World News Random, Random
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Re: World News Random, Random
We have reached 8 Billion people on Earth.
Climate Change is a major problem, if not the most pressing of them all.
But the other is job automation. We are still scheduled to reach 9 billion, which means 1 more billion that will need energy, but also 1 more billion that will need jobs. And work automation is erasing jobs, not creating them.
Climate Change is a major problem, if not the most pressing of them all.
But the other is job automation. We are still scheduled to reach 9 billion, which means 1 more billion that will need energy, but also 1 more billion that will need jobs. And work automation is erasing jobs, not creating them.
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Re: World News Random, Random
“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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Re: World News Random, Random
We need to start geo-engineering, and fast.
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Re: World News Random, Random
Umm... duh. The bombing of Belgrade was a huge tactical (long-term) and humanitarian mistake that the US/NATO never really had to account for.
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Re: World News Random, Random
So... Earth's human population reached 8 Billion today. That's obviously far more than the planet can handle and maintain its health, given the careless, selfish, and irresponsible manner in which humans are currently living.
How Can 8 Billion People Sustainably Share a Planet?
If we could only get rid of all of the assholes in the world - that would bring us down to a significantly more manageable 1 Billion or less...
How Can 8 Billion People Sustainably Share a Planet?
If we could only get rid of all of the assholes in the world - that would bring us down to a significantly more manageable 1 Billion or less...
R.I.P. Amal...
“The opposite of courage is not cowardice - it’s conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.”- Jim Hightower
“The opposite of courage is not cowardice - it’s conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.”- Jim Hightower
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Re: World News Random, Random
“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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Re: World News Random, Random
Sunak and Hunt to 'kitchen sink' the bad news in autumn statement - and it won't be pleasant
The autumn statement will be the Tories' attempt to get all the bad news out the way in one go as Rishi Sunak tries to rectify the mess of his predecessor and give his party a shot at staying in power in 2024.
Ed Conway
Economics & data editor @EdConwaySky
Corporate executives call it "kitchen sinking".
The minute you get into a new job you collect all the bad news, announce the miserable stuff at the same time and take the grisliest, most painful decisions all at once. You throw the kitchen sink at it.
You'll have spotted this strategy before, and not just in politics – though George Osborne's 2010 summer budget is often held up as the prime example.
Note how when a new chief executive takes over at a company, they will invariably begin by telling you the whole place needs a desperate clean-up and a change of strategy.
The autumn statement will be Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt's attempt to "kitchen sink" the bad news for the UK economy.
And to some extent, there's little they have to do to amplify what's already coming from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
The OBR's forecasts for the economy – the official numbers against which the government must set its own policy decisions – were already shaping up to be pretty miserable long before Rishi Sunak came into Downing Street.
The UK is probably already in a recession.
It could be a long recession – though the many caveats to the Bank of England's headline forecast for an eight-quarter long slump seem to have been forgotten in recent weeks.
What could the future hold?
Either way, the news is not good, and this recession is likely to feel tougher than many others, in large part because this time it is not banks or businesses being squeezed but households themselves.
For evidence of this, look no further than the latest inflation data from the Office for National Statistics, which shows that housing and household service prices are rising at the fastest rate since comparable records began in the 1950s.
True: the path ahead is very uncertain.
If gas prices fall and the Ukraine conflict goes in the right direction, things could be a lot better than expected.
But trying to second-guess Vladimir Putin is a mug's game. And in the meantime, the news is not good.
Britain, as a big importer of goods and for that matter energy, is very sensitive to increases in international prices, and we are going through an energy and price squeeze across much of the world.
And since our homegrown ability to generate income has not improved in the past year or so, those higher costs mean we are all, as a nation, worse off.
Britain is considerably poorer than it was last year – and this will be reflected in the OBR's forecasts.
But the point of kitchen sinking is not merely to deliver all the bad news at once, but to announce some remedies – tough as they may be.
And that's where the autumn statement really comes in.
What are we expecting from the autumn statement?
What was hitherto pitched by previous chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng as a brief update on the state of the public finances, and the government's fiscal plan, has turned into something far bigger.
There will be spending cuts in real if not nominal terms and tax rises.
There will be warnings of a difficult couple of years to come.
