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digitaltariq · 12 days

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China's fiscal stimulus is dropping its effectiveness, S&P says

Pictured here's a industrial residential property beneath building on March 20, 2024, in Nanning, capital of the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous area in south China.Future Publishing | Future Publishing | Getty PicturesBEIJING — China's fiscal stimulus is dropping its effectiveness and is extra of a method to purchase time for industrial and consumption insurance policies, S&P World Rankings senior analyst Yunbang Xu mentioned in a report Thursday.The evaluation used progress in authorities spending to measure fiscal stimulus."In our view, fiscal stimulus is a buy-time technique that would have some longer-term advantages, if initiatives are centered on reviving consumption or industrial upgrades that enhance value-add," Xu mentioned.China has set a goal of round 5% GDP progress this yr, a aim many analysts have mentioned is bold given the extent of introduced stimulus. The pinnacle of the highest financial planning company mentioned in March that China would "strengthen macroeconomic insurance policies" and enhance coordination amongst fiscal, financial, employment, industrial and regional insurance policies.Excessive debt ranges restrict how a lot fiscal stimulus a neighborhood authorities can undertake, no matter whether or not a metropolis is taken into account a excessive or low-income area, the S&P report mentioned.Public debt as a share of GDP can vary from round 20% for the high-income metropolis of Shenzhen, to 140% for the far smaller, low-income metropolis of Bazhong in southwestern Sichuan province, the report mentioned."Given fiscal constraints and diminishing effectiveness, we anticipate native governments will give attention to decreasing purple tape and taking different measures to enhance enterprise environments and assist long-term progress and dwelling requirements," S&P's Xu mentioned."Funding is much less efficient amid drastic property sector slowdown," Xu added.Mounted asset funding for the yr up to now picked up tempo in March versus the primary two months of the yr, due to an acceleration of funding in manufacturing, in accordance with official knowledge launched this week. Funding in infrastructure slowed its progress, whereas that into actual property dropped additional.The Chinese language authorities earlier this yr introduced plans to bolster home demand with subsidies and different incentives for gear upgrades and client product trade-ins. The measures are formally anticipated to create nicely over 5 trillion yuan ($704.23 billion) in annual spending on gear.Officers advised reporters final week that on the fiscal entrance, the central authorities would supply "sturdy assist" for such upgrades.S&P discovered that native governments' fiscal stimulus has typically been larger and simpler in richer cities, based mostly on knowledge from 2020 to 2022."Greater-income cities have a lead as a result of they're much less susceptible to declines in property markets, have stronger industrial bases, and their consumption is extra resilient in downturns," Xu mentioned within the report. "Trade, consumption and funding will stay the important thing progress drivers going ahead.""Greater-tech sectors will proceed to drive China's industrial improve and anchor long-term financial progress," Xu mentioned. "That mentioned, overcapacity in some sectors may spark worth ache within the close to time period." Read the full article

#businessnews #Chinas #effectiveness #fiscal #losing #MarketInsider #Markets #stimulus #Stockmarkets

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habarilive · 2 years

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China’s Cupboard, Dispute Council, outlined a 19-point protection kit on Wednesday while asserting financial stimulus measures charge CNY1 trillion ($146 billion) to stimulate development strug... #habarilive

#Business #China #stimulus

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don-lichterman · 2 years

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China Unveils Detailed Stimulus Policies to Support Virus-Hit Economy | World News

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s cabinet unveiled a package of 33 measures covering fiscal, financial, investment and industrial policies on Tuesday to revive a pandemic-ravaged economy, saying it will inspect how provincial governments implement them. The stimulus package, which was flagged by China’s State Council in a routine meeting last week, underscores Beijing’s shift toward growth, after…

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#China #Collections: World #detailed #Economy #Infrastructure #Loans #News #policies #Renewable energy #Reuters #Stimulus #Support #unveils #VirusHit #World #World News

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zvaigzdelasas · 3 months

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China’s economy is currently on the operating table, hunched over by surgeons, chest cavity splayed open, hooked up to a cardiopulmonary machine, surrounded by nurses staring at monitors flashing vital signs. It all looks rather grim.

This surgery, however, is not an emergency bypass. That would be too easy. China has had many of those already – stimulus packages, grand infrastructure projects and many rounds of directed lending.

Every two decades or so, going all the way back to the founding of the PRC in 1949, the surgeons get ambitious. These guys are mad scientists attempting a comic book trope – to create the ultimate superhero.

They want to inject super serum, replace skeletal calcium with adamantium and dose the patient with gamma rays, giving China the powers of shazams out the wazoo.[...]

In the lamented “pre-reform” era, China’s mad scientists engineered spectacular growth by increasing investment from a prewar 6% of GDP to 20% in the first Five-Year Plan, covering 1952-1957. This led industrial output to register a compound annual growth rate.

