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woodlu

The latest shock to China's economy: power shortages | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...chinas-economy-power-shortages

economics

shared by woodlu on 05 Oct 21 - No Cached
  • At least 19 of China’s provinces, including many of its industrial heartlands, have suffered power shortages in recent weeks, with some unplanned and indiscriminate cuts.
  • the high price of coal is to blame. Ten provinces are also trying to meet strict environmental limits on energy consumption. Nomura, a bank, expects China’s GDP to shrink in the third quarter, compared with the second.
lucieperloff

Australia's (Brief) Idea to Ease Supply Chains: Juvenile Forklift Drivers - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...juvenile-forklift-drivers.html

pandemic supply international politics

shared by lucieperloff on 20 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • The Australian government has been trying all kinds of things to address a pandemic labor shortage: Letting international students work more hours. Reimbursing visa costs to lure backpackers. Easing isolation requirements for essential workers.
  • Mr. Morrison had planned, according to media reports, to present the notion to state and territory leaders as part of a suite of proposals to reduce regulatory requirements for crucial segments of the work force, as soaring coronavirus case counts keep many off the job.
  • The chief minister of the Australian Capital Territory, Andrew Barr, said in an apparent dig at the prime minister that while the assembled leaders had supported “sensible and safe” measures to alleviate workplace shortages, “allowing 16-year-olds to drive a forklift was unanimously rejected by all states and territories.”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • As in many places around the world, supply chains in Australia have been snarled as the Omicron variant has swamped a country that had largely contained the coronavirus for almost two years.
  • To ease the shortages, the Australian government announced last week that transport, freight and logistics workers would no longer have to isolate for seven days if they were identified as a close contact of someone who tested positive for the coronavirus. Instead, they can go back to work as soon as they test negative on a rapid antigen test.
lilyrashkind

Federal officials say efforts in Wilmington are national example of how to address housing shortage | The Latest from WDEL News | wdel.com - 0 views

www.wdel.com/...c8-11ec-ac70-eb1e5f42b434.html

housing wilmington US

shared by lilyrashkind on 02 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • On a day where, nationally, federal officials unveiled an initiative to address the affordable housing shortage, efforts to provide such opportunities in Wilmington were highlighted as an example of what was achievable when all levels of government and community worked together for the greater good. While U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Regional Administrator Matthew Heckle noted June is a month where homeownership is celebrated, he called June 1st a "national day of action" to answer President Joe Biden's call to "solve the housing supply deficit that our nation faces, and makes it so difficult for so many families to find, afford and keep a roof over their heads."
  • From the front yards of the Habitat For Humanity-built Amara Way II townhomes along Bennett Street in Wilmington--and across from the Amala Way I homes previously completed--HUD Deputy Secretary Adrianne Todman said everywhere she travels across the country, she's heard from someone who's had trouble accessing home ownership.Luckily, she said, the problem is one that can be addressed, and through the Our Way Home initiative, HUD's "answer to the president's call to solve the housing supply deficit that our nation faces," the steps to do so are ones being accomplished in Wilmington already. 
  • "One of the reasons I love coming to events like this is that I pick up something, I learn something that I then talk about throughout the rest of the country," Todman said. "What you're doing here, I will be talking about in Nevada, in Idaho, in Florida, in Wyoming, because it's going to take this level of intentionality...for us to be moving forward as a country, as we should."Addressing housing issues should be everyone's focus, said U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, because it's the number one priority to be fixed that can impact all the other issues that drag a community down. Ensuring access to safe, affordable, quality housing trickles down to ultimately impacting issues in education, public health, public safety, and challenges with families, children, and seniors. 
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  • Additionally joined by U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer, and Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki, Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County CEO Kevin Smith told everyone to get ready for a serious facelift for a Wilmington neighborhood that often gets a bad rap.
Javier E

The Scary Hidden Stressor - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-scary-hidden-stressor.html

global warming food revolution social prices politics crisis

shared by Javier E on 07 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • A stressor, she explains, is a “sudden change in circumstances or environment that interacts with a complicated psychological profile in a way that leads a previously quiescent person to become violent.” The stressor is never the only explanation for the crime, but it is inevitably an important factor in a complex set of variables that lead to a disaster
  • the essays make a strong case that the interplay between climate change, food prices (particularly wheat) and politics is a hidden stressor that helped to fuel the revolutions and will continue to make consolidating them into stable democracies much more difficult.
  • in 2010-11, in tandem with the Arab awakenings, “a once-in-a-century winter drought in China” — combined, at the same time, with record-breaking heat waves or floods in other key wheat-growing countries (Ukraine, Russia, Canada and Australia) — “contributed to global wheat shortages and skyrocketing bread prices” in wheat-importing states, most of which are in the Arab world.
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  • Everything is linked: Chinese drought and Russian bushfires produced wheat shortages leading to higher bread prices fueling protests in Tahrir Square. Sternberg calls it the globalization of “hazard.”
  • from 2006 to 2011, up to 60 percent of Syria’s land experienced the worst drought ever recorded there — at a time when Syria’s population was exploding and its corrupt and inefficient regime was proving incapable of managing the stress.
  • The future does not look much brighter. “On a scale of wetness conditions,” Femia and Werrell note, “ ‘where a reading of -4 or below is considered extreme drought,’ a 2010 report by the National Center for Atmospheric Research shows that Syria and its neighbors face projected readings of -8 to -15 as a result of climatic changes in the next 25 years.
  • Similar trends, they note, are true for Libya, whose “primary source of water is a finite cache of fossilized groundwater, which already has been severely stressed while coastal aquifers have been progressively invaded by seawater.”
  • when it comes to climate change, we need to manage what is unavoidable and avoid what is unmanageable. That requires collective action globally to mitigate as much climate change as we can and the building of resilient states locally to adapt to what we can’t mitigate.
  • The Arab world is doing the opposite. Arab states as a group are the biggest lobbyists against efforts to reduce oil and fuel subsidies. According to the International Monetary Fund, as much as one-fifth of some Arab state budgets go to subsidizing gasoline and cooking fuel — more than $200 billion a year in the Arab world as a whole — rather than into spending on health and education. Meanwhile, locally, Arab states are being made less resilient by the tribalism and sectarianism that are eating away at their democratic revolutions.
rachelramirez

