China tussles over legacy of cultural revolution - FT.com
What could have possibly been worth the deaths of tens of millions of people? "An editorial in the Global Times, the party-controlled tabloid, on Tuesday warned against “small groups” creating “a totally chaotic misunderstanding of the cultural revolution” on the upcoming anniversary, criticizing both those seeking to restore the legacy of the period and those who might be overly critical. “After the party has long ago given an official conclusion . . . discussions strictly should not depart from the party’s decided politics or thinking,” it said. The party’s official verdict on the period is that it was a “leftist deviation” primarily caused by Mao but manipulated by counter-revolutionaries." Oh bloody hell! A detour, a lark, a mere side trip, which resulted in economic disaster, millions murdered, and for a while it was very clear, Mordor was China. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlBiLNN1NhQ It simply is not possible to take authoritarian socialism seriously. It is what happens when a country allows a group of psychopaths to play with the levers of power. Never forget progressivism is its idiot younger sibling.
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London House Prices Soar but Posh Districts Lose Their Shine
. . . results in spiraling costs no matter where it happens! As in America, this hurts the poor, and the middle income the most, while it protects the wealthy, and the upper middle class from the predation of having to live next to the hoi polloi. One would think we would learn, but no. We continue to do the same destructive things over and over again. Of course, for progressives this is a benefit. They win when people are in poverty because their power relies upon people dependent upon government largess. Independence from that would mean the awakening of the people to what progressivism really is, and the ultimate death of progressivism. Hungarian Teachers Protest Government’s Grip on Education
It was at its end in 1972, that it has hung on this long is amazing. Might we take the time to build a suitable replacement? BrothersJudd Blog: A RUN OF THE MILL MALTHUSIAN:
Well, these wankers do! "Prominent MIT economist and dean Lester Thurow dies at 77 : Scholar and public intellectual examined globalization and its consequences. (Peter Dizikes, 3/30/16, MIT News Office ) The influential MIT economist and public intellectual Lester Thurow, whose work addressed the many consequences of an increasingly global economy, died on Friday at his home in Westport, Massachusetts. Thurow, who also served as dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management, was 77 years old. [...] In many years of engagement with the public and government officials -- and in a series of bestselling books -- Thurow advocated a distinctive set of policy ideas that defied simple political labeling. He was just lucky that there are no consequences for intellectuals when everything they say turns out to be wrong, Zero-Sum Fallacies (Rich Karlgaard) At the dawn of the U.S. economic boom in 1980 MIT economist Lester C. Thurow looked backward into the dark night. He called his sad new book The Zero-Sum Society: Distribution and the Possibilities for Economic Change. Here is a description on Amazon: "Interpreting macroeconomics as a zero-sum game, Thurow proposes that the American economy will not solve its most trenchant problems-inflation, slow economic growth, the environment-until the political economy can support, in theory and in practice, the idea that certain members of society will have to bear the brunt of taxation and other government-sponsored economic actions." That yawner of a 58-word sentence gives you the flavor of the book. Nevertheless, the famed Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith called Zero-Sum Society "an extraordinarily good and lucid examination of current economic difficulties." Galbraith was wrong about prose and prophecy. It was a horrible book and a crimped way of looking at economics and the human spirit. President Ronald Reagan neglected to read it. One assumes the founders and backers of Apple, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Dell, Oracle, Cisco, Palm, Yahoo and Google passed on it, too. Zero-sum implies no net progress in human affairs. The facts scream otherwise. Global production in 2006 amounted to $66 tril-lion, or $10,200 per person. Two hundred years ago per capita income was about $300. Five thousand years ago it was equivalent to $200. For the mass of mankind there was no detectable economic progress for 4,800 years. Then came the Industrial Revolution with its hockey-stick curve in income and life span. Yet the zero-sum myth lives on. Like a retrovirus it burrows and hides and waits. In 1968 it popped up in the form of a bestselling book by Paul R. Ehrlich entitled The Population Bomb. As investor Gary Alexander recounted in a recent speech: "[Ehrlich] opened famously by saying, 'The battle to feed [all of] humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.' Writing in Ramparts magazine, Ehrlich went even further, 'Millions