One Stop Thought Shop

The official death toll from the Chernobyl disaster is 4,000, but the true toll could reach tens or even hundreds of thousands. More than 25,000 emergency workers known as “liquidators” from then-Soviet Ukraine, Russia and Belarus have died.

“There are still more than two million people suffering from harmful effects of radiation exposure, of whom 498,000 are children.”

The dead reactor is still a threat because the concrete cover hastily laid over some 200 tonnes of spilled radioactive material is cracking.

John Rogers:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Immigrants hold one-third of America’s doctorates.

There’s talk of turning suburbs into agricultural centers:

In cities, agriculture might be able to take the place of vacant lots. And in suburbia?

Well, in 2008, the New Urbanism evangelist Andrés Duany, of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company, architects and town planners, proclaimed that “agriculture is the new golf” a prescient and deliberately provocative claim that is helping frame the conversation about suburbia’s future.

“Only 17 percent of people living in golf-course communities play golf more than once a year.”

Local success is much of what’s missing in our economy. I don’t hang much with tyranny’s preachers, but I do track renovation and re-purposing of regional assets – unused labor and undreamt options in a great new variety of witty vendors.

A story on how we got coal:

It took about 160 years to lay down what is now a 1 ft thick layer of lignite coal; 260 years for a foot of bituminous, and about 490 years for a foot of anthracite. An eight-foot coal seam requires about 2,100 years.

CNNMoney: Although its international businesses netted a $10.8 billion profit and General Electric filed more than 7,000 income tax returns in hundreds of global jurisdictions last year, when push came to shove, the company owed the U.S. government a whopping bill of $0.

Yes. After Getting Bailed Out By American Taxpayers, General Electric Pays ZERO U.S. Taxes, Pretending that All of Its Profits are Overseas

Younger people bellyache about paying for Social Security, but the cost of kindergarten through college is an entitlement too. To pay for the education of the young that provides a lifetime of gains, today’s elderly experienced a net loss:

Using historical data and future projections, Lee and his research team calculated the net value of Social Security, Medicare and public education at all levels – minus taxes – for Americans born from 1850 through 2090.

They found that people ages 38 and younger – including those born 20 years from now – will make net gains in earnings of 4 to 6 percent over their lifetimes.

By contrast, those now aged 63 to 80 will have paid out more in taxes than they will have received in Social Security, Medicare and public education benefits, losing 1 to 2 percent in net earnings over their lifetimes.

Michael Lewis has put good effort into helping us understand why some people were able to see our  financial disaster while most were so blind.

His point is from Tolstoy:

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.

A Pack of Fools, James Kwak prefers to say, is what was going on behind the scenes on Wall Street.

Free financial markets are supposed to create efficient prices.

Every argument about the benefits of financial markets (optimal allocation of capital, liquidity, etc.) depends on this one point.

But the prices in this market were being set based on the dealers’ own interests. Think about that.

Yes, it’s socialism and welfare. For whom? Do you know their names?

One of the most understated issues in American political discourse is is is surging extraction.

Plutocracy Reborn.