ERP for OCD Works, But It's Expensive and Hard to Find - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...505538

OCD US

shared by rachelramirez on 28 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • The Only Cure for OCD Is Expensive, Elusive, and Scary
  • She can’t resist picking up litter whenever she spots it; the other day she cleaned up the entire parking lot of her apartment complex. Each night, she must place her phone in an exact spot on the nightstand in order to fall asleep.
  • Since then, a succession of therapists have failed to help her. They’ve told her, “I don't really know how to treat this,” she said. Or, they talked to her about the possible source of her troubles.
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  • there are no psychologists who specialize in exposure and response prevention, the specific kind of therapy she and many others with OCD require in order to break their crippling thought cycles.
  • At its worst, OCD can compel people to spend hours each day rehearsing an intricate mental dance they feel powerless to end.
  • Along with medication, exposure and response prevention, or ERP, therapy is the gold-standard treatment for people with OCD. It is radically different from more traditional talk therapy, which excavates patients’ childhoods or past relationships for clues to their present-day problems.
  • a person is forced to confront their obsessive thoughts relentlessly. The goal is to make the sufferer so accustomed to their obsessions that they no longer feel tempted to engage in soothing compulsions.
  • Because the symptoms can be entirely mental, it can take years for either patients or therapists to recognize OCD for what it is.
  • People obsessed with not offending God might hold a satanic ritual. Those assailed by persistent (and baseless) fears they will molest their siblings might read the incest tome Flowers in the Attic.
  • some studies estimate it takes OCD sufferers 17 years to find proper treatment from the onset of symptoms. Seeking certain forms of talk therapy can make them worse, not better. In the meantime, some experience symptoms so debilitating they are confined to their homes.
  • Most moderate OCD cases get at least partly better if the patient receives two or three months of ERP.
  • There is no mandatory number of hours that psychologists must spend training in either cognitive-behavioral therapy or ERP, said Lynn Bufka, a psychologist with the American Psychological Association. Bufka did not know what percentage of psychotherapists provide ERP, but she suspects it’s “small.”
  • Between 3 and 7 million Americans suffer from OCD at some point—a substantial number, but still far fewer than the vast multitudes who seek therapy for anxiety and depression.
  • ERP teaches people, “these thoughts are meaningless, you need to learn to ignore them.”
  • Access to ERP therapists is compounded by the already profound shortage of psychotherapists in rural areas. More than half of U.S. counties have no mental-health professionals at all.
  • ERP specialists might feel no need to take insurance, since they are so rare they often have no shortage of clients, Szymanski, of the International OCD Foundation, pointed out.
  • But the treatment was so expensive it contributed to the family’s decision to sell their house.
julia rhodes

Its Great Lake Shriveled, Iran Confronts Crisis of Water Supply - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ts-crisis-of-water-supply.html

great lake iran crisis water supply history politics policy culture economics

shared by julia rhodes on 31 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Iran is facing a water shortage potentially so serious that officials are making contingency plans for rationing in the greater Tehran area, home to 22 million, and other major cities around the country. President Hassan Rouhani has identified water as a national security issue, and in public speeches in areas struck hardest by the shortage he is promising to “bring the water back.”
  • Iran’s water troubles extend far beyond Lake Urmia, which as a salt lake was never fit for drinking or agricultural use. Other lakes and major rivers have also been drying up, leading to disputes over water rights, demonstrations and even riots.
  • Dam construction was given renewed emphasis under Mr. Rouhani’s predecessor as president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who as an engineer had a weakness for grand projects. Another driving force is the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which through its engineering arm, Khatam al-Anbia Construction, builds many of the dams in Iran and surrounding countries.
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  • Most people in the area blame the half-dozen major dams the government has built in the region for the lake’s disappearance. The dams have greatly reduced the flow of water in the 11 rivers that feed into the lake. As an arid country with numerous lofty mountain chains, Iran has a predilection for dams that extends to the reign of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
  • In a 2005 book that he wrote on national security challenges for Iran, Mr. Rouhani estimated that 92 percent of Iran’s water is used for agriculture, compared with 80 percent in the United States (90 percent in some Western states).
  • “They turn open the tap, flood the land, without understanding that in our climate most of the water evaporates that way,” said Ali Reza Seyed Ghoreishi, a member of the local water management council. “We need to educate the farmers.”
  • “We are all to blame,” Mr. Ranaghadr said. “There are just too many people nowadays, and everybody needs to use the water and the electricity the dams generate.”
  • While Iran is shooting monkeys into space to advance its missile program, the Rouhani government, low on funds because of the impact of the international sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program, has not made any money available for efforts to restore the lake.
Javier E

Can Jeremy Grantham Profit From Ecological Mayhem? - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...it-from-ecological-mayhem.html

ecological prediction resources scarcity historical economic trends growth Malthus capitalism crisis investment

