The US military just shifted its bloody campaigns in Afghanistan and Libya to a bloody war against Russia, a focus of its new massive military budget while it cries poverty regarding the needs of even its own workers for domestic programs.
That the Christian holiday is tied into the US military apparatus with its imperial bases and adventures throughout the world is no surprise.
This article goes on about progress for blacks in the US...a half century ago the New York City magnet school Stuyvesant had hundreds of black students (over 300). In recent years the number accepted each year has been 7 or 8 each year, with a student body of over 3000. Efforts to bring students in from different neighborhoods have resulted in massive political efforts against that. This is just one data point, but would shape local people's perceptions toward progress, and opposition seems even more vociferous in other parts of the country.
I put my trust in how the average person thinks things are going, not from people on high telling us everything is great and why don't we recognize this. In the past year our industry has seen stocks tank, and layoffs increasing along with the fed funds rate. Someone having to push a story of how great everything is will get a cool response. People can assess how things are going, despite efforts from on high that people are mistaken in how great things are going.
The security clearance he was stripped of was set to lapse a day afterward anyhow. After all his effort and contributions, he was attacked out of spite.
Karl Marx said unemployment was a foundational necessity of capitalism (although not the feudalism that preceded capitalism), so I don't see this program lasting long ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour ).
This was published seven years ago. Its arguments are very sketchy - as if settling nurture versus nature for humans were not social science, as opposed to science.
If identical twins are raised in a wealthy household versus a poor household, how can one determine traits coming from inheritance versus environment? This analysis does not really answer it.
The data of identical twins separated at birth is very light, as one can imagine. A look at the data of the major studies shows there really is not a lot of data - twins are separated at the age of 9 or so, or sometimes are separated at birth and then reunited.
Many of these twin studies are funded by the strange but well-funded Pioneer Fund. You can check out what they were up to in the 1930s if you're interested.
Actually Marx talked a lot about automation. Marx's prediction was this would lead to a lower rate of profit for invested capital which - mainstream establishment sources say is what has been happening.
It's not like a socialist country could invent things like a satellite, and be the society that figures out how to send a man into space, probes to the moon and other planets - oh yaa, a socialist country is the first country to figure out those things.
The argument he is arguing against is that the workers create the wealth, and profit is that unpaid surplus labor time that the LPs/VCs/founders expropriate from the workers creating wealth. You can't "share" profits with workers when workers are creating all the wealth, the LPs/VCs etc. expropriate profits from workers.
It's a strawman argument for founders, but I am fairly sure it is made out of ignorance.
Let's say a sole founder buys $100,000 worth of Amazon Cloud, Nvidia cards, smartphones etc. Yes, one person is at the company, but others made those goods. The founder may not have directly exploited the person who made the smartphone they're using, but someone did.
Also, let's say I sell my small company which is well positioned in a fast growing market. The buyers are not buying based on what happened before, but on the future work and revenues that will be acquired from people working on the product.
At the end of the day there are people who work and create wealth and get a wage or salary, and there are idle class heir LPs who do not work or create wealth. The heirs survive on the wealth created in expropriated, unpaid surplus labor time of workers who do work. VCs front for the LPs, and founders deal with the VCs.
I don't think Graham even knows what he is arguing with. I'm not trying to make a convincing argument for the other side, but a clarifying one.
Incidentally, pretty much every economist up until the mid 19th century agreed with my view in some form - Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, David Ricardo - all the people who made economic arguments which economists still use. They said they studied political economy. It wasn't until the 1870s that arguments against new value being created by labor were started in full swing, although some of the ideas go back to the 1830s.
I read this and Chomsky says what I said - the civilian deaths due to the US ground invasion and carpet bombing are ignored.
Also, as I said, the US began arming the Khmer Rouge in 1979, and began openly arming them in the 1980s. So if the Khmer Rouge had committed a genocide, then that's who the US was arming to put back in power.
Chomsky condemned the US ground invasion and carpet bombing of Kampuchea, which destabilized the country and I'm guessing the mass death of civilians from does not fit into your genocide definition.
In 1975 the coalition led, nominally or not, by Sihanouk gained control of Kampuchea (again, in the case of Sihanouk). The US and west said a genocide was happening between 1975 and 1979, but immediately somewhat covertly, and then openly, began arming the coalition with Pol Pot and what the west called the Khmer Rouge.