Current Affairs Donald Trump POS: Judgement cometh and that right soon

[abelard]

It's a nerve that can be easily struck. I should have walked away.

You're alright. In my head my posts are always in the spirit of jovial banter at the pub after a few rounds, and not furious basement missives. Easily lost without visual cues, I guess. And I am admittedly a bit of a smart-ass.

 

[SteveSC]

It's the man that puts the condom on mate. It's the man that so often bails on their responsibility. Not sure why women are getting the blame and the responsibility here. There was a post in another thread blaming some Tory MP for crassly and clumsily hoping that one day we might actually take responsibility for sex and the huge consequences of raising a child you're not able to support properly.

There's so much evidence to highlight the incredible importance of parenting, from education to crime, health to employment, yet we seem to shrug our shoulders and say it's fine to not wear a condom, it's fine to not think through the responsibility of raising your child. Generations of the welfare state show us that it isn't an able substitute. It isn't sufficient to put back together a broken home. Yet there still seems this weird male aversion to putting a [Poor language removed] condom on.

For the record. I'm not blaming women its a responsibility for both of them. Unfortunately the women are left picking up the pieces and dealing with it as are their families and the state.

I agree with you the men should know better considering when the child is born most of them don't want to know or run away from it.

 

[verreauxi]

You're alright. In my head my posts are always in the spirit of jovial banter at the pub after a few rounds, and not furious basement missives. Easily lost without visual cues, I guess. And I am admittedly a bit of a smart-ass.

But an insightful and substantive and contributory smart-ass. Which is okay in my book!

 

[Bruce Wayne]

I don't really want to add to your bad day mate, but is it apparent to those that you're discussing the NHS with that you may have a vested interest in its privatisation? It may help people understand your experience in the field better.

Btw, i've voted tory/lib Dem far more than labour, but I believe anyone who has social values and understands the extent of damage to what's left of our social infrastructure that the current Government will perform if unchecked, ought to attempt to remove them from power.

As an aside, I know Tony Young well and he's a good guy that's frequently frustrated by the NHS.

"When Jack Dee, a stand-up comedian, suggests he ought to be elected as Minister for Health to sort things out in a day, the audience spontaneously laughs. Yet, scratch deeper underneath this man’s humour and his further suggestion to, “Stop people coming if what happened to them is their own fault”, even though it “sounds hard but word would get around and people would start to be more careful”, it must be said, carries some truth …

Traditionally, we held doctors on par with priests and handed them over a certain sovereignty, which many gladly held onto, retaining this whole mystic air around them and the know-it-all attitude. With the Latin lingo they were reminiscent of the priests of the medieval times who held their power over the common folk by reading the mass in Latin, so the populace couldn’t understand them.

But, what would happen if we stopped seeing doctors as gods and the answer to all our prayers?

What would happen if we became CEOs of our own health, which is precisely what’s humorously alluded to by Jack Dee?

More than ever there is a great call for doctors, historically the gatekeepers of health care, to step back and for patients to step forward to take greater responsibility for their health, keeping it in their own hands rather than handing it over completely to the doctor.

Everything in and around us, all the stats as well as many of our medics, including Professor Tony Young, a consultant surgeon and The NHS’s National Clinical Director for Innovation, are telling us that it is high time “We get serious about prevention.” And to get serious about prevention means each of us taking more responsibility for the daily choices we make.

Gradually, we have seen massive changes in our health care/medical systems. Doctors’ bags have morphed to a point where what’s available to doctors is available to patients too – new tools, tests, apps … a digital patient kit in the comfort of our living rooms. Apparently we are already living with generations that will be equipped with ‘insideables’ – chips (not the French fries kind!) planted under one’s skin and ‘ingestibles’ – minute sensor pills we would swallow. All of which are said to be able to take us away from medical professionals and have healthcare placed back into our own hands.

But are we taking responsibility for our own health as much as possible? If at all?

