Market planning and allocation of real resources at its best. Those with most $ (acquired from the Government and bank credit) get all the real resources.
Thing about gold is it's not that far off from stuff like Bitcoin except for the floor value it has, not many gold for gold sake, they buy it to turn money into more money, including central banks (though some also care about sanctions risk but underlying reasoning is the same).
Buy Government securities (directly or through ETFs/MFs) instead of equity and private debt. That's what i do with my involuntary savings.
Ministry of Information Technology
Games could come under Arts or Culture.
that said, i've used leaseweb dedis in the past and never had any trouble with public torrents. Maybe try seedhost.eu (they use leaseweb) or feralhosting.com (own ASN and all, unlimited traffic)
AirVPN is fine, make sure to bind the interface, there are docker containers which prevent leakage too, you can then host a home seedbox.
rebrand it as 'electrolytes'
It really should be sovereign spending tbf. Like, America's bloated healthcare and military is Federal spending (ofc, no one cares about 'losses' for military since you know, it's the military). When you use non-sovereign entities, you are borrowing from commercial banks (even if state owned), commercial banks give out loans which are supposed to be paid back so the sovereign (central bank + ministry of finance) don't have to recapitalize it (which raises fiscal deficits which the central gov don't like due to 'sound' finance). Obviously, HSR has a lot of utility however the financing debt should be transferred to the Central Govt, I don't care about profitability in money terms, many of the good parts of HSR don't show up on balance sheets. i think they should stop using accounting trickery and have it be an item on Central Govt budget, although the reason they do it this way is to make national debt and fiscal deficit appear lower (for silly reasons).
Capital gains, dividends aren't included in GDP so yea capitalist and top percentile financial wealth grew much more than 4.3%
4.3% is the real goods/services growth (that too is iffy since market pricing inflates certain things like healthcare when real outcomes are poor, also inclusion of services itself is questionable). There are many silly things that are included in GDP under services like bank fees (overdraft and all which are basically rent, costs bank next to nothing and practically a tax).
Manufacturing growth is at like <1%.
Under socialism the response would be "Wow that's great, it means workers can do other stuff instead or work less hours"
spoiler
It is easy to see why politicians like raising the minimum wage. Short of cash yet keen to fight inequality, they have seized on a tool of redistribution that costs governments little and wins votes. In its budget on November 26th Britain is likely to raise the minimum wage, which sits at 61% of median income, up from 48% a decade ago. Germany introduced a minimum wage only in 2015; by 2023 it had crossed 50%. And although America’s federal rate of $7.25 an hour has not changed since 2009, many states and cities controlled by Democrats have raised their pay floors far higher. The average effective minimum wage is around $12 per hour; the highest is over $21.
Chart: The Economist
In one respect the surging minimum wage is a triumph for economists. Having originally been sceptics, they embraced the policy around the turn of the millennium, arguing that wage floors did not eliminate jobs as they once feared—a finding that the experience of the past two decades seemed to confirm. Yet as we report this week, just as governments are championing the consensus, scholars are getting cold feet. A growing body of research suggests that minimum wages distort economies in ways that do not immediately appear in jobs numbers.
One worry is that it takes time for minimum wages to kill jobs. Evidence from a big hike to Seattle’s pay floor in 2015 and 2016 suggests hiring at the bottom end of the labour market slowed by 10%, even though existing workers were typically not laid off. Another is that higher minimums degrade jobs rather than destroy them. When employers must pay more, but can still hire easily, they may cut corners elsewhere. New research finds that big increases in the minimum wage are associated with shorter or less predictable working hours, more workplace accidents and fewer perks such as health insurance.
A final risk is that early success breeds overconfidence. Moderate minimum wages can, counterintuitively, make jobs more abundant, by offsetting the bargaining power of big employers, who would otherwise restrain hiring to suppress pay. But the more governments embrace big hikes, the more likely they are to eliminate jobs—just as a big enough tax rise will reduce revenue. One recent peer-reviewed estimate puts the average American minimum wage that corrects for employer market power at under $8.
