Taiwan Reports 13 Incursions By Chinese Air Force In One Day
During the final months of the Trump administration Chinese PLA military exercises near Taiwan grew as part of the tit-for-tat escalation of Washington moves in support of the self-declared Republic.
Lately Chinese jets have breached Taiwan’s claimed airspace as part of ongoing ‘show of force’ maneuvers in the contested area. But on Saturday, a mere few days following President Joe Biden’s entry into the White House, China’s military undertook one of its biggest flyovers yet.
According to local press “Taiwan recorded no fewer than 13 incursions by Chinese military planes into its air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in a single day Saturday (Jan. 23), the most of any such incidents within one day so far this year.” As Reuters adds, “Eight Chinese bomber planes and four fighter jets entered the southwestern corner of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone on Saturday, and Taiwan’s air force deployed missiles to ‘monitor’ the incursion, the island’s Defense Ministry said.” Additionally, a Chinese Y-8 anti-submatine aircraft also entered Taiwan’s ADIZ.
Taiwan reportedly scrambled its American-supplied fighter jets to “warn off” the Chinese formation.
“Airborne alert sorties had been tasked, radio warnings issued and air defense missile systems deployed to monitor the activity,” a Taiwan military statement said.
PLA military flyovers of contested territory around the island have now become an almost daily occurrence, but as Reuters points out:
However they have generally consisted of just one or two reconnaissance aircraft.
The presence of so many Chinese combat aircraft on this mission – Taiwan said it was made up of eight nuclear-capable H-6K bombers and four J-16 fighter jets – is unusual.
In this instance it was said to be in the vicinity over the contested waters of the Paracel islands.
The new White House National Security Council has this week vowed that America’s commitment to Taiwan would remain “rock-solid”. But it remains to be seen if Biden keeps up the provocative level of Trump’s weapons sales to Taiwan, which reached a historic peak in the latter part of 2020.
My new article, “Freedom Through Foot Voting” (forthcoming in the British public policy journal Economic Affairs), is now available for free download on SSRN. It builds on and expands some of the ideas developed in my recent bookFree to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom. Among other things, the article applies my framework for dealing with potential downsides of freedom of movement to the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, and other similar situations. My book, of course, was finished just before the pandemic began, so I was not able to address that issue there.
Here is the abstract:
Freedom of movement is one of the great issues of our time. Expanding opportunities for both international and internal migration can greatly expand freedom and opportunity for hundreds of millions of people. The same goes for expanding freedom of choice in the private sector. “Voting with your feet” in any of these three ways is also, in crucial ways, superior to ballot box voting as a mechanism of political choice.
In this article I summarize the key advantages of foot voting over ballot box voting, describe how they apply to the three major types of foot voting, and outline answers to several types of standard objections to expanded migration rights. I address these issues in much greater detail in my book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom, on which this article draws.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2MjAIP4
via IFTTT
My new article, “Freedom Through Foot Voting” (forthcoming in the British public policy journal Economic Affairs), is now available for free download on SSRN. It builds on and expands some of the ideas developed in my recent bookFree to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom. Among other things, the article applies my framework for dealing with potential downsides of freedom of movement to the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, and other similar situations. My book, of course, was finished just before the pandemic began, so I was not able to address that issue there.
Here is the abstract:
Freedom of movement is one of the great issues of our time. Expanding opportunities for both international and internal migration can greatly expand freedom and opportunity for hundreds of millions of people. The same goes for expanding freedom of choice in the private sector. “Voting with your feet” in any of these three ways is also, in crucial ways, superior to ballot box voting as a mechanism of political choice.
In this article I summarize the key advantages of foot voting over ballot box voting, describe how they apply to the three major types of foot voting, and outline answers to several types of standard objections to expanded migration rights. I address these issues in much greater detail in my book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom, on which this article draws.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2MjAIP4
via IFTTT
The media has been buzzing with this news about the young forensic psychologist from Oegstgeest, Netherlands and her amazing creation. A quick Google review of this story found more than 100 news stories about this innovation – not just (or even primarily) in fringe online media outlets – but in mainstream media from the Reuters to the New York Post.