Whilst advances are being made with personalised medicine, where the right drug is administered for the right person at the right time, taking all patient factors into consideration, there is much more still to be done to achieve true personalised medicine. The days of one size (drug) fits all ought to be consigned to the history books.

Taking responsibility and having personal medicine would imply that we’d not only live longer but healthier too. Or perhaps not – if we continue to bathe in the pool of irresponsibility.

Some of the world’s most esteemed scientists are convinced that the ageing process can be treated as an illness and apparently billions are being poured into longevity research to find the elusive cause of ageing in order to attenuate it.

But what is the purpose of defying death when we are light years away from defying so many diseases?? It’s like looking to the stars to avoid addressing all the earthly matters.

Indeed, people are living longer, surviving conditions that in the past were untreatable. However, we have a situation where, according to Professor Young, 70% of our healthcare budget is spent on chronic disease management! Evidently, living longer is costing us a fortune because the disease is still prevalent.

In the same talk I heard Professor Young state the fact that more than half of our population is overweight or obese! – the trend which is suggesting that in the coming years more people will die from obesity than cancer.

And YET – Obesity = entirely preventable condition! The equation we seem to loathe hearing, let alone heeding.

Given the seriousness of this, shouldn’t we as a nation, as a race of people, actually do something about it, other than book our medical appointments and cry out loud: HELP/SAVE ME/RESCUE ME? And when that’s not possible we complain about medics, blame the respective governments for insufficient funds and call the NHS incompetent.

Hard not to concur with Jack Dee when he says he is sick of people moaning about the NHS and medics, the very same people who work hard day and night to help restore our health, rectifying the outcomes of our ill-choices. The last thing they need to hear is us moaning things like: “Casualty is such a horrible place to be.”

“Yes it is,” confirms Jack. “Because something horrible has happened to us! What do we want? Disneyland?”

Around 8.5% of our GDP is spent on healthcare and around 18% in the USA. Are we not, through our irresponsible behaviour, (food and lifestyle choices) further taxing a system that is already bankrupt, and then we berate it? No amount of money poured into the NHS would satiate the balance sheet if we continue to eat and drink ourselves to illness and disease.

“Our medics do provide great healthcare but there is only so much they can do when the patients are not taking care of themselves,” says Professor Young. He/They are not telling us this to fend us off from overcrowding the wards and clinics, but instead they are communicating that they are only human and there is only so much fixing they can do. No different to what a car mechanic would say/do if we kept bringing back our car as a result of our bad driving techniques like overusing the clutch or misusing the gears.

Many of our wise and hard working medics like Professor Young are appealing to patients, doctors, citizens, indeed to everyone, that we all need to roll our sleeves up if we are going to deliver a society that knows and lives health and wellbeing, which would then lead to a richer quality of life for all.

Health and wellbeing of our society is in truth about prevention and it starts with caring enough for ourselves to make more sound choices when it comes to food and beverages, how we move, how we exercise, how we are both physically and emotionally, as it is our daily choices and behaviours that contribute to illness and disease.

“There is no money to be made in preventative medicine. And that is because each and every one of us just needs to get on with being responsible for our lifestyle choices. But there are trillions to be made from irresponsibility.

And guess which medicine currently dominates society?”
Serge BenhayonEsoteric Teachings and Revelations II, p 128"

 

[BlueTX]

Hahaha. Every American has access to healthcare. It's a fact. If you can't pay for it, it's fine, you still have many, many avenues to get treatment for free. If you're given treatment without some sort of coverage and you can't pay for it, you don't get thrown in jail, in most cases nothing even happens to you. This doom and gloom nonsense about American healthcare is laughable.

I've invited everyone I've discussed this with in this thread to tell me why the USG should be believed capable of a socialized care system, and I've gotten exactly zero responses. Why? Because it's a huge albatross of a hole in the argument.

You've received little response from me for the very reason I explained. I was in BOD meetings.

