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44 votes
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Türkiye is heading for a classic currency crisis. All of its reserves and then some are borrowed.
28 votes -
The trillion-dollar grift: Inside the greatest scam of all time
26 votes -
Report - The increasing return of legal child labor to the US economy
Child labor is making a comeback with a vengeance. A striking number of lawmakers are undertaking concerted efforts to weaken or repeal statutes that have long prevented (or at least seriously...
Child labor is making a comeback with a vengeance. A striking number of lawmakers are undertaking concerted efforts to weaken or repeal statutes that have long prevented (or at least seriously inhibited) the possibility of exploiting children.
Take a breath and consider this: the number of kids at work in the U.S. increased by 37% between 2015 and 2022. During the last two years, 14 states have either introduced or enacted legislation rolling back regulations that governed the number of hours children can be employed, lowered the restrictions on dangerous work, and legalized subminimum wages for youths.
Iowa now allows those as young as 14 to work in industrial laundries. At age 16, they can take jobs in roofing, construction, excavation, and demolition and can operate power-driven machinery. Fourteen-year-olds can now even work night shifts and once they hit 15 can join assembly lines. All of this was, of course, prohibited not so long ago.
Legislators offer fatuous justifications for such incursions into long-settled practice. Working, they tell us, will get kids off their computers or video games or away from the TV. Or it will strip the government of the power to dictate what children can and can’t do, leaving parents in control — a claim already transformed into fantasy by efforts to strip away protective legislation and permit 14-year-old kids to work without formal parental permission.
In 2014, the Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank, published “A Case Against Child Labor Prohibitions,” arguing that such laws stifled opportunity for poor — and especially Black — children. The Foundation for Government Accountability, a think tank funded by a range of wealthy conservative donors including the DeVos family, has spearheaded efforts to weaken child-labor laws, and Americans for Prosperity, the billionaire Koch brothers’ foundation, has joined in.
Here is a Robert Frost poem related to the subject of the article. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53087/out-out
I'm GenX and I worked as a teen, but my earliest jobs were babysitting, not industrial labor.
54 votes -
Gini global inequality at lowest level in nearly 150 years
13 votes -
US Supreme Court strikes down President Biden's student loan forgiveness: Now what?
117 votes -
A Delaware city is set to give corporations the right to vote in elections
28 votes -
US President Biden can probably forgive student debt even if SCOTUS rules against him
28 votes -
Cheques will be phased out in Australia by 2030 as mobile wallet use sky-rockets
18 votes -
Why are US red states hiring so much faster than blue states?
7 votes -
The high-wire drama of raising the US debt ceiling is making headlines again. Is there a better way? Perhaps Denmark has the answer
5 votes -
Super-rich abandoning Norway at record rate as wealth tax rises slightly – flood moving abroad has come as a shock and is costing tens of millions in lost tax receipts
10 votes -
Joko Widodo wants local governments to ditch Visa, Mastercard
4 votes -
Norway's fossil fuel bonanza stokes impassioned debate about how best to spend its 'war profits'
4 votes -
Brazil and Argentina to start preparations for a common currency
10 votes -
Battle for the nation's soul – Norway faces debate about gas and oil wealth
8 votes -
A theme park crisis is wrecking South Korea’s bond market
3 votes -
Norway-style windfall tax on energy companies could raise £33.3bn extra by 2027, plugging a hole in UK government finances, analysis has found
4 votes -
Are billionaires a market failure? And if not market, are they social failure?
I was reading this text from the Washington Post (sorry for the maybe paywall): https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/06/xi-jinping-crackdown-china-economy-change/ The opinion asserts...
I was reading this text from the Washington Post (sorry for the maybe paywall):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/06/xi-jinping-crackdown-china-economy-change/
The opinion asserts that in response to liberalization of Chinese life, driven by capitalistic economic growth, is the reason that Xi Pinjing "cracked down in every sphere imaginable — attacking the private sector, humiliating billionaires, reviving Communist ideology, purging the party of corrupt officials and ramping up nationalism (mostly anti-Western) in both word and deed."
