A real economy is by necessity a positive sum system. This is the heart of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, which you will note was not called Wealth of Billionaires. That would have been a good description of the Mercantilist system that provoked the American Revolution. You may recognize it today.
Mercantilism promotes government regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting and bolstering state power at the expense of rival national powers. High tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, were almost universally a feature of mercantilist policy.
The Koan of the Invisible Hand
The Art of the Screw
If I bake more bread than I need, and you churn more butter than you need, we both profit by exchanging bread for butter. If I get paid a fair wage, exchanging labor for money, and exchange some of that money for rent, food, clothing, shelter, health care…then my employer, myself, and all of those I buy from make a profit. But MAGAtroids in general and The Himself in particular are incapable of grokking this. A deal, to him, is only real if he gets to rip somebody off. Profit is irrelevant to those whose only concern is privilege, of making sure that Those People don’t get anything like their fair share.
And there you also have the entire Republican Congressional agenda, their under water polling, their stark underperformance in multitudes of court cases and elections…The Bad News Boors have a fundamental problem with tax cuts, slashing Medicaid, and tariffs, the heart of their legislative agenda, which are very specifically the plans that the public hates worst.
So, Chris Hayes asked last night, how do they sell these plans?
- Do they try to pretend that none of it is happening? Yes, but they can’t.
- Do they try to pretend that it is all good for their low-income, largely rural voters? Yes, but they can’t.
- Do they try to sneak it all through in the dead of night? Yes, but they can’t.
- Do they fuss about how many bills to put everything into? Yes. And that is something they can do, but it doesn’t do them any good. It just ends up with the Thing That Ate the GQP demanding that they put it all into One Big Beautiful Bill, and actually call it that.
- Do they try to…? Yes, whatever it is, but they can’t.
In particular, there are what you might call “moderate Rs who want to cut Medicaid by somewhat less than $880 billion, and those that you might call wackadoodlidoodles who want to cut far more.
We, of course, want a government informed by empathy and by real economics, both of which are anathema to them. That means that we have to work much harder than them in the midterms and the next Presidential cycle.
And also point and laugh to the max.
Regular Good News
- Chop Wood, Carry Water/Jessica Craven—
- Civil Eats—
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- Good For All News—THE SWEET SUCCESS OF TANZANIAN BEEKEEPING
- GoodGoodGood—Why the Trump administration can't stop states from fighting climate change
- Good News Network—
- Hopium Chronicles/Simon Rosenberg—
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From Hopium:
- New youth vote pod and analysis with @racheljanfaza.bsky.social
- Going live at 215pm ET today with Rob Shapiro to talk about Trump's "pay more, get less" economy - join us!
- Dems putting focus on Trump's unprecedented corruption
More 👇
www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/a-big-win-...
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— Simon Rosenberg (@simonwdc.bsky.social) May 6, 2025 at 10:15 AM
- News From the States— On Bluesky as States Newsroom @statesnewsroom.com
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Gov. Ron DeSantis is standing by Attorney General James Uthmeier’s open defiance of a federal court order requiring law enforcement agencies in Florida to halt immigration arrests under a new state immigration law.
via @floridaphoenix.com
www.newsfromthestates.com/article/desa...
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— States Newsroom (@statesnewsroom.com) May 7, 2025 at 3:22 PM
- Optimist Daily—
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A brighter, community-powered future is on the horizon for the Isle of Arran in Scotland. Plans for what will become the country’s largest entirely community-owned solar farm are officially moving ahead. www.optimistdaily.com/2025/05/scot...
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— The Optimist Daily (@optimistdaily.bsky.social) May 2, 2025 at 11:38 AM
- Positive News—A fresh jump at childhood: Ghana’s safe house for trafficking survivors
- Progress Network—
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"Getting rid of a dictator doesn’t automatically lead to freedom. It just creates a vacuum," writes TPN member Faisal Saeed Al Mutar.