The Great Leap Forward accelerated this growth to 66% in 1958 and 39% in 1959 before crashing and burning in 1961 when mismanagement of communal farms and “backyard blast furnaces” caught up with the mad scientists.

Course correction starting in 1962 recovered all lost ground by 1965. According to economist Cheng Chu-Yuan, China’s GDP growth averaged 11% between 1952 and 1966, the eve of the Cultural Revolution. (T. C. Liu of Cornell and K. C. Yeh of the Rand Corporation have a lower estimate: 8%.)

More importantly, China built a full kit of infrastructure, machinery and equipment capable of driving future industrialization.[...]

Many analysts have a tabula rasa understanding of China’s reform era, as if there had been no economy before Deng Xiaoping. In reality, China’s industrialization started right after the formation of the PRC with some of the fastest growth recorded in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Even during the “low growth” Cultural Revolution, resources directed towards public health (for example, barefoot doctors) and primary education doubled life expectancy and quadrupled adult literacy by 1980 from pre-PRC levels.

The mad scientists are now at it again. They have about twenty years of new data not just on China but from the rest of the world. When Zhu Rongji was head surgeon, history had ended and markets reigned supreme. This time around, the surgeons are correcting for market irrationality and negative externalities. The next twenty years is again being determined on the operating table.

Three years ago, the surgeons pried open China’s chest cavity with the three red lines credit limits, instantly seizing the speculation driven property sector. Since then, they ripped out unnecessary organs like education companies, clamped the Ant Financial artery and eviscerated the video game industry. All of this has caused spasms in vital signs from lackluster growth to rising youth unemployment. Wondering whether China will or will not stimulate the economy next quarter or next year is missing the forest from the trees. For the next few years, China’s economy will still be under the knife and whatever adjustments will merely be anesthesiologists and technicians nominally dialing the drugs up and down and adjusting the heart-lung machine to maintain vital signs.

What are these mad scientists trying to achieve? We believe President Xi Jinping’s 2020 target of doubling China’s GDP by 2035 stands. That is an average growth rate of 4.7% for 15 years. But beyond just a numerical target, it is important to figure out what superpowers China is trying to acquire. And just as importantly, what Kryptonite factors China is attempting to inoculate itself against.

China wants America’s Silicon Valley, but regulated; Japan’s car companies, but electrified; Germany’s Mittelstand, but scalable; and Korea’s chaebol conglomerates, but without political capture. It wants to lead the world in science and technology, but without cram schools. A thriving economy, but with common prosperity. Industry, without air pollution. Digital lifestyle, without gaming addiction. Material plenty, without hedonism. Modernity, without its ills. This is, of course, a wish-list and unrealistically ambitious. But these mad scientists sure as hell are going to try. They’ve developed a taste for it.

In college, early into the semester, we went through a ritual called course exchange. Students gathered in an auditorium to swap classes after sampling lectures for three weeks – satisfaction was not guaranteed. The strategy passed down to underclassmen applied to both course exchange and significant others: “Add before you drop.”

China is undergoing – but perhaps botching – the same process with a more party-esque slogan, “Establish the new before abolishing the old.”

The surgeons have been on a tear gutting the old. The big kahuna is, of course, the property sector. But right behind are platform monopolies, private education, financial services and video games. The new has been playing catch-up, with 5G equipment, electric vehicles, photovoltaics and wind turbines being leading examples.

From all appearances, the Industrial Party is in ascendance and China will double down on climbing the manufacturing value chain. The Industrial Party is a political identity that believes industry, science and technology should determine China’s future. Adherents believe that China’s strength lie in the technical skills of her population and thus favor hard-science, high-tech industries as opposed to services and business model innovations.

Therefore, Chinese politicians, whatever their predisposition, must find a way to create space for this next generation of scientists and technicians to develop themselves. They cannot be confined to a production line at a Foxconn plant. Maintaining social stability means finding a use for future scientists and technicians, which means pursuing industrialization. Is there any other way? The key variable for determining the course of China’s future development is thus the massive number of talented technical and scientific workers.

If mistakes were made, it would have been in sequencing and in faith – dropping before adding is a poor strategy in both love and course exchange. China’s mad scientists may have been too confident that electric vehicles and renewable energy would be followed quickly by semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and commercial aircraft.

Perhaps they have reason to be confident. Planning for this surgery has been in the works since 2015 with the Made in China 2025 project. China has been steadily eroding imports of high value added intermediary goods like batteries, precision parts and electrical components, flipping trade with South Korea from deficit to surplus.[...]

China never properly transitioned from its Soviet era Material Product System (MPS) of national accounts to the United Nation’s System of National Accounts (UNSNA) standard, leaving out much of services from reported GDP.

