Higgenbotham wrote: ↑Tue Jun 11, 2024 1:53 pm
This will be my next project in this Dark Age Hovel: to go through all 214 pages of this hovel and summarize the factual information regarding the outputs that the managerial elite class overseeing the United States has actually generated.
Outputs Related to Toxic Exposures, Reproductive/Children's Health and Transgenerational Effects
1. "DR. PHILIP LANDRIGAN, CHAIRMAN, PREVENTIVE MEDICINE, MT. SINAI SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: We are conducting a vast toxicological experiment, and we are using our children as the experimental animals. There are 80,000 different man-made chemicals that have been registered with the EPA for possible use in commerce. Of those 80,000, there are about 15,000 that are actually produced each year in major quantities, and of those 15,000, only about 43 percent have ever been properly tested to see whether or not they can cause injury to humans."
2. "A study that examined 18 preschools in the Bay Area found traces of per- and poly-flouroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in almost all of the preschools’ carpets." "Hundreds of laboratory studies link PFAS exposure to adverse health outcomes."
3. "The Dutch Guidelines for PFAS in Soils and Dredging Material Were Impossible to Apply Due to the Ubiquity of PFAS in Atmospheric Deposition"
4. "Many home gardeners buy compost or commercial soil amendments to enhance soil nutrition. But new tests reveal concerning levels of toxic chemicals known as PFAS in fertilizer products which are commonly made from sewage sludge."
5. "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges it could be a problem nationwide. The agency cites research from Southern California showing that people who swam in areas near flowing storm drains were 50 percent more likely to get sick than those who swam farther from the same drains. This idea that the pathway from sewer pipes to storm drains might be a significant source of contamination even in areas with separate systems is new, as is the ability to track it."
6. "Even under average-flow conditions, some drinking-water plants use water containing more than 20 percent wastewater. Of the 11 drinking-water plant intakes in the U.S. with the highest percentage of such de facto reuse, eight are in Texas. So, many Texans are now, probably unknown to them, ingesting water that was recently municipal wastewater. Yes, natural processes in those rivers help clean the water, but those processes are generally slow, so the natural cleanup is minimal when the travel time between cities is only days."
7. "A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows."
8. "In a trailblazing new study, researchers have discovered bottled water sold in stores can contain 10 to 100 times more bits of plastic than previously estimated — nanoparticles so infinitesimally tiny they cannot be seen under a microscope. At 1,000th the average width of a human hair, nanoplastics are so teeny they can migrate through the tissues of the digestive tract or lungs into the bloodstream, distributing potentially harmful synthetic chemicals throughout the body and into cells, experts say. One liter of water — the equivalent of two standard-size bottled waters — contained an average of 240,000 plastic particles from seven types of plastics, of which 90% were identified as nanoplastics and the rest were microplastics, according to the new study." "'The chemicals can be carried to your liver and your kidney and your brain and even make their way across the placental boundary and end up in an unborn child,' Mason said."
9. "In other words, people today are about 10 percent heavier than people were in the 1980s, even if they follow the exact same diet and exercise plans." "In an interview, Kuk proffered three different factors that might be making harder for adults today to stay thin. First, people are exposed to more chemicals that might be weight-gain inducing. Pesticides, flame retardants, and the substances in food packaging might all be altering our hormonal processes and tweaking the way our bodies put on and maintain weight. Second, the use of prescription drugs has risen dramatically since the ‘70s and ‘80s. Finally, Kuk and the other study authors think that the microbiomes of Americans might have somehow changed between the 1980s and now."
10.
11. "There's no question that humans have been getting bigger and bigger, and now it seems that animals living near us are coming along for the ride. A new study of 12 distinct populations of eight different mammals -- including feral rats, lab animals and domestic pets -- shows that they, too, have been gaining weight over the last several decades." "Allison pointed out at least three potential contributions to this and the other observations: endocrine disrupting chemicals, pathogens such as a virus, and/or changes in temperature where the animals are kept."
12. "Studies show that age-specific testosterone levels in men have been in a slow and consistent decline for several decades. Researchers call the changes “alarming” from an evolutionary point of view."
13. "'In general, when you get below 40 million sperm per millilitre of semen, you start to see fertility problems,' says Hagai Levine, professor of epidemiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem." "In 2022, Levine and his collaborators published a review of global trends in sperm count. It showed that sperm counts fell on average by 1.2% per year between 1973 to 2018, from 104 to 49 million/ml. From the year 2000, this rate of decline accelerated to more than 2.6% per year. Levine argues this acceleration could be down to epigenetic changes, meaning, alterations to the way genes work, caused by environmental or lifestyle factors. A separate review also suggests epigenetics may play a part in changes in sperm, and male infertility. 'There are signs that it could be cumulative across generations,' he says. The idea that epigenetic changes can be inherited across generations has not been without controversy, but there is evidence suggesting it may be possible. 'This [declining sperm count] is a marker of poor health of men, maybe even of mankind," says Levine. "We are facing a public health crisis – and we don't know if it's reversible.'"