shared by Javier E on 14 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Energy “will give us serious and sustained problems” over the next 50 years as we make the transition from hydrocarbons — oil, coal, gas — to solar, wind, nuclear and other sources, but we’ll muddle through to a solution to Peak Oil and related challenges. Peak Everything Else will prove more intractable for humanity. Metals, for instance, “are entropy at work . . . from wonderful metal ores to scattered waste,” and scarcity and higher prices “will slowly increase forever,” but if we scrimp and recycle, we can make do for another century before tight constraint kicks in.
  • Agriculture is more worrisome. Local water shortages will cause “persistent irritation” — wars, famines. Of the three essential macro nutrient fertilizers, nitrogen is relatively plentiful and recoverable, but we’re running out of potassium and phosphorus, finite mined resources that are “necessary for all life.” Canada has large reserves of potash (the source of potassium), which is good news for Americans, but 50 to 75 percent of the known reserves of phosphate (the source of phosphorus) are located in Morocco and the western Sahara. Assuming a 2 percent annual increase in phosphorus consumption, Grantham believes the rest of the world’s reserves won’t last more than 50 years, so he expects “gamesmanship” from the phosphate-rich.
  • he rates soil erosion as the biggest threat of all. The world’s population could reach 10 billion within half a century — perhaps twice as many human beings as the planet’s overtaxed resources can sustainably support, perhaps six times too many.
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  • most economists see global trade as a win-win proposition, but resource limitation turns it into a win-lose, zero-sum contest. “The faster China grows, the higher grain prices go, the more people in China or India who upgrade to meat, the higher the tendency for Africa to starve,” he said.
  • Grantham argues that the late-18th-century doomsayer Thomas Malthus pretty much got it right but just had the bad timing to make his predictions about unsustainable population growth on the eve of the hydrocarbon-fueled Industrial Revolution, which “partially removed the barriers to rapid population growth, wealth and scientific progress.” That put off the inevitable for a couple of centuries, but now, ready or not, the age of cheap hydrocarbons is ending. Grantham’s July letter concludes: “We humans have the brains and the means to reach real planetary sustainability. The problem is with us and our focus on short-term growth and profits, which is likely to cause suffering on a vast scale. With foresight and thoughtful planning, this suffering is completely avoidable.”
  • “E.D.F. is educating people that dealing with climate change will be good for the economy and job creation. One of Jeremy’s insights is that we can make headway on the market side because higher commodity prices will enforce greater efficiency.”
  • When he reminds us that modern capitalism isn’t equipped to handle long-range problems or tragedies of the commons (situations like overfishing or global warming, in which acting rationally in your own self-interest only deepens the harm to all), when he urges us to outgrow our touching faith in the efficiency of markets and boundless human ingenuity, and especially when he says that a wise investor can prosper in the coming hard times, his bad news and its silver lining come with a built-in answer to the skeptical question that Americans traditionally pose to egghead Cassandras: If you’re so smart, how come you’re not rich?
  • Grantham believes that the best approach may be to recast global warming, which depresses crop yields and worsens soil erosion, as a factor contributing to resource depletion. “People are naturally much more responsive to finite resources than they are to climate change,” he said. “Global warming is bad news. Finite resources is investment advice.”
  • “Americans are just about the worst at dealing with long-term problems, down there with Uzbekistan,” he said, “but they respond to a market signal better than almost anyone. They roll the dice bigger and quicker than most.”
  • Grantham, the public face of a company that manages more than $100 billion in assets, the very embodiment of a high-finance insider in blue blazer and yellow tie, has serious doubts about capitalism’s ability to address the biggest problems facing humanity.
  • Grantham says that corporations respond well to this message because they are “persuaded by data,” but American public opinion is harder to move, and contemporary American political culture is practically dataproof. “The politicians are the worst,” he said. “An Indian economist once said to me, ‘We have 28 political parties, and they all think climate change is important.’ ” Whatever the precise number of parties in India, and it depends on how you count, his point was that the U.S. has just two that matter, one that dismisses global warming as a hoax and one that now avoids the subject.
  • Grantham, who says that “this time it’s different are the four most dangerous words in the English language,” has become a connoisseur of bubbles. His historical study of more than 300 of them shows the same pattern occurring again and again. A bump in sales or some other impressive development causes people to get excited. When they do, the price of that asset class — South Sea company shares, dot-coms — goes up, and human nature and the financial industry conspire to push it higher. People want to hear good news; they tend to be bad with numbers and uncertainty, and to assume that present conditions will persist. In the financial industry, the imperative to minimize career risk produces herd behavior.
  • So it’s news when Grantham, who has built his career on the conviction that peaks and troughs will even out as prices inevitably revert to their historical mean, says that this time it really is different, and not in a good way. In his April letter, “Time to Wake Up: Days of Abundant Resources and Falling Prices Are Over Forever,” he argued that “we are in the midst of one of the giant inflection points in economic history.” The market is “sending us the Mother of all price signals,” warning us that “if we maintain our desperate focus on growth, we will run out of everything and crash.”
  • here’s the short version: “The prices of all important commodities except oil declined for 100 years until 2002, by an average of 70 percent. From 2002 until now, this entire decline was erased by a bigger price surge than occurred during World War II. Statistically, most commodities are now so far away from their former downward trend that it makes it very probable that the old trend has changed — that there is in fact a Paradigm Shift — perhaps the most important economic event since the Industrial Revolution.”
  • When prices go up and stay up, it’s not a bubble. Prices may always revert to the mean, but the mean can change; that’s a paradigm shift. As Grantham tells it, oil went first. For a century it steadily returned to about $16 a barrel in today’s currency, then in 1974 the mean shifted to about $35, and Grantham believes it has recently doubled again. Metals and nearly everything else — coal, corn, palm oil, soybeans, sugar, cotton — appear to be following suit. “From now on, price pressure and shortages of resources will be a permanent feature of our lives,” he argues. “The world is using up its natural resources at an alarming rate, and this has caused a permanent shift in their value. We all need to adjust our behavior to this new environment. It would help if we did it quickly.”
  • Grantham is taking the Malthusian side in an ongoing debate about growth and commodity prices­. The argument often circles back to the bet made in 1980 between the biologist Paul Ehrlich, who foretold catastrophic scarcity caused by overpopulation, and the economist Julian Simon, who argued that any short-term increase in resource prices caused by population growth will stimulate inventors and entrepreneurs to find new ways to exploit those resources, lowering prices in the long run. The two men picked five commodities and wagered on whether their prices, taken as an indicator of scarcity, would be higher or lower in 1990. Simon won, 5-0, even though the world’s population grew by 800 million during that decade. Malthusians have been trying to live down that defeat ever since, but, as Grantham points out in his July letter, if we extend the original bet past its arbitrary 10-year limit to the present day, Ehrlich wins the five-commodity bet 4-1, and he wins big if the bet is further extended to all important commodities.
  • He’s an impassioned environmentalist not only for the usual reasons but also because he believes humanity’s vexed relationship with the planet is the great economic story of our time. “This commodities thing may turn out to be the most interesting call of my career,” he told me. “I have no doubt we’re going to have a bad hundred years. We have the resources to gracefully handle the transition, but we won’t. We apparently can’t.”
  • “Whether the stable population will be 1.5 billion or 5 billion,” he said to me, “the question is: How do we get there?”
Javier E

