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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 5:57 pm Post subject: The nothing to do with America thread |
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Alright, the CE first page is about 95% America related. Sure, the election in interesting and America is powerful (and yes, some are myopically focused on the US) but it is damn annoying now.
This thread is about non-American topics. You may NOT, under any circumstances, mention the United States in this thread. Please heed this.
Post anything on any topic, less the USA. I'll start.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/13/china
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Radical reforms to set China's farmers free
Thirty years after first setting out on the capitalist road, China's ruling Communist party has approved bold proposals that aim to liberate 700 million peasants from their state-owned land.
The plans, passed yesterday at a plenary session of the party's central committee, could allow farmers to exchange their plots of land or use the sites as collateral for loans. Experts are hoping that the measures will boost rural incomes, improve productivity and help households raise the money required for individuals to get access to the cities.
As the world economy tumbles into recession, the government appears anxious to ease its dependence on the export trade by strengthening domestic demand. Spreading the wealth to the countryside, officials say, will allow farmers to buy more consumer goods; it will also free up resources for spending on rural health and education, another priority for Beijing.
China's countryside was at the centre of the party's efforts to rejuvenate its economy in 1978, but within a decade the focus had shifted to the industrialised east. Instead of improving life on the farm, the government's priority was to move half a billion underemployed rural workers to millions of building sites along the eastern coast.
The unprecedented urban construction boom has already swallowed up farmland as well as farm labour, and legislators are hoping that the new measures will improve productivity and meet growing urban food demand. That, in turn, will help head-off surging food prices, the major component of the country's recent inflation scares.
Despite the urbanisation programme, China's peasantry still makes up more than 55% of the total population, and the government believes another 300 million farmers need to relocate to the heaving urban centres over the next 20 years.
Meanwhile, the gap between the urban rich and the rural poor has continued to widen. The latest official statistics show that per capita city incomes are 3.3 times higher than those in the countryside, the biggest since reforms began in 1978.
As China shifts inexorably towards the "socialist market", the Communist party continues to try to reconcile the requirements of capitalism with the shibboleths of its Maoist past, and government experts have rejected talk of "privatisation".
The proposals will not formally break with the principles of collectivisation. Land will continue to belong to the state, but the "leases" that were introduced by reformers in 1978 could now be lengthened to 70 years, giving farmers far greater freedom over what to do with the land.
When it was launched the "household responsibility system" allocated plots of collectively-owned land to individual families for periods up to 30 years, allowing families to make decisions about what to grow and to reap the profits.
The proposals on the table this week could give farmers far greater scope to let land or borrow against it.
Observers say the development will mark a full break from the country's "semi-feudal" past by freeing farmers from the grass-roots party committees, which have remained responsible for allocating land-use rights, but that the government's real priorities might lie elsewhere.
Xu Xianglin, professor at the Communist party school, said: "Hu Jintao, [the country's president] discussing land transfer problems, said [the new measures] were aimed at achieving economies of scale."
That could cause problems. Sceptics believe that without a social safety net in the countryside the system will merely persuade indigent farmers to sell up cheaply to big agricultural conglomerates. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 6:21 pm Post subject: |
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England Hammer Kazakhstan
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| ENGLAND have thrashed Kazakhstan 5-1 in their World Cup qualifier, and been booed by the Wembley crowd for a slow start against the European minnows. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 6:25 pm Post subject: |
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| So, is South Africa going to be able to pull off the WC? I've read that Oz is waitin on the side for the go-ahead. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 6:38 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| So, is South Africa going to be able to pull off the WC? I've read that Oz is waitin on the side for the go-ahead. |
That's a very good question. It would be a shame if they didn't - a little demoralising for Africa. But from my own selfish pov, it would be much better if Australia got it. I'd be much more likely to go in that case. BTW, what are you doing reading the Guardianista? That's for wild-eyed lefties and unapologetic multi-cults, me old son.
Here's some more not-of-that-land-that-we-must-not-speak news:
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An artwork at St Pancras station that portrayed a commuter falling in front of a train driven by the Grim Reaper has been rejected at the last moment after the head of the company that commissioned it deemed it unsuitable.
The image, by sculptor Paul Day, was one of a series planned for a bronze frieze to be added to the 30ft sculpture of a couple embracing at the London station. It showed two scenes of a platform reflected in a giant pair of sunglasses, one of which showed the man falling into the path of a train driven by a skeletal Grim Reaper figure. Among a crowd of onlookers was a woman with an outstretched arm, either pushing the victim over the platform edge or trying to pull him back. |
Eurostar station cancels rail death artwork
Bloody hilarious! They were going to have a sculpture of some poor bugger being killed by a train - in a London train station. Hahaha! |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 6:47 pm Post subject: |
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I like to read wide beyond those who I agree with. The Guardian, the SLPC, the Nation, MoJo, Le Monde Dip find their way onto my googlereader along with sites run by sane people. By the by, if you aren't using googlereader, your internet experience could be vastly improved.
