RSA: Who's Destroying The American Dream

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Tuesday 31st October 2017

It’s now conventional wisdom to focus on the excesses of the ultra-rich top 1% who are hoarding income and wealth while incomes for the rest are stagnant. But the more important, and widening, gap in American society, argues Richard Reeves, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is between the upper middle class and everyone else.

Reeves defines the upper middle class as those whose incomes are in the top 20 percent of American society. Income isn’t the only way to measure a society, but in a market economy it is crucial because access to money generally determines who gets the best quality education, housing and health care.

As Reeves shows, the growing separation between the upper middle class and everyone else can be seen in family structure, neighbourhoods, attitudes, and lifestyle. Those at the top of the income ladder are becoming more effective at passing on their status to their children, reducing overall social mobility. The result is a fracturing of American society along class lines, not just an economic divide.

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BBC4 Analysis: The Invisible Hand of Donald Trump

Donald Trump's surprise elevation to the office of president last November stunned the world and electrified the financial markets. Promises to cut red tape, bring huge infrastructure projects to life, and sort out the byzantine American tax system propelled Wall Street to record highs. It's called the Trump Bump. Yet Trump's protectionist rhetoric simultaneously created fears of a global trade war.

Martin Wolf, Chief Economic Commentator of the Financial Times, reflects on what Trump has accomplished in economic terms in the year since the election heard round the world. Financial systems are recovering from the calamities of the last decade, but that improvement was well under way before Trump took the helm of the world's largest economy. New proposals from the administration are stalled for lack of clarity, infirmity of purpose and political disarray. This doesn't mean that President Trump's decisions on everything from trade tariffs to the Federal Reserve will not send ripples around the globe in the years ahead. He's vowed to deliver tax reform, build a wall, bring jobs home and tear up trade treaties. Will these promises still be delivered? If they are, what might follow?

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Politico: Seehofer to quit as Bavarian premier to end power struggle

Seehofer’s decision leaves open the possibility that he could become a minister in the next German government. Asked about that prospect on Monday, he replied: “First we’ll see which ministries are available for the CSU, then we’ll see what faces come into question for them.” [...]

Seehofer reportedly told CSU members that he and Söder have a good working relationship — a sign that he backed the finance minister as his successor, even though Söder is a polarizing figure within the party and the two have long have been seen as enemies. [...]

Earlier this year, Seehofer indicated that he planned to continue both as Bavarian premier and CSU leader after the 2018 state election. However, the CSU’s poor performance in September’s German general election — the party won 39 percent of the vote in Bavaria, a 10-point drop from four years earlier — prompted questions about his leadership.

The party is anxious to retain its absolute majority in the Bavarian state parliament and fend off electoral challenges from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Critics charged that Seehofer hewed too closely to Merkel’s centrist policies during Germany’s refugee crisis, ceding political ground to the strongly anti-immigration AfD. Most CSU members tend to be considerably further right on the issue than Merkel.

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Bloomberg: How Brexit Could Make Food Prices Skyrocket (Nov 8, 2017)

British farmers are being hit by a shortage of migrant workers and are warning a dysfunctional Brexit will have a devastating impact on their industry. They are calling on the government to provide direction and answers on the future of British farming after the U.K. leaves the European Union. Bloomberg’s Angus Bennett travelled to Kent, in Southern England, to meet the farmers and migrant workers on the front lines of Brexit. 

The Guardian: Would a gay monarch cure the church of its homophobia?

The higher levels of homelessness among the gay community would remain. Austerity, which disproportionately affects LGBT people, would still be in place. Hate crimes against LGBT people wouldn’t become any less regular. A same-sex royal wedding would stop homophobia no more than Prince Harry marrying Meghan Markle will end Britain’s inherent racism. [...]

If a gay king stands any chance of middle England embracing him he’d need to be the “right kind of gay”. He’d need a flawless, palatable narrative, starting with a well-managed coming-out arc and an inoffensive, “straight-acting” partner who didn’t challenge gender norms or stereotypes too much. I’m sure this would probably still be a struggle for some.  

In Holdsworth’s blogpost he assumes that influential gay public figures automatically inspire positive shifts in attitudes. He forgets that gay men can be just as terrible as their straight counterparts, and that their actions can often do the community – and the attitudes towards the community – more harm than good (see: Kevin Spacey, Milo Yiannopoulos, Perez Hilton).  [...]