And while Mr Hunt will emphasise that these "difficult decisions" will help provide the government with the room to cut taxes when the economy has recovered, the light at the end of the tunnel will feel quite distant.
There are a couple of reasons for this.
The first is that following the market mayhem of recent weeks, the Treasury wants to make abundantly clear to investors that it has a plan to repair the public finances. And it has a habit of overcompensating in moments like this.
One of the things that almost certainly unnerved investors back in September was that the mini-budget put the national debt on an ever-increasing trajectory.
The main task the chancellor is focusing on this time around is changing that trajectory so that the national debt is falling in five years' time.
This is where the much-discussed "black hole" concept comes in.
What is the 'black hole' concept?
The "eye-watering black hole" the Treasury has talked about in recent weeks is actually something quite simple: the amount of spending cuts/tax rises it would take to get the national debt falling within five years.
That equates to roughly £50-60bn, once you take account of the stuff Jeremy Hunt has already reversed.
Now, these numbers are subject to enormous change, since they are based on imprecise estimates and the state of the economy is pretty unclear anyway.
But the gist here is that the Treasury is keen to over-compensate, much as it under-compensated in the mini-budget, sending a pretty clear signal to markets that it has a plan to reduce debt in the medium term.
And to meet that target, lots of bad news will be kitchen sinked: public sector pay settlements, departmental spending, tax rises for the wealthier, freezes in personal allowances.
Then there's the energy price guarantee and what happens next year, namely a significantly scaled-back scheme to follow the £2,500 average price cap currently in place.
Is Sunak's goal unrealistic?
But the other reason Rishi Sunak wants to kitchen sink the bad news now is because he has another date in mind: 2024.
He believes that if the Conservatives have any chance of winning the next election, likely before the end of that year, they need to show both that they've repaired the mess of the past few months, and that the light at the end of the tunnel is no longer such a distant prospect.
His hope is that by raising taxes today, he'll be able to promise to cut them (or even actually implement some cuts) by the election.
This might be an unrealistic prospect.
If the Bank of England's forecasts are to be relied on, and that's not a given, we may still be in the depths of a slump in a couple of years' time.
Even so, Mr Sunak will be hoping he can replicate the path taken by another previous Tory administration, that of Margaret Thatcher.
She came into office and, via Geoffrey Howe, delivered a heap of bad news in those first budgets.
Interest rates and taxes were raised.
It was the ultimate kitchen-sinking exercise but, so goes the Tory narrative, it laid the grounds for Nigel Lawson's tax-cutting budgets of the late 1980s.
Others will argue today, as economists did back then, that it is madness to "tighten" fiscal policy even as the UK faces a recession and interest rates are on the way up.
Some will argue – with good reason – that there is little point in kitchen sinking some bad news without addressing the other stuff, like the fact that on top of everything else, Brexit is depressing trade growth and output.
Political strategists will point out that Thatcher might have lost her second election were it not for the Falklands War and the Labour Party's lurch to the left.
More to the point, she could claim to be cleaning up the mess left by her political opponents; Rishi Sunak is cleaning up the mess left by his own colleagues.
Still, one thing is for sure: this will not be pleasant.
https://news.sky.com/story/sunak-and-hu ... sf-twitter
The autumn statement will be the Tories' attempt to get all the bad news out the way in one go as Rishi Sunak tries to rectify the mess of his predecessor and give his party a shot at staying in power in 2024.
Ed Conway
Economics & data editor @EdConwaySky
Corporate executives call it "kitchen sinking".
The minute you get into a new job you collect all the bad news, announce the miserable stuff at the same time and take the grisliest, most painful decisions all at once. You throw the kitchen sink at it.
You'll have spotted this strategy before, and not just in politics – though George Osborne's 2010 summer budget is often held up as the prime example.
Note how when a new chief executive takes over at a company, they will invariably begin by telling you the whole place needs a desperate clean-up and a change of strategy.
The autumn statement will be Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt's attempt to "kitchen sink" the bad news for the UK economy.
And to some extent, there's little they have to do to amplify what's already coming from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
The OBR's forecasts for the economy – the official numbers against which the government must set its own policy decisions – were already shaping up to be pretty miserable long before Rishi Sunak came into Downing Street.
The UK is probably already in a recession.
It could be a long recession – though the many caveats to the Bank of England's headline forecast for an eight-quarter long slump seem to have been forgotten in recent weeks.
What could the future hold?
Either way, the news is not good, and this recession is likely to feel tougher than many others, in large part because this time it is not banks or businesses being squeezed but households themselves.
For evidence of this, look no further than the latest inflation data from the Office for National Statistics, which shows that housing and household service prices are rising at the fastest rate since comparable records began in the 1950s.
True: the path ahead is very uncertain.
If gas prices fall and the Ukraine conflict goes in the right direction, things could be a lot better than expected.
But trying to second-guess Vladimir Putin is a mug's game. And in the meantime, the news is not good.
Britain, as a big importer of goods and for that matter energy, is very sensitive to increases in international prices, and we are going through an energy and price squeeze across much of the world.
And since our homegrown ability to generate income has not improved in the past year or so, those higher costs mean we are all, as a nation, worse off.
Britain is considerably poorer than it was last year – and this will be reflected in the OBR's forecasts.
But the point of kitchen sinking is not merely to deliver all the bad news at once, but to announce some remedies – tough as they may be.
And that's where the autumn statement really comes in.
What are we expecting from the autumn statement?
What was hitherto pitched by previous chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng as a brief update on the state of the public finances, and the government's fiscal plan, has turned into something far bigger.
There will be spending cuts in real if not nominal terms and tax rises.
There will be warnings of a difficult couple of years to come.
And while Mr Hunt will emphasise that these "difficult decisions" will help provide the government with the room to cut taxes when the economy has recovered, the light at the end of the tunnel will feel quite distant.
There are a couple of reasons for this.
The first is that following the market mayhem of recent weeks, the Treasury wants to make abundantly clear to investors that it has a plan to repair the public finances. And it has a habit of overcompensating in moments like this.
One of the things that almost certainly unnerved investors back in September was that the mini-budget put the national debt on an ever-increasing trajectory.
The main task the chancellor is focusing on this time around is changing that trajectory so that the national debt is falling in five years' time.
This is where the much-discussed "black hole" concept comes in.
What is the 'black hole' concept?
The "eye-watering black hole" the Treasury has talked about in recent weeks is actually something quite simple: the amount of spending cuts/tax rises it would take to get the national debt falling within five years.
That equates to roughly £50-60bn, once you take account of the stuff Jeremy Hunt has already reversed.
Now, these numbers are subject to enormous change, since they are based on imprecise estimates and the state of the economy is pretty unclear anyway.
But the gist here is that the Treasury is keen to over-compensate, much as it under-compensated in the mini-budget, sending a pretty clear signal to markets that it has a plan to reduce debt in the medium term.
And to meet that target, lots of bad news will be kitchen sinked: public sector pay settlements, departmental spending, tax rises for the wealthier, freezes in personal allowances.
Then there's the energy price guarantee and what happens next year, namely a significantly scaled-back scheme to follow the £2,500 average price cap currently in place.
Is Sunak's goal unrealistic?
But the other reason Rishi Sunak wants to kitchen sink the bad news now is because he has another date in mind: 2024.
He believes that if the Conservatives have any chance of winning the next election, likely before the end of that year, they need to show both that they've repaired the mess of the past few months, and that the light at the end of the tunnel is no longer such a distant prospect.
His hope is that by raising taxes today, he'll be able to promise to cut them (or even actually implement some cuts) by the election.
This might be an unrealistic prospect.
If the Bank of England's forecasts are to be relied on, and that's not a given, we may still be in the depths of a slump in a couple of years' time.
Even so, Mr Sunak will be hoping he can replicate the path taken by another previous Tory administration, that of Margaret Thatcher.
She came into office and, via Geoffrey Howe, delivered a heap of bad news in those first budgets.
Interest rates and taxes were raised.
It was the ultimate kitchen-sinking exercise but, so goes the Tory narrative, it laid the grounds for Nigel Lawson's tax-cutting budgets of the late 1980s.
Others will argue today, as economists did back then, that it is madness to "tighten" fiscal policy even as the UK faces a recession and interest rates are on the way up.
Some will argue – with good reason – that there is little point in kitchen sinking some bad news without addressing the other stuff, like the fact that on top of everything else, Brexit is depressing trade growth and output.
