#anyway. working in the public sector and in research administration is good many times but VERY GOOD right now for me

[mycenaae]

"sci-comm at the alda center: the next frontier" between this and the jingle-bells based pun for the single-cell rna session, they really know how to get me with this conference

[hailcyeon]

hiraeth | 08

When your cousin the Crown Prince calls in on a decade-old debt, you have no choice but to answer. You’re rewarded for your troubles with your nightmares finding new life, danger around every corner, and a fiendishly irritating bodyguard. As each new discovery unearths more secrets, you learn the true costs of your homecoming.

⇾ Pairing: Lee Jaehwan x Reader ⇾ Genre: Sci-Fi, Royal AU, Bodyguard AU ⇾ Word Count: 4.5k ⇾ Warnings: Mild swearing, descriptions of anxiety

He bores into your eyes with his gaze, and you think Hakyeon has more of his father in him than you remember. 

The next morning finds you in yet another unfamiliar apartment. Your legs are jelly descending the stairs, and the three-inch heels on your feet aren't helping. There's a railroad spike through your brain in the form of a migraine, all the while you fight the urge to rub your eyes so you don't ruin Sora's hard work. Hakyeon is already downstairs, dressed impeccably as ever in a navy suit. He adjusts his cuffs, looking up with a frown as he takes in your stiff expression. 

"Are you feeling okay? I told you to eat breakfast." 

The click of your heels on the tiled floor— somehow even shinier than the one in Hakyeon's other apartment — rings out loudly as you walk over. "Hakyeon, I will throw up on this very expensive dress if you make me eat." 

He purses his lips and gives you a disapproving look. "Forgive me for thinking you need a little nutrition beyond caffeine and painkillers." He runs his gaze up and down your form, inspecting Sora's work as his eyes look for even a single thread out of place.

"The third-degree is a little creepy, Hakyeon," you say in response, irritated and tired. You were dragged to this decoy apartment at an ungodly time to meet Sora. Two hours of hair, makeup, and wardrobe later, you still don't feel ready to face the public, let alone the King. You rub your temple gently as if to massage out your headache. The coffee and aspirin you'd downed first thing in the morning have not only done little to help, but also seem to have turned your stomach to molten lava. 

Hakyeon has the grace to look contrite as he brushes invisible dust off your shoulder. "I hope you don't expect to speak to my father that way." There are no wrinkles or excessive folds to be found, as your new clothes have been tailored just for you, but he straightens out the sleeves anyway. You take this with all the patience of a doll, resigning yourself to only internal screaming. 

"She looks fine, I did a great job," Sora says as she hauls the last of the makeup cases down the stairs. “The King isn’t going to be fixated over her outfit anyway.” She'd instructed you to bring a few of the items you bought yesterday, and had arrived this morning with her own personal trove of beauty tools. Armored in a smart blazer and a dress cut just on the edgier side of conservative, your polished attire belies the true discomfort you feel. 

"I intend to speak as little as possible, actually." You swallow down the burn in your esophagus and fiddle with your sleeves as Hakyeon steps back for one last look over, making you feel very self-conscious. “I’m not good at your type of political subterfuge, you know that.” 

Hakyeon nods and checks his watch. "That's probably for the best. I’ve done what I can to take the situation out of his hands." You wonder what he means by that, but no explanation comes. “Still, you must be rock-solid in your defense. Why are you here, Princess of Asadal?” He bores into your eyes with his gaze, and you think Hakyeon has more of his father in him than you remember.

“To serve the King,” you answer mechanically. Your voice is less steel and more soft than you’d like, but you force your shoulders back and face your cousin, unwavering.

Hakyeon nods again, a quick decline of his chin, and turns to the door. “Then it’s time that we left.”

The elevator ride down is too quick for your liking, and before you know it you’re standing in front of a sleek, black limo adorned with the flag of Asadal. Jaehwan, your ever-present shadow, is leaning up against the idling car, hands in pockets and looking more formal than ever in his own dark suit. Sora turns around, carefully balancing the various makeup boxes she has, and takes your hand in hers. “I have to run to a photoshoot this afternoon, but I’ll be in touch. You’re gonna kill it, don’t worry,” she says with a last squeeze of your hand. 

“I’d prefer to get this over with as little violence as possible actually.” Your retort is clipped with a stiff smile. 

Sora leaves, and so does your general sense of bravado. If the events of the past few days have felt strange to you so far, this situation feels positively surreal as Jaehwan opens the door to the limousine for you and Hakyeon to slide in. You're sitting sandwiched between your cousin the prince and a man you hardly know, dressed to the nines in clothes so expensive they could pay a year's rent for your apartment back home.

“This is rather ostentatious,” you mutter quietly, moving your gaze around the luxurious interior.

Hakyeon shifts over to the opposite seats to give you some more room. “The aide insisted. Our entrance won’t be subtle, to say the least.”

This is not the most comforting thing to say, as your jaw clenches once more in anticipation. Jaehwan spares you a side glance, cool as the early morning air outside in his dark suit and upswept hair. 

“All right, Princess?” Jaehwan’s tone is neutral, the ubiquitous smile playing in one corner of his mouth. It only serves to irritate you further. You compulsively smooth out your dress and aim for a measured response.

“I’m excellent.” The hem of your dress has ridden up to mid-thigh over your dark tights, and though the exquisite tailoring means there’s nary a stray thread, your fingers keep rubbing the stitching. “No sleep, murderous uncle, not a problem. I am a-ok.”

Not quite.

Hakyeon places a hand over your clenched fist. Whether it's meant to be soothing or a warning, you're not sure. Nevertheless, you force yourself to take a deep breath. Your nerves are already frayed, but you can't afford to fall apart just yet. Not yet.

The ride to the king’s tower is spent in terse silence. You have been to the Assembly House over which the new administrative building was built, but so much of the city is unfamiliar to you that it may as well be an unknown route. Hakyeon's apartment is located in what seems to be a luxury residential area of the Capital, you realize, as you pass high-rise after high-rise, gleaming in the morning sun. These neighborhoods are separated from the business and administrative sectors by the Yuseong River.

The trip over the bridge does your nerves no favors. The limousine is insulated to all outside noises, but the rush of the river below sounds through your memories regardless. The western banks of the river are dotted with construction projects, workers already scrambling around the sites. It’s clear to you that these new buildings are meant to serve your uncle’s pet councilmen and others on the higher rungs of society, given how far they are from the cheaper parts of the city. Unable to sleep in your anxiety, you had done a little research on the state of the city nowadays. Street names and neighborhood designations can only tell you so much, but a quick glance at the housing markets clearly delineates the various strata of society in the Capital.

More interesting is the King's official seat as it draws nearer. In the dark of night when you first saw it, the tower looked like a single dark obelisk thrust up into the sky. Upon closer look now you can see it is actually three different towers circling each other and connected at the base, forming an elongated trident. The Assembly House had never been your favorite piece of architecture, with its dusty corners and old-fashioned facade, but you quite miss it in the face of the tower’s imposing presence.

The streets leading up to the building are lined with trees and fountains and more people than you think should be the case for an otherwise innocuous weekday. The gentle trickle of people escalates and promptly explodes into a thronging mass spilling off the sidewalks as the limousine reaches a stone slab etched with a very generic-sounding “Administration Headquarters” in gold. Your eyes widen at the crowds held at bay by metal dividers to create a path for the car. Had the citizens decided to protest after all?

You purse your lips and swallow thickly at the sight of several news vans and a thicket of flashing cameras. The crowd, initially standing around idly, is spurred into action at the arrival of the limousine, pushing against the barriers and craning over others to catch a better look. You don’t know what to make of the clamor, and Hakyeon answers your unasked questions. 

“The news of your return broke early this morning.” Hakyeon looks straight ahead, hands folded in his lap and voice betraying nothing. You know your cousin has many years of playing the imperious monarch on you, but in this moment you feel the gulf in experience particularly strongly.

“The paparazzi move quick,” you say tersely, trying to hide how much your breathing has quickened.

“The paparazzi had nothing to do with it,” interjects Jaehwan suddenly with a side glance toward Hakyeon.

You’re struck with a sudden sense of alarm as your eyes snap to your cousin’s. “Did you do something?”

“You were tailed yesterday.” Hakyeon’s face is stone, as impassive and unfeeling as yours is alarmed and shaken. “The King and his administration know of your presence, and it would only be a matter of time before the news spread. At least this way we can control the narrative.”

"Of course," you mutter. The anxiety is taking over your mind, so you default to anger. "Of course we were tailed."

“The King had a man following us around to every location we hit yesterday," Jaehwan adds unhelpfully. "He stopped sometime before we got back to the apartment, but it’s likely the King knows about that location anyway.”

“You were going to tell me this when, bodyguard?”

Jaehwan shrugs. “I’m telling you now.”

"This is nothing we hadn't already anticipated," Hakyeon hastily interjects before the two of you can start arguing.

In any case, you’re halted in your thoughts as the limousine passes through the official gates to the tower grounds, cutting off the bustling crowd from the kingdom’s highest administration. You catch a glimpse of a long set of marble steps before the view outside is swallowed by the walls of the tower. It’s hard to make out much beyond the dark tinted windows, so you settle for staring at the floor and counting your breaths. The ride continues steadily over the next few minutes, during which a stifling sort of silence has fallen over the three of you inside. The darkness of the tunnel you’ve entered is punctuated by the flash of guiding lights every few seconds, ramping up your already racing heartbeat.

“Don’t start hyperventilating now,” comes from your left in Jaehwan’s smooth tenor. You shoot him a glare, but the effect is rather diminished by the lack of light. 

Hakyeon's voice is quiet and steady as he says, "We're in the VIP tunnel. Flattering as the name may be, we're really just going through high levels of security. There is no access to the King's office from the public entrance." 

"What kind of security?" Somehow, focusing on the details helps you ground yourself to the moment. 

You hear Hakyeon shift in his seat slightly. “The usual scans, identification, some biometrics. Only the security team knows the full details, but I’ve gone through the checks several times myself.”

You suck in a deep breath and force yourself to let it out slowly. The car continues on for a minute longer before coming slowly to a stop. The door to your right opens suddenly to a man bent over in a deep bow. 

"Good morning, Your Highness. I trust your trip was comfortable?" 

Hakyeon steps out smoothly, buttoning his suit jacket as he stands. “Thank you, Ryu. The car was most appreciated.”

The man then extends a gloved hand to help you out of the limousine. Jaehwan hops out the other side without a glance back, and you have no choice but to take the offered hand. Gingerly you step out onto the concrete floor, balanced by the aide’s arm. The light is dim in the underground VIP garage. You make out a fleet of dark limousines very similar to the one you just exited, all adorned with the navy and gold livery of Asadal, waiting in the surrounding spots. Large vents and cold fluorescent lights are built into the ceiling high above, providing a cavernous quality to the garage. Your feet are illuminated by lights built into the concrete platform spelling out “Council Chamber and Main Royal Entrance”, with a small bay of elevators laying just beyond. 

“Welcome, Princess. It’s wonderful to have you back in the kingdom.” The aide’s ear-to-ear smile makes you think the sentiment is genuine, but you can only manage a small incline of your head in response. Hakyeon strides ahead to the central elevator, which opens at his approach without prompting. You follow along less confidently with the aide at your side, trailed by Jaehwan to your back. 

The elevator is large enough that the three of you can stand without touching elbows, but you still feel suffocated by the gleaming metal walls and the presence of the government official. Bespectacled and clad in a dove gray suit, he’s hardly the most intimidating man, but you are ever wary of strangers. Hakyeon absentmindedly checks his watch again while the aide fills him in on the details of the meeting. 

"The King is in with Magistrate Moon currently, but he's scheduled to be done by the time we clear processing. The princess's data shouldn't take long, but it's good to be thorough." 

"What do you mean, my data?" you interject. 

The aide starts as if he'd forgotten you could speak. "Oh, it's just simple protocol Your Highness—" He's cut off by a ding as the elevator opens to a brightly lit lobby. 

Despite being such a high-profile area, the lobby itself is fairly sparse. Hakyeon shuffles you through past a set of cushy armchairs and a table, which honestly feel like a decoy more than anything, into a blank white hallway. At the end are several full-body scanners glowing a neon green. Hakyeon strides through them proudly without pause, and you have no choice but to follow. Despite having nothing on your person to cause suspicion, some irrational part of you blanches as you walk through the scanners. Thankfully, you walk out the other side with no incident.

You let out an unnecessarily-held breath and are immediately shuffled into a side room. There's not a lot to the space save for a few monitors and seemingly medical equipment. The sting of antiseptic tickles your nose and the extreme sterility in fluorescent lighting gives you an uneasy feeling. Confused, you look to Hakyeon for guidance, only to be met with the passively smiling face of Jaehwan. Hakyeon is instead just outside the door talking to a woman in a white lab coat. If he senses your eyes on him, he gives no indication. The woman, however, turns and flashes you a smile, striding into the room with clipboard in hand. 

“Good morning, Your Highness,” she chirps with a quick bow in your general direction before shuffling off to some equipment on a far counter. You shift your feet nervously, glancing again at Hakyeon. He checks his watch again and joins you inside the room, leaving the aide outside.

“This won’t take very long at all, we have the entire process streamlined,” says the woman from the counter, pulling various equipment out of shelves and inspecting them. “My name is Dr. Yang, and I will be administering your locator chip today.” 

“My locator chip?” The words come out shriller than you intend, and you see Hakyeon wince out of the corner of your eye. 

"It's just for security purposes," he says quickly in a low voice. "It's necessary for being in the VIP parts of the building." 

"It's very small," the doctor reassures. "You won't feel a thing!" 

You swallow roughly and take a few steps back. "Hakyeon, could I speak to you for a moment?" You wait for him walk closer before mouthing, "What the fuck?" 

He glances at Jaehwan, who has also joined your little enclave, and crosses his arms. "I know you don't like it, but there's no other way to speak with the King."

You snort. "I didn't want to meet with him in the first place if you remember." 

Hakyeon purses his lips and exhales an impatient little sigh. "I know, and I know this whole thing is a mess. There are certain concessions that just have to be made. Security is tight around here; we all have a tracker to monitor our movement around the building." To make his point clearer, he extends his thumb. Jaehwan says nothing but absently scratches his left wrist. 

"This is some insane surveillance state nonsense, Hakyeon," you hiss. You weren't expecting to just prance into the King's office, but the idea of having his influence literally implanted in you? Your skin is crawling without anything even having happened. It monitors your location at that? Not to mention what else could be in there that isn’t being disclosed to the public.

“Our last royal family died,” Jaehwan chimes in an almost singsong way. You meet his eyes with a glare that does nothing to budge the pleasant look on his face. “Counter measures had to be taken.” 

Somehow Jaehwan’s stern look behind his sunny smile rattles you more than Hakyeon’s impatient pushing. You hold their gazes for a beat longer before looking down and swinging back around to the doctor. We’re not done talking about this, Hakyeon.

To her credit, Dr. Yang has maintained the utmost professionalism through your little meltdown. She stands next to a leather stool holding a tablet in one hand, patting the seat gently with the other. You stride over, head held high as you can, and sit down delicately. You can just touch the floor with your toes from this height, and you grip the edges of the seat with your hands, feeling as if on the precipice of something you can’t walk away from. 

“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” starts Dr. Yang, handing you the tablet. “The chip is microscopic and is only inserted into the topmost layer of the epidermis, so you won’t even feel the insertion. The shallow location is so that the chip can be removed through your body’s natural shedding of its skin cells, meaning there’s no hassle to dig back in there when you’re done here.”

Pain is hardly the thing you’re worried about. You swipe down through the extensive legalese on the tablet, which seems to be a permission form of sorts. There is no option not to grant it. “What’s the purpose of this chip, just to monitor my location?” you ask while signing your name with the attached stylus. 

The doctor nods. “It follows your presence through the building, and only within the building. There are additional forms to detail your identity and security clearance, but of course you don’t need any sort of verification on that front, Your Highness.” She ends her sentence with a tinkle of a laugh, and you fight the urge to roll your eyes. 

You hand the tablet back, wishing you could examine the system yourself. Undoubtedly it’s a database keyed to the individual chips, but you wonder what tech they’re using to detect the trackers throughout the building. And how much interference they could handle before they fry. Dr. Yang returns, having deposited the tablet on the counter, with gloved hands and a metal pen. 

“Now, as I said, the chip is inserted in the first layer of skin, for which we’ll need a particularly dense area so it stays put for the time being.” She tears open a packet of antiseptic and smiles. “If you’ll please extend your index finger?” You've got half a mind to offer her your middle finger instead, but you grit your teeth and uncurl your left index finger. A quick swipe of the alcohol-soaked wipe later, she presses the pen to your finger, cold and solid.

“Wait.” You take your finger back, clenching your hand into a fist. You look up, eyes darting to Hakyeon’s. Impassive as he is, you think you see some hint of guilt in his gaze, and dark circles under his own layers of concealer. Jaehwan, for his part, simply looks on boredly. 

“Is something wrong?” Dr. Yang has taken a step back and is looking at you with concern. 

You swallow, throat very dry all of a sudden, and shake your head. “No, it’s fine.” You extend your finger again, the nails of your other hand digging into your palm. “Go ahead.”

The doctor clicks her tongue and opens another packet of antiseptic. “You have no idea how many people come through here with a serious fear of needles,” she says, wiping down your finger again, even more gently than the last time. “All these big Councilmen, afraid of a little poke!” She chortles to herself and presses the pen down. 

True to her words, you feel nothing. 

You hop off the stool as soon as she pulls the pen away. The nausea from this morning has returned with a vengeance, which it tends to do when you indulge your anxiety rather than dissipating it. The doctor bows in goodbye and before you know it, you are ushered out the door by Hakyeon.

From there it’s a short walk to another bank of elevators. “That was very quick, wasn’t it?” starts the aide. “We’re a little ahead of schedule, so I thought perhaps we could show the Princess around the Council chambers and then—”

Hakyeon cuts him off abruptly. “Thank you Ryu, but that won’t be necessary. I think we can take it from here. Please send the alert upstairs to let them know we’re coming.”

The aide blinks. “The King is likely still in his meeting, Your Highness, if you’ll—” 

Hakyeon halts his speech again with a swift raise of his hand. “I’m aware of the King’s schedule. Be on your way.”

The ease and confidence with which your cousin addresses the aide is weirdly comforting. Hakyeon is Crown Prince. Hakyeon can handle this. You are just playing a part, but Hakyeon, he's the real deal. 

The aide makes a quick bow and disappears down a side hallway. Hakyeon wastes no time in calling down an elevator, and before long you’re ensconced in tense silence again. You feel eyes on you, but resolutely look forward. In the shiny metal of the elevator doors you see Hakyeon’s reflection turn to face you properly. “Doing ok?” You flick your gaze to him for but a second. Your jaw is starting to hurt from grinding your teeth so hard, and you keep compulsively rubbing your thumb against your other fingers. “I’m—” comes out in a rasp, your throat bone-dry. You swallow and try again. “I’m fine.” Hakyeon’s eyes don’t leave your face, and Jaehwan is now looking at you with an expression somewhere between curiosity and amusement. “I’m fine, it’s fine,” you reiterate, refusing to meet anyone’s gaze. “It just—” you start, then stop. It just terrifies me. It just makes me want to rip off my own skin. “It got too real,” you say quietly. Jaehwan chuckles, a soft gust of air through his nostrils and the crinkling curl of one corner of his mouth. 

Your glare at his reflection is cut short when the doors suddenly open to blinding light. This lobby is much busier than the last, with people scurrying to and fro, disappearing off into more elevators and hallways. As Hakyeon leads you into the mess, you notice several people stop right in their tracks and make very low but very quick bows in your general direction. You get a cursory glance out the glass walls to where the rest of the city sprawls before Hakyeon stops before what seems to be the main elevator, all chrome and gold leaf. A press of his palm to a nearby touchpad opens the doors to reveal elegant carpeting and crystal-studded walls. You roll your eyes at the predictable opulence.

Following Hakyeon into the elevator, you turn around only to find that Jaehwan hasn’t joined as usual. You blink. “Where are you going?” “Shh, secret mission,” he says in a hiss. The last thing you see before the doors close is Jaehwan’s grin with a finger pressed to his lips. 

What secret mission? You feel the tug of gravity as the elevator glides upward and furrow your brows. “You put Jaehwan on some other task?”

Hakyeon rolls his eyes. “He’s being dramatic. He’s just gone to talk to some old friends at my suggestion.” 

You’re well aware of who Jaehwan’s old friends are. “The Swords are loyal only to the King,” you say, on edge again at the remembrance of Jaehwan’s involvement in the special forces. 

Hakyeon ignores your statement in favor of some last-minute pep talk. “I know you must be feeling apprehensive, but I have full trust in your ability to sway my father. I’m positive you can assure him you’re not a threat, and it won’t be hard, since you’ve been away for so long. You’re hardly a scheming politician after all, and—”

“I get it, Hakyeon.” You cut off his rambling, nerves raw and screaming. “Play nice, or die.” The elevator opens again to two guards — Swords, speak of the devil — and an otherwise empty hallway. They bow as Hakyeon exits, the barest hint of a frown on his face. You follow, trying your best to match his confident strides. Think simpering sycophant thoughts. Should you pretend to be happy to see your uncle? Grateful to be back in your— no, his kingdom?

The hallway turns a corner and leads to the most nondescript wooden doors you’ve ever seen. The double doors are handleless and flanked by four-foot tall ceramic vases holding each a cascade of orchids. You can’t see any physical indication as to the importance of these doors, but your heart pounds harder with every step forward. As if sensing your hesitation, Hakyeon stops just short and turns to you.

“I’m not going to lie and say this will be easy,” he starts. His gaze is too difficult to hold, so you turn your eyes to a blank spot on the wall just behind his ear. “But this has to be done, for better or worse. Are you ready?”

No, you think to yourself. In what world could you ever be ready to face the instigator of all your nightmares?

“Yes,” you say.

Hakyeon gives you a quick, terse nod and raises his hand. He raps his knuckles against the wood of the door twice, the beats ringing out in the quiet hallway.

[thezeekrecord]

CITA ch5

[index/summary]

Bubby’s forced to reckon with his feelings towards Dr. Coomer as Dr. Coomer grows closer with his new girlfriend.

They seemed happy.

Bubby told himself that every day, rather than giving into his immediate reaction of wanting to run far away and scream whenever he saw them together. What he told Dr. Coomer was right; he deserved better than to have a boyfriend trapped in Black Mesa, and Bubby could never deal with what felt like the inevitable heartbreak of being separated forcibly. He didn’t want that looming over his relationship, and he was certain Dr. Coomer didn’t deserve that, either.

At least the two of them gave Bubby the dignity of not acting strange about displaying affection in front of him after the first couple of days. The only thing that would make him feel worse was the mutual feeling of awkwardness between them; he was an adult man, he could handle watching his best friend that he also happened to be in love with kiss someone else.

At least, he wanted to be able to handle that. So he tried very, very hard for them. It wouldn’t be fair to ask anything else of them anyway—Bubby had no right to tell Dr. Coomer how to act around his girlfriend. Even if they were very affectionate in public, to the clear annoyance of others. Bubby couldn’t be surprised that Dr. Coomer was that type of man, of course, considering he was almost as affectionate towards Bubby in their friendship prior to his birthday—which, wow, that put so much into perspective on Bubby’s end once they’d finally talked about it. He wouldn’t have blamed anyone looking at them for assuming they were dating this whole time, he realized with a significant amount of embarrassment.

It got easier with time, at least. He wasn’t entirely sure how easy it would be to ever move past his feelings for Dr. Coomer, honestly—he didn’t talk to enough people, it still felt like his entire world was work and Dr. Coomer—but after a few years, he only got a twinge of disappointment when he saw him and Veronica happy together, mostly buried under genuine happiness to see his friend in a loving relationship. He deserved it. He deserved anything good that came to him and more, Bubby always thought.

Black Mesa didn’t seem to be on the same page about that, though. As Dr. Coomer and Bubby arrived in their sector, they went about their usual morning routine; collecting their mail, Dr. Coomer paying much closer attention to his than Bubby paid his own as they drank coffee leisurely, then they’d head to their office and start looking over the planned tests for the day, figuring out where to start from there.

Bubby was done tossing out a mess of company memos—all he ever got, pretty much, aside from an envelope once a month containing one of his prepaid cards, ready to finish off his coffee before he heard an indignant noise from Dr. Coomer. Bubby frowned, glancing over at him.

“What is it?” Bubby asked.

“They’re cutting a lot of employee benefits!” Dr. Coomer complained, nodding down to the letter he’d received. “Costs of insurance are going up, they’re cutting our pension—this is just outrageous.”

Bubby frowned deeply. “Oh. So—what are you going to do?”

Dr. Coomer sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know. I mean, this is going to really hurt my retirement fund, not to mention what I’m sending back home to help my sister take care of our parents...”

Bubby stared at Dr. Coomer. “Wait, you have a sister?”

Dr. Coomer glanced at Bubby. “Oh, yes, I do. It’s just—well, my relationship with her and our parents isn’t nearly as relevant.” He said dismissively. “During lunch, I’m going to have to go over all of this some more, see how bad it’s going to hit my finances.”

Bubby’s stomach churned. If it was too much and Dr. Coomer knew of somewhere better to work, would he leave Black Mesa entirely? He wondered.

“Well—if you need help, I have a lot of savings.” Bubby offered.

“Oh, no, no, Bubby. I’m sure it’ll be perfectly fine. I’d never ask you to give anything up for me.” Dr. Coomer said, smiling kindly for him. “Let’s just get to work, shall we?”

Dr. Coomer didn’t talk any more about it in the next couple weeks—at least, around Bubby—but he heard plenty of displeased chatter about the new benefit cuts. It sounded trivial to Bubby at first, but apparently, it was a much bigger deal than he’d imagined—not that Bubby had any need for insurance or a pension plan, so he couldn’t be expected to truly understand. As he eavesdropped on the tram and in the cafeteria near his and Dr. Coomer’s lab, he heard plenty of gossip about people who were quitting, discussion of potential strikes, and more. Tensions were high in Black Mesa, to say the least.

Still, they had plenty of work to do, despite all the drama. Bubby was stood in the lab with Dr. Coomer, fully immersed in a test when the dreaded noise of his phone ringing shocked him out of his thoughts.

“What?” He demanded. “I’m fucking busy.”

“Oh, sorry to bother.” A voice decidedly not belonging to the head of biological research said. Bubby didn’t say anything—the fact remained true, he was still annoyed and busy. “You’ve worked in the biodome complex before, correct?”

“Yeah, a few years ago.” Bubby replied. “Why?”

“Well, we’re highly understaffed here right now, and we need an extra pair of hands...if you’re busy, though, we can probably make do.” The scientist said on the other end.

Bubby paused to think about it, glancing back at Dr. Coomer. “...What, are you doing some sort of test today?”

“Yes, something highly time-sensitive. I wouldn’t ask otherwise.” The scientist said, sounding deeply exhausted.

“...Hold on.” Bubby said, pressing his palm to the receiver so the scientist on the other end couldn’t hear. “Coomer, are we on schedule?”

Dr. Coomer glanced at the board behind him. “Yes, looks like it—ahead, in fact.”

“Hmmm.” Bubby hummed thoughtfully. “The biodome complex needs help today. I might go help them out, if we’re fine up here.”

