Linkage

Wielding the power of credit, commercial banks get to determine the allocation of investment and therefore determine what gets produced.  They make these decisions based on whatever production is most profitable, regardless of whether it is beneficial or destructive. As a result, we get massive investment in things like fossil fuels, beef and SUVs, because these things are highly profitable to capital, and chronic underinvestment in necessary sectors like renewable energy, regenerative agriculture and public transit, because these are less profitable or not profitable at all.  

This dynamic is what explains the fact that high-income countries – like the United States and Britain – are characterized by extremely high levels of resource use and yet still fail to meet many basic human needs. It is because investment is controlled in an undemocratic way, and is totally unaccountable to society.

Credit guidance can help deal with this problem.  We need a democratically ratified framework to guide private investment in line with social and ecological objectives rather than just profit maximization. What are our main goals and values as a society? What do we need to accomplish? What forms of production should be increased in order to improve human well-being?  What forms of production are destructive and unnecessary and should be scaled down?  These questions should be democratically determined and a credit guidance framework should be established accordingly.

This:

It’s important to understand that hormones, surgeries, and other aspects of transition do not always result in the dramatic physical changes many of us hope for. HRT, in particular, is often seen as a miracle cure that will bring about rapid changes in fat distribution, breast development, and softening of facial features. While HRT can bring about incredible and affirming changes, it’s not a magic wand. The results can vary widely depending on factors such as age, genetics, and individual body characteristics.

At 55, my body doesn’t respond to HRT in the same way that a younger person’s might. The progress has been slow, and while I am grateful for every sign of change, the truth is that I may never fully meet the physical expectations that the world imposes on women. And that’s devastating—not because I want to conform to societal ideals of beauty, but because I want to feel comfortable in my own skin and be accepted for who I am.

The relentless pursuit of passing can also lead to harmful behaviors. Some transgender women may resort to extreme dieting, over-exercising, or engaging in risky procedures to try to achieve a more “feminine” appearance. The focus on passing can overshadow the actual goal of transitioning: to live authentically and find inner peace. Anxiety, depression, and a sense of failure can take the place of the joy of transition when the emphasis shifts from self-acceptance to meeting external standards.

We are currently getting a terrifying preview of what all this would look like in practice. Trump has never shied away from admitting – from promising – that his mass deportation “will be a bloody story.” And the leaders on the Right are currently doing their best to ensure that there will be blood long before the election.

On September 9, J.D. Vance used his social media to rail against “Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio.” He added: “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country. Where is our border czar?”

[…]

Over the next few days, Vance kept doubling down. On September 10, he claimed a child had been murdered by “a Haitian immigrant who had no right to be here.” The senator from Ohio did not care that the child’s parents begged him to stop using their boy, who was killed in a car accident, to demonize immigrants.

[…]

This vile propaganda has had its desired effect. Already on September 12, City Hall, schools, and the DMV in Springfield had to be evacuated because of bomb threats from people raging against the Haitian immigrants. Acts of vandalism against the Haitian community followed. More threats against elementary and middle schools as well as against public officials on September 13. On September 14 and 15, hospitals had to be evacuated – so did universities, as someone threatened to shoot members of the Haitian community on campus. Ohio State Troopers now sweep every building in every school in Springfield Ohio, every morning before the start of classes, looking for explosives, because the bomb threats keep coming. Meanwhile, neo-Nazis are marching through town – the Proud Boys, and a group called Blood Tribe. Life in Springfield, Ohio upended. All based on a lie.

Using super for housing would make homes more expensive, hinder the home ownership aspirations of young Australians, reduce retirement incomes, and lead to a significant long-term cost to the Budget, a Corinna Economic Advisory report authored by Saul Eslake has found.  

In an independent report, commissioned by the Super Members Council, Mr Eslake charts how a long list of demand-side Australian housing policies over several decades have simply made homes more expensive.  

He warns super for a house would be the worst of all.  

“We have 60 years of history, which unambiguously tells us, anything that allows Australians to pay more for housing than they otherwise could leads to more expensive housing and not more homeowners,” he said.

“Of all the demand-fuelling housing policies, the Coalition’s super for housing policy would be the biggest – it can only lead to higher prices.”  

“If super for house was introduced, it would be one of the worst public policy decisions in the last six decades.”

