The blog will resume on 30th January 2018.
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26 January 2018
25 January 2018
Social Europe: Instability, Not Productivity, Is The Economic Problem
For some 30 years after the second world war the global economy grew with only minor interruptions but with creeping inflation. In some countries, the creep tended to accelerate and when the oil shock of 1974/5 worsened the terms of trade inflation exploded in most developed countries. That period was characterised by either a stable share of wages and profits in GDP or, in some countries, a rising wage share. [...]
As a consequence, from the mid-1980s economic power swung decisively from labour to capital. Inflation died in all developed countries and in most the share of profits within GDP began to rise. Cyclically adjusted, the rise was to last for over 30 years. Within the labour market in Western countries jobs at the top of the hierarchy became better paid, those at the bottom worse paid while those in the middle dwindled in relative number. [...]
In a world of deficient demand and shortage of “jobs”, all countries want to run an export surplus. Easy money everywhere eliminates the possibility of competitive devaluation – everyone is trying it so no-one can do it. The country that expands its fiscal deficit quickly ends up with a current account deficit. Calls on surplus countries to take their share of the burden of raising demand fall on deaf ears. Indeed, Germany, for example, is congenitally deaf on this issue. Trade imbalances grow, so does international indebtedness and eventually creditors become alarmed. No one wants to be another Greece so stabilisation via fiscal deficit is unfashionable as long as international co-ordination of fiscal policies is impossible.
FiveThirtyEight: Are White Evangelicals Sacrificing The Future In Search Of The Past?
The driver behind much of this change is “generational turnover.” And so a chasm has emerged between the views of these young people and white evangelical Protestants. A PRRI survey found that 83 percent of the latter believe that sex is morally acceptable only between a man and a woman who are married, but this view is held among only 30 percent of all young adults. For many young people, white evangelical Protestants in the 21st century appear to be advocating a mid-20th century approach to sex, relationships and marriage, even as American society resembles life during this period less and less. [...]
After dominating much of American politics for the past 40 years, white evangelical Protestants are now facing a sharp decline. Nearly one-third of white Americans raised in evangelical Christian households leave their childhood faith.2 About 60 percent of those who leave end up joining another faith tradition, while 40 percent give up on religion altogether. The rates of disaffiliation are even higher among young adults: 39 percent of those raised evangelical Christian no longer identify as such in adulthood. And while there is always a good deal of churn in the religious marketplace — people both entering and leaving faith traditions — recent findings suggest that membership losses among white evangelical Protestants are not being offset by gains.
As a result, the white evangelical Protestant population in the U.S. has fallen over the past decade, dropping from 23 percent in 2006 to 17 percent in 2016. But equally troubling for those concerned about the vitality of evangelical Christianity, white evangelical Protestants are aging. Today, 62 percent of white evangelical Protestants are at least 50 years old. In 1987, fewer than half (46 percent) were. The median age of white evangelical Protestants today is 55. [...]
Other research also suggests that one of the prime motivators for leaving a religion is belief incompatibility. A 2016 PRRI study found that the most common reason people give up on their childhood faith is that they no longer believe in its teachings. Twenty-nine percent of Americans who have left their formative religion explicitly mention negative teachings about gay and lesbian people as a proximate cause for their disaffiliation.
The School of Life: In Praise Of Bias
“A presumption among many thoughtful people is that the great enemy of a good life and a decent world is something called ‘bias’. By bias, people have come to understand a twisting of the facts towards dark and entirely nefarious ends. According to this interpretation, bias is invariably and necessarily bad. In some quarters, the word has simply grown synonymous with evil…”
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