Category Archives: Social policy

America’s Descent into Third World Status: Tropical Diseases Rise Among Poor (Update)

To the extent that middle class and more affluent people think about poverty in America, they likely have blurry, partial images due to distance and lack of direct experience. Their remedies might include better education and training, higher minimum wages, more affordable housing.

New Scientist thinks otherwise. Its headline for a blistering editorial: Want to fix US inequality? Begin with worming tablets.

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Ilargi: Everything’s Fine In A Parallel Universe

Last week, I was reading parts of a report issued by Japanese investment bank Nomura, which started out saying that the “Global Financial Crisis” is over. If I lay out a statement like that side by side with a lot of other things I see, I can only conclude that Nomura doesn’t reside in the same universe I do.

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Mathew D. Rose: Is It Time to Pull the Plug on the EU?

“Success is relative” wrote T. S. Eliot in his play The Family Reunion, “It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.” This is an apposite description of the current “success” in the EU. A financial and political disaster has been transformed into a permanent calamity.

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Satyajit Das: The End of Trust? Part I

Yves here. Das makes some statements in this post that I am certain will provide grist for reader discussion. But even if you quibble on some of the particulars, I anticipate you’ll agree on the extent of the damage done to trust at various levels of society and how costly it is proving to be.

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Michael Hoexter: Loathsome Wall Street Deficit Hysterics: ‘Blame the Old and Sick, Not Us’ – Part 2

While Pete Peterson and Bob Rubin have couched their campaign against Social Security and Medicare in the moral vestments of “fiscal responsibility”, they gloss over the macroeconomic financial reality of government and the requirement for deficit spending to maintain growth of the national and world economies.  The moral fervor that they apply is inapplicable to government programs: while it may seem real to them or the gullible politicians they influence, the moral outrage they hope to play on is based on false and inhumane premises.

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How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme — Again

Over the last year and a half, Wall Street hedge funds and private equity firms have quietly amassed an unprecedented rental empire, snapping up Queen Anne Victorians in Atlanta, brick-faced bungalows in Chicago, Spanish revivals in Phoenix

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Bob Goodwin: Why Code is Law

Several bellwether software initiatives have gone off the rails over the last five years. I am going to focus on one, because I learned about it on Naked Capitalism, and is where I first saw the expression “Code is Law”. I hope when history is written, this example will stand out on how the anarchist nerds that we call software engineers inadvertently started to hijack public institutions.

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Chronicles of a European Winter: “There is a Difference Between Saying Greeks Should Live With Less and Saying Greeks Should Live With Nothing”

This is the first segment of an ongoing project, Eurowinter, to record the human toll of austerity policies in Europe. It focuses on the suffering Greece, as told by Greeks themselves.

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Michael Olenick: Comprehensive Review of ObamaCare Plans Reveals Not Only High Cost for Atrocious Coverage, but Also Apparent Violations of ACA Requirements

After five weeks healthcare.gov presented insurance policies for my family to purchase. No wonder the website was dark for so long: the plans are expensive, atrocious, and the insurance companies look like they are cheating.

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