14. "We are so hell-bent on finding out what is going on in outer space, and we don't even know how the embryo develops." "We don't know at what concentration the hormones act in the developing embryo to tell the embryo how to develop." "We haven't paid attention to what is normal. And the problem is, now it may be too late because there isn't anyone in the world who doesn't have a large number of what we call "persistent chemicals" in their body. There isn't a child born today that hasn't been exposed to these chemicals from the day of conception. So we can't go back and find out what was back then or what was normal."
15. "In 1991, a group of scientists met in Racine, Wisconsin, to discuss the effects of living in what many describe as a sea of artificial oestrogens, and issued something called the Wingspread Statement: ‘The concentrations of a number of synthetic hormone agonists and antagonists measured in the US human population today are well within the range and dosages at which effects are seen in wildlife populations,’ the scientists warned.
‘Unless the environmental load of synthetic hormone disruptors is abated and controlled, large-scale dysfunction at the population level is possible.’"
16. "Writing in the January 2009 issue of the journal Functional Neurology, Dr. Swaab and his colleague Alicia Garcia-Falgueras explained the two-step process: 'During the intrauterine period the fetal brain develops in the male direction through a direct action of testosterone on the developing nerve cells, or in the female direction through the absence of this hormone surge. In this way, our gender identity (the conviction of belonging to the male or female gender) … are programmed into our brain structures when we are still in the womb. Since sexual differentiation of the genitals takes place in the first two months of pregnancy and sexual differentiation of the brain starts in the second half of pregnancy, these two processes can be influenced independently, which may result in transsexuality. This also means that in the event of ambiguous sex at birth, the degree of masculinization of the genitals may not reflect the degree of masculinization of the brain.'" "'There is no proof that social environment after birth has an effect on gender identity,' says Dr. Swaab." "As National Institutes of Health scientist Retha Newbold, a pioneer in the study of endocrine disruption, sexual health, and gender identity, notes, 'People are just now recognizing that this is indeed a possibility.'"
17.
18. "Harmful microplastics have been found in human placenta, with some of them known to trigger asthma, damage the liver, cause cancer, and impair reproductive function." "Researchers found that all 62 tested placenta samples contained microplastics, with concentrations ranging from 6.5 to 790 micrograms per gram of tissue." “Microplastics carry with them substances which acting as endocrine disruptors could cause long-term effects on human health.”
19. "Philippe Grandjean, Bellinger’s Harvard colleague, and Philip Landrigan, dean for global health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, announced to some controversy in the pages of a prestigious medical journal that a “silent pandemic” of toxins has been damaging the brains of unborn children. The experts named 12 chemicals—substances found in both the environment and everyday items like furniture and clothing—that they believed to be causing not just lower IQs but ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. Pesticides were among the toxins they identified."
20. "Fetal exposures cause disease in future generations. Remarkably, it appears that early life exposures can lead to health problems not only in adulthood, but also down through subsequent generations." "Scientists have recently found heritable epigenetic changes linked to the fungicide vinclozolin and pesticide methoxychlor, which impaired sperm counts and sperm motility not only among animals exposed in utero, but also in three subsequent generations (Anway et al. 2005)."
21. "A 2012 study by the American Medical Association found that the current generation may be the first to encounter parents outliving their children due to childhood obesity which in turn can cause adults in middle age to suffer from hypertension, osteoarthritis, diabetes, stroke, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. The number of young and middle-aged adults becoming obese at increasingly younger ages is resulting a greater incidence of chronic disease and shortened life expectancy. Research from the University of Michigan’s Joyce Lee, a pediatric endocrinologist, found that people born between 1966 and 1985 became obese at a much faster rate than previous generations."
22. "The current generation is the sickest in American history. When John F. Kennedy was president, 6% of American kids had a chronic health condition. Today it is 60%. Rates of autoimmune disease, diabetes, ADD and ADHD, autism, obesity, asthma, food allergies, and other chronic health conditions have been skyrocketing."
23.
24.
25. Prevalence of autism in California by year of birth.
26.
27.
1.
https://billmoyers.com/content/trade-secrets/
2.