“If we have this hierarchy that the king is worth more than the queen,” Ms. Mellink said in a press interview, “then this subtle inequality influences people in their daily life (sic) because it’s just another way of saying ‘hey, you’re less important.’ Even subtle inequalities like this do play a big role.”
Toxic masculinity?
Despite their hearts being in the right place on the left side of their chests, both Ms. Mellink and the fawning media who’ve been both reporters and cheerleaders for this long-overdue innovation have managed to miss the main point.
Playing cards – and indeed most, if not all – games, are politically incorrect, and for a variety of reasons.
Consider, for instance, a deck of cards – even Ms. Mellink’s gender-neutral deck of cards. They have four suits – Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs and Spades – as well as two colors – Red and Black. “Red,” obviously, is a not-so-subtle allusion calling to mind the Red States, where – in the most recent two Presidential elections – white supremacists voted overwhelmingly for Trump. “Black,” especially when connected to the name of one of the four suits in the card deck, is an obvious and historically-offensive racist reference to a pejorative label for black men. This clearly racist sub-text is also present in the game of checkers, where Red and Black compete for power and dominance.
Another major offender is the board game Scrabble. The fact that the game’s rules contain no restriction on the use of specific words ignores the risk of allowing players to use excluding terms. It is well within the rules to marginalize individuals or groups, and insult groups of disadvantaged or discriminated-against people. Verbal micro-aggressions, such as the use of demeaning gender-specific pronouns, are freely permitted in the game. Specifically, trigger words, hate speech and the cultural appropriation of words – all of which must be avoided at all cost – are freely permitted in Scrabble. The game does nothing to prevent their use, nor does it encourage virtue signaling by players offended by their opponents’ use of hurtful and exclusionary words. That signaling should be rewarded as a necessary part of the process of excluding hateful, hurtful words from the game.
Monopoly – in some ways the worst offender – is symbolized by a cartoon caricature of a white male capitalist, an oligarch and almost certainly a Republican … a Trump Republican. This raises some important questions, including, “Is Donald Trump consciously channeling the Monopoly icon, or is this merely a coincidence of cosmic proportions?” Other questions include: “How does this paternalistic affirmation of the patriarchy makes right-thinking people feel while playing such a game?” Or, “What does Monopoly’s embrace of rapacious exploitation of workers and tenants teach our children about life in a society dominated by unfettered capitalism? Shades of Gordon Gekko …
However, perhaps the most offensive game – as well as perhaps the oldest board game in human history, is chess. This game is also the most blatantly offensive of the lot. The reason is obvious to even the color-specific visually-impaired around us. Chess pieces are either white or black, and white ALWAYS goes first, while black ALWAYS goes second. The racist message of chess is hardly obscure or subtle. Players are told that white is always better than black.
So, while Ms. Mellink has identified the risk of politically-incorrect games and gaming devices, she has barely scratched the surface. If we want a “safe space” for games and gaming, we must take collective action to enforce decent, inoffensive standards on those games.
Shortage Of Greenwich Homes Triggers Bidding War As New Yorkers Flock To Suburbs
The exodus of city dwellers from New York City continued into late 2020 as homebuying in Greenwich surged, according to Bloomberg.
A new report from appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and Douglas Elliman Real Estate said 317 single-family homes were listed in the tiny town, located in southwestern Fairfield County, at the end of December.
A shortage of Greenwich homes prompted a fierce bidding war among buyers who were willing to pay at least 14% above the seller’s asking price, compared with 2.6% in 2019.
The average listing time for homes on the market was 142 days in 2020, compared with 183 days one year earlier. The pace at which Greenwich homes are selling is the the fastest in seven years.
Completed transactions jumped 141% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier to 282, Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman said.
In a separate report, Brokerage Houlihan Lawrence said pending home sales in the town soared as well. The number of homes in Greenwich under contract at the end of December was up 97% from a year earlier.
A combination of the virus pandemic, social unrest, remote working, and violent crime has resulted in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing New York City.