We calculate that China accounts for 22-24% of global GDP and 20-23% of global consumption. We also calculate that household consumption is 50-55% of China’s GDP, in line with global averages. China should easily be able to grow at 4.7% through 2035 with only a modest increase in consumption’s GDP share (5 percentage points over 10 years) without upsetting global economic balances.

In the reform period prior to Xi, everything was sacrificed at the altar of economic growth. In the new era, growth has been walked down from 9.6% in 2011 to an average of 4.7% in the Covid years (2020-2023) as an increasing litany of issues were given precedence. Debt however, soared over this time from 175% of GDP to over 300%. What exactly did all that debt buy?

When Xi assumed leadership of China, he declared that inequality could not be allowed to increase further. Inequality is perhaps the major Kryptonite factor of the American economy which China wasted no time in matching as the economy roared with market reforms.

While still problematic, inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, has steadily fallen since 2010 largely as a result of massive investment in urbanization, pushing people into cities and pushing cities up the tiering ladder.[...]

China also poured resources into stamping out last-mile poverty. While most poverty alleviation in China was through economic growth, recalcitrant extremely poverty could only be eradicated by concentrated marshaling of resources, from relocating entire villages to weekly visits by social workers.[...]

Since peaking in 2012, air pollution in Beijing has been cut by over 60%, with Shanghai falling over 50%. China, which used to dominate the list of most polluted cities, now only claims one spot in the top 20. None of this came cheap, from installing scrubbers in smoke stacks to increasing renewables to moving heavy industry to strict emissions regulations for cars.[...]

Before Hu Jintao handed the reins to Xi, Hu warned delegates to the 18th Party Congress in 2012 that “[corruption] could prove fatal to the party… and [cause] the fall of the state.” The popular opinion in the West is that Xi ended China’s highly successful reform era because of an ideological bent. This is off the mark. Xi was brought in to clean house as the wheels were coming off from excesses of the reform era.

Throughout Xi’s decade in office, there has been no letup in his anti-corruption campaign. In 2022, a record 638,000 officials were punished for corruption. While there haven’t been any large scale ideological appeals to the public, it’s a different story within the 98-million-member party.

During this time, free market capitalism and liberal democracies also faced their own existential tests. Success or failure going forward will depend on whether liberal institutions remain intact in the West and whether party discipline can be maintained in China. What the PRC has had since 1949 is a governing party with the political autonomy to play mad scientist. [...]

Of course we live in the real world, not a comic-book world. The question in the real world has always been whether the economy can be engineered by mad scientists from the top down or is it best left to the invisible hand of the market? [...]

The standard economic opinion – against all evidence – is that China was economically stagnant before Deng’s market reforms. The thinking on this for the American economys is undergoing a transformation in egghead land – just how has neoliberal economics benefitted the American people over the past few decades?

In a Q&A exchange at a conference in Malaysia, Eric Li, the barbed-tongued venture capitalist, was asked, “Do you think top-down directives are sustainable in the long run?” To which he replied, “It’s the only thing that’s sustainable.… That’s why America is failing today.” After World War II, Li said, the Americans “lost the ability to do top-down design.”

Dec 2023

#quite the colorful rhetorical device but lots of good data here

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occasionaltouhou · 6 months

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Regarding thay Eirinelixir question (I just voted), Shinto Gods have no real need for the Hourai Elixir. Personally, I need no evidence for this, it is true. You'd know if you met one. My closest book-reason is Tsukuyomi largely believing the elixir needing to be forbidden, even for Yagokoro, despite both being Shinto Gods. It seems like less of a rule to prevent them from becoming immortal (especially since they effectively are), and more of a way to prevent the mortal populace to be capable of challenging godhood.

Don't ask me why Chang'e took ot, she's a Chinese God. Not Shinto. Maybe they don't hold as much weight in Gensokyo, I dunno. Iean, some consider Tamamo no Mae as a God in China (referring to her as the vessel of Da Ji), but in Japan she is simply a powerful supernatural being (sorry I almost vomitted writing that sentence she's a real bastard, okay. One rung above Tanuki, okay?)

Eirin is Omoikane probably, and therefore a Shinto God. Unlike local Shinto Gods (Takeminakata, Yasaka Kanako), these are effectively impervious to a lack of faith (and thus lack of power) for quite some time. If their power and effective-immortality were threatened, these Gods would likely take action (ask Eirin to create this elixir). Eirin understands this, and therefore has no pressing need to actually take it at the current moment.

For Eirin, avoiding death is not a challenge. Even if she could entirely prevent it, she'd probably prefer to live under risk of death, which acts as an active stimulus for her immense intelligence. Plotting to perfectly avoid threat is a difficult task, and probably like a puzzle to her.

Honestly, I don't think she wants OR needs to take the elixir, and thus did not. That's how I see it. Even if she hinted that she might've, I'd be more inclined to believe it is both a display of knowledge (as she has near-total knowledge of the workings and effects of the medicine) and to further cement her defenseive strategy game by making others believe she is invincible, even if she isn't. Gensokyo is held together by the power of belief, anyways.