Political strategists will point out that Thatcher might have lost her second election were it not for the Falklands War and the Labour Party's lurch to the left.
More to the point, she could claim to be cleaning up the mess left by her political opponents; Rishi Sunak is cleaning up the mess left by his own colleagues.
Still, one thing is for sure: this will not be pleasant.
https://news.sky.com/story/sunak-and-hu ... sf-twitter
“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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Re: World News Random, Random
“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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Re: World News Random, Random
The Guardian UK
@TheGuardian_uk@newsrelay.org
Workers in running battles with police at Foxconn’s iPhone factory in China - Officers deal out beatings amid dispute about pay and conditions at Zhengzhou plant, with Apple warning of iPhone 14 delivery delaysPolice in China have dealt out beatings to workers protesting over working conditions and pay at the biggest factory for iPhones, as the country... #theguardian
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/202
“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
- ponchi101
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Re: World News Random, Random
Apple is warning of iPhone 14 delivery delays.
Mentioning the appalling conditions most people in Chinese factories face, in ALL factories, thanks to the fact that Apple cannot open a factory in the USA or elsewhere because their bottom line IS the bottom line? Nah, no need for that.
(Change Apple for Nike, Adidas, any apparel company, other hardware companies, it remains the same).
Mentioning the appalling conditions most people in Chinese factories face, in ALL factories, thanks to the fact that Apple cannot open a factory in the USA or elsewhere because their bottom line IS the bottom line? Nah, no need for that.
(Change Apple for Nike, Adidas, any apparel company, other hardware companies, it remains the same).
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Re: World News Random, Random
Bottom line is bottom line indeed, but good luck opening 200,000 worker factory anywhere in US or EU. I bet you couldn't do it even if you paid 100k with plush benefits.
Could you in Colombia paying locally top level wages?
Could you in Colombia paying locally top level wages?
- ponchi101
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Re: World News Random, Random
South America was never given the chance to develop any sort of industry in the same way that China was. Maybe Mexico, across the border from Texas, but most of that is mid-tech.
We are now in awe of Chinese technology, but that was non-existent in the 70's. The USA and later the EU decided to invest in tech transfer, but could not care less about human rights.
Several countries in S. America, at the time, could have set the same quality plants that China had at the time. Argentina and Brazil were at comparable stages of development. Venezuela was not interesting because we had our oil boom and wages were not interesting. Colombia and Peru had ongoing guerrillas devastating the country at the time, but Chile had an educated population that could have benefited.
We are now in awe of Chinese technology, but that was non-existent in the 70's. The USA and later the EU decided to invest in tech transfer, but could not care less about human rights.
Several countries in S. America, at the time, could have set the same quality plants that China had at the time. Argentina and Brazil were at comparable stages of development. Venezuela was not interesting because we had our oil boom and wages were not interesting. Colombia and Peru had ongoing guerrillas devastating the country at the time, but Chile had an educated population that could have benefited.
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That's all true, but I was thinking more scale than skills in this case. Most likely 80%+ of those employees have no particular skills other than maybe a good work ethic. In most places you just couldn't find that many people who need a job and are willing to work on an assembly line.
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Yes, now. We are nowhere near the technological needs that a company like Apple needs, TODAY. But when the entanglement between the USA manufacturing sector and the Chinese government started, China was the laughingstock of all industries. S. America or several other locations could have benefitted from the progressive introduction of technology but, our dictatorships were not open to allow American companies to do ANYTHING THEY WANTED in our countries (there would have been limits).
Reagan was the one that decided that it was better to move all American manufacturing to China, to keep manufacturing prices down. The lie given was that once China would see the benefits of becoming an industrialized country, democracy would follow.
I was a stupid 21 yo at the time, finishing my studies in the USA. And even I laughed at that.
Reagan was the one that decided that it was better to move all American manufacturing to China, to keep manufacturing prices down. The lie given was that once China would see the benefits of becoming an industrialized country, democracy would follow.
I was a stupid 21 yo at the time, finishing my studies in the USA. And even I laughed at that.
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Re: World News Random, Random
“Do not grow old, no matter how long you live. Never cease to stand like curious children before the Great Mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein
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