“Oh, that sounds perfectly fine.” Dr. Coomer replied, rifling through some papers on his desk. “By the looks of it, I could even get the rest of the day’s work done myself, if I need to. I’ve already done so before.”

Bubby put the phone back to his ear. “Yeah, I’ll head up. I’ll be about...20 minutes, I think.”

The scientist was highly thankful, wasting too much of Bubby’s valuable time thanking him over and over before Bubby hung up the phone. He said goodbye to Dr. Coomer, gave a tentative promise to be back before dinner, and headed up to the biodome complex.

That wasn’t the last time Bubby was called upon to help other departments. He considered just telling them no, he was too busy, etc—but he couldn’t deny that despite how he’d been content to stay in his little mini-department with Dr. Coomer for so long, new, stimulating work was doing him a lot of favors. He’d forgotten how much he enjoyed hopping departments like this; so he obliged when he was called upon.

He’d been walking between two different labs, asked to spend half his day in one and head on over to the other after lunch, when he found someone familiar walking down the hall ahead of him, staring down at a thick stack of papers. Bubby stared at her, only speaking up once they began to pass each other.

“Hello, Veronica.” He greeted. “Isn’t the lab for the Borealis project in Sector H?”

Veronica looked up from her stack of papers, jumping in surprise at Bubby’s voice. “Oh! Well—yes. I just had a...meeting up here. What are you doing here? Don’t you usually work in Sector C?”

“Normally. I’ve just been helping other departments.” Bubby reminded her, unable to resist his curiosity as he glanced down at the papers she was holding. It looked like unfilled forms, with “UNITED STATES ARMY” in bold letters at the top.

Veronica held the papers closer to her chest. “Right, yeah. I remember now. Umm...well, good luck today.”

Bubby nodded slowly. “You, too.”

Bubby watched her bustle down the hall, clearly in a hurry to get away. Bubby hummed thoughtfully as he proceeded to the lab. He paused at the door, though, glancing further down the hallway at an office he never paid any mind to.

The military had a presence at Black Mesa—it was highly affiliated with the US government, after all. They had several offices throughout the facility, where their daily operations were a complete mystery to Bubby. He despised not knowing, if he was honest—he knew almost every dark secret Black Mesa had to offer, and yet he had no idea why the military had offices here. It wasn’t like he ever saw soldiers walking around the facility; it stood to reason that they were always dressed up in plain clothes, which seemed odd. Like they were trying to mitigate people noticing there were soldiers right under their noses. Bubby wondered what Veronica knew about it, if she seemed curious about applying.

Bubby decided to push the thought aside for now. He had a lot of work to get to.

****

Bubby rarely had cause to visit the administrator of Black Mesa. A lot of the time, if he had any concerns or requests regarding his “employment”, he’d talk to the head of the biological research department—sometimes, though, he needed someone a little higher up to discuss his issues with than merely the head of biological research. This seemed as important a matter as any to talk to Dr. Breen about, Bubby resolved as he let himself into his office.

Dr. Breen glanced up from his paperwork, immediately turning his gaze back down to his work as Bubby shut the door behind him and approached the desk.

“Ah, Bubby. What brings you here today?” He asked half-heartedly.

“You realize how many employees you’re losing right now, right?” Bubby questioned. “I’ve been requested to help so many departments recently, I’m pulling 12 to 16, sometimes 18 hour days just to help some departments meet your expectations.”

“Well, you’re a resilient man. I’ve never heard you complain about hours like that before.” Dr. Breen pointed out, still writing as he spoke.

“It’s not about me.” Bubby half-lied. Truthfully, although he loved long hours like this before just to keep himself busy, he’d become much more soft after spending so much time with Dr. Coomer recently; a 12 hour day was standard before becoming lab partners with him, and now, it just felt grueling. “I’m only one person. These departments should be able to operate completely on their own without me showing up to do half the work for them. Are you really going to keep this up?”

“Keep what up?” Dr. Breen asked, finally looking up at Bubby.

“That fucking employee benefits cut or whatever it is.” Bubby said impatiently. “Everyone’s quitting because of it. Do you have any plans to mitigate that?”

“Not that this is any of your concern, Bubby, but things are running perfectly fine here.” Dr. Breen said, leaning back in his chair calmly. “Departments are meeting their requirements at, what, almost half the staff? I think that just goes to show we didn’t need that many employees in the first place.”

Bubby scoffed. “Yeah, you’d say that, just looking at the numbers up here in your office without seeing how hard everyone’s working down there.”

“Whatever happened to a good work ethic?” Dr. Breen sighed, returning to his paperwork. “If you truly think it’s such an issue, I’ll look into it. I thank you for bringing this to my attention, Bubby, but I am rather busy at the moment. If you would show yourself out, please.”

Bubby sighed in frustration, giving Dr. Breen no pleasantries before turning to leave.

It had been a few months since employee retention dropped—too many months of too many long nights spent without Dr. Coomer’s company. He decided as he headed back to the tram he’d blow off a non-essential test tonight to make boxing club instead. Plunging himself into work was an easy way not to think about his feelings towards him, of course, but he could only take so much of that before he grew excessively lonely.

Bubby arrived just a couple minutes late, catching Dr. Coomer’s eye as they seemed to still be preparing themselves for matches. It was an incredibly poor turnout, and everyone there looked exhausted. Bubby set his work bag aside as Dr. Coomer approached him with a wide smile.

“You made it!” He said excitably as he hugged Bubby tightly. “It’s so good to see you here again, Bubby. It’s been too long!”

Bubby was embarrassed to discover how deeply he’d honestly needed a good hug—it really had been much too long. He sighed in contentment, hugging Dr. Coomer back.

“Don’t count on me not passing out down here.” Bubby grumbled. “I’m pretty fucking tired.”

“Oh, Bubby, if you have the spare time, maybe you ought to rest, instead.” Dr. Coomer suggested as he pulled away.

“As far as I’m concerned, this is resting.” Bubby argued. “Go do your boxing thing, I’ll just sit down over there.”

“Oh, alright.” Dr. Coomer caved, pulling him in for one last tight hug before turning to rejoin the others. “Do try not to pass out, though!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Bubby said dismissively as he sat down in one of the few chairs in the room, as promised.

It had been too long since Bubby got to watch Dr. Coomer box. Honestly, as he sat there watching for the first time in at least a month or so, he was beginning to wonder all over again how he had vehemently denied his feelings for him all that time. He couldn’t ignore anymore how much he loved watching him beat the shit out of his coworkers—in retrospect, it put the intense feelings he got when he watched him fight into perspective. Bubby, despite all the complicated feelings of their situation, found himself glad he came down to watch again.

Bubby glanced up in surprise as he heard the door open halfway through the usual meeting time. Dr. Coomer was currently engaged in a fight, pausing mid-punch as he looked towards the door. Veronica stood in the doorway, holding a packet close to her chest as she looked at Dr. Coomer.

“Hey, um...sorry to interrupt.” Veronica said sheepishly. “Could we talk, Harold?”

“Oh! Of course.” Dr. Coomer replied, pulling his gloves off to join Veronica out in the hall.

Well, this certainly wasn’t Bubby’s business, he thought as he sat there—but he’d never truly stamped out his habit of snooping, and hated being in the dark on things. He stood and leaned against the wall by the door, ignoring the prying eyes of other boxing club members as he strained to listen in on the conversation.

“But why?” Dr. Coomer asked with a level of dismay Bubby had rarely ever heard from him. “I thought you agreed with me on this before!”

“I did, before Black Mesa cut our benefits.” She insisted. “I’m sorry, Harold. I know this is a lot. It’s just—I’ll be losing a lot of money when this change takes effect. I’ll still be in Black Mesa, it’s not like I’m going off to serve anywhere else.”

“Yes, but—it’s sort of the principle of the thing.” Dr. Coomer argued. “Besides, I can’t truly imagine they’ll keep that promise.”

“Harold...” Veronica sighed, pausing for a long moment. “I’m sorry. I already signed up and took the tests, gave my notice to Black Mesa—everything. I just have some things to finish up here, then I leave for basic next month.”

It was silent in the hall for a moment before Dr. Coomer finally spoke.

“Um...I-I’m going back to the club.”

“...Okay.” Veronica muttered. “See you later?”

“Y-yeah. Of course. See you later.”

Bubby watched Dr. Coomer carefully as he reentered the room, closing the door gently behind him. He looked surprised to see Bubby where he was.

“Were you listening?” He asked, nudging Bubby in the same playful manner as always, but his smile was highly strained.

“...Kinda. Sorry.” Bubby admitted guiltily. “Wanna talk about it?”

Dr. Coomer let out a deep sigh, running his fingers through his hair. “Well...not now. Maybe later.” He muttered, picking up his gloves again.

Bubby sat back down, watching Dr. Coomer get back to his match. He looked like he needed it now; by the time he’d defeated the other scientist, he looked clearer, more at ease as he moved to the edge of the room to chug some water. He ambled closer to Bubby afterward, leaning against the wall with a deep sigh.

“How much did you hear?” Dr. Coomer asked.

“That she’s joining the military.” Bubby replied sheepishly.

“...It’s...not the first time she’s brought it up.” Dr. Coomer said slowly, crossing his arms. “She’s sort of thought about it a few times in her life. I kept thinking I’d convinced her not to, then she’d bring it up again—I feel like this is less about the money, and more an excuse to join. It’s...so strange, the way she acts like she understands my stance before it just completely falls through all over again. I feel like we keep talking in circles every time.”

Bubby nodded sympathetically, unsure what to say.

“I guess it’s too late to change her mind again.” Dr. Coomer muttered. “I wish she’d told me she was considering it again in the first place. I mean—it’s her decision, ultimately, but I should have had the space to tell her how it would affect our relationship, right? Or is that unfair?”

“Uhh—I don’t know.” Bubby admitted awkwardly. “That sounds reasonable to me.”

“This is the only thing she’s been so strange about, I think.” Dr. Coomer continued, twirling his hair thoughtfully. “She’s always been good about communicating with everything else. It’s just...it makes me feel like that job is more important to her than me.”

Bubby felt like he was grappling at straws to figure out anything comforting to say. Instead of saying anything, he settled to stand up and tentatively reach out for his hand. He didn’t initiate contact with Dr. Coomer very often—Dr. Coomer rarely gave him the chance to—but it felt right in the moment to squeeze his hand when he couldn’t figure out what to say. Dr. Coomer looked up at Bubby with a small, exhausted smile.

“Thanks for being here, Bubby.” Dr. Coomer sighed. “I appreciate it a lot. You’re a good friend.”

“Sorry all this is happening.” Bubby said. “Do you...know what you’re going to do?”

Dr. Coomer shook his head. “No. Not yet. I suppose I have to sleep on it. So...I’m going to head back to my dorm, then.”

Bubby walked back to the dorms with Dr. Coomer, giving him a departing hug before going their separate ways. Too exhausted to do anything else after a long day of work, Bubby headed straight for bed—still, though, thoughts about Dr. Coomer’s relationship hung over him.

He’d grown a little less kneejerk resentful towards her over the years; he had to rationalize and think through his feelings less and less around her, until it became easy to just exist around the two. That was how Bubby knew his feelings of frustration weren’t inherently jealousy—Dr. Coomer stating he felt like the job was prioritized over him echoed in Bubby’s head over and over. He couldn’t imagine how Dr. Coomer would be feeling.

He wished, more than anything else, he could give Dr. Coomer better.

****

In the days that followed, Bubby tried his best to make as much time as he could for Dr. Coomer, but Black Mesa was just as understaffed as before; he spent a lot of nights overworking himself, and when he finally had the time to visit Dr. Coomer’s dorm, he was unwilling to talk about his relationship with Veronica. He seemed exhausted and thoughtful every time Bubby saw him, though—his deeply nosy nature made him wish Dr. Coomer would just spit it out, but he resisted the urge to push him on it and kept his distance.

It was a full week after that night when Bubby was sat in his dorm after a relatively short 12 hour day, eager to recuperate as much as he could before there was a knock at his door. He stood, already knowing straight away that it was Dr. Coomer from the particular rhythm he always knocked with.

“Bubby!” Dr. Coomer greeted with a smile, Bubby already stood to the side to let him in. “I’m so glad you’re home, I wasn’t sure if you’d be working late again tonight.”

“I hate how 12 hours is considered early these days for us.” Bubby griped as he moved to flop down on the couch. Dr. Coomer had stopped in front of it, though, fiddling with his fingers anxiously, so Bubby stood in front of him instead. “What brings you here tonight?”

“Well—oh, goodness, sorry, I’m nervous to ask this.” Dr. Coomer said, flapping his hands and bouncing on his heels. Bubby couldn’t quite get a read on him—he looked so conflicted. Nervous, but excited? He took a deep breath, though, stepping forward to grasp Bubby’s hands tightly in his own. “Veronica and I came to...an understanding, I suppose, after talking it out the past few days. And the other night, well—oh, I can hardly say it!”

“What, Coomer? Spit it out already.” Bubby said impatiently.

Dr. Coomer smiled. Bubby wasn’t sure what it was that made his stomach churn now—something about the way he squeezed his hands, the way he seemed uncharacteristically exhausted, not as boisterous as he might be when he was excited—but Bubby detected something strange about it all. Likely, he was just tired and overworked, Bubby thought dismissively.

Finally, Dr. Coomer wrapped Bubby up in a tight hug, lifting him off the floor and spinning him a few times. “Veronica and I are getting married!”

“Oh! Oh.” Bubby blurted out as Dr. Coomer put him down, holding him by his shoulders. “What about—I mean...the whole military thing?”

“Well, we talked about it extensively, and...I suppose she made a very compelling argument.” Dr. Coomer said, averting his eyes for a moment. “But then—I mean, I guess things moved so fast from there. She told me she didn’t want any of that to damage our relationship, and I agreed, and...well, for a number of reasons, we thought that getting married could help that significantly, so she proposed! We’re going to have the ceremony before she leaves.”

Bubby felt nauseous, struggling to do his best in looking supportive for Dr. Coomer. “Oh—well, that’s...I’m happy for you, Coomer.”

“And, Bubby...” Dr. Coomer went on, sliding his hands down Bubby’s arms to grasp his hands again. “I can’t think of anybody else in the world I’d want to be my best man.”

“Me?” Bubby asked incredulously. “I—Coomer, I can’t.”

Dr. Coomer frowned, squeezing his hands tightly. “Why not?”

“Well—I can’t leave Black Mesa.” Bubby reminded him.

Dr. Coomer nodded with a deeply hopeful look in his eyes, stepping in closer to Bubby. “Under normal circumstances, no. But we were hoping that an exception might be made for our ceremony—it is a special occasion, after all. Who would we talk to?”

Bubby frowned deeply. “Uhh...I mean, a request that big, it’d probably save a lot of time to go straight to Dr. Breen.” Bubby said thoughtfully. “I-I don’t know, though. I’ve...never been off of Black Mesa property, before. I have no idea how to be a best man, I don’t—you might be better off choosing someone else.”

“We only have a couple of weeks to plan, Bubby, it’s not going to be a complicated wedding. Mostly, I just...would like you to be there.” Dr. Coomer said gently. “There’s no harm in trying, right? Otherwise, if they say no, we can always have the wedding on Black Mesa grounds.”

Bubby couldn’t help a bitter, surprised laugh at that. “A wedding at Black Mesa? Are you sure you’d go that far just for me to be there?”

“Well, it’s not exactly postcard worthy, no, but I’d have my wedding anywhere in the world as long as we could ensure you’d be there.” Dr. Coomer insisted. “We could have a wedding in the boxing club room, just me, you, and Veronica, for all I care! It’s very, very important to me that you’re there.”

Well, there was no way Bubby could back out of that. He took in a deep breath and nodded slowly. “...Yeah. Okay. I’ll talk to Breen, then. Hopefully, it shouldn’t come to having a fucking wedding in the most miserable place on this goddamn planet.”

Dr. Coomer grinned and hugged Bubby close again. “Oh, thank you, Bubby! That means so much to me. Thank you for being so supportive.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Bubby replied, voice strained by how tightly Dr. Coomer hugged him. “It’s...the least I could do, as your best man.”

[previous | next]

[mildredjizquierdo]

Five pandemic predictions five months later. Was I right?

Looking back

In April, with the pandemic raging, lockdowns underway in the Northeast and West, and widespread panic about what the immediate future would bring, I tried to look over the horizon to see where we were heading. My 4 predictions for the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and Prediction 5: The end of immigration, distilled what I was seeing in Boston plus what I was hearing from healthcare and life sciences clients and physician and scientist friends in US hotspots and around the world. I didn’t put a timeframe on when this “next phase” would be, but with the summer behind us and a new school year getting going, now seems like a good time to take stock.

Judge for yourself, but overall I think I did well. Let’s review:

#1: Treatment, not testing will be key to reopening the economy Grade: B

I was right that testing wouldn’t be our savior, but also overestimated how quickly treatment would improve.

In April, everyone was talking about the need for millions of rapid turnaround tests to get things moving again. Other countries, like Germany and Singapore had deployed testing on a massive scale. But when I looked at what was going on in the US I was unimpressed. There were lots of announcements about capacity but little follow through.

Sadly, we’re still doing poorly. Recent estimates suggest the need for 193 million tests per day; we’re only doing 21 million. In Massachusetts (one of the leaders in testing) it’s still hard to get a test if you’re not symptomatic. Test results elsewhere can take a week or even longer, if you can get tested at all. Bill Gates recently criticized the current state of US testing: too few, too slow to return results, wrong swabs.

The absence of rapid turnaround testing at scale and weak contact tracking has hampered the ability of scientists to inform policy makers and the public about what works and what doesn’t. This failure contributed to the rapid spread of disease in early hot spots. It also fed public confusion and undermined support for guidelines, which seemed vague, random and contradictory.

Remdesivir was already showing promise in April, and non-drug adjustments such as optimization of mechanical ventilation and turning patients on their sides were being tried. Intriguing stories of cardiovascular impacts and cytokine storms were emerging. I expected we’d have a bunch of drugs and other innovations that would make COVID-19 a manageable disease by now. The death rate is down, but treatment improvements have been incremental and some early hopes fizzled. Dexamethasone, an old steroid is the only drug beyond remdesivir with widespread evidence of effectiveness.

There are new possibilities ahead. Olumiant (baricitinib) appears to help patients on remdesivir recover faster and may gain emergency approval by the time you read this. And researchers are looking at new mechanisms, such as bradykinin storms to understand how COVID-19 does its damage and how to stop it. There are several other treatments under evaluation, too.

Bottom line: fatigue, denial and surrender were bigger factors in reopening decisions than I expected. The economy still isn’t fully reopened and we may need to wait for a vaccine to move back toward normalcy.

#2: Hybridization (virtual/in-person mix) will be the new reality Grade: A+

I’m proud of this prediction. At the time I made it, the consensus was that everyone would return to the office by summer and get back to school in September. That hasn’t happened. Instead, as spaces reopen, hybrid models are emerging everywhere to reduce density and decrease risk. You see it with schools, businesses, physician offices and clinical trials. Remote work and school are still happening, but work from home is no panacea.

I expect hybridization to outlive the pandemic as individuals and organizations learn that a mix of in-person and remote is best for most activities. But patients may have to assert themselves to receive the full benefits of hybrid care, because healthcare organizations have a tendency to revert to what works for them rather than what’s most convenient and affordable for patients. Telehealth was used for almost 70 percent of total visits in April before dropping to around 20 percent in the summer. Some patient-centric leaders, such as Boston Children’s Hospital have maintained rates at close to 50 percent.

#3: Public health post-COVID-19 will be like security post-9/11 Grade: B

When I started traveling again soon after 9/11, the sudden jump in security at airports, office buildings and public spaces was staggering. In the following months and years, security became a huge industry and an obsession.

In April, I wrote:

“Now that COVID-19 has struck, we can expect public health to be similarly elevated. It will become a pervasive part of our economy and society. Expect temperature –and maybe face mask and hand washing– checks at the office, school, and any public venue.  Contact tracers may call or visit our homes or scrutinize our cellphone records. Event managers and employers will need to hire a health team and devise a health/safety plan to prevent outbreaks and provide confidence.”

I’ve certainly seen this in the private sector. For example, many private schools require daily health attestations, temperature checks, masks, outdoor eating, etc. Stores announce, “no mask, no service” policies in their windows. Some states and counties have good contact tracing programs, but unlike 9/11 there is no nationwide approach, and no Homeland Security equivalent.

As more venues reopen I expect that this trend will continue. What’s not yet clear is whether public health will receive additional funding and just how central it will be to our future. Much depends on how quickly and completely the current pandemic is brought under control, whether new health threats emerge soon, and who occupies the White House in 2021.

#4: Federal government will grow even more powerful relative to everything else Grade: A-

This prediction was paradoxical. Those I reviewed it with at the time found it novel and counter-intuitive. After all, the feds failed to prepare for the pandemic and threw everything onto the states. The CDC embarrassed itself with its testing approach and then was sidelined.

But the federal government has essentially unlimited spending power, which it used to prop up the economy with the $2+ Trillion CARES Act, and the stock market (via the Federal Reserve). Meanwhile, states had to come begging –quite literally—to the president for help, and our world-leading universities and colleges found themselves in desperate straits and unable to reopen.

In short, the federal government’s failures have weakened the rest of US society much more than the federal government itself has been weakened.

The reason I give myself an A- instead of an A is that I didn’t address what would happen relative to the rest of the world. The US federal government has lost international standing during the pandemic with its poor response. The country was rated as the most prepared for a pandemic –but botched things anyway. The withdrawal from the WHO weakened our hand, and our slow economic recovery means we’re losing ground on China and others.

#5: The end of immigration Grade: A

Crises present major opportunities for governments to enact policies they wouldn’t be able to get away with in normal times. The current Administration has made no secret of its disdain for immigration.  It had taken some dramatic steps before the pandemic, such as curtailing the H1-B program for highly skilled workers and attempting to build a wall along the Mexican border.

In April, the president tweeted his intention to suspend all immigration. That’s about as dramatic as it gets and would have drawn much more fire even a month or two earlier. But with lockdowns and travel bans throughout the world, and a virus floating in the air, it was harder to argue against. Consider some of the additional actions taken against immigration during the pandemic, including bans on asylum seekers and refugee resettlement, a ban on international students coming to the US if their classes were not in person (rescinded after pushback), and more restrictions on H-1B lottery winners.

The pandemic has also made the US a less attractive destination for would-be immigrants, even without all of the explicit actions. That won’t be reversed quickly.

What’s next?

There are big questions for the next few months and years, including:

When will vaccination make a decisive difference? This includes when vaccines are approved, how quickly and rationally they are distributed, how well they work and for how long, and what the uptake is.

What will the economy of the early 2020s look like? Will travel and leisure return? Education at all levels? Office work? What new industries will emerge?

What will be the US’s role in the world? Much of this hinges on the results of the 2020 election and its aftermath.

I’ll offer my commentary on these topics as the situation continues to unfold. Check the Health Business Blog and HealthBiz podcast for updates.

In recent months, my strategy consulting firm, Health Business Group has helped our healthcare and life sciences clients factor the implications of the pandemic into their growth and M&A strategies. Would you like to discuss your own organization’s plans and how Health Business Group can help? If so, please email me: dwilliams@healthbusinessgroup.com.

The post Five pandemic predictions five months later. Was I right? appeared first on Health Business Group.

[freechoicedreamer]

Body and Soul (Ch. 12)

AO3

Opening Theme

“Your hands, your hands, Fall upon mine as waves upon the sands. O, soft as moonlight on the evening rose, That but to moonlight will its sweet unclose, Your hands, your hands, Fall upon mine, and my hands open as That evening primrose opens when the hot hours pass. Your hands, your hands, They are like towers that in far southern lands Look at pale dawn over gloom-valley'd miles, White temple towers that gleam through mist at whiles. Your hands, your hands, With the south wind fall kissing on my brow, And all past joy and future is summed in this great 'Now!”

(John Freeman, Hands)

*

Enchanted Mountains, Arendelle

Long and strong hands were the first attributes to catch Anna and Kristoff's attention. The baby searching eyes, curiously looking at his parents, and his hair, so pale that looked like a white down covering the white skin, came later. But the hands defined Handy, whose previously chosen name, Aatami, was immediately discarded as soon as the proud and exhausted new parents -Anna's labor lasted 10 hours! - laid their eyes on the little boy.

"Feet and hands of a climber..." declares his aunt as she bends over the crib, examining the newborn and already completely in love, "...hmm, conquering look of who knows that already has me in his palm, isn't it my cute little baby?!"

"Gideon," Anna turns to her sister's husband, who was watching the scene from a distance, "you've got competition!"

"No, if we consider that I'm in love with Elsa's loving way with your son, Anna…" he confesses already totally comfortable in expressing his feelings for Elsa in front of her sister and brother-in-law.

Elsa turns to look at Gideon sideways and smiles covertly. To their innermost sphere of friends their shyness and need to preserve the aura of mystery surrounding their relationship has given way to the relaxation of a 'let it go', although both still react with a barely-disguised surprise before public demonstrations of affection coming from the other. But what is better is that, as a reaction, no one else is surprised by them. Even out of their circle, as two public figures they have truly become an item, an emblem for a consolidated couple with private life out of the spotlight - everyone understands and respects their choice. (The same discreteness does not apply for more outgoing personalities, such as Anna’s, who is only curbed by Kristoff's more down-to-earth, practical way).

The royal palace is now divided into three wings. For housing the two new families in a more independent way, each sister occupies one of the two private wings, which in practice corresponds to twin homes, while the third wing is also divided into two sectors, one for the administrative activities of the Enchanted Mountains and the other for those related to the Ministry of Adventure Tourism.

As suggested by Belle, Gideon and Elsa actually chose to keep two residences, the other in his castle - arrangement that, in practice, doesn't change much for them because both palaces are located in the same enchanted land and the time to switch from one to another literally corresponds to the time spent at the flick of a finger.

"I've heard that Jasmine and Aladdin have welcome their little baby girl less than a week ago - which means all royal babies that spent Operation B&S in their mommies' wombs have already been born," Gideon tells them, moving to sit at the armchair close to the fireplace, "and we still need heating in late April, quite impressive…" he grumbles through his teeth.

"We are in the highest mountains, Gideon," Elsa joins him, "and in the highest latitudes…"

"The latitudes could be higher, though…" Kristoff sighs sitting close to Anna.

"What do you mean?" Elsa asks intrigued, "Arendelle is on the northernmost border."

"He means there is more beyond the frontier, higher mountains, even… He means Canada, for example, just to remain close to where we are…" Anna explains.

"But then we would have to cross the magic barrier. Of course I know that the world doesn't end on the border, but I'm not used to think beyond Maine," Elsa justifies her question.

"I think that when we think on adventure we can’t think on these limits.” Anna defends hers and Kristoff’s point of view, “and we are not alone, know that there are those that refuse to be caged in.”

“I get what you mean,” Gideon nods reticent.

“You do? You mean in a literal sense or in metaphorical one?” Kristoff questions him.

“In both senses, they refer to explorers. In a metaphoric sense, those thinking about going beyond the borders are like the eyes of an imaginative child, to give you just an example. In common with those in the literal sense they aim at exploring our world and learning, each day, how much wider it is than they thought the day before. Explorers are a self-fulfiller, self-motivated, self-driven, and self-sufficient. Independence is their hallmark...”

