Another way to see it is the Internet was supposed to make sharing what one understood as truth easier; instead, what it did was democratize Chomsky's propaganda model by making entry into becoming the media much cheaper; the Internet-based media newcomers essentially copied as best as they could the traditional media's model of _imposing_ their view of reality and manufacturing consent.
In this view, what we're seeing is a power struggle for influence between the media who traditionally held the power to manufacture consent and the Internet-based newcomers.
> So much for the lie that Trump would "end big gov".
The Republicans like to talk about fiscal responsibility to attack “tax and spend” Democrats, but when the Republicans are in power they are much more inclined to cut taxes than spending (they certainly redirect spending, but they never cut as much as they cut taxes.)
I don't think the actions and the goal are inconsistent. As you quoted it's all about 'ending big government.'
Taxing and spending increases the size of government. And it arguably has no end. Government is the ultimate bureaucracy and will spend every penny it receives, and then some. Even Finland, whose government takes more than 40% of its national GDP in taxes, is now somehow facing mounting government debt. It has phenomenal state programs, but will they prove to be sustainable or not? Since the government is a bureaucracy, the only way to reduce its spending is to reduce the amount of money it has available. As Milton Friedman put it, reducing taxes 'cuts the government's allowance.' Reducing taxes results in either programs being cut out of necessity, or the eventual collapse of the government under its own debt. In either case it certainly 'ends big government.'
The big hypocrisy is not in the tax cuts, but in the spending of presidents like Bush. We spent one can only imagine how many trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan. And while perhaps the military can be considered distinct from government in general, spending money on poorly justified wars we can't afford certainly precludes any notion of fiscal purpose.
The US hasn't had a sustainable budget since 2002.
The Obama years added ~$10 trillion in debt in eight years. How was that sustainable exactly?
For the last decade, the CBO has been forecasting blown out budget deficits starting about now, because of entitlement costs. There's no scenario where the budget deficit doesn't explode, unless you cut entitlements, dramatically raise taxes, or both.
I'm assuming you meant first year in office, also the last Bush budget (as fiscal 2017 was the last Obama budget and the coming one will be the first Trump budget).
As for 2016, I am confused by the numbers on that table - the addition to the debt seems to have several hundred billion in unexplained increase that doesn't appear to be referenced anywhere that I saw.
It's not a sonic attack (experts agree), but it's very likely not mass hysteria either (an unproved speculation from a medical doctor not involved in the investigation).
More research is needed (and not by journalists looking to capitalize on a popular story).
It's not "interesting" because the media industries have been doing this everyday for at least 2 centuries. Maybe more interesting is how people keep getting amnesiac about this.
We can attribute any of it to "the Internet" or "Facebook" or "Twitter"... or to any other communication platform that lets people reach a wide audience.
One of the big reasons I find it interesting is because I expect there's probably more news outlets now than ever before, yet we see such a peculiar level of homogeneity in the views they espouse - perhaps even more so than in times past. The New York Times has an awesome archive going all the way back to the 1850s. In fact there's a lot of really great free newspaper archive resources [1]. And in perusing these archives something that I think has really changed is that in the past there was a far greater diversity of published views. By contrast today views tend to be quite uniform except in archetypical difference, such as partisanship.
In a way I would not be surprised if behind the scenes people were collaborating with one another, feeling that expressing different views would undermine the credibility of what's said as different organizations contradict each other. But ironically I think this sort of homogeneity is playing a large role in peoples' diminishing trust in media. It makes the news seem very artificial and orchestrated. And the homogeneity means that when they get things wrong - as seems to be the case here, it makes the entire industry look just awful. Being wrong is one thing, being so collectively ill informed as to not have even meaningfully considered the possibility of a binary truth (it is a weapon, or it's not a weapon)? That's something far worse.
Whenever you hear about amazing breakthroughs in medicine, look to see if it is an animal study. Those usually do not translate into results in humans.
Because what works in animal studies doesn't often work in humans. This is why you hear about a novel cure for cancer in the news every month -- it's always animal studies.
If you want something to get your hopes up, look for stuff undergoing human studies. They're not new(s) -- in fact, it's stuff that is known and has shown promise for years -- but they're more likely to eventually work.
Only if you stored that value at the peak. If you stored that value a few years ago, it's not that big of a deal to be back to the price it was in November (which itself was pretty incredible)
So you're saying Bitcoin is only good for early adopters and it's dangerous for new users to use Bitcoin because they could lose all their stored value when early adopters cash out?
It's a calming, reassuring article about something that will destroy people's lives and societies in unpredictable ways and disrupt the balance of power for worse.
At least there's always the soothing "solution" of "regulating it". The people who get to "regulate it" are exactly the ones who will wield its power.
After some millions of us have died the other people who survive will eventually find a new equilibrium.
In this view, what we're seeing is a power struggle for influence between the media who traditionally held the power to manufacture consent and the Internet-based newcomers.