The great escape to Greenwich began in April and has continued ever since. Last month, we noted that condo interest in New York City suburbs was erupting in the fourth quarter, especially in Greenwich.
New York City’s trend is to either downsize and find a house in the suburbs or unload real estate and never return as the metro transforms into a violent hellhole. The city’s economic recovery times will undoubtedly lag the rest of the country.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi ramped up the attacks on members of her own house this week, accusing them of giving “aid and comfort” to those who want to destroy the nation.
The comments came after Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., denied a public accusation by Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., that she personally took rioters around the capitol for a tour before the attack on January 6th. Boebert pointed out that the “rioters” were her family members and she has never given such tours. Rather than encouraging colleagues to avoid baseless and inflammatory accusations pending review of what occurred on January 6th, Pelosi threw gasoline on the fire and accused her colleagues of giving “aid and comfort” to those who were trying to destroy the Constitution and the country. It is, in my view, another failure of leadership by the Speaker in her duties to the institution as a whole.
Like many, I support a commission to look into how these rioters gained such rapid entry into the Capitol Hill. However, Democratic members have claimed that Republican members were actual co-conspirators in the riot in supplying access to the building to plan out the attack. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D., N.J.) went public with an extraordinary allegation against some of her colleagues that they conducted secret surveillance in a conspiracy with rioters at the Capitol. Sherrill stated in a Facebook live address to her constituents that she witnessed the surveillance personally. She said unidentified members of Congress “had groups coming through the Capitol” in “a reconnaissance for the next day.”
Sherill has still not supplied any of the names of her colleagues to who worked as inside co-conspirators. As noted earlier, this is an unambiguous allegation of criminal conduct against colleagues. Either members were conspiring in a crime or Sherill unfairly defamed her colleagues. Article I, Section 5, the Constitution says, “Each House (of Congress) may determine the Rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.” The House may discipline members for violations of both unlawful conduct as well as any conduct which the House of Representatives finds has reflected discredit upon the institution. In re Chapman, 166 U.S. 661, 669-670 (1897). A House Select Committee in 1967 stated:
Censure of a Member has been deemed appropriate in cases of a breach of the privileges of the House. There are two classes of privilege, the one, affecting the rights of the House collectively, its safety, dignity, and the integrity of its proceedings; and the other, affecting the rights, reputation, and conduct of Members, individually. Most cases of censure have involved the use of unparliamentary language, assaults upon a Member or insults to the House by introductions of offensive resolutions, but in five cases in the House and one in the Senate [as of 1967] censure was based on corrupt acts by a Member, and in another Senate case censure was based upon noncooperation with and abuse of Senate committees.
If members did conspire as alleged by Rep. Sherrill, they could be expelled for that criminal act. They would also face prosecution. It would be a betrayal of not just Congress but the country.
One would think that this rising level of acrimony would prompt a Speaker to calm her members and call for an investigation. Speaker Pelosi however proceeded to ramp up the rhetoric. She started out well by stating, “You have to have evidence for what has happened.” She then took a shot at Republicans and stated:
“There is no question that there were members in this body who gave aid and comfort to those with the idea that they were embracing a lie — a lie perpetrated by the president of the United States that the election did not have legitimacy.”
The language comes from the treason language in the Constitution Article III, Section 3 states:
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or, in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
In the context of alleged criminal conspiracy by members, the use of this language clearly suggested members were more than just politically at fault for their positions. It suggested that they were traitors.
These attacks are coming as some members are calling for the possible expulsion of members for challenging the electoral votes, an act expressly allowed under federal law and repeatedly done by Democrats in prior elections. It is an example of the rage-filled politics that continues to build in our country, including calls for blacklists and punitive measures against anyone deemed supportive of Trump. As I noted in today’s column, it is a crisis of leadership in this country when we desperately need leaders who can unite us rather than capitalize on our divisions.
“Gross Interference”: Russia Livid That US Embassy Posted Times & Locations Of Navalny Protests
Earlier on Saturday as pro-Navalny protests began “sweeping across Russia” – as CNN dubiously put it (which have not numbered more than in the thousands in any one place) – we asked the question: are we witnessing the start of a manufactured ‘color revolution’ targeting Putin and the ruling government under the banner of the Navalny ‘nerve agent’ saga?
