The Islamic State is failing at being a state →

Initial reports suggested ISIS/ISIL/IS was picking up the slack where the Iraqi state had failed: garbage services, water, etc. That may have been the case, briefly, or only in certain areas...

Slick Islamic State videos depicting functioning government offices and the distribution of aid do not match the reality of growing deprivation and disorganized, erratic leadership, the residents say. A trumpeted Islamic State currency has not materialized, nor have the passports the group promised. Schools barely function, doctors are few, and disease is on the rise.
In the Iraqi city of Mosul, the water has become undrinkable because supplies of chlorine have dried up, said a journalist living there, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his safety. Hepatitis is spreading, and flour is becoming scarce, he said. “Life in the city is nearly dead, and it is as though we are living in a giant prison,” he said.
In the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group’s self-styled capital, water and electricity are available for no more than three or four hours a day, garbage piles up uncollected, and the city’s poor scavenge for scraps on streets crowded with sellers hawking anything they can find, residents say.

How solar power and electric cars could make suburban living awesome again →

Personally-owned (or rented) solar panels, plus electric vehicles... I think this will be a winning formula going forward (not for everyone, of course; we don't all live in sunny areas). It would avoid a current glaring problem with electric vehicles: electricity generation is still heavily based on burning coal. The biggest obstacle to this move? Obstinate electricity companies that are afraid of solar and wind, and currently fighting interested citizens in court and in several states' legislatures.

Fast food consumption is out of control—and it could be blunting children’s brains →

Researchers at Ohio State University used data from a nationally representative sample of some 11,700 children to measure how fast food might be affecting their performance in class. The study measured how much fast food the children were eating at age 10, and then compared the consumption levels to test results in reading, math, and science three years later.

What they found is that even small increases in the frequency with which the students ate fast food were associated with poorer academic test results. Habitual fast food eaters—those who ate fast food daily—saw "test score gains that were up to about 20 percent lower than those who didn’t eat any fast food."

The connection held true even after the researchers took into account more than a dozen other factors about the children's habits and backgrounds that might have contributed to the association between fast food consumption and poorer academic performance, including fitness, broader eating habits, socioeconomic status, and characteristics of both their neighborhood and school.

The Booming Economy vs. The Struggling Middle Class →

The key point, however, is not that the ratio doubled but why.  Corrected for inflation, the median wealth of upper-income families has doubled since 1983, from $318,000 to $639,000.  By contrast, the median wealth of middle-class families has stagnated during that period--$94,000 in 1983, $96,000 today.  To be sure, middle-class wealth increased to $158,000 between 1983 and 2007 but the Great Recession reversed that gain, and the middle class has not participated significantly in the stock market surge that began in mid-2009.

While we should welcome the increased pace of job creation and early signs of wage gains, the middle class is unlikely to regain a sense of security until the nest eggs of average families reclaim the ground they have lost since the onset of the Great Recession.

The US doesn’t have a good way of determining who’s poor →

In the age of Big Data, we can get closer to solving this problem:

In New York City—the most expensive city in the US—a two-adult, two-child family is considered poor if it earns less than $30,949 a year. The federal government sets the level at about $23,000.

 

The federal poverty threshold, which was developed over five decades ago and is based on what the estimated food costs were for a family at that time, has been widely criticized as being outdated and flawed. Meanwhile, the New York City poverty number, which is calculated by the City’s Center for Economic Opportunity, takes into account all of a family’s expenses, including housing and resources such as government benefits. While the New York poverty number is a closer reflection of how people live, it’s still not the most accurate measurement.

And 2014's Worst Currency Was...Bitcoin →

Albeit Bitcoin is fundamentally different from the currency of nation-states, but this will inform views of the long-term potential of "cryptocurrencies" (even if only in the short term).

Seven Questions About The Recent Oil Price Slump →

Oil prices have plunged recently, affecting everyone: producers, exporters, governments, and consumers.  Overall, we see this as a shot in the arm for the global economy. Bearing in mind that our simulations do not represent a forecast of the state of the global economy, we find a gain for world GDP between 0.3 and 0.7 percent in 2015, compared to a scenario without the drop in oil prices. There is however much more to this complex and evolving story. In this blog we examine the mechanics of the oil market now and in the future, the implications for various groups of countries as well as for financial stability, and how policymakers should address the impact on their economies.