L'Hôte: all by yourself - 0 views

lhote.blogspot.com/...all-by-yourself.html

internet online social solitude conformity

shared by Javier E on 06 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • "I ask no mercy and I plead for no immunity." freddie7 AT gmail DOT com My brother is a tailor and dressmaker. Check him out. Blog Archive ▼  2011 (81) ▼  April (6) seriousness and honesty are only conditionally vir... all by yourself straight fire failing students drop classes reason for optimism today in unfortunate yet amazing errors, Freddie e... ►  March (30) winning is fast, humanitarianism is slow we don't have a worker shortage quote for the day "you see an old woman...." amen sympathy for the juice box set first principles an open letter to Juan Cole on Libya they should have done a miniseries about Benjamin ... next big thing anniversary note the more things change ad hominems left-wing non-interventionism sorry about comments system how perfect is your knowledge? here they come France and the UK Libya gentrification involves more than the gentry the profession that wants to destroy itself they're bringing back all the classics marijuana legalization is a human rights issue Bobby Sands was an MP damn you, DVD clearance fees links and such a man from somewhere today in insanity the incredible naivete of the incredibly savvy ►  February (33) marked bodies What does it mean for a movie to be experimental a... subversion and containment IOZ on Reason's absurdity Reihan and progressivism/neoliberalism/leftism California good people are everywhere what I want submitted without comment welcome to lottery ticket America another perfect opportunity what's before us by the way the Atlantic and the working class ►  January (12) archivedate collaps
  • Paradoxically, what I find more and more is that the Internet is a place for people to affirm and support each other. It's as if the understanding of the fundamental weakness of these electronic proxies to represent human connection causes people to push for it more and more. And this could be beautiful. But it can also be dangerous. Because of the depth of the loneliness, I blame no one for how they interact and connect with others online. I just worry. I worry about the urge towards conformity. I worry about Twitter. I worry that all of those retweets and all of those "right on"s contribute to a kind of coarse postmodernism, where what the truth becomes what is most agreed on. I worry that dissent is confused with a lack of etiquette. And I particularly worry about the echo chamber effect, and the way that small groups of people who are just like each other can come to think of themselves as representing the opinions of everyone. On the Internet, we all make the world in our own image.
  • The pressure, online, will always be to tack towards the crowd, and people will look endlessly towards their peers-- not intending to undermine the individual voice, but getting there, often, anyway. Don't get judgmental about it, but keep saying your piece. In the tenor of the single voice, you can find strength, and if you keep saying what you think is true, in spite of it all, you will find what is incorruptible in yourself.
katyshannon

Haryana State in India Proposes New Caste Status in Bid to Quell Protests - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...w-delhi-jat-water-protest.html

state india caste status bid protests new york times politics history culture policy

shared by katyshannon on 23 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • A state government in India promised to introduce a bill to grant coveted “backward” status to a relatively prosperous caste group, officials said Monday, in an effort to quell protests that have raged for the past four days.
  • The protesters, members of the Jat caste group, had blocked roads around the capital, set fire to railway stations and cars, and temporarily shut down a crucial canal that is a major source of the city’s water. Nineteen people were killed in the violence in surrounding Haryana State, and fears of water shortages led New Delhi to close its schools to conserve its supply.
  • The main thoroughfare in the area, Grand Trunk Road, which had been reopened on Sunday, was blocked again by fighting on Monday morning, the police said. Still, a state official said, 80 percent of the roads that had been closed were open again on Monday morning.
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  • Roshan Shankar, an adviser to the Delhi government, said the authorities had regained control of a canal that supplied water to New Delhi, though the canal was badly damaged. For now, he said, the government was using existing reserves and other water bodies to meet the need. He said severe, widespread shortages had not been reported so far.
  • Nevertheless, he added, officials were “trying to get people to ration.”
  • A Jat leader, Satpal Singh Sangwan, a retired government official, said in an interview that officials had assured him that the Jat group would be added to a list of more than 2,000 other groups considered “backward,” making their members eligible for quotas in government jobs and university admissions.
  • A year ago, another relatively prosperous caste group, in the state of Gujarat, also demanded, unsuccessfully, to be part of the “backward classes.” Yet the latest caste protests are only the most violent and visible in what has been a steady stream of requests from different caste groups claiming to be “backward.”
  • It is one of the country’s major paradoxes that a population that has been trying for decades to rid itself of the caste system finds so many groups demanding to be ranked lower on the socioeconomic ladder in order to advance themselves economically.
  • Experts say the trend is being driven by increasing numbers of Indians who fear being left behind in the rapidly modernizing economy and who see government quotas as the only tangible way they can gain influence to help better themselves economically.
  • Vast numbers of Indians now “feel totally helpless with regard to the economy and private capital,” said Satish Deshpande, a sociology professor at Delhi University.
  • Despite the economic liberalization that began here in the 1990s, many people still lack jobs and educational opportunities, intensifying the competition for the age-old staple of government jobs.
  • Almost half of government jobs and university seats in the country are reserved for members of special groups.
  • India’s Constitution guarantees equality to all, but it also enshrines caste-based affirmative action for the lowest social group, the Dalits, known in legal terms as scheduled castes, and for indigenous forest-dwellers, known as scheduled tribes. In time, the government created a third group, the Other Backward Classes.
  • In many cases, groups flex their electoral muscles to induce the government to add them to the list of groups considered backward.The Jats started on that path. In 2014, as national elections approached, the incumbent Congress party agreed to their demand for backward status. But the Supreme Court struck down the decision last year, noting that a commission set up to review the program had refused to recommend such a step for the group.
  • The Jat protests became so out of hand over the weekend that the Indian Army had to be called in. Mr. Das said several protesters were killed in clashes with another caste group whose property was being burned. Other people were killed when law enforcement officials fired at protesters who had turned violent, he said. At least 19 people in all have been killed, Mr. Das said.
  • The riots also disrupted businesses. Maruti Suzuki India, the country’s biggest car manufacturer, said over the weekend that it had suspended manufacturing at two area factories.
runlai_jiang