Of course, it’s too early to tell. But already on ‘day one’ of major protests across several Russian cities the US Embassy in Moscow is highlighting the protests and their locations on its website. While ostensibly the embassy is directing citizens to “avoid” these demonstrations, given the possibility of violence, the State Department-sponsored public notice lists in surprisingly specific detail the location and times of a dozen protests in large cities.
Russia’s foreign ministry is livid, and has charged the US Embassy with giving unnecessary “cover” to the ‘unauthorized’ protests. Essentially the Kremlin is alleging that the ‘notification’ is a US Embassy ploy to actually publicize and promote the protests.
#Hypocrisy is an instrument of American democracy, which has become especially dangerous during the #COVID19 pandemic.
☝️ See to your own problems and stop interfering in domestics affairs of other countries. pic.twitter.com/7bQbBJRr8m
Here’s the full Russian foreign ministry response to the provocative US Embassy webpage as featured in TASS:
Russia plans to view the attempts of the US embassy in Moscow to “cover” the unauthorized rallies in Russia as interference in internal affairs, the Russian Foreign Ministry wrote on its Telegram channel on Friday.
“All that coincides with Washington’s provocative doctrinal guidelines to encourage ‘protests in the countries with unwanted governments’,” the Foreign Ministry said. “Any attempts of this ‘coverage’ of unauthorized rallies will be regarded as gross interference in our country’s domestic affairs and will lead to a corresponding response.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry pointed out that the information, posted on the US embassy’s site, on the time and venues for the unsanctioned rallies goes beyond concern for US nationals in Russia.
Under the pretext of “avoiding ” the planned for today anti-government meetings in Russia , US Embassy published the exact times & locations of the planned meetings, as a guide where actually the riots are expected. https://t.co/rGGw3scRrj
How do they know, where & when, btw? https://t.co/1eMtvPo2hQ
Below is the remarkably detailed information posted to the US Embassy in Moscow’s website.
The “Demonstration Alert” provided the list of planned protests a full day ahead of the demonstrations actually taking place.
* * *
In Moscow, demonstrators plan to gather near Pushkin Square at approximately 1400 and march towards the Kremlin.
In St. Petersburg, demonstrators plan to gather near Senate Square at approximately 1400 and march towards Gostiny Dvor (located on Nevsky Avenue).
In Yekaterinburg, demonstrators plan to gather at the entrance to Dinamo Stadium, 12 Ulitsa Yeryomina at approximately 1400 and march along the embankment of the city lake toward the Drama Theater.
In Perm, demonstrators plan to gather at the intersection of Komsomolskiy Prospekt and Ulitsa Poliny Osipenko at approximately 1400 and march towards Komsomolskiy Prospekt and some other central streets.
In Chelyabinsk, demonstrators plan to gather at Slavy Boulevard at approximately 1400 and march towards Lenin Prospekt to Kurchatov Monument.
In Krasnoyarsk, demonstrators plan to gather in Krasnaya (Red) Square at approximately 1400 and march towards the downtown area.
In Novosibirsk, demonstrators plan to gather at 63 Krasny Prospekt, near House of Officers at approximately 1400 and march towards Lenin Square.
In Omsk, demonstrators plan to gather at Leningrad Square, at the intersection of Karla Marksa Prospekt and Ulitsa Maslennikova at approximately 1400 and march towards Sobornaya (Cathedral) Square.
In Vladivostok, demonstrators plan to gather at the Fighters for Soviet Power Monument on Svetlanskaya Street at 1400.
In Khabarovsk, demonstrators plan to gather at Lenin Square at 1200.
In Ulan Ude, demonstrators plan to gather at Teatralnaya Square at 1400.
In Irkutsk, demonstrators plan to gather at the Square on Ulitsa Uritskogo on the square near the consumer services center “Dom Byta”
* * *
Time for another US-sponsored Color Revolution in Eastern Europe?