40% of the population of the United States is already provided a socialized care system thru CMS (Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP) and TriCare (military). The population of patients under these coverages are consistently happier with their plans, care and doctors than are those with private health care plans in surveys performed over the last 20-30 years. As an employer of clinical providers whose businesses depend on payment for services rendered by government or private insurance plans, I know I can more readily count on our providers being paid in a timely manner by Medicare than by Humana or Blue Cross or otherwise. Why? Simple. If you follow the rules in submitting claims, Medicare pays in short order (2 weeks). Routinely private insurance companies withhold payment for capricious reasons that require expense/time on the part of the doctor or practice in order to recoup. Why? Quite simple, really. Additional profit to shareholders.

Furthermore, the 40% covered by government plans are more likely to be chronically sick or disabled and, therefore, use services more frequently at more cost. Any reasonable analysis would show adding the additional 60% of the population who are healthier not to be some giant cost or management burden. It can be done.

I really, really, really get tired of the trope "everyone has access to health care". It is an unbelievably callous and empty statement. An emergency room is not health care. Preventative treatment through access to primary care, testing and early intervention via relationship with your doctors is health care. If you honestly believe everyone has access to these things you are sorely misinformed. Further, accessing the emergency room is far from free and the cost is passed to taxpayers from those who cannot afford to pay, so it is a form of socialized medicine - and an ludicrously expensive one when compared to primary care.

As for additional unnecessary drivers of cost related to the private market, I could go on and on and on. Yet, as others have mentioned, this whole matter comes down to the simple question. Is health care a right or a privilege? The United States has, so far, decided this question in a manner opposite of most of the free democratic world. In my view this has been detrimental to the physical, mental, political and financial health of the country.

 

[DanEFC92]

 

[verreauxi]

I really, really, really get tired of the trope "everyone has access to health care". It is an unbelievably callous and empty statement. An emergency room is not health care. Preventative treatment through access to primary care, testing and early intervention via relationship with your doctors is health care. If you honestly believe everyone has access to these things you are sorely misinformed. Further, accessing the emergency room is far from free and the cost is passed to taxpayers from those who cannot afford to pay, so it is a form of socialized medicine - and an ludicrously expensive one when compared to primary care.

Yeah, but but but but ...they dont' go to jail! THEY DON'T GO TO JAIL!!

 

[Pettifogger]

You've received little response from me for the very reason I explained. I was in BOD meetings.

40% of the population of the United States is already provided a socialized care system thru CMS (Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP) and TriCare (military). The population of patients under these coverages are consistently happier with their plans, care and doctors than are those with private health care plans in surveys performed over the last 20-30 years. As an employer of clinical providers whose businesses depend on payment for services rendered by government or private insurance plans, I know I can more readily count on our providers being paid in a timely manner by Medicare than by Humana or Blue Cross or otherwise. Why? Simple. If you follow the rules in submitting claims, Medicare pays in short order (2 weeks). Routinely private insurance companies withhold payment for capricious reasons that require expense/time on the part of the doctor or practice in order to recoup. Why? Quite simple, really. Additional profit to shareholders.

Furthermore, the 40% covered by government plans are more likely to be chronically sick or disabled and, therefore, use services more frequently at more cost. Any reasonable analysis would show adding the additional 60% of the population who are healthier not to be some giant cost or management burden. It can be done.

I really, really, really get tired of the trope "everyone has access to health care". It is an unbelievably callous and empty statement. An emergency room is not health care. Preventative treatment through access to primary care, testing and early intervention via relationship with your doctors is health care. If you honestly believe everyone has access to these things you are sorely misinformed. Further, accessing the emergency room is far from free and the cost is passed to taxpayers from those who cannot afford to pay, so it is a form of socialized medicine - and an ludicrously expensive one when compared to primary care.

As for additional unnecessary drivers of cost related to the private market, I could go on and on and on. Yet, as others have mentioned, this whole matter comes down to the simple question. Is health care a right or a privilege? The United States has, so far, decided this question in a manner opposite of most of the free democratic world. In my view this has been detrimental to the physical, mental, political and financial health of the country.

