package of religious and cultural constraints. This was a kind of library of limits that was embedded in your social and physical environment. These limits performed certain self-regulatory tasks for you so you didn’t have to take them on yourself. The packages included habits, practices, rituals, social conventions, moral codes, and a myriad of other constraints that had typically evolved over many centuries, if not millennia, to reliably guide – or shall we say design – our lives in the direction of particular values, and to help us give attention to the things that matter most. In the twentieth century the rise of secularism and modernism in the West occasioned the collapse – if not the jettisoning – of many of these off-the-shelf packages of constraints in the cause of the liberation of the individual. In many cases, this rejection occurred on the basis of philosophical or cosmological disagreements with the old packages. This has, of course, had many great benefits. Yet by rejecting entire packages of constraint, we’ve also rejected those constraints that were actually useful for our purposes. “The left’s project of liberation,” writes the American philosopher Matthew Crawford, “led us to dismantle inherited cultural jigs that once imposed a certain coherence (for better and worse) on individual lives. This created a vacuum of cultural authority that has been filled, opportunistically, with attentional landscapes that get installed by whatever ‘choice architect’ brings the most energy to the task – usually because it sees the profit potential.” The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, in his book You Must Change Your Life, has called for a reclamation of this particular aspect of religion – its habits and practices – which he calls “anthropotechnics.”6 When you dismantle existing boundaries in your environment, it frees you from their limitations, but it requires you to bring your own boundaries where you didn’t have to before. Sometimes, taking on this additional self-regulatory burden is totally worth it. Other times, though, the cost is too high. According to the so-called “ego-depletion” hypothesis, our self-control, our willpower, is a finite resource.7 So when the self-regulatory cost of bringing your own boundaries is high enough, it takes away willpower that could have been spent on something else.

also been a white-collar worker in my career. In my experience, there are two types of people who do this type of work: Achievers and Hiders. Achievers are the people who want to perform at a high level. They are ambitious, motivated and energetic. They are full of ideas and want to move up the corporate ladder, which are great attributes to have. But there is a downside for the Achiever. The moment a person decides to be an Achiever, they become a target. Their boss sees them as threatening to their job, so they start to hold them down or take shots at their reputation. Their peers see them as a person who will either embarrass them or keep them from getting a promotion, so they start to do what they can to undermine their accomplishments. So, to remain an Achiever and survive in this hostile environment, a person must become good at one thing that has nothing to do with their productivity—and that’s politics. They must learn how to navigate the political world by diminishing their enemies and strengthening their relationship with powerful people. In fact, some of the most successful people in the corporate world aren’t Achievers at all. They are pure politicians. So if you decide to work in the corporate environment and to be an Achiever, you must accept the fact that you must become a good politician also. Now, let’s talk about the Hiders. These are the people who HATE politics, but still need a job. They learn not to be the ambitious Achiever. They don’t stand out. They don’t speak up in meetings. They don’t bring new ideas. They HIDE. They keep their heads down and do as they’re told. They do just enough so that they aren’t talked about negatively. They survive. And this has worked for decades. But in the New Economy, it’s becoming much more difficult to hide. And people are running out of time. So, back to our Perfect Career List: Can a white-collar job deliver on the list? Again, the clear answer is no—certainly not in very many areas. Sales

Except then a local high school journalism class decided to investigate the story. Not having attended Columbia Journalism School, the young scribes were unaware of the prohibition on committing journalism that reflects poorly on Third World immigrants. Thanks to the teenagers’ reporting, it was discovered that Reddy had become a multimillionaire by using H-1B visas to bring in slave labor from his native India. Dozens of Indian slaves were working in his buildings and at his restaurant. Apparently, some of those “brainy” high-tech workers America so desperately needs include busboys and janitors. And concubines. The pubescent girls Reddy brought in on H-1B visas were not his nieces: They were his concubines, purchased from their parents in India when they were twelve years old. The sixty-four-year-old Reddy flew the girls to America so he could have sex with them—often several of them at once. (We can only hope this is not why Mark Zuckerberg is so keen on H-1B visas.) The third roommate—the crying girl—had escaped the carbon monoxide poisoning only because she had been at Reddy’s house having sex with him, which, judging by the looks of him, might be worse than death. As soon as a translator other than Reddy was found, she admitted that “the primary purpose for her to enter the U.S. was to continue to have sex with Reddy.” The day her roommates arrived from India, she was forced to watch as the old, balding immigrant had sex with both underage girls at once.3 She also said her dead roommate had been pregnant with Reddy’s child. That could not be confirmed by the court because Reddy had already cremated the girl, in the Hindu tradition—even though her parents were Christian. In all, Reddy had brought seven underage girls to the United States for sex—smuggled in by his brother and sister-in-law, who lied to immigration authorities by posing as the girls’ parents.4 Reddy’s “high-tech” workers were just doing the slavery Americans won’t do. No really—we’ve tried getting American slaves! We’ve advertised for slaves at all the local high schools and didn’t get a single taker. We even posted flyers at the grade schools, asking for prepubescent girls to have sex with Reddy. Nothing. Not even on Craigslist. Reddy’s slaves and concubines were considered “untouchables” in India, treated as “subhuman”—“so low that they are not even considered part of Hinduism’s caste system,” as the Los Angeles Times explained. To put it in layman’s terms, in India they’re considered lower than a Kardashian. According to the Indian American magazine India Currents: “Modern slavery is on display every day in India: children forced to beg, young girls recruited into brothels, and men in debt bondage toiling away in agricultural fields.” More than half of the estimated 20.9 million slaves worldwide live in Asia.5 Thanks to American immigration policies, slavery is making a comeback in the United States! A San Francisco couple “active in the Indian community” bought a slave from a New Delhi recruiter to clean house for them, took away her passport when she arrived, and refused to let her call her family or leave their home.6 In New York, Indian immigrants Varsha and Mahender Sabhnani were convicted in 2006 of bringing in two Indonesian illegal aliens as slaves to be domestics in their Long Island, New York, home.7 In addition to helping reintroduce slavery to America, Reddy sends millions of dollars out of the country in order to build monuments to himself in India. “The more money Reddy made in the States,” the Los Angeles Times chirped, “the more good he seemed to do in his hometown.” That’s great for India, but what is America getting out of this model immigrant? Slavery: Check. Sickening caste system: Check. Purchasing twelve-year-old girls for sex: Check. Draining millions of dollars from the American economy: Check. Smuggling half-dead sex slaves out of his slums in rolled-up carpets right under the nose of the Berkeley police: Priceless.

To put it slightly differently, the rate at which we need to process energy to sustain our standard of living remained at just a few hundred watts for hundreds of thousands of years, until about ten thousand years ago when we began to form collective urban communities. This marked the beginning of the Anthropocene, in which our effective metabolic rate began its steady rise to its present level of more than 3,000 watts today. But this is just its average value taken across the entire planet. The rate at which energy is used in developed countries is far higher. In the United States it is almost a factor of four larger, at a whopping 11,000 watts, which is more than one hundred times larger than its “natural” biological value. This amount of power is not a lot smaller than the metabolic rate of a blue whale, which is more than one thousand times larger in mass than we are. Thinking of us as an animal using thirty times more energy than we “should” given our physical size, the effective human population of the planet accordingly operates as if it were much larger than the 7.3 billion people who actually inhabit it. In a very real sense, we are operating as if our population were at least thirty times larger, equivalent to a global population in excess of 200 billion people.

