• “OUR PARENTS MAY HAVE BEEN RIGHT all those times they warned that staring at the TV all day would fry our eyeballs.” Lifestyle changes from Covid-19, over a year spent indoors staring at movies/ TV/ video games/ computers/ smartphones or other digital devices, have directly caused short-sightedness in kids.  According to a research study of 1,800 children reported in the British Journal of Ophthalmology,  2½ times the rate of Myopia developed during the pandemic, as compared with before it began, which “sounds like an innocuous condition but can predispose kids to ocular complications and increase risk of irreversible vision loss later in life.”  [NEOSCOPE – 8/3/21]
  • “VOTING PARTY SYSTEMS HAVE PROFOUNDLY TRANSITIONED from ‘class-based’ to ‘multi-elite’ systems of the rich and the well-educated,” becoming the predominant factor, in over 300 elections during seven decades in fifty democracies. Apart from voters opting for or against ‘personality’ (e.g. Obama and Trump), “those with high incomes generally vote Right while people with high-levels of education (such as university degrees) have shifted to the Left, leaving little space for the expression of interests of the most disadvantaged citizens… Combined with ideology that puts private property above all else, the decline of Class divisions is perceived as politically salient and as having contributed to: (1) the rise in identity-based conflicts; (2) economic insecurity and cultural anxiety  allowing Populism to irrevocably take root in the political system; (3) increased concern that globalization & technical change can now serve the interests of more than a narrow majority.”  [GUARDIAN – 8/5/21]
  • “TREATING ANIMALS MORE HUMANELY” was the purpose of a California law effective 2022 – The Farm Animal Confinement Prop 12.” Breeders of chickens and veal have prepared for this, but 96% of pork producers have not and continue to lobby & litigate to stall the ballot proposition. Impact is significant since (1) “California consumes some 15% of all pork produced in the country and, unless the court or Governor intervene to allow sale of non-compliant meat, the state’s pork supply will drop by over 80% with price for bacon jumping 60%; and (2) California slaughterhouses are also troubled since they send different cuts of a single hog to locations throughout the U.S. and other countries, which require processors to design new tracking systems.”  [AP NEWS – 7/31/21] 
  • WHILE OVERPOPULATION IS THE MEDIA-PROMOTED GLOBAL CONCERN, “REALITY IS A THREAT OF UNDERPOPULATION resulting from consistently declining fertility rates. “The metric that demographers use to measure the number of offspring per parent required for each generation to exactly replace itself is globally now around 2.1.  Rates in the most populated countries (China & India) have dropped from 5 to 2; The U.S. rate has halved – from 3.6 in 1957 to now around 1.8… Major causes for this unprecedented decline stem from three trends: (a) Empowerment of women – with clinics reporting an increase in requests for birth control prescriptions and abortion medications; (b) Rising cost of raising children; and (c) Declining child mortality from improved standard of living… The major forecasted impacts will be shift toward the elderly and their physical suffering from the disease called ‘aging,’ and creating a heavier burden on the working population. [PETER DIAMENDIS – 8/5/21]  
  • THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK:   

         Sports Franchise profitability, combined with depreciation write-offs of acquisition media & player contracts, are plenty lucrative, especially for billionaire owners.    https://www.propublica.org/article/the-billionaire-playbook-how-sports-owners-use-their-teams-to-avoid-millions-in-taxes