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Tidbits – Dec. 1, 2022 – Reader Comments: Railroad Workers Deserve Sick Days; More Gun Violence; Jewish Divide Over Netanyahu; Readers Debate Ukraine; Thanksgiving Origins; Afterlife of Paris Commune; Fifty Year Tribute to Juan González; More

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Reader Comments: Railroad Workers Deserve Sick Days; More Gun Violence; Jewish Divide Over Netanyahu; Readers Debate Ukraine; Thanksgiving Origins; Afterlife of Paris Commune; Fifty Year Tribute to Juan González; More Announcements; Cartoons;

What Does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Know About Tax Policy? A Lot.

Paul Krugman New York Times
AOC’s advocacy of a tax rate of 70-80 percent on very high incomes, is obviously crazy, right? Who thinks that makes sense? Only ignorant people like - Peter Diamond, Nobel laureate in economics, arguably the world’s leading expert on public finance

Who Benefits from Trump’s Trade War?

Koichi Hamada Project Syndicate
A trade war with China poses a serious threat to the US itself, which is bound to suffer severe losses due to trade diversion; and broader damage, as tit-for-tat tariffs reduce overall exports, undermine total global trade, and world economic growth.

Xi, Trump and Rising China in the World

Duncan McFarland Portside
This fall the Chinese Communist Party holds its Nineteenth Party Congress. The US-China relationship is one of considerable global importance on several levels: political, economic and the situation of socialism and the international working class. Trump in his presidential campaign adopted a very hostile anti-China tone. However, after Trump assumed power, he changed; his actions towards China proved largely a continuation of established policy. Why did this happen?

America's Collapsing Trade Initiatives

Robert Kuttner Common Dreams; Campaign for America's Future Blog
Obama's trade policy is in tatters. The grand design, created by Obama's old friend and former Wall Street deal-maker, trade chief Mike Froman, comes in two parts -- a grand bargain with Pacific nations aimed at building a U.S.-led trading bloc to contain the influence of China, and an Atlantic agreement to cement economic relations with the European Union. Both are on the verge of collapse from their own contradictory goals and incoherent logic.
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