The only think I can personally believe as an alternative reason to this is Eirin taking it to make Kaguya feel better about doing so (as well as sharing the blame), for yuri reasons.

But since Eirin felt she needed to justify her crime in stating that she made it, equal to that who took it (despite both being instrumental in making.it anyways), it implies that she never drank anyways.

Also any evidence not from direct experience is from memory of the books I read some time ago, so forgive me for some inaccuracies.

i gotta be real i'm kinda in awe of the passion demonstrated in this message

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grandhotelabyss · 6 months

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Any thoughts on nick land / mark fisher?

I've encountered both of them essentially as bloggers—I don't think I've ever read a word of either on paper—so I can't say I've studied them formally or mastered their thinking.

Land's concept of capital as autonomous alien intelligence assembling itself through retroaction on human agents—do I have this right?—is fun science fiction. I accept that as a theory of cultural temporality in general but not necessarily as a theory of technology or capitalism in particular. As for his more (shall we say) "ethnic" idea about "exit" and the Anglo character—maybe there's something to that. Modern history as the struggle between decentralized commercial sea empires (UK, US) and despotic communist land empires (Germany, Russia, China). And his new thing about Anglo-Zionism—I believe he's read Milton deeply—is right on time. All his Compact pieces on the English canon are paywalled, so I haven't read them, but it seems like he's approaching the idea that the God of the Bible is the force he previously identified as capital. (I think this is similar to what Mitchell Heisman outlined in his Suicide Note, but I only read some of that, and only once, on one sleepless night over 10 years ago, and doubt I'll revisit it. Does Heisman cite Land? I don't recall.) Hyperstition is real, as any manifestation girl on here or on TikTok or on YouTube will tell you.

Now Fisher was a sad case. I think all that anti-humanist theory did him no favors, personally. I'm not sure he could stand in that desolate place, the way Land could. I don't believe I ever directly interacted with him online when we both were bloggers in the same milieu circa 2005 or so. Maybe once or twice. He had a positive Marxist take on Batman Begins, and I had a negative one, and I think somebody sent him mine when he had comments open. (He had a whole thing, which anticipated the "vampire's castle" image, about "gray vampires" who stalk the comments section and suck the life out of your imaginative assertions with their point-missing nitpickery. He wasn't wrong!) I'm sure he thought I was hideously naive if he ever thought about me at all, and I was naive, I was essentially a Stalinist, an obvious example of humanist theory gone wrong, but there are limits, too, to that gothic style he picked up from Land and the CCRU.

I think he said Kafka was his first major author. There's a case to be made that you should read Kafka only after Dickens. (I don't mean literally but metonymically. Nor do I mean the 19th century vs. the 20th or even realism vs. modernism. Replace Kafka with Baudelaire and Dickens with Joyce and it'll mean the same.) And I'm not talking about politics here or even ethics. No panacea for politics and ethics can be found in books. Kafka, for that matter, was probably a nicer guy qua guy than Dickens was. But, just as someone who has to live in the world in your skin, it can't hurt to read a non-anti-humanist book from time to time if you're a bookish person. To not always try to conceptually outflank as a ruse of power every obvious humane sentiment. And to try not to need your humane sentiments to be conveyed only by the most alienating stimulus, to need them to come in the form of their opposite. I never got over his review of The Passion of the Christ:

What, from one perspective, is the utter humiliation and degradation of Jesus's body is on the other a coldly ruthless vision of the body liberated from the 'wisdom and limits of the organism'.

Masochristianity.

Christ's Example is simply this: it is better to die than to pass on abuse virus or to in any way vindicate the idiot vacuity and stupidity of the World of authority.

Power depends upon the weakness of the organism. When authority is seriously challenged, when its tolerance is tested to the limit, it has the ultimate recourse of torture. The slow, graphic scenes of mindless physical degradation in The Passion of the Christ are necessary for revealing the horrors to which Jesus' organism was subject. It is made clear that he could have escaped the excruciating agony simply by renouncing his Truth and by assenting to the Authority of the World. Christ's Example insists: better to let the organism be tortured to death ('If thine own eye offend thee, pluck it out') than to bow, bent-headed, to Authority.

This is what is perhaps most astonishing about Gibson's film. Far from being a statement of Catholic bigotry, it can only be read as an anti-authoritarian AND THEREFORE anti-Catholic film. For the Pharisees of two millennia ago, puffed up in their absurd finery, substitute the child-abuser apologists of today's gilt-laden, guilt-ridden Vatican. Against all the odds, against two thousand years of cover-ups and dissimulation, The Passion of the Christ recovers the original Christ, the anti-Wordly but not otherwordly Christ of Liberation Theology: the Gnostic herald of Apocalypse Now.

