Main Idea:
The poor ain’t so poor. Stop paying them to do nothing. It doesn’t help anyone.
https://www.cato.org/blog/countries-highest-shares-their-populations-living-us
The United States is home to immigrants from every country in the world, but people are much more likely to leave some countries than others. The probability of a person from a given country immigrating to the United States can be broadly measured by dividing the number of immigrants in the United States by the country’s population plus the country’s population.
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This one just gets weirder and weirder.
“We expected it to pop a lot more than it did,” Lally said. For one, he thought that Santos’s opponent, Robert Zimmerman (D), would have made more of the Leader’s endorsement and “pushed” the contradictions his newspaper uncovered into larger publications such as Newsday and the New York Times.
You think?
Maybe they thought the sheer embarrassment would drive him out and new erection could be had. Ha. it’s 2023, bruh. Ain’t got time for shame.
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In 2022, ProPublica and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, in collaboration with dozens of media partners, investigated this shadowy world, finding corrupt, violent and dangerous consuls — including accused terrorist financiers and Kremlin loyalists — who have threatened the rule of law in the United States and abroad.
The governments of seven countries have so far announced reforms, investigations or other changes. That includes Latvia, which last month launched an investigation into an honorary consul after revelations of domestic violence, and Jordan, which ended the appointment of a long-serving honorary consul whose prior arrest in a corruption scandal was described in the ProPublica and ICIJ investigation.
When the Taliban returned to power last year, donor governments and international institutions withdrew billions of dollars in assistance, triggering an economic and humanitarian crisis. Months of isolation prompted the cash-strapped Taliban government to ramp up production and export of one of Afghanistan’s more abundant commodities to countries like Pakistan to help resuscitate the economy, which contracted last year by about 20%.
Hmm, but there must be a bigger bad guy out there encouraging kids to mine coal.
Yup!
Not only does the government have plans to build new roads for better access to China’s markets, it’s also eager to welcome foreign investment in the mining sector — for coal and especially rare minerals and metals, including lithium.
And who learned from the Chinese? The Taliban did!
“Our doors are open, especially for American and European companies,” says Burhan. “The one condition we have: If a foreign company comes here, they must have an Afghan partnership.”
And how did that work out?
The investment has been slow to materialize.
I can’t imagine why.
“It is the work of destiny,” says 17-year-old Abdul Salaam. He’s been working here since he was 9. “If it is my destiny to die in these mines, then so be it.”
Ah, that may be why.
That piece is a hit-job @jdsmith 
Can’t motivate equality on the basis of foodstamps and like transfers. Basically writer is saying “inequality is overstated, because after government transfers (to minimise inequality), it is not so bad”
And that sleight of hand about income taxes by all government bodies, 40% of the top households, most of those paying those taxes are all levels of the middle class.
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Well, there’s inequality and the perception of inequality and poverty, which change when political winds shift. I was “poor“ enough to be eligible for free lunch programs when my son was in high school. Never took them up on it as my kid brown bagged it.
I’d have to reread that article to remind myself of its more salient points, and if you want to actually discuss it, I will.
My condensed blurb might not be the high bar of understanding. Lol
One of the few things I learned to say in arabic
Shared by an old Scotsman on FB.
That’s fecking cool.
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The American left isn’t sure what to make of people like Mike or his family or mine. The white working class used to be the focus of the American left, but the left abandoned us amid the tumult of the late 1960s: Vietnam, the civil rights movement, women’s rights, the radicalization of the campus, the upending of traditional mores and family structures. That was when the paradigm started to shift from a class-based politics to a politics of race and sex. Now, we’re a cudgel used by progressives to bash “late-stage capitalism,” whatever they mean by that.
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Long one, haven’t read it all yet. Seems interesting
This is how the government-created “war against disinformation” became the great moral crusade of its time. CIA officers at Langley came to share a cause with hip young journalists in Brooklyn, progressive nonprofits in D.C., George Soros-funded think tanks in Prague, racial equity consultants, private equity consultants, tech company staffers in Silicon Valley, Ivy League researchers, and failed British royals. Never Trump Republicans joined forces with the Democratic National Committee, which declared online disinformation “a whole-of-society problem that requires a whole-of-society response.”
Sorry, we invested your retirement income in China, and now we can’t get it back. But, you won’t need to retire because work will be easier?