Spring Home Sales Could Be the Weakest in Years - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...ears-for-home-sales-1520424001

shared by runlai_jiang on 07 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • The culprits: rising mortgage rates, a tax bill that reduces the incentives for homeownership and a growing weariness among first-buyers being priced out of the market—all of which are expected to damp demand for homes this year.
  • “It’s still going to be a tight market, but we’re moving from an extremely tight market to one that has some wiggle room around the edges for buyers,” said Daren Blomquist, a senior vice president at the housing-research firm Attom Data Solutions.
  • Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, said he expects sales to be flat this spring from a year earlier. Roughly 2.06 million homes were sold between March and June 2017, up from about 2 million in the same period a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors.
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  • Mr. Yun predicts sales will remain flat for all of 2018, due to inventory shortages and eroding affordability, as both prices and mortgage rates rise.
  • A homeowner with a median-priced home in the San Francisco area will receive $4,500 less in housing-related tax benefits in the first year of a 30-year mortgage this year, according to real-estate data company Apartment List. A homeowner in the same position in the New York metro area would receive $1,500 less annually.
  • Weakness at the high end is being driven by stock market volatility and the $10,000 cap the tax bill placed on deducting state and local property taxes
  • “People are being a little more cautious than they were before,” Mr. Glazer said. “Buyers have a number in mind, and they’re willing to stick their ground more than in the past.”
  • Kalena Masching, a Redfin agent in Silicon Valley, said she has seen a pickup in activity in recent weeks as buyers and sellers have digested the implications of the tax bill. Buyers are putting down larger down payments to bring the size of their mortgages below the new $750,000 cap. But that could be a challenge if the stock market continues to fluctuate, because buyers might want to hold on to more of their cash
  • s. Masching said she is also hearing more from older buyers who are thinking about selling their homes and using the proceeds to retire out of state, prompted in part by the changes to the tax law
  • “I’m hoping it’s going to be better. We never got any inventory last year,” said Ms. Masching. “The big concern for our sellers is: Where are they going to go?”
  • Rhian Daniel, a 50 year old who works for a medical startup, and his wife have been looking for a home for about four years, both in the Bay Area and further afield. The couple have largely given up for the moment, and are considering eventually moving to a place like Dallas, with lower home prices and property taxes.
  • Mr. Daniel’s wife is a therapist, and they both have student debt that limits the size of the mortgage they can get.
Javier E

Google Chief Economist Hal Varian Argues Automation Is Essential - CIO Journal. - WSJ - 0 views

blogs.wsj.com/...argues-automation-is-essential

automation google economist labor unemployment

shared by Javier E on 10 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • Hal Varian, chief economist at Alphabet Inc.-owned Google, is optimistic about the overall impact of automation on the worldwide economy.
  • Automating routine, predictable tasks will help mitigate the effects of a tight labor market over the next decade
  • “Automation, in my view, is coming along just in time to address this coming period of labor shortages,”
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  • Free tutorial videos on platforms like Google-owned YouTube will also mitigate negative effects of the tight labor market,
  • “We never had a technology before that could educate such a broad group of people any time on an as-needed basis for free,”
  • Jobs where one person is doing the same, routine task over and over again, in an automobile-manufacturing assembly line, for example, will be the first to be automated, he said. “If you look at environments that don’t have those characteristics, then the possibilities of automation become much more problematic,”
  • Analysts at Forrester Research Inc. predict that over the next five years, about 4 million jobs will be lost in the U.S. as a result of artificial intelligence and related technology, including software robots.
  • Gartner Inc. has said that artificial intelligence will create 2.3 million jobs in 2020, while eliminating 1.8 million.
  • “If you want to see what the future looks like in an extreme case, go to Japan, where there are vending machines that are providing so many things because of the shortage of labor,” he said.
  • “The line in Silicon Valley is, ‘We always overestimate the amount of change that can occur in a year and we underestimate what can occur in a decade,’” he said. “So I think that’s a very good principle to keep in mind.”
brickol

Trump invokes Defense Production Act law to compel GM to supply ventilators | US news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-production-act-coronavirus-gm

COVID-19 us trump

shared by brickol on 28 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Donald Trump has bowed to overwhelming pressure and invoked a national security law compelling General Motors to mass produce breathing equipment as the US becomes the first country to top 100,000 confirmed coronavirus cases.But at yet another turbulent press conference, the president continued to give conflicting signals, claiming that more than 100,000 ventilators would be produced quickly but then casually suggesting some could be donated to the UK and other countries.
  • For weeks the president seemed reluctant to enforce the Defense Production Act (DPA), which grants him power to require companies to expand industrial production of key materials or products.
  • But officials say he did use it on 18 March, when he signed an order prioritising contracts and allocating resources to the US health secretary, Alex Azar, and again on 23 March, when he signed an order to prevent people from hoarding health and medical resources.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The third instance, an order compelling GM to begin manufacturing ventilators, was the most far-reaching as Trump came under criticism from state governors, Democrats and doctors for playing down a nationwide shortage of ventilators.
  • Covid-19 is a respiratory illness. Most who contract it recover but it can be fatal, particularly among older people and those with underlying health problems. Ventilators enable a person with compromised lungs to keep breathing.
  • After Trump invoked the act, GM said it had been working around the clock for more than a week with Ventec Life Systems, a medical device company, and parts suppliers to build more ventilators. The company’s commitment to build Ventec’s ventilators “has never wavered”, it said.
  • Trump also announced that the White House trade adviser Peter Navarro would become the national DPA policy coordinator for the federal government. Navarro has been a leading advocate of Trump’s protectionist trade agenda, championing tariffs against China and the European Union.
  • The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, welcomed Trump’s use of the DPA as “an important but seriously belated step”. She added in a statement on Friday: “Much more must be done. The president must use the full powers of this law to address the dire, widespread shortage of materials required to fight this pandemic, including diagnostic test supplies, masks and other personal protective equipment.”
  • Critics say Trump ignored early warnings about the threat of the pandemic and had he acted sooner, mass production of ventilators would now be well under way.
  • In another bizarre moment, when Trump was asked for a message to schoolchildren forced to stay at home, he said: “You can call it a germ, a flu, a virus, you can call it many things. I’m not sure people know what it is.” Scientists have identified it as coronavirus disease (Covid-19), an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus called Sars-CoV-2.
  • In another sign that Trump is not living up to his appeal for bipartisanship, Trump did not invite Pelosi or any other Democrats to the signing of a $2.2tn emergency relief bill. Pelosi said in a statement on Friday: “We must do more to address the health emergency, mitigate the economic damage, and provide for a strong recovery.”
nrashkind