Smiling dreamily, Anna whispers, “Kris, remind me to ask Gideon to write the flyers for Summer vacations…”

Still wondering about what Anna said before, Elsa finally asks, “Anna, what do you mean by not being alone - am I sensing a new rebellion being forged?”

“Of course not,” Anna responds while accommodating the baby on her lap to breastfeed him. “I was referring to a recurring topic of conversations in taverns, restaurants, family reunions, especially since the shelter gatherings. During Operation B&S people talked a lot, being confined as they were, you know?"

"You mean… Operation B&S awakened the seeker?" Elsa asks.

"More than that, sis. During Operation B&S Kristoff and I ran a research in some shelters with two groups of adults: Younger and between 30 to 40. You didn't see it because you spent a lot of time at a kids' shelter... Anyway, compiling the answers we came to the conclusion that among us there are more wanderers, pilgrims and iconoclasts than we imagined - which is good for the Ministry. Borrowing Gideon's term, we identified a lot of explorers, people seeking to escape the confines of their average life by traveling the world or exploring its many mysteries."

"That's interesting… and to think you haven't sampled the two segments with the highest concentration of explorers: kids and teens. Anyway, better not explore this subject too much. Transposing the borders could have unpredictable consequences, there are plenty of places to explore within the Realms, so many that would take many lifetimes to explore them all…" Gideon reasons.

"Sure," Kristoff intervenes, "Anna's concern is with conformity - it reminds me how we, when children, loved to learn about the world. But don't worry, we are all good, no rebellion in sight… With Handy and within the realms we already have a lot of fun in the horizon. After the many events - fairs, festivals and tournaments - among many other tourism activities planned for this Summer, our next achievable goal is to activate the underground canals' maze for guided tours, perhaps this Autumn…"

"Wait a minute," Elsa cuts him, "but the maze... how to cross it without magic runes?"

"Well, good thing the Trolls are our friends, isn't it?" Kristoff winks, "we promised them to not include the Valley of the Living Rock in any tour package, in other words, to leave them in peace and alone, and in exchange they have drawn a few sketches of the maze. Grand Pabbie, Bulda, Cliff, Little Rock, and Goth - all of them are helping."

"The only thing holding back the project is the restoration of Wish Rumple's Castle. It's progressing slowly but we understand that its cleaning is complex and involves more than healing a build. As you know, Archie and Wish Regina are using the restoration as a recovery treatment for both Felixes and that requires another timing." Anna remembers. "Once the castle is ready, which I suppose will happen by autumn-winter, we'll be able to open the first United Realms Ski Resort. If it wasn't for Handy I'd be anxious, but now I'm not in such a hurry, every minute of this cuddly is precious and I want to enjoy it intensely," she says, looking tenderly at the baby breast feeding on her...

Enchanted Mountains, Wish Rumple's Castle

After its last residents, the old castle was left in ruins metaphorically comparable to the mental tissue deterioration of the newest pair of wish-nonwish twins. One of them, actually, ended up earning a new chance for living on Earth but in common both were lacking in emotional stability and life purpose. For this reason, Archie and Wish Regina, working together to socially reintegrate the two men - two adults too far away from their Lost Boys time, decided to develop for them a special rehabilitation program. This way, Felix and Wish Felix were enlisted as constructor apprentices in the Wish Rumple's Castle Restoration Project.

"They'll need many years of therapy," Archie diagnosed, but in order for them to become socially integrated, the participation in this project will give them a feeling of being useful, it will be good for their self-esteem, among other more audacious goals I hope they manage to achieve. But make no mistake, we are dealing with two cases of deep trauma."

"Luckily, the first steps have already been overcome," Archie continued to explain to those deciding over the guys' fate, "I mean, for their real therapy to begin they had to start walking the right path: both have already admitted that for them it is no longer a matter of blaming the father and mother figures standing in their way, as they used to do as Lost Boys - it is on them, the blame. Even this realization, helpful as it is, somehow is still a bit negative because it simply states that they realize that their parents are not against them, they are."

"I'm not sure if I got what you're saying. Who/what inner part is against them?" Killian questioned. "Is there a hidden part of their personality under the father and mother images making them believe for years that the cause of most of their trouble might somehow have got into them from outside?"

"Before answering this question, let's remember that we are dealing with two traumas interconnected. Besides the father-mother issue, cultivated for centuries in both Neverlands by each Felix -  I'm naming it 'the Lost Boy Trauma', there is another equally (perhaps even more) important part: their unresolved sexuality. Despite their loyalty to their lovers' evilness, the misdirection of their sexual energy, the unhealthy development of their libido in an abusive and secret relationship never allowed to come out in the open and, which is worse, their true love and devotion, all of that ended up in betrayal, abandonment and feelings of hatred and sexual rejection. So, basically, in a second pack, there is the 'Pan/Malcom Trauma'. While Pan can be seen as Malcom's pedophile side disguised as a boy, each Felix must be seen only as Felix, they went to Neverland during their adolescence, not as a perverted adult reverted to a boy's age. That said, Killian, to answer your question, their inner hidden part fighting against them is the counterpart of their conscious attitude. The unconscious side will leave them no peace and will continue to plague them until it has been accepted. If they were younger a liberation from the past could be enough and a beckoning future would naturally stand ahead rich in possibilities, it would be then sufficient to break a few bonds and the life-urge would do the rest. But in Felixes' cases, they are not really as "young" as their bodies seem to be, the challenges are complex, the stakes are higher."

"In this case, what will be your approach for treating them, Archie?" Key asked.

"I'll illustrate with a metaphor, Key: the butterfly's metamorphosis, this is what I plan to explore during the treatment - a transformational process that might need to be extended over a considerable period of time, during which both Felixes will find themselves living in the very foundations of a world under construction. So, in this sense, I plan to get them involved in the process of restoration of the castle as a metaphor for the life-changing transformation they have to face, a massive reorganization of attitude, behavior, and sense of meaning similar to the massive reorganization of the chaos left by the Pans and Cruellas. Being there, working with their hands in the cleaning and reorganization of the rooms, helping to transform it into a Ski Resort, will trigger their singular encounter with a transformative image after transforming their major life traumas. The castle restoration will take months but for them their own metamorphosis, or transformation, will probably take years to become complete. When there is such a major passage, one can think in terms of the passing over (meta, trans) from one form (morph, form) to another."

...

Wish Regina is now married to Liam Senior, who decided to remain in land with her and Roland (though sometimes the young man visits his father and Regina and stays for a while with them). Besides their work on the Social Welfare Ministry, Liam and Wish Regina run, nearby their Enchanted Seashore house, a restaurant, The Sentinel, and a small hostel which is frequently the in-land home of the Nautilus' crew. Within her duties as Minister, once a week W. Regina travels to W. Rumple's castle taking Tink, W. Tink and the two Felixes with her. They are left there during the five working days, together with architects, bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers, electricians and painters, working on restoring the castle - left in ruins by the Pans and Cruellas - and creating a completely new place. During the weekends they return to Storybrooke and remain in a Detoxing Clinic.

Under the  supervision of the two Fairies, their old acquaintances from both Neverlands, the ex-lovers of Pan and Wish Pan are responsible for cleaning the aura of the old castle, which is done through meditation exercises. For that, by acting on their own aura, cleaning the energy field that covers their entire bodies and protecting their spirits from the energies that surround them, they become energy generators producing purifying fields for the environment. This way, their  psychic irradiation acts to clean the castle aura. The principle the Fairies use is a combination of mindfulness and meditation applied through simple exercises based on three techniques that greatly help to eliminate negative energies: 1) absorbing sunshine; 2) purifying energies through the crystal clear water of the underground rivers; and 3) just lying in a comfortable place where they can have time for themselves, without being disturbed, to empty their minds and relax their bodies.

In the beginning, only the two Felixes and the two Tinks took part of the exercises but soon the others joined their sessions, usually happening early in the morning, at noon and in the evening. With such a good camaraderie being established, Felix started to help the carpenters and Wish Felix, the  painters (the fairies opted to work on the kitchen). These new developments have already showed the first signs of their past traumas' healing.

...

The Felix case rekindled the debates over the activation of the Ministry of Justice - which had been set up with the other ministries but the post had not yet been occupied. Regina, since Robin's return, has been completely refreshed and enthusiastic about the UR activities, and although accumulating the Justice post, she was the first to suggest that a new minister should be appointed. Some names were thought of, but all opinions converged when someone mentioned the name of Emma Swan-Jones…

For Emma, more than a Poetic Justice, the nomination was the crowning of a life trajectory, of a heroic journey marked by being a product of True Love in an unique configuration, back to old times at the Enchanted Forest. Above all, more than a tale written by the Fates, everybody agreed that she would be a natural in managing matters pertinent to the judiciary, police, maintenance and defense of human rights. Besides, having her beloved Captain by her side, leading the intelligence bureau of all realms, would be the icing on the cake.

By her turn, on numerous occasions Emma had already assisted Wish Regina at the Social Welfare Ministry, especially in the project most dear to her - Childhood & Adolescence, but she was somewhat reluctant to accept the invitation for a major ministerial role. Eventually she decided in favor of it once a few conditions were fulfilled satisfactorily. For that, Cruella's house was finally given a purpose after the clones were removed from it. Emma and Killian's goal was to remain in Storybrooke, close to their relatives and to the sea, and that was made possible when the Justice Ministry started to operate in the old mansion after another restoration project was carried out on it. The energy cleansing process adopted was similar to the one being performed at Wish Rumple's Castle - an Astral Healing Operation, but to a lesser extent given the different scales of the two buildings.

All in all, six and a half months after Operation B&S, everyone is starting to rationalize with their minds what has already been felt by their hearts: the astral field is cleaner now and a new energetic balance is gradually being achieved in the Upperworld Realms...

Olympus, Persephone's Garden

In the past, Persephone had a garden of ever blooming flowers in the Underworld but that changed after Hades' descent into madness and villainy - nothing else could flourish there. For Persephone, however, with the half-yearly change of scenery, a garden at Olympus would always bloom and produce her favorite fruit, pomegranate, upon her return to the Upperworld in spring.

The pomegranate is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub fruit that has been used throughout history and in virtually every religion as a symbol of humanity’s central beliefs and ideals, namely, life and death, rebirth and eternal life, fertility and marriage, and abundance. For the goddess, it features prominently in the story of her marriage to Hades. Hades kidnapped Persephone and took her to the Underworld to be his wife. Persephone’s mother, Demeter, goddess of fertility, considering her daughter lost, went into mourning and thus all things on earth ceased to grow. Zeus, Persephone’s father, commanded his brother Hades to release her, however Hades had tricked her into eating six pomegranate seeds, and it was a Fate's rule, later repealed, that anyone who consumed food or drink in the Underworld was doomed to spend eternity there. Since Persephone had eaten the six pomegranate seeds, she had to remain in the Underworld for six months of the year. Hades agreed to release her to the world above for the other six months of the year, to be reunited with her mother.  

...

For the gods, after the normalization of Nectar and Ambrosia production, the experience of being mortal became just a memory. But an unforgettable one, forever altering the way they view life and death. Apart from long philosophical discussions, however, in practice the cycles of seasons continue to follow, and with them, the time for Persephone's return to Olympus after the long winter.

Walking with her mother, Demeter, in their exuberant garden, Persephone reviews the events of the last period spent in the Underworld, probably the most intense and original of her entire existence.

“So far the total rebel souls count has surpassed 150,000, a surprising number. Arthur still suspects that there are some runaway souls hiding in the dry woods around Underbrooke, but no one to be found at the basements and sewers anymore. The rebellion leaders who refused to undergo a recovery program have returned to Tartarus and are now sharing the best-kept Titans' sector. I believe some of those who opted to cooperate can still be regenerated, such as Facilier, Tamara, Greg and a few others who showed signs of a slight regret - and you know that under my sight there is no way for them to fake a regret. By reading their aura I know that, ultimately, they all have as a goal drinking from the waters of Lethe to benefit from forgetfulness and to return for the reincarnation cycle. But their fates have yet to be revealed, they will be submitted to a new judgment and their new punishment will be defined. I’m advocating that there is no meaning in punishing if not for recovering but we will have to wait and see how the divine principle of Justice will be applied…”

“Remember that in some cases there is no return, my dear… By the way, what about Wish Rumple and Nimue? Despite the very serious crimes that weigh on them, without their help our victory would have been much more complex… ” Demeter asks.

“They are hibernating, especially Nimue, she hibernates 100% of the time. Merlin went down to the Underworld, accompanied by his friend Ingrid, and they worked with Nimue's soul for several days, applying passes on her, and helped Arthur and me to set up a gradual recovery program for her, in principle for lasting almost a century. Something different from what is being applied to James Nolan, because his case is quite simpler, his soul was not so corrupted. Similarly, for Wish Rumple, Wish Belle also worked with us to define a special recovery program for him. In his case, without the need of a prolonged hibernation. He voluntarily asked to gradually replace this therapy by a work assisting Arthur after Wish Belle moves to Elysium - which is about to happen. Another of his requests was to be part of the string quartet. As I’m not there, he has already started playing, but his instrument will change after Belle leaves. I've watched only one performance but the results on his aura cleaning were encouraging.”

“Hmm, that's interesting... We could use guardian flowers to accelerate Nimue and W. Rumple’s healing processes, they could be kept by Merlin and W. Belle, their true loves: a poetic outcome in the fate of the first and the last Dark Ones...” Demeter suggests.

“What a great idea! The flowers must be Red Rose, for Rumple, and Mistletoe, for Nimue, like this!” and with a gesture, Persephone produces two crystal cylindrical domes with the flowers in them. “We just need to give them to Merlin and W. Belle. For as long as they preserve their vitality and bright, there will be hope for Nimue and Rumple’s redemption.”

“Why not go down there now and give both to Belle? She can take them with her when she moves on. And I could go with you, you know, get to know more closely the Human that has stolen my daughter’s heart….” she winks.

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“Don’t deny, Persephone, it is too evident. You are in love with Arthur and that is great, I’m happy for you. You needed a King to reign with you…”

“Right…” she smiles timidly, “I confess, he really is a special man. But ours is an impossible love, Mother, he is more than mortal, he is dead man, I mean, he doesn’t have a physical body, which makes things more complicated for us.”

“Not for Zeus, you know, I have talked to him and he has agreed: if Arthur agrees he can be resurrected in a similar way as Killian Jones was. From that, if he drinks the Nectar, in a similar way as what happened to Psyche - remember her story with Eros? Well, then, if he agrees in drinking the Nectar he will be one of us, a God, the new King of the Underworld. He will reign alone when you, the Underworld Queen, come to the Upperworld during spring-summer, and he will stay with you, down there, during autumn-winter.”

“Oh, Mother!” she closes her eyes dreamily, “that would be a dream come true, a really good dream! Arthur is nothing like Hades, he is a loyal and righteous soul. Although he made a very compromising mistake in Camelot, he was the first victim of it, a consequence of Merlin's prophecy misinterpretation. He paid with his life for all his crimes and has given successive proofs of a brilliant, selfless intelligence. Not to mention that to my eyes at least he is a very handsome man and... by the way he looks at me, it seems that my feelings are reciprocated. Oh, Mother, I can't believe I've been given a chance to love and be loved again, to find physical pleasure with a god, again... " she sighs with her eyes closed, anticipating the hours of endless love and passion beside the future god. "You and my Father really made this Spring a special one for me, thank you so much!”

“I'm glad to hear you saying that, your happiness is well deserved - and I'm glad that this time, hopefully, shared with a god worthy of your love, Persephone. You have been a good queen but too lonely… So, let’s visit my future son in law, your King Arthur, and soon he will be the one feeling good. Actually, if he agrees - as I’m sure he will, he will be the one feeling god!" Demeter grins at her pun. "You know, my divine intuition is telling me that soon you will have back your garden down there: with the return of music and yours and Arthur's blossoming love I’m sure that soon the flowers will be back to Underbrooke, in a similar way as hope returned when Killian resurrected and Arthur decided to stay there. His resolution triggered the restoration of a broken kingdom, thus marking the definite end of Hades' era - Arthur being rewarded with immortality is not a favor, my dear, but an act of Justice."

Enchanted Sea, Nautilus

"Ursula, more than six months have passed and you haven't started drinking Ambrosia's Nectar yet... always with some excuse not to go to Olympus. Triton told me that he started drinking months ago..." Nemo again tries to understand Ursula's motivation for her Nectar's abstinence, trying to make her open up to him. This time, in response Ursula shrugs, smiles a mischievous smile, and finally offers him the first concrete answer about her motives: "I'll drink again if you agree to drink with me..."

Her response catches the Captain by surprise and his reaction is a plopped look, a parted mouth but no sound and, finally, a piercing look into her eyes. Before he outlines another reaction, however, W. Ariel and Junior knock at the door and announce that the last crossing point has just been unlocked during the little mermaid dive. With that, they all head to the main room for joining Harris, Martin and their guests, not without Nemo finally managing to whisper, back to Ursula, "this conversation isn’t over yet!"

...

Renewed and grateful for the new chance of a life on earth, Lieutenant Martin and Lieutenant Harris, in an eternal honeymoon, rejoined the Nautilus' crew and, for this dive into southern waters still within twenty thousand leagues boundary, they invited three new friends from their Underworld experience: Franz, from Arendelle, Theodora, from Oz, and Jefferson Hatter, accompanied by his daughter Grace. In addition to the entertainment tour for the guests, the expedition fulfills the mission of unlocking the remaining crossing points on the seabed gridline - those on Earth have already been unlocked and the telluric energies are back to flow freely.

…

Sit at a lunch table, they celebrate their mission ending while still retelling their vivid reminiscences of the Underworld. Always eloquent, Jefferson is one of the most talkative, especially when asked about his latest great adventure. “I spent a great deal of my long existence traveling between realms, crossing portals to other dimensions… I knew lands without color - just black, white and shades of gray; I explored alternate enchanted forests, distant realms, wonderlands and enchanted deserts, many of them running under different paces, but nothing prepared me for the Underworld. I couldn't say it was, in the strict sense, a bad trip, because we were received as warmly as possible given the circumstances, but the feeling of death can only be understood by those who felt and remember it!!”

“What about the Land without Magic, Papa? You never told me much about it...” Grace asks, moving to a less somber subject.

“That’s because I’ve only been there briefly, my dear. During the first curse I confess that I was tempted to move there, because being the only Storybrooke’s citizen keeping the Enchanted Forest memory, the only one who did not forget the real identity, besides Regina, was the true experience of madness. People often refer to me as the Mad Hatter, but the real madness has always been my extreme lucidity - the rest is eccentricity and legend. But then I never wanted to cross the border because I didn't want to forget you, Grace. Although the pain of being able to see you, knowing who you were, but not being recognized by you was almost unbearable, I didn't want to lose you. Later, after the first curse was broken it became possible to leave without losing my memory and I got away with it. I loved New York even though I wouldn't want to live there. But all the cosmopolitan buzz, the mix of peoples and cultures make it a city that cannot be considered without magic. Unfortunately, its problem is being in a very sick world, a very sick society. I admit that my analysis is too simplistic, but definitely their economic, political and social systems turn their world a sick land. I do not know if there is, on the whole planet within the dimension of the Land without Magic, any society or political or economic system that escapes this sickness. As a society we also have a lot of problems but nothing comparable to their reality. The United Realms creation, as a concept, is fantastic but no one can predict the long term consequences of bringing us together without portals to cross - the only outside world for us now is the Land without Magic, reachable by crossing enchanted border lines. For adventurers minds like mine crossing the UR border will be tempting, mainly for younger, explorer minds since the older ones tend to be more conservative and less curious. Besides, as we do access their world through the electromagnetic waves, we know what is going on there, though they don't access our encrypted signals - yet; we know them and their struggles but they don't know us. We know how badly they treat the planet..."

“I know that the oceans suffer a lot because of the people who inhabit the Land without Magic," W. Ariel comments. "I communicate with many sea inhabitants and they use to describe the atrocities they are subjected to: predatory hunting with institution of destruction, the greed of seabed exploration for oil extraction, nuclear tests, contamination of waters by chemical, radioactive and industrialized waste - tons of plastic waste; there are various endangered species out there... it's very sad what they tell me when they can cross the barriers that separate the Enchanted Sea from the other Oceans."

“Their armament industry forces them to live in a permanent war…” Ursula adds. “I lived there, I know quite a bit about what Jefferson said, he is absolutely right. You know, sometimes I wonder if the world would accept and respect our existence... we could help them in that case.”

“They are not prepared for accepting that those whom they classify as fictional characters are in fact real people,” Theodora explains. “I know that there have been attempts, in the past, of people from our realms who tried to explain that to them - all ended up treated as crazy people and died in an asylum.”

“I guess they would accept more easily the existence of outer space Aliens than ours!” Junior jokes.

“Even so,” Nemo ponders, “my adventurous, explorer spirit insists that there must be a way to cross the borders undetected and, once there, work anonymously and unknowingly to at least protect the natural resources of the planet - as citizens of the planet we are connected to them - if they destroy Mother Nature, they destroy themselves and ourselves!”

“Has anyone discussed the possibility of unifying the United Realms with the Land without Magic?” Franz wonders.

“That would be too problematic, Franz,” Nemo responds. “We would be seen as part of Maine, the US government wouldn't respect our independence and would want us to be subject to their command, under their taxes, laws, currency and state government’s policies. And which is worse, considering their belic industry and geopolitical/military interests, they would want to explore and use our Magic and our unique Science as a weapon - not to mention that other people would want to proclaim their cultural property to reclaim some of our kingdoms. But as we really are One, what happens in there directly or indirectly affects us. That's particularly true now. You see, we could help them during this pandemic crisis much more extensively if we weren't oblied to work anonymously.”

“We got to befriend the Shamans and their tribes,” Grace reminds them, “there is hope…”

“That is meaningful, it really is.” Franz tells Grace. “But I’ve been told by those who got to talk with the Shamans, during the Victory Celebrations, that most of their people have been decimated and their culture has been disrespected for centuries, now. They are the real Native people of the American territory, in other words the original inhabitants of the United Realms territory. Perhaps if it were for them, only, the border could be deactivated without problem. But let's face reality, we should take their experience as a reference and be prepared to defend our lifestyle and culture. From what I understood, if we opened our borders we could become an exploited freak, something like an exotic attraction. Their dominant system - capitalism, isn't it? - would see us as an absurdly great source of wealth and exploitation. That would be our end," he continues reasoning. “But I get your point, Grace, knowing that they are destroying and polluting our shared home, Mother Earth, and being here doing nothing is quite disturbing…”

“Franz is right,” Nemo agrees. “For capitalism, we would be seen as a source of profit, of power, only. Our mystical existence would be unexplainable for them. Our elements of mystery if not explorable for profit or domination could be seen as a threat to their lifestyle and religious systems, which, it seems, may enrich the understanding but rob the imagination… As for us, we use to divide the world not into different groups of objects but into different groups of connections and, based on that, my only hope of a better rapport with them comes exactly from their Modern Science and their Ancient Cultures, such as the Shamans’ - both get closer to our approach. For modern Physics, the world appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine and thereby determine the texture of the whole. I could discuss our principles and mysteries with scientists but not with politicians and economists…”

“You are referring to Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy, isn’t it? I read about it during the 28 years of cursed Storybrooke…” Jefferson asks. "The so-called uncertainty principle..."

“Exactly,” Nemo confirms. “Heisenberg was a congenial fellow, he emphasized that the view of nature as an object out there was quite illusory, he demonstrated that the subject was always part of the equation, that an inexorable reciprocity between subject and object existed such that the very act of observation changed irreparably what was being observed - unknowingly, he enunciated one of the principles of Magic!! That is also one of the most important paradigms of Psychology, a fundamental paradox of existence inherited precisely in the fact that the human being is both subject and object at once.”

“They would want to rob our Nectar of Ambrosia, again…” Ursula mumbles.

“Oh, that reminds me that Ursula and I have an important issue to discuss, privately. So, if you'll excuse us, my friends, you should continue the conversation without us for now. Shall we go to our quarters, Ursula, please?” Nemo addresses her, already standing up.

…

Closing their quarters door and sitting close to Ursula, Nemo turns to her, holding her hand, “Very well, Ursula… Immortality. Is that what you are offering me?”

“Yeah…” she answers timidly. “That, or the other way around, I mean, mortality for me. I can't handle any other alternative very well. I either become a mortal and follow the timeline with you, or bring you with me to the immortality line. There is no other alternative to my equation, Nemo. I wouldn't know, wouldn't resist, and wouldn't want to be eternal away from you. I have already talked to my father and Zeus, among the gods they are of the few with authority and power to allow a mortal to become immortal. They recently opened an exception for Arthur, in the Underworld, not only to resurrect him but also to make him immortal, and they will say yes to you if you agree. The final decision is yours, you are free to choose."

“I choose you, my love, my eternal love…” he closes the gap between them, caressing her arms up and down to hug her tightly, holding her chin, stroking her ear and opening his lips to kiss her soft lips as they start a sensual dance of passionate tongues as skilled and wet as the tentacles of an octopus and a nautilus curling up and merging into One in a mating ritual.

Elysium, Islands of the Blessed

Belle's farewell was gentle, full of promises and hope when she and Rumple consummated their love the day before her departure.

“Rumple, trust our love, always be guided by it, know that through our Rose, I will be always taking care of you and protecting you. Please remember, keep in your heart that ancient Greek inscription we so often read together, as the mark of our everlasting love: Time is a child - playing like a child - playing on a chessboard - the realm of the child. It is Telesphorus, who errs through the dark regions of the cosmos and shines like a star rising from the depths. It points the way to the gates of the sun and dreamland…”

“I remember,” Rumple whispers caressing her tenderly, “when we sit in our castle to read about Telesphorus, whom in Greek mythology symbolizes convalescence, the period following an illness. Perhaps, one day, if you go to Mount Olympus, you will meet him. He is the son of Asclepius, the chief god of medicine.”

“Yeah, I’ll remember that… Do you know, Rumple, why I liked so much this passage? I never told you, I guess. That is because the "disease", of which Telesphorus announces convalescence through its small lantern, is the moment of complete immersion in the unconscious, in the darkness of absolute nothingness, referred to in the Greek text as dark regions of the cosmos."

Nodding, Rumple smiles and then asks, “and have I told you before why I liked this representation of Time?” As she shakes her head, he continues, “normally time is represented by the figure of death, a sinister skull with a scythe in its hand, but here it is represented by a figure of a child: playing, illuminating our paths through the infinite sky's darkness. It is also a representation of the Self, our real being, when we finally recognize it. Telesphorus represents the time when light is rescued, he is the discrimination, the right direction during darkening situations. He is the Time at the center of consciousness.”

The tears fall as Belle closes her eyes to absorb Rumple’s words. Reopening them, she looks into his eyes. “My love, the images of time, as the skull that carries the scythe or as the child that brings the light, they refer to two types of time experience that you and I will undergo from now on. The first speaks of the linear time to which your next flesh, after your stage in Underbrooke, will be subjected, easily perceived by the external transformations manifested by the body design and the environment around it. It will be marked by birth, life, and death and is related to the causal form of thought, beginning, middle, and end. They are like deaths and rebirths. This is Kronos, which represents time related to death, a time that consumes itself. Our Love lives in Kayros, a nonlinear time. It represents those moments that transcend the limitations imposed by the fear of death in a second as vast as the infinite space. Please remember, Rumple, Kayros, in Greek, means the right time. In Latin, it corresponds to momentum, the moment that leaves a strong and unique impression throughout life without the weight of past burdens and the anxiety about the future.”