Drafting conscript workers was one thing. But unless they were adequately fed they were useless. There was no industry in the 1940s in which the correlation between labour productivity and calorific input was more direct than in mining.91 But after 1939 the food supply in Western Europe was no less constrained than the supply of coal.92 As was true of Germany, the high-intensity dairy farms of France, the Netherlands and Denmark were dependent on imported animal feed. Grain imports in the late 1930s had run at the rate of more than 7 million tons per annum mostly from Argentina and Canada. These sources of supply were closed off by the British blockade. In addition Western Europe had imported more than 700,000 tons of oil seed.93 Of course, France was a major producer of grain in its own right. But French grain yields depended, as they did in Germany, on large quantities of nitrogen-based fertilizer, which could be supplied only at the expense of the production of explosives. And like German agriculture, the farms of Western Europe depended on huge herds of draught animals and on the daily labour of millions of farm workers. The removal of horses, manpower, fertilizer and animal feed that followed the outbreak of war set off a disastrous chain reaction in the delicate ecology of European peasant farming. By the summer of 1940, Germany was facing a Europe-wide agricultural crisis.

The first thing to note about Korean industrial structure is the sheer concentration of Korean industry. Like other Asian economies, there are two levels of organization: individual firms and larger network organizations that unite disparate corporate entities. The Korean network organization is known as the chaebol, represented by the same two Chinese characters as the Japanese zaibatsu and patterned deliberately on the Japanese model. The size of individual Korean companies is not large by international standards. As of the mid-1980s, the Hyundai Motor Company, Korea’s largest automobile manufacturer, was only a thirtieth the size of General Motors, and the Samsung Electric Company was only a tenth the size of Japan’s Hitachi.1 However, these statistics understate their true economic clout because these businesses are linked to one another in very large network organizations. Virtually the whole of the large-business sector in Korea is part of a chaebol network: in 1988, forty-three chaebol (defined as conglomerates with assets in excess of 400 billion won, or US$500 million) brought together some 672 companies.2 If we measure industrial concentration by chaebol rather than individual firm, the figures are staggering: in 1984, the three largest chaebol alone (Samsung, Hyundai, and Lucky-Goldstar) produced 36 percent of Korea’s gross domestic product.3 Korean industry is more concentrated than that of Japan, particularly in the manufacturing sector; the three-firm concentration ratio for Korea in 1980 was 62.0 percent of all manufactured goods, compared to 56.3 percent for Japan.4 The degree of concentration of Korean industry grew throughout the postwar period, moreover, as the rate of chaebol growth substantially exceeded the rate of growth for the economy as a whole. For example, the twenty largest chaebol produced 21.8 percent of Korean gross domestic product in 1973, 28.9 percent in 1975, and 33.2 percent in 1978.5 The Japanese influence on Korean business organization has been enormous. Korea was an almost wholly agricultural society at the beginning of Japan’s colonial occupation in 1910, and the latter was responsible for creating much of the country’s early industrial infrastructure.6 Nearly 700,000 Japanese lived in Korea in 1940, and a similarly large number of Koreans lived in Japan as forced laborers. Some of the early Korean businesses got their start as colonial enterprises in the period of Japanese occupation.7 A good part of the two countries’ émigré populations were repatriated after the war, leading to a considerable exchange of knowledge and experience of business practices. The highly state-centered development strategies of President Park Chung Hee and others like him were formed as a result of his observation of Japanese industrial policy in Korea in the prewar period.

Here are some scary statistics: Each year the average company loses 20-50% of its employee base Cost of replacing entry level employees: 30-50% of their annual salary Cost of replacing mid-level employees: 150% of their annual salary Millennial turnover costs the U.S. economy $30.5 billion annually. The cost of replacing high-level or highly specialized employees: 400% of their annual salary.

As growth collapsed and economies went into recession, budget surpluses would disappear as taxation revenues fell and social security outlays rose to support the unemployed. This meant that government borrowing and public debt would increase.6 Budget deficits were now inevitable.7 But who would pay for these deficits in the long term? It wouldn’t be the financial institutions. No, it would once again be the little guy, the long-suffering taxpayer who, once economies eventually returned to growth, would see their taxes increase through ‘bracket creep’ until the debt was gradually retired.

The calculations of RNS agronomists suggested that to achieve full self-sufficiency with current technology and at the current standard of living, the Third Reich would need to add 7–8 million empty hectares of farmland to the 34 million hectares currently within its borders.77 It may seem far-fetched to suggest that it was the difficulties of German agriculture that drove the progressive radicalization of Hitler’s regime. But when Hitler did attempt to give concrete meaning to his concept of Lebensraum it was to agriculture that he turned.

When Facebook launched Facebook Platform to help developers create apps in May 2007, the big shift began. An ecosystem of partners willing to extend the capabilities of Facebook quickly took root.7 By November 2007, there were 7,000 outside applications on the site.8 Recognizing how this flood of new apps was enhancing its rival’s appeal, Myspace responded by opening to developers in February 2008. But the tide had already turned,

Regardless of whether you think the industrial era has been good or bad, three profoundly fundamental shifts underlie this revolution. The first is that industrialists harnessed new sources of energy, primarily to produce things. Preindustrial people occasionally used wind or water to generate power, but they mostly relied on muscles—human and animal—to generate force. Industrial pioneers such as James Watt (who invented the modern steam engine) figured out how to transform energy from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas into steam, electricity, and other kinds of power to run machines. The first of these machines were designed to make textiles, but within decades others were invented to make iron, mill wood, plow fields, transport things, and do just about everything else one can manufacture and sell (including beer)7. A second major component of the Industrial Revolution was a reorganization of economies and social institutions. As industrialization gathered steam, capitalism, in which individuals compete to produce goods and services for profit, became the world’s dominant economic system, spurring the development of further industrialization and social change. As workers changed their locus of activity from the farm to factories and companies, more people had to work together even as they needed to perform more specialized activities. Factories required more coordination and regulation. In

The factors that usually decide presidential elections—the economy, likability of the candidates, and so on—added up to a wash, and the outcome came down to a few key swing states. Mitt Romney’s campaign followed a conventional polling approach, grouping voters into broad categories and targeting each one or not. Neil Newhouse, Romney’s pollster, said that “if we can win independents in Ohio, we can win this race.” Romney won them by 7 percent but still lost the state and the election. In contrast, President Obama hired Rayid Ghani, a machine-learning expert, as chief scientist of his campaign, and Ghani proceeded to put together the greatest analytics operation in the history of politics. They consolidated all voter information into a single database; combined it with what they could get from social networking, marketing, and other sources; and set about predicting four things for each individual voter: how likely he or she was to support Obama, show up at the polls, respond to the campaign’s reminders to do so, and change his or her mind about the election based on a conversation about a specific issue. Based on these voter models, every night the campaign ran 66,000 simulations of the election and used the results to direct its army of volunteers: whom to call, which doors to knock on, what to say. In politics, as in business and war, there is nothing worse than seeing your opponent make moves that you don’t understand and don’t know what to do about until it’s too late. That’s what happened to the Romney campaign. They could see the other side buying ads in particular cable stations in particular towns but couldn’t tell why; their crystal ball was too fuzzy. In the end, Obama won every battleground state save North Carolina and by larger margins than even the most accurate pollsters had predicted. The most accurate pollsters, in turn, were the ones (like Nate Silver) who used the most sophisticated prediction techniques; they were less accurate than the Obama campaign because they had fewer resources. But they were a lot more accurate than the traditional pundits, whose predictions were based on their expertise. You might think the 2012 election was a fluke: most elections are not close enough for machine learning to be the deciding factor. But machine learning will cause more elections to be close in the future. In politics, as in everything, learning is an arms race. In the days of Karl Rove, a former direct marketer and data miner, the Republicans were ahead. By 2012, they’d fallen behind, but now they’re catching up again.

