Juggling Dynamite

For several years we have been pointing out that demographic trends are turning away from high-cost, high-maintenance housing, in favor of lower cost, more efficient, and easier-to-maintain housing. In Canada especially (and many other countries) this is happening as home prices have ballooned on a household debt bubble.  This is bad timing for baby boomers who are counting currently inflated values as the bulk of their life savings and hoping to sell high in order to buy less, reduce debt, and hopefully–bank some savings for retirement. Best to get on with it sooner, than later.  The pool of able and interested buyers is small and shrinking. See:  A mismatch of buyers and sellers points to pain this year

The US housing market has a big problem on its hands—the types of houses people want to buy aren’t available, and the kind they don’t are. Most Americans are looking to buy starter homes, but there is currently a dearth of options available. At the upper end of the housing spectrum there is lots of availability but little interest. Overall, the balance of homes leads to a 7.4% mismatch between supply and demand, where zero would reflect perfect balance. This will likely lead to swift price rises for lower priced homes and falling prices for higher priced ones.

For well over a century, viscose rayon has been used to make clothes, tires, cellophane and everyday kitchen sponges. It was hailed as a wondrous new product when first introduced — but what most people didn’t know is how deadly manufacturing rayon was for the factory workers.

In his new book Fake Silk: The Lethal History of Viscose Rayon, Blanc, who is also a University of California professor of medicine, looks at how the manufacturing of viscose rayon served as a death sentence for many industry workers.

Here is a direct audio link.

A few giggles and many lucid points in this article from British commentator, comedian Frankie Boyle.  See here:  All presidents come into office with something to prove, it’s just rarely their sanity. Here are just two standout paragraphs:

I don’t really understand commentators who say it’s vital not to normalise any of Trump’s actions. They have been normalised for eight years by Barack Obama while many of the same people looked the other way. Banks and corporations writing their own legislation; war by executive order; mass deportations; kill lists: it’s all now as normal and American as earthquakes caused by fracked gases being ignited by burning abortion clinics. Of course, there is a moral difference in whether such actions are performed by a Harvard-educated constitutional law professor or a gibbering moron, and the distinction goes in Trump’s favour. That’s not to say Trump won’t plumb profound new depths of awfulness, like the disbanding of the environmental protection agency set up by hippy, libtard snowflake Richard Nixon….

Morally, I think you have to look at what you can do to change your own country first, as that’s the bit you have most influence on. This is complicated in Britain as we have a government that has undergone what is known in the business world as “regulatory capture” by corporate and financial interests, and is, broadly speaking, a vassal state of the US. What can we do practically to influence our own government that would truly affect the Trump administration? Well, in a country supposedly filled with restored national pride, we could not renew Trident and refuse to be his missile base. That kind of strategic loss would damage him deeply. No amount of likes or memes or petitions can achieve this. Really, if we want to survive as a species, it’s time for organised civil disobedience. It’s time to stop writing to your MP.