Donald Trump Is a Menace to Public Health - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...608449

shared by nrashkind on 29 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • The autocratic political culture that has propped up the Trump administration has left the nation entirely unprepared for an economic and public-health calamity.
  • The president of the United States is a menace to public health
  • I don’t mean that I disagree with him on policy, although I do
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • What I am referring to is the fact that, soon after the coronavirus outbreak emerged in China, the rest of the world began to regard it as a threat to public health, while Trump has seen it as a public-relations problem
  • Trump’s primary method of dealing with public-relations problems is to exert the full force of the authoritarian cult of personality that surrounds him to deny that a problem even exists.
  • Neither the tide of pestilence sweeping the nation nor the economic calamity that will follow was inevitable
  • Trump’s first public remarks on the coronavirus came during an interview with the CNBC reporter Joe Kernen on January 22
  • Kernen asked, “Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?” To which Trump replied, “No. Not at all. And—we’re—we have it totally under control
  • Except Trump was not preparing
  • He was consciously contradicting his administration’s own public-health officials at the time.
  • Nor were the president’s dismissals of the dangers posed by the coronavirus an attempt to buy time for the federal government to appropriately respond.
  • Medical workers are running out of face masks and gloves. The United States does not have enough ventilators for critically ill patients who need them. States lack sufficient testing capacity to measure the scale of the outbreak. Emergency rooms are overwhelmed. Hospitals are running out of beds. The president is tweeting praise of himself.
  • In the meantime, doctors, nurses, and EMTs are getting sick
nrashkind

'That's when all hell broke loose': Coronavirus patients overwhelm US hospitals - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by nrashkind on 29 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • "We ended up getting our first positive patients -- and that's when all hell broke loose," said one New York City doctor.
  • "We don't have the machines, we don't have the beds," the doctor said.
  • "To think that we're in New York City and this is happening," he added. "It's like a third-world country type of scenario. It's mind-blowing."
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • At first, patients skewed toward the 70-plus age group, but in the past week or so there have been a number of patients younger than 50.
  • "Two weeks ago, life was completely different."
  • There are simultaneous effort to procure ventilators for the most severe patients. According to Cuomo, New York has procured 7,000 ventilators in addition to 4,000 already on hand, and the White House said Tuesday that the state would receive two shipments of 2,000 machines this week from the national stockpile. But the state needs 30,000, Cuomo said.
  • "There is a very different air this week than there was last week."
  • Public health experts, including US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams, have warned the US could "become Italy," where doctors in hospitals filled with Covid-19 patients have been forced to ration care and choose who gets a ventilator.
  • Cuomo also described the extreme measures hospitals are planning to take to increase their capacity for patients who need intensive care.
  • It's not just New York that's feeling the pressure. Hospitals across the country are seeing a surge of patients, a shortage of personal protective equipment such as masks and gowns, and health care workers who feel that they, their families and their patients are being put at risk.
  • Several nurses around the country also spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, also fearing they could lose their jobs.
  • Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez, an ER nurse at Montefiore Medical Center and president of the New York State Nurses Association, said that "everybody is terrified" about becoming infected because many lack the proper protective gear, and many are being told to reuse the same mask between multiple patients.
  • to become sick and we also don't want to become carriers," she said. "In my own hospital -- and I don't think it's unique -- we have a nurse who is on a ventilator right now who contracted the virus."
  • The goal: to prevent hospitals from seeing a massive spike of patients arriving around the same time.
  • "Obviously, no one is going to want to tone down things when you see things going on like in New York City," Fauci said Tuesday.
Javier E

The U.S. Tried to Build a New Fleet of Ventilators. The Mission Failed. - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...us-us-ventilator-shortage.html