“I see…” Rumple nods barely managing to speak, also with teary eyes.

...

“I love you, ma Belle de Jour, my eternal Belle! Meet me in our Kayros, I'll be there... part of me will be always there, waiting for the Right Time when we will be together again...” Rumple waves as she slowly climbs the stairs to the Upperworld taking with her the two crystal domes with the two flowers, the symbols of Hope and Eternal Love.

…

Wish Belle died without a proper funeral ceremony - her remains were abandoned in a cell where they decomposed. Nonetheless, she was loved - much loved by everyone who knew her and it was this love that allowed her soul to have the direction it had in Underbrooke. Finally managing to steer her Unfinished Business to a good outcome, Wish Belle braced herself for the big and definite shift in her existence: the Champs Elysee. She arrives in the Islands of the Blessed through a portal that took her soul to cross her twin’s place of burial, as a kind of ritual of passage to absorb a proper burial, and is met by two friends who recently have been in the Underworld with her: Merlin and Ingrid.

“Welcome,” Ingrid tells her, extending her arms.

“Hello, Belle, welcome to your new home,” Merlin smiles, receiving the dome with Nimue’s flower and looking at it absently.

“Follow me,” Ingrid brings them both back to the present. “There is a reception party waiting for you, my dear, you will soon realize how much we enjoy a good socializing meeting with good talk, dancing, delicious meals, lots of music and peace. Above all, Belle, a lot of peace. This does not mean that we do not care about those who have not yet reached this state of mind, on the contrary. Even in the face of the pain and suffering of others, it is the serenity of our spirit that points to the paths and to the reasons why so much sadness still affects our beloved humans incarnated on Earth or in lower layers of the Underworld. Come, Belle, between us we don't have to use the prefix "wish" to distinguish ourselves, we just know who we are.”

…

Wish Belle is living with the two Baelfires, now that Milah has moved to Liam’s ship, where he already lived with Alice. Sometimes she visits her twin and brother in law, usually to borrow a new book, which she reads out loud in front of her Rose, imagining she is reading to her Rumple. Her sister took from Olympus a free pass to the Olympian Library and she is sure to have enough lecture for all eternity - both Belles don’t complain. The 'Tiltskin brothers are the best companions she could have asked for, always good humored, always gentle, always ready to talk and to day dream. They love to spend hours painting or hearing their neighbor, Aesop, narrating/creating new fables in the house he shares with Marian.

Ingrid, living with her sisters and brother in law, sometimes visits Merlin, joining Rumple, who also loves to visit the Wizard and his Apprentice, Jack, in a lab where they run experiments, discuss spells or simply talk about Life, Love, and Eternity.

Fergus and Farah, with Midas, Wish Midas and their wives share a common hobby: Midas received from the gods a wide screen similar to the Charmings', but in their case, instead of watching real life people, they prefer to marathon watching movies and series produced on the LWM.

In contrast to Midas' cine club,  Aunt Em, Ruth and Wish Ruth, being the Charming’s neighbors, are usually at their house watching their beloved ones, vibrating for them, feeling good with them...

Enchanted Sea, the Jolly Rogers

At the end of July, to celebrate the twins' third month and the first anniversary of the Sweet Suite, the much-dreamed and planned trip on the two Jolly Rogers finally became true. On a sunny Tuesday morning, the crew and passengers of the two ships departed from Storybrooke heading south, reproducing the original journey of Key and his four mates until their arrival on Heart-Shaped Island.

The preparations for the trip ran in parallel to a ministerial reform initiated with David's request to leave the Defense Ministry and to occupy the Agriculture Ministry, instead. What followed was a concatenation of changes leading to a brand new configuration. The renewed setup began to be outlined when Robin Hood assumed the Prime Minister position and soon after that several ministerial posts - previously created but not yet occupied - gained their holders, new offices and staff. As a whole, it was decided that each Ministry would have two holders to provide a better balance for them to conciliate their professional duties with their private lives.

This way, after David’s move, Emma requested Killian's release for working at the Ministry of Justice as head of the new Intelligence Bureau. Key, in turn, asked to share his time between Storybrooke Police Department and Emm's newly occupied Ministry of Art & Culture. As a leading specialist in computer science, Key naturally needed a higher freedom degree because he gradually became a consultant for all ministries but his goal is to dedicate, at least part-time, to fine arts, especially painting, and to maritime navigation - a dream shared with Killian. Besides, with his move he intended to free his wife for a part-time job thus allowing her to take care of the babies during their first year.

In the Magic Ministry Gideon gained Zelena's support after she and Chad settled back on her farm, previously occupied by Robyn and Alice. With the magic connection between the ranch and their Portland house, Zelena and Chad can better reconcile life on both worlds. Robyn and Alice, by their turn, are the newest occupants of the Loft in downtown Storybrooke.

Henry Mills joined Snow in the Education Ministry, while Chynna, besides majoring in  Psychology, took over the Communication Ministry with Sydney (her father joined Nemo in the Ministry of Science & Technology). Lily and Phileas Fog assumed the Transport Ministry in coordination with the activities ran by Aladdin and Eric at the Ministry of Industry & Trade whilst Lancelot and Naveen moved to the Defense Ministry. The complete setup diagram was emailed by Chynna to Robin a few minutes after boarding the ships and its printed version went hand in hand.

"It looks great," Snow summed it up and concluded with her characteristic optimism: “This diagram confirms that we are not leaving any critical issue behind. We are free to completely relax and indulge ourselves on the cruise to Heart Island. All aboard, settled down, great weather, two ships lined up and ready to set sail!”

Differently from the original 4-sailor team, the cruise required a bigger crew which then resulted in 6 people for each ship under the two captains Jones command. The passengers include, in addition to those connected to the original Sweet Suite events: Kristoff, Anna and Handy (their baby boy), Eric, Ariel, Anastasia, Drizella, Moe, Jack and Johanna. The other passengers are: Killian, Emma, Hope, Key, Emm, Jason, Dylan, Henry, Cindy, Lucy, W. Henry, Violet, Alice, Robyn, David, Snow, Neal, Gideon, Elsa, Robin, Regina, Roland, S. Regina, W. Robin, Coralline, W. Regina, Liam Sr, W. Ariel, Liam Jr, Ursula, Nemo, Brennan, Gepetto, August, W. Pinocchio, W. Granny, Granny, Merida, Mulan, Red, Dorothy, W. Red, W. Mulan, Tiana, Naveen, Zelena, Chad, Aladdin, Jasmine and Farah (their baby girl) - a total of 72 people, 36 on each ship: full capacity without compromising their quarters comfort.

And there they go!

...

The days have followed with tranquility: warm with a refreshing breeze blowing over the sails, propelling the vessels like two ships floating in clear days and starry nights. The passage of time has been marked by the Sweet Suite songs, played in the same order as they were originally sung and played. One of the ships, however, has been kept quieter: Key's, as the four babies are traveling on it - Jason, Dylan, Handy and Farah, four new forces of nature preparing to shine in the world. Meanwhile, on the other ship, with everyone already with their own brightness dawned, there hasn't been any restrictions for a noisier radiation of joy and promise of life.

Seen from a distance the cruise resembles perfection, but at a close inspection Snow's wish hasn't been exactly fulfilled - blame on the Internet. Although trying, they haven't been completely disconnected from the world, especially from constant threats of global pandemic and ecological imbalances reported in the news arriving from the Land without Magic, which they follow concerned.

Despite of that the Enchanted Sea and the enchanted ships, working their magic, have managed to provide a well-deserved vacation to all, entitled to a stop on Carnation Island for a heavenly feast prepared by Poseidon and Triton, who were waiting for them. Inspired by the events on the island a year ago, Ursula proposes that they rehearse a new musical number in addition to the one performed for the Sweet Suite. The result, in the end, may not have been as magical as before, but will surely be remembered as one of the most relaxing and funny moments of their cruise.

...

Another day comes and goes and, finally, they reach it: Heart-shaped Island, bringing up to every one - each in their own private universe that collectively built the Sweet Suite a year ago, a lot of memories and emotions, a lot of voices in the sound of the waves, voices of the sea, voices speaking to the travelers disembarking from the two ships in a state of wonder but, if they stop to listen, shut up, for listening too: fortunate, enchanted hearty island, land where Love lives waiting for walkers as they wake up from a dream and face Real Life, where there's only sentiment, where there's only the sea.

“So beautiful…” Emm extends her arms with teary eyes clouded by images and sounds reverberating in her heart: magic music... magic mirror and, oh! sweet memory... Luna and Missy... “I miss them…” she whispers to Key and Emma, who walks close to them, hand in hand with Hope.

“They are here, Aunt Emm,” Hope comforts Emm, caressing her hands and pointing to the sky, “see those two shinning birds flying over there? They are Luna and Missy sending their love!!!”

…

The Beatles song sounds far away, mingling in the air with the happy laughs and screams of children - who today don't want to be treated like pre-teens or teens. Even the adults, seen at close range, have allowed the kid they kept in their chests to run free on the beach. At the extremes, all in all, old and young find themselves communing with the magic of the Island.

"Here comes the sun king Everybody is laughing Everybody is happy Here comes the sun king...

Quando paramucho mi amore de felice corazón Mundo paparazzi mi amore chicka ferdy parasol Cuesto obrigado tanta mucho que canite carousel..."

In this scenario, Emm and Key - she with Jason, the ever more contemplative, on her lap, he carrying the most alert, Dylan - are walking the heart path, the island edge.

"Still beautiful and welcoming," Emm smiles with nostalgia.

"Would you like to come back, love?"

"Maybe, on summer holidays or special occasions... we could build a few summer houses and come with Killian, Emma and Hope, perhaps, Robyn & Alice and Henry & Violet, and..." she grins shaking her head,  "not too many or it would become too crowded..."

"Three houses would be perfect, love, they could be 3-bedroom cottages. Killian, Emma and I were talking to Anna and Kristoff about that, you know, nearly 30 minutes ago. We are thinking about creating a regular Tourism route - remember that it is always Summer-like here - but for that we'd have to build a small dock, for the Jolly Rogers, and 3 cottages: one at the tip of the heart, where your house used to be, and the other two in the lobes of the heart, where we made love for the second time," he grins, playing with Dylan's fingers.

Emma chuckles and continues, "it would be nice for us and the children, I can already imagine them running along these white sands, laughing happily, building castles..."

"Aye..." suddenly Key stops on his track to look into Emm's eyes, "it was here that I told you, for the first time, that I love you..."

"I love you too, Killian, and if it weren't for Jason already massaging my breasts and making my milk drip, I'd kiss you showing how much... Let's go find a shadow because these two are thirsty and so do I..."

"Sit here with the boys, Emma, under these palm trees. Don't spend your magic to bring water, I'll fill the canteen in the fountain and will be back in a minute."

...

“Emm, you lived in a paradise: a beautiful beach with warm waters, a cool breeze, crystal clear drinking water, delicious…” Zelena and Chad approach Emm, lying on the sand next to the babies, who alternate to breastfeed on her.

“Yeah, this island is really special, Zelena: magic and musical…” she smiles softly while looking at the children approaching with Alice and Henry Mills to sit next to them.

“What song would she - the island is a girl - sing to us if she could sing?” Cora asks, making funny faces at Dylan.

“We could ask her,” Hope replies and turns to Alice, “Starfish…” everyone smiles at the girl's cuteness using Alice's nickname, “you talk to the trees, so... you could ask them what song they would sing for us…”

“Sure, my cutie,” Alice replies blinking, “I'm going to the middle of the island, near the water fountain, I will concentrate to ask them and to be able to hear their answer and then I will come back to tell you…”

…

When she comes back with a big smile on her lips, everyone asks: "So, did it work?"

“Aye, the Island responded! she told me that the song she would like to dedicate to us is called Feeling Good!"

Initially the title didn't ring a bell to anyone and Key then asked his daughter if there wasn't any other hint - "nope, nada!"

“I know it!” Henry finally exclaims, “I know this song! There is a classic version with Nina Simone but I think I have a cover version on my playlist, do you want to hear it?”

“We want it!!” “Of course!” “Aye!” “Yes!” “Aye!”

"Very well, everyone," Henry prepares to press play: "here we go!"

*

[imaginaireradical]

Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs

It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.

By David Graeber

In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technology would have advanced sufficiently by century’s end that countries like Great Britain or the United States would achieve a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.

Why did Keynes’ promised utopia – still being eagerly awaited in the ‘60s – never materialise? The standard line today is that he didn’t figure in the massive increase in consumerism. Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we’ve collectively chosen the latter. This presents a nice morality tale, but even a moment’s reflection shows it can’t really be true. Yes, we have witnessed the creation of an endless variety of new jobs and industries since the ‘20s, but very few have anything to do with the production and distribution of sushi, iPhones, or fancy sneakers.

So what are these new jobs, precisely? A recent report comparing employment in the US between 1910 and 2000 gives us a clear picture (and I note, one pretty much exactly echoed in the UK). Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, “professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers” tripled, growing “from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.” In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away (even if you count industrial workers globally, including the toiling masses in India and China, such workers are still not nearly so large a percentage of the world population as they used to be).

But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the “service” sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.

These are what I propose to call “bullshit jobs.”

It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is exactly what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as they had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat). But, of course, this is the very sort of problem market competition is supposed to fix. According to economic theory, at least, the last thing a profit-seeking firm is going to do is shell out money to workers they don’t really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens.

While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the layoffs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing and maintaining things; through some strange alchemy no one can quite explain, the number of salaried paper-pushers ultimately seems to expand, and more and more employees find themselves, not unlike Soviet workers actually, working 40 or even 50 hour weeks on paper, but effectively working 15 hours just as Keynes predicted, since the rest of their time is spent organising or attending motivational seminars, updating their facebook profiles or downloading TV box-sets.

The answer clearly isn’t economic: it’s moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the ‘60s). And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them.

Once, when contemplating the apparently endless growth of administrative responsibilities in British academic departments, I came up with one possible vision of hell. Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at. Say they were hired because they were excellent cabinet-makers, and then discover they are expected to spend a great deal of their time frying fish. Neither does the task really need to be done – at least, there’s only a very limited number of fish that need to be fried. Yet somehow, they all become so obsessed with resentment at the thought that some of their co-workers might be spending more time making cabinets, and not doing their fair share of the fish-frying responsibilities, that before long there’s endless piles of useless badly cooked fish piling up all over the workshop and it’s all that anyone really does.

I think this is actually a pretty accurate description of the moral dynamics of our own economy.

*

Now, I realise any such argument is going to run into immediate objections: “who are you to say what jobs are really ‘necessary’? What’s necessary anyway? You’re an anthropology professor, what’s the ‘need’ for that?” (And indeed a lot of tabloid readers would take the existence of my job as the very definition of wasteful social expenditure.) And on one level, this is obviously true. There can be no objective measure of social value.

I would not presume to tell someone who is convinced they are making a meaningful contribution to the world that, really, they are not. But what about those people who are themselves convinced their jobs are meaningless? Not long ago I got back in touch with a school friend who I hadn’t seen since I was 12. I was amazed to discover that in the interim, he had become first a poet, then the front man in an indie rock band. I’d heard some of his songs on the radio having no idea the singer was someone I actually knew. He was obviously brilliant, innovative, and his work had unquestionably brightened and improved the lives of people all over the world. Yet, after a couple of unsuccessful albums, he’d lost his contract, and plagued with debts and a newborn daughter, ended up, as he put it, “taking the default choice of so many directionless folk: law school.” Now he’s a corporate lawyer working in a prominent New York firm. He was the first to admit that his job was utterly meaningless, contributed nothing to the world, and, in his own estimation, should not really exist.

There’s a lot of questions one could ask here, starting with, what does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law? (Answer: if 1% of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call “the market” reflects what they think is useful or important, not anybody else.) But even more, it shows that most people in these jobs are ultimately aware of it. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever met a corporate lawyer who didn’t think their job was bullshit. The same goes for almost all the new industries outlined above. There is a whole class of salaried professionals that, should you meet them at parties and admit that you do something that might be considered interesting (an anthropologist, for example), will want to avoid even discussing their line of work entirely. Give them a few drinks, and they will launch into tirades about how pointless and stupid their job really is.

This is a profound psychological violence here. How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment. Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way, as in the case of the fish-fryers, to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.  Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it’s obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble, and even one without science fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. (Many suspect it might markedly improve.) Yet apart from a handful of well-touted exceptions (doctors), the rule holds surprisingly well.

Even more perverse, there seems to be a broad sense that this is the way things should be. This is one of the secret strengths of right-wing populism. You can see it when tabloids whip up resentment against tube workers for paralysing London during contract disputes: the very fact that tube workers can paralyse London shows that their work is actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys people. It’s even clearer in the US, where Republicans have had remarkable success mobilizing resentment against school teachers, or auto workers (and not, significantly, against the school administrators or auto industry managers who actually cause the problems) for their supposedly bloated wages and benefits. It’s as if they are being told “but you get to teach children! Or make cars! You get to have real jobs! And on top of that you have the nerve to also expect middle-class pensions and health care?”

If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it’s hard to see how they could have done a better job. Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the – universally reviled – unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc) – and particularly its financial avatars – but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value. Clearly, the system was never consciously designed. It emerged from almost a century of trial and error. But it is the only explanation for why, despite our technological capacities, we are not all working 3-4 hour days.

[eznews]

Here’s what you need to know:

Notre Dame is temporarily shutting its campus to control an outbreak.

Possibly exposed? Don’t quarantine, keep working, Tennessee school districts tell their teachers.

Pooled testing has become worthless in areas of the U.S., in part because there are simply too many cases.

Deaths in American correctional facilities surpass 1,000, as cases rise to 160,000.

Idaho, facing hundreds of new cases a day, is the state furthest behind its testing target.

N.Y.C. hotels and short-term rentals must make travelers from restricted states fill out health forms, the mayor says.

After a substantial reduction in cases, the virus roars anew in France.

Image

Students returned to Notre Dame’s campus near South Bend, Ind., this month.Credit…Robert Franklin/South Bend Tribune, via Associated Press

Notre Dame is temporarily shutting its campus to control an outbreak.

The University of Notre Dame announced on Tuesday that it would move to online instruction for at least the next two weeks in an attempt to control a growing coronavirus outbreak and would shut down the campus entirely if those measures failed to stop the spread.

“If these steps are not successful, we will have to send students home, as we did last spring,” Notre Dame’s president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, said in a video address to students, noting that he had been inclined to take that step before consulting with health officials.

The school will also close public spaces on campus and restrict dormitories to residents. Students who live in off-campus housing must stay off campus and “associate with housemates only,” he said, with a limit on gatherings reduced from 20 to 10 people.

On Tuesday, the school reported that at least 147 people on campus had tested positive since students began returning on Aug. 3 for the start of classes a week later. Eighty of those confirmed cases were added on Tuesday.

“The virus is a formidable foe,” Mr. Jenkins said. “For the past week, it has been winning.”

On Monday, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill became the first large university in the country to shut down classes after students had returned. The school moved all undergraduate courses online after 177 students tested positive and another 349 students were forced to quarantine because of possible exposure.

And on Tuesday, Ithaca College in upstate New York said that it would extend remote learning through the fall semester, despite its plans to bring students back to campus in waves starting this month. In a statement, Shirley M. Collado, the president of the college, called the reversal “an agonizing decision.”

The college had released a fall reopening plan last week, which included an indoor mask mandate and testing for students returning to to campus. But Prof. Collado said Tuesday that “bringing students here, only to send them back home, would cause unnecessary disruption in the continuity of their academic experience.”

U.N.C., with 30,000 students, started classes on Aug. 10, the same day that courses resumed at Notre Dame, a campus of 8,600 students near South Bend, Ind. Notre Dame tested all of its students before they returned to campus, with 33 positive results.

Across the United States, Greek life has come under particular scrutiny amid reports of outbreaks at fraternities and sororities. On Tuesday, health officials in Riley County, Kan., reported a new outbreak of cases associated with the Phi Delta Theta fraternity at Kansas State University — 13 members tested positive — and recommended quarantine for anyone who had been in contact with those infected.

A Notre Dame spokesman said a significant number of its cases were connected to two off-campus parties where students, mostly seniors, did not wear masks or practice social distancing. Most of those who have tested positive live in off-campus housing, the spokesman, Paul Brown, said.

Both North Carolina and Notre Dame said athletic teams were unaffected. Notre Dame is ordinarily an independent in football but is planning to play this fall in the Atlantic Coast Conference, which also counts North Carolina as a member. Unlike the Pac-12 and the Big Ten, the A.C.C. has not yet abandoned its fall season.

Beyond the immediate matter of whether sports like football should be played this autumn, this week’s approach by North Carolina could ultimately factor into debates over players’ rights and whether the hyphen in “student-athlete” might be more properly replaced with “or.”

“The optics aren’t very good, if you take the principle that all college athletes are students first,” said Walter Harrison, a former president of the University of Hartford who once was chairman of the committee that evolved into the N.C.A.A.’s top governing body.

Possibly exposed? Don’t quarantine, keep working, Tennessee school districts tell their teachers.

Teachers in at least six Tennessee public school districts who may have been exposed to coronavirus can be required to go right on teaching in person anyway, under policies approved by their districts.

The districts, located in six counties in eastern and central Tennessee, are adapting C.D.C. guidelines for essential workers, according to Beth Brown, president of the Tennessee Education Association, a teachers’ organization. District officials did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Under C.D.C. guidelines, most people are supposed to go into quarantine for 14 days after possible exposure. But the school districts say teachers may be expected to forego quarantine and keep working as long as they do not show symptoms, provided that “additional precautions are implemented to protect them and the community.”

Researchers have found that people who have caught the virus can spread it before they show symptoms, or without ever developing them.

John C. Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, another teachers’ organization, said he expected more districts to adopt the same policies, because of a shortage of substitute teachers to cover for any who are quarantined. And he said he expected to see some teachers quit their jobs because of the policies.

“Teachers are afraid,” Mr. Bowman said. “You can open up the school buildings all day long — that’s the easy part. But without healthy educators and staff available. they’re just buildings.”

Some schools in Tennessee have been open for almost three weeks, and a few have seen virus-related disruptions. In Putnam County, at least 80 students have been quarantined because of a potential coronavirus exposure, and a middle school and a high school in Maury County postponed reopening by a few days because teachers were in quarantine.

Gov. Bill Lee said at a news conference Tuesday that the state would soon be providing districts with guidelines on what precautions they must take to designate employees as “critical infrastructure workers.”

Pooled testing has become worthless in areas of the U.S., in part because there are simply too many cases.

A Roche Cobas 8800 System is used for Covid-19 testing at a Quest Diagnostics facility in Teterboro, N.J. In July, Quest became the first commercial lab to receive emergency authorization for pooled testing.Credit…Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York Times

Earlier this summer, Trump administration officials hailed a new strategy for catching coronavirus infections: pooled testing.

The decades-old approach combines samples from multiple people to save time and precious testing supplies. Federal health officials like Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Adm. Brett Giroir said pooling would allow for constant surveillance of large sectors of the community, and said they hoped it would be up and running nationwide by the time students returned to school.

But now, when the nation desperately needs more tests to get a handle on the virus’s spread, this efficient approach has become worthless in many places, in part because there are simply too many cases to catch.

Pooled testing only works when the vast majority of batches test negative, among other drawbacks with the procedure. If the proportion of positives is too high, more pools come up positive — requiring each individual sample to then be retested, wasting precious chemicals.

Nebraska’s state public health laboratory, for example, was a pooling trailblazer when it began combining five samples a test in mid-March, cutting the number of necessary tests by about half.

But the lab was forced to halt its streak on April 27, when local positivity rates — the proportion of tests that turn up positive — surged past 10 percent. With that many positives, there was little benefit in pooling.

“It’s definitely frustrating,” said Dr. Baha Abdalhamid, the assistant director of the laboratory. In combination with physical distancing and mask-wearing, pooling could have helped keep the virus in check, he added. But the pooling window, for now, has slammed shut.

Still, the strategy has made significant headway in some parts of the country. In New York, where test positivity rates have held at or below 1 percent since June, universities, hospitals, private companies and public health labs are using the technique in a variety of settings, often to catch people who aren’t feeling sick, said Gareth Rhodes, an aide to the governor and a member of his virus response team. Last week, the State University of New York was cleared to start combining up to 25 samples at once.

Key data of the day

Deaths in American correctional facilities surpass 1,000, as cases rise to 160,000.

San Quentin State Prison in California is home to the nation’s largest known coronavirus cluster.Credit…Eric Risberg/Associated Press

The number of known deaths in prisons, jails and other correctional facilities among prisoners and correctional officers has surpassed 1,000, according to a New York Times database tracking deaths in correctional institutions.

The number of deaths in state and federal prisons, local jails and immigration detention centers — which stood at 1,002 on Tuesday morning — has increased by about 40 percent during the past six weeks, according to the database. There have been nearly 160,000 infections among prisoners and guards.

The actual number of deaths is almost certainly higher because jails and prisons perform limited testing on inmates, including many facilities that decline to test prisoners who die after exhibiting symptoms consistent with the coronavirus.

A recent study showed that prisoners are infected at a rate more than five times the nation’s overall rate. The death rate of inmates is also higher than the national rate — 39 deaths per 100,000 compared to 29 deaths per 100,000.

The Times’s database tracks coronavirus infections and deaths among inmates and correctional officers at some 2,500 prisons, jails and immigration detention centers.

The nation’s largest known virus cluster is at San Quentin State Prison in California, where more than 2,600 inmates and guards have been sickened and 25 inmates have died after a botched transfer of inmates in May. “It’s the perfect environment for people to die in — which people are,” said Juan Moreno Haines, an inmate at San Quentin.

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Idaho, facing hundreds of new cases a day, is the state furthest behind its testing target.

A testing site in Moscow, Idaho, in July.Credit…Geoff Crimmins/The Moscow-Pullman Daily News, via Associated Press

Idaho, one of the states where new cases peaked this summer, is doing the least amount of testing in the country necessary to understand and contain the virus across the state, according to a New York Times database. Testing is critical to reducing the spread of the virus.

Harvard researchers developed a formula to determine how many daily tests a specific state should be doing to slow the spread of the virus. The researchers said that, at the very least, there should be enough daily tests to assess anyone with flulike symptoms, plus an additional 10 people for any symptomatic person who tests positive.

The United States is testing only 52 percent of what it should be to slow the spread of the virus, according to the Harvard model, and Idaho is hitting just 16 percent of the daily testing it needs to be doing. The state also has a 16 percent positivity rate, and the World Health Organization has said a positivity rate has to be under 5 percent for at least two weeks to signal that spread is under control. (That figure is based on the assumption that the state or region is meeting their testing target.)

Idaho is also among the states that have reported the highest number of new cases per 100,000 people over the past seven days, even as the number of new cases there has slowed.

The state’s response to the virus, led by Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, came under fire in the earliest days of the pandemic for not doing enough to stop the spread of the virus. In late March, Idaho saw an average of about 16 new cases a day, compared with the current average, over a seven-day period, of more than 400 a day. Idahoans were told on March 25 to stay at home, and the state started reopening in phases on May 1.