"And if you’re not ready to fill that vacuum with ideas, institutions, and opportunities, someone else will—usually the people with the most guns."
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— The Progress Network (@progressntwrk.bsky.social) May 7, 2025 at 3:46 PM
- Reasons to Be Cheerful—
- The Brighter Side of News—
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Orlando City Commissioner Tony Ortiz just switched from Republican to Democratic.
“The Republican Party is not the party I signed up with... The marginalization of Latinos and immigrants—many of whom have helped build this country—is not leadership. It’s fear-based politics.”
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— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen.bsky.social) May 7, 2025 at 11:03 AM
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The Contrarian—
- The Smile—The Smile: 5/7
- Today: Good News—The first vote in the Conclave did not result in the choice of a new Pope.
- r/UpliftingNews—
- Upworthy—15 people share the one sentence they'll never forget because it completely changed their lives
Never try to hate anyone; often they don't care, and you're left doing all the work.
- Waging Nonviolence—
- Yes!—
Slowed giving and reduced philanthropic investment in independent media—particularly media that centers the stories and voices of historically excluded communities—have left us without a viable path forward.
Rabidly Repellent Republicans Rushing to Ruin/Bad News for Them
Far too much to list here.
I’ll just mention that House Republicans have blocked the Trump plan to defund Planned Parenthood completely.
Science! Lifeforms! Weirdness (Legitimate or Stupid)!
We’re doing all of this because Donald Trump does not understand that trade is a positive-sum interaction.
Derek Thompson, The Atlantic
But the haters can’t avoid having positive interactions with all the rest of us. Don’t try to explain it to them. Just enjoy.
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JWST’s most ambitious view is now available to everyone
The largest, deepest JWST mosaic of the Universe ever taken, the COSMOS-Web field, is now complete and available to all.
Get the full 166 Megapixel view, and see what's inside for yourself.
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#space #astro #science
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— Ethan Siegel (@startswithabang.bsky.social) May 5, 2025 at 11:04 AM
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Astronomers using JWST have identified 1,678 galaxy groups—some dating back 12 billion years. This is the largest such sample ever collected and helps reveal how galaxies evolved in the early universe.
#JWST
#Astronomy
#Galaxies
#Cosmos
🧪🔭
Paper:
www.aanda.org/component/ar...
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— Kenneth Becker (@geophotographer.org) May 4, 2025 at 3:28 PM
UNM Researchers Plan Clinical Trials to Test Vaccine Against Alzheimer’s-Promoting Tau Protein
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Strapped some lasers and lights on our dropcam and drifted along the Santa Monica Bay ocean floor at about 40m depth. Absolutely hacky, but it worked.
Plenty of brittlestars, sanddabs, urchins, tubeworms, anemones, and more!
Turns out octopuses are a lot like cats when it comes to lasers.
🦑🐟🧪🌎
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— Vantuna Research Group at Occidental College (@vrgoxy.bsky.social) May 5, 2025 at 11:33 AM
Ancient Poems Reveal the History of the Endangered Yangtze Porpoise
Mentions of the critically endangered Yangtze finless porpoise in ancient Chinese poetry have revealed missing information about the habitat of the world’s only freshwater porpoise
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Walked around the newly formed pond today and saw the beaver lodge; pretty wild to think this used to be just a narrow little creek, barely a foot wide. Nature doesn’t mess around when it comes to transformation.
#BeaverLodge #NatureAtWork #PondLife #BackyardWildlife #CreekToPond #BeaverDam
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— Misery (@chaoticcalm.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 1:13 PM
Funny or Fuggedaboudit
YouTube ameriCArtoon, FreedomToons, The Week, Political Cartoons, DK Cartoons, DK Image Library, The Onion
P. D. Q. Bach and More
P.D.Q. Bach Fan Channel on YouTube
List of compositions by P. D. Q. Bach
P.D.Q. Bach - Twelve Quite Heavenly Songs
Muppet Songs: Harry Belafonte vs. Animal - Drum Battle