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2019/11/21 ... ol-carpets
3.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c02765
4.
https://www.sierraclub.org/sludge-garde ... age-sludge
5.
https://wisconsinwatch.org/2014/05/leak ... -to-lakes/
6.
https://news.utexas.edu/2014/08/01/what ... -tap-water
7.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-n ... a1c9461352
8.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/08/health/b ... index.html
9.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why- ... wtab-en-us
10.
https://www.statista.com/chart/11497/obesity-in-the-us/
11.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna40370160
12.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/decl ... one-levels
13.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2023 ... ity-crisis
14.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontlin ... lborn.html
15.
https://theecologist.org/2008/oct/01/ch-ch-changes
16.
https://medium.com/@davidwilliamsteinma ... e2f8d47fbf
17.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/470708/lgb ... teady.aspx
18.
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/scien ... sted-study
19.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/arch ... ns/284466/
20.
https://www.ewg.org/research/body-burde ... n-newborns
21.
https://theoldish.com/seniors-who-outli ... -children/
22.
https://www.kennedy24.com/end-chronic-disease
23.
https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/php/data-r ... index.html
24.
https://www.statista.com/chart/29630/id ... in-the-us/
25.
https://brainhealthfrombirth.com/prevalence/
26.
https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/Asthma-Preva ... 23-508.pdf
27.
https://www.clearvuehealth.com/b/add-statistics/
Outputs Related to Political, Social and Educational Breakdown
1. "A 66 percent majority of Republicans in 13 Southern states including Texas and Florida are in favor of seceding from the union, according to a poll released Wednesday by Bright Line Watch. Support for forming a breakaway country reached 47 percent among Democrats in California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii."
2. "A recent survey shows increasing support for the use of violence to restore former President Trump to the White House. The report, titled “Dangers to Democracy” and released by the Chicago Project on Security Threats (CPST) earlier this month, found that 7 percent of Americans from April 6 to June 26 agree that “the use of force is justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.” That number is an increase from 4.5 percent, or “the equivalent of an estimated shift from 12 million to 18 million American adults,” according to the survey, which was conducted by CPST and NORC."
3. "Anti-government groups in the past two years began using online forums to urge followers to attack critical infrastructure, including the power grid. They have posted documents and even instructions outlining vulnerabilities and suggesting the use of high-powered rifles."
4.
5. "Gallup previously reported that trust in the judicial branch of the federal government has cratered in the past two years; it now sits at 47%, below the majority level for the first time in Gallup's polling history. At 43%, trust in the executive branch is just three percentage points above its record low from the Watergate era. Americans are even less trusting in the legislative branch, at 38%, but this figure has been as low as 28% in the past."
6. "As part of the online poll of 943 18-30-year-old registered voters, Blueprint asked participants to respond to a series of questions about the American political system: ... 64% backed the statement that “America is in decline.” A whopping 65% agreed either strongly or somewhat that “nearly all politicians are corrupt, and make money from their political power” — only 7% disagreed."
7. "Acemoglu et al. systematically examined companies that had corporate ties to Geithner, had executives who served with him on other boards, or had other direct relationships. They found that "the quantitative effect is comparable to standard findings" in Third World countries with weak institutions and higher levels of corruption. In other words, markets react to government actions in the U.S. the same way they do in a corrupt developing country. Crony capitalism pays, and the market knows it."
8. "Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found."
9. "The pool of those eligible to join the military continues to shrink, with more young men and women than ever disqualified for obesity, drug use or criminal records. Last month, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville testified before Congress that only 23% of Americans ages 17-24 are qualified to serve without a waiver to join, down from 29% in recent years."
10. "Goodhart cites a YouGov poll from 2011 that found 62% agreed with the proposition: “Britain has changed in recent times beyond recognition, it sometimes feels like a foreign country and this makes me uncomfortable.” Only 30% disagreed. "
11. "A new statewide poll found 70% of respondents expressed high levels of happiness with living in California and applaud the state for its diversity. But 4 in 10 Californians are considering moving out of state, with the majority saying it’s too expensive to live there."