Personal responsibility is completely foreign to the highest echelons of the Street. Citigroup’s stock fell 44 percent in 2011, but its CEO, Vikram Pandit, got at least $5.45 million on top of a retention bonus of $16.7 million. The stock of JPMorgan Chase fell 20 percent, but its CEO, Jamie Dimon, was awarded a package worth $22.9 million.

The Guardian, Victor Drayton knew that though his work hadn't been fully realized when he was alive it had presented huge economies of scale in his death through his creation of millions of monitor programs to assist human beings: he had been given the ability to transcend mortality and had become the closest thing to a real life ghost as he touched human lives and existed, encapsulated in this electronic mind beyond the grave, thinking, feeling and utilizing his intellectual skills to invisibly interact with human beings every day.

It seems no one is guaranteed a job anywhere anymore. These are troubled times for workers. The creeping sense that no one’s job is safe, even as the companies they work for are thriving, means the spread of fear, apprehension, and confusion. One sign of this growing unease: An American headhunting firm reported that more than half of callers making inquiries about jobs were still employed—but were so fearful of losing those jobs that they had already started to look for another.5 The day that AT&T began notifying the first of forty thousand workers to be laid off—in a year when its profits were a record $4.7 billion—a poll reported that a third of Americans feared that someone in their household would soon lose a job. Such fears persist at a time when the American economy is creating more jobs than it is losing. The churning of jobs—what economists euphemistically call “labor market flexibility”—is now a troubling fact of work life. And it is part of a global tidal wave sweeping through all the leading economies of the developed world, whether in Europe, Asia, or the Americas. Prosperity is no guarantee of jobs; layoffs continue even amidst a booming economy. This paradox, as Paul Krugman, an MIT economist, puts it, is “the unfortunate price we have to pay for having as dynamic an economy as we do.”6 There is now a palpable bleakness about the new landscape of work. “We work in what amounts to a quiet war zone” is the way one midlevel executive at a multinational firm put it to me. “There’s no way to give your loyalty to a company and expect it to be returned anymore. So each person is becoming their own little shop within the company—you have to be able to be part of a team, but also ready to move on and be self-sufficient.” For many older workers—children of the meritocracy, who were taught that education and technical skills were a permanent ticket to success—this new way of thinking may come as a shock. People are beginning to realize that success takes more than intellectual excellence or technical prowess, and that we need another sort of skill just to survive—and certainly to thrive—in the increasingly turbulent job market of the future. Internal qualities such as resilience, initiative, optimism, and adaptability are taking on a new valuation. A

We prepare for victory or defeat at the start of each day. When you get up in the morning, you have to set your mind in the right direction. You may feel discouraged. You may feel the blahs, thinking, I don’t want to go to work today. Or I don’t want to deal with these children. Or I’ve got so many problems. If you make the mistake of dwelling on those thoughts, you are preparing to have a lousy day. You’re using your faith in the wrong direction. Turn it around and say, “This will be a great day. Something good will happen to me. God has favor in my future, and I’m expecting new opportunities, divine connections, and supernatural breakthroughs. When you take that approach, you prepare for victory, increase, and restoration. God says to the angels, “Did you hear that? They’re expecting My goodness. They’re expecting to prosper in spite of the economy. They’re expecting to get well in spite of the medical report. They’re expecting to accomplish their dreams even though they don’t have the resources right now.” When you begin each day in faith, anticipating something good, God tells the angels to go to work and to arrange things in your favor. He gives you breaks, lines up the right people, and opens the right doors. That’s what allows God to show up and do amazing things. Sometimes you will see major improvements in your life if you just make that minor adjustment. You would not only have more energy, you would also have a better attitude, and you would be more productive. You would see new doors open. You would meet new friends. You would get some of those breakthroughs you’ve been praying for if you would just get up in the morning and, instead of preparing for defeat, prepare for victory. Prepare for increase. Prepare for God’s favor. You have to set the tone at the start of each day. If you leave your mind in neutral, the negative thoughts will start to come just by default.

I heard all these birds singing and singing so loud and so cheerful. Little birds were chirping and chirping. Big birds were making a melody. It was like they were having a big party. I wanted to say to them, “Hey, birds. Have you read the newspapers lately? Did you see the stock market last year? You’re not supposed to be singing, enjoying life. What’s wrong with you? You’re acting like everything will be all right.” What was it with those birds? They know a secret. They know their heavenly Father is in control. They know God has promised to take care of them, so they go through the day singing and enjoying life, regardless of the circumstances. That’s how to start off each day. Get up in the morning and have a song of praise in your heart. Put a smile on your face. Go out into the day and be determined to enjoy it. The apostle Paul wrote: “Be happy [in your faith] and rejoice and be glad-hearted continually (always)” (1 Thessalonians 5:16 AMP). How long are we supposed to be glad-hearted? How long are we supposed to have a smile on our faces? As long as people treat us right? As long as we feel okay? As long as the economy is up? No, the Scripture says, “Be glad-hearted continually (always).” That means in the good times and in the tough times, when it’s sunny and when it’s raining. When dark clouds are over your head and you feel like life is depressing and gloomy, always remember that right above those dark clouds the sun is shining. You may not be able to see the sun in your life right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s not up there. It’s just blocked by the dark clouds. The good news is, the clouds are temporary. The clouds will not last forever. The sun will shine in your life once again. In the meantime, keep your joy. Be glad-hearted continually. Don’t let a few clouds darken your life. The rain falls on the just and the unjust. That means we all face disappointments, unfair situations, tests, trials, and temptation. But know this: Right past the test is promotion. On the other side of every difficulty is increase. If you go through adversity with a smile on your face and a song in your heart, on the other side there will be a reward.

At the time of our visit, European manufacturers doubted the robustness of the Indian car market, as well as the merits of being a minority partner in a government-managed company. Their fears were not without basis. Though the Indian economy had grown 7.2 per cent in 1980-81, it was not seen as a very vibrant economy. The demand for cars had been stagnant for a decade. Cars were highly taxed and were considered a luxury item. The economy was still closed and highly controlled and the business environment for foreigners was not friendly. If the number of cars produced was small, royalties would not yield much income. The stringent localization conditions would mean that profits from the sale of imported components would be low. The world car market was going through a downswing at that time and European car makers were battling stiff competition from Japanese cars on their home turf. Getting into an unfamiliar, and what appeared to be an unattractive market, was hardly a priority.

In 2005, nonprofits employed 12.9 million people, approximately 9.7% of the U.S. economy, and they employed more people than the construction (7.3 million), finance and insurance (5.8 million), and real estate (2.0 million) sectors.

