1.
So, George O’Keeffe made an appearance this week as the next portrait in the series of Lost Siblings.
2.
A Facebook friend, Jeffrey Anthony, recently started his own Substack that deals with the economics of Pima County. So far he’s covered incentives relating to the Gift Clause Statute, the Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities District, and Arizona’s Emerging EV Agglomeration.
To be honest, I have better luck reading Egyptian Scrolls than understanding money matters. But Anthony has spent a chunk of time working within the city while pursuing a Master of Public Administration at the University of Arizona. He says of his writing, “I am reviewing the economic development academic literature to illuminate what works and what doesn’t and how economic development professionals can increase their effectiveness thereby creating more economic prosperity and resiliency in their communities.” Great stuff if you’re a money mover and shaker, and perhaps this information will be useful for communities in other parts of the country.
Personally I’ve enjoyed some his Facebook writings which are a bit more pedestrian and easier for my tiny brain to digest. The following is an interesting example, from an earlier Facebook post, of how money and debt works, which is news to me:
People have many misconceptions about money and debt. Like many people say the federal reserve just prints money and that causes inflation. Wrong.
When you buy a car and get a loan, you just printed money. The loan that is created by the bank is newly issued bank money. It did not exist before you signed the promissory note. Your promise to repay that car loan was monetized by the bank, turned into newly created money that was transferred to the bank's dealership, and your loan became an asset for the bank.
Same exact thing when you buy a house. The money issued on the day you close on that house did not exist before you signed the promissory note, and the bank monetized your promise, or you and your partners promise, to repay the loan.
This is how money gets injected and also how money gets removed from the system. When you pay down your loans you are destroying the amount of money in the system, however what usually happens is the bank just makes more loans to meet demand. And demand is made by people who want to usually buy things, and also by businesses who want to make money from the things you want to buy.
This is the modularity of our modern banking system. The interest rate set by the Federal Reserve is supposed to act like a brake, or accelerator to increase or decrease this process I just described.
Your savings, or your rich uncle's savings, has nothing to do with how many new loans get made or not made, banks do not loan out other people's money, they create new money with every loan and those loans are assets for banks.
3.
See, I have an easier time when visual aids are used when talking economics.
4.
Not yet a hotspot in Tucson but could become one. I see lots of folks unmasked in stores these days. Just got my 2nd booster on Tuesday as we’ll be getting on a plane in a couple weeks. Be smart and safe, people!
5.
According to the Tucson Sentinel, A group of abortion rights activists filed an initiative to amend the Arizona Constitution to add a "fundamental right to reproductive freedom." They'll need at least 356,000 signatures by July 7 to get the measure on the ballot. Petitions with a minimum of 356,467 valid signatures must be returned to state officials in the next 51 days, in order for it to be put to voters at the November general election. Sign up!
In that spirit, the Sentinel also reported that Hundreds of Tucson-area high school students rallied for abortion rights Wednesday morning on the University of Arizona campus. Around 10 a.m., students from at least a dozen schools, including Tucson High Magnet School—just a few blocks from the UA—left their classes and headed to the grassy bowl of the university's Highland Quad. The rally also included students from City Hall, Rincon and University, Pueblo, and Amphi high schools.
Sherronda J. Brown, a Southern-grown essayist, editor, and storyteller with a focus on media analysis and cultural critique, recently wrote in Prism that Addressing both reproductive rights and justice requires an understanding of governmentality and how capitalism, state violence, and reproductive control operate in tandem, as the most marginalized people are used as cannon fodder in the endeavor to create and maintain a white supremacist police state.
She also noted that Alabama’s new law mandating an almost blanket ban on abortion, the strictest in the United States, was passed by a group of exclusively white, male politicians. Surprised? I didn’t think so…meet the Alabama Deciders…
(Warning: author editorial ahead) I don’t think of these men as deplorable. No, I think they are average men; average men doing average work in an average town with an average suit and an average house with average habits eating average food and thinking average thoughts. I also think it’s going to be the women in their lives that will have to rise up and kick their asses out of their average bubble if anything is going to change. (end of author’s short editorial)
Not to be outdone, NPR (and many others) reported that Oklahoma's Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a Texas-style abortion ban on Tuesday that prohibits abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, part of a nationwide push in GOP-led states hopeful that the conservative U.S. Supreme Court will uphold new restrictions.
"I want Oklahoma to be the most pro-life state in the country," Stitt tweeted after signing the bill.
Like the Texas law, the Oklahoma bill would allow private citizens to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion for up to $10,000. After the U.S. Supreme Court allowed that mechanism to remain in place, other Republican-led states sought to copy Texas' ban. Idaho's governor signed the first copycat measure in March, although it has been temporarily blocked by the state's Supreme Court.
And, according to an article in Politico, Legislators in Missouri and Oklahoma have discussed — but not yet passed — legislation that would allow individuals to sue someone in another state who facilitated an abortion for a citizen of the home state.
The United States really is an exceptional nation — just not in the ways we like to think. The U.S. is turning against abortion rights while much of the rest of the world, including Catholic Latin America, is increasing access. Structurally, however, something almost more dismaying is going on: While almost all our peer countries have settled on some compromise that protects abortion rights with restrictions that seem reasonable to the average citizen, we are preparing for a knife fight. Having lost our ability to settle even modest differences, it is far, far beyond us to adjudicate profound ones. Perhaps in 10 years, or 20, we will find our way to a new consensus. Until then, it seems, it’s civil war.
And now…