12. "And on the other side of the room, literally, I was looking at pain and that every year in the National Health Interview Survey, we get pretty good battery of questions on pain. And that from the 1990s onward, people were reporting more and more pain every year." "I mean, one of the things when Anne and I were on different sides of the room back in 2013, which we covered fairly early on, was that across space, pain and suicide are very closely correlated with one another. So, pain predicts suicide better than guns predicts suicide, for example --" "But one other little piece of the puzzle when we were pulling it apart was that these deaths from alcohol and deaths separately from suicide and deaths separately from drugs are much worse for birth cohorts that came up on later. So, people born in 1960 are at higher risk at any given age than people born in 1950. And those born in 1970 are in worse shape than those born in 1960 and so on." "What we're seeing so far in the data is that younger people entering the labor market without much hope of finding a good job without a four-year degree, well, one thing that happens to them is they can't get married." "The marriage rates dropped. From 1980 to 1990, marriage rates dropped for people with and without a college degree. It was --just like people stopped getting married in quite as big numbers. But for people with a BA, now it's stable. For people without a BA, marriage rates continue to drop." "And they've given up on organized religion, which regardless of what people think of organized religion, it's an institution that's been important in this country since its founding. If you needed --solace -- It's a place where you go and people embrace you, and there's a certain amount of community you find there." "That's gone. Family life is gone. You don't have a good work life. So, going back to Durkheim, which is what it sent us back to, that's like a recipe for suicide. You know, the pillars that held you up are eroded, we think, because of a really bad job market." "Right. So, we've got a phenomenon here and then a sort of proximate cause, which is some sort of social unraveling, right? So, that people's connections both to each other, to institutions, to community, to family are coming apart. They are left lonelier and more alienated. And that loneliness and alienation are drivers of the kinds of behavior or actions that lead to this -- shorter life expectancy."
13. “The bottom line is that our life expectancy is increasingly being shaped by where we live within the U.S.,” said Jennifer Karas Montez, a sociology researcher at Syracuse University in New York who wasn’t involved in the study." “Lifestyle behaviors are not causes, they are symptoms,” Montez said by email. “They are symptoms of the environment and the social and economic deprivation that many parts of the country now endure thanks to decades of policy decisions.”
14. "People are trying to solve the crisis on their own. I see a lot of relying on the internet to try to treat, especially mental health problems." "[These people] are often not working, not in relationships, just not connected to any kind of social organisations. In this coal region there used to be a church on every corner and people would join together and socialise and exchange information, but now, most of those churches have closed down." "We have a whole generation of people who are just in some ways wasted talent. There's a lot of suffering, a lot of desperation, fear, vulnerability, and hopelessness. They're not really sure how they can make a world better for their children and they feel very betrayed."
15. "While the U.S. labor market remains incredibly tight — with the economy adding another 517,000 jobs in December — around 7 million “prime age” men between the ages of 25 and 54 are reportedly sitting it out."
16. "The finding that nearly half of prime age, NLF (Not in Labor Force) men take pain medication on any given day and that 40 percent report that pain prevents them from accepting a job suggests that pain management interventions could potentially be helpful."
17. "Many people can't even get through on the telephone to their own neighbors because the latter no longer answer the phone due to the robocalls they receive. I noted that getting through to your callee is so difficult these days that it represents a formidable obstacle both to a functioning democratic society and a functioning consumer-driven economy."
18. "Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that far fewer people visited neighborhoods where residents made significantly more or less money than they did in December 2021 than in January 2019. Interactions between people of different socioeconomic backgrounds dropped by up to 30% during that time period — long after COVID lockdowns were lifted, according to tracked cellphone data of more than a million people in Boston, Dallas, Seattle, and Los Angeles. The researchers laid the blame in part on the rise of remote work and online shopping in helping keep Americans in their own neighborhoods."
19. "The percentage of births who are both: 1. under age 25 and 2. not on Medicaid is therefore about: [15.4*(1 - 0.775) + 63.0*(1 - 0.637)]/327.1 x 100 = 8.0%."
20. "Roughly 4% to as high as 12% of CEOs exhibit psychopathic traits, according to some expert estimates, many times more than the 1% rate found in the general population and more in line with the 15% rate found in prisons."
21. "According a study dating back to 2010, there were at least three times as many psychopaths in executive or CEO roles than in the overall population. But more recent data found it’s now a much higher figure: 20 percent."
22. "According to data from the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), about 10.5% of the general population is estimated to have an impulse control disorder."
23. "College enrollment in the U.S. is currently at a 16-year low as tuition grows increasingly expensive and college degrees lose value." "From the fall of 2019 to the spring of 2023, college enrollment fell by nearly 9%."
24. "Between 50% and 82% of the full-time graduate students in key technical fields at U.S. universities are international students."
25. "Eighth-grade math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the “Nation’s Report Card,” fell by a jarring eight points since the test was last administered in 2019, while fourth-grade scores dropped by five points; both are the largest math declines ever recorded on the test."