My conspiratorial brain latched on to the humiliating billionaires line, and started thinking about a between the lines message along the lines that billionaires are good and should not be humiliated, a subtle warning-response to the progressive grumblings here in the U.S. that a failure to support capitalism will result in totalitarianism.
Then I started thinking about the questions, are billionaires good for society? I had always held the position that a billionaire is a market failure (in my econ 101 understanding of the term), much like pollution. It is improper hoarding and unfair leveraging of capital into disproportionate and un-earned degree of pesonal privilege.
It is certainly a by-product of euro-american capitalism, whereby the desires and welfare of the many are trodden on by those with the ability to fight and to shape the regulatory machine meant to protect the interests of the common-wealth.
I see a few possibilities. One, is that my understanding of economics is wrong, and producing as many billionaires as possible is the ultimate goal of capitalism and in fact good for everyone, even in theory.
Two, it is indeed as I suspect, a market failure. And the failure here is one of degree, it is not, in fact problematic to have some individuals with significantly greater wealth among us, and is, in fact, beneficial overall, but to have some with so much more than the rest of us (wealth inequaility) is a result of getting in the way of a clean functioning marketplace.
Three, economic theory is working as described, and economic theory/activity is an insufficient foundation for the maintenance and success of a whole society, and we need to find a way to constrain it to its own sphere, so that it provides us with what we need to be healthy and happy, but no more.
I turn to the bright minds of tildes: am I looking at this right?
16 votes -
UK scraps tax cut for wealthy that sparked market turmoil
11 votes -
Liz Truss's UK growth plan is nothing but a magic potion
11 votes -
UK in turmoil as government's gamble to solve economic woes fuels crisis, instead
9 votes -
The new US Income-Driven Repayment system could cause some big problems
7 votes -
When it comes to flaunting its defense industry, Stockholm is shy – and it's hurting Swedish companies and handing lucrative contracts to competitors
4 votes -
Inflation reduction act explained by Hank Green
7 votes -
Right-wing think tank Family Research Council, a staunch opponent of abortion and LGBTQ rights, joins growing list of activist groups seeking church status to shield themselves from financial scrutiny
6 votes -
With no fuel and no cash, Sri Lanka grinds to a halt
10 votes -
Norway seeks solution to looming EU tax on car batteries – batteries produced outside the UK or the EU after 2027 face a 10% customs tax
5 votes -
A forever student loan pause? Why US President Joe Biden is likely to continue freezing payments
14 votes -
Sweden has earmarked $661 million for a temporary scheme to help the most affected households cope with high electricity bills this winter
6 votes -
The White House will freeze Federal student loan repayments until May 1
22 votes -
The Trump SPAC is doing stonk things, which is hilarious
10 votes -
Pandora Papers - Billions hidden beyond reach
26 votes -
US to erase student debt for those with severe disabilities
15 votes -
Wolin, on his coined 'inverted totalitarianism' and the motivations of citizens under it
3 votes -
Trump Organization charged in fifteen-year tax scheme. Longtime CFO Allen Weisselberg was also charged with evading taxes on $1.7 million of income.
12 votes -
What the rich don’t want to admit about the poor
26 votes -
Taxing consumption progressively is a better way to tax the wealthy
8 votes -
$45 billion in US rent relief was seen as the solution to a possible wave of evictions. It ran headfirst into reality.
10 votes -
Why was Trump’s corporate tax cut such a flop?
5 votes -
The trillion-dollar woman - A conversation with the economist Stephanie Kelton about the "deficit myth," Modern Monetary Theory for dummies, and why the age of capital may finally be ending
18 votes -
Yanis Varoufakis: Capitalism has become ‘techno-feudalism’
9 votes -
2020 US Congress insider trading scandal
7 votes -
No one knows how much the government can borrow
14 votes -
All a gig-economy pioneer had to do was “politely disagree” it was violating Federal law and the Labor Department walked away
8 votes -
When capitalists go on strike
5 votes -
Democratic Sen. Manchin casts doubts on $2,000 direct payments, potentially jeopardizing passage
5 votes -
China CCP to nationalize Jack Ma's Alibaba and Ant Group
26 votes -
The morality of canceling student debt
17 votes -
How a $17 billion bailout fund intended for Boeing ended up in very different hands
4 votes