Posted in economy, politics, technology, tagged $2 dollar a day, 2012, 47 percent, accusations, American Dream, American way, Arab Spring, Australia, backbiting, badmouth, candidate, character defect, cohesion, community, competitive, Comptroller, consumer price index, consumers, country, crisis, culprits, David Walker, debt, deficit, democracy, Democrats, dialog, direction, division, Dong Tao, easy target, economy, efficient, election, emerging power, entitlement class, Europe, family, finance, financial aid, First World, free trade, fundraiser, future, gina rinehart, have nots, haves, help, incomes, individualism, insolvency, jobs, labor, lazy, living standards, low pay, middle class, minimum wage, Mitt Romney, money, nation, partisans, policy, political will, president, profits, pundits, questions, race to the bottom, raise all boats, real inflation, recession, Reform, regulations, Republicans, resentment, scapegoat, solution, stand together, sustainable, technology, Third World, threaten, trade for a new century, unemployment, unsustainable, USA, voters, wage loss, Wall Street, welfare state, West, whining, work, workforce, world markets on September 20, 2012 |
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She’s the world’s wealthiest woman you’ve never heard of and she’s saying something you probably wish you hadn’t: “Gina Rinehart, world’s richest woman, makes case for $2-a-day pay“,the Los Angeles Times reports.
The Australian mining heiress has a problem. The cost of running a mining operation in Australia cannot compete with Africans willing to work a continent away for $2 per day.
There’s a certain elementary logic to Rinehart’s argument. If the two nations are selling raw materials at vastly different prices because of vastly different costs of labor, her operation loses. In a worse-case scenario, it might not even make sense to go on operating. From Rinehart’s perspective, profit is the objective and benevolence is a job — never mind if the jobs she creates fails to compensate workers well enough to keep the lights on. She’s precariously positioned on that slippery slope so common to today’s political and trade debates: It could be worse: no jobs.
The world’s richest woman has a point. But it doesn’t pass the sustainable-future test.
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Posted in economy, politics, technology, tagged abundant, advancements, alternative, balance, Big Oil, blame, brown energy, bullet train, buzzword, capital, clean, collaborative, collective, commodities, cooperative, crisis, debate, define, drilling, economy, efficient, environmentalists, food, food insecurity, fuel, future, geothermal, gouging, Green, highway, history, hovercraft, imagine, incentives, inflation, infrastructure, innovation, invention, Iran, jobs, market, myths, not in my backyard, oil, partisan, partnership, petro, petro hoarding, political, Popular Science, power, price hikes, prices, private, privatize, profit, progress, public, pump, railroad, renewable, renewable resources, resource, rhetoric, risk, role, scarcity, solution, space, speculation, subsidy, surge, sustainable, tax break, technology, transportation, truth, values, venture capital, vision, water, wind, world, WPA on March 18, 2012 |
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Quick! What type of world did you imagine when you were a kid? Did you foresee yourself darting about in a hovercraft much like the cartoon family in the Jetsons? Vacationing on the moon? A lean, mean greener world? How is it that we find ourselves these many years, decades even, down the road and we’re still looking at a society that in so many ways is what it once was: the world that petroleum built? Decades after the Carter-era gasoline shortages, now with the prospect of $6 gasoline looming before us, we have little to show for our grand hopes and great visions. We’re still talking about moving off foreign oil even as the buzzword “energy independence” has become firmly entrenched in our lexicon. So little, so late.
What happened? (more…)
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Posted in economy, politics, tagged 21st Century, adopting, agitators, all-size-fits-all, allegations, alter the way we live, American, analogy, Asean Plus Six, Asian, bailout, Barack Obama, barriers, block, bode, body, borders, bottom line, brainwash, broken, bureaucracy, business, capitalism, captive, challenges, change, civil, civil unrest, codependent, coercion, coined the phrase, collectivist, commonwealth, communism, comparative advantage, competition, concentrate, concentration of power, confederacy, conflicting, consolidate, conspiracy, conspirator, Constitution, cooperation, corporation, crisis, culture, currency, customs union theory, deceive, deconstruct, deliver on, downside, economics, eggs in one basket, emergent, enmeshed, evolution by stealth, expedient, experiment, fact, fascism, fearmonger, fears, federation, fiction, finance, foolhardy, force, foreign policy, framework, free trade, freedom, Friedmanesque, Friedmanism, future, global, globalization, goal, groups, guarantee, H.G. Wells, H.W. Bush, history, hope, horizon, human, idealism, imagined, impersonal, in name only, independence, individual, interregionalism, is United States, issues, Jerome Corsi, jobs, justice, language, law, legal, legislation, liberty, lies, logical extension, Lou Dobbs, maps, market, media, member, metaphor, military complex, myth, NAFTA, NASCO, nation, national sovereignty passe, nationalization, nature, neocapitalist, neoclassical economists, net gain, new deal, new economy, new empire, new world order, North American, NWO, offset, opponents, opportunity, opt out, optimal currency area theory, organization, oversell, paranoid, peacetime, policy, policymakers, practical, practice, pragmatic, president, Prime Minister Brown, principles, progress, promise, proposals, prosperity, psychology, public opinion, push, raindrops, real, reality, reconstruct, Reform, regional security complex, regionalization, relationship, replace, representative, representative democracy, rights, Ross Perot, rule of law, scale, secure, security, serious questions, shift, Single Market and Economy, socialism, speak out, specialization, SPP, states, stimulus, subservient, succession, SuperCorridor Project, sustainable, theory, threat, timeline, Trans-Texas Corridor, transnational, transnational progressives, treaty, trend, Union, unrest, Urban Legend, usher in, Utopian, venture, wages, weakest link, WFM, Woodrow Wilson, workers, world federalism movement, world leaders on October 30, 2009 |
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President H.W. Bush, borrowing a phrase from an earlier era, popularized the term “New World Order” (NWO) in the early 1990s. But while the New World Order has legitimate roots, it has come to be associated with little more than paranoid conspiracy.
Given what we’ve witnessed in recent times, however, is it wise to continue to dismiss the notion out-of-hand?
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