1.
https://www.newsweek.com/47-west-coast- ... us-1609875
2.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4 ... se-survey/
3.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/us/power ... index.html
4.
https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/a ... 0FINAL.pdf
5.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/402737/tru ... alter.aspx
6.
https://www.semafor.com/article/05/28/2 ... s-politics
7.
https://reason.com/2012/02/09/warren-bu ... ootlegger/
8.
https://www.ap.org/media-center/press-r ... ety-rules/
9.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/e ... -rcna35078
10.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/ ... e-politics
11.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nearl ... 4e08&ei=11
12.
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/why ... s-n1305967
13.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... -location/
14.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36255143
15.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/most-chi ... 00193.html
16.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6364990/
17.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022 ... ach-people
18.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careers ... 5904&ei=39
19.
https://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=81280#p81280
20.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackmccull ... ad2574791e
21.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/08/the-sci ... thing.html
22.
https://americanaddictioncenters.org/co ... l-disorder
23.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/09/13/coll ... expensive/
24.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartande ... ch-talent/
25.
https://www.wvxu.org/education/2022-10- ... grade-math
Outputs related to Economic Breakdown
1. "Now they (the Bank for International Settlements) are warning of a crash the scale of which we have never seen before, with a staggering $80trillion (£65trillion) at stake." "It'll wipe out every dollar in the world."
2.
3. "Effective August 20, 2010" "As a result, agency MBS holdings will decline over time."
4.
5. "MSU scholars find $21 trillion in unauthorized government spending" "Earlier this year, a Michigan State University economist, working with graduate students and a former government official, found $21 trillion in unauthorized spending in the departments of Defense and Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015." "The work of Mark Skidmore and his team, which included digging into government websites and repeated queries to U.S. agencies that went unanswered, coincided with the Office of Inspector General, at one point, disabling the links to all key documents showing the unsupported spending."
6.
7. "Private equity has made one-fifth of the market effectively invisible to investors, the media, and regulators." "A private economy is one in which companies can more easily get away with wrongdoing and an economic crisis can take everyone by surprise. And to a startling degree, a private economy is what we already have."
8. "Business dynamism, measured by the rate of new firm creation in markets, is directly tied to innovation and productivity. In Akcigit’s field, researchers have known that it’s been declining in the U.S. since the 1980s, the cause of which has prompted various theories. This decline in dynamism is significant because it’s linked to a general slowing of productivity and creative momentum, which need to be strong for the U.S. to remain the world’s dominant economy in the long term. The majority of U.S. markets have become more concentrated, and thus less competitive due to the slowing firm turnover rate, the co-authors argued. The result has been markets increasingly dominated by big players who don’t drive their sectors forward, and higher barriers for new businesses to enter markets. The dip in new entrants is a hit to the economy, as new entrepreneurs are the engines of growth under capitalism."
9.
10. "Florida once had 350 small citrus farmers, Janet Mixon said less than 20 remain."
11. "In today’s business climate, Home Depot may have been able to only open 15 or 16 stores, (Home Depot founder) Marcus said, compared to the 2,300 locations the retailer currently has scattered around the U.S."
12. "The net inflow of high-net-worth individuals to the US plummeted 86% in 2022 from peak pre-pandemic levels, falling to just 1,500 people, according to a new wealth report by London-based consultancy Henley & Partners. That's compared to a net inflow that fluctuated between 6,400 and 10,800 wealthy people a year from 2013 to 2019."
13. "Gallup has found that one of the most important decisions companies make is simply whom they name manager. Yet our analytics suggest they usually get it wrong. In fact, Gallup finds that companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time."
14. "My company recently ran a survey of 1,000 full-time employees across the U.S. who are not already in a managerial position. A meager 38% said they were interested in becoming a people manager at their current company. This problem crosses industries and borders. We're seeing clients in all lines of work struggling to fill frontline management positions." "Only 21% of workers strongly agree that they trust the leadership in their company, and the number has been on the decline since the pandemic." "Among those we surveyed, 40% said their biggest worry with becoming a manager was increased stress, pressure and hours. When we asked people to identify their top ambition, 67% said spending more time with their friends and families and 64% said being more physically and mentally. The lowest priorities were becoming a C-suite executive (4%) and becoming a people manager (9%)."
15. "Based on a study by the Dallas Fed and the St Louis Fed 18 months ago, 90% of job openings are posted for the sole purpose of poaching your competitor's best employee."
16. "A study led by Sheri Sheppard, associate vice provost for graduate education at Stanford University, cites the “troubling trend” that, over the past two decades, “the highest-performing students and graduates are leaving science and engineering pathways at higher rates” than lower-performing peers."
