NEW: @OleMiss is trying to compel its ombudsman to turn over confidential communications in order to unmask the #UMemails whistleblowers who exposed a web of racism among UM officials and donors.

The effort has "terrified" faculty members.

@AwBlessYerHeart @Gus_802 Keynesian/demand side economics is what made the Middle Class better off but it was applied at a time when it wasn’t always equitable toward PoC or women. We need to bring back Keynesian policies but that means having Dem Mandates in Congress & WH for more than two short years.

@Gus_802 Ultimately we need to stop having arguments about “capitalism vs socialism” because they are both loaded words and imprecise descriptors of how our economy functions. Capitalism and socialism describe systems which, in their purist forms, don’t exist anywhere in the world

@Gus_802 The developed world and even most of the developing world have mixed economies where elements of what is regarded as socialism and capitalism exist. But the real ISM the drives our economy is consumerism as 2/3 of all economic activity is based on consumer/demand side spending

@Gus_802 When we couch these forces as “socialism” or “capitalism”, we automatically created a conflict and a polarizing zero sum argument which often derails honest discussions about our economic system which stifles discussions on ways to improve it

@Gus_802 We should instead call these forces “public funding” and “private funding” as they are more precise and less heated descriptors. We then make the cogent argument that, to support a consumer based economy, we need both public and private funding to do so effectively

The economic impact of the Brexit deal: our

Key points to remember:

1. Leaving Single Market/Customs Union means major new trade barriers - customs and border checks, regulatory barriers, end of rules allowing services to be sold across borders.

2. A deal doesn't change that. It means no tariffs and quotas and *some* provisions that will stop trade breaking down. But the main impacts -on our and the government's own analysis, about two-thirds - happen either way

3. That also means that some disruption is inevitable. You can't introduce new systems/processes overnight. The delay in doing a deal plus covid means some things will go wrong

4. But short term disruption, even if it gets headlines, does *not* mean Brexit is a failure. And when that disruption is resolved and new systems are working, we should*not* conclude it's a success.

American collapse is gonna be a horror show because we are an economic parasite on the world, and collapse will be the host cutting off our proboscis. We cannot self-sustain.

Robert Reich once bragged that our economy was transforming into one where 20% of us would be well compensated "symbolic analysts" and everyone else would be servants to this class.

This is echoed in Primary Colors where Fake Clinton tells the shipbuilder union to get ready to go back to school because making things is over. We are all "symbolic analysts" now.

That's only possible because the rest of the world makes stuff for us to consume. On a net basis the world makes while we take. Capitalism is the international legal system which ensures this will happen through the enforcement of investor and property rights.

This is the "system of international rules" that Biden has warned China must be obeyed. Or else.

The world makes, we take (and pay in USD).

I think one way of looking at the economic pathologies of our society, without using words like 'capitalism' and 'rentiership', is to talk about inequities in the distribution of risk. Some have more taste for risk than others, sure, but risk is not distributed on this basis.

In the UK, so much of our political troubles come from the growth in the landlord class, who if nothing else, wield disproportionate power relative to their social worth: at one and the same time claim to be martyrs to the risk of investment, and demand these risks be minimised.

Of course, it's possible to make claims like this: e.g., nurses have every right to claim that they shoulder not merely more risk than most, but far more risk than is strictly necessary. The pandemic has made this brutally obvious to anyone who has been paying attention.

However one chooses to tally up compensation for this social role, be it financial, social, or some other privilege, it's pretty obvious that every last 'essential worker' is shouldering more societal risk than most non-essential workers compensated far better than they.

The way this trade off gets (implicitly) articulated as 'pay vs. purpose' is one of the enduring insights of @davidgraeber's Bullshit Jobs. Yet there are many essential workers who don't even get the illusion of purpose in compensation for personal risk (e.g., warehouse staff).