CMS and Tricare cover what, 45% of the country at this point? Of course a market swath of that size that doesn't have to operate as a going concern will carry significant influence over the "industry." Sure, we probably can expand that to cover everyone, although I think further shrinkage in the private insurance market is likely to decrease efficiency and the quality of care in government plans.

But more importantly to me, how is this fair? How is it fair that half the country subsidizes care for the rest of the country? How can enforcement, which is bad now, improve when we expand that system? You'll say we already are (largely due to regulations like emtala, not due to market forces), and your argument isn't lost on me. But what we'll be doing under your proposal is taking a broken system and making it more efficient, theoretically, by codifying the inequities I'm talking about.

 

[Ruairi77]

CMS and Tricare cover what, 45% of the country at this point? Of course a market swath of that size that doesn't have to operate as a going concern will carry significant influence over the "industry." Sure, we probably can expand that to cover everyone, although I think further shrinkage in the private insurance market is likely to decrease efficiency and the quality of care in government plans.

But more importantly to me, how is this fair? How is it fair that half the country subsidizes care for the rest of the country? How can enforcement, which is bad now, improve when we expand that system? You'll say we already are (largely due to regulations like emtala, not due to market forces), and your argument isn't lost on me. But what we'll be doing under your proposal is taking a broken system and making it more efficient, theoretically, by codifying the inequities I'm talking about.

I presume you’re fine with the socialist government programme called the military.

 

[Pettifogger]

I presume you’re fine with the socialist government programme called the military.

Not a pure libertarian. Perfectly happy to entertain the idea that there are limited areas the government should operate where private enterprise or state-led programs would be impossible or otherwise very problematic. I think the other poster has, and probably could continue to argue in favor of that applying to healthcare. Of course, we've had private health coverage in the US for approaching a century, so it clearly can and has worked.

 

[BlueTX]

CMS and Tricare cover what, 45% of the country at this point? Of course a market swath of that size that doesn't have to operate as a going concern will carry significant influence over the "industry." Sure, we probably can expand that to cover everyone, although I think further shrinkage in the private insurance market is likely to decrease efficiency and the quality of care in government plans.

But more importantly to me, how is this fair? How is it fair that half the country subsidizes care for the rest of the country? How can enforcement, which is bad now, improve when we expand that system? You'll say we already are (largely due to regulations like emtala, not due to market forces), and your argument isn't lost on me. But what we'll be doing under your proposal is taking a broken system and making it more efficient, theoretically, by codifying the inequities I'm talking about.

I will give you the opportunity to define "fair" before attempting to answer your questions.

 

[Pettifogger]

I will give you the opportunity to define "fair" before attempting to answer your questions.

It's probably easier to define what isn't fair/just/equitable. I don't think a taxation system whereby half of households don't pay taxes is under that tent. I think similarly about expanding a system whereby tens of millions receive their health coverage at the expense of others, or have that coverage increasingly subsidized.

As I've stated, I believe in safety nets, which is why I'm not giving you some hard tax bracket or coverage proposal that I think equates to the "fair" answer. But I hesitate to endorse the expansion of safety nets, especially when accompanied ever-decreasing interest in ensuring those are not being abused.

 

[abelard]

America's Political Economy: The local structure of labour markets and bargaining power
https://www.adamtooze.com/2018/01/2...al-structure-labour-markets-bargaining-power/

Across much of America (and many other countries) the concentration of monopoly power in the hands of a handful of employers in local labour markets, gives them huge bargaining power in relation to workers, even when labour is scarce nationally.

It is an incredibly intuitive finding revealed by a recent NBER paper by José Azar, Ioana Marinescu, Marshall I. Steinbaum. Using data gleaned from America’s largest online jobs site CareerBuilder.com they show the extent of monopsony power (monopoly power enjoyed by a purchaser of goods or services) enjoyed by employers across much of the US.

