Thursday, February 21, 2019
Steve Rattner Warns that Government-Granted Patent and Copyright Monopolies Are Imposing a Burden on Our Children
Written by Dean Baker
Published: 11 February 2019
Of course, he wouldn't do
that. Steven
Rattner isn't concerned about the hundreds of billions (perhaps more than $1
trillion) that the government redistributes upward each year in the form of
patent and copyright rents. These rents, which come to close to $400 billion
annually for prescription drugs alone, are a direct and intended result of the
monopolies that the government gives companies and individuals as a way of
paying for innovation and creative work.
But Steven Rattner isn't
concerned about this enormous burden on our children, which makes folks like
Bill Gates incredibly rich. Instead, he is worried about
the much smaller burden of the interest on the debt, which currently nets out
(after deducting money rebated by the Federal Reserve Board) to around $200
billion a year or 1.0 percent of GDP. He also is not concerned about the fact
that the income of our children may be $1 trillion a year less, which has the
same effect on living standards as paying another $1 trillion a year in higher
taxes ($3,000 per person), because of the
austerity that people like him demanded in the years following the
Great Recession.
For some reason, no matter how
much damage these people cause and how little sense their arguments make, we
are still supposed to take their views seriously. Any ideas why?
Biggest Snubs In Oscars History
The Academy Awards inspire
debate every year about whether certain films, directors, and actors were
recognized over more deserving ones, and over time, some of those overlooked
movies and performances have come to seem particularly egregious. The
Onion looks back at the biggest Oscars snubs in history.
Citizen Kane:
While Orson Welles’ magnum opus
is considered a masterpiece today, audiences in 1942 just weren’t as into being
bored out of their fucking minds.
Raging Bull:
The Academy made up for snubbing
this Martin Scorsese movie by also snubbing Goodfellas 10 years
later.
Tom Cruise:
His failure to win a Best
Actor award despite a long and illustrious film career has been attributed to
the Academy’s notorious pro-Xenu bias.
Jaws:
Was considered a shoo-in for
Best Shark.
Judy Garland:
Left out of the Best Actress
category for The Wizard Of Oz in which the 16-year-old acts, sings,
and dances in a starring role, Garland was instead awarded an adorable miniature
Oscar statuette called the Juvenile Award, which totally wasn’t patronizing at
all.
Avatar:
If we’d just given James
Cameron the stupid award back in 2009 maybe we wouldn’t have to go through four
more installments of this garbage.
Matthew Lillard:
He’s been in like 30 movies
and still not a single Oscar.
Hell Or High Water:
Many felt this gripping
modern-day Western was far more deserving than La La Land to be
mistakenly announced as the winner before losing to Moonlight.
Alfred Hitchcock:
Never won Best Director
despite his work pioneering the film style in which a bunch of fake-looking
animals attack humans for no reason.
Taxi Driver, Network,
and All The President’s Men:
All three lost Best Picture to
an equally deserving Rocky in 1976, when the film industry learned
they’re better off releasing a maximum of one good movie per year.
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Utopian science fictions legitimising our current dystopia, Yanis Varoufakis
https://livestream.com/oxuni/events/8557394/videos/187226981?t=1549916632960
Utopian science fictions legitimising our current dystopia – 2019 Taylor Lecture, Oxford Universityby webmaster YanisVaroufakis
The Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford University, kindly invited me to deliver the 2019 Taylor Lecture on 12th February 2019. I chose the topic of Realistic Utopias versus Dystopic Realities - my aim being to highlight the manner in which really-existing capitalism is marketed as a utopian science fiction that has nothing to do with... really-existing capitalism. Behind this elegant utopian mathematical the powers-that-be hide a dismal dystopia that is failing humanity in a variety of ways. Plato, King Lear, Coriolanus and the Borg Queen make cameo appearances...
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