Russian authorities arresting peaceful protesters, journalists – appears to be concerted campaign to suppress free speech, peaceful assembly. This continues years of Russia tightening restrictions, repressive actions against civil society, independent media, political opposition.
Russians are taking to the streets today in the freezing cold to peacefully demand freedom, human rights for all their citizens, an end to corruption, and the immediate release of Alexei @Navalny.
I stand with them. The United States, and the world, must stand with them, too. https://t.co/OtKebHgMBm
Many commentators have pointed out that if the Russian Embassy in Washington D.C. had done the same thing related to either pro-Trump or BLM protests at any point, US leaders would explode in anger and there’d be a flood of the usual denunciations of “Russian interference”.
“6 Months For A Regime Change”: Why One Strategist Believes The Market Will Crash In The Second Half Of 2021
By now it is clear to everyone that: i) we are living in an “epic” market bubble (as defined by Jeremy Grantham, who also see s “spectacular” crash coming), and ii) one which is made all that more acute by a historic level of euphoria (according to Citi, Goldman and BofA), with Citi’s euphoria sentiment indicator at the euphoria-est stage in history as the latest Panic/Euphoria model shows
Ok, fine, the market is now more insane than it has ever been and the result are Volkswagen-esque short-squeeze explosions like the one we just saw in Gamestop, which made the Big Short (Squeeze) Michael Burry even richer.
But while everyone knows this is a bubble of unprecedented euphoria proportions, what everyone wants to know is how – and more importantly when – it will end.
Just yesterday we got two attempts to answer that question, the first from Jeremy Grantham, who told Bloomberg that he sees a “spectacular” crash in “the next few months.” Another, less alarmist prediction, came from BofA CIO Michael Hartnett, who while not expecting anything “spectacular”, predicted a sharp drawdown in risk as soon as this quarter, as this simply has to happen to reduce the record froth in this “late-stage speculative blow-off” and allow the normal move higher to resume.
Adding to the pile up, in his latest Weekly Kickstart note even the ever-cheerful Goldman head equity strategist, David Kostin, admits that a part of the market that appears frothy “and may pose a broader risk is extremely high-growth, high-multiple stocks.” As the Goldman strategist points out, “like negative earners and penny stocks, trading volumes and share prices of stocks with EV/sales multiples over 20x have soared.”
However, these firms are much larger, collectively accounting for 23% of trading volumes during the past month (96thpercentile since 1985) and 9% of market cap. Some of this appreciation is appropriate given record low interest rates. Firms with EV/sales ratios greater than 20x accounted for 2% of trading volumes in 2019. That share rose to 10% in August 2020 as interest rates plunged. However, their share of volumes has doubled again during the most recent market rally.
Another way of showing this: the Fed’s injections of trillions have made it so investors have run out of new trash to buy, so they are piling into the same old trash to the point where the riskiest assets are also the most attractive ones.
The chart above should come as no surprise to our regular readers: after all for the past decade we have said that we are now in a (non) “market” where fundamentals and logic don’t matter, so instead you have armies of retail daytraders rushing into the most shorted names – something we said was the best trading strategy as far back as 2013 – and also everyone turning into a momentum trader, and just buying anything that goes up (and selling anything that doesn’t). The FT had an amusing take on that:
… the stock market has totally lost its marbles, and in a bid to make as much money in as little time as possible has decided to become one giant momentum trade which consumes ever more of itself as it feeds itself.
Incidentally, those who wonder what may be the “next Gamestop” where an violent short squeeze sends the stocks soaring, yesterday we showed a handful of companies where the short interest as a % of float is over 50% and are ripe to explode higher.
Now, these staggering meltups across stocks, sectors and the broader market, are starting to be a problem for Wall Street, whose analysts are once again badly behind the curve. Take Bank of America, which has a 2021 year end target of 3,800, or below the S&P’s Friday close. Or Wells Fargo which is at 3,850 and also below the recent all time high in the S&P, which was reached before January was even over.