equipment profit public health pandemic capitalism

shared by Javier E on 29 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Thirteen years ago, a group of U.S. public health officials came up with a plan to address what they regarded as one of the medical system’s crucial vulnerabilities: a shortage of ventilators.
  • The plan was to build a large fleet of inexpensive portable devices to deploy in a flu pandemic or another crisis.
  • Money was budgeted. A federal contract was signed. Work got underway.
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • then things suddenly veered off course. A multibillion-dollar maker of medical devices bought the small California company that had been hired to design the new machines. The project ultimately produced zero ventilators.
  • That failure delayed the development of an affordable ventilator by at least half a decade, depriving hospitals, states and the federal government of the ability to stock up
  • The stalled efforts to create a new class of cheap, easy-to-use ventilators highlight the perils of outsourcing projects with critical public-health implications to private companies; their focus on maximizing profits is not always consistent with the government’s goal of preparing for a future crisis
  • “We definitely saw the problem,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, who ran the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2009 to 2017. “We innovated to try and get a solution.
  • The project — code-named Aura — came in the wake of a parade of near-miss pandemics: SARS, MERS, bird flu and swine flu.
  • Federal officials decided to re-evaluate their strategy for the next public health emergency. They considered vaccines, antiviral drugs, protective gear and ventilators, the last line of defense for patients suffering respiratory failure
  • In 2006, the Department of Health and Human Services established a new division, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, with a mandate to prepare medical responses to chemical, biological and nuclear attacks, as well as infectious diseases.
  • In its first year in operation, the research agency considered how to expand the number of ventilators. It estimated that an additional 70,000 machines would be required in a moderate influenza pandemic.
  • In 2014, with no ventilators having been delivered to the government, Covidien executives told officials at the biomedical research agency that they wanted to get out of the contract, according to three former federal officials. The executives complained that it was not sufficiently profitable for the company.
  • The goal was for the machines to be approved by regulators for mass development by 2010 or 2011,
  • The ventilators were to cost less than $3,000 each. The lower the price, the more machines the government would be able to buy.
  • Ventilators at the time typically went for about $10,000 each, and getting the price down to $3,000 would be tough. But Newport’s executives bet they would be able to make up for any losses by selling the ventilators around the world.
  • In 2011, Newport shipped three working prototypes from the company’s California plant to Washington for federal officials to review.
  • In April 2012, a senior Health and Human Services official testified before Congress that the program was “on schedule to file for market approval in September 2013.” After that, the machines would go into production.
  • In May 2012, Covidien, a large medical device manufacturer, agreed to buy Newport for just over $100 million.
  • Newport executives and government officials working on the ventilator contract said they immediately noticed a change when Covidien took over. Developing inexpensive portable ventilators no longer seemed like a top priority.
  • Government officials and executives at rival ventilator companies said they suspected that Covidien had acquired Newport to prevent it from building a cheaper product that would undermine Covidien’s profits from its existing ventilator business.
  • Some Newport executives who worked on the project were reassigned to other roles. Others decided to leave the company.
  • The research agency convened a panel of experts in November 2007 to devise a set of requirements for a new generation of mobile, easy-to-use ventilators.
  • The stockpile is “still awaiting delivery of the Trilogy Evo,” a Health and Human Services spokeswoman said. “We do not currently have any in inventory, though we are expecting them soon.”
brookegoodman

The coronavirus-themed foods bringing light relief to customers | CNN Travel - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

culture crisis economics

shared by brookegoodman on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • (CNN) — Among global efforts to offer some light relief to the current crisis, bakers and chefs have been producing coronavirus-related dishes that are hopefully a lot tastier than the epidemic which has inspired them.
  • According to Reuters, the takeaway shop is currently selling around 50 of the burgers every day, which is particularly impressive considering the number of businesses that have been forced to close down as a result of the pandemic.
  • Pré told French language newspaper Le Telegramme he devised the eggs to bring some humor to the situation after growing "tired of hearing" about coronavirus.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Meanwhile in western Germany, the Schuerener Backparadies bakery has added two different coronavirus-themed creations to its selection.
  • A nod to the well-documented toilet paper shortage that's occurred across the world as consumers frantically buy up huge quantities, the marble cakes are wrapped in white fondant etched with tiny diamond shapes in the style of quilted toilet roll.
  • Like France, and many countries around the world, Germany has imposed extensive restrictions and many non-essential businesses have been forced to close.
  • Over in the US, a New York doughnut shop has dedicated its latest offering to infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force who's won the public over with his straight-talking approach.
  • According to Semeraro, the shop has sold thousands of the buttercream-frosted doughnut, which features Fauci's face printed on edible paper, with customers asking for the treat to be sent to various cities and states.
Javier E

U.S. Virus Plan Anticipates 18-Month Pandemic and Widespread Shortages - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-coronavirus-plan.html

pandemic government response trump crisis politics

shared by Javier E on 18 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • A federal government plan to combat the coronavirus warned policymakers last week that a pandemic “will last 18 months or longer” and could include “multiple waves,” resulting in widespread shortages that would strain consumers and the nation’s health care system.
  • Among the “additional key federal decisions” listed among the options for Mr. Trump was invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950, a Korean War-era law that authorizes a president to take extraordinary action to force American industry to ramp up production of critical equipment and supplies such as ventilators, respirators and protective gear for health care workers.
Javier E

Opinion | The Best-Case Outcome for the Coronavirus, and the Worst - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...coronavirus-outcomes.html

