Amazons Against Amazon

“After much thought and deliberation, we’ve decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens,” Amazon announced Thursday in a statement.
It added, “While polls show that 70 percent of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project we and many others envisioned in Long Island City.”

Ocasio-Cortez, who has denounced the deal repeatedly, reacted to Amazon's decision to pull out of New York this way:
"Anything is possible: today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world".

This is amazing. We'll probably see more interviews with Stormy, though.

 

The Lady and the Tiger

This is the headline of the NYT editorial from 2/14/19.

The Green New Deal Is What Realistic Environmental Policy Looks Like


Now I see only two assessments of this. One, it is true and we are doomed. Two, it is false and a beacon of intelligent and thoughtful public discussion has lost its mind.

Buying the Dip VS. DCA

Timing doesn't work.
 
 

 
 
 
Here’s a graph of the performance of "buying on market weakness" versus "Dollar Cost Averaging:" 

Inequality: Cause and Effect

The inequality of income and fortunes is essential to capitalism; it is its source and its outcome. Diversity --variety--provides the impetus for competition. And some sorting out of value results. So inequality is both the unperceived cause the perceived effect of competition.
So competition reveals the truth.
Remember the observation by deTocqueville: I know of no other country where love of money has such a grip on men's hearts or where stronger scorn is expressed for the theory of permanent equality of property.

The effect in the U.S. is curious:

Authentic Food and Lives

Gordon Ramsey is getting a lot of flack for opening what he called an "authentic Asian restaurant." Apparently one cannot be an authentic Asian restaurant and serve Asian food without being Asian. The mind just swims with the potential of this great breakthrough.

Imagine what items will have to come off the menu depending who owns the restaurant or cooks the food. French onion soup. Stir-fried anything. Eggs Benedict. And will the restaurant need specific sub-sets in the kitchen? Will Normand food require a western French chef? Could a mulatto serve soul food?

And we could not tolerate pretenders, the cultural appropriators like Elizabeth Warren. We would need  proof of authenticity and certification. A bureaucracy could emerge--a good jobs program--to ascertain the righteousness of the kitchen and truth in advertising.

We could live in a kosher-like world.

The "Green New Deal"

The Green New Deal has been introduced to Congress in the form of a non-binding resolution laying out a series of goals. ( Symbolism is important to these [people.) The specifics were in an online FAQ that appeared on Ocasio-Cortez’s website (but was later taken down.)  The website is instructive, offering an insight as to how these people think. (These are the non-environmental plans--the environmental plans are extensive and expensive...and extra).
Some of the objectives:

1. “a job with family-sustaining wages, family and medical leave, vacations, and retirement security”
2. “high-quality education, including higher education and trade schools”
3. “high-quality health care”
4. “safe, affordable, adequate housing”
5. “economic security to all who are unable or unwilling to work"

A rough cost estimate — which doesn’t include all of the promises listed in the FAQ (and, remember, does not include the environmental costs) --adds up to about $6.6 trillion a year. $6.6 TRILLION. That’s more than three times as much as the federal government collects now in tax revenue, and equal to about 34 percent of the U.S.’s entire gross domestic product. And that’s assuming no cost overruns. Total government spending already accounts for about 38 percent of the economy, so if no other programs were cut to pay for the Green New Deal, it could mean that almost three-quarters of the economy would be spent through the government. And this all without the promise that any of it would work. (Remember, for example, that the environmental plans, which are mainly "good intentions," all depend upon technologies we do not have or use and are funded by taxation upon people who do not exist.)

One of the dangers of the modern political scene is personified by Trump himself: Americans have become increasingly numb to the political declarations. While Trump is silly and loquacious, he is relatively philosophy-free; the Left is not. And, on occasion, the Left has the bad judgment to write their plans down.

These are arrogant, dangerous people with horrible, dangerous notions masquerading as ideas.

Sunday/Fisherman

In today's gospel, Christ preaches from a boat off the shore, then says to Simon the gospel's famous quote: "Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch." Commentators love the symbolism of it but, after the catch, Simon says something puzzling. He says, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man."

Why would he say that?

Certainly, as the analysts say, Simon Peter, as a fisherman, may have been rightfully impressed. But enough to make a public confession?

Whatever happened, Simon Peter was more than impressed.