But cases started to mount in mid-June, as happened across several states. The amount of testing in Idaho has increased since the onset of the virus, but delays in getting results have hurt efforts to contain the spread.

Elsewhere in the U.S.:

Officials in Kentucky reported 19 new deaths on Tuesday, a single-day record. The previous single-day record was 17 new deaths reported on April 21st.

The S&P 500 closed at a record high on Tuesday, a remarkable display of investor optimism despite an economic decline that has sent unemployment soaring. Technology stocks played a big role in the gains, which were also fueled by the trillions of dollars pumped into financial markets by the Federal Reserve and enormous spending by the government to protect American workers and businesses from the worst of the downturn.

Senate Republicans on Tuesday began circulating text of a narrow coronavirus relief package that would revive extra unemployment benefits at half the original rate, shield businesses from lawsuits related to the virus and provide funding for testing and schools. The draft measure appears to be an effort to break through the political stalemate over providing another round of economic stimulus to Americans during the pandemic. But it is unlikely to alter the debate in Washington, where Democrats have repeatedly rejected previous Republican offers as insufficient. The new bill would spend less money, in fewer areas, than those earlier offers.

Democrats opened an extraordinary presidential nominating convention on Monday night, offering a vivid illustration of how both the pandemic and widespread opposition to President Trump have upended the country’s politics. Perhaps the most searing critique of Mr. Trump came not from an elected official but from Kristin Urquiza, a young woman whose father, a Trump supporter, died after contracting the virus. Speaking briefly and in raw terms about her loss, Ms. Urquiza said of her father, “His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that he paid with his life.”

Covid-19 strike teams apply an emergency response model traditionally used in natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires to combating outbreaks in long-term care facilities. Composed of about eight to 10 members from local emergency management departments, health departments, nonprofits, private businesses — and at times, the National Guard — the teams are designed to bring more resources and personnel to a disaster scene.

New York Roundup

N.Y.C. hotels and short-term rentals must make travelers from restricted states fill out health forms, the mayor says.

The Wythe hotel in Brooklyn in June.Credit…Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

New York City will require that hotels and short-term rental companies make travelers from dozens of states fill out forms with their personal information before they can have access to their rooms, or provide proof they had already done so, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Tuesday. Those travelers were already required by the state to quarantine for 14 days and to fill out the state’s health form, but the new measure, which goes into effect Friday, is another attempt at ensuring compliance with the rules that many are flouting in the city.

Both hotels and guests could be subject to fines of up to $2,000 for ignoring the rule, according to a spokeswoman for the mayor. People who had recently traveled to areas outside the city accounted for 15 to 20 percent of cases in the city over the past month, according Dr. Jay Varma, one of the mayor’s health advisers. Mr. de Blasio urged New Yorkers to avoid traveling to places restricted by New York State unless it was necessary.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Tuesday that travelers from Alaska and Delaware will now also be required to quarantine for 14 days, joining a list of 31 other states as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“If you have a choice in travel, don’t go where the problem is,” Mr. de Blasio said, adding that “because, of course, if you go there there’s a chance you bring that disease back.”

New York State’s list changes each week, which has forced some college students to abandon longstanding travel plans and quickly find accommodations to serve out the quarantine. More than 59,000 private-college students in New York come from states on the list as of Tuesday, according to the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities.

Elsewhere in the New York area:

The number of apartments for rent in New York City has soared to the highest rate in more than a decade, a sign that a notable number of residents have left the city because of the outbreak, at least temporarily, potentially creating a new obstacle to reviving the local economy. The surge in supply has driven down rental costs across the city and forced landlords to offer generous concessions, including up to three months’ free rent and paying the expensive fees brokers command.

New York City will not open gyms before Sept. 2, the mayor said Tuesday as the city needs more time to complete the inspections required under new state guidance. The state had said that gyms could open as early as Aug. 24, but the mayor said that city officials have been focused on reopening schools and child care centers. The state’s guidance on gyms also clarified that rules on capacity and mask-wearing applied in apartment building gyms, and said that buffs, bandannas and gaiters could not be used as face coverings in gyms statewide.

The compensation packages of museum directors are drawing scrutiny as their institutions try to fill budget holes with cutbacks that have included layoffs and furloughs of lesser-paid staffers.

Travelers to Connecticut and New Jersey will now be subject to a 14-day quarantine if they are coming from Alaska and Delaware, as well as dozens of other states and two territories, though compliance is voluntary in New Jersey. Connecticut also removed Washington State from its list.

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

After a substantial reduction in cases, the virus roars anew in France.

A recent resurgence of cases in France has made mask wearing mandatory in widening areas of Paris and other cities across the country.Credit…Charles Platiau/Reuters

Faced with a recent resurgence of cases, officials in France have made mask wearing mandatory in business spaces across the country, pleading with people not to let down their guard and jeopardize the hard-won gains made against the virus during a two-month lockdown this spring.

The government on Tuesday announced the mandate for mask wearing in business spaces, building on mask policies that had been in place. France “cannot wait for the health situation to get worse,” Elisabeth Borne, the French labor minister, wrote on Twitter. “With our business partners, we want to take every precaution to avoid the propagation of the virus, to protect workers and guarantee the continuity of economic activity.”

The signs of a new wave of infection emerged over the summer as people began resuming much of their pre-virus lives, traveling across France and socializing in cafes, restaurants and parks. Many, especially the young, have visibly relaxed their vigilance.

In recent days, France has recorded about 3,000 new infections every day, roughly double the figure at the beginning of the month, and the authorities are investigating an increasing number of clusters.

Thirty percent of the new infections are in young adults, ages 15 to 44, according to a recent report. Since they are less likely to develop serious forms of the illness, deaths and the number of patients in intensive care remain at a fraction of what they were at the height of the pandemic. Still, officials are not taking any chances.

“The indicators are bad, the signals are worrying, and the situation is deteriorating,” Jérôme Salomon, the French health ministry director, told the radio station France Inter last week. “The fate of the epidemic is in our hands.”

France has suffered more than 30,400 deaths from the virus — one of the world’s worst tolls — and experienced an economically devastating lockdown from mid-March to mid-May. Thanks to the lockdown, however, France succeeded in stopping the spread of the virus and lifted most restrictions at the start of summer.

The course of the pandemic in Europe has followed a somewhat similar trend, with Spain also reporting new local clusters. But important disparities exist among countries. In the past week, as France reported more than 16,000 new cases, Britain reported 7,000, and Italy 3,000, according to data collected by The Times.

In other developments around the world:

While Hong Kong’s latest outbreak appears to be tapering off generally, testing has revealed a new cluster among the port city’s dock workers, who often live in cramped dormitories. As of Monday, 57 dockside laborers were among 65 cases linked to the city’s Kwai Tsing Container Terminals. On Monday, the Union of Hong Kong Dockers called on container companies to expand their accommodation for employees and to hire workers directly instead of outsourcing recruitment to smaller firms.

Sweden has temporarily recalled its diplomats from North Korea, citing increasing difficulties with travel and diplomatic postings, in part because of the pandemic. The Swedish embassy remains open with local staff, and “Sweden is engaged in dialogue with North Korea on these subjects,” a spokesman for the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs said.

Officials in New Zealand on Tuesday pushed back against Mr. Trump’s assertion that it was “having a big surge.” New Zealand, where the national election has been delayed from September to October because of a growing cluster in Auckland, has reported 22 deaths and fewer than 1,700 cases during the entire pandemic. “I’m not concerned about people misinterpreting our status,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.

After a surge in infections in the past week, South Korea tightened social-distancing rules in the Seoul metropolitan area, banning all gatherings of more than 50 people indoors and more than 100 outdoors and shutting down high-risk facilities such as nightclubs, karaoke rooms and buffet restaurants. Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun also said that churches must switch to online prayer services.

Greece has locked down two facilities for migrants where new infections have been traced, after another overcrowded reception center was put under lockdown last week, the government said. The infections are part of a recent spike in the number of cases in Greece, which has weathered the pandemic relatively well so far, with just over 7,200 confirmed cases and 230 deaths. But the authorities this week introduced new restrictions to address local outbreaks and have warned of more measures if the upward trend continues.

Countries putting their own interests ahead of others in trying to ensure supplies of a possible coronavirus vaccine are making the pandemic worse, the director general of the World Health Organization said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. “No one is safe until everyone is safe,” the agency’s leader, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said during a briefing in Geneva. The organization also said the pandemic was now being driven by young people, many of whom were unaware they were infected, posing a danger to vulnerable groups.

A series of photographs and videos posted by Agence France-Presse captured a moment on Saturday night when hundreds of people attended a pool-party rave that would have been unthinkable only months ago. It was in Wuhan, the city in central China where the coronavirus pandemic began late last year. Life appears to be slowly returning to normal in China, even in its hardest-hit city, as other countries struggle with new outbreaks. Shanghai Disneyland reopened in May, while movie theaters reopened across China last month.

A series of new reports clarify susceptibility to Covid-19 and a possible new direction for treatment.

STUDIES ON HIGH-RISK WORK PLACES

Workers in factories, warehouses and building sites are at especially high risk of infection as American businesses reopen, according to a new report from government public health researchers.

The new analysis, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, helps clarify which economic sectors pose the greatest danger, at a time when states are bracing for a possible new phase of the epidemic in the fall.

The C.D.C. report, along with two other just-published findings — one analyzing Covid-19 hospitalizations, the other deaths — also sheds light on racial disparities in the shape and the impact of the U.S. epidemic.

Black and Latino people were far more likely than non-Hispanic white people to be hospitalized for Covid-19, one study found. But ethnicity was not related to the risk of later dying of the disease, the other study concluded. Both were posted by the medical journal JAMA.

REMDESIVIR

A large federal study that found an experimental antiviral drug, remdesivir, can hasten the recovery of hospitalized Covid-19 patients has begun a new phase of investigation.

Researchers will examine whether adding another drug — beta interferon, which has already been approved to treat multiple sclerosis and mainly kills viruses, but can also tame inflammation — would improve remdesivir’s effects and speed recovery even more.

In a large clinical trial, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, remdesivir was shown to modestly shorten recovery time by four days on average, but it did not reduce deaths.

RARE IMMUNE SYNDROME

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome, the severe illness that strikes some children with the coronavirus, is distinct from both Kawasaki disease and from Covid-19 in adults, according to a new study.

Most children infected with the coronavirus have mild symptoms, if any at all. But on very rare occasions, some develop so-called MIS-C, characterized by widespread inflammation in the heart, lungs, brain, skin and other organs. In the United States, there were 570 confirmed cases of the syndrome and 10 deaths as of Aug. 6.

The study, published Tuesday in Nature Medicine, analyzed immune cells in 15 boys and 10 girls, aged 7 to 14 years, with the syndrome.

When the children were acutely ill with MIS-C, their immune cells behaved differently than they did in adults with Covid-19. The pattern also differs from that seen in Kawasaki disease, a similarly rare inflammatory condition in young children.

As of Aug. 3, children account for 7.3 percent of U.S. coronavirus cases, but make up about 22 percent of the overall population. The actual proportion of infected children is likely to be higher, because testing is still focused primarily on adults with symptoms.

Help yourself be more productive.

You don’t need to finish everything to feel productive. Satisfaction can and should come from the smaller accomplishments in your day. Here’s how to refocus your attention on your smaller wins.

Reporting was contributed by Alan Blinder, Alexander Burns, Stephen Castle, Choe Sang-Hun, Troy Closson, Nick Corasaniti, Hannah Critchfield, Brendon Derr, Claire Fu, Thomas Fuller, Trip Gabriel, Michael Gold, Rebecca Griesbach, Amy Harmon, Ethan Hauser, Ann Hinga Klein, Jennifer Jett, Niki Kitsantonis, Gina Kolata, Théophile Larcher, Jonathan Martin, Tiffany May, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, Constant Méheut, Steven Lee Myers, Norimitsu Onishi, Elian Peltier, Robin Pogrebin, Frances Robles, Eliza Shapiro, Michael D. Shear, Daniel E. Slotnik, Mark Walker, Timothy Williams and Karen Zraick.

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[treemist5]

Michael Hudson: Trump’s Trade Threats are really Cold War 2.0

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is “and forgive them their debts”: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year.

President Trump has threatened China’s President Xi that if they don’t meet and talk at the upcoming G20 meetings in Japan, June 29-30, the United States will not soften its tariff war and economic sanctions against Chinese exports and technology.

Some meeting between Chinese and U.S. leaders will indeed take place, but it cannot be anything like a real negotiation. Such meetings normally are planned in advance, by specialized officials working together to prepare an agreement to be announced by their heads of state. No such preparation has taken place, or can take place. Mr. Trump doesn’t delegate authority.

He opens negotiations with a threat. That costs nothing, and you never know (or at least, he never knows) whether he can get a freebee. His threat is that the U.S. can hurt its adversary unless that country agrees to abide by America’s wish-list. But in this case the list is so unrealistic that the media are embarrassed to talk about it. The US is making impossible demands for economic surrender – that no country could accept. What appears on the surface to be only a trade war is really a full-fledged Cold War 2.0.

America’s Wish List: Other Countries’ Neoliberal Subservience

At stake is whether China will agree to do what Russia did in the 1990s: put a Yeltsin-like puppet of neoliberal planners in place to shift control of its economy from its government to the U.S. financial sector and its planners. So the fight really is over what kind of planning China and the rest of the world should have: by governments to raise prosperity, or by the financial sector to extract revenue and impose austerity.

U.S. diplomacy aims to make other countries dependent on its agricultural exports, its oil (or oil in countries that U.S. majors and allies control), information and military technology. This trade dependency will enable U.S. strategists to impose sanctions that would deprive economies of basic food, energy, communications and replacement parts if they resist U.S. demands.

The objective is to gain financial control of global resources and make trade “partners” pay interest, licensing fees and high prices for products in which the United States enjoys monopoly pricing “rights” for intellectual property. A trade war thus aims to make other countries dependent on U.S.-controlled food, oil, banking and finance, or high-technology goods whose disruption will cause austerity and suffering until the trade “partner” surrenders.

China’s Willingness to Give Trump a “Win”

Threats are cheap, but Mr. Trump can’t really follow through without turning farmers, Wall Street and the stock market, Walmart and much of the IT sector against him at election time if his tariffs on China increase the cost of living and doing business. His diplomatic threat is really that the US will cut its own economic throat, imposing sanctions on its own importers and investors if China does not acquiesce.

It is easy to see what China’s answer will be. It will stand aside and let the US self-destruct. Its negotiators are quite happy to “offer” whatever China has planned to do anyway, and let Trump brag that this is a “concession” he has won.

China has a great sweetener that I think President Xi Jinping should offer: It can nominate Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. We know that he wants what his predecessor Barack Obama got. And doesn’t he deserve it more? After all, he is helping to bring Eurasia together, driving China and Russia into an alliance with neighboring counties, reaching out to Europe.

Trump may be too narcissistic to realize the irony here. Catalyzing Asian and European trade independence, financial independence, food independence and IT independence from the threat of U.S. sanctions will leave the U.S. isolated in the emerging multilateralism.

America’s Wish for a Neoliberal Chinese Yeltsin (and Another Russian Yeltsin for That Matter)

A good diplomat does not make demands to which the only answer can be “No.” There is no way that China will dismantle its mixed economy and turn it over to U.S. and other global investors. It is no secret that the United States achieved world industrial supremacy in the late 19th and early 20th century by heavy public-sector subsidy of education, roads, communication and other basic infrastructure. Today’s privatized, financialized and “Thatcherized” economies are high-cost and inefficient.

Yet U.S. officials persist in their dream of promoting some neoliberal Chinese leader or “free market” party to wreak the damage that Yeltsin and his American advisors wrought on Russia. The U.S. idea of a “win-win” agreement is one in which China will be “permitted” to grow as long as it agrees to become a U.S. financial and trade satellite, not an independent competitor.

Trump’s trade tantrum is that other countries are simply following the same economic strategy that once made America great, but which neoliberals have destroyed here and in much of Europe. U.S. negotiators are unwilling to acknowledge that the United States has lost its competitive industrial advantage and become a high-cost rentier economy. Its GDP is “empty,” consisting mainly of the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) rents, profits and capital gains while the nation’s infrastructure decays and its labor is reduced to a prat-time “gig” economy. Under these conditions the effect of trade threats can only be to speed up the drive by other countries to become economically self-reliant.

This entry was posted in China, Garrulous insolence, Guest Post, Politics on June 14, 2019 by Lambert Strether.

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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Source: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/06/michael-hudson-trumps-trade-threats-are-really-cold-war-2-0.html

[jeroldlockettus]

Why Rent Control Doesn’t Work (Ep. 373)

Caption: In the U.S., median rent has doubled since the 1990’s, outpacing inflation. Politicians and the public think rent control is the solution. Spoiler alert: it’s not. (Photo: Caelie Frampton)

As cities become ever-more expensive, politicians and housing advocates keep calling for rent control. Economists think that’s a terrible idea. They say it helps a small (albeit noisy) group of renters, but keeps overall rents artificially high by disincentivizing new construction. So what happens next?

Listen and subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability.

For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

*      *      *

I’m sure you know this already, but let me say it anyway: cities have become really popular, all over the world. An ever-larger share of the U.S. and global population lives in cities, and that large share is expected to get even larger. As demand for city living grows, the supply of housing often can’t keep up. Which results in — and you know this too — a rise in prices. In the U.S., median rent has doubled since the 1990’s, outpacing inflation by quite a bit. In many cities, this makes it hard for people who already live there to stay, and hard for people who’d like to move there. I’m sure you’ve heard the horror stories about rents in cities like London and Hong Kong; Seattle and San Francisco, where the median one-bedroom apartment costs about $3,700 a month. The problem is so bad in New York City that it inspired a new political party.

Jimmy McMILLAN: I represent the Rent Is Too Damn High Party. People are working eight hours a day and forty hours a week and some a third job.

New York, like many cities, has over time put in place various affordable-housing policies. One time-honored tradition is some form of rent control. That might mean setting a price cap on what a landlord can charge or limiting the amount the rent can be raised. Here’s the Stanford economist Rebecca Diamond.

Rebecca DIAMOND: From an economics point of view, it provides insurance against getting priced out of your neighborhood.

And rent control seems to be having a moment. It already exists in a number of places.

DIAMOND: The most expensive cities in the U.S., they almost all have rent control.

And the appetite is spreading.

DIAMOND: You see rent control popping up politically when housing prices and rents are going up. 

Among the cities currently considering some form of rent control are Chicago, Philadelphia, Providence, and Denver. Oregon recently became the first state to pass a rent-control bill. A statewide proposition in California failed, but some cities there are moving ahead on their own. A recent report by a consortium of affordable-housing advocates says that if all the proposed rent-control legislation were to pass, nearly one in three American tenants would have some kind of rent protection.

*      *      *

Most economists say that rent control is a bad idea, as is just about any form of price control. They believe that markets work best when supply and demand are allowed to find a natural equilibrium, with price acting as the referee. Here’s one such economist.

GLAESER: My name is Ed Glaeser and I am the Fred and Eleanor Glimp professor of economics at Harvard, where I teach both microeconomic theory and the economics of cities.

DUBNER: Ed, you have one minute to convince someone that rent control is a terrible idea. Go.

GLAESER: All right. So, I’ve already squandered five of my seconds. It’s not particularly fair. It’s not a good way of allocating scarce space. It’s not a good way of helping the downtrodden. It’s a way that freezes a city and stops it from adjusting to changes, a way that freezes people in apartments and stops the motion that is inherent in cities.

So that’s a baseline economic take, at least. Let’s try to unravel this issue, starting with a brief history of rent control.

GLAESER: Rent controls really became ubiquitous in World War II, and the idea here was, the nation was laying down its life to try and bring freedom to the world, and it seemed wrong that some people who were well-placed should earn some form of extra bonuses by being able to raise up rents on people, maybe whose sons and daughters were off fighting for the U.S. elsewhere. And rent control was seen as being a way of, somehow or other, trying to keep America being a bit fairer during World War II. Now, lots of places introduced rent control during this period. After the war, most of them got rid of it because that cause seemed to be a little bit less pressing. But, some cities kept it, and New York, of course, is the most famous place that still has it.

Glaeser himself grew up in New York.

GLAESER: I lived in a rent-stabilized unit for the first ten years of my life. I mean something like 72, 74 percent of New York City’s households were renters in those days. And indeed, the mid-1970s was an era in which New York’s housing didn’t seem that expensive, affordability just wasn’t the same issue that it was today. Now, flash forward 30 years, the cities have been enormously successful they haven’t built enough to accommodate the new demand. They risk becoming boutique towns affordable only to the wealthy, and people are desperate to see that those cities don’t push out every poor resident, that they don’t become monocultures built around the privileged and the rich, and rent control appears to be at least one avenue for doing it. But it’s a very blunt instrument.

Just how blunt? There are decades’ worth of economic research describing the downsides of rent control. The first major paper was written in 1946 by Milton Friedman and George Stigler; here’s Friedman:

Milton FRIEDMAN: Rent control is a law that supposedly is passed to help the people who are in housing. And it does help those who are in current housing. But the effect of rent control is to create scarcity, and to make it difficult for other people to get housing.

Where did this scarcity come from? For one, developers had less incentive to build new housing if there was a ceiling placed on what they could charge. Friedman also argued that rent control created a “haphazard and arbitrary allocation of space.” This was echoed in a 1972 paper by Edgar Olsen, which found that rent control led to what economists call an “overconsumption” of housing.

GLAESER Let’s say you rented an apartment in New York in 1955, you had three small kids, you rented a three-bedroom. It was perfectly matched for the needs of you with your kids growing up. They moved out of the house in the early 70’s. By the late 80’s, maybe your husband or wife actually died and you’re living on your own in a three-bedroom apartment in New York. But, my goodness, would you ever move out? Your rent is a fraction of what the market rent is. One of my favorite stories about this — and this is quoted by Ken Auletta’s The Streets Were Paved with Gold, he cites Nat Sherman, the famous tobacconist to the world, who had this big shop on Fifth Avenue, who said that he pays, I forget what it was.

DUBNER: $355 a month for a six-room apartment, it says here.

GLAESER: Isn’t that amazing? Keep in mind, it’s a few decades ago. But it’s an unbelievable deal. Now, what’s outrageous about this is, he then says, “I think it’s fair because I use it so rarely,” right? Which means that he’s not getting very much value out of it, but the crazy thing about this is, there were lots of New Yorkers who would love to have that apartment and it would get a lot more value out of it.

In 1997, Ed Glaeser did his own analysis of rent control in New York City, trying to determine just how economically inefficient it was. He and his co-author, Erzo Luttmer, found that “this misallocation of bedrooms leads to a loss in welfare which could be well over $500 million annually to the consumers of New York, before we even consider the social losses due to undersupply of housing.” Glaeser’s work has also inspired a new generation of economists to further the literature on rent control.

DIAMOND: Historically, people relied much more on theory in making their arguments about rent control.

That’s Rebecca Diamond again. She’s a former student of Ed Glaeser’s.

DIAMOND: Because even without a lot of data you can make some pretty simple theoretical predictions about what rent control might do to a housing market.

But there are some things that theory alone cannot tell you.

DIAMOND: One of the biggest open questions in the literature of rent control is: what happens to those tenants that get rent control? Really, how much are the renters benefiting, because they’re the potential big winners of rent control. And to measure that, you really need to have data on where everybody lives, and who gets access to rent control, and whether they decide to stay in that rent-controlled apartment or go somewhere else. And traditional data sources that economists work with very rarely track migration of an individual.

DUBNER: So you recently co-authored with Tim McQuade and Franklin Qian a paper called “The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco.” First, if you would, talk about the data.

DIAMOND: Yeah, we have some really cool data. So, traditional data sets, you can get things on the distribution of earnings and income, things like that. But you won’t also see their migration. So, we have this, you could call, administrative data, which tracks people’s address histories.

DUBNER: And where did these migratory data come from?

DIAMOND: We bought them from a company called Infutor. They are a company that works in “identity management,” So they have this history of addresses for everyone which they collect from a number of different sources and stitch them together, which is very useful for the private sector and firms that need to keep track of up-to-date addresses. But from a research perspective, it’s super-exciting data because it’s so big and so detailed.

Armed with this super-exciting data on individual tenants, Diamond and her fellow researchers set out to measure some of the long-term effects of rent control in San Francisco. They made particular use of a change in the city’s rent laws. San Francisco had rent control, but it didn’t apply many of the city’s smaller apartment buildings.

DIAMOND: And the exemption was basically thought of as, “Well, these are mom-and-pop landlords. They don’t have market power. They’re not corporations. So we don’t need to regulate their rents.” And then newspapers reported that those smaller multi-family buildings were increasingly purchased by corporate entities, because that’s really where you could make your money in the housing market. And that led to a vote in 1994 where everyone in the city got to vote about whether we could remove this small multi-family exemption, and that would then expand rent control, not just to the large multi-family housing stock, but also the small multi-family housing stock. And that, indeed, passed.

DUBNER: So, you’ve got this awesome new law — awesome for you guys, at least, as researchers — that lets you mark before and after. It’s a perfect little natural experiment with a control group. And then you’ve got these wonderful data sets. And then you mash up all of these data together and analyze it and you find the following: your paper concludes that among many things “rent control limits renters’ mobility by 20 percent and lowers displacement from San Francisco, especially for minorities.” So let’s start with this: what does it mean exactly that renters’ mobility is lowered by 20 percent, and why is that important?

DIAMOND: So, we look at whether the renters who get access to rent control choose to remain in their newly rent-controlled apartment. So, we find that they are 20 percent more likely to remain there, relative to our control-group renters who don’t get access to rent control.

DUBNER: So, that seems totally unsurprising, yes?

DIAMOND: Yes, I more see that result as a validation that our data is good and high-quality and we have some something to work with here.

DUBNER: Okay. Further, you write that “rent control lowers displacement from San Francisco.” What does that mean, exactly?

DIAMOND: So, we can look at not just whether you remain in the actual apartment you lived in when you got access to rent control, but whether you remain in San Francisco as a whole. We find rent control has a dramatic impact on whether you actually live in San Francisco or not. So, it prevents those renters from leaving the city as a whole, which I think from a policy perspective of rent-control advocates, that’s one of the goals they talk about as preventing displacement from the city.

DUBNER: And then you write that, especially for minorities, that displacement is lowered.

DIAMOND: Right. So, when you look at that first cohort of renters that already lived in the city at the time of rent control, it is definitely helping minorities more. It’s preventing displacement of them especially.

DUBNER: Furthermore, you write that landlords who are susceptible to rent control “reduce rental housing supplies by 15 percent either by converting to condos, selling to owner-occupants, or redeveloping buildings.” So, now it starts to get a little more complicated. Can you talk about who’s now starting to win here and who’s starting to lose here?

DIAMOND: So, obviously, when the landlord is first notified about rent control, he or she can quickly deduce that his or her rental stream is going to be lower than previously expected. And just like any other business owner, they might think about changing their business strategy. So, if renting out their apartments is no longer very profitable, now they may decide, “Oh, maybe it’s worthwhile to convert to condos and sell off the apartments to owner-occupants” and that would be a way to recover some of this lost income. Or, another thing they could do is, say, knock down their old building and build some new construction and either sell those as condos or rent them out as apartments.

