“The Big Read: America’s Christmas shopping spree.” Financial Times, December 24, 2022. Page 1(Internet) headline
“Shoppers Cut Back Spending Ahead of Holidays.” The Wall Street Journal, December 24-25, 2022. Page 1 headline.
If reality makes regulation difficult, change the reality. It seems that garments made from multiple materials – spandex and cotton for example – are difficult to recycle “because separating the yarns is tricky” reports The WSJ. No problem for European fans of regulation, determined to make clothing recycleable: simply require that clothing be made of a single material. Put “fast fashion out of fashion” by 2030 is the banner under which they are marching on the couture houses of Paris and Milan.
The monofabric requirement will also affect America’s Nike and Levi Strauss, Japan’s Uniglo. German manufacturers, apparently more compliant than those in other countries, have already begun producing monofabric clothing, despite claims that such clothing is less durable than stuff made from the multifiber fabrics the EU is being urged to ban.
Regulatory-minded groups here in America are also on the move. They want labels on the fronts of cans and bottles to include interpretative designs such as an octagonal-shaped stop sign to warn of high content of stuff they find objectionable – sugar, salt and saturated fat. That’s not good enough: they also want labels to be printed in red, yellow and green, the colors of traffic signals, “to distill nutritional information into a graphic.” That should drive down food costs.
Class warfare breaks out in America. Battles between the rich and the very rich are always entertaining for the hoi poloi. The NYT reports that some residents of posh East Hampton complain that “their pool parties and backyard barbecues have been increasingly marred by growling aircraft.” That includes private helicopters and jets relied on by the very rich to facilitate regular commutes. A sub-battle pits millionaires who can only afford a $700 seat on a ten-seater helicopter for an occasional visit against “those who can afford beach homes.”
Battles between the rich and ordinary folk are more serious. Elon Musk is an outlier: Silicon Valley millionaires and their employees remain “staunchly Democratic” reports the NYT. In 2020, billionaire Marc Andreessen called for a major expansion of America’s inventory and housing stock.
But when California passed a law creating new incentives for the construction of multiple-dwelling housing units, founders and senior executives of Apple, Google, Facebook, SoftBank and Twitter (your remember Twitter) yielded to their inner NIMBYs. Bloomberg reports that the Andreessen family’s letter opposing application of the law to Atherton, a Silicon Valley suburb, claimed “They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values.”
Meanwhile, the 12-square-mile town of Woodside, California, with mulit-million dollar homes housing its 5,000 residents, designated itself a sanctuary for mountain lions. That would exempt it from the new state law allowing duplexes across the state, according to the NYT. The state’s Mountain Lion Foundation, without consulting the lions about the quality of the food supply and other amenities available in Woodside, joined several state agencies in objecting.
High scores for teachers, low scores for students. In Decatur, Illinois in 2019 – can’t blame these scores on covid, which had not yet come over from Wuhan — fewer than one per cent of eleventh graders were reading at grade level, and only 4 per cent were on par in math. The Illinois Board of Education rated 97.3 per cent of teachers in that city “excellent” or “proficient”. In 2018, reports the WSJ, that figure rose to 99.7 per cent.
This year’s data for the state of Illinois record that only 20.1 per cent of students are proficient in reading and 15.7 per cent in math. The Illinois State Board of Education rated 97.2 per cent of the state’s teachers proficient or excellent.
Harry and Meghan continue their search for privacy from media intrusion by producing a six-part series with details on their relationship and the cruelty of the royal family for Netflix.