The measure of concentration they use is the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) index. It is a clever analytical and argumentative move. Usually HHI is used in anti-trust suits to measure concentration in product markets. The originality of the paper is that it applies the measures to another facet of corporate power: their power as purchasers of labour.

The results are stark. They show a truly dramatic concentration of labour market power in the hands of employers. Across thousands of labour markets the average HHI index based on advertised vacancies is 3157, well above the 2500 threshold that would raise anti-trust concerns in product markets. Based on applications rather than vacancies i.e. the jobs that people actually wanted, the HHI index was 3480. These were the averages including big city regions where many employers compete for workers. Outside the big cities the level of concentration rockets to 10,000.

Concentration matters because it is tightly related to wages. Higher concentration on the side of the employer makes for lower wages.

Any anecdotal experience of small town or rural life in America (or anywhere else) would confirm this result. Likewise the fact that investors seek out rural locations in which they can maximize their bargaining power, is a commonplace. But as the authors modestly state: “This paper provides for the first time to our knowledge a measure of labor market concentration for many of the largest labor markets in the US.”

Or in plainer English...
https://slate.com/business/2018/01/...cans-cant-get-a-raise.html?via=recirc_engaged

If you were a delivery van driver searching for a new job any time between the years of 2010 and 2013, chances are, you wouldn’t have found many businesses competing for your services. In Selma, Alabama, there was, on average, just one company posting help wanted ads for those drivers on the nation’s biggest job board. In all of Orlando, Florida, there were about nine. Nationwide the average was about two.

The situation for telemarketers wasn’t great either. In any given city or town, approximately three companies were trying to hire for their services. Accountants only had it a little better: Roughly four businesses were posting jobs for them.

A lack of competition among employers gives businesses outsize power over workers, including the ability to tamp down on pay.
Those numbers are based on the findings of a new research paper that may help unlock the mystery of why Americans can’t seem to get a decent raise. Economists have struggled over that question for years now, as wage growth has stagnated and more of the nation’s income has shifted from the pockets of workers into the bank accounts of business owners. Since 1979, inflation-adjusted hourly pay is up just 3.41 percent for the middle 20 percent of Americans while labor’s overall share of national income has declined sharply since the early 2000s. There are lots of possible explanations for why this is, from long-term factors like the rise of automation and decline of organized labor, to short-term ones, such as the lingering weakness in the job market left over from the great recession. But a recent study by a group of labor economists introduces an interesting theory into the mix: Workers’ pay may be lagging because the U.S. is suffering from a shortage of employers.

You don’t have to look hard to tell that we live in a world where many employers have extraordinary leverage over their workers—just read about the grueling, erratic, computer-generated schedules low-wage workers are forced to navigate, or the widespread proliferation of noncompete agreements. And it’s clear that American industry has consolidated enormously over the decades. Years of mergers and the rise of exceedingly profitable superstars like Google and Facebook have concentrated economic power in fewer corporate boardrooms, and research suggests that America’s transformation into a life-size Monopoly board may be cutting into labor’s share of the economy.

The degree of concentration, and the effect on wages, tended to be worse in smaller towns than major cities. Places like Alpena, Michigan, and Butte, Montana, had the least competition among employers, while New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia had the most. It also varied by occupation. Equipment mechanics, legal secretaries, telemarketers, and those delivery drivers faced some of the most highly concentrated job markets; registered nurses, corporate salesmen, and customer service representatives had some of the least. But overall, the problem looks pervasive.

If the U.S. really does have the sort of widespread monopsony problem this paper documents, it would be one more important point on the constellation of reasons workers have fallen so far behind this century. It would also change the way we need to think about certain public policy issues.

Take the minimum wage. The classic argument against increasing the pay floor is that it will kill jobs by making hiring more costly than it’s worth. But in a monopsony-afflicted world where companies can artificially depress wages, a higher minimum shouldn’t hurt employment, because it will just force employers to pay workers more in line with the value they produce.

The same goes for collective bargaining. In the perfectly competitive labor markets of economics textbooks, labor unions are basically dead weight that make companies less efficient. In a world where a small clutch of businesses do most of the hiring, unions may actually fix a broken market by giving workers more sway.