This is why I found him frustrating when I read him as a daily blogger almost 20 years ago. Plus the over-solemnity about pop-culture ephemera. I found him a bit naive, too, in the end, though he was almost 15 years my senior. I also sometimes just didn't and don't know what he was talking about, because I sort of hated and hate theory.

In his purely political commentary, he was right, however, to focus on bureaucratization as an effect of neoliberalism—the way capitalism and communism converge in the present for the worst of both worlds, everything is at once a competition and frozen in a statist hierarchy. I'm not sure I'm persuaded by the "hauntology" thesis. I've thought through that issue in a different way and am not convinced the end of the myth of the revolution or the myth of the avant-garde has to mean that we have no future. In fact it might mean the opposite. But good for him for putting into public consciousness an interesting and melancholically beautiful idea that would otherwise have remained confined to smug Derrida-readers.

He is fun to read. That's the highest compliment I can pay. I'm sure the big K-Punk book is a wonderful thing to own and to browse through: to watch a movie or read a book or listen to an album and then see what he had to say about it. He was one model of the blogger as true essayist.

#nick land #mark fisher

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oldgayjew · 4 months

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Wait ... can't be ...didn't Obozo's multi-billion dollar infra-structure stimulus give-away fix all that ...

... they're beating their plow-shares into swords and their pruning hooks into spears ... just as it says in the book of Micah ...

... will we all be ready ...

... because we will be attacked on all sides ... illegals ... food shortages ... Islamic terrorists ... China ... and the Goebbels Media ... our 5th columnists ...

Get ready ... stock up on food, water, medicine, first-aid, weaponry and all other essentials ...

... and ... most importantly ...

... get right with GOD ...

Make your peace with GOD...

However you pray ...

Pray from your heart ...

We all might meet GOD sooner than planned ...

#bjb oldgayjew #bjb oldgayjew prophecy's shout #barsefrin - the elder #bjb - barsefrin #john galt bjb #history's ghost - screaming - again #bjb - oldgayjew #bjb #john galt

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mariacallous · 3 months

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Meduza: (Opinion) America would be doing a lot more for Ukraine if it really cared

UCLA professor and economist Oleg Itskhoki thinks Nikki Haley is America’s only chance of rekindling the Reaganite fervor that motivated the White House to mobilize its full might against the Evil Empire in Moscow. In an interview with iStories, published on January 16 as an essay, Itskhoki argues that the U.S. could overpower Russia in short order and force an end to the invasion of Ukraine. He identifies three policies that Washington could adopt but doesn’t: (1) subsidize oil production to drive down its global price, thereby starving the Russian war chest (he says knocking a barrel of oil under $60 should do the trick), (2) activate the Defense Production Act and “increase military production tenfold” to ensure that Ukraine has an overwhelming military advantage, and (3) designate Russia as a nation sponsoring terrorism to reinforce its isolation and solidify secondary sanctions against others who trade with it, reducing Moscow’s international trade to “barter for oil.”

Itskhoki offers the following explanations for why the U.S. doesn’t implement these policies:

Oil prices: Americans are generally reluctant to interfere in market mechanisms, and increasing oil production would contradict the Democrats’ initiative to develop America’s green energy. Itskhoki says economic logic dictates that a transition to green energy is still possible with cheap oil prices, so long as significant taxes preserve the stimulus to switch to clean energy, but he acknowledges that raising taxes is politically toxic.

Weapons: Itskhoki says America currently suffers from a lack of manufacturing capacity (this seems to undermine his earlier claim that Washington could make more weapons but chooses not to). He points out that the U.S. is trying to overcome this limitation by hiring foreign companies to produce weapons designed in America, such as Javelin missiles in Poland.

Russia as a sponsor of terrorism: Itskhoki says Washington’s main concern is that this would cut Russian oil exports and trigger a spike in world oil prices.

Itskhoki argues that the U.S. would have adopted all these measures if something like the Ukraine invasion had occurred during the Cold War. He cites research by game theorists at Northwestern and Rutgers universities to reason that American support for Ukraine must be “quick,” “dramatic,” and “overwhelming” to be successful, as well as work by political scientist Kirill Rogov, who claims that the United States could end the war in Ukraine by producing 10 times more artillery shells. “But then the shells would be useful to no one,” says Itskhoki, paraphrasing Rogov. He also argues that Washington’s apparent half-measures only prolong the war and provoke Moscow: “And if you produce almost as many shells are needed, it naturally leads to the emergence of actors like Putin who want to test the West’s resilience.”

The fundamental reason the U.S. doesn’t adopt more drastic measures to aid Ukraine, says Itskhoki, is that Americans aren’t particularly worried about Putin or a war in distant Ukraine that could drag on for years. Itskhoki singles out Democrats for caring more about the planet’s climate crisis and suggests that the entire country is perhaps “myopically” more concerned with China.