17. "Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said it will push back the start of mass production at its plant in Arizona to 2025 due to a shortage of skilled workers and technicians needed to move equipment into the facility." "'We are encountering certain challenges, as there is an insufficient amount of skilled workers with the specialized expertise required for equipment installation in a semiconductor-grade facility,' Liu said. He added that TSMC is sending experienced technicians from Taiwan to make up for delays and the lack of trained local workers, confirming a Nikkei Asia report last month."
18. "Ten out of 20 plants — built by Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, TSMC, Intel, Rapidus (Japanese chip consortium) and Chinese chipmakers — were rated “worrisome” in more than three categories. The Texas chip plant of Samsung Electronics had more than three hurdles to overcome, including high production costs and a lack of labor. The nine categories evaluated were: production cost; geopolitical and environmental risk; semiconductor equipment and facility delivery; future demand; subsidies and tax credits; water and electricity supply; governmental risks, such as excess profit sharing; and labor supply."
19. "“I not only believe, but know for a fact that the cost of manufacturing chips in the US will be at least 55% higher than in Taiwan,” Chang had said at a press meeting on Saturday on the sidelines of APEC."
20.
21. "Again, the point here is that the subscriber side of the creator economy can be hugely lucrative, but the average earnings are almost certainly prohibitively minute."
22. "The latest data from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, released in January, found that a record high 22.4 million renter households — or half of renters nationwide — were spending more than 30% of their income on rent in 2022." "Those factors contributed to a dramatic rise in eviction filings and a record number of people becoming homeless."
23. "The number of county households considered housing cost-burdened – or households which spend more than half of their income on rent and utilities – has increased 40 percent since 2019. In Travis County, 72,000 households are categorized this way." “Households in this category cannot afford all that they need including transportation, health care, child care, and even food,” Siegfried explained. “A household that is severely housing cost-burdened is not stable; paying that percentage of your income on rent and utilities cannot be sustained.” (This would mean about 15% of households in this county are in an unsustainable situation.)
1.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/i ... skbarhover
2.
https://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=86906#p86906
3.
https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/mbs_FAQ.HTML
4.
https://budget.house.gov/press-release/ ... dependency
5.
https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2017/msu- ... to-conduct
6.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per- ... energy-use
7.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... es/675788/
8.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/savinga ... f4f7e&ei=7
9.
https://www.wsj.com/graphics/big-companies-get-bigger/
10.
https://www.fox13news.com/news/mixon-fa ... ruit-farms
11.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/ ... 259be365f6
12.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... 6dc916959b
13.
https://www.gallup.com/workplace/231593 ... -rare.aspx
14.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbu ... reason-why
15.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6ASAkAIbQ&t=2292s
16.
https://newprism.asee.org/checkered-careers-jan/
17.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/S ... -shortages
18.
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/20 ... 21960.html
19.
https://wraltechwire.com/2022/11/21/chi ... ing-to-us/
20.
https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-frag ... -recovery/
21.
https://nickfthilton.medium.com/the-end ... 197f252c6a
22.
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireSto ... -107013779
23.
https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2 ... -says-hhs/
Outputs Related to Resource Depletion
1. "According to Dr Kristine Nichols, a soil microbiologist and regenerative agriculture expert, of the 900 million arable acres in the U.S., only about 1.5% is being farmed regeneratively. Iowa soil, for instance, was once among the most fertile on the planet, but is now rapidly being depleted. The average topsoil depth has decreased from around 14-18 inches at the beginning of the 20th century, to 6-8 inches by the year 2000."
2. “Irrigation on 24% of the cultivated land produces 40% of the total global food supply,” Irmak points out. “If we stopped irrigating today, more people would suffer due to substantially reduced food, fiber, and feed production, especially in areas that are already experiencing a significant shortage of supplies.”
3. "With the Ogallala Aquifer drying up, Kansas ponders limits to irrigation" "Statewide water levels fell by an average of nearly two feet this year — the third-largest decline since the 1990s — as extreme drought pushed farmers to irrigate crops more than usual. If the water keeps running out, some of the region’s farms and towns could vanish within a generation or two. 'We’ve still got time in a lot of places, Wilson said. 'In other places, that future is now."
4.
Figure 2. A, Long-term average annual rainfall (mm) (PRISM 2014); B, historical presettlement plant communities (derived from Callan et al 2016); and C, estimated date of groundwater depletion (derived from Haacker et al. 2016) of the Ogallala Aquifer region.