Still, even if the study is only gesturing in the direction of a real problem, it’s a deeply worrisome one. We’re living in an era of industry consolidation. That’s not going away in the foreseeable future. And workers can’t ask for fair pay if there aren’t enough businesses out there competing to hire.

WHY WON'T THOSE WORKERS JUST STAND UP STRAIGHT WITH THEIR SHOULDERS BACK ALREADY!!!

 

[verreauxi]

America's Political Economy: The local structure of labour markets and bargaining power
https://www.adamtooze.com/2018/01/2...al-structure-labour-markets-bargaining-power/

Across much of America (and many other countries) the concentration of monopoly power in the hands of a handful of employers in local labour markets, gives them huge bargaining power in relation to workers, even when labour is scarce nationally.

It is an incredibly intuitive finding revealed by a recent NBER paper by José Azar, Ioana Marinescu, Marshall I. Steinbaum. Using data gleaned from America’s largest online jobs site CareerBuilder.com they show the extent of monopsony power (monopoly power enjoyed by a purchaser of goods or services) enjoyed by employers across much of the US.

The measure of concentration they use is the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) index. It is a clever analytical and argumentative move. Usually HHI is used in anti-trust suits to measure concentration in product markets. The originality of the paper is that it applies the measures to another facet of corporate power: their power as purchasers of labour.

The results are stark. They show a truly dramatic concentration of labour market power in the hands of employers. Across thousands of labour markets the average HHI index based on advertised vacancies is 3157, well above the 2500 threshold that would raise anti-trust concerns in product markets. Based on applications rather than vacancies i.e. the jobs that people actually wanted, the HHI index was 3480. These were the averages including big city regions where many employers compete for workers. Outside the big cities the level of concentration rockets to 10,000.

Concentration matters because it is tightly related to wages. Higher concentration on the side of the employer makes for lower wages.

Any anecdotal experience of small town or rural life in America (or anywhere else) would confirm this result. Likewise the fact that investors seek out rural locations in which they can maximize their bargaining power, is a commonplace. But as the authors modestly state: “This paper provides for the first time to our knowledge a measure of labor market concentration for many of the largest labor markets in the US.”

Or in plainer English...
https://slate.com/business/2018/01/...cans-cant-get-a-raise.html?via=recirc_engaged

If you were a delivery van driver searching for a new job any time between the years of 2010 and 2013, chances are, you wouldn’t have found many businesses competing for your services. In Selma, Alabama, there was, on average, just one company posting help wanted ads for those drivers on the nation’s biggest job board. In all of Orlando, Florida, there were about nine. Nationwide the average was about two.

The situation for telemarketers wasn’t great either. In any given city or town, approximately three companies were trying to hire for their services. Accountants only had it a little better: Roughly four businesses were posting jobs for them.

A lack of competition among employers gives businesses outsize power over workers, including the ability to tamp down on pay.
Those numbers are based on the findings of a new research paper that may help unlock the mystery of why Americans can’t seem to get a decent raise. Economists have struggled over that question for years now, as wage growth has stagnated and more of the nation’s income has shifted from the pockets of workers into the bank accounts of business owners. Since 1979, inflation-adjusted hourly pay is up just 3.41 percent for the middle 20 percent of Americans while labor’s overall share of national income has declined sharply since the early 2000s. There are lots of possible explanations for why this is, from long-term factors like the rise of automation and decline of organized labor, to short-term ones, such as the lingering weakness in the job market left over from the great recession. But a recent study by a group of labor economists introduces an interesting theory into the mix: Workers’ pay may be lagging because the U.S. is suffering from a shortage of employers.