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argumate · 10 months

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China should certainly "shift the focus of its stimulus from investment to consumption," and some of us have been arguing this for over a decade, but its important to understand that this doesn't mean just shifting the direction of subsidies from one sector to another.

It means completely reversing the direction of subsidies. For 2-3 decades implicit and explicit transfers from households allowed Beijing to direct subsidies in greater or lesser amounts to a whole series of manufacturing and investment sectors.

Shifting the focus of stimulus to consumption means reversing the transfers that once subsidized the manufacturing and investment sectors and that made Chinese manufacturing so internationally competitive. This would greatly undermine China's manufacturing competitiveness.

This "shift", in other words, doesn't mean strengthening consumption and leaving everything else the same. It means strengthening consumption while sharply undermining Chinese manufacturing competitiveness.

can do this the hard way or the even harder way

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tomrogers-viscom · 4 months

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D&AD - Initial Gaming Research

The average number of hours spent globally on playing video games is 8.45 hours per week,5 and this is not taking in to account social media, movie and video content and social app usage.

Younger age groups are at higher risk: 6- to 7-year-old children are five times more likely to be myopic with heavy screen use.

YouTube last year reported that over 10 billion hours of game play was watched on the channel; children are not just playing games but also spending time watching others play games.

Children who use screens for more than three hours per day are almost four times more likely to be myopic.

Extended screen time has also been linked to eye strain, headaches and dry eye syndrome in both children and adults.

Gaming addiction may include issues such as social withdrawal, loss of relationships, poorer educational outcomes or career opportunities or negative mood states.

China has recently outlined a new national policy limiting the hours children under 18 can play online games. Gaming for children is now restricted to between 8pm and 9pm, on Friday, Saturday or Sunday and on public holidays.

A study in 2009 evaluated symptoms and oculomotor changes in children aged 5-16 years after 30 minutes of VR viewing. In the 9-16 year old participants, symptoms of "feeling tired" occured in 43% and "feeling sleeping" in 40%, while just under 20% reported "sore/aching eyes" and "difficulty concentrating".

There are no known long-term eye development effects from VR. However, there is a potential risk potential between too much screen time and myopia progression.

VR can cause myopia in kids just like a TV or computer would if they spent long hours close to the screen.

Some argue VR actually may be better for preventing myopia than traditional screens. VR makes the users field of vision change inputs on the peripheral retina, and also bright illumination close to the eyes could possibly provide a positive stimulus, both of which could potentially protect against myopia

Sources:

https://www.visioncenter.org/blog/is-vr-bad-for-your-eyes/

https://www.myopiaprofile.com/articles/could-virtual-reality-be-better-for-myopia-than-screens

https://myeyewellness.com/is-vr-bad-for-your-eyes/#:~:text=There are no known long,growing concern for health professionals.

https://www.optometrists.org/childrens-vision/healthy-eyes-for-life-8-ideas-to-teach-children/can-gaming-cause-myopia/#:~:text=Children who spend a significant,distant objects to appear blurry.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/playing-video-games-may-cause-eyestrain-3421596#:~:text=Summary,eye strain from video games.

https://www.myopiaprofile.com/articles/restricting-children-gaming-myopia

#d&ad #specialist practice

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cultml · 2 years

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gettothestabbing · 8 months

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To Mr. Balding, the communist regime and the private sector are fundamentally in conflict. “You’re telling a communist government not to be communist anymore when you say Beijing needs to encourage the private sector,” he said. “You’re telling the communist government, ‘If you’re not communist anymore, things will get better.’” “I’m just going to be blunt,” he said, adding, “At the end of the day, all of Chinese economics is still about the state” because the Party controls the capital. The CCP has built its legitimacy by telling the Chinese people that it was a good economic and financial manager of the country, Mr. Balding said. “Beijing cannot allow an event, a hard landing, a crisis, something like that; they simply cannot. Because if they do, that's the end of the CCP.”

#China #economics #Epoch Times #deflation #Terri Wu #Chinese Communist Party #stagnation #loans #private sector

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 years

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[From Financial Times :: h/t Scott Horton]

* * * *

A funeral for magical thinking: It is impossible to regain our sense of pragmatism?

The Tories have found their own Jeremy Corbyn.

Ed Luce: The entirely foreseeable calamity of Trussonomics — the new by-word, named after Liz Truss, for people who do not know what they are doing — finds strong echoes among American conservatives. Our politics have been plagued for years by the curse of magical thinking — promises that bear no relation to any realistic ability to deliver; extravagant lies that cater to some felt need for self-delusion; gullibility dressed up as hard-nosed “taking back control”.

