Tom Streithorst

Vice — Two hundred activists and academics meet for the first ever Modern Monetary Theory conference in Kansas City, convinced they can change the world. They just might be right.

lareviewofbooks.org — IN THE 1950s, the average New York City apartment rented for $60 a month - around $530 in today's money. With the US median wage at $5,000 a year, New Yorkers spent 1/10 of their salaries on rent. After World War II, apartments were so cheap and available that Manhattanites would regularly move every September just to get the landlord to repaint their new home. In those days, an apartment was a place to live. Now it is as much an investment as shelter. Imagine trying to find an apartment in Manhattan for $530 now. It is almost inconceivable.

lareviewofbooks.org — WE HAVE TWO OPPOSING VISIONS of the future. In one, technology has advanced so far it seems almost magic. We blithely teleport ourselves around the planet and explore distant galaxies. We manufacture iPhones and steak dinners out of thin air, just from their component molecules. Scientific knowledge has unraveled the structure of the universe, technology allows all our needs and desires to be met with a minimum of effort. The second is more dramatic and less idyllic. Desperate and hungry gangs of thugs roam a post apocalyptic landscape littered with the detritus of our decadent civilization, battling over the last tanker load of gasoline.

prospectmagazine.co.uk — Austerity is more likely to kill the patient than cure him.

pieria.co.uk — Hobbes was right. Without the government monopoly on violence, life is nasty brutish and short.

pieria.co.uk — Before Korea, America never lost a war. Ever since, other than the first Gulf War, it hasn't won any. In Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan America spent trillions of dollars, exploded countless tons of munitions, killed hundreds of thousands of enemy combatants along with innocent civilians and accomplished hardly any of the goals its leaders proclaimed when they sent their soldiers into battle. America's inability to translate its immense firepower into meaningful political effect suggests the $500 billion it spends annually on defence is wasted.

pieria.co.uk — The Jains are probably the most peaceful people on the planet. Strict vegetarians, unwilling to wear leather because their religion abhors hurting animals, the especially devout wear masks so they don't accidentally inhale microscopic creatures. A Jain will not swat a mosquito as it sucks blood from his arm. Harming others, whether human or animal is anathema. Until I travelled to Jaisilmire, the North Indian walled city on the edge of the Thar desert, I gave little thought to the Jains or their gentle ways. But upon visiting their beautiful and extravagantly decorated temple, I learned that the Jains were renowned all over South Asia for their wealth and their skill as businessmen.

pieria.co.uk — Few events are more central to the history of the 20th century than the First World War.

pieria.co.uk — "Stop whining young people, you've never had it so good". That's the debate topic sponsored by The Spectator last week at the British Museum. On the one hand, the statement is insane and insulting. 60% of the unemployed are under 35, recent university graduates on average owe £45,000 for their education and more than a quarter live with their parents because they can't afford the rent. Entry-level jobs are evaporating, and even internships require impressive resumes. Most young university graduates with paying work are in jobs that could have been filled by high school graduates. It's not just Millennials.

lareviewofbooks.org — Obstinate ignorance is usually a manifestation of underlying political motives. — Michal Kalecki BERNIE SANDERS IS PROPOSING AMERICA spend $15 trillion over the next 10 years, improving infrastructure, increasing Social Security, extending Medicare to all, and making public universities tuition-free. All these programs are tempting and desirable, but they feel extravagant. Can we afford them? Maybe that is the wrong question. Ever since John Maynard Keynes wrote his General Theory 80 years ago, economists have known the best medicine to boost a stagnant economy is increased government spending. The last time the economy was in this bad of shape it took a World War to power us out of the Great Depression.

Vice — It's time to admit it: America sucks at war. The last time we decisively defeated our enemies was 1945. Korea was a draw, Vietnam a defeat, the first Gulf War only a qualified success-Saddam Hussein stayed in power considerably longer than George H. W. Bush-Afghanistan and Iraq epic disasters for American foreign policy. The United States has more firepower at its fingertips than any empire in history but seems unable to translate all that might into anything that could be called victory.

lareviewofbooks.org — WE LIVE LIKE GODS, and we don't even know it. We fly across oceans in airplanes, we eat tropical fruit in December, we have machines that sing us songs, clean our house, take pictures of Mars. Much the total accumulated knowledge of our species can fit on a hard drive that fits in our pocket. Even the poorest among us own electronic toys that millionaires and kings would have lusted for a decade ago. Our ancestors would be amazed. For most of our time on the planet, humans lived on the knife-edge of survival.

theamericanconservative.com — Back in the 1930s, after Stalin had finished starving the Ukrainians into submission, was in the midst of slaughtering the kulaks, and was getting ready to murder his own party members, the biggest hit on the Moscow stage was Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Days of the Turbins." It was their "Cats" or, as the head of the Moscow Arts Theatre said at the time, "another 'Seagull' for a new generation." Its appeal to sophisticated Russian theatergoers might have been that it had no tractors, no Stakhanovite workers, no heroic Red Army, none of the tawdry claptrap of typical Soviet propaganda.

theamericanconservative.com — Five years into the war, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and over 4,000 Americans have died. The proud and educated Iraqi middle class has been eviscerated. And America, the birthplace of rock and roll and Marilyn Monroe, the conqueror of the Nazis and the Soviets, for generations a benevolent and powerful force in the world, has been revealed as impotent and petty. The goals of transforming the Middle East, establishing hegemony over the oil fields of Iraq, and demonstrating the invincible powers of the American military have faded. Most of us, except the likes of Norman Podhoretz and Christopher Hitchens, realize the invasion was a disaster.