EU: high corporate profits during bad economic times are bad for consumers

When major oil companies announced record earnings in February, even US President Joe Biden was appalled. The White House said it was "outrageous" that ExxonMobil had raked in a profit of $56 billion (€51 billion) in 2022 as consumers were grappling with inflation rates not seen in decades.

Top policymakers in Europe have also weighed in on the issue, imposing windfall taxes on energy firms. Even though price pressures have eased lately from their record levels, the eurozone is still reeling from elevated inflation levels. Consumer prices in the common currency area rose 6.9% in March from a year earlier, keeping inflation at more than three times the European Central Bank's target of 2%.

Read more at: https://www.dw.com

Population Explosion: Are there too many people? All bets are off

In 2011, when the global population hit 7 billion, economist David Lam and demographer Stan Becker made a bet. Lam predicted food would get cheaper over the next decade, despite continuing population growth. Becker predicted that food prices would go up, because of the damage humans were doing to the planet, which meant that population growth would outstrip food supply. Becker won and, following his wishes, Lam has just written out a cheque for $194 to the Vermont-based nonprofit Population Media Center, which promotes population stabilisation internationally.

$194, about £140, equates to the amount by which a basket containing five food types – oils and fats, cereals, dairy, meat and sugar – and worth on average $1,000 in the decade to 2010, increased in price over the following decade, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index (FFPI) and allowing for inflation.

Read more at: Are there too many people? All bets are off | Population | The Guardian

Excercise: Why winter exercise can be especially hard on the lungs - by Laura Glowacki

Canadian Olympic hopeful Katherine Stewart-Jones can't remember when she first started experiencing a cough she and other cross-country skiers call "race hack," but she said it was probably when she started competing in her early teen years.

"Sometimes, it goes like all the way into your back ... it's just this burning sensation," she said. "I'll lean over and just don't want to get up for a while because it hurts.

Read more at: Why winter exercise can be especially hard on the lungs | CBC News

Germany: Angela Merkel: No-deal Brexit would send a bad signal to the world

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that it would send a bad signal to the world if a Brexit trade deal could not be reached, as an EU negotiating team stayed in London for additional talks.

With just one month remaining for the European Union and the UK to come to an agreement, Merkel told a virtual gathering of parliamentarians from across the continent: "Britain and the EU share common values. If we failed to reach a deal, it would not send a good signal."

Read more at: Angela Merkel: No-deal Brexit would send a bad signal to the world | News | DW | 30.11.2020

The Global Economy: Real World Economics: Bad trade policies will last for years – by Edward Lotterman

The election Tuesday will be a momentous one in U.S. history, perhaps the most important since 1932 or even 1860. The last four years have been turbulent indeed for our politics and economics. Those splits will remain as we now vote against a backdrop of a world pandemic not seen in a century.

Read more at:Real World Economics: Bad trade policies will last for years – Twin Cities

EU-US relations under Trump - "not impossible he changes"

The US, once leader of the free world, needs a President that would not spread hate, top EU politician Guy Verhofstadt said on Twitter.

At this point, a re-election of Trump next year could go either way, this analyst believes.

"If he continues along the path that he's on and the way in which he has, I think, consciously been pushing the Europeans hard and uncomfortably and in a way that they are not accustomed to, yes, it's quite possible that in another four years the relationship could be much more divisive.

But one thing that I think Europeans need to bear in mind is that when George W. Bush ran for a second term, the policy in his first term and his second term were very different, specifically with respect to the EU. So it's not impossible that Mr. Trump too can make a change."

Europeans are very unhappy with the changes Trump did make during his first term.

Read more: EU-US relations under Trump - "not impossible he changes" | Euronews

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USA recycling: Why is the US so bad at recycling

Why is the US so bad at recycling?

Read more at:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48127398

Britain - Brexit bad for the Environment?

Is Brexit bad for the environment? Theresa May has same CO2 output as 126 Brits or 2,600 Kenyans

Read more at: 

https://www.euronews.com/2019/04/19/is-brexit-bad-for-the-environment-theresa-may-has-same-co2-output-as-126-brits-or-2-600-ke

Global Health Care Ranking: Survey Ranks the U.S. Health Care System Lowest in Performance - Melissa Hellmann

 he U.S. health care system has been subject to heated debate over the past decade, but one thing that has remained consistent is the level of performance, which has been ranked as the worst among industrialized nations for the fifth time, according to the 2014 Commonwealth Fund survey 2014. The U.K. ranked best with Switzerland following a close second.

The Commonwealth Fund report compares the U.S. with 10 other nations: France, Australia, Germany, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the U.K. were all judged to be superior based on various factors. These include quality of care, access to doctors and equity throughout the country.

Results of the study rely on data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Health Organization and interviews from physicians and patients.

Although the U.S. has the most expensive health care system in the world, the nation ranks lowest in terms of “efficiency, equity and outcomes,” according to the report. One of the most piercing revelations is that the high rate of expenditure for insurance is not commensurate to the satisfaction of patients or quality of service. High out-of-pocket costs and gaps in coverage “undermine efforts in the U.S. to improve care coordination,” the report summarized.

A striking take-home from the report was a need for equity throughout the nation. “Disparities in access to services signal the need to expand insurance to cover the uninsured and to ensure that all Americans have an accessible medical home,” it said. A lack of universal health care was noted as the key difference between the U.S. and the other industrial nations.

Note EU-Digest: Sorry to say but this Time report  is right on target, Insurance companies, Medical Profession (Dr's) and Pharmaceutical companies have one common goal, ripping off patients, and the US political establishment not only does nothing about it, many are also on the payroll of these thieves.

Read more at: Survey Ranks the U.S. Health Care System Lowest in Performance | Time

Propaganda: The Insidious Power of Propaganda - by Karel van Wolferen

To study the effects of political propaganda in what used to be called the ‘free world’ there could hardly be a better time than now. We are living through an in stance of insidious propaganda that has clean contours.

It fills a common need. In a period of large-scale slaughter and other man-made disaster the morally conscious person can do with some clear categories of good and bad, desirable and despicable. Political certainty, in other words. You can even sell wars using ‘moral clarity’ as a sales pitch, as happened with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Good-evil classification is easy enough when we have imprisoned journalists decapitated by jihadis. Those who “will do something about that” are automatically placed in the ‘good guys’ category. But there is a problem of murkiness in this sample. Syria’s Assad has been listed for years at the top of the bad guy list, and yet he appears to be changing into something of an ally of those who are intent now on setting things straight.

On top of which, the fact that the radical Islamists out of which ISIS emerged were funded and encouraged by the United States and its Arab allies is not a deep secret, and the fact that none of this mayhem would now exist were it not for the sorcerer’s apprentice effect of the decapitation of the Iraqi state in 2003 has been pretty much agreed on.

The Ukraine sample is more clear-cut. Here we have fighters for democracy and other Western values in Kiev vs a character who is throwing a spanner in the works, who does not respect the sovereignty of neighbors, and whose intransigence does not lessen, no matter what sanctions you throw at him.

Read more: The Insidious Power of Propaganda - The Unz Review