Conservatism in the largest English-speaking democracies is locked in a race over which of them can find rock bottom more quickly. For the moment, the UK is in the lead. Apparently City traders have taken to calling sterling “shitcoin”, which says it all. I fear America’s Trump-contagion variety will have something to say about that in the coming months. My question to Swampians, which I will also try to answer, is whether our democracies can learn from the disastrous consequences of magical thinking. Or are we too screwed up as societies to regain that habit of pragmatism for which we were once fabled? Rana, it goes without saying that I am also posing this question to you.

It is impossible to answer it without examining how we reached this pretty pass. The conditions for Anglo-American populism were crystallised in the 2008 global financial crisis. It was really just a western meltdown (China and India kept growing and were relatively unscathed). In fact its main culprits were from the anglosphere. Nothing enrages people more than the wealthy and well-connected being bailed out while the rest are left to struggle. As fate would have it, the job of cleaning the mess fell to centre-left governments on both sides of Atlantic — Gordon Brown’s Labour and Barack Obama’s young administration. The centre-left thus got branded with the recklessness that triggered the crisis and suffered most from its bad-tempered aftermath. One of the casualties of 2008 was “expertise” — the idea that people with degrees in economics or MBAs knew what they were doing.

The Chicago School’s efficient market hypothesis has a lot to answer for.

In an accountable world, you would largely blame the right for the market fundamentalism that had become dominant since the 1980s. But it was the right that benefited politically from the 2008 fallout. The countercyclical stimulus that helped restart growth was delivered by the left. We then had six years of procyclical austerity from 2010 to 2016 in which the beleaguered middle classes bore the brunt of the fiscal tightening brought about by the Tea Party Republicans in the US, and David Cameron’s Conservative government in the UK. Again, it was the right that perversely reaped the gains from the rage and insecurity that resulted. But it was a different kind of right to what we grew up with. The twin shocks of Brexit and Trump’s election in 2016 were the high water mark of magical thinking. At least I hope they were.

Opinion polls in Britain show rising regret over Brexit — “regrexit”, as some call it. Of course, it’s too late to re-enter the European Union, and would be politically very hard to pull off. But it’s a sign that people are digesting lessons from that notorious referendum. Keir Starmer’s Labour party also has a 30-point lead over the Conservatives, which reinforces that point. That would never have happened under Jeremy Corbyn.

#political #economics #history #Economic Times #Ed Luce

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shreemetalprices12 · 1 year

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Markets were more volatile In the week ending March 3. As a fresh batch of positive United states economic statistics impacted on risk appetites. And investors grew more optimistic about stimulus announcements at China’s National People’s Congress (CNPC).

#Commodities #China #metal prices #metal industry #news #shreemetal

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gatekeeperwatchman · 1 year

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Has Money Ever Failed in a Society in the Bible?

Yes, there is a record of money failing in a society in the Bible. You can read the story in Genesis Chapter 47.

Genesis 47:15 “And when money failed in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph, and said, Give us bread: for why should we die in thy presence? for the money faileth.”

There was a famine in the land during the time that this happened. However, God had raised a man named Joseph who was the Pharaoh’s right-hand man and he had wisdom from God and had stored up food for hard times for the people of the land since he was given knowledge from God that the famine was coming and how long it would be. Today, there are Prophets and people of God that are telling people there will be food shortages and that they should store up food now while we have a window of time to do so. In the coming days, food could be more valuable than gold or money.

Yes, God will take care of His children no matter what happens, but perhaps He wants to help us prepare ahead of time, so we will not be a victim of what the devil is planning and it will be easier for us than those who do not prepare or plan.

China has implemented cryptocurrency in some of its cities, but it comes with the cost of the total loss of financial privacy and government control. The same plans are in the making for our country. China, being a communist country, has always restricted freedom, so it was easy for their government to manipulate the masses there, to implement this new monetary system. However, we are a free nation and it will be harder for the government here to deceive the masses, but people are vulnerable when it comes to the need for money and food. Several Christian business people in our nation are aware of these plans and are positioning themselves not to become a part of them. Several moral people feel the same way. The testimony below is one of those people. (I do not know if they are Christians). These are not Christian testimonies per se, but rather common sense testimonies.

The Lord has led me to some very revealing things that are going on right now in financial circles that need immediate prayer. Many other things are happening as well, which confirms we are in those perilous times mentioned in the Bible. We are definitely in the time of the end right before Jesus comes to this earth again. But remember that day comes after a period of great tribulation according to Matthew 24.

2 Timothy 3:1-5:

1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. 2 For men shall be lovers of their selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, 4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; 5 Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

Banks are getting prepared because they expect to lose control of inflation soon “This new system will enable the Fed to deposit money directly and give them absolute control of their policies. This coming UBI stimulus scheme will be the fuel that starts the hyperinflation fire since we are a consumer-driven economy; they have to get us to consume,” Also, if you want an understanding, the world is on the brink of a total financial collapse, Peter Schiff shares those reasons in this video link below. God is shaking everything that is not built on His Word and our biggest problem financially is that we, as a nation, are headed for bankruptcy without divine intervention from God. It is because of the enormous amount of debt we have with no way to pay it off. Simply put, the outgo is more than the income. Record-high government debt is projected to hit $31.4 TRILLION by 2030. This is impossible to sustain in the natural. Only God can save us. He is waiting on us to individually and corporately repent of our sins so He can show us the way out of destruction.