So are strategists rushing to lift their price targets as they so always do when they chase prices and try to justify their recos to clients? Some – like Goldman, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are. Others, however, like Wells Fargo head strategist Chris Harvey refuses to do so and is keeping his S&P target of 3,850. Speaking with Bloomberg’s “What Goes Up” podcast, he discussed why he’s not ready to throw in the towel on his conservative target. He also discussed how Tesla Inc.’s entrance into the S&P 500 reminds him of when AOL joined the benchmark index more than 20 years ago, and why he sees it as a potential signal of the end of “growth-at-any-price” (not to be confused with GARP) type of investing,
Here are the highlights from his interview starting with why he’s sticking with his S&P 500 target:
“We knew that this is a very conservative target and we bias ourselves on the conservative side. Last year, we also had a lower target than the marketplace. And one of the things that was different from us is we had a lot of confidence in it. We never cut our price target. And when things got really dicey, we found real value. We felt comfortable in and around the market lows, telling people to put money to work. Also at this time last year, we ran into a similar situation where people were saying, ‘Hey Chris, are you going to raise your price target? Or what are you going to do?’ We said no. And right now the answer is no.”
“We have very conservative earnings estimates. Part of that is because we don’t know what the tax regime is going to look like. It’s a long year and we’ll see, and we have no problems raising our targets or changing when the information changes. What we really don’t want to do is to cut our target because we don’t want to tell people there’s value there when there really isn’t. And so we tend to err on the more conservative side.”
On why investment opportunities based on stimulus may be short-lived:
“To get to the tax situation: One of the reasons why we see the opportunity being much shorter is it appears to be a rent, not own, type situation. We’re super cheap, right? And frugal as the day is long. We don’t want to stick around for the bill. You’re going to have to pay that bill. You’re going to have to do that before the midterm elections. So that’s saying somewhere in the second half of this year, or the beginning of next year. It’s hard to say granularly what’s going to occur, but we know that we’ve spent a lot of money and sooner or later we do have to pay the bill and we think it’s coming. And so, unlike a lot of my peers, I’m a little bit worried about that because that’s not going to be a whole lot of fun.”
Why Tesla gives him an AOL flashback:
“The Spidey sense is starting to tingle, right? I remember 1998, 1999 and I remember what was happening. You had a lot of speculation, you had a lot of retail investors getting involved. And we have a lot of funny things going on now. But what was amazing to me is AOL at the time was a game changer. It was an amazing technology. The stock had an incredible run, a run I really hadn’t seen before.”
“And it was added to the S&P late in the year at a very large market cap, or very large weighting. That to me was the beginning of the end, right? ‘99 was a fantastic year for stocks, but after ‘99, many of your tech companies and many of your growth companies lost 50% to 100% of their value. Now you have another game-changing technology in Tesla. And you have a stock that has performed amazingly well. And it’s going into the S&P 500 when? December last year. At a very large weight or market cap. This is signaling that we’re close to the end of the ‘growth-at-any-price’ type investment strategy. It’s not a call-out on a particular stock, but what it shows you is that we’ve reached that level.”
“And so back in the late ‘90s, it took 12 months for that, for the regime change to occur. And what I’m telling clients now is in 2020, everything is accelerated, right? Everything that I thought was going to happen more or less occurred, but just in a very compressed time period. So if it took 12 months in the late ‘90s, we think it probably takes six months now for that regime change really to occur.”
Finally, on the potential “pain trade” for 2021:
“Funny enough, I think the big pain trade for a lot of people on the buy side is a recovery or a strong recovery, because many people haven’t traded in a post-recessionary environment. Many people have been trading in a low-growth or recessionary environment. And when growth is abundant, different things happen. The market rewards value and small caps and cyclicals and that could cause a lot of pain for much of the buy side, because they’re so steeped in that growth trade.”
There is one more reason why the second half of 2021 will be very painful. As we first explained one month ago, the Chinese credit impulse has just peaked and is now set for a period of freefall as China scrambles to contain its recent lending spree, a move which will send its first derivative, the impulse, reeling and will have profoundly adverse impacts not only on Nominal GDP…
The failure of anyone to win two of America’s largest lotteries recently caused the jackpots to soar unleashing a bout of “Lotto Madness.” This spread like a wildfire across America revealing something very significant about our culture.