5. "The Organic Consumers Association cites several other studies with similar findings: A Kushi Institute analysis of nutrient data from 1975 to 1997 found that average calcium levels in 12 fresh vegetables dropped 27 percent; iron levels 37 percent; vitamin A levels 21 percent, and vitamin C levels 30 percent. A similar study of British nutrient data from 1930 to 1980, published in the British Food Journal,found that in 20 vegetables the average calcium content had declined 19 percent; iron 22 percent; and potassium 14 percent. Yet another study concluded that one would have to eat eight oranges today to derive the same amount of Vitamin A as our grandparents would have gotten from one."
6. "The presence of renewables makes our grids far less resilient and far more susceptible to wide-scale blackouts. The trillions of dollars of public money already thrown at this effort provide no protection." "As the penetration of renewable energy grows around the world, grid operators are wringing their hands over the prospect of uncontrolled power losses leading to truly catastrophic events. Although you won’t read about them often in traditional media outlets, numerous similar events across the US have been cataloged by The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), and the organization has flagged concern over potential extended periods of total power loss at the grid level."
7. "The built world that sustains us is so vast that, for every pound of an average person’s body, there are 30 tons of infrastructure: roads, houses, sidewalks, utility grids, intensively farmed soil, and so forth. Without all that, global population would fall to ten million or so, where it stood during much of Scott’s story, or perhaps 200 million, as it was at the beginning of the Common Era. We are creatures of the artificial world that began with Scott’s walls and canals. The Earth is so thoroughly the world we have made that our domestic animals outweigh wild terrestrial mammals by a factor of 25 to one."
1.
https://www.reuters.com/business/sustai ... 022-09-14/
2.
https://www.agriculture.com/machinery/i ... -advantage
3.
https://www.kcur.org/2023-04-04/with-th ... irrigation
4.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 242200118X
5.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... ition-loss
6.
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/inverted-priorities
7.
https://newrepublic.com/article/145444/ ... vilization
Outputs Related to Crime
1. "Walmart CEO Doug McMillon issued a stark warning Tuesday: If theft does not slow down, the retailer will close stores across the country."
2. "At Target, year-to-date, incremental shortage (organized retail crime) has already reduced our gross margin by more than $400 million vs. last year," Target CFO Michael Fiddelke said on the earnings call, "and we expect it will reduce our gross margin by more than $600 million for the full year."
3. "Walmart and Target each eclipsed $500 million in retail theft losses last year, so the retail giants’ store closures in cities “where theft has gotten out of control” are no surprise, said Kristin Moss, chief ambassador for DealAid.org, which offers online discounts for more than 10,000 U.S. retailers. Last year, Target closed nine stores in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon, over safety concerns. Ms. Moss pointed to data showing a concentration of Walmart stores with the highest retail losses in cities with the lowest prosecution rates for shoplifting."
4. "A Safeway in Vallejo recently added metal emergency exit gates in front of one of the entrances that warn an 'alarm will sound' if thieves try to leave the building. Some Safeway locations installed exit bars months ago, as one shopper took to Twitter to show one store going to the extreme, blocking off closed checkout lanes with large metal gates, as well as lining pathways leading out of the store with obstructions as well. 'Bars everywhere, multiple security guards, you have to scan your receipt for the gate to open in order to exit, and if you don't buy anything an employee has to open the gate to let you out,' a Twitter user remarked in February about an Oakland Safeway store."
5. "John Schreiber @johnschreiber Keep hearing of train burglaries in LA on the scanner so went to #LincolnHeights to see it all. And… there’s looted packages as far as the eye can see. Amazon packages, @UPS boxes, unused Covid tests, fishing lures, epi pens. Cargo containers left busted open on trains."
6. "Online sales are nearly 15% of retail sales, a share that’s higher than pre-pandemic, which means more opportunities for “porch pirates” to strike. The annual amount lost to package theft is an estimated $19.5 billion, according to a report. (That looks to be about 2%.)"
7. "Houston police discuss ‘disturbing uptick’ in copper wire thefts" "The HPD Metal Theft Unit, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, and Crime Stoppers said copper thefts are up in our area, with criminals targeting fiberoptic cables. Sgt. Bob Carson with the Metal Theft Unit said these wires are critical to our infrastructure, and can knock out internet and power for homes, businesses, and hospitals."
8. "Illegal marijuana grows run by Chinese nationals have sprung up all across the state of Maine, and residents say law enforcement isn’t doing enough to stop their spread. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identified 270 suspected Chinese illegal marijuana grow operations in the state that could be making an estimated $4.37 billion in revenue, which are often used for more criminal activities or are sent back to China, the DCNF exclusively reported in August."
9.
