Ever since Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and others founded the Chicago School, in the nineteen-forties and fifties, one of its goals has been to displace Keynesianism, and it had largely succeeded. In the areas of regulation, trade, anti-trust laws, taxes, interest rates, and welfare, Chicago thinking greatly influenced policymaking in the U.S. and many other parts of the world. But in the year after the crash Keynes’s name appeared to be everywhere.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
Jeffrey Sachs
My colleagues and I took a stand in our work several years ago that we would not look for the magic bullet, because there is none. These are just basic problems requiring basic work. Nothing magic about it.
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The digital revolution has already put wind in the sails of development, most notably as mobile phones have ended the isolation of billions of people living in rural areas that are now connected by telephony.
The MDGs involve every aspect of life in poor communities: income poverty, hunger, education, children’s health, safe childbirth, disease control, and environmental safety.
Mobile telephony and broadband access (whether through wireless or fibre or a combination of the two), can contribute meaningfully to every single MDG. The gains are breathtaking in promoting livelihoods, improved health, better schools, and other areas.
In the Millennium Villages in Africa, the advent of mobile telephony (brought to very distant communities by Ericsson and local mobile providers as part of their commitment to the MDGs) has changed life dramatically.
The village is suddenly connected to the market with regular price quotes, phone-based banking, and is better able to arrange transport. The community health workers are empowered by phone-based systems to treat malaria and other diseases. The schools are connected to the web by wireless. And countless more applications are being scaled up.
Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza
Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza (né le 26 janvier 1852 à Rome - mort le 14 septembre 1905 à Dakar) est un explorateur français d'origine italienne qui a ouvert la voie à la colonisation française en Afrique centrale.His easy manner and great physical charm, as well as his pacific approach among Africans, were his trademarks. Under French colonial rule Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of the Congo, was named after him and the name was retained by the post-colonial rulers.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
埼玉新聞
航空自衛隊入間基地のそばにある所沢市立狭山ケ丘中学校の防音対策工事を兼ねたエアコン設置工事について、藤本正人市長が「必要ない」として新年度予算に計上せず、防衛省の防音工事補助金を辞退していたことが、２１日までに分かった。昨年末から市議会で問題として取り上げられてきたほか、地元中学校の父母や後援会も「納得がいかない」と説明を求めている。
工事は市の防音学校施設計画に基づき、同中の防音とエアコン設置を２０１０年度と１２年度の２カ年で、総事業費は１億４２４２万円で実施する予定だった。しかし藤本市長は、昨年１２月の市議会定例議会の一般質問で、平井明美市議（共産）に「扇風機で十分。子どもたちにエアコンは必要ない」と答弁した。
カナロコ
県警少年捜査課と厚木署は21日、県青少年保護育成条例違反の疑いで、厚木市在住の県立定時制高校４年の男子生徒（19）を逮捕した。
逮捕容疑は、生徒は２月22日午前４時半ごろ、自宅で綾瀬市在住の県立高校２年の 女子生徒（17）にみだらな行為をした、としている。
女子生徒は男子生徒の友人で、男子生徒宅に泊まりに来ていたという。同署は女子生徒の親から相談を受けていた。
本田由紀
ニートの支援に関連する諸々の対策は利権の温床となっており、各省庁や地方自治体、更には支援に携わるNPO法人等の民間団体や企業までもが、「ニートの自立支援」を名目とした予算の争奪戦を繰り広げている。
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これまで、引きこもりへの支援を細々と行っていた様な（民間の）団体が、“ニート”への支援を謳い始めた途端に、お金が降りて来るというような現象が起きている。
Joseph Heath
The total number of green traffic lights must be the same as the total number of red traffic lights, because one person's green light just is someone else's red light. The same is true of economic exchange. Every time someone sells something, someone else must buy something. Why? Because the only way to sell something is to sell it to someone else. This may seem obvious, but a staggering percentage of the popular commentary on all sorts of economic issues loses track of this elementary equivalence.
Benedictus PP XVI
Silence is an integral element of communication; in its absence, words rich in content cannot exist. In silence, we are better able to listen to and understand ourselves; ideas come to birth and acquire depth; we understand with greater clarity what it is we want to say and what we expect from others; and we choose how to express ourselves. By remaining silent we allow the other person to speak, to express him or herself; and we avoid being tied simply to our own words and ideas without them being adequately tested. In this way, space is created for mutual listening, and deeper human relationships become possible. It is often in silence, for example, that we observe the most authentic communication taking place between people who are in love: gestures, facial expressions and body language are signs by which they reveal themselves to each other. Joy, anxiety, and suffering can all be communicated in silence – indeed it provides them with a particularly powerful mode of expression. Silence, then, gives rise to even more active communication, requiring sensitivity and a capacity to listen that often makes manifest the true measure and nature of the relationships involved. When messages and information are plentiful, silence becomes essential if we are to distinguish what is important from what is insignificant or secondary. Deeper reflection helps us to discover the links between events that at first sight seem unconnected, to make evaluations, to analyze messages; this makes it possible to share thoughtful and relevant opinions, giving rise to an authentic body of shared knowledge.
Ian Bremmer
Globalization, like capitalism, is powered by the individual impulses of billions of people. It is not the result of someone’s economic reform plan, and it can’t be reversed by decree.
Ha-Joon Chang
Since the rise of neo-liberalism in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, many people in the rich countries, both inside and outside the academia, have come to take the view that the developing countries are what they are only because of their own inabilities and corruption and that the rich countries have no moral obligations to help them. Indeed, there is a growing view that helping the developing countries is actually bad for them because it will only encourage dependency mentality.
Robert Green Ingersoll
The real difference is this: the Christian says that he has knowledge; the Agnostic admits that he has none; and yet the Christian accuses the Agnostic of arrogance, and asks him how he has the impudence to admit the limitations of his mind. To the Agnostic every fact is a torch, and by this light, and this light only, he walks.
The Agnostic knows that the testimony of man is not sufficient to establish what is known as the miraculous. We would not believe to-day the testimony of millions to the effect that the dead had been raised. The church itself would be the first to attack such testimony. If we cannot believe those whom we know, why should we believe witnesses who have been dead thousands of years, and about whom we know nothing?
The Agnostic takes the ground that human experience is the basis of morality. Consequently, it is of no importance who wrote the gospels, or who vouched or vouches for the genuineness of the miracles. In his scheme of life these things are utterly unimportant. He is satisfied that “the miraculous” is the impossible. He knows that the witnesses were wholly incapable of examining the questions involved, that credulity had possession of their minds, that “the miraculous” was expected, that it was their daily food.
The Agnostic knows that the testimony of man is not sufficient to establish what is known as the miraculous. We would not believe to-day the testimony of millions to the effect that the dead had been raised. The church itself would be the first to attack such testimony. If we cannot believe those whom we know, why should we believe witnesses who have been dead thousands of years, and about whom we know nothing?
The Agnostic takes the ground that human experience is the basis of morality. Consequently, it is of no importance who wrote the gospels, or who vouched or vouches for the genuineness of the miracles. In his scheme of life these things are utterly unimportant. He is satisfied that “the miraculous” is the impossible. He knows that the witnesses were wholly incapable of examining the questions involved, that credulity had possession of their minds, that “the miraculous” was expected, that it was their daily food.
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