While this might not reach the level of needing a post-event “debriefing” a closer look at how these large lotteries affect our culture may be important and meaningful. A close inspection of how people react to the idea of winning a large sum of money exposes more than a few flaws in our values and the way we think.
It seems that society has reached the point where it thinks the road to riches is not through the valley of hard work and savings and that we can by-pass the important area known as sacrifice.
Family Guy Wins The Lottery!
When we have a large jackpot, lotto madness can even extend into the media and influenced television shows like the animated comedy “Family Guy.” During one of the big payouts years ago, an episode had the Griffin family living on a strict budget until a local news story on the lottery influences Peter to buy a ticket in hopes that he will win and set the family on a better financial platform. In fact, Peter reveals to his family that he has not bought just one, but several thousand lottery tickets, admitting that he has taken out a second mortgage on the house to buy them. After watching the results of the lottery that night, they discover that they have indeed won it yes, they have obtained the American dream.
Articles occasionally appear in the media with in your face revelations of incomes and comparing salaries. One showed an athlete making $15,900,000 a year, next to a government employee making $165,000, a CEO at $120,000,000 a year, and a business owner at $24,000 a year, this is the sort of thing that gives us a reason to pause. No wonder we as a society are totally screwed up as to how we value and relate to money. We must question our values, we must question the fairness of such inequality. It is hard to measure the discontent generated by such fluff pieces and irresponsible articles like these that are often inaccurate or fail to tell the full story.
It is clear that many people feel the trade-offs we face by living in a free market-consumer-based society and it wears away at them. The fact is economic growth is accompanied by “wheel spinning”, inefficiencies and waste. While the benefits of our system often outweigh the negatives we find society is paying a toll through increased rates of addiction, depression, and economic inequality. On the emotional side, many people are not achieving the degree of being content or happy they had hoped for and are left with feelings of insecurity. This all contributes to people going totally bonkers and off the deep end at the prospect of winning a great deal of money even if the odds are massively against them doing so.
Government sanctioned gambling and especially lotteries send a message to the populace that conflicts with many important cultural values. These can have far-reaching effects. These messages promote a “let it roll” mentality. Simply allowing such activities and promoting them are two different issues. The government has climbed into bed with the devil to gain revenue from taxing these activities. Gaming does not benefit the average man. Truth is the laws of nature and the odds are against you, that’s why they call it gambling and not winning. It might be interesting to place more focus on how many people suffer post lotto depression when they do not win.
Many people who can least afford it spend $5 or $10 a week on lottery tickets in a futile attempt at striking it rich. The problem is, few people comprehend the chance to win a lottery is very small. These lotteries redistribute wealth from the working poor to the government which wins every week. Some studies indicate when lower-income players do buy tickets, they spend far more money on lottery tickets than wealthier players. A study published in the Journal of Gambling Studies found that those in the bottom fifth of income spent the most on lottery tickets, and more than twice as much as the richest lottery players – $433 a year vs. $193 a year.
Huge sums of money from lotteries are unmanageable by the average man and often cause adjustment difficulties, resulting in pain and not happiness. Large jackpots also result in a disconnect in true and associated values causing unrealistic expectations.The thought that we might at anytime win a jackpot in excess of one hundred million dollars gives a false impression of reality that is harmful in cultivating positive work ethics and makes a mockery of those who toil to produce a better life. In the past, some winners have used the line “be careful what you wish for” after having their life turned upside-down and disrupted by good fortune. One person that won big and experienced having his brutalized is Jack Whitaker. He has been quoted as saying he wished he had torn up his ticket after he was afflicted numerous times by the “lottery curse”.
Our modern consumer-based society has made us slaves to material objects and producers of waste. Many economists urge us to consume, even when we must borrow to do so, saying it creates more jobs. We follow Governments and leaders that we often neither like nor trust. Today’s youth growing up besieged by marketers are now vilified for being materialistic, marred by too little perspective, they find themselves angry and disappointed. During the latest lotteries that sported a massive well-publicized jackpot people used covid-19 relief money that was intended to be used to pay rent and even the food stamp money given to them by taxpayers to buy tickets. Bottom-line this is indeed madness.
