Daily Archives: November 10, 2015

Opinion – Paul Krugman: Despair, American style | The Kansas City Star

November 10, 2015 By in Austerity, Business Administration, Defense Policy, Economics, Education, Fiscal Policy, Foreign Policy, Growth, Healthcare, People, Politics, Public Services Reform, Unemployment, US Election 2 Comments

Krugman piles into America‘s latest demographic time-bomb. Krugman, who’s a liberal, Nobel prize winning economist, with a prominent NYT blog and a 1 million+ Twitter following.

Krugman agrees that white Americans are, in increasing numbers, killing themselves, directly or indirectly – with suicides way up, and deaths from drug poisoning and the chronic liver disease that excessive drinking can cause. Krugman admits that ‘We’ve seen this kind of thing in other times and places. But it’s a shock to see it, even in an attenuated form, in America’.

Source: Paul Krugman: Despair, American style | The Kansas City Star

As a conservative, living in Europe, let me share a few open questions.

Firstly, it’s questionable what Obama‘s two terms have done for working and middle class Americans?  Sure there are some extra zero hours type contract jobs stacking supermarket shelves – but what’s Obama done about real jobs?

What has Obama done to increase America’s competitiveness or the nation’s skill-base? Why does the American education performance so poorly for so many & so well for so-few?

With rising technology and offshoring being trends that are here to stay, why hasn’t Obama tried to harness the energy of Americans lost along the way?

Perhaps, Americans have lost some of their national pride after Obama’s disaterous foreign policy interventions?

Most of all, I question whether Obama’s legacy has helped to bury the American Dream?

Thoughts?

Opinion – Fathom – The Corbyn left: the politics of position and the politics of reason – John Gelmini

November 10, 2015 By in Austerity, Business Administration, David Cameron, Economics, Fiscal Policy, Foreign Policy, Jeremy Corbyn, People, Politics Tags: , , Leave a comment

I see this slightly differently to Dr Alf.

Corbyn has been put there as a lightning rod for the disaffected, the disenfranchised and the under-achievers, while the real business of reforming the bloated public sector can eventually start unimpeded.

Corbyn cannot assume power unless he becomes a Privy Councillor in every sense, something he refuses point blank to do. He is in Stalin’s terminology, a “Useful idiot”.

The “hard left” will through “direct action ” and rabble-rousing cause trouble. The UK Government and the authorities will use this as a pretext for more draconian security measures and intrusive surveillance which perhaps is as much about controlling the “great unwashed masses” as it ever was about dealing with terrorists.

It might be timely to reread George Orwell’s classic, ‘Nineteen Eighty Four‘.

The UK’s ‘Soft-Left‘ should not have allowed the Labour Party to be hijacked!

John Gelmini