Beyond that, the minimum wage is a crude and wasteful tool for redistribution. Many minimum-wage workers are not poor, but live with higher earners. And when firms raise prices to offset their steeper costs, it is the poor who suffer most—more so than from sales taxes, according to one paper.
Politicians should beware these effects. Although raising minimum wages invariably polls well, electorates everywhere are also angry about soaring prices and a crisis of affordability. There is a danger of a doom loop in which employers’ higher costs are passed on to consumers, making life still less affordable, including for the very workers governments are trying to help. Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York, has promised to raise the minimum wage from $16.50 today to $30 by 2030. Prices would rise significantly as a result, making an already expensive place to live even dearer.
There are better ways to help low earners. In-work tax credits are better targeted towards the poor and, if paid for with growth-friendly taxes, less harmful to the economy. They may lack the appeal of minimum wages, the costs of which are well hidden. But after a decade of aggressive increases, the responsible option is not to go higher still. It is to stop. ■
Tldr: Quantity Theory of Money bullshit, that capitalists will pass through 100% of wage rises as prices, there is no room for output for expand, no room for higher productivity, no room for profits from greater sales, no room for higher employment.
A final risk is that early success breeds overconfidence. Moderate minimum wages can, counterintuitively, make jobs more abundant, by offsetting the bargaining power of big employers, who would otherwise restrain hiring to suppress pay.
Yes which is why there needs to be a job guarantee at the said wage. And direct public sector hiring so wages all along the scale.
But the more governments embrace big hikes, the more likely they are to eliminate jobs—just as a big enough tax rise will reduce revenue.
Laffer Curve crap.
In Shreve, Crump & Low, a jewellery store in Greenwich, Connecticut, a Laurent Ferrier “Grand Sport Tourbillon” watch can set you back as much as $210,000. Business is brisk.
“We’re very blessed in Greenwich,” said managing partner Bradford Walker. The Swiss luxury watches, natural diamonds, sapphires and emeralds the shop specialises in are all selling well. “Demand has actually increased over the past six months.”
In the city of Bridgeport, a 30-minute drive away, demand is also rising — but for a different kind of product. People here are flocking to the city’s food pantries and soup kitchens as the high cost of living bears down on lower-income families.
“I’m living day by day,” said Jamaica-born Roselyn Macdonald, as she picked up eggs from a food bank in The Hollow, a poor immigrant neighbourhood of Bridgeport. Macdonald is unemployed and struggling to pay her bills.
‘We’re very blessed in Greenwich,’ says Bradford Walker, managing partner of a jewellery store © Pascal Perich/FT
Volunteers prepare food for people in need in Bridgeport © Pascal Perich/FT
This is the tale of two cities — a pair of communities just 30 miles apart that have experienced such contrasting fortunes they could be in different countries.
Together, they symbolise America’s K-shaped economy — a split screen where asset-owning classes have become ever wealthier while lower-income households have seen their living standards stagnate or decline.
This bifurcation has pushed the issue of affordability to the top of the US political agenda, threatening the Republican party’s prospects in next year’s midterm elections and weighing on Donald Trump’s presidency.
Fairfield County, where Greenwich and Bridgeport are situated, is one of the most K-shaped regions in America. In Greenwich, home to hedge funds including AQR, Viking Global Investors and Lone Pine Capital, the average gross income per tax return was $687,000 in 2023. In Bridgeport it was a tenth of that — just $70,500.
In Greenwich, the average gross income per tax return was $687,000 in 2023 © Pascal Perich/FT
Those disparities have got worse in recent years. “The gap is widening, not narrowing,” said David Rabin, head of Greenwich United Way, a local non-profit organisation.
The Republicans’ signature legislative achievement this year, the “big beautiful bill”, has in some cases made families’ situations worse. The legislation, which Trump signed in July, has delivered tax cuts for the rich while reducing federal funding for Medicaid, the taxpayer-funded health insurance programme for low-income Americans, and food stamps known as Snap.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan agency, households in the bottom decile of income distribution will lose about $1,600 per year as a result of the law, while those in the top 10 per cent will see a $12,000 annual gain.