pandemic model outcome crisis

shared by Javier E on 21 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • About four out of five people known to have had the virus had only mild symptoms, and even among those older than 90 in Italy, 78 percent survived.
  • Two-thirds of those who died in Italy had pre-existing medical conditions and were also elderly
  • “I’m not pessimistic. I think this can work.” She thinks it will take eight weeks of social distancing to have a chance to slow the virus, and success will depend on people changing behaviors and on hospitals not being overrun. “If warm weather helps, if we can get these drugs, if we can get companies to produce more ventilators, we have a window to tamp this down,”
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Dr. Neil M. Ferguson, a British epidemiologist who is regarded as one of the best disease modelers in the world, produced a sophisticated model with a worst case of 2.2 million deaths in the United States.
  • I asked Ferguson for his best case. “About 1.1 million deaths,” he said.
  • one can argue that the U.S. is not only on the same path as Italy but is also less prepared, for America has fewer doctors and hospital beds per capita than Italy does — and a shorter life expectancy even in the best of times.
  • up to 366,000 I.C.U. beds might be needed in the United States for coronavirus patients at one time, more than 10 times the number available. A Harvard study reached a similar conclusion.
  • This is an interval of quiet when the United States should be urgently ramping up investment in vaccines and therapies, addressing the severe shortages of medical supplies and equipment, and giving retired physicians and military medics legal authority to practice in a crisis
  • During World War II, the Ford Motor Company turned out one B-24 bomber every 63 minutes; today, we should be rushing out ventilators and face masks, but there’s nothing like the same sense of urgency.
  • After initial missteps in Wuhan, where the coronavirus was first discovered, China adopted protocols for protective gear that are more rigorous than those in the United States, involving N95 masks and face shields, double gowns, gloves and shoe covers, plus special areas to remove protective clothing — and all this worked. Not one of the 42,000 health workers sent to Wuhan is known to have become infected with the coronavirus. The United States isn’t protecting health workers with the same determination; it seems to be betraying them.
  • In Italy, 8.3 percent of coronavirus cases involve health workers. A doctor in the Seattle area who is forced to reuse N95 masks told me that she and her colleagues fear that the lack of supplies will be deadly.
  • “We are all making dying contingency plans at this point just in case,” she said. “Wills, backup people to take care of kids, recording bedtime stories.”
  • The United States is in a weaker position than some other countries to confront the virus because it is the only advanced country that doesn’t have universal health coverage, and the only one that does not guarantee paid sick leave
  • with infectious diseases, the burden will be shared by all Americans
  • This crisis should be a wake-up call to address long-term vulnerabilities. That means providing universal health coverage and paid sick leave — and if you think that the coronavirus legislation Trump signed on Wednesday achieves that, think again. It guarantees sick leave to only about one-fifth of private-sector workers. It’s a symbol of the inadequacy of America’s preparedness.
  • We may dodge a bullet this time, but experts have been warning for decades that a killer pandemic will come;
  • if we, too, can be scared enough to invest in public health and fix our health care system, then something good can come from this crisis — and in the long run, that may save lives.
  • Ferguson questions whether South Korea and other countries can sustain their success for 18 months until a vaccine is ready, even as new cases are constantly being imported
  • America and South Korea reported their first Covid-19 cases on the same day, but South Korea took the epidemic seriously, promptly created an effective test, used it widely and has seen cases go down more than 90 percent from the peak.
  • In contrast, the United States badly bungled testing, and President Trump repeatedly dismissed the coronavirus, saying it was “totally under control” and “will disappear,” and insisting he wasn’t “concerned at all.” The United States has still done only a bit more than 10 percent as many tests per capita as Canada, Austria and Denmark.
  • Peter Hotez, an eminent vaccine scientist at Baylor College of Medicine, told me that he and his colleagues have a candidate vaccine for the coronavirus but still haven’t been able to line up sufficient funding for clinical trials.
brickol

Trump to suspend travel from Europe, excluding UK, amid coronavirus outbreak | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...virus-outbreak-us-trump-latest

crisis us trump economics

shared by brickol on 12 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Donald Trump has announced that the US would temporarily suspend most travel from the European Union, as the country reckons with the spread of coronavirus and the White House grapples with the severity of the situation.
  • The restrictions, which would begin on Friday and last for 30 days, would not apply to US citizens or to travelers from the UK.
  • During the rare address to the nation, Trump defended his administration’s response while laying blame on the European Union for not acting quickly enough to address the “foreign virus”, saying US clusters had been “seeded” by European travelers.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • “I can say we will see more cases, and things will get worse than they are right now,” Fauci told the House Oversight and Reform Committee. He said it is “10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu”.
  • Trump’s speech comes on a tumultuous day as cases in the US topped 1,000 and the number of deaths rose to 37, while fluctuations in the financial markets continued and Washington strained to respond. Testifying on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned that the outbreak in the US is going to get worse.
  • The president also said he would take “emergency action” to provide relief to workers who are affected. He said he was asking Congress for $50bn for small business loans, and he also called for “immediate” payroll tax cuts.
  • In a statement, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the affected countries include: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland”.
  • The Trump administrators has faced a raft of criticism over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, from the shortage of testing kits available in the US to Trump’s own lack of urgency and downplaying the severity of the situation
  • Daniel Drezner, a professor of International politics at Tufts University, told the Guardian that limiting travel from Europe would “be a drop in the bucket” compared with the number of cases that are already in the US.
  • Democrats also called out Trump for failing to address the shortage of testing kits that has hampered containment efforts across the country. “We have a public health crisis in this country and the best way to help keep the American people safe and ensure their economic security is for the president to focus on fighting the spread of the coronavirus itself,” said Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leaders of the Senate and House, in a joint statement. “Alarmingly, the president did not say how the administration will address the lack of coronavirus testing kits throughout the United States.”
Javier E

Jay Inslee sounds an ominous warning as Trump's failures mount - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...rnor-sounds-an-ominous-warning

washington pandemic government response warning

shared by Javier E on 09 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • In another unsettling example, Inslee noted that he recently asked the CEO of a private company that is manufacturing the transport medium for tests if it could ramp up production with double shifts.
  • “I would have thought the federal government would have talked to every single manufacturer in the nation who either makes this, or could make this, by this point, and said, ‘Look, we’re going to finance a double shift,’” Inslee told me. “That hasn’t happened.
  • These problems appear to flow directly from a kind of schizophrenic approach adopted by the federal government. Trump initially told states they were mostly on their own, which led to a bidding war among states seeking supplies from a range of manufacturers and suppliers. Now the feds have sought to exert control over distribution, but it appears piecemeal and partial.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • In Inslee’s telling, this has resulted in a double whammy: a shortage of supplies and a lack of coordination of availability of parts. This could be mitigated by a much more robust and coordinated response via the Defense Production Act
  • As coronavirus cases recede in the coming months, if anything, more testing will be required. That’s because when people reassemble, it will be urgent to jump on cases in which people again show symptoms, and test them, to avoid a second wave.
  • “As we want to reopen our schools, as we want to reopen our industries, the amount of testing we need will actually increase,” Inslee said. “In the second wave, we have to have testing, a resource base, and a contact-tracing base that is so much more scaled up than right now. It’s an enormous challenge.”
  • “What we need now, what won World War II, was a quartermaster,” Inslee said. “That’s how you win wars. That’s what we need — a quartermaster.
  • Recently, Trump was directly confronted with glaring evidence of this. His own administration released a report documenting urgent shortages faced by hospital administrators around the country, who offered constructive suggestions on how the federal government can help save American lives.
  • In response, Trump lashed out in a rage, and pretended those problems are simply nonexistent.
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