of people will soon perish in smog disasters in New York and Los Angeles the oceans will die of DDT poisoning by 1979 the U.S. life expectancy will drop to 42 years by 1980, due to cancer epidemics.' Hepatitis and dysentery would sweep America by 1980 and nearly all of us would wear gas masks. Over 65 million Americans would starve in the 1980s, leaving only 22.6 million starved Americans alive in 1990." Then, to Ehrlich's apparent dismay, the inventive human spirit intervened. While Ehrlich was gnashing his teeth, Alexander writes, "Dr. Norman Borlaug was launching the Green Revolution, which has managed to feed billions more people on moderately more arable soil than in the 1960s. Instead of starving against our will, millions of us are trying to starve voluntarily-by dieting. Food is far cheaper, relative to the overall growth of the cost of living, than in the 1960s. From 1977 to 1994 food costs fell 77% in real terms.'" Today seems to be progressive, and neoMalthusian claptrap day. All of the environmental, neoMalthusian, zero sum fads like population bomb, global cooling, DDT, fluoridated drinking water, peak oil, Club of Rome over-population, acid rain, high tension electromagnetic fields, ozone hole, radon, dioxin, mad cow disease, mercury, global warming, climate change are nothing more than fadish beliefs which make us feel important and special. The reality is we are not. We no more need to band together to save the world than we can band together to climb to the moon. These beliefs are destructive. This should be pointed out at every turn. What cures the ills behind by these scares is wealth. The wealthier the people, the cleaner the environment, and the more limited the family size. Human ingenuity will conquer the problems facing us in the future, as it has in the past. fearfully fretting like a spinster aunt is a worthless endeavor, don't engage in it. When you see others engaging in it, mock them, point out their folly. Be merciless about it! Deflation Welcome! Lower Third of Population Goes Deeper in Debt, Cannot Afford Any Price Increases | MishTalk
. . . which shows exactly why the progressive cant which limits land development is wrong. "A new PEW study on Household Incomes and Expenditures goes a long ways towards explaining why economists who expected a big jump in consumer spending based on falling gasoline prices were dead wrong." Homeowners in the bottom third of income spent 40% of their income on housing, while renters in the bottom third of income spent about 48% of their income on housing. Worse yet most families in the lower third of income had more in expenditures than in income, with the median family going $-2339 and the 25 percentile going $-6938 in the red. Even the median family in the middle third of income can only save $5944. That is by definition "middle America." The urban growth boundary, or urban services boundary, or various zoning schemes designed to allow the upper middle class to live above and away from the hoi polloi are killing the ability of the middle and lower classes to thrive. Instead they are barely surviving. These arrangements need to stop. America has plenty of land. Mish makes another point. The Fed wants inflation at 2%, but this would further destroy the ability of the average American to survive. Deflation, however, would allow these people to make do. The progressive era has just about wrung all the money it can out of the averageAmerican. Perhaps it is time for a change, a return to more rational economic, and social policies, policies which place the individual's liberty above the monetary desires of the wealthy elite? Or is that a bridge too far? Shortages and Abundance | The Antiplanner . . . all wish to kill hundreds of millions to billions of humans. These are malignant beliefs. I saw a very enjoyable travelogue show just the other day. While the episodes are a bit uneven, but Billy Connolly is fun, plus, it frames the US as it really is, a vast huge expanse with few people. So, why exactly are we forcing people to live on little slivers of land, where home prices are astronomical? Repeat after me, "progressives hate humans!"
Instapundit: Top German Journalist Admits Mainstream Media Is Completely Fake
And it always has been fake. Video: Ben Shapiro debates pro-choicers on when a ‘bundle of cells’ becomes a human being - Hot Air
We really do need to determine when human rights accrue to the individual. This could change how we view, and treat abortion, but the progressives will not allow this to happen willingly. The idea that adults might debate, and then determine serious human rights concerns seems to be off limits to the progressive. Husband and wife teachers arrested for 'having sex with students'
With crime ebbing to new lows every day, this seems to be the current state of crime in America. Rape is an equal opportunity employer. Ok, so leave a comment as to which you think will receive a longer sentence. Clinton's entourage blocks up traffic as she gets $600 haircut
. . . no, really! Well, a smug, unfriendly Captain Kangaroo. That comparison is brilliant! |
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