Sinn Fein’s Victory is Ireland’s ‘Brexit Moment’

Sinn Fein’s Victory is Ireland’s ‘Brexit Moment’ When Left-Out Voters Turn on the Elite
by PATRICK COCKBURN
“People wanted to kick the government and Sinn Fein provided the shoe to do the kicking,” says Christy Parker, a journalist from the beautiful but de-industrialised town of Youghal in county Cork. He speaks of the “chasm” between the elite benefiting from Ireland’s impressive economic progress and the large part of the population that has been left behind.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/02/17/sinn-feins-victory-is-irelands-brexit-moment-when-left-out-voters-turn-on-the-elite/

Can Sanders Do it? Jan 31, 2020 James K. Galbraith

 As of 2019-2020, the Core Sanders has been supplemented by an “Expanded Sanders” program comprising the Green New Deal (GND), a federal job guarantee, a wealth tax, and a plan to abolish and forgive student-loan and medical debts. Of these four policies, the first two would be expansionary or stabilizing in their economic effects. The third is, in my view, impractical, and the fourth is perhaps more far-reaching than is generally appreciated.
 By boosting incomes without creating new consumption goods, the GND is similar to an industrial mobilization for war. The increase in income from GND-related activities will be partly offset by a decrease in wasteful finance, private health insurance, and excessive medical provision (somehow defined), as well as reductions in military spending consistent with ending America’s forever wars.
 But how, then, would the GND be funded? True “financing” is a matter of real resources, not scrounging for tax revenue. As noted above, those real resources would come from cutting back on finance, health insurance, unnecessary medical provision, and the military, and by mobilizing residual unemployed and underemployed workers toward more useful and necessary activities. Tax revenue would then come from these workers’ earnings, and from more effective levies on the profits of the companies that employ them.

 Among the circumstances likely to face a Sanders administration in 2021 are those left over from the 2008 financial crisis, which gave way to a decade of slow but steady growth, accompanied by a broad reduction of unemployment. The decline in the unemployment rate partly reflects an aging workforce and decreased immigration, but mainly a large increase in new service-sector jobs paying mediocre wages. As a result, an ever-growing number of US households have come to rely on multiple earners to make ends meet.Meanwhile, neglect of public investment has accelerated physical decay in many parts of the country. Mitigating and adapting to climate change demands major investments, and a large share of the available physical resources will need to be committed to carrying out a successful transition to a clean-energy economy. Obviously, this has not happened under Trump.

Sanders Can Do It

Whether an economic program as a whole succeeds or fails largely depends on how its various components add up. Based on a general evaluation of Sanders’s agenda, it appears that a reasonable answer to the question of whether he can do it if given the chance is: Yes, he can. The Sanders movement is growing, and the candidate’s program is popular. Equally important, the Sanders agenda is largely coherent as a matter of basic economics, broadly balanced between elements that boost economic growth and those that free up resources, and largely consistent with the broader conditions, domestic and international, that the next US president is likely to face.
 https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/what-if-bernie-wins-by-james-k-galbraith-2020-01

Events in Syria have Taken a Dangerous Turn

In recent days, we’ve been witnessing a noticeable deterioration of the security situation in Syria. Hostilities are being reported both the in Idlib and Aleppo governorates, where radical militants are desperately trying to regain control of sections of the M5 highway they had to surrender. Gunfights are being reported near the village of al-Rashidin to the west of Aleppo.

https://journal-neo.org/2020/02/15/events-in-syria-have-taken-a-dangerous-turn/

Some Economic and Political Factors of Coronavirus Outbreak

At present, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the global economy is potentially heading for a disaster. It would suffice to allude to various problems that are bound to arise when foreign investment and capital flow into the Chinese economy dry up. After all, the PRC has been one of the key drivers of growth of the global economy.


https://journal-neo.org/2020/02/16/some-economic-and-political-factors-of-coronavirus-outbreak/

capital cities the best places to live?

What makes capital cities the best places to live?

Capital cities, no matter the size, are centres of
economic and institutional resources, and the
quality of life they offer contributes to their
competitive advantage, especially in attracting
investment and highly qualified labour forces.Quality of life data show that in most countries, the capital city has advantages compared to the regions outside the capital. In light of the continued growth of capital city populations and the concentration of resources within them, this policy brief explores the source of the advantages of capital cities in quality of life. Are these advantages mostly related to specific demographics that these cities nurture and attract? Or do these advantages stem from opportunities that major cities provide due to their scale and economic growth?
The policy brief aims to clarify why policy should focus on both the economy and society when it comes to advancing economic, social and territorial cohesion.

In Europe, people living in the capital city generally have a better quality of life than people living in other parts of a country. On this basis, it seems that capital cities are indeed the best places to live.

Capital cities have, by and large, larger proportions of people who report feeling resilient – able to cope during times of hardship – compared to other urban centres and rural regions in the same country. Some characteristics of city populations – such as a younger age profile and higher educational attainment – contribute to resilience, while others, such as housing insecurity, erode it. The findings suggest that some other latent factor, possibly related to opportunities for economic advancement and improving one’s living standards, could underlie the extra resilience that capital cities provide.
 The findings are drawn from the European
Quality of Life Survey 2016, which monitors
different dimensions of quality of life examined
here: individual quality of life and well-being,
quality of society, and quality of public
services.

https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/publications/policy-brief/2020/what-makes-capital-cities-the-best-places-to-live?&utm_campaign=quality-of-life-and-public-services&utm_content=ef18025&utm_source=social-europe&utm_medium=banner
 Eurofound (2020), What makes capital cities the best places to live?, European Quality of Life Survey 2016 series, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg.