COVID-19 notes:
We Must Adopt a “Zero Covid” Strategy to Defend Against new and old Coronavirus Variants
I’m A Scientist.
I Can’t Even Get My Own Family And Friends To Follow COVID-19 Rules.
They know it’s a real and highly contagious virus, and they know about
the guidelines. They’re just deciding not to follow them.
These nursing
home chains have the highest COVID-19 death rates in Ontario, data analysis
finds
Regular Related Fare:
House passes
bill to increase $600 stimulus checks to $2,000. It now goes to the Senate.
Regular Fare:
Magna in Electric-Car Parts Joint Venture With LG Electronics
US Home Prices Accelerate At Fastest Pace Since 2014
MMT Fare:
Joan Robinson, in her book Introduction To The Theory Of Employment, 1933:
CREATION OF MONEY THROUGH A BUDGET DEFICIT
A budget deficit financed by borrowing from the
Central Bank has effects similar to those of gold-mining. We have already seen
how a budget deficit influences incomes. If there is an increase in government
expenditure without any corresponding increase in tax receipts there will be an
increase in incomes and activity. This is true equally whether the government
borrows from the public or from the Central Bank. If the borrowing is from the
public there is no further effect to be considered. But if borrowing is from
the Central Bank, then on top of the direct effect of the deficit upon income
there is the effect of an increase in the quantity of money. For the Central
Bank, in lending to the government, increases the ” cash” of the banks, just as
it does by buying securities or by buying gold. The direct effect of the
deficit comes to an end as soon as the budget is balanced, but the effect upon
the quantity of money remains as a permanent legacy.
The increase in the quantity of money, which takes
place cumulatively as long as the deficit is running, will tend to produce a
fall in the rate of interest and (unless confidence has been badly shaken) the
effects of an increase in investment, induced by lower interest rates, will be
superimposed upon the direct effects of the budget deficit in increasing
consumption.
At first there will be a drag upon the fall in the
rate of interest because the direct effect of the budget deficit in increasing
incomes raises the demand for money, since the requirements of the active
circulation depend upon the level of income. But the increase in demand for
money will be very slight (so long as money wages do not rise) compared to the
increase in supply, and it is a once-andfor-all effect, while the increase in
the supply of money is cumulative.
…
The whole difference between a budget deficit financed
by creating money and one financed by ordinary borrowing lies in this reaction
upon the rate of interest.
Other Fare:
Discovery
Supports a Surprising New View of How Life on Earth Originated.
[Not] Fun Fare:
Octopus punches fish in the head (just because it can)
Many drivers, some stranded since
Saturday, risk spending Christmas parked by the side of an English road. Sikh
humanitarian group Khalsa Aid is set to return to the congested M20 today to
distribute 2,500 Domino’s pizzas among them.
Pics of the Week:
California’s epic wildfires in 2020 took deadly aim at the state’s most beloved trees.
EXTRA [controversial or non-market-related] FARE:
Other Political Fare:
The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump
The COVID-driven
centralization of economic power and information control in the hands of a few
corporate monopolies poses enduring threats to political freedom.
Asserting that Donald Trump
is a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of
U.S. democracy has been a virtual requirement over the last four years to
obtain entrance to cable news Green Rooms, sinecures as mainstream newspaper
columnists, and popularity in faculty lounges. Yet it has proven to be a
preposterous farce.
…
The hysterical
Trump-as-despot script was all melodrama, a ploy for profits and ratings, and,
most of all, a potent instrument to distract from the neoliberal ideology that
gave rise to Trump in the first place by causing so much wreckage. Positing
Trump as a grand aberration from U.S. politics and as the prime author of
America’s woes — rather than what he was: a perfectly predictable extension of
U.S politics and a symptom of preexisting pathologies — enabled those who have
so much blood and economic destruction on their hands not only to evade
responsibility for what they did, but to rehabilitate themselves as the
guardians of freedom and prosperity and, ultimately, catapult themselves back
into power. As of January 20, that is exactly where they will reside.
…
What makes this most
menacing of all is that the primary beneficiaries of these rapid changes are
Silicon Valley giants, at least three of which — Facebook, Google, and Amazon —
are now classic monopolies. That the wealth of their primary owners and
executives — Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai — has skyrocketed
during the pandemic is well-covered, but far more significant is the
unprecedented power these companies exert over the dissemination of information
and conduct of political debates, to say nothing of the immense data they
possess about our lives by virtue of online surveillance.
…
All of these authoritarian
powers will, ironically, be invoked and justified in the name of stopping authoritarianism
— not from those who wield power but from the movement that was just removed
from power. Those who spent four years shrieking to great profit about the
dangers of lurking “fascism” will — without realizing the irony — now use this
merger of state and corporate power to consolidate their own authority, control
the contours of permissible debate, and silence those who challenge them even
further. Those most vocally screaming about growing authoritarianism in the
U.S. over the last four years were very right in their core warning, but very
wrong about the real source of that danger.
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