Both of those options would avoid them having to pay this tax of rent control, help recoup some of their losses — which is good for the landlords, but is going to undermine the goals of rent control because now we’re going to have less rental housing out there available for rent control.

So you can start to see how rent control may be accomplishing a narrow, short-term goal — making existing housing more affordable for a select group of people — at the expense of the long-term goal of making a city more affordable generally.

DIAMOND: When you pass rent control, the landlords of the property suddenly getting covered by rent control are losing so much money, they no longer really want to rent their apartments out at the prevailing new prices, so they decrease their supply of rental housing to the market. And if there’s less supply, that’s going to drive up prices.  

DUBNER: Okay, so, let me just make sure I have it pretty straight. You find evidence that rent control increases gentrification, one component of which is the displacement of low-income tenants. On the other hand, you also find evidence that low-income people, including minorities — at least those who are in rent-controlled units already — they’re likely to disproportionately benefit from rent control.

So, if I’m an affordable-housing advocate, I might say, “Oh, fine, fancy Stanford professor — who I’m sure has some kind of great income and/or housing subsidy and/or situation — I don’t care that some landlords are suffering. I don’t care that the policy is having some downstream effects that you don’t like. I need to make sure that low-income people aren’t going to get a rent increase of 50 percent overnight.” So, how do you respond to that argument?

DIAMOND: So, when you think about those initial tenants, that’s the best bet you’re going to get for the benefits of rent control to low-income tenants: the people that are already in the housing. But even though we find that those tenants are much more likely to stay in their apartment, when we look 10, 15 years later, the share of those 1994 residents that are still there is down to 10 percent or so. So 90 percent of them no longer live in that initial apartment.

And it’s that next low-income tenant that wants to live in the city, that low-income tenant is going to have a very hard time finding an affordable option, because now there’s going to be less rental housing, the prices that that low-income tenant are going to face when they want to initially move in are going to be higher than they would have been absent rent control.

DUBNER: I’m curious how generalizable you think your findings from San Francisco are for other cities.

DIAMOND: I would suspect that the actual quantitative loss of rental supply or benefits to the tenant will depend a little bit city to city, but I think the qualitative takeaway that landlords are savvy and are going to work hard to not lose money on their investments, I think is a very general point.  

For economists who already felt confident in the theoretical arguments against rent control, research like Diamond’s provides empirical evidence that essentially tells the same story. Yes, there are some winners in rent control; but the losing is more widespread, and longer term. But how about empirical evidence from a reverse angle — that is, not when a city adds or expands rent control, like San Francisco did, but when it gets rid of it?

DIAMOND: So, there’s other work by David Autor and coauthors that looks at the removal of rent control in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1994.

By the early 1990s, Cambridge was one of the few remaining rent-control strongholds in Massachusetts. Landlords had been trying to get rid of it for years. But there are a lot fewer landlords than there are tenants, so any attempt to change the local law was voted down. Finally, the rent control opponents had a winning idea: put the issue up on a statewide referendum, where there might be less empathy for all those city dwellers with below-market rents. When the referendum was held, nearly 60 percent of the voters in Cambridge were opposed — but, statewide, it passed, and so Cambridge began to deregulate its rents. Years later, a trio of M.I.T. economists examined the effects of removing rent control.

GLAESER: Okay, so, the classic paper on this has been written by David Autor, Parag Pathak, and Chris Palmer.

Ed Glaeser again.

GLAESER: It showed that when units were brought out of rent control, their owners invested in them. So, they upped the quality of the units; there was more of a supply of higher-end housing.  

DIAMOND: They find that the rent-controlled apartments experience a lot of renovation. Landlords renovate a lot, and that drives up the desirability of living in those apartments. Also, they find that that creates spillovers onto the nearby apartment buildings that they themselves weren’t rent-controlled.

GLAESER: So neighboring apartments became more valued as a result of the end of rent control. And the most recent paper has shown that crime has gone down — particularly, street crime has gone down right after the elimination of rent control in Cambridge.

DIAMOND: So it looked like rent control had negative externalities on the neighborhood.

So what does economic research tell us about rent control? There are at least two conclusions — which, if I’m reading it right, sort of work against each other. The first conclusion is that rent control doesn’t help many people for very long, in part because it constrains the supply of affordable housing. The second conclusion is that just getting rid of rent control does not, in and of itself, lead to more affordable housing; in fact a deregulated housing market can easily lead to less affordable housing. The Boston-Cambridge area is one of many places experiencing a steep shortage in not just affordable housing but housing overall.

So even if you accept that rent control is a big contributor to the affordable-housing problem, getting rid of it isn’t necessarily a solution. You can see why politicians and policy-makers are confused. In Massachusetts, in fact, there’s currently a movement to bring back statewide rent control. And as we mentioned earlier, Massachusetts is not alone.

DIAMOND: So, we just had this big vote in California about whether we should repeal a statewide law that restricts the scope of rent control in California, and indeed we did not repeal that law.

DUBNER: So, somebody read your paper.

DIAMOND: It was interesting to see how our results were used by policy makers and media on both sides of the fight. Because indeed, some of our results are, like, rent control are good, others make them look bad. You’ve got to read the whole paper and take it all into account to make a decision, but it was a very policy-relevant paper for that discussion.

DUBNER: I’m curious what you can tell us about the political dimensions of rent control. I may be wrong, but I believe that rent control is generally supported by Democrats and generally opposed by Republicans.

DIAMOND: I think it’s a simplification to say all Democrats support rent control. But I think in the short run, you can see the benefits of rent control — the tenants right away benefit. What’s much harder to see are these indirect effects that take a long time, and it’s harder to put your finger on that. The losses are spread everywhere a little bit, and harder to see walking down the street or talking to your constituents.

GLAESER: There certainly are some poor people who can benefit. And, it’s a very tangible benefit, right? It’s not some complicated thing which requires you to trust in the market. It’s just sort of very clear, and if you think that people on the left, many of them just don’t trust markets to begin with, then saying there’s going to be some negative market effect to them, that sounds like capitalist hocus-pocus, whereas, what they can see right now is that Mrs. Reyes’s rents won’t go up because of their regulation.

Vicki BEEN: Economists tend to believe their models and say, “End of story,” and, “Believe me,” right?

That’s Vicki Been.

BEEN: But communities don’t necessarily have to believe economists, and so economists need to do a better job of responding to the very real fears that communities have.

Been used to be commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Now she’s a law professor at New York University, and she directs the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

BEEN: The Furman Center has embarked on a project that we call “Not Your Grandmother’s Rent Control” to try to figure out, if you were starting from scratch, and you were designing the most efficient rent-regulation system, what would that look like?

*      *      *

As we’ve been hearing, economists are generally opposed to rent control. It rewards some people, but fairly arbitrarily; it punishes many others, and generally doesn’t do much to improve overall access to housing. That said, most people don’t think like economists, or even believe them. Which is why many politicians and members of the public think rent control is a great idea.

David EISENBACH: Well, I’m in favor of residential rent control and rent regulations. 

That’s David Eisenbach; he teaches history at Columbia University and he recently ran for a citywide office in New York called public advocate. There are in New York City about 3.4 million apartment units, nearly 1 million of which are rent-stabilized. And New York’s rental market is incredibly expensive — as it is in many other cities with regulated rents, like San Francisco. Economists argue that overall high prices are a direct consequence of rent regulation; what does Eisenbach think?

EISENBACH: I disagree. I mean, there are a lot of reasons why real estate in San Francisco and real estate in New York are high. Blaming it on rent stabilization is definitely not it. The consequences of getting rid of either rent control and/or rent stabilization would be the immediate displacement, of a big portion of the population, and that would just be cruel at this point. I don’t know how anybody could justify — even somebody looking at it purely in economic terms — how anybody could justify that, just in human terms. You’re going to blame the high rents on rent control? Come on.

Okay, so Eisenbach does not believe the economic research on rent control. What does he believe in?

EISENBACH: Well, first and foremost, I’m an angry New Yorker who walks around the streets of New York and sees empty storefront after empty storefront, and just feels like my city is dying.

New York’s commercial rents have spiked along with its residential rents. And in some parts of Manhattan, as much as 20 percent of the retail space is either vacant or soon to be vacant.

EISENBACH: And I found out that there is this bill called the Small Business Jobs Survival Act. It was initially submitted back in the 1980’s and I figured, why don’t I run for office pushing this bill? And so I ran for public advocate on the platform, “We’re going to pass this bill; it’s going to save small business in New York City.”

We should say that Eisenbach did not win the election. He came in 13th in a field of 17. But he did get a fair amount of attention for talking about all those empty storefronts, which have upset a lot of people.

EISENBACH: There are two major provisions of the Small Business Jobs Survival Act. One: it guarantees a 10-year lease renewal offer from the landlord to the tenant for any tenant with a commercial lease in New York City. Number two: if the landlord and tenant cannot come to an agreement, they go to legally binding arbitration, and that arbitrator then will pick a fair market rent, which will then be charged in the next 10-year lease renewal.

Opponents of this proposal call it commercial rent control.

EISENBACH: But this bill, the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, is absolutely not rent control. It doesn’t put a limit on how much rent can be charged, which is the very definition of rent control. It’s legally binding arbitration. Much different.

DUBNER: Are there other cities that have this kind of small-business jobs protection on the real-estate front that works well?

EISENBACH: It’s going to be unique.  

Even though Eisenbach lost his election, he still believes the Small Business Jobs Survival Act may get through New York’s City Council. I was interested to know what the economists we’ve been speaking with — Rebecca Diamond of Stanford and Ed Glaeser of Harvard — what they thought about commercial rent regulation.

DIAMOND: So, I’m also very interested in that, and I also know almost nothing about it. I have never seen any work on it.  

GLAESER: You can easily tell a story where the threat of some form of rent control makes a vacancy problem worse in the short run. So, for example, I don’t want to rent right now to a lower-end tenant who could fill my space, because I’ll be locked in by the rent-control law and I’ve got that tenant forever. So, that means, I’m going to really hold out for a blue-chip tenant because I have this threat of this law over my shoulder.

So, do I think vacant empty storefronts are a problem? Sure. I mean, we can talk about it from a perspective merely as an urbanist, where we think it’s unattractive to have these things, but I’m also disturbed by it as an economist, because someone’s got space to sell, there are people who want to buy that space. Why isn’t the transaction happening, right? It’s sort of — the market is going awry. And the answer to that — of why the market is going awry — is not immediately obvious.

There are of course plenty of theories as to why so many storefronts in New York are vacant. Here again is Vicki Been, the former housing official who studies the real-estate market at NYU.

BEEN: I think there are a lot of questions about how commercial rent regulation would work and how it might interfere with an efficient market. One concern that I would have right now is, we seem to be in the middle of an upset, of a transition in retail in general, because of the availability of Internet retail. A lot is in flux.

GLAESER: But there are two points of evidence against that. One of which is that many of these storefronts formerly held services, and I don’t think a nail salon has been made obsolete by Amazon just yet. And secondly, the rents, the asking rents, at least according to the most recent Real Estate Board of New York report, in many of these areas are still sky-high. It’s not like there’s no demand for areas where you’re charging $300, $400 per square foot to rent these areas.

In the long term, all the economic push for both the landlords and the tenants is to get those units occupied and get the rent payments again flowing to the landlord.

Landlords, whether small or large, are often left out of public discussions about property markets. And if they’re not left out, they’re usually drawn as villains. Vicki Been, in thinking about the project she calls “Not Your Grandmother’s Rent Control,” is trying to change that.

BEEN: I think the thing that you really need to focus on is: how can I ensure that the landlord is getting a reasonable return, right? Because otherwise, people will take their money and put it elsewhere and you won’t get building. And how can we at the same time try to close some of these avenues that landlords could use to try to escape rent regulation without it becoming a system that’s so weighed down with so many different enforcement challenges that it kind of collapses of its own weight, right?

You need to pay attention to the different ways in which property owners are making money on the property, so you really need to have a holistic look. At the same time, you need to have very open-eyes view of the kinds of costs that we’re imposing on them.

There’s one huge cost that drives real-estate prices, whether we’re talking about rentals or sales, for both commercial and residential buildings.

BEEN: In New York City, for example, a very high percentage of rent goes for property taxes. So we can’t be saying to landlords, “Hey, keep prices down — but by the way, your property tax just went up by 10 percent. So we have to recognize that, okay, we as a taxpaying body have an obligation to understand the effect that those increases may have on rents, and we can’t just turn around and say to the landlord, “You absorb them,” right? “Don’t pass them onto the tenant.” Because that’s an unsustainable system.  

GLAESER: It’s certainly true that renters implicitly have to pay for property taxes. And it’s not obvious that’s wrong, because the idea of property taxes is they’re paying for city services and renters use city services, too. That’s obviously not wrong.

DUBNER: So, here’s a big question that I really hope you can answer, because I’ve wondered this for a long time. Some of the biggest property owners in a city like New York — and some of the wealthiest property holders generally — are universities, religious institutions, hospitals, and other not-for-profit institutions, which makes them either partially or wholly exempt from paying property taxes. So, I’m curious, how does that exemption affect a) the taxes paid by everyone else, and how does that b) ultimately affect housing prices for everyone.  

GLAESER: First of all: clearly, you’re right. The government has decided to subsidize certain institutions by enabling them not to pay property taxes. And from a purely accounting point of view, those taxes need to come from somewhere else.

On the other hand, it is also true that at least some of the institutions that you’re talking about have proven to be extraordinarily important for the economic health of the area, right? We’re subsidizing the university student, right? We’re making it cheaper for them to rent than it would be otherwise. Is that fair? Well, we thought that, somehow or other, it was a good idea to subsidize educational institutions at one point in time. We thought there might be some spillovers from that, some benefits from encouraging people to become educated. But, we should be open to re-investigating that, and anyway, you shouldn’t take my word for it, because after all, I’m the employee of an educational institution.

We can ask whether or not the blanket property-tax exemption that we’ve given to religious institutions and educational institutions is appropriate. I mean, that seems like a reasonable question to ask. In the case of religious institutions it in some sense goes back to fundamental issues about separation of church and state in the U.S., but we can still ask this question.

I would be surprised if we think that changing those tax rates is the number-one step to take to promote affordability in New York City though, relative to bringing more space on market that you can actually build on, changing the regulations. I mean, it seems like that’s not likely to be the case, but it is true that you move stuff to a religious or educational use, in many cases you’re moving away from an owner who would actually build on it. And that’s also correct.

So what have we learned about housing, especially affordable housing, especially in the most desirable cities? For starters, we’ve learned that it’s complicated. Property taxes play a large, underappreciated role in driving up costs, and the tax burden isn’t necessarily spread so equitably. Rent regulations, meanwhile, appeal to the public and politicians, but they also create perverse incentives that in the long run work against affordable housing. How about housing vouchers: aren’t they a more flexible way to subsidize housing?

BEEN: The advantage of a voucher is, you can go through all of those eligibility requirements and really target the voucher to the families that you think are most in need. And we in New York, and in many other major cities, we have prohibitions against a landlord refusing a tenant because they’re using a voucher rather than earned income.

But we’re still getting enormous resistance from landlords, because if you have a federal government that shuts down and isn’t paying its voucher payments, and there, the landlord is stuck with that, right? Or if you have a city, like New York City did, that issued vouchers and then changed its mind, and said, “Oops, that program is over,” then the landlord has a tenant in place who no longer can pay the rent and the landlord has to take them to court and bear the costs of that.

Meanwhile, the market price of housing in a place like Manhattan lies somewhere between punitive and prohibitive. So if rent control isn’t a viable tool in the fight for affordable housing, what is?

GLAESER: The most natural tool towards affordability is supply, and to make sure that we are making it easy enough to build moderate-cost rental-apartment buildings in these cities. 

Ed Glaeser again. 

GLAESER: We’ve used regulations to so restrict our ability to provide affordable housing units that now we’re at this restricted frozen-in-amber form. In the case of New York — gosh, New York is New York. It’s hard to imagine how much housing you’d really need to sate demand for New York.

DUBNER: What about Boston, where you live? Boston is facing what it calls a historic housing shortage. The city’s growing, not enough housing to match. What do you suggest Boston do to accommodate that surge, other than let the market work its famous magic?

 GLAESER: Look, drive around Boston. It doesn’t look overcrowded to me, and I don’t think it should look overcrowded to anyone else. There’s a lot of vacant industrial space that could easily house tens of thousands of units. If you made it easy enough to build, I’ve got to think that this is a doable problem, at least from an engineering and economics point of view. The politics, of course, are more difficult.  

DUBNER: What, specifically, would need to be done to change it?  

GLAESER: So, the big answer is, you need, as-of-right zoning that enables fairly high-density levels over a fair amount of space. So, currently Boston’s zoning plan is highly antiquated. Every project is handled on an ad-hoc basis. Usually, it involves variances that are quite high from the original plan, which means that they are highly subject to judicial challenge. All of that is a recipe for uncertainty and delay and endless community meetings.

The thing that works best is when you have something where you’ve decided in advance, “This is how much we’re going to allow to build; there are a couple of simple rules that you’ve got to follow. Come here, bring your units and make it happen.” And that’s what’s needed. That’s what actually works. It’s not something that involves a 10-year negotiation process, but something that says, “Here are the rules upfront. Go to it.”

It should be noted that not all U.S. cities impose the same level of red tape you see in Boston and New York and San Francisco.

GLAESER: If you want to look for affordability, the American Sunbelt is pretty great. The Atlantas, the Houstons, the Dallases, the places that just have made it very easy to build over the last 40 years — you want to ask why Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix each added a million people between 2000 and 2010 as metro areas, it’s because they make it astonishingly easy to build. And you can go and you can buy a great-looking house for a fraction of what you’d pay in New York in these places.

We don’t have an affordable housing crisis in the U.S. nationally. We have lots of affordable housing in places with names like Atlanta, but just not in New York City.

Many European cities, meanwhile, are more like New York — in fact, exaggerated versions of New York.

GLAESER: Much of Europe is quite restrictive in your cities, but I’m much more comfortable about the idea that much of central Paris is patrimony of the world that needs to be protected.

While policies vary from city to city and country to country, almost all major European cities have rent control.

GLAESER: Sweden, of course, is the place where Assar Lindbeck, the famous economist — and although he was market-oriented, he certainly skewed to the left — Assar famously said that, “short of bombing, I know of no way to destroy a city that was more effective than rent control,” and he certainly had Stockholm in mind.

Tommy ANDERSSON: Right now, there are around 10 million people living in Sweden. Around 550,000 of these people were standing in a queue waiting for an apartment in Stockholm. That is 5 percent of the Swedish population.

That’s the economist Tommy Andersson.

ANDERSSON: I am a professor at Lund University, which is located in the south of Sweden. I focus on an area called market design.

Sweden has nationwide rent control.

ANDERSSON: The rental system in Sweden is based on collective bargaining. So according to the Swedish law, there is a union called the Swedish Union of Tenants and their job is essentially to negotiate the rents for tenants. And it’s based on something which is called the utility value, which essentially means that if you have two comparable apartments, they should have the same rents. Another objective that they have is that they should keep the rents low. The rents cannot be increased by too much.

If you’ve been listening closely, it may not surprise you to learn that this system has led to a housing shortage. 

ANDERSSON: Because people will not invest in new buildings unless they can get good returns. So if you look at this report written by the National Board of Housing, Building, and Planning from 2016, they estimated that Sweden needs around 440,000 new homes before 2020.

And that’s not going to happen. This shortage is what can lead to long lines to get an apartment, especially in the more desirable places. How long do you have to wait in Stockholm?

ANDERSSON: You have to wait for 10 or 20 or even 30 years to get an apartment right now, if you would sign up today.

What if you don’t want to wait 10 or 20 or 30 years for an apartment?

ANDERSSON: So, there are no official figures because it’s a black market. But it’s clear that there exists a black market. You can get an apartment in several different ways. So one of them is essentially to buy contract with black money. You can also bribe someone in charge of allocating available apartments to get the better position in the queue. And another thing which is popular is these fake swaps. So, you’re allowed by law to swap apartments with other persons. So you’re just pretending that you are swapping apartments, but essentially you’re not.

In the old days what I had heard — and I must stress that I don’t have any scientific evidence of this — but apparently, black contracts used to cost around 10 percent of the market value. But in recent years it has actually grown to say 20 percent of the market value of the apartment. So it’s expensive to buy a black contract. You know, it’s always a risk to be involved in this business because even if you paid the money, it’s not clear that you will get the apartment simply because, I mean, there are criminal gangs involved in this as well.

That doesn’t sound like what the designers of the Swedish rental system were going for. But the housing market in Stockholm is so bad that even business leaders there have risen up in protest.

ANDERSSON: The C.E.O. and the founder of Spotify, in 2016, he wrote an open letter to the people of Sweden saying that unless you solve this housing situation in Stockholm, Spotify may consider moving its headquarters out of Stockholm simply because we cannot find housing for our future employees.

If policy makers can’t figure out smarter ways to encourage more affordable housing, you can expect to see this kind of scenario playing out in cities all over the world.

*      *      *

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Zack Lapinski. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rippin, Harry Huggins, Matt Hickey and Corinne Wallace. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; all the other music was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Rebecca Diamond, Associate Professor of Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

David Eisenbach, history lecturer at Columbia University.

Vicki Been, former commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development and law professor at the New York University School of Law.

Ed Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

Tommy Andersson, economics professor at Lund University.

RESOURCES

“Roofs or Ceilings?: The Current Housing Problem,” by Milton Friedman and George J. Stigler (Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1946).

“An Econometric Analysis of Rent Control,” by Edgar O. Olsen (Journal of Political Economy, 1972).

“The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco,” by Rebecca Diamond, Tim McQuade, and Franklin Qian (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2019).

“Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from the End of Rent Control in Cambridge, Massachusetts,” by David H. Autor, Christopher J. Palmer, and Parang A. Pathak (Journal of Political Economy, 2014).

The post Why Rent Control Doesn’t Work (Ep. 373) appeared first on Freakonomics.

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Understand SEO 2019 Before You Regret

Colorado SEO Pros CEO Frank Rodgers talks search engine marketing (SEO) strategy, artificial intelligence (AI), and why link building will be dangerous for companies. SEO or the particular Search Engine Optimization is certainly an method of increasing visitors generation for an internet company. Cisco approximated that by 2019, video will certainly make up 80% of most consumer internet traffic. In line along with the previous point, SEOs may consider various landing pages along with proper keywords, meta tags plus the overall website structure through the SEO point of see. Including relevant key phrases in the title, URL, plus headers of the page plus making sure that a web site is crawlable are actions that will site owners can take in order to improve the SEO of their particular site. To fulfill intent and position well in the long work, build your SEO marketing technique around topics, not keywords In case you do that, you will find a person can naturally optimize for essential keywords, anyway. Artificial cleverness (AI) and voice searches are usually two technologies that are currently affecting SEO but will probably have an even bigger influence in 2019 and the many years to come. They are usually also great for video SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, and get great organic position online and Google. Remember keywords are usually the KEY in SEO composing guidelines. It deeply analyze your internet site and reveals each opportunity with regard to your SEO improvement by concentrating on key factors like cultural media, technologies, local SEO, guests, usability, search ranking efforts plus mobile SEO. A SEO specialist or agency can audit your own site and appear at just how it is performing against your own most important keywords.

This particular SEO model is called the "topic cluster, " and contemporary search engine algorithms rely upon them to connect users along with the information they're looking regarding. Your own SEO strategy likely involves articles designed to be shared upon social media. Take this article intended for example, if you search with regard to reverse engineer Google, ” seo secrets, ” reverse engineering seo, ” this post is on the particular first page for every associated with those search terms. Social media marketing and SEO ought to be working together, sharing content material or utilizing engagement metrics because data for future article advertising. Simply put, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is marketing through an knowing of how search algorithms function combined with a knowledge associated with what human users might research for. The results furthermore underscore the value of creating new content with your SEO online marketing strategy. Once you create new content structured on your priority keywords, a person have several advantages by having an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION marketing strategy. Both SEO and content material marketing converge in several places; these people do not work in remoteness. Free to go to SearchLeeds covers everything from complex SEO and analytics, to ADVERTISING, content marketing, paid media and even more. Following technical mobile SEO greatest practices (e. g., image marketing, redirects, JavaScript and CSS) is usually a necessary barrier to access in today's digital world.

There is definitely no magic wand in your own hands to regulate or manage your competitors' strategies or administration, Google analytics update, or user's behavior communicate business but a person can manage your SEO. In this particular new environment, the digital internet marketer who views SEO in the broader context will surely come away ahead of the competition within 2018 and beyond. Good SEO textbooks explain in detail how greatest to use keywords and just how to structure your entire web site to attract the attention associated with search engine spiders and associated with human visitors, and a posting such as this cannot perform the topic justice. While businesses start on an SEO advertising advertising campaign, they should realize that a good entire marketing campaign can drop flat on its face in the event that a business is unable in order to reach the masses, that will be, their target audience. If your own pages were designed to obtain the most out of Search engines, with commonly known and right now outdated SEO techniques chances are usually Google has identified this plus is throttling your rankings within some way. Several business people find keeping upward with the "moving target" associated with SEO distracts them from day-to-day priorities more than they actually imagined, so it's good in order to appear closely at what can make sense for every business. The program process for the SocialSEO Electronic Marketing and SEO Scholarship is usually done 100% electronically and demands these list of materials. User-generated content racks up serious SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION points by providing sites along with fresh content, bundles of inbound links, and sources for organically framing natural attributes. You'll find it right here Also really worth checking out there is Moz's Beginner's Facts SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, ” which you'll find right here, and the SEO Success Pyramid from Small Business Search Marketing and advertising. Off-page SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategy refers to the impact of a change in various other websites in your search rank. Bruce Clay-based set the standard for honest internet marketing by authoring the particular " SEO Code of Integrity, " now translated into eighteen languages, and it has already been a respected leader within the particular ever-changing research engine marketing industry since mil novecentos e noventa e seis. Website SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (including, content optimisation, meta marketing, the significance of links). A good SEO Specialist is someone which is an expert on the particular topic of search engine optimisation. Just since a proper On-page and Off-page SEO optimization work will provide a better Ranking to your own website in Search Engine Outcome Page (SERP). The largest SEO change and tendency I realize already happening within 2018 is Google's switch in order to a mobile-first index, so in case a site is not however mobile-friendly and optimized for this, it's critical to prioritize this particular as it is now essential for its SEO success. With good on-page SEO, lookup engines can easily index your own web pages, understand what your own site is about, and effortlessly navigate the structure and articles of your website, thus position your site accordingly. The traditional method to SEO has been devoted to creating excellent content that will is easily searchable via lookup engine bots. To realize SEO, you'll also need in order to know how Google search functions. 2019 may still use many of these kinds of newly implemented tactics, but lookup engine optimization experts are in addition suggesting there will be a great deal more. Currently more than half associated with searches account for mobile gadgets, and the number will surely proceed up in 2019. Within the remaining 2018 quarter, a person need to invest in mobile-first content that will rank a person higher in mobile search within 2019. The vast majority of your SEO learning need to come from online resources, yet there are a few publications that will help you conceptually understand the history of research, search engines, and how SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION has changed through the yrs. There are several methods that webmasters use within order to entice potential clients to their site—one of the particular most important and effective associated with those being Seo (SEO). SEO is important for plenty of companies because if individuals find you with a web lookup and find what they're searching for, you can receive a lot of new web visitors that will can help you earn even more money. Good SEO follows guidelines that Search engines determines are best practices in order to have your articles ranked upon top. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION services do thorough keyword analysis for the specific website, and after that optimize the information on the particular basis of these keywords plus theme of website. All of us wished to look at a massive group that included businesses of most sizes and in all sectors so we could really observe how SEO traffic increased whenever the only common denominator was including reviews to their site. In truth, this is section of the SEO technique we have used to gradually grow our organic traffic throughout the last 12 months right here at SnapApp: #3. Mobile may account for 72% of ALL OF US digital ad spend by 2019. This workshop will be designed to help business proprietors implement Digital Marketing techniques with regard to their business including social mass media, organic SEO as well because paid channels. The Beginner's Guide in order to SEO continues to be go through over 3 million times plus offers comprehensive information you require to get on the road to professional quality Search Motor Optimization, or SEO. Whether it's using web analytics for carrying out research or even conversion tools that monitor plus report the usage of essential keywords, SEO agencies know just how and where you can obtain the information they need in order to save time furthermore lessen your in-house price. Generally there is probably no more simple strategy for SEO than the particular integration of internal links straight into your site - it is usually an easy way to enhance traffic to individual pages, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Consult says. SEO SERVICES Right now there are a number of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION services which can help enhance the organic search engine ratings of a website.

