According to McKinsey & Company, global spending on “DEI-related efforts” totaled $7.5 billion in 2020. If trends continue, that figure will exceed $15 billion by 2026.DEI principles were attached to over $1 billion in federal contracts last year.
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Foreign direct investment fell by 4 percent across the continent in 2023, with Germany suffering a steep 12 percent decline.
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Cormac McCarthy began a relationship with a 16-year-old girl when he was 42, according to an account given by the woman who says she became his “secret muse.” There is a fascinating story about the two of them in Vanity Fair. From it:
"Santa Fe killed the Cormac I knew. He gained fame, wealth, and fancy superficial friends. He turned his back on his old friends like Jimmy Long (J-Bone) and Billy Kidwell. They were left to die, forgotten and alone. He lost much of his compassion and kindness. As the Institute crowd claimed more of his time, he struggled to write. Couldn’t write. How could he? He’d stifled or killed that which inspired him. The advance for The Passenger was spent. He was obligated. These last many years he has taken up drinking again. Living in majestic splendor but enjoying none of it. Surrounded by junk and the clutter of a lifetime. Haunted."
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Shlaes on the Depression
Amity Shlaes explains “the economic consequences of populism” in AIER. A slice:
'Historian Robert Higgs has developed a useful thesis to explain this lost decade [of the 1930s]: “regime uncertainty,” the notion that an erratic, aggressive government can terrify businesses into slowdown. The same theme was taken up by the chief economist of Chase Bank, Benjamin Anderson in a 1945 book, Economics and the Public Welfare. Though individual policies promulgated during the Depression may have differed, Anderson noted, there was one commonality: authorities’ arrogance. “Preceding chapters,” concluded Anderson at the end of his section on the Great Depression, “have explained the Great Depression of 1930–1939 as due to the efforts of governments, and very especially of the Government of the United States, to play God.” When playing God failed, Anderson noted, our government had determined that “far from retiring from the role of God,” it “must play God yet more vigorously.”'
"Santa Fe killed the Cormac I knew. He gained fame, wealth, and fancy superficial friends. He turned his back on his old friends like Jimmy Long (J-Bone) and Billy Kidwell. They were left to die, forgotten and alone. He lost much of his compassion and kindness. As the Institute crowd claimed more of his time, he struggled to write. Couldn’t write. How could he? He’d stifled or killed that which inspired him. The advance for The Passenger was spent. He was obligated. These last many years he has taken up drinking again. Living in majestic splendor but enjoying none of it. Surrounded by junk and the clutter of a lifetime. Haunted."
***
Shlaes on the Depression
Amity Shlaes explains “the economic consequences of populism” in AIER. A slice:
'Historian Robert Higgs has developed a useful thesis to explain this lost decade [of the 1930s]: “regime uncertainty,” the notion that an erratic, aggressive government can terrify businesses into slowdown. The same theme was taken up by the chief economist of Chase Bank, Benjamin Anderson in a 1945 book, Economics and the Public Welfare. Though individual policies promulgated during the Depression may have differed, Anderson noted, there was one commonality: authorities’ arrogance. “Preceding chapters,” concluded Anderson at the end of his section on the Great Depression, “have explained the Great Depression of 1930–1939 as due to the efforts of governments, and very especially of the Government of the United States, to play God.” When playing God failed, Anderson noted, our government had determined that “far from retiring from the role of God,” it “must play God yet more vigorously.”'
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