You don’t have to look hard to tell that we live in a world where many employers have extraordinary leverage over their workers—just read about the grueling, erratic, computer-generated schedules low-wage workers are forced to navigate, or the widespread proliferation of noncompete agreements. And it’s clear that American industry has consolidated enormously over the decades. Years of mergers and the rise of exceedingly profitable superstars like Google and Facebook have concentrated economic power in fewer corporate boardrooms, and research suggests that America’s transformation into a life-size Monopoly board may be cutting into labor’s share of the economy.

The degree of concentration, and the effect on wages, tended to be worse in smaller towns than major cities. Places like Alpena, Michigan, and Butte, Montana, had the least competition among employers, while New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia had the most. It also varied by occupation. Equipment mechanics, legal secretaries, telemarketers, and those delivery drivers faced some of the most highly concentrated job markets; registered nurses, corporate salesmen, and customer service representatives had some of the least. But overall, the problem looks pervasive.

If the U.S. really does have the sort of widespread monopsony problem this paper documents, it would be one more important point on the constellation of reasons workers have fallen so far behind this century. It would also change the way we need to think about certain public policy issues.

Take the minimum wage. The classic argument against increasing the pay floor is that it will kill jobs by making hiring more costly than it’s worth. But in a monopsony-afflicted world where companies can artificially depress wages, a higher minimum shouldn’t hurt employment, because it will just force employers to pay workers more in line with the value they produce.

The same goes for collective bargaining. In the perfectly competitive labor markets of economics textbooks, labor unions are basically dead weight that make companies less efficient. In a world where a small clutch of businesses do most of the hiring, unions may actually fix a broken market by giving workers more sway.

Still, even if the study is only gesturing in the direction of a real problem, it’s a deeply worrisome one. We’re living in an era of industry consolidation. That’s not going away in the foreseeable future. And workers can’t ask for fair pay if there aren’t enough businesses out there competing to hire.

WHY WON'T THOSE WORKERS JUST STAND UP STRAIGHT WITH THEIR SHOULDERS BACK ALREADY!!!

Very interesting approach; they essentially found data to support what we all perceive: the agglutination of corporate interests. Neoliberalism is a fast mutating virus, and this is one consequence.

 

[abelard]

Very interesting approach; they essentially found data to support what we all perceive: the agglutination of corporate interests. Neoliberalism is a fast mutating virus, and this is one consequence.

It's partly because America, as usual, has a peculiar and bad interpretation of 'monopoly'. Whereas in the EU, lack of competition is understood to be inherently bad - the basis of Vestager's efforts to chasten the tech interests, for instance - in the US, antitrust is only enforced if it can be shown that consumer prices have increased as a result. We owe this quirk to Robert "worst person nobody has heard of" Bork (who first distinguished himself by his servility to Richard Nixon, firing the Watergate Special Prosecutor when nobody else would). The law will probably have to be rewritten before anything can change, and obviously neither party will allow this to happen.

I've been through dozens if not hundreds of small towns in the US, evidently once quite charming, and now utterly bleak and hollowed out. Then, a few miles out of town, there will be an enormous plaza surrounded by an absolute ocean of parking, featuring the exact same small handful of chain stores. These places are invariably hideous, and completely devoid of character or any sense of place.

Beyond the frustration that stems from an inability to negotiate market wages, I suspect "Make America Great Again" (among many other things) resonates among voters who remember what life was like when the flyover places where they lived were actually nice; when people could found and run their own shops rather than working in poverty for Walmart; when they could walk to a bustling town centre and stop to chat with the people they knew; and when there was an actual basis for pride in the communities where they lived.

Now, every suburb, store, and strip plaza looks and feels exactly the same - an imposed uniformity that East Germany could only dream of.

One of the features that made the Trump campaign so intriguing was that Bannon in particular seemed to grasp this, hinting often about breaking up if not nationalising some of America's monstrous tech and banking cartels. Of course, Bannon was also a drunken reprobate with coked-up delusions of grandeur, reporting to a senile testicle of a man with the personality and awareness of a spoiled thirteen-year-old girl. Embarrassingly out of depth, the pair succumbed more or less immediately to the very Party so resoundingly repudiated by their unlikely victory.