Mr Eslake said the decline in home ownership rates could undermine a key assumption in Australia’s retirement system – that most retirees will own their own home – and noted the need to expand housing supply.  

However, the Coalition’s ‘Super Home Buyer Scheme’ under which people would be allowed to withdraw up to 40% of their superannuation savings up to a maximum of $50,000, would likely hinder home ownership aspirations for younger Australians.

Full report here.

Today New York congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Minnesota senator Tina Smith have introduced new national legislation that, if passed and funded, would go a long way toward making real the social housing revolution.

The Homes Act of 2024 would create a Housing Development Authority (HDA) for the entire country. Housed under the federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) agency but operating autonomously, the HDA’s sole mission would be to build, buy, renovate, and operate social housing, which it defines as housing with public, nonprofit, or resident ownership; permanent protections and affordability; community control; and deep sustainability and accessibility. It would be governed by a board that includes not only expert appointees in housing and the environment but also its residents and members of the unions that build and support it.

The HDA would be a flexible vehicle, modeled after a 2020 Urban Democracy Lab report entitled “The SHDA — A Proposal.” It could build social housing itself; it could buy anti-social housing and convert it into social housing, then operate it itself or pass it on to tenant, labor, or community groups; it could finance social housing projects operated by state and municipal housing agencies or Public Housing Authorities; or it could finance social housing projects initiated by tenant, labor, and community organizations or by Community Land Trusts.

ACOSS (the Australian Council of Social Service) has partnered with UNSW Sydney to undertake a research and impact collaboration to sharpen the national focus on poverty and inequality in Australia. The partnership monitors trends in poverty and inequality over time, explores drivers, and develops solutions to sharpen the focus and stimulate action to tackle these policy challenges.

What do housing, transit and lifestyle statistics have to do with loneliness and unhappiness, you might ask. Well, I don’t think it’s a reach to suggest that separating people physically also leads to emotional and psychological separation. Moreover, the implements that make sprawl-induced physical separation work on a societal level — cars to contract long distances and digital media to ameliorate the effects of social isolation — deepen loneliness and unhappiness on the personal level. These implements also make people sedentary, directly relating to the fact that 73% of the total American population is overweight and 42% is obese, per the CDC.

One of the biggest issues is population density. At the risk of oversimplifying, it’s a lot harder to socially isolate when there are people around you.

Andrew Dunlop runs cattle on his property in southern New South Wales and has spent his career working in the red meat industry, including 15 years in Japan.

Last month, he returned to Japan to find Australian cubed beef for sale at $18.35 a kilogram, around $2 to $4 a kilo cheaper than in major Australian supermarkets.

[…]

Mr Dunlop says it's another sign of concentrated supermarket power and increased profit margins from supermarkets.

"The Japanese retail industry is not concentrated like it is here," he said.

"Any individual retailer in Japan probably has at most a 10 per cent share of the market, although there will be some regional differences."

John Gunthorpe, chair of the Australian Cattle Industry Council, said Australian meat was well trimmed and presented without much fat or sinew.

"The prices and the quality of presentation of the meat are far better than anything that we get here in Australia," he said.

Pressed on whether it was a fair comparison to the beef in Australian supermarkets, Mr Gunthorpe said it was.

"It's beef off the same farms," he said.

"The real concern is the level of profit that Coles and Woolies are making in the domestic market relative to the profit that's being made by the Japanese in Tokyo."

Using a nationwide online survey (N = 534), we investigate how individual-level characteristics and past actions are related to support of affordable housing at the neighborhood level. Several demographic characteristics, past actions, federal government trust, personal exposure, racism (symbolic racism scale), and affect (emotional connotation) are found to be significant predictors of support. We provide evidence for racism and affect being mediating factors acting in series to shape support of affordable housing. In addition to racism, individuals’ affect can potentially help explain the shift from support of hypothetical scenarios to opposition of real affordable housing development proposals and warrants continued study.

The World Income Inequality Database (WIID) presents information on income inequality for most countries and historical entities. It provides the most comprehensive set of income inequality statistics available and can be downloaded for free. ​

This page hosts the latest version of WIID, but also the WIID Companion datasets which report standardized WIID data to create more comparable country level inequality series, inequality indices, and complete country and global income distributions for the longest periods possible. The WIID Companion datasets are directly accessible in real time through our WIID Explorer, a powerful tool for accessing and analysing the most comprehensive collection of comparable income inequality statistics in the world.