Europe Scrambles To Stretch COVID Jab Supplies As Global Cases Near 100MM: Live Updates
Summary:
Global cases near 100MM
Deaths 2.1MM
BoJo pushes more lockdowns
Vaccine makers may sell jabs directly to states
Bloomberg says nearly 57MM doses distributed
UK hospital population falls for 3rd day
German health minister expects 3MM vaccines delivered in Feb
* * *
Although the news has been buried, to a degree, by Joe Biden’s inauguration and his flurry of executive orders this week intended to undo President Trump’s legislative legacy, most Americans continue to fret about the efficacy of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, especially following word from Israel that their efficacy has been greatly exaggerated.
Meanwhile, on a global scale, total cases are nearing 100MM, while deaths pass 2.1MM
A few days ago, we reported that nearly 2 dozen batches of spoiled vaccines accidentally ruined in transit by McKesson (or at least that was the official story) had caused tens of thousands of dosing delays in NYC, but elsewhere in the country as well, including across the state of California.
At the very least, now that the WHO has acknowledged that its PCR testing has been rendering millions of false positives due to over-amplification, the official data show that hospitalizations continue to decline across the country, suggesting that a team at Goldman calling for a trend reversal in hospitalizations (and, later on, deaths) may have been spot on.
As Pfizer said it would consider selling vaccines directly to the states as complaints about the federal plan (or, lack thereof, as Dr. Fauci claimed). A doctor in the UK urging the government to remove some of its more complicate guidelines, which have caused widespread frustration from the public.
However, in an interesting twist, Gov. Cuomo acknowledged that the federal government was no longer the greatest obstacle for states like New York when it comes to meeting vaccination targets: Instead, skeptical Black and Latino residents – purportedly those who have borne most of the suffering tied to COVID have seen the highest rates of refusal.
A group of doctors in the UK has urged the government to review the 12 weeks required for people to receive a second dose of the vaccine produced by Pfizer. The manufacturer suggests 21 days, but France’s top health authority recommends doubling that three-week gap as a way to stretch supplies and speed inoculations.
Of course, that wouldn’t exactly be great for Pfizer’s bottom line…
As Europe continues to struggle to overcome the delays on the vaccine front, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the “official projections” release by Chancellor Merkel, the Bank of England and myriad other institutions across Europe are essentially worthless (shocker).
And instead of waiting for their allotments of the AstraZeneca vaccine, Hungary yesterday became the first EU member to strike a deal to circumvent Brussels. And judging by grumblings in Italy, Poland and elsewhere, it won’t be the last.
According to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker, 56.7MM doses in 52 countries have been administered. The latest rate was roughly 2.85 million doses a day, on average. Vaccinations in the U.S. began Dec. 14 with health-care workers, and so far 18.4 million shots have been given, according to a state-by-state tally by Bloomberg and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the last week, an average of 939,973 doses per day were administered. The UK is the jab leader in the West, with 5.8 doled out by Saturday.
Here’s a roundup of COVID news on Saturday:
People being treated for Covid-19 in U.K. hospitals fell for a third day, to 37,899 on Jan. 21. Another 33,552 positive cases were reported on Saturday, about 5,000 below the average over the previous seven days. Deaths were above the weekly average at 1,348. More than 5.86 million people have received a first dose of vaccine.
A day after saying New York was running out vaccines, Governor Andrew Cuomo said the coming week’s supply has begun to arrive from the federal government — and he encouraged hesitant minorities to take it.
German Health Minister Jens Spahn said he expects 3MM vaccine doses to be delivered to the country in February, despite production problems by AstraZeneca.
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Still, while Moderna and Pfizer have had their share of “logistical problems” in the US, a second coronavirus vaccine manufacturer has warned of supply issues to the European Union, compounding frustration in the bloc. AstraZeneca said a production problem meant the number of initial doses available would be lower than expected. The fresh blow comes after some nations’ inoculation programmes were slowed due to a cut in deliveries of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