Page 7: (H)e (Darwin) supposed that man, before he even emerged from apedom, was already a social being, living in small scattered communities. Evolution in his eyes was carried out mainly as a struggle between communities - team against team, tribe against tribe. Inside each team or tribe, the 'ethical cosmos' [the dual code of Amity and Enmity] was at work, forging and strengthening the social bonds which made the members of such a team a co-operative whole. … Thus, in the early stages of human evolution we find competition and co-operation as constituent elements of the evolutionary process … Co-operation and unity give strength to a team or tribe; but why did neighboring tribes refuse so stubbornly to amalgamate? If united, they would have got rid of competition and struggle. Why do human tribes instinctively repel every thought of amalgamation, and prize above all things independence, the control of their destiny, their sovereignty? Here we have to look beneath the surface of things and formulate a theory to explain tribal behavior. How does a tribe fulfill an evolutionary purpose? A tribe is a 'corporate body,' which Nature has entrusted with an assortment of human seed or genes, the assortment differing in some degree from that entrusted to every other tribe. If the genes are to work out their evolutionary effects, then it is necessary that the tribe or corporation should maintain its integrity through an infinity of generations. If a tribe loses its integrity by a slackening of social bonds, or by disintegration of the parental instincts, or by lack of courage or of skill to defend itself from the aggression of neighboring tribes, or by free interbreeding with neighbors and thus scattering its genes, then that tribe as an evolutionary venture has come to an untimely end. For evolutionary purposes it has proved a failure. Page 25: Tribalism was Nature's method in bringing about the evolution of man. I have already explained what a tribe really is - a corporation of human beings entrusted with a certain capital of genes. The business of such a corporation is to nurse and develop its stock of genes - to bring them to an evolutionary fruition. To reach such an end a tribal corporation had to comply with two conditions: (1) it had to endure for a long age; (2) it had to remain intact and separate from all neighboring and competing tribes. Human nature was fashioned or evolved just to secure these two conditions - continuity through time and separation in space. Hence the duality of man's nature - the good, social, or virtuous traits serving intratribal economy; the evil, vicious, or antisocial qualities serving the intertribal economy and the policy of keeping its genes apart. Human nature is the basal part of the machinery used for the evolution of man. When you know the history of our basal mentality - one fitted for tribal life - do you wonder at the disorder and turmoil which now afflict the detribalized part of the world?

Paul was driven to fulfill his ministry. He told the Ephesian elders, “I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, in order that I may finish my course, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24). That ministry consisted primarily of the preaching of the word of God, of “declaring … the whole purpose of God” (Acts 20:27). And Paul fulfilled that ministry. Near the end of his life he exclaimed triumphantly, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7). His economy of effort, his single-minded devotion, and clear, direct focus on the task God had given him enabled him to carry out his ministry fully. He set himself to do God’s will, nothing more or less, and stayed within that narrow prescription.

ALL OF THAT said, the reason I suggest the bioregion as a meeting grounds for our attention is not simply because it would address species loneliness, or because it enriches the human experience, or even because I believe our physical survival may depend on it. I value bioregionalism for the even more basic reason that, just as attention may be the last resource we have to withhold, the physical world is our last common reference point. At least until everyone is wearing augmented reality glasses 24/7, you cannot opt out of awareness of physical reality. The fact that commenting on the weather is a cliché of small talk is actually a profound reminder of this, since the weather is one of the only things we each know any other person must pay attention to.

PwC estimates that the United States and China are set to capture a full 70 percent of the $15.7 trillion that AI will add to the global economy by 2030, with China alone taking home $7 trillion.

In sum, it would seem that there has been a remarkable increase in Asia’s engagement with the world economy over the past fifty years, which is reflected in its growing relative importance in every dimension. The dominance of Asia, led by East Asia, is particularly striking in international trade flows, where both have expanded at the expense of all other country-groups and regions of the world. However, even though Asia and East Asia are significant in other spheres, such a dominance is not visible in international investment and international migration. 7.

Five years later, the legacy of Trump’s presidency and his promises can be addressed. There never was an infrastructure bill. Trump’s budgets consistently proposed cuts to the social programs he vowed not to touch. He did little to combat the opioid epidemic he promised to end, with deaths rising by the end of his tenure. The national debt Trump promised to erase has ballooned by almost $7.8 trillion. Trump’s failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with nothing remains the nadir of his public approval, surpassing even the days following his incitement of an armed attack on the Capitol building in an effort to overturn his 2020 election loss. Trump has the worst jobs record of any president since 1939, with more than three million lost. He is, in fact, the worst jobs president “god ever created,” despite inheriting an economy that had finally begun to boom in the later years of the Obama administration. The promises of better healthcare didn’t materialize, and the job and wage growth from the economy he inherited were crushed by the pandemic he refused to address. Those were not the promises Trump kept.

Our blessed Redeemer, in directing us how to conduct one towards another, appeals to our own feeling: “Whatsoever ye would that other men should do to you, do ye even so to them” [Mt. 7:12]. Now where such live in fullness on the labor of others, who have never had experience of hard labor themselves, there is often a danger of their not having a right feeling of the labourer’s condition, and therefore of being disqualified to judge candidly in their case, not knowing what they themselves would desire were they to labor hard from one year to another to raise the necessaries of life and to pay large rents beside—that it’s good for those who live in fullness to labor for tenderness of heart, to improve every opportunity of being acquainted with the hardships and fatigues of those who labor for their living, and [to] think seriously with themselves: Am I influenced with true charity in fixing all my demands? Have I no desire to support myself in expensive customs because my acquaintance live in those customs, Were I to labor as they do toward supporting them and their children in a station like mine, in such sort as they and their children labor for us, could I not on such a change, before I entered into agreements of rents or interest, name some costly articles now used by me or in my family which have no real use in them, the expense whereof might be lessened? And should I not in such case strongly desire the disuse of those needless expenses, that less answering their way of life the terms might be the easier to me? If a wealthy man, on serious reflection, finds a witness in his own conscience that there are some expenses which he indulgeth himself in that are in conformity to custom, which might be omitted consistent with the true design of living, and which was he to change places with those who occupy his estate he would desire to be discontinued by them—whoever are thus awakened to their feeling will necessarily find the injunction binding on them: “Do thou even so to them

100 Air China: 22" × 16" × 8" (max: Economy, 11 pounds/Business, 2 pieces of luggage, 17 pounds each) 101 American Airlines: 22" × 14" × 9" (max: undisclosed) 102 Delta Air Lines: 22" × 14" × 9" (max: 15 pounds when flying out of Singapore Changi Airport, 22 pounds when flying out of Beijing Capital Airport and Shanghai Pudong Airport) 103 EasyJet: 22" × 17.7" × 9.8" (max: undisclosed) 104 Emirates: 22" × 15" × 8" (max: 15 pounds) 105 Quantas: 22" × 14.2" × 9" (max: 15 pounds) 106 Ryanair: 21.7" × 15.7" × 7.9" (max: 22 pounds) 107 Southwest Airlines: 24" × 16" × 10" (max: 15.4 pounds) 108 Turkish Airlines: 21.7" × 15.7" × 9" (max: 17.6 pounds) 109 United Airlines: 22" × 14" × 9" (max: undisclosed)

Norman now surprised everyone by arguing for a sharp rise in U.S. rates, possibly by 1 percent, even by 2 percent, taking the discount rate to 7 percent. The Fed should try to break "the spirit of speculation," "prostrating" the market by a forceful tightening of credit. Once a change in psychology had been achieved, interest rate could be then brought down again and capital flows to Europe would resume. For some reason Norman thought the Fed could pierce the bubble with a surgical incision that would bring it back to earth, without harming the economy. It was a completely absurd idea. Monetary policy does not work like a scalpel but more like a sledgehammer. Norman could neither be sure how high rates would have to go to check the market boom nor predict with any certainty what this would do to the U.S. economy.

Women represented 21 per cent of India’s workforce despite being half of college graduates in the country, placing India in the bottom ten countries in the world in terms of women workforce participation. In contrast, similar economies such as China and Brazil had 61 per cent and 48 per cent of women in the workforce, respectively.

