Blogs

The following is the first of several short articles on the relationship between public finances, economic growth, and economic welfare. In this case two variables are considered, the Gini Coefficient of Income and the Total Tax Revenue as a percentage of GDP for OECD countries. In both cases the data is from c2018, the "circa" indicating that in some cases the data is a year or two older.

Donald Trump is now seriously arguing that the FDA deliberately withheld trial data from their COVID-19 vaccine until after the election.

"The @US_FDA and the Democrats didn’t want to have me get a Vaccine WIN, prior to the election, so instead it came out five days later – As I’ve said all along!"
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1325962203346972678

The real story is:

Global COVID-19 cases hit 50 million; 1.25 million dead.

The rate is now over 600K new infections per day, and 9K dead per day.

On September 17 I pointed out that global cases of the coronavirus-19 pandemic had reached 30 million.
https://www.facebook.com/lev.lafayette/posts/10159396674065955

On August 10 we had hit 20,000,000 cases.
https://www.facebook.com/lev.lafayette/posts/10159291022025955

On 26 October, death threats were sent to all 15 members of the Executive Committee of FECODE, the Colombian Federation of Education Workers (Federación Colombiana de Educadores), as well as to the President of the Trade Union Confederation CUT and former teacher and FECODE leader. The threats took the form of a funeral wreath with the words 'rest in peace'. Sixteen candles and 16 obituary notices with the name of each targeted union leader were also delivered to the home of Carlos Rivas, FECODE’s Secretary for legal affairs.

If you think election night is going to be long this year, think about the election of 1800, which pitted the incumbent President John Adams against Vice President Thomas Jefferson. The states all voted at different times, so the first ballots were cast in April and the last ones were cast in October.

The Biden/Harris platform is actually really good. I say this in spite of Biden being my least favorite of all the main party candidates other than Trump.

I like the healthcare policy. It doesn't eliminate for-profit private health insurance, but it would expand coverage to over 90% of the populace (excluding only illegal immigrants). It would subsidize costs for anyone below 400% of the federal poverty line and create a public option (basically "Medicare for All who want it"), but allowing the public option to negotiate prices.

The Murdoch empire: a degenerative neurological disorder that destroys the mind, body and soul of anybody who comes into prolonged contact with it.

This week we will look at the domination of the Murdoch empire and how it sets the political, social and cultural agenda in Australian society. How does it do it? Why is the legacy media still important? Why is print media still important?

It has to be said that Victoria, AU, has managed something quite impressive.

Neil Mitchell believes: "Because despite meeting the targets, our Premier has decided to delay any further reopening in the metropolitan area, and make restricted changes in regional Victoria... The targets were met. People did the right thing despite the pain. And having been promised likely relief, they got none."

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/now-we-are-crushed-daniel-an...

In the last couple of months, Belarus has experienced rigged elections, mass protests, and severe violence carried out by the security forces.

Union leaders, members of the Belarusian Independent Trade Union (BITU), have been arrested and imprisoned for participating in protests and strike action.