Off-page SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION concentrates on increasing the authority associated with your domain through the act associated with getting links from all additional websites. Regarding: Search Engine Journal's flagship meeting, SEJ Summit, is dedicated to providing SEO pros the actual require, with an agenda of unique, first-run presentations covering the newest SEO and PPC tactics through renowned experts, plus excellent social networking opportunities. SEO combines official research engine guidelines, empirical knowledge, plus theoretical knowledge from science documents or patents. This is usually a half-day workshop at LeadsCon that will be designed for you to give attendees an end-to-end watch of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), how it works, and real things they can do nowadays to improve their SEO efficiency. After the Search engines Panda algorithm appeared, SEO professionals realized just how much key phrase frequency and density matters. SEO means optimizing your content so it shows up a great deal more often in search results. 33. With social media systems like Facebook diminishing visibility associated with companies and brands, SEO (as well as paid promotion) is usually becoming critically important for generating traffic to your social stations. 2019 dates TBD. ). Why go to: One-track conference full of forward-thinking, tactical sessions in SEO, development marketing, the mobile landscape, analytics, content marketing and more. ” Don't miss the LeadsCon Meeting in Vegas, March 4-6, 2019. If you understand you might have VERY lower-quality doorway pages on your own site, a person should remove them or think again about your SEO strategy if a person want to rank high within Google for the long expression. One of the problems engines like google and Bing have constantly attempted to overcome is knowing which external links exist exclusively for SEO purposes and which usually links represent a true sign that the source content is usually of value to the visitors. 2018 has currently seen some particularly significant SEO paradigm shifts from Mobile First” in order to the ever-advancing Rankbrain machine-learning protocol. Content marketing is usually a bigger approach which along with SEO forms a part associated with your digital marketing strategy. What You Should Know: This future of search engine marketing is Semantic SEO. Links plus technical SEO are the biggest pieces of the pie, yet multimedia efforts such as movie, photos, and podcasts will become the game changer and differentiator in many competitive markets. Occasional, and I actually do more occasional and not really frequent, usage of keywords plus keyword phrases in these hyperlinks may also help very somewhat in your SEO processes. Excelling at SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION means serving your visitors—not simply search engines. Here arrives the idea of SEO or even search engine optimization. The particular fact remains that SEO solutions assure clients that even in case the site will not position among the top search motors like google, the money will certainly not be a waste expected to the refund. Search Motor Optimization (SEO) is the technique to campaign your products on-line towards the right clientele intended for increasing ROI. There are many tools upon the web to assist along with basic keyword research (including the particular Google Keyword Planner tool and there are even more useful third party SEO tools to help you perform this). The biggest change that will we'll see in 2019 (and that's already happening) is the particular fact that keywords are getting less important. Once you've discovered your keywords, use another SEMrush tool, the SEO Content Design template, which is part of their particular Content Marketing Toolkit, to function out the best way in order to optimize your content. If a company is providing you all these services below one roof, climbing up the particular SEO ranking will not become an uphill task for your own business any more. Local SEO companies allows a person to position your business upon search engines like google plus other digital marketing platforms therefore you're seen by potential clients — on their terms. YouTube adds the particular nofollow” tag to their hyperlinks, so they don't really assist with SEO. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION isn't just about building lookup engine-friendly websites. The sooner you understand exactly why Google is sending you much less traffic than it did a year ago, the sooner you can clear it up and focus upon proactive SEO that starts to effect your rankings in a optimistic way. The trending SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION technique or strategy now plus in 2019 will be Lookup Enterprise Optimization It has already been coined by myself since 2015. We cover every topic within the digital marketing sphere like SEO, technical SEO, local SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING, PPC, SEM, content marketing, CRO, analytics, backlink, marketing strategy, mobile phone marketing, social media marketing plus much more. Any SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION company has to be capable to create high quality articles on an ongoing basis. SEO is the treatment for making changes to the website to be able in order to improve its position in the particular search engines like google. Robert thinks that by 2019 most cellular searches will be conducted simply by voice by mobile devices or even virtual assistants in fact this is very important to obtain your positioning in the lookup engine ranking positions as shortly as possible. As the particular factors search engines like Search engines, Bing, and Yahoo use in order to rank sites are kept top secret 10 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Rely On SEO 2019 Anymore and change frequently, we construct all known SEO best methods into every Squarespace site. Black hat SEO may get you to the best of SERP in a brief time, however, search engines such as google will most probably punish and ban the website more rapidly or later. If might read from the beginning, a person know that links are the key SEO ranking factor. Generally there are 2 types of lookup engine optimization or SEO. Now, pay shut attention to the components that will make up on-page SEO, because this is where non-SEO authorities will be able to help to make the most meaningful impact in their search engine rankings. Erase all duplicated content material; it will increase your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ranking. Long-term: as discussed over, you'll ultimately get more research traffic from better usability, actually though you don't squeeze each last drop from the SEO-trick lemon. However, to accomplish all this particular, web-developers use SEO custom solutions, that have long-lasting SEO Search engines rank. That being said, companies usually have little or simply no time for you to maintain up with the latest advancements in SEO techniques. Social search motor optimization is largely built on user-generated content. Keywords are at the center of SEO, but they're really not your first step in order to an organic growth play any more. Obviously, reviews are a powerful kind of customer content that has large implications for SEO and enhancing Blog9T organic traffic. With right search engine optimization and with the help associated with an SEO expert however, your own website can give you a good increasing number of visitors plus exposure. Just keep in mind to pay attention to strong content creation and copywriting principles, engage your viewers deeply, plus stay abreast of technical tendencies such as backlinks, SEO health, site velocity, and schema. SEOmonitor pricing is based on the particular number of websites and key phrases you track. So, I actually would say that 2018 is usually a challenge for Google, simply because much as it could be for SEOs. The SEO Publication Keyword Suggestion Tool aggregates research data and provides volumes, associated terms, and more.

SEO differs from local lookup engine optimization in that the particular latter is targeted on enhancing a business' online presence therefore that its web pages is definitely going to be displayed simply by search engines when a consumer enters a local search intended for its products or services. The challenge for webmasters plus SEO is that Google does not want company owners to rank with regard to lots of keywords using autogenerated content especially when that creates A LOT of pages upon a website using (for instance) a list of keyword variants page-to-page. In time, the series between social media marketing management, channel advancement, and SEO will be considerably blurrier than it really will be today. In 2016, SEO experts possess determined which factors are almost all likely to affect your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION rankings. Customers and marketers will need in order to begin implementing multiple forms associated with digital marketing tactics including compensated search, social media marketing, nearby SEO, in addition to SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION if they hope to rule a given Google SERP. Before beginning with this, the SEO professionals should visit your business and realize each and every aspect associated with your company so that they will can help your achieve your own marketing goals. What really matters in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in 2018 is what a person prioritise today to ensure that will in 3-6 months you may see improvements in the high quality of your organic traffic. Mobile will account for 72% of US digital ad invest by 2019. Content written simply by customers gives sites legitimacy plus it earns SEO juice each from manual and automatic ranking systems. Within 2018, this trend is upon the rise and if a person invest in making your web site mobile friendly you will take pleasure in higher ratings in 2019 as well. When making a site for Google in 2018, a person need to understand that Search engines has a long list associated with things it will mark websites down for, and that's generally old-school SEO tactics which are usually now classed as ‘webspam‘. Besides getting social plus having a good time, your own social media profiles can favorably affect your SEO efforts. Since so many people trust in voice search being the tendency in 2019, I, Nicole Bermack (this article's author), am coining the word VSO - voice lookup optimization. Intelligent brands and agencies are changing new SEO, social and articles marketing strategies to join their particular customer conversations. Search engine marketing (SEO) is the art plus science of getting pages in order to rank higher in search motors such as Google. A person can audit your page's SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION health, compare SEO metrics regarding a number of pages, plus analyze both external and inner links on any given internet page. Content companies that will offer SEO content creation providers are experts in creating content material that are not only enhanced for search engine rankings yet also add value for your own business in terms of brand name awareness, customer engagement and enhanced sales. A several of the popular keyword analysis tools are Wordtracker, SEOMOZ Key phrase Difficulty Tool, SEOBook Keyword Device and Google Keyword Tool. Luckily, SEO allows webmasters to supply clues that the engines may use to understand content. Because less as 20% dentists within a city hire SEO expert s who really wants that shift within their Google ranking. The particular analytical part of the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is about tracking organic key phrase positions, website traffic and the engagement in Google Analytics, Site owner Tools and many other specific tools. Mobile SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is nothing than a typical SEO, creating content and marking to be able to remain out online. SEO rankings are placing excess fat than ever upon what users have to state. The Search System will help you to evaluate your keyword rankings, CTRs, feasible Google penalties and many additional useful data for technical SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. Blog posts, guides, whitepapers, situation studies, videos, and social articles all need to include the particular right keywords for social plus SEO. For even more detailed information on the make use of of keywords on your web site visit SEOcious to will discover many other important factors included in having your web web page in the top 10 entries on the search engines. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, search engine optimization is most about search engines, search motor result page (SERP), search position, online visibility, and quality visitors. If your web site has about 5-10 niche key phrases that are extremely targeted yet not very competitive, your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION pricing is going to become quite less. Google My Business is Google's business directory and, thus, extra crucial to your local SEO Outlined businesses using the best SEO will certainly appear in the Local 3-Pack, the batch of 3 showcased businesses nearest you that look when you do a pertinent local search. Stir up Visibility recently released SEO: The particular Movie ”. This 40-minute movie covers a brief history associated with search engine optimization portrayed via the experiences of some associated with the biggest names within the particular SEO industry. In addition to producing content accessible to search engines, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION also helps boost rankings therefore that content will be positioned where searchers will more easily believe it is. The Internet is getting increasingly competitive, and the ones companies that perform SEO may have the decided advantage in visitors plus customers. Unfortunately, SEO - and lookup in general - is usually soloed into focusing on The particular Google” and not really regarded for other tactics. This means website owners plus SEO experts will need in order to be on top of their own game when it comes in order to keyword research and keeping the particular context of their site appropriate to users. Varvy's SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Overview tool audits your web site for key parameters like site strength, links, image SEO, cultural counts, on-page SEO, technical standing, page speed, loading time plus more. The particular trouble is that SEO position factors have changed a great deal over the years (find out there how in our keyword exploration guide ). That means typically the search engine optimization techniques of which worked 5 in years past won't soar today.

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7 New Thoughts About SEO 2019 That Will Turn Your World Upside Down

With the way things proceed so fast on the internet, many business people find internet design and search engine optimisation (SEO) to become like the moving target. Dave Gregory, Content Marketing Supervisor from the UK based functionality marketing agency, SiteVisibility, predicts that will 2019, and not 2018, will be going to be the true year of voice. If we consider Google's Guide then there are almost 200+ factors that lead a site in ranking, which we possess researched and clustered in twenty one On Page SEO Factors, that will needs your attention in 2019. SEO Wise Links can automatically link essential terms in your posts plus comments with corresponding posts, web pages, categories and tags on your own blog. 41. An effective interpersonal media strategy needs a strong SEO plan. Google does make a few of this data accessible in their particular free Webmaster Tools interface (if you haven't set up a free account, this is a very useful SEO tool both for unearthing search query data and regarding diagnosing various technical SEO issues). AI and Tone of voice Search Impact SEO, Lets observe how voice search analytics Impact's SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and can impact in the particular coming time. A great many businesses choose to hire external help to be able to get the full benefits regarding SEO, so a large element of our audience is studying how to convince their customers that search is a good investment (and then prove it! ). Nevertheless, SEOs tend in order to prefer links higher on the page. Because your site, because of to the nature of your current business is going to always be more image orientated than written text heavy, you can be at a small disadvantage when it comes in order to employing SEO techniques such because keywords, backlinking and so on. There is definitely no magic wand in your own hands to regulate or manage your competitors' strategies or administration, Google analytics update, or user's behavior communicate business but a person can manage your SEO. In this particular new environment, the digital internet marketer who views SEO in the broader context will surely come away ahead of the competition within 2018 and beyond. Good SEO publications explain in detail how greatest to use keywords and just how to structure your entire internet site to attract the attention associated with search engine spiders and associated with human visitors, and a posting such as this cannot perform the topic justice. While businesses begin on an SEO advertising marketing campaign, they should realize that a good entire marketing campaign can drop flat on its face when a business is unable in order to reach the masses, that is definitely, their target audience. If your own pages were designed to obtain the most out of Search engines, with commonly known and today outdated SEO techniques chances are usually Google has identified this plus is throttling your rankings within some way. Several business people find keeping upward with the "moving target" associated with SEO distracts them from every day priorities more than they actually imagined, so it's good in order to appear closely at what can make sense for every business. The software process for the SocialSEO Electronic Marketing and SEO Scholarship will be done 100% electronically and needs these list of materials. The number one particular reason for using video upon your site to improve SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is to increase the quantity of time users remain upon your site. Search engine optimization had been but still is fascinating in order to me. The SEO placement intended for any size business begins along with proper web site optimization, a good excellent link building strategy plus a well planned online advertising plan. One part of focus for better marketing and SEO performance within 2018 is the confluence associated with content, influence, and social. This can be helpful for SEO, as it helps avoid search engine crawlers from getting confused by syntax or affirmation errors, and leads to even more accurate indexing. Stop thinking in terms associated with SEO vs. content marketing” plus start exploring how well they Blog9T will perform together. (Give it a try tone of voice search using OK Google through your cell phone and enquire "What Is BlowFish SEO" ) When all remains as it is definitely, Google will read out loud most about my company in the short to the point method, These cards are formatted in order to fit the screen of your own cell with no scrolling upward or down. Although SEO is really the time-consuming process but believes myself, if you work well along with dedication and trendy techniques, the particular combined results of on-page plus off-page SEO holds you upon the top with rank #1 for a specific search outcome. Fairly lately, I've seen a resurgence associated with on-page SEO factors making the difference searching engine rankings. SEO or the particular Search Engine Optimization is certainly an method of increasing visitors generation for an internet company. Cisco approximated that by 2019, video will certainly make up 80% of almost all consumer internet traffic. In line along with the previous point, SEOs can consider various landing pages along with proper keywords, meta tags plus the overall website structure through the SEO point of see. Including relevant key phrases in the title, URL, plus headers of the page plus making sure that a web site is crawlable are actions that will site owners can take in order to improve the SEO of their particular site. To fulfill intent and position well in the long work, build your SEO marketing technique around topics, not keywords In case you do that, there are plenty of a person can naturally optimize for essential keywords, anyway. Artificial cleverness (AI) and voice searches are usually two technologies that are currently affecting SEO but will probably What's So Trendy About SEO 2019 That Everyone Went Crazy Over It? have an even bigger effect in 2019 and the many years to come. They are usually also great for video SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, and get great organic rank online and Google. Remember keywords are usually the KEY in SEO composing guidelines. It deeply analyze your web site and reveals each opportunity regarding your SEO improvement by concentrating on key factors like sociable media, technologies, local SEO, guests, usability, search ranking efforts plus mobile SEO. A SEO advisor or agency can audit your own site and appear at just how it is performing against your own most important keywords. SEO's basic importance comes from the particular fact that most users show strong search dominance — that will will be, search is the main method people go places on the particular Internet. Reading blogs related to SEO might also be very useful within locating out concerning the essential companies on the market which usually are offering comprehensive and genuine Search engine optimization services in the direction of the corporate sector. The initial SEO is dependent mostly on number of key phrases targeted and the size associated with your web site, while the particular ongoing link campaign depends even more on the competitiveness of the particular keywords chosen. Whether you aren't an SEO newbie or the seasoned practitioner, I encourage a person to fully read this in order to understand how you can obtain your content on top associated with search results. Large Brand campaigns are far, considerably totally different from small business SEO strategies that have zero links, to start with, to give you yet an example. These SEO companies have got a strategy requiring clients in order to pay for the major lookup engines (including Google and Yahoo) for monthly website maintenance. Specialists are reporting that 2019 will certainly be the year of words search, and that the tone search algorithm may change in addition to supersede text search relatively. A TOP DOG blog is simply one component of social media distribution, an essential SEO strategy according to SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Consult You should be disseminating links to fresh content upon your site across appropriate sociable networking platforms. This guide will be made to describe all locations of SEO—from locating the terms plus phrases (keywords) that generate visitors to your website, to producing your blog friendly to search motors, to building links and marketing and advertising the unique associated with your own site. With out SEO, a website can end up being invisible to search engines. On-page SEO refers for you to every strategy, technique, and application you utilize within your web site to optimize your web webpages and content for search machines like google. Today, the quality of inbound links is evaluated higher when compared with their quantity and may bring about your SEO efforts. Lookup engine optimization (SEO) tools assist companies position themselves to obtain a favorable ranking in internet search engine results. The particular second biggest SEO trend within 2019 will be voice research. Jooxie is long past mobile search plus voice-search being a ‘trend' : they are the full upon normal now, outdoing desktop lookup in both volume and SEO-favorability. Rather compared to marketing at people, you require to make it possible regarding them to find you whenever they want you, and gowns where SEO is available within. Prior To proceeding BlowFish SEO full Time, Robert Headed very successful internet incoming marketing campaigns for Bella Sante Day Spa's of Boston plus Red Door Spas increasing their particular yearly Gift Card Sales simply by over 400% and increasing client appointments over 300%. In 2019 and over and above, the majority of the on the internet searches will be in the particular form of conversation, and since a result, the online internet marketers will give more importance in order to artificial intelligence keywords for optimisation of the web content.

PeepCon (which stands for The Householder's Conference”) seeks to teach doable SEO and digital marketing training. See how Matthew had taken a website from zero in order to one million visits in much less than a year, using the mix of blogging, content advertising, and SEO. Solid knowing of the keywords, questions, and even phrases your ideal customers make use of to find your products and even services is critical to powerful SEO. 34. Applying SEO practices (such keyword optimization) to social networking raises discoverability when users search cultural platforms like Facebook and Youtube . com. Onsite SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Guide — If you the particular actual link, you will observe a opt-in button where a person can download the Onsite SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Guide. ” Matt Diggity will a lot of testing upon his own sites, and this manual reflects what on page strategies are working best for your pet. One important aspect associated with taking care of SEO will be identifying issues that are harming search engine ranking positions plus reducing the traffic you obtain through SERPs. User-generated content like reviews assist SEO through SMO, because this often comes in the type of social shares, likes, or even commenting, or common threads such as hashtags that point back in the direction of a brand. Local SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION services offer a very focused online marketing approach, (it's not really like dropping off brochures upon front-porch steps or paying for a good ad in a local paper that could or may not really be seen by a achievable client that is actually fascinated in your products or services). We all desired to look at a large group that included businesses of most sizes and in all industrial sectors so we could really notice how SEO traffic increased whenever the only common denominator was including reviews to their site. In reality, this is section of the SEO technique we have used to gradually grow our organic traffic throughout the last 12 months right here at SnapApp: #3. Mobile may account for 72% of ALL OF US digital ad spend by 2019. This workshop will be designed to help business proprietors implement Digital Marketing techniques regarding their business including social press, organic SEO as well because paid channels. The Beginner's Guide in order to SEO continues to be study over 3 million times plus offers comprehensive information you require to get on the road to professional quality Search Motor Optimization, or SEO. Whether it's using web analytics for carrying out research or even conversion tools that monitor plus report the usage of essential keywords, SEO agencies know exactly how and where you can obtain the information they need in order to save time furthermore decrease your in-house price. Generally there is probably no more fundamental strategy for SEO than the particular integration of internal links straight into your site - it is definitely an easy way to increase traffic to individual pages, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Consult says. SEO SERVICES Right now there are a number of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION services which can help enhance the organic search engine search positions of a website.

I believed it as simple as a good example to illustrate an element of onpage SEO or ‘rank modification', that's white hat, fully Google friendly plus not, ever going to trigger you a issue with Search engines. So in case you want to get began which includes basic SEO, the particular first thing that I might recommend would be choosing the set of keywords for every page on your website. Away from page, SEO has contrasted along with it. Undoubtedly, off page marketing is all about link developing, but the quality links plus content. By way of a direct incorporation of Google's Search Console, Siteimprove SEO helps you understand how the particular world's most popular search motor and its users see and—more importantly—find your website. On Page Ranking Factors — Moz's on page ranking aspects explains the different on web page elements and their importance within SEO. Surprisingly enough, the lot of SEOs out presently there do tend to underestimate the particular power of Google Trends This tool has a separate "YouTube search" feature, which hides beneath the "Web search" option. An SEO agency may work together with a business to provide an added viewpoint, when it comes to knowing and developing marketing strategies intended for different sectors and various sorts of business websites. Given the search positions and search volume, SEO may drive considerable traffic and qualified prospects for Grainger. SEO stands for research engine optimization - that very much has stayed the same. But they keep on transforming their algorithms making it tough to rely on one specific tool for SEO optimization Plus today you could have a good appropriate rank which may not really last in the coming 6 months.

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[theconservativebrief]

The US government, as a matter of policy, has decided to separate families who are seeking asylum at the border by crossing over illegally.

It’s a horrendous situation that has provoked indignation in the US and across the world. One of the many questions you might ask when looking at a story like this is, “How can Border Patrol agents participate in this policy?” Surely there are mothers and fathers among them, and surely they feel conflicted about ripping children out of their parents’ arms. Yet they’re doing it anyway.

To shed some light on this issue, I reached out to Bernardo Zacka, a research fellow at the Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University and the author of the book When the State Meets the Street. Zacka’s book is an on-the-ground look at the choices bureaucrats must make every day, and the moral environment that structures those choices.

It’s easy — and necessary — to judge the decisions of bureaucrats, but the conditions they face are enormously complicated and often make it more difficult for them to act ethically. I asked Zacka about the reasons behind this, and what we can do to create bureaucracies that encourage people to do what’s right even when they’re asked or pressured to do the opposite.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Sean Illing

A lot of people look at what’s happening on the border right now and wonder why Border Patrol agents would comply with orders many of them must know are wrong or immoral.

Bernardo Zacka

I worry that framing the matter like this detracts from the real problem. How many people are willing to risk their job to do the right thing? Can we really hold people to such a standard and be surprised if they fail to meet it? The problem is that we put people in situations where they must either act immorally or act heroically. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Sean Illing

Your book is largely about this tension in which bureaucrats operate. On the one hand, they’re asked to thoughtlessly perform vague and conflicting duties, and on the other hand, they have to make moral choices in an environment in which they don’t have the resources or authority to tackle problems in any definitive way. That’s not an easy thing to negotiate.

Bernardo Zacka

It’s helpful to distinguish between two sorts of predicaments. There are cases where the directives you receive are clear but morally troubling, and cases where the directives themselves are vague and ambiguous. The first type of case arises when bureaucracies have lost their moral compass, and as a bureaucrat, you must find the strength necessary to say no, or the resilience to live with yourself having said yes. You might think that this is the kind of situation Border Patrol agents are facing right now.

The second sort of case arises more often in bureaucracies. When the law runs out, bureaucrats must resort to a variety of standards to guide their action — they must, at the very least, strive to be efficient, fair, responsive, and respectful.

Knowing how to weigh these values against one another and dealing with the conflicts that occur between them requires people to exert complex moral judgment in the thick of everyday work. Both types of cases are difficult to negotiate, but they are challenging in different ways.

Sean Illing

I thought a lot about the great political theorist Hannah Arendt while reading your book. She studied Nazism and was one of the first people to note that the Holocaust was, in fact, an industrial phenomenon, that it was carried out by everyday German bureaucrats who were able to commit the worst imaginable crimes and somehow go home at night and live otherwise normal lives. Surely that says something about the nature of bureaucratic structures.

Bernardo Zacka

Arendt’s writing on the topic is terrific, but I’m not sure how much it can help us make sense of the experience of front-line workers like Border Patrol agents.

In the aftermath of World War II, many scholars approached bureaucracy as an industrial phenomenon, a bit like a Fordist production line. If all you do is pull a lever alongside thousands of others who are doing similarly minute tasks, none of you may be quite aware that you are producing a weapon. The repetitiveness of the work, and the lack of contact with those who will be on the receiving end of it, has a way of numbing our moral sensibilities.

But things are different when you’re a welfare worker, a police officer, or a Border Patrol agent, because you’re directly intervening in people’s lives. You know you are separating children from their parents; you can see the tears and hear the screams. So the mechanism that explains why you can go home and live a normal life has to be different. That’s something I try to flesh out in the book.

If I were to sum it up, I’d say this: As a front-line worker, it’s not that bureaucracy shields you from experiencing morally agonizing situations, but that it exposes you to them so frequently that you must develop psychological coping mechanisms that reduce the strain.

This is how indifference comes about.

Sean Illing

I appreciate that distinction, but when I look at what’s happening right now on the southern border, I see the tendency of bureaucracies to separate the people who are doing the job from the implications (moral or otherwise) of the work. Border Patrol agents might personally feel awful about separating kids from their parents, but because they’re operating as instruments of a larger machine, they don’t feel themselves morally responsible for their actions.

Bernardo Zacka

I’d put things slightly differently. Imagine you were a Border Patrol agent and found the policy morally repugnant. You might be outraged at having to implement it for the first, second, or third week. But how long can your outrage last if you can’t do anything about it? And more importantly, perhaps, how long can you go on living with yourself as someone who routinely does morally repugnant acts?

One way out of this is to start relating to your role differently — perhaps what you’re doing is not so bad after all; perhaps your moral qualms have no place given the social role you occupy.

That way, you can regain your self-respect, but at the cost of a reductive understanding of your responsibilities. A lot of this happens unconsciously, of course. You may ultimately end up with something that looks an awful lot like indifference and detachment, but it would have originated in the opposite sentiment.

Sean Illing

But there are bureaucrats who transcend the constraints of their environment, who find a way to do what’s right or who walk away in protest if they can’t. Are there lessons in these examples?