The reaction to Holdsworth’s suggestion from figures within the church once again emphasised how difficult instilling such change would be. Gavin Ashenden, a former chaplain to the Queen, told Christian Today that Holdsworth’s comments were unkind, destructive and the “theological equivalent of the curse of the wicked fairy”. Lee Gatiss, director of the Church Society, described the comments as sinister and claimed that “to coopt the royal children to service a narrow sexual agenda seems particular tasteless”.  

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Statista: The Czechs Are Europe's Top-Beer Drinkers

Which European countries tend to drink the most beer every year? The Czech Republic is well known as a haven for beer lovers, tracing its brewing history all the way back to the Břevnov Monastery in 993. Today, Czechs are Europe's biggest beer drinkers, consuming 143 litres per capita every year, according to the Brewers of Europe. Germany comes second with people drinking an average of 104 litres each year, just ahead of neighbouring Austria where they drink marginally less each.

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Bloomberg: Here's Why Theresa May Is So Furious at Trump

The Dutch political scientist Cas Muddle says that right-wing extremist movements advocate at least three of the following five doctrines: nationalism, racism, xenophobia, opposition to democracy and support for strong states. Using this definition, researchers from the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue recently analyzed over 5,000 pieces of far-right content gathered from over 50 different platforms used by these groups. Their findings are striking.

What's new is the level of cooperation and cross-pollination among groups that gather for crowdfunding on alternative platforms such as the Twitter-like Gab.ai and Hatreon, and on Discord, a chat application originally developed for gamers. The research suggests that the Daily Stormer — the neo-Nazi website associated with the alt-right — made the fourth-most-frequent use of the hashtag #MGGA (Make Germany Great Again) to help promote the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party that just entered the German parliament. The alt-right hacker Andrew Auernheimer (best known by his pseudonym weev) reached out to French and Germans to build troll armies that could influence European elections. [...]

The U.K. has experienced a rise in hate crimes (which also spiked during the 2016 campaign that preceded the vote to leave the European Union) following terrorist attacks on Manchester and London Bridge in May and June this year. The U.K. government reports a 27 percent increase in hate crimes this year over last year. [...]

Trump's retweets and his subsequent defense of them undermined British policies to counter far-right extremism at home. They have thus  prompted the most serious diplomatic row between the two allies since Ronald Reagan had to apologize for leaving Margaret Thatcher out of the loop in the 1983 invasion of Grenada. That was short-lived. Thatcher and Reagan had a strong friendship and working relationship and were united against a common enemy. Trump and May have no friendship, a strained working relationship and now Trump seems to have taken up with the enemy. No wonder May is struggling to find common ground.

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Business Insider: Brexit will never happen, according to the only analyst to call the last general election correctly

Samuel Tombs, an economist renowned for correctly predicting the result of June's general election, has a fresh prediction: Brexit isn't actually going to happen.

Writing in a note circulated to clients of Pantheon Macroeconomics on Sunday evening, Tombs — Pantheon's chief UK economist — argued that Brexit will be so damaging to Britain's economy in the short term that no politician will feel comfortable actually pulling the UK out of the bloc when push comes to shove, both for the sake of their own reputations, and the UK's economic health.

Tombs writes that he believes the UK and EU will eventually agree to a transition deal to smooth Britain's passage out of the EU, but once Britain reaches the intended end of the transition period, it will then stay in the EU. [...]

"The key issue is that leaving the single market would entail short-term economic pain in return for the possibility of long-term gain, in the form of closer ties with fast-growing emerging market economies. This sequencing of the costs and benefits means Brexit always will be unpalatable for any politician, given their myopia. It will be particularly unattractive for the Conservatives to implement Brexit in 2021, one year before the deadline for the next election."

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Deutsche Welle: German pilots refuse to carry out deportations

Following an information request from the Left party, the government said that 222 planned flights were stopped by pilots who wanted no part in the controversial return of refugees to Afghanistan, which has been deemed a "safe country of origin" in some cases, despite ongoing violence and repression in parts of the country.

Some 85 of the refusals between January and September 2017 came from Germany's main airline Lufthansa and its subsidiary Eurowings. About 40 took place at Dusseldorf airport, where the controversial deportations are routinely accompanied by protesters on the tarmac. The majority of the canceled flights, around 140, took place at Frankfurt Airport, Germany's largest and most important hub. [...]

In order to reduce the number of appeals and speed up deportations, the government has proposed a program to begin in February 2018 that would see rejected asylum seekers given 3,000 euros as an incentive to accept deportation.

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