1.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/compani ... 8d70578f93
2.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/target-o ... 06396.html
3.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... curity-pu/
4.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/compani ... jl#image=1
5.
https://twitter.com/johnschreiber/statu ... 2271760384 https://twitter.com/johnschreiber/statu ... 7767698435
6.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/18/porch-p ... -2021.html
7.
https://www.click2houston.com/news/loca ... re-thefts/
8.
https://dailycaller.com/2023/11/22/chin ... nts-maine/
9.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022 ... lf-in-2020
Outputs Related to Miscellaneous Measures of General Well-Being
1. "94 percent of American workers say they’re stressed at work, and three-quarters believe they’re more stressed than their parents (and their parents)."
2. "With no end in sight, legions of nurses have left the field, retired early, or switched jobs. Some 100,000 nurses left the industry between 2020 and 2021, according to an industry trade-journal estimate. Although there were 4.4 million registered nurses with active licenses as of 2021, according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, only 3 million people were employed as nurses, according to the Department of Labor."
3.
4. "Suicide rates in the U.S. rose to their highest level ever last year, with the oldest adults having the high rates of suicide among any age group, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
5.
6.
7. "In 737 U.S. counties out of more than 3,000, life expectancies for women declined between 1997 and 2007. For life expectancy to decline in a developed nation is rare. Setbacks on this scale have not been seen in the U.S. since the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918, according to demographers."
8. "Where life expectancy at birth was calculated at 79 in 2019, this dropped to 76.1 in 2021."
9.
10. "In the United States, life expectancy in 2021 was 79.1 years for women and 73.2 years for men. That 5.9-year difference is the largest gap in a quarter-century."
11. "From 2020 to 2021, death rates increased for each age group 1 year and over. Age-specific rates increased 10.1% for age group 1–4 (from 22.7 deaths per 100,000 population in 2020 to 25.0 in 2021), 4.4% for 5–14 (13.7 to 14.3), 5.6% for 15–24 (84.2 to 88.9), 13.4% for 25–34 (159.5 to 180.8), and 16.1% for 35–44 (248.0 to 287.9). Rates increased 12.1% for 45–54 (473.5 to 531.0), 7.5% for 55–64 (1,038.9 to 1,117.1), 3.8% for 65–74 (2,072.3 to 2,151.3), 2.4% for 75–84 (4,997.0 to 5,119.4), and 3.5% for 85 and over (15,210.9 to 15,743.3)."
12. "The authors behind of a new study in The Lancet believe bacterial infection could be the second leading cause of death around the world." "Their analysis estimates there were 7.7 million deaths in 2019 linked to 33 pathogens, the equivalent of around 13.6% of all the world’s mortalities that year."
13.
14. "'People aged 30 to 34 — 60% of them in 1990 had one child. Now it's 27%,' he said."
15. "NYC lost 5.3% of its population — nearly a half-million people — since COVID, with most heading South" "New Yorkers are so worried about crime, sky-high housing costs and struggling schools, 27% percent of state residents said they want to move away in the next five years, a survey revealed Wednesday."
16. "Oil-and-gas wells produce nearly a trillion gallons of toxic waste a year. An investigation shows how it could be making workers sick and contaminating communities across America."
17. "More than 36% of U.S. kids ate fast food on any given day from 2015 to 2018, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data showed. Among U.S. children and adolescents ages 2-19, more than 11% consumed more than 45% of their daily calories from fast food, reported Cheryl Fryar, MSPH, of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) in Hyattsville, Maryland, and colleagues."
18. "American height saw a decline beginning in the 1980s" "A decline in Americans' health is likely a major factor in Americans shrinking. "Height is strongly influenced by the mother's nourishment during pregnancy and the child's during infancy," explained The New York Times. "Height is also linked to overall health and well-being." During the 1980s, new economic policies increased the country's wealth inequality, reducing lower-income families' access to nutritious food."
1.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/an-e ... ket-newtab
2.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... 8fa1a1bac4
3.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/505745/dep ... highs.aspx
4.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/ ... 4f7e&ei=16
5.
https://www.ksjbam.com/2022/02/23/state ... ugh-sleep/
6.
https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/y ... 23_508.pdf
7.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/ ... ectancies/
8.
https://www.statista.com/chart/20673/us ... cy-higher/
9.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/us-life-e ... =108305740
10.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness ... ket-newtab
11.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db456.htm
12.
https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinic ... -for-first
13.
https://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=84841#p84841
14.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... fcaf&ei=67
15.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/12/nearly-th ... more-poll/
16.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/amer ... wtab-en-us
17.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/primarycar ... tion/88062
18.
https://theweek.com/health/height-in-am ... lic-healthWhile the periphery breaks down rather slowly at first, the capital cities of the hegemon should collapse suddenly and violently.