Bernardo Zacka

Absolutely. I spent eight months working in the field as a receptionist at an anti-poverty center, and although I didn’t really encounter policies that bureaucrats wanted to walk away from, I did encounter policies that they wished they had more time and resources to implement well.

This gave rise to endless dilemmas. Do you see as many people as possible but process their cases summarily; or do you give each person the time and attention they need but process fewer of them? There’s no good answer. Yet despite the constraints and pressure, some workers managed to strike sensible compromises between various demands.

How did they do that? Some of it boils down to temperament, of course, but a large part, I think, has to do with mental exercises — tricks, practices, habits — that allowed them to cope well under pressure. It will only take you so far, short of policy or administrative reform, but it makes a difference.

Sean Illing

So what are we to do about all this? Is it in the nature of bureaucracies to produce inhuman outcomes, or can we fix them by, say, changing the incentive structures?

Bernardo Zacka

Bureaucracies can only be as good as the policies they are tasked to implement. Setting that aside, and assuming that we are dealing with sensible policies, are bureaucracies themselves inherently bad? I’m not so sure. After all, most of the good things government does are done by bureaucracies.

To the extent that bureaucracies stand for the impartial application of the law, they’re a central component of a democracy. But it’s important to remember that they should be evaluated differently than their counterparts in the private sector. It’s not enough for them to be efficient; they must also be fair, responsive, and respectful. This creates all sorts of conflicts and necessarily makes their operation clunky. This doesn’t mean they are failing, only that we ask them to do a lot at once.

Can bureaucracies be improved? For sure. Tweaking the incentive structure is certainly part of the answer, but that alone may not take us very far. It’s been tried since the 1980s by pretty much every single wave of public sector reform. Another way forward might be to approach bureaucracies not just as instruments that execute directives, but as organizations that demand complex judgment from their employees. If we realize that government bureaucracies are professional organizations and not simply factories, we’ll be more likely to produce outcomes that are fair and humane.

Original Source -> Why Border Patrol agents obey immoral orders

via The Conservative Brief

[dragnews]

On Trade, the U.S. and China Consider the Unthinkable: Breaking Up

BEIJING — The economic relationship between China and the United States has defined the modern era. It helped lift hundreds of millions of people in China out of poverty. It gave affordable iPhones and other gadgets to American consumers, handed big profits to American companies and delivered 1.3 billion hungry customers to American farmers.

Now some people in both countries want to tear it apart.

As a top Chinese economic policymaker meets with the Trump administration this week in hopes of heading off a potential trade war, some officials in both countries are planning for a time when the world’s two biggest economies do not need each other quite so much any more. They are seeking nothing less than a fundamental rethinking of a trade relationship that encompasses more than $700 billion in goods and services that flow between the countries every year.

Full disengagement is impossible, leaders on both sides acknowledge. But the plans being developed in Beijing and Washington anticipate a time when the economic engines of China and the United States are not so closely linked, particularly in high-tech industries.

“In the next step of tackling technology, we must cast aside illusions and rely on ourselves,” President Xi Jinping of China said last month after visiting a new computer microchip factory in the country’s center.

Beijing has Made in China 2025, a plan that calls for the country to become largely self-sufficient and globally competitive in 10 advanced manufacturing sectors now dominated by the West. These include commercial aircraft, robotics, 5G mobile phone communications and computer microchips.

China currently depends on the United States and its allies for those elements of a high-tech future. Washington showed that last month with its move to deny American-made components to ZTE, bringing the Chinese company’s factories to a halt.

But Washington is also worried about China’s efforts to build homegrown champions. The Trump administration blocked the chip maker Broadcom’s proposed acquisition of Qualcomm, a rival, this year, over concerns that the deal would give China’s Huawei an advantage in 5G technology.

The United States has outlined its own strategy of sorts to wean itself from China. Should the Trump administration enact its threated tariffs on $150 billion in Chinese-made goods, the thinking goes, American corporations would begin to reduce their reliance on Chinese-made small components, machinery and other dull-but-essential parts in the global supply chain.

President Trump’s proposed tariffs are partly targeted at industries where customers would have an easier time switching to a supplier based in either the United States or a friendly ally like Germany, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Mexico or India. In most of the initial product categories the administration has identified for tariffs, less than half of the goods imported by American companies come from China.

Levi’s has a plan for protecting itself should tensions escalate further. If the Trump administration imposes a levy on clothes made in China, the company could sell American consumers jeans made in Vietnam, Cambodia or one of the three dozen or so other countries where it has suppliers.

“It’s a shell game,” said Chip Bergh, the chief executive of Levi’s. He added, “We’ll probably still be making a lot of product in China but it just won’t be coming to the U.S.” He noted that jeans made in China could be sold to consumers in Mexico instead.

The tariffs are also geared toward the products that will shape the future. China exports almost nothing now in some categories that the Trump administration carefully included in its list for planned tariffs, like electric cars and satellites. But China’s leaders hope that with government nurturing, such industries will soon become big exporters.

American laws and World Trade Organization rules allow countries to impose tariffs on subsidized goods from overseas that harm domestic industries. But the Trump administration is trying to pre-empt Chinese exports of subsidized high-tech goods to the United States by imposing tariffs in advance.

United States trade officials are counting on tariffs to have long-lasting effects. Decades-old levies on imported pickup trucks, for example, help explain why essentially all pickups sold in the United States — even those made by Japanese companies like Toyota — are made in America.

American trade policy “will respond to hostile economic competitors, will recognize the importance of technology, and will seek opportunities to work with other countries that share our goals,” Robert E. Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, recently told the Senate Finance Committee.

The focus on disengagement reflect broader political realities. China is rapidly building a world-class navy; conducting military exercises in Africa and off the shores of northern Europe; and developing some of the world’s most advanced stealth fighter planes and ballistic missiles. The military muscle-flexing has caused alarm in Washington and directly influenced trade policy.

In China, leaders were alarmed five years ago by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s disclosures that American intelligence services had involved technology companies in the United States in its spying on China and its allies. China also faces rising labor costs — meaning cheap manufacturing will no longer provide as many jobs — and has a rising class of educated young people for whom it needs to find well-paying, high-tech jobs. While many American and European companies see Made in China 2025 as building up government-supported rivals, Chinese leaders see the plan as essential to the country’s future prosperity.

ZTE’s punishment, in particular, exposed big gaps in China’s economic prowess.

“It seems likely that the current trade dispute, and the ZTE sanctions in particular, will spur the Chinese government to double down on its economic autarky model, where they seek self-sufficiency in a wider array of technology-based products,” said Robert D. Atkinson, the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington policy research group backed partly by Western technology companies.

The Chinese and American plans both face long odds.

At first glance, China’s might seem to have a better chance of success. The country’s state-controlled banking system can steer huge loans at very low interest rates to any industry the central government chooses. Local governments have also been urged to promote targeted industries, which they can do through subsidies like providing downtown land at virtually no cost. Semiconductor factories are now rising in major cities all over China, posing a formidable challenge to the industry’s global players.

But China has a long way to go. It trails the United States significantly in crucial areas like microchips, software design and high-end precision manufacturing. As one example, semiconductors designed in the United States make up half the chips China buys every year. American companies can already design and will soon be manufacturing semiconductors with circuits just one-fifth of the size of Chinese circuits.

But the United States faces its own challenges. Washington could find it extremely difficult to lure back factories that moved to China over the years. Chinese workers may be more expensive to employ than they once were, but they are still paid a quarter or less than American workers. China has also become a vast new market in its own right — one that companies are loath to leave — and has invested huge sums in highways, bullet trains and other systems that make connecting buyers and sellers cheap and easy.

And some industries simply may never come back. For example, Mr. Trump’s proposed tariffs will not touch the consumer electronics industry, in an acknowledgment that the business of making iPhones and Xboxes will stay in China for the foreseeable future.

Foxconn, a Taiwan company that makes iPhones and other devices, has begun building a manufacturing complex in India and is preparing to build one in the United States, too. Devendra Fadnavis, the chief minister of Maharashtra state in India, which includes Mumbai, said in an interview that he had recently met with a group of chief executives of American companies who also wanted to place big bets on new factories in the country.

“They were very bullish on India,” Mr. Fadnavis said, “and now I’m getting more and more inquiries from the U.S.”

But politics, not economics, have played a major role in those decisions, and progress has been slow. Despite a plan to build factories employing 50,000 people in the western Indian state of Maharashtra by 2020, Foxconn now has 16,500 workers in all of India. In China, it has one million.

“We are continuing to invest in expanding our presence and capabilities in locations throughout China,” Foxconn said in a statement.

Jie Zhao, a public policy specialist at Fudan University, predicted that increased economic self-reliance in the United States and China would not come quickly, but that it may lie ahead anyway.

“Neither China nor the U.S. can eliminate the economic interdependence of each other at this moment in time,” she said. “But reducing their dependence could be an option for getting ahead in the technological competition and world-power reorganization.”

Follow Keith Bradsher on Twitter: @KeithBradsher.

Natalie Kitroeff contributed reporting from New York

The post On Trade, the U.S. and China Consider the Unthinkable: Breaking Up appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2GrlkrB via Today News

[dani-qrt]

On Trade, the U.S. and China Consider the Unthinkable: Breaking Up

BEIJING — The economic relationship between China and the United States has defined the modern era. It helped lift hundreds of millions of people in China out of poverty. It gave affordable iPhones and other gadgets to American consumers, handed big profits to American companies and delivered 1.3 billion hungry customers to American farmers.

Now some people in both countries want to tear it apart.

As a top Chinese economic policymaker meets with the Trump administration this week in hopes of heading off a potential trade war, some officials in both countries are planning for a time when the world’s two biggest economies do not need each other quite so much any more. They are seeking nothing less than a fundamental rethinking of a trade relationship that encompasses more than $700 billion in goods and services that flow between the countries every year.

Full disengagement is impossible, leaders on both sides acknowledge. But the plans being developed in Beijing and Washington anticipate a time when the economic engines of China and the United States are not so closely linked, particularly in high-tech industries.

“In the next step of tackling technology, we must cast aside illusions and rely on ourselves,” President Xi Jinping of China said last month after visiting a new computer microchip factory in the country’s center.

Beijing has Made in China 2025, a plan that calls for the country to become largely self-sufficient and globally competitive in 10 advanced manufacturing sectors now dominated by the West. These include commercial aircraft, robotics, 5G mobile phone communications and computer microchips.

China currently depends on the United States and its allies for those elements of a high-tech future. Washington showed that last month with its move to deny American-made components to ZTE, bringing the Chinese company’s factories to a halt.

But Washington is also worried about China’s efforts to build homegrown champions. The Trump administration blocked the chip maker Broadcom’s proposed acquisition of Qualcomm, a rival, this year, over concerns that the deal would give China’s Huawei an advantage in 5G technology.

The United States has outlined its own strategy of sorts to wean itself from China. Should the Trump administration enact its threated tariffs on $150 billion in Chinese-made goods, the thinking goes, American corporations would begin to reduce their reliance on Chinese-made small components, machinery and other dull-but-essential parts in the global supply chain.

President Trump’s proposed tariffs are partly targeted at industries where customers would have an easier time switching to a supplier based in either the United States or a friendly ally like Germany, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Mexico or India. In most of the initial product categories the administration has identified for tariffs, less than half of the goods imported by American companies come from China.

Levi’s has a plan for protecting itself should tensions escalate further. If the Trump administration imposes a levy on clothes made in China, the company could sell American consumers jeans made in Vietnam, Cambodia or one of the three dozen or so other countries where it has suppliers.

“It’s a shell game,” said Chip Bergh, the chief executive of Levi’s. He added, “We’ll probably still be making a lot of product in China but it just won’t be coming to the U.S.” He noted that jeans made in China could be sold to consumers in Mexico instead.

The tariffs are also geared toward the products that will shape the future. China exports almost nothing now in some categories that the Trump administration carefully included in its list for planned tariffs, like electric cars and satellites. But China’s leaders hope that with government nurturing, such industries will soon become big exporters.

American laws and World Trade Organization rules allow countries to impose tariffs on subsidized goods from overseas that harm domestic industries. But the Trump administration is trying to pre-empt Chinese exports of subsidized high-tech goods to the United States by imposing tariffs in advance.

United States trade officials are counting on tariffs to have long-lasting effects. Decades-old levies on imported pickup trucks, for example, help explain why essentially all pickups sold in the United States — even those made by Japanese companies like Toyota — are made in America.

American trade policy “will respond to hostile economic competitors, will recognize the importance of technology, and will seek opportunities to work with other countries that share our goals,” Robert E. Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, recently told the Senate Finance Committee.

The focus on disengagement reflect broader political realities. China is rapidly building a world-class navy; conducting military exercises in Africa and off the shores of northern Europe; and developing some of the world’s most advanced stealth fighter planes and ballistic missiles. The military muscle-flexing has caused alarm in Washington and directly influenced trade policy.

In China, leaders were alarmed five years ago by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s disclosures that American intelligence services had involved technology companies in the United States in its spying on China and its allies. China also faces rising labor costs — meaning cheap manufacturing will no longer provide as many jobs — and has a rising class of educated young people for whom it needs to find well-paying, high-tech jobs. While many American and European companies see Made in China 2025 as building up government-supported rivals, Chinese leaders see the plan as essential to the country’s future prosperity.

ZTE’s punishment, in particular, exposed big gaps in China’s economic prowess.

“It seems likely that the current trade dispute, and the ZTE sanctions in particular, will spur the Chinese government to double down on its economic autarky model, where they seek self-sufficiency in a wider array of technology-based products,” said Robert D. Atkinson, the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington policy research group backed partly by Western technology companies.

The Chinese and American plans both face long odds.

At first glance, China’s might seem to have a better chance of success. The country’s state-controlled banking system can steer huge loans at very low interest rates to any industry the central government chooses. Local governments have also been urged to promote targeted industries, which they can do through subsidies like providing downtown land at virtually no cost. Semiconductor factories are now rising in major cities all over China, posing a formidable challenge to the industry’s global players.

But China has a long way to go. It trails the United States significantly in crucial areas like microchips, software design and high-end precision manufacturing. As one example, semiconductors designed in the United States make up half the chips China buys every year. American companies can already design and will soon be manufacturing semiconductors with circuits just one-fifth of the size of Chinese circuits.

But the United States faces its own challenges. Washington could find it extremely difficult to lure back factories that moved to China over the years. Chinese workers may be more expensive to employ than they once were, but they are still paid a quarter or less than American workers. China has also become a vast new market in its own right — one that companies are loath to leave — and has invested huge sums in highways, bullet trains and other systems that make connecting buyers and sellers cheap and easy.

And some industries simply may never come back. For example, Mr. Trump’s proposed tariffs will not touch the consumer electronics industry, in an acknowledgment that the business of making iPhones and Xboxes will stay in China for the foreseeable future.

Foxconn, a Taiwan company that makes iPhones and other devices, has begun building a manufacturing complex in India and is preparing to build one in the United States, too. Devendra Fadnavis, the chief minister of Maharashtra state in India, which includes Mumbai, said in an interview that he had recently met with a group of chief executives of American companies who also wanted to place big bets on new factories in the country.

“They were very bullish on India,” Mr. Fadnavis said, “and now I’m getting more and more inquiries from the U.S.”

But politics, not economics, have played a major role in those decisions, and progress has been slow. Despite a plan to build factories employing 50,000 people in the western Indian state of Maharashtra by 2020, Foxconn now has 16,500 workers in all of India. In China, it has one million.

“We are continuing to invest in expanding our presence and capabilities in locations throughout China,” Foxconn said in a statement.

Jie Zhao, a public policy specialist at Fudan University, predicted that increased economic self-reliance in the United States and China would not come quickly, but that it may lie ahead anyway.

“Neither China nor the U.S. can eliminate the economic interdependence of each other at this moment in time,” she said. “But reducing their dependence could be an option for getting ahead in the technological competition and world-power reorganization.”

Follow Keith Bradsher on Twitter: @KeithBradsher.

Natalie Kitroeff contributed reporting from New York

The post On Trade, the U.S. and China Consider the Unthinkable: Breaking Up appeared first on World The News.

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[heliosfinance]

Why The Cost Of College And Student Loan Debt Won’t Go Down

You've read the headlines for years - the cost of college continues to rise, and the amount of student loan debt graduates leave school with continues to grow.

According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2016–2017 school year was $33,480 at private colleges, $9,650 for state residents at public colleges, and $24,930 for out-of-state residents attending public universities.

And according to Student Loan Hero, the average Class of 2016 graduate has $37,172 in student loan debt, up six percent from last year. 

The fact is, people are demanding an education. And they need to pay for that education. As long as there is strong demand, it's hard to see costs falling. But let's take a look at some of the underlying factors that are driving the situation, and talk a bit about what can potentially be done.

Quick Navigation

Why College Tuition Costs Have Been Rising

Looking At Student Loan Debt And Paying For College

College Economics 101

How Can We Change The System?

Final Thoughts

Why College Tuition Costs Have Been Rising

According to The College Board, between 2011-12 and 2016-17, published tuition and fee prices rose by 9% in the public four-year sector, by 11% at public two-year colleges, and by 13% at private nonprofit four-year institutions, after adjusting for inflation. 

It's also important to realize, that along with increased tuition costs, enrollment in colleges nationwide has surged in the past 20 years. Since 1995, enrollment in higher education has increased 50%.

However, many students never actually pay full price. In fact, the average "discount rate" at private colleges is approaching 50% - that means that students are really only paying half the advertised tuition price. This could be through a combination of grants and scholarships, work study, and more.

So, there's more students, more discounts, and yet college tuition has been rising? Why? Well, because colleges can. They are using the money to expand programs, hire more full-tenured professors, and expand administration that, in turn, can potentially provide more experiences to students.

How can they justify it? Because of student aid. Recent research has suggested that because of generous financial aid programs (i.e. student loans), colleges have an incentive to raise prices to capture as much of this as possible. 

Colleges can charge more because students can pay more. It's as simple as that. But to stay competitive with other schools doing the same thing, colleges need to offer more services, have better professors and programs, and more modern campuses. Thus, they spend, expand, and pass the bill onto students that can pay due to government-backed financial aid programs.

Looking At Student Loan Debt And Paying For College

So, moving into student loan debt, we know there is a record $1.45 trillion in outstanding student loan debt and it's continuing to grow. And it's incredibly easy to get student loans! While there are caps on the amounts of Federal student loans you can get, the rise over time. And there are really no limits on private student loans.

Borrowers can basically get a limitless amount of money to pay for college. Lenders are happy to lend because the collateral for student loans is future earnings. Given that there are limited ways to discharge the debt (i.e. no bankruptcy options, generous ability to collect), lenders have a "safe" bet of getting repaid over a young person's entire life.

As a high school senior, you don't consider much else except "this is where I want to go to school, let's get the loans and pay for it." Sadly, there aren't many who do an ROI Calculation on the value of a college education.

Even fewer look for ways to minimize the amount borrowed by getting scholarships, working through school, or taking community college classes. 

When it comes to paying for college, the math is skewed in colleges favor. If they create a high demand for their programs by investing in them, they can charge more, knowing full well that students can always pay because their costs are going to be covered by limitless government-backed loans (both directly backed and indirectly backed through legislative protections).

College Economics 101

Now that we understand the underlying causes, let's do some economics 101 and really show why the cost of college and student loan debt won't go down.

Demand For College Education: Growing

The simple fact is that growing college admissions have failed to keep pace with the rising amount of students applying for college. College Board research has shown that admissions have only kept pace with 50% of the applicant increase in the last decade. At the most competitive schools, admissions have only kept pace with 10% of the applicant increase. 

Supply Of College Eduction: Limited

At the average school, admissions have increased by 747,000 over the last decade. At highly competitive schools, admissions have only increased 55,000 over the last decade. Neither of these numbers comes close to the rise in demand. And logistically, it will be difficult for schools to continue to invest in supply of education without massive expenditures in infrastructure and staffing.

Price Sensitivity Of College Students: Insensitive To Price Increases

Given the fact that college students can (and will) pay anything for college, there is no reason that suppliers need to lower prices. As such, the price sensitivity of college students is very insensitive, and tuition increases will not create any diminishing demand. The student loan system is a big driver in the price elasticity of demand of college students.

How Can We Change The System?

This is the million (or trillion) dollar question - what can we do about rising tuition costs and rising student loan debt? Sadly, not much - but here are some areas to focus on.

With anything, you have to look at the economic drivers and see what change can happen. There isn't much that can be done for the demand side of this equation. Education is a national good, and it should be viewed positively that people want to get educated. You can potentially look at better K-12 education, but I doubt that would have much of an impact on higher education demand.

We can look at improving higher education supply, but this would be costly - and it's likely that any increases in supply would simply be passed to the tuition payers anyway. The other solution would be more public funding, but that public funding would likely be offset through taxes or increased tuitions - still putting the burden on the public.

Finally, we can look at shifting the price sensitivity of college students. How can we make college students more sensitive to the cost of tuition? We can make it harder to borrow. That's not a sexy or popular answer, but it would work to drive costs down. 

By instituting lower Federal limits, instituting private student loan limits, and potentially tying both Federal and private borrower limits to colleges and/or degree programs, we could force a shift in the higher education marketplace. 

If colleges suddenly faced a class of student who simply couldn't borrow their way to pay for school, the colleges would be left with a choice: 

Keep costs the same and see lower enrollment (which would diminish revenue to the school)

Lower costs to allow for students to borrow in order to maintain full enrollment (and in turn, maximize revenue)

A bonus of lower borrowing limits would likely be less student loan defaults in the future, as the ROI of a college education would likely become more in line with potential earnings after graduation. 

However, in the short term this would be a huge disruption to higher education because they would have to realign cost structures to conform with a lower revenue environment. While good for students, it could prove challenging for schools (and their government or non-profit backers).

Final Thoughts

It's hard to discuss overall structural change to the higher education system in the United States because there will always be winners and losers.

However, college, and it's associated costs, is still a personal decision. Nobody is forcing college on anyone. Nobody is forcing student loans on anyone. 

The best thing a family can do is have a rational discussion about college costs, paying for college, and working together as a unit to ensure the student is successful (both educationally and financially). Look at ROI, have a purpose for going to school, and don't be afraid to work during school to offset the costs and gain real world skills. 

​What are your thoughts on rising tuition, rising student debt, and potential solutions?

The post Why The Cost Of College And Student Loan Debt Won’t Go Down appeared first on The College Investor.

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God Loves a Cheerful Itemizer

If you make between $50,000 and $100,000 a year, you’ll probably give less to charity under President Donald Trump’s proposed tax plan.

So says a study commissioned by Independent Sector, a coalition of nonprofits, foundations, and corporate giving programs.

Back in May, researchers from Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy ran the numbers on the Trump administration’s proposal to double the standard deduction from $6,300 to $12,600 for individuals, and from $12,600 to $24,000 for joint filers. This week, key Republicans affirmed the plan, which also increases the child tax credit and eliminates most itemized deductions except for mortgage interest and charitable contributions.

The changes, which still have to get past Congress, would mean less money in the federal government’s pockets—and also mean less for ministries.

“The Unified Framework for Fixing Our Broken Tax Code is just that—a framework,” said Dan Busby, president of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA). “The details”—many of which are left up to Congress to decide—“are what will tell the real story.”

Busby broke down for CT how Trump’s proposals would affect charitable giving:

Lowering corporate tax rates and the pass-through rates for small business are pro-growth elements, placing more dollars in the hands of those who support churches and ministries. That is good for ministries, but the impact will tend to be long-term.

The elimination of the personal deduction reduces available resources to make charitable deductions.

The repeal of the death tax removes the significant incentive for many to make charitable contributions to avoid this tax.

But the change that is likely to make the biggest impact on middle-income taxpayers is the doubling of the standard deduction, Busby said.

Raising the standard deduction puts money back into taxpayer pockets, but also means those who itemize their charitable contributions on their IRS 1040 forms would drop from about 30 percent of the population to about 5 percent, said National Christian Foundation president emeritus David Wills. If that group of people is no longer able to write off their charitable contributions as tax free, they may be less inclined to give.

And because itemizing taxpayers—who tend to both earn more and donate more—gave away $217 billion in 2015, that could mean a drop of between $5 billion and $13 billion in charitable giving, concluded the Indiana University researchers. The wide spread is due to statisticians’ uncertainty about just how much tax policy influences a giver’s motivation.

While a higher standard deduction would likely have “a dampening effect” on giving, it won’t destroy it, said James Bakke, executive director of the Barnabas Foundation, which provides planned giving and stewardship services to Christian organizations. “Most of our donors aren’t motivated primarily by taxes. They’re almost always motivated by the mission of the organization and by doing something good with their money.��

Indeed, one Grey Matter study showed that while 37 percent of Protestant churchgoing donors thought eliminating the deduction would decrease giving by a lot, only 8 percent said it would decrease their own giving by a lot.

People committed to tithing will continue to do it regardless of tax structures, Bakke said. And the 75 percent of taxpayers who already take the standard deduction or who will continue to itemize (even after the raised limits) won’t be affected.

However, the 25 percent who will be affected are significant: In 2015, the 30 percent who itemized provided nearly 60 percent of America’s charitable donations.

But the bigger danger is that by narrowing the charitable deduction, only the wealthiest people will benefit by using it, experts say.

“It allows [opponents] to say, ‘We can get rid of this because most people don’t get the charitable deduction anyway,’” Bakke said.

Elimination of the charitable deduction altogether would be a significant problem for charities, both decreasing incentive to donate and symbolically withdrawing government support.

The charitable deduction is as old as World War I, introduced in 1917 to make giving more attractive to Americans weighed down by heavy wartime taxes. Ever since, the US government has been friendly to charities.

It has been good public policy, since “charities do work that benefits the public in a way that’s more cost effective by using volunteers” who give both time and materials, said Barnabas Fund finance director Dave Schutt. “If the government reduces funding of charity [through tax breaks], either those services go away or the government has to step in and provide them.”

And that would lead to a dramatic tax hike, said Case Hoogendoorn, a Chicago attorney who works with high net-worth clients on taxes and giving.

Assuming the charitable deduction can be eliminated because it’s a benefit for the rich is the wrong perspective, he said. “That perspective assumes that money belongs to the government, and so when it creates a deduction, it’s giving [the donors] a break.”

But the break doesn’t actually go to the donors, who are out the money anyway. Instead, it means the donation costs a dollar, rather than a dollar plus tax.

“It’s splitting your income with the NGO sector,” Hoogendoorn said. Only the income you retain is taxed.

Instead of narrowing the slice of taxpayers who can take a charitable deduction, charities are pushing to see it expanded.

Independent Sector launched an initiative in April to make the tax deduction universal. All donations would be taken as an exclusion “above-the-line,” reducing taxable income the way traditional IRA donations do.

“[This] would encourage more giving from everyone,” Wills said.

Indeed, the Indiana University study predicts those making less than $100,000 would increase their giving by about 8 percent, and overall charitable giving would grow between $3.7 billion and $12 billion.

The Barnabas Foundation’s best advice to givers: Don’t get lost in the weeds.

“Some donors, when they get all caught up in the taxes, they lose the joy,” Schutt said. “We remind them of the reason they give and tell them, ‘If it’s going to cause you to lose your joy in giving, don’t worry about the taxes.’”

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