National surveys underscore the divergence. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index shows that people with investment portfolios feel significantly better about the economy than those who do not own stocks, with sentiment among non-stockholders sinking to its lowest point since the university began collecting such data in 1998.
This split is on show in Fairfield County. In Greenwich and other rich enclaves such as Darien and New Canaan, “people’s net worth and wealth has been increasing as home prices and the stock market have gone up”, said Mark Abraham, head of DataHaven, a Connecticut-based non-profit research organisation that studies social trends and public data.
“But the majority, people who are just starting out in their career or don’t own a home or don’t have a stock portfolio, they’re kind of treading water,” Abraham added.
Mendi Blue Paca, head of Fairfield County’s Communities Foundation, which awards grants to local charities, said chronic homelessness had been virtually eliminated in the area about six years ago, but since the coronavirus pandemic it had been “going gangbusters”.
“The shelters are overflowing, the pantries are overwhelmed,” she said. “And it’s not just people below the poverty line showing up for handouts — it’s the working poor, as well, who are now food insecure.”
With its waterside mansions, private beaches and Lamborghini dealerships, Greenwich — where the median sale price for a single-family home rose to $3.5mn in July from $3.1mn the previous year — is largely insulated from such problems.
The town has benefited from a stock market that hit near record highs this year: the HFRI fund-weighted composite index, a barometer of the global hedge fund industry’s health, was up more than 11 per cent by November, close to its best performance since 2016.
“There are lots of people making lots of money,” said Bruce McGuire, head of the Connecticut Hedge Fund Association. “The shops and restaurants up and down Greenwich Avenue all seem to be doing very well.”
But even in Greenwich, where 9 per cent of people live below the federal poverty line, the stresses are growing. Rabin said low- and middle-income families often struggled to come up with the $151,000 a year needed for rent, food and child care in the town. “Almost a third of the population here are one missed pay cheque away from disaster,” he said.
Rabin also noted that as a result of Trump’s tax and spending bill, about a quarter of the 850 people in Greenwich who usually receive food stamps were no longer eligible for them.
In Bridgeport, the effect of the bill will be far greater. A large share of the population depends on Snap and Medicaid, said Rhonda Neal, head of Bridgeport Rescue Mission, a charity. “If you cut [them], you’re affecting the working poor, the elderly and kids.”
Lunch is served at the Thomas Merton Center in Bridgeport © Pascal Perich/FT
The increased need is obvious at the Thomas Merton Family Center in Bridgeport, where a soup kitchen doles out plates of meatballs and pasta to a snaking queue of single men and married couples.
“Every day we have new faces coming here,” said the head chef, Kelemen. Four years ago, 125-150 people showed up for lunch: “Now it’s 200-250.”
Juan Cardona is a typical guest, a homeless ex-convict who lives in a tent. “Bridgeport is rough,” he said. “But the only way is up.”
Trump has described “affordability” as the “greatest con job”. But he has also stressed his administration is working hard to lower prices. In a speech from the White House on December 17, he blamed the high cost of living on his predecessor, Joe Biden, and claimed that inflation was being “crushed”.
People in Bridgeport are unconvinced. “Trump is the biggest liar,” said Robert Walsh, a homeless man who works as a pantry co-ordinator at the Thomas Merton Family Center. “He said he was going to bring prices down on his first day in office. Instead they’ve gone way up.”
9
Trump’s “best is yet to come” and the data reality are diverging – for the worse!
(billmitchell.org)
2026 Recession year? 
https://x.com/sopjap/status/1996123471265587535
He do be looking drippy though
Twitter 
56
[Polish state owned enterprise] Repurposed a Nazi Factory Site to Make TNT to Drop on Gaza
(www.dropsitenews.com)
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nope, just a
. i think there is definitely a funny aspect to making a real cover out of an AI slop song.