What happened in Greece? For the sake of brevity, during the years 2009 to 2016 Greece faced a national bank crisis which led to it facing total bank collapse. Greek voters said “no” to austerity measures (cutting back on spending), so instability created a run on the banks. Greece sustained extensive economic damage during the two weeks surrounding the vote. Banks closed and restricted ATM withdrawals to 60 euros per day. They were not allowed to withdraw their money from their checking and savings accounts. Instead, the bank proposed they would give them only a portion of their deposited monies and would give them bank stock for the rest of their funds to keep the bank from going bankrupt. The people had to accept this deal or they would have not received any of their money at all. Can this happen in the United States?

The Fall of a Democracy

Quote below by Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee who was a Scottish advocate, judge, writer, and historian who served as Professor of Universal History, and Greek and Roman Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.”

The government and corporate greed and lust, with no restraint, have led us to this place. It is only a matter of “when this will happen,” not “if it will happen.” Our government has broken all the biblical financial laws, especially in the area of debt, so this federal system can no longer stand. If we break those same financial laws, we too will fail financially. Our debt can also bring destruction to our nation. Debt is not sinful, but failing to repay our debts is. We can sin by not obeying God with our money. If you are having financial difficulties, there is a checklist on this page as to what you may not be doing regarding your finances.

One major financial sin Christians are committing is their failure to tithe and give to the works of God. Sin has led us to this place and only repentance will save us. However, God has a remnant of people who are hearing His voice and God will save them as He did Noah and his family in the time of the flood that swept away that violent society. (Genesis 6 & 7). Right now the devil is trying to set up people for the future “mark of the beast.” Things are now unfolding rapidly that was predicted in the Bible thousands of years ago. Men will be marked in their minds long before they will be marked physically unless they are putting the Word of God into their hearts and minds.

I have spent the day writing this as it was urgent in my heart. I do not know how much time we have before these events begin to unfold, it could be days, weeks, or even a year or two. Since God is merciful, He gives us more time to repent and obey Him when we pray and seek Him. I just know the Lord wants to help us get ready in the natural, as well as get ready in the spirit as well. Please pray about how the Lord wants you to respond to the information I have shared with you in this article. As I said, I am not a financial counselor, but I have learned and practiced what the Bible says about finances so I am not afraid as I know the Lord will not only provide for us in hard times but will also use His people to help others in the days ahead. He is sending His glory on His people in the days ahead to show Himself as the mighty God Who preserves His people. We are shifting into supernatural guidance and provision for all who are fully committed to the will of god. I am listing some additional links below that you might want to read as well. A Warning to Rich Men Who Look to Their Riches Instead of God

James 5:1-8:

1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. 2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver are cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last few days. 4 Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. 5 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. 6 Ye have condemned and killed the just, and he doth not resist you. 7 Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receives the early and latter rain. 8 Be ye also patient; establish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.

Bottom Line

If none of this applies to you or has spoken to you, my last word on this subject is this. No amount of money will save any of us in the days ahead. If we are trying to protect our money, without submitting completely to the will of God (being willing to go anywhere, give up anything and do anything He asks of us); then we shall surely lose our worldly possessions. He wants us to trust Him. God is dealing with lust and idolatry in the hearts of His people and He loves us enough to chastise us so we do not end up backsliding or miss our blessings or even end up in hell. Remember the parable of the “Ten Virgins” in Matthew 25. Five of them could not enter the wedding chamber with Jesus. This chapter also talks about those who hid the Lord’s money and what happened to them.

God wants you to hear from Him regarding all things so I encourage you to surrender totally and unconditionally to Him today. He wants to make you into His image and cause you to overcome all things that are hindering your walk with Him.

For those who are overcomers and make up His bride, He has great things in store for them. One of those is that He wants to make us rulers over all of our goods according to Matthew 24:42-47:

42 Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. 43 But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. 44 Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh. 45 Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? 46 Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. 47 Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods.

From: Steven P. Miller CEO/ Founder of Gatekeeper-Watchman International Groups Jacksonville, Florida., Duval County, USA. Instagram: steven_parker_miller_1956, Twitter: @GatekeeperWatchman1, @ParkermillerQ, Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/gatekeeperwatchman URL: linkedin.com/in/steven-miller-b1ab21259 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ElderStevenMiller

GWIG, #GWIN, #GWINGO, #Ephraim1, #IAM, #Sparkermiller,#Eldermiller1981

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