LOCAL SELF AS HOST FOR NONLOCAL SELF When you drop back into your daily life after meditation, you’re changed. You’ve communed with nonlocal mind for an hour, experiencing the highest possible cadence of who you are. That High Self version of you rearranges neurons in your head to create a physical structure to anchor it. You now have a brain that accommodates both the local self and the nonlocal self. My experience has been that the longer you spend in Bliss Brain, whether in or out of meditation, the greater the volume of neural tissue available to anchor that transcendent self in physical experience. Once a critical mass of neurons has wired together, a tipping point occurs. You begin to flash spontaneously into Bliss Brain throughout your day. When you’re idle for a while, like being stuck in traffic or standing in line at the grocery store, the most natural activity seems to be to go into Bliss Brain for a few moments. This reminds you, in the middle of everyday life, that the nonlocal component of your Self exists. It also brings all the enhanced creativity, productivity, and problem-solving ability of Bliss Brain to bear on your daily tasks. You become a happy, creative, and effective person. These enhanced capabilities render you much more able to cope with the challenges of life. They don’t confer exceptional luck. When everyone’s house burns down, yours does too. When the economy nosedives, it takes you with it. But because you possess resilience, and a daily experience of your nonlocal self, you take it in stride. Even when external things vanish, you still have the neural network that Bliss Brain created. No one can take that away from you. DEEPENING PRACTICES Here are practices you can do this week to integrate the information in this chapter into your life: Posttraumatic Growth Exercise 1: In your journal, write down the names of the most resilient people you’ve known personally. They can be alive or dead. They’re people who’ve gone through tragedy and come out intact. Make an appointment to spend time with at least two of the living ones in the coming month. Listen to their stories and allow inspiration to fill you. Neural Reconsolidation Exercise: This week, after a particularly deep meditation, savor the experience. Set a timer and lie down for 15 to 30 minutes. Visualize your synapses wiring together as you deliberately fire them by remembering the deliciousness of the meditation. Choices Exercise: Make 10 photocopies of illustration 7.4, the two doors. Next, analyze in what areas of your environment you often make negative choices. Maybe it’s in online meetings with an annoying colleague at work. Maybe it’s the food choices you make when you walk to the fridge. Maybe it’s the movies you watch on your TV. Tape a copy of the two doors illustration to those objects, such as the monitor, fridge, or TV. This will help you remember, when you’re under stress, that you have a choice.

During the forty years from 1978 to 2018, typical workers saw their compensation rise by a meager 12 percent; CEO compensation, meanwhile, ballooned by 940 percent. As of 2020, home health and personal care aides, one of the fastest-growing sectors of the economy, took home $27,080 per year on average. Other workers who provide socially necessary care, like preschool teachers, take home just over $30,500 a year. Food and service workers, meanwhile, take home just $21,250 a year. For the 7.5 million US residents who work these three jobs—and for the families dependent on them—staying afloat is a constant struggle, if not an impossibility. I wish I could say these occupations were the anomaly, but they’re not. What was once America’s working class is today its working poor.19 The

Check in frequently and consistently—not just once a year for an intense engagement. 2. Create content that others can access. 3. “Police” the community and ensure that cultural norms that strengthen the group are enforced. 4. Have a two-way relationship with the organization itself—providing feedback and suggestions. 5. Demonstrate genuine desire to help other members. 6. Attract new members. 7. Aid in the onboarding of new members.

Across the economy, incomes doubled from 1945 to 1970. The era was characterized by affluence: single-family homes with cars, good public education, steady jobs, electricity, plumbing, toys, television, health care, and a secure old age. Meanwhile, a strongly progressive tax code spread the costs of repaying the wartime debt and funding the new social services evenly. The top marginal tax rate during Eisenhower’s administration was 91 percent, and the effective tax rate for the highest incomes was 70 percent. The corporate tax rate peaked at 52.8 percent in the late 1960s.[7]

startups take fewer employees. “In 1999, the typical new business had 7.7 employees; its counterpart in 2011 had 4.7.

We look up to her, as on a Star that guides us, shining through the dark clouds of human uncertainty. The annual Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception shines bright from within the background of the Advent liturgy. We contemplate Our Lady in the divine economy of salvation as the ‘Gate of heaven’ through which the Redeemer comes into the world.[398]

The warning signs had been there since the crash of 2008, but after the initial shock, nothing had been done to correct the problem. Banks had been trading over $7 trillion in risky derivatives daily, as well as fixing interest rates and making bets on the rigged games. There was an ever-growing gap between the elite and all the rest of the people which had continued to develop even after the 2008 crash.

In response to current events, people often reach for historical analogies, and this occasion was no exception. The trick is to choose the right analogy. In August 2007, the analogies that came to mind—both inside and outside the Fed—were October 1987, when the Dow Jones industrial average had plummeted nearly 23 percent in a single day, and August 1998, when the Dow had fallen 11.5 percent over three days after Russia defaulted on its foreign debts. With help from the Fed, markets had rebounded each time with little evident damage to the economy. Not everyone viewed these interventions as successful, though. In fact, some viewed the Fed’s actions in the fall of 1998—three quarter-point reductions in the federal funds rate—as an overreaction that helped fuel the growing dot-com bubble. Others derided what they perceived to be a tendency of the Fed to respond too strongly to price declines in stocks and other financial assets, which they dubbed the “Greenspan put.” (A put is an options contract that protects the buyer against loss if the price of a stock or other security declines.) Newspaper opinion columns in August 2007 were rife with speculation that Helicopter Ben would provide a similar put soon. In arguing against Fed intervention, many commentators asserted that investors had grown complacent and needed to be taught a lesson. The cure to the current mess, this line of thinking went, was a repricing of risk, meaning a painful reduction in asset prices—from stocks to bonds to mortgage-linked securities. “Credit panics are never pretty, but their virtue is that they restore some fear and humility to the marketplace,” the Wall Street Journal had editorialized, in arguing for no rate cut at the August 7 FOMC meeting.

Imagine if you will two circles, one a larger outer circle we call the circle of concern, and the second a smaller inner circle we call the circle of influence. The circle of influence basically means those things you can do something about. You can have influence upon them or control over them, such as your work, your health, your attitude. The circle of concern, the outer circle, represents things you can do nothing about, such as the economy, other people’s behavior, even the weather. Where does the proactive person focus? On the inner circle. And what do you think happens to this inner circle? It gets larger and larger. And you’re more and more able to influence. And where do you think the reactive person focuses?

Adjusted for inflation, the top 0.1 percent saw their average annual income rise from just over $1 million in 1974 to $7.1 million in 2007. And things were even better for the top 0.01 percent, who saw their average annual income explode from less than $4 million to $35 million, nearly a ninefold increase.51 It is not simply that the rich are getting richer, though that’s certainly true. It is that a smaller and smaller group of über-rich are able to capture a larger and larger share of the fruits of the American economy. America now features more inequality than any other industrialized democracy.

German socialism had to overcome this “private,” that is, unrestrained and irresponsible view of property. All property is common property. The owner is bound by the people and the Reich to the responsible management of his goods. His legal position is only justified when he satisfies this responsibility to the community.7 Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation’s economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, is secondary; what counts is the issue of control. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property—so long as the state reserves to itself the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property. If “ownership” means the right to determine the use and disposal of material goods, then Nazism endowed the state with every real prerogative of ownership. What the individual retained was merely a formal deed, a contentless deed, which conferred no rights on its holder.

