Here is an interesting article with economic predictions for 2015. I agree with all of them except #1. But that’s probably because it’s worded too emotionally.

There is also a great link within that link which offers a very good explanation for the wage stagnation in the US. The short resume: irrespective of how much the GDP grows in the US, wages will not experience significant growth until we acquire the kind of skills that somebody in China or elsewhere isn’t offering much more cheaply. In short: massive and intensive education for the majority will win world dominance for whomever wants it.

Charles Hill, a business school professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, penned a recent blog entry looking at a change in local police tactics intended to reduce the demand for the service of sex workers.

Since the only way to reduce a person’s demand for sex is by having sex with that person, I find it very entertaining how these poor police officers go about such a task. Isn’t it entirely ridiculous that a state would waste money and manpower on such completely ridiculous tasks? Are there no actual criminals for the police to investigate?

Did another airplane go missing?  Is anybody following the story and can share with me what’s happening?

I won’t be able to get on the computer and look it up until the night.

Trigger warnings, students who complain that learning about the Inquisition hurts their feelings, middle-aged folks who whine about the need to choose between the inconvenience of traveling for Christmas and the discomfort of explaining the reluctance to do so, extreme political apathy, the failure of all recent protest movements, frenzied pill-popping, the destruction of the concept of workers’ rights by bored amateurs, the shameless peddling of online learning – all of these phenomena stem from the same root. The absolute, extreme terror of being inconvenienced and the pursuit of convenience at absolutely any cost are the guiding principles of the citizens in the post-nation-state.

It got to the point where we are likely to have presidential candidates named Clinton and Bush. Nobody wants to go to the trouble of memorizing a couple of new names because that would just be way too inconvenient. 

On a certain level it does make sense: the state is becoming increasingly irrelevant, so why not just replay the old and familiar elections with the old and familiar faces instead of wasting energy and time on coming up with new ones?

The great mistake of the EU is that it chose to structure itself as a nation-state on top of many different nation-states. And now is a really bad time for that.

As we found out in our discussions here on the blog, the greatest public good today is convenience. Adding regulations on top of even more regulations is not a strategy that any state can afford to practice for much longer.

The EU will exist for as long as it provides convenience and ease of movement. Facilitating travel and offering easy change of residence, removing the hassle of having to think about currency exchange rates – this should be the EU’s business if it is to survive.

In Switzerland (where niqab is already banned in Ticino since 2013), the German-speaking newspaper SonntagsBlick recently cited a survey saying that 62% of the Swiss population would be in favor of a burqa ban.

This is shockingly low. Just 62%? And what about the rest? They all despise women?

This is just sad. Civilizational  advances are slow.

I want to lay to rest, once and for all, the weird fantasies that people keep expressing about imminent starvation in the US. Here is an article listing restaurant meals (and often single menu items) that carry the caloric impact big enough to keep one not just alive but permanently obese. Most of these food items are extraordinarily cheap.

Can we lay to rest these starvation fantasies already? Please? I find them disturbing and offensive. Poverty in the US is not about starvation. But this doesn’t make it less worthy of attention.  This is the poverty of ill health caused by bad food, unhealthy lifestyles, psychological problems, and lack of medical care.

You can’t solve a problem that you refuse to name because you are aiming for greater dramatic effect. 

In China, the prevalence of selective abortions has skewed the natural ratio of males to females

, and in many places there simply aren’t enough women to go around.

To go around what, exactly?

Fucking douchebag.

When I first started writing about the imminent collapse of the nation-state, readers started asking me, “But why do you discount the possibility that the civil society might have anything to say about these changes?”

I don’t believe that a civil society is compatible with the society of consumers but I’m always ready to recognize my mistakes. So I’ve been on the lookout for evidence that a civil society exists and that it is willing to suffer some minor discomfort in order to retain some vestiges of the nation-state.  When the nation-state model collapses for good, the social stratification will soar. Everybody realizes it and expresses concern. Is anybody ready to do anything about it, I wondered?

The answer is a resounding NO. I was right this entire time: the civil society is a myth. There is no way whatsoever to get anybody even just to consider holding on to what was good about the nation-state. My poignant posts on the destruction of the public university were met with stony indifference on the part of people working at that university. The suggestions on the steep inheritance tax, forced “volunteering”, the destruction of professionalism and labor unions by bored amateurs, etc are all greeted with an invariable, “But it’s more convenient this way.”

And that’s fine, I guess. If everybody is ready for the nation-state to go, I don’t want to be a silly old Luddite who fusses about a welcome change. There are many attractive qualities in the new state model. For one, the variety of goods and services will really soar once the concept of worker rights recedes into oblivion. The fortunate will be able to live more intensely than ever, shifting from one location, profession, identity, etc into another. The highly mobile, brilliantly educated class will have the best kind of existence ever experienced by anybody in history. Everybody else will be happy, too, with their plasma-screen TVs and smartphones. The social ties will be broken, and “me and my convenience” will be the most popular religion. And social activism will mean “making losers contort eagerly and ridiculously by throwing them some crumbs.” The next big political protests will be organized by a bored millionaire who will find it entertaining to force the equally bored workers to put on a show of political activism.

Come to think of it, it’s all here already, and everybody is perfectly happy.

Via Jonathan Mayhew’s blog and the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

This difference is only going to intensify due to the reasons I have amply explained this year.