I don't care about soccer, but Africa could use a 'win'. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 6:56 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
I like to read wide beyond those who I agree with. The Guardian, the SLPC, the Nation, MoJo, Le Monde Dip find their way onto my googlereader along with sites run by sane people. By the by, if you aren't using googlereader, your internet experience could be vastly improved.
I don't care about soccer, but Africa could use a 'win'. |
I did used to read widely on a daily basis - from all across the political spectrum and from various nations. But much of what I read has now been substituted with Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends or Numbers with Elmo, or The Three Little Pigs, and other such literary delights. Now I just content myself with browsing one or two articles, usually from The Guardian, every few days or so. Sigh. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:02 pm Post subject: |
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| You're in graduate school too, right? I hate having to manage time closely. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:05 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| You're in graduate school too, right? I hate having to manage time closely. |
Yeah. I must have been mad.  |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:10 pm Post subject: |
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Well, economic research suggests that a woman is most able to recover from her labor force participation break if she earned credentials during her workforce absence.
Almost all (but not all) of the wage gap in professional fields between men and women is the cause of the female tendency to drop out of the labor force for several years to have kiddies.
From a purely academic and general perspective, you'll likely be very happy -from an equality and financial standpoint- that you did this in 5 years. Which was I suppose your goal. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:13 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
Well, economic research suggests that a woman is most able to recover from her labor force participation break if she earned credentials during her workforce absence.
Almost all (but not all) of the wage gap in professional fields between men and women is the cause of the female tendency to drop out of the labor force for several years to have kiddies.
From a purely academic and general perspective, you'll likely be very happy -from an equality and financial standpoint- that you did this in 5 years. Which was I suppose your goal. |
Well that's encouraging.  |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:17 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, in fact, HR departments (which are overwhelming dominated by women) often give a slight bit more money to women to juggled the school/kids thing. Some women actually end up earning more than a similarly qualified man, despite 2-3 years removed from the labour force.
That's about all I remember from "gender and economics" in the undergrad. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:20 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
Yeah, in fact, HR departments (which are overwhelming dominated by women) often give a slight bit more money to women to juggled the school/kids thing. Some women actually end up earning more than a similarly qualified man, despite 2-3 years removed from the labour force.
That's about all I remember from "gender and economics" in the undergrad. |
Hehe - every advantage will be appreciated!
Perhpas it's because they understand that it's so bloody hard? This is the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life. Maybe it's a case of "if they can get through that...they can get through bloody anything! " lol |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Yeah, I'm sure that is it. |
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Bigfeet
Joined: 29 May 2008
Location: Grrrrr.....
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| Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| Numbers with Elmo |
You failed!  |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:25 pm Post subject: |
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The judge gives it a pass. Close, though.
In a more controversial bit:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jj4yj37U9DWYfLMh8iNpt2MokknAD93O9NPG1
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Joerg Haider
VIENNA, Austria (AP) � Austrian politician Joerg Haider, whose far-right rhetoric at times sounded sympathetic to the Nazis and contemptuous of Jews � and at one point led to months of international isolation for the Alpine republic � has died in a car accident. He was 58.
Haider was pronounced dead in a hospital Saturday after his car veered off the road outside Klagenfurt in southern Austria and overturned several times, police said. Authorities said an initial investigation showed no signs of foul play.
At the time of his death, Haider was governor of the province of Carinthia and leader of the Alliance for the Future of Austria � a party he formed after breaking away from the far right Freedom Party in 2005.
In 1999, Haider received 27 percent of the vote in national elections as leader of the Freedom Party, which ran an anti-immigrant campaign critical of European Union goals of opening membership to Eastern European countries.
Though Haider denied accusations he was pro-Nazi, the party's inclusion in the coalition government led to months of EU sanctions over his statements, which were seen as anti-Semitic or sympathetic to Adolf Hitler's labor policies.
Haider had since significantly toned down his rhetoric. Over the summer, he staged a comeback in national politics and helped his Alliance for the Future of Austria significantly improve their standing in Sept. 28 national elections.
Haider and his supporters broke away from the Freedom Party in 2005 to form the new movement meant to reflect a turn toward relative moderation. |
Haider was, as I understand him, a text-book racist. |
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