It is hard to find many better examples of values-first leadership than Ventura, California-based outdoor clothing company Patagonia. For more than 30 years, the company has defied conventional wisdom by building its brand as much around environmental responsibility as on quality products and service. How many businesses would run a marketing campaign encouraging customers to not buy new products but repair the old ones instead in order to reduce their environmental footprint? Only companies interested in creating a “lovability economy” would prioritize sustainable growth for themselves and the world and take a long-term perspective. They see themselves as stewards of meaningful relationships and understand that mutually positive interactions and exchanges of value are lasting. Patagonia has even made its supply chain public with an online map showing every farm, textile mill, and factory it uses in sourcing its materials and manufacturing its products. Anyone who wants to can see where their Patagonia products come from and verify that the company is walking the walk — using sustainable materials and producing apparel in facilities that are safe for workers. That is transparency that breeds trust. Founder Yvon Chouinard’s vision has also led to a culture that is not only employee-friendly (the company even encourages employees at its corporate headquarters to quit early when the surf is up) but attracts people whose values align with the company’s. This aggressively anti-profit, pro-values approach has yielded big dividends. The privately-held benefit corporation is tight-lipped about its revenues, but two years after it began its “cause marketing” campaign, sales increased 27 percent, to $575 million in 2013.7

The first stacked dolls better known as Russian Nesting Dolls, matryoshka dolls or Babushka Dolls, were first made in 1890 by Vasily Zvyozdochkin. Much of the artistry is in the painting of the usual 5 dolls, although the world record is 51 dolls. Each doll, which when opened reveals a smaller doll of the same type inside ending with the smallest innermost doll, which is considered the baby doll and is carved from a single piece of wood. Frequently these dolls are of a woman, dressed in a full length traditional Russian peasant dress called a sarafan. When I served with the Military Intelligence Corps of the U.S.Army, the concept of onion skins was a similar metaphor used to denote that we were always encouraged to look beyond the obvious. That it was essential to delve deeper into a subject, so as to arrive at the essence of the situation or matter. This is the same principle I employed in writing my award winning book, The Exciting Story of Cuba. Although it can be considered a history book, it is actually a book comprised of many stories or vignettes that when woven together give the reader a view into the inner workings of the Island Nation, just 90 miles south of Key West. The early 1950’s are an example of this. At that time President Batista was hailed a champion of business interests and considered this a direct endorsement of his régime. Sugar prices remained high during this period and Cuba enjoyed some of its best years agriculturally. For those at the top of the ladder, the Cuban economy flourished! However, it was during this same period that the people lower on the economic ladder struggled. A populist movement was started, resulting in a number of rebel bands to challenge the entrenched regime, including the followers of autocrats such as Fidel and Raul Castro. Castro’s M 26 7 militia had a reputation of indiscriminately placing bombs, one of which blew a young woman to pieces in the once-grand theater, “Teatro America.” A farmer, who failed to cooperate with Batista’s army, was locked into his home with his wife and his daughter, which was then set on fire killing them all. What had been a corrupt but peaceful government, quickly turned into a war zone. Despite of Batista’s constitutional abuses and his alliance with the Mafia, the years under his régime were still the most prosperous ones in Cuba’s history. Of course most of the money went to those at the top of the economic ladder and on the lower end of the scale a house maid was lucky to make $25 to $30 a month.

Most consumers appear to be willing to trade access to detailed data about their spending behavior for easy access to credit. But many may not fully appreciate the fact that the same dynamics that power the credit agencies underlie the services provided by “free” information service businesses—the data aggregators we described in chapter 7. If

On the other hand, there are a number of cases where economic growth did not produce better governance, but where, to the contrary, it was good governance that was responsible for growth. Consider South Korea and Nigeria. In 1954, following the Korean War, South Korea’s per capita GDP was lower than that of Nigeria, which was to win its independence from Britain in 1960. Over the following fifty years, Nigeria took in more than $300 billion in oil revenues, and yet its per capita income declined in the years between 1975 and 1995. In contrast, South Korea grew at rates ranging from 7 to 9 percent per year over this same period, to the point that it became the world’s twelfth-largest economy by the time of the Asian financial crisis in 1997. The reason for this difference in performance is almost entirely attributable to the far superior government that presided over South Korea compared to Nigeria.

justified the hyperbole. With the ongoing “war” approaching the ten-year mark, the U.S. economy shed a total of 7.9 million jobs in just three years.3 For only the second time since World War II, the official unemployment rate topped 10 percent. The

It’s estimated the economy would grow by 2 percent in 2012, which is peanuts. The deeper the economic hole we’ve been in, the faster we need to grow in order to get back on track. Given the depth of the hole we fell into in 2008, we would need the economy to be growing by 4–6 percent in 2012 and at least that fast in 2013. Consider that in 1934, when the economy began emerging from the bottom of the Great Depression, it grew 7.7 percent. The next year it grew more than 8 percent. In 1936 it grew a whopping 14.1 percent.

10:12; 14:17). ‹‹    DAY 5    ›› II. The purpose of God’s calling is fully revealed in the New Testament: A. God’s calling is according to His predestination (Eph. 1:4-5), His purpose (2 Tim. 1:9; Rom. 8:28), and His grace (2 Tim. 1:9-10). B. God’s calling is in Christ (1 Pet. 5:10) and through the gospel (2 Thes. 2:14). C. The New Testament reveals various aspects of the purpose of God’s calling: 1. God has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9): a. Darkness is a sign of sin and death; it is the expression and sphere of Satan in death. b. When God calls us, He opens our eyes and turns us from darkness to light and from the authority of Satan to Himself; to be turned to God means to be turned to the authority of God, which is God’s kingdom of light (Acts 26:18). 2. God’s calling is that His chosen ones may be separated and made holy unto God, to be the holy ones, the saints (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2). ‹‹    DAY 6    ›› 3. God has called us so that we may enter into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, to partake of and enjoy His all-inclusive riches (vv. 9, 30). 4. God has called us into the sufferings of Christ (1 Pet. 2:20-21). 5. For the Body of Christ, God has called us into the peace of Christ (Col. 3:15). 6. God has called us for the purpose of obtaining the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ; He has called His chosen ones unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth so that they might obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thes. 2:13-14). 7. God’s calling is by His own glory and with the goal of our entering into the eternal glory of God (2 Pet. 1:3; 1 Pet. 5:10): a. God has called us not only by His glory but also to His glory. b. In order that we might enter into His eternal glory, the God of all grace is ministering to us the riches of the bountiful supply of the divine life in many aspects and in many steps of the divine operation on and in us in God’s economy (v. 10; 2 Pet. 1:3). 8. God has called us into His kingdom (1 Thes. 2:12): a. The kingdom of God is an organism constituted with God’s life as a realm of life for His ruling, in which He reigns by the divine life and expresses Himself in the divine life (John 3:3, 5-6; Matt. 6:10, 13). b. Today we, the called ones, should live in the church as the kingdom of God so that we may grow and develop in the life of God unto full maturity; through this growth and development, the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly supplied to us (Rom. 14:17; 2 Pet. 1:5-11).

Agriculture is twenty percent of GDP. The most important crop is wheat. We are almost self-sufficient, overall almost eighty percent self-sufficient, in food.” In addition, he says, the country’s external debt of $7 billion is only ten percent of GDP, a proportion Greece, Spain, and Italy could envy. With foreign reserves of $17 billion, the country, in his view, could go on importing for another ten months. Syria is receiving assistance from Russia, Iran, and Iraq, which helps further to ease the burden. In any case, as in Iraq from 1990 to 2003, the sanctions are affecting the populace more than the regime. Further harming the people and the economy is the endemic corruption of some within the regime, who have treated the state as their personal business enterprise to be looted at will.

According to Brightsource, solar power tower is expected to produce electricity at a cost 30% to 40% lower than that produced by parabolic trough, the CSP market leader88.

As I’ve explained, solar generation on the utility scale is likely to be dominated by concentrating solar thermal power (CSP). So far the

Building a CSP plant (solar power tower or parabolic trough) currently requires an investment around $4 to $6 per watt.

Revering God Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Only fools despise wisdom and discipline. Proverbs 1:7 As we look at the state of the world around us, at what has happened in the past and what we may face in the year ahead, there is much to fear: Will a sniper terrorize our community as has happened in other areas? Will the bottom fall out of the economy? Will my job be jeopardized? Will there be violence at my child’s school? Fear about possibilities like these can consume us, producing increased stress and even illness. But today’s verse tells us that there is only one thing to fear—God himself. This fear is not an unhealthy fear that leads to cringing and hiding as Adam and Eve did after they had disobeyed God. Rather, it is a humble and honest recognition of God’s beauty, sovereignty, and preeminence so that worshiping and serving him take first place in our lives. It is a healthy reverence that leads to intimacy and an understanding that the power of God residing in us by his Spirit is greater than the power of our fears or of our enemy Satan. A deep sense of awe about who God is leads to the true knowledge and wisdom we desperately need for our lives today and in the year ahead.   LORD, develop in me a deep reverence of you that leads to life, wisdom, and greater intimacy with you. Open my heart to be teachable and to receive correction and discipline willingly. Grant that I would fear you, Father, and not my circumstances in the present or the what-ifs of the future. May I be so filled with your love that faith would replace my fear.   WHILE WE MUST NEVER ON THE ONE HAND LOSE THE FREEDOM TO ENTER BOLDLY AND JOYFULLY BY FAITH INTO GOD’S PRESENCE DURING OUR LIVES ON EARTH, WE MUST ALSO LEARN HOW TO REVERE GOD IN OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM. . . . INTIMACY CANNOT OCCUR WITHOUT RESPECT. John White

Digital Economy In India Is Among The Top 7 Modern Social Transfromation and Wealth Creation Opportunity Since Industrial Revolution In Europe In 1740

God Honors Our Trust in Him He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. PSALM 91:15 Many people have difficulty trusting God because of past hurts. But God is not like the people who have hurt us. We can trust Him! Although God wants to take care of us, His hands are tied by our unbelief and works of the flesh. He is a gentleman and will not just take over without being invited to do so. He waits until we give up the job of self-care and place our trust and confidence in Him. The law of faith, mentioned in 1 Peter 5:7, is this: When you stop trying to take care of yourself, you release God to take care of you! (Paraphrased.) I have discovered that it is very hard to walk in obedience to God and in love with others if my primary interest is that “I” don’t get hurt or taken advantage of. However, when I allow God to be God in my life, He honors three distinct promises He makes in Psalm 91:15: He’ll be with me in trouble, He’ll deliver me, and He will honor me. Honor is a place of lifting up. When God honors a believer, He lifts up or exalts that person. When we let go and do not try to care for ourselves, we are admitting that we need God’s help. It is an act of humility, and that act of faith places us in the direct line of God’s exaltation. Peter wrote, “Therefore humble yourselves [demote, lower yourselves in your own estimation] under the mighty hand of God, that in due time He may exalt you…” (1 Pet. 5:6). When we trust God, we are in line for a promotion. God will honor us and reward us as we place our faith in Him. In the world’s system, you work hard and then get your reward. In God’s economy, you trust Him deeply and then receive your reward.

Americans spend an average of about $7,200 a year on health care, compared with the roughly $2,900 average for the other market economies that make up the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), and for that greatly increased outlay we get higher infant mortality, higher obesity rates, lower longevity, fewer doctors per 1,000 people (just 2.4 per 1,000 in the United States, compared with 3.1 in OECD states), and fewer acute care hospital beds (2.7 per 1,000, compared to 3.8 per 1,000 in the OECD countries).

Very quickly, the Obama administration lost political momentum. The obscene sight of those who had played a major role in setting the scene for the Crash (men like Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke) effectively returning to the scene of the crime as ‘saviours’, wielding trillions of freshly minted or borrowed dollars to lavish upon their banker ‘mates’, was enough to turn off even the hardiest of Mr Obama’s supporters. The result was predictable: as often happens during a deflationary period (think of the 1930s, for example), those who gainpolitically do not come from the revolutionary Left; they come from the loony Right. In the United States it was the Tea Party that grew on the back of a disdain for bankers, 6 a denunciation of the Fed, a clarion call for ‘honest’, metal-backed money, 7 and a revulsion towards all government. Ironically, the rise of the Tea Party increased the interventions of the Fed that the movement denounced. The reason was simple: once the Obama administration had lost its way, and could not pass any meaningful bills through Congress that might have stimulated the economy, onlyone lever was left with which anyone could steer America’s macroeconomy – the Fed’s monetary policy. And since interest rates were dwelling in the nether world of the first liquidity trap to hit the United States since the 1930s8 (recall Chapter 2 here), the Fed decided that quantitative easing or QE – the strategy that Chapter 8 describes in the context of the 1990s’ ‘lost Japanese decade’ – was all that was left separating America from a repugnant depression.

The IMF has lowered its forecast for China’s economy this year from 7.1 per cent growth to 6.8 per cent, in large part because of the slowdown in property and investment.

A century ago, in his 1905 classic work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber argued that striving for success is a compulsory virtue, even a sacred duty in American culture. "The capitalistic economy of the present day is an immense cosmos into which the individual is born, and which presents itself to him, at least as an individual, as an unalterable order of things in which he must live," Weber explained. "It forces the individual, in so far as he is involved in the system of market relationships, to conform to capitalistic rules of action." These rules include the rational pursuit of profit, the perpetual increase of capital as an end in itself, the development of an acquisitive personality, and the belief that ceaseless work is a necessity of life.7

The Greek GDP spiked 25% when statisticians dove into the country’s black market in 2006, for instance, thereby enabling the government to take out several hefty loans shortly before the European debt crisis broke out. Italy started including its black market back in 1987, which swelled its economy by 20% overnight. “A wave of euphoria swept over Italians,” reported the New York Times, “after economists recalibrated their statistics taking into account for the first time the country’s formidable underground economy of tax evaders and illegal workers.”4 And that’s to say nothing of all the unpaid labor that doesn’t even qualify as part of the black market, from volunteering to childcare to cooking, which together represents more than half of all our work. Of course, we can hire cleaners or nannies to do some of these chores, in which case they count toward the GDP, but we still do most ourselves. Adding all this unpaid work would expand the economy by anywhere from 37% (in Hungary) to 74% (in the UK).5 However, as the economist Diane Coyle notes, “generally official statistical agencies have never bothered – perhaps because it has been carried out mainly by women.”6 While we’re on the subject, only Denmark has ever attempted to quantify the value of breastfeeding in its GDP. And it’s no paltry sum: In the U.S., the potential contribution of breast milk has been estimated at an incredible $110 billion a year7 – about the size of China’s military budget.

Borio cast aside the money veil to reveal a world of asset price bubbles, financial cycles, and credit booms and busts: ‘Think monetary! Modelling the financial cycle correctly … requires recognising fully the fundamental monetary nature of our economies,’ was Borio’s clarion call.7 The financial system, he asserted, doesn’t just allocate resources, it generates purchasing power. It has a life of its own. Finance and macroeconomics are ‘inextricably linked’. We inhabit a looking-glass world. Finance does not mirror reality, but acts upon it.fn2 Economics without finance, said Borio, is like Hamlet without the prince.

prompting the United States in 1935 to join about twenty other countries that had already instituted a social insurance program. Social Security made moral sense. It made mathematical sense, too. At that time, just over half of men who reached their 21st birthday would also reach their 65th, the year at which most could begin to collect a supplemental income. Those who reached age 65 could count on about thirteen more years of life.32 And there were a lot of younger workers paying into the system to support that short retirement; at that time only about 7 percent of Americans were over the age of 65. As the economy began to boom again in the wake of World War II, there were forty-one workers paying into the system for every beneficiary. Those are the numbers that supported the system when its first beneficiary, a legal secretary from Vermont named Ida May Fuller, began collecting her checks. Fuller had worked for three years under Social Security and paid $24.75 into the system. She lived to the age of 100 and by the time of her death in 1975 had collected $22,888.92. At that point, the poverty rate among seniors had fallen to 15 percent, and it has continued to fall ever since, owing largely to social insurance.33 Now about three-quarters of Americans who reach the age of 21 also see 65. And changes to the laws that govern the US social insurance safety net have prompted many to retire—and begin collecting—earlier than that. New benefits have been added over the years. Of course, people are living longer, too; individuals who make it to the age of 65 can count on about twenty more years of life.34 And as just about every social insurance doomsdayer can tell you, the ratio of workers to beneficiaries is an unsustainable three to one.

Now, contrast that with a place like Centennial, Colorado, or Sterling Heights, Michigan, which are among the safest cities in the United States and have some of the lowest violent crime rates in the nation. There is so little violent crime in those cities, you don’t see the same sort of instant escalation of hostility. You don’t see the same sort of violent reaction to those same inconsequential things that would get you shot on the South Side of Chicago. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that those cities have robust economies and opportunities for people to succeed. When people don’t have to scrape by just to survive, they can thrive.

John Judis and Ruy Teixeira identified a useful distinction between members of this seemingly homogenous demographic—a distinction that can help to explain why two white-collar Americans might vote in opposite ways. They suggested that a group they call “professionals” tend toward the Democratic side. These professionals are typically white-collar workers with college or advanced degrees. They include “academics, architects, engineers, scientists, computer analysts, lawyers, physicians, registered nurses, teachers, social workers, therapists, fashion designers, interior decorators, graphic artists, writers, editors, and actors.” In the 1950s, according to Judis and Teixeira, such professionals represented only 7 percent of the workforce. Today, after a decades-long transition from a blue-collar, industrial economy to one where the engine of growth is ideas and services, they represent more than 15 percent of American workers.

Afraid to move and give away his nervousness, Zubair was in no hurry. Once most of the other passengers were gone, he retrieved his computer bag and made his way down the narrow stairs to the main body of the plane. He half expected to see a group of men in suits waiting for him, but thankfully there were none. He’d been warned that the Americans had gotten much better at intercepting people who were trying to illegally enter their country. Two female flight attendants with whorish makeup and skirts that were far too short stood by the door. They thanked him for flying Qantas. Despite what his trainers had told him, Zubair ignored the women, refusing to look them in the eye. Fortunately for him his diminutive stature made him seem shy rather than hostile. Zubair was just five and a half feet tall, and weighed a svelte 142 pounds. With his mustache shaved he easily passed for someone five to ten years younger than his twenty-nine years. He stepped into the Jetway, joining the stampede for baggage claim and customs and sandwiched between the business-class and economy customers. The stress of the situation and the heat of the enclosed Jetway triggered the scientist’s sweat glands, sending them into overdrive. Within seconds salty perspiration dampened every inch of his skin. Zubair felt trapped, as if he was on a conveyor belt headed toward his own execution. There was no turning back. Passengers continued to pour off the plane, pushing forward, moving through the confined tunnel toward U.S. Customs agents who would ask probing questions. Zubair suddenly wished he had taken the sedative that they had given him to calm his nerves. He had thrown the pills away at the Sydney airport. Allah would never approve of him taking a mood-altering drug.

the three major sectors (electricity, transportation, and industry) all produce comparable emissions. But they’d be affected very differently by an economy-wide carbon price. For example, coal fueled about one-quarter of US electricity in 2019, and each metric ton of that coal was sold for about $39.7 A carbon price of $40 for each ton of CO2 emitted would effectively double that cost to power plant operators and so be a strong inducement for them to forswear coal. In contrast, that same carbon price would increase the effective price of crude oil by only about 40 percent above $60 per barrel. And if that cost were passed through to the pump, gasoline would increase by only some $0.35 per gallon. Since that’s small compared to how much pump prices have varied historically, consumers wouldn’t have much incentive to move away from gasoline. So reductions in emissions from power (and, as it turns out, heat) are much easier to encourage than reductions from transportation, fundamentally because oil packs a lot more energy per carbon atom than does coal.

Humanitarian Arithmetic (Sonnet 1354) If it takes $300bn to end world hunger, and 7 trillion to fund the next AI wonder, how many people have to starve to death, to feed the appetite of the cyberworld? If Britain's NHS costs about $200bn, and US military costs 800 billion dollars, how many have to suffer from sickness, for the tribal chiefs to feel secure? If it takes $20bn to end homelessness in the US, and trillions to colonize Mars, how many have to sleep in cardboard boxes, for heirs of billionaires to breed on Mars? You don't need to be a Ramanujan or Euler, to solve this simple arithmetic equation. But you do need a living human heart, to take responsibility for the solution.

of climate change. What was needed was a massive nudge in the right direction. In the past, the stick of regulation and the rod of taxation were the methods that environmentalists believed could break the fossil fuel economy. But the Inflation Reduction Act doesn’t rely on such punitive tactics, because Manchin culled them from the bill. Instead, it imagined that the United States could become the global leader of a booming climate economy, if the government provided tax credits and subsidies, a lucrative set of incentives. There was a cost associated with the bill. By the Congressional Budget Office’s score, it offered $386 billion in tax credits to encourage the production of wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal plants, and battery storage. Tax credits would reduce the cost of electric vehicles so that they would become the car of choice for Middle America. But $386 billion was an estimate, not a price tag, since the legislation didn’t cap the amount of money available in tax credits. If utilities wanted to build more wind turbines or if demand for electric vehicles surged, the government would keep spending. When Credit Suisse studied the program, it estimated that so many businesses and consumers will avail themselves of the tax credits that the government could spend nearly $800 billion. If Credit Suisse is correct, then the tax credits will unleash $1.7 trillion in private sector spending on green technologies. Within six years, solar and wind energy produced by the US will be the cheapest in the world. Alternative energies will cross a threshold: it will become financially irresponsible not to use them. Even though Joe Biden played a negligible role in the final negotiations, the Inflation Reduction Act exudes his preferences. He romanticizes the idea of factories building stuff. It is a vision of the Goliath of American manufacturing, seemingly moribund, sprung back to life. At the same time that the legislation helps to stall climate change, it allows the United States to dominate the industries of the future. This was a bill that, in the end, climate activists and a broad swath of industry could love. Indeed, strikingly few business lobbies, other than finance and pharma, tried to stymie the bill in its final stages. It was a far cry from the death struggles over energy legislation in the Clinton and Obama administrations, when industry scuppered transformational legislation. The Inflation Reduction Act will allow the United States to prevent its own decline. And not just economic decline. Without such a meaningful program, the United States would have had no standing to prod other countries to respond more aggressively to climate change. It would have been a marginal player in shaping the response to the planet’s greatest challenge. The bill was an investment in moral authority.

Cops often saw cybercrime as a benign act that didn’t really hurt anyone. There was nothing benign in stealing someone’s identity or destroying their credit rating. There was nothing benign in controlling the world’s power grids, banking systems, or economies. Control cyber-technology and you controlled the flow of information for most of the world’s population. And cyber-warfare had already begun. Just ask the Iranians about Stuxnet, or Estonia, Ukraine and Georgia about pissing off the Russians.