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|　 　　￣￣￣￣￣￣　　　　￣￣￣￣￣￣　　　　￣￣￣￣￣　          |
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WaPo.

Social mobility, the amount that a typical American moves up or down the economic ladder from where their parents and grandparents stood, has became a major focus of political discussion, academic research and popular outrage in the years since the global financial crisis. While Americans have traditionally seen their country as a place where anyone can make through hard work and a stroke of luck, data collected in the past decade have shown otherwise.

Compared with many European countries, for example, few Americans end up with an income or educational level that is substantially different than their parents. Research by economists from Harvard and Berkeley found that fewer than 10 percent of people in the bottom fifth of the wealth distribution will make it into the top fifth. Things weren't much better for the middle class: Only about 20 percent of people in the middle fifth would rise into the top fifth over the course of their lives.

Now, new research suggests that social mobility in America may be even more limited than researchers have realized. In a new paper, Joseph Ferrie of Northwestern University, Catherine Massey of the University of Michigan and Jonathan Rothbaum of the U.S. Census Bureau draw on a newly constructed dataset about American families reaching back to 1910. Unlike past studies, which have mainly compared parents and children, the new work adds data on grandparents and great-grandparents to show just how fixed the fortunes of many Americans have become.

In the past, researchers have overestimated the amount of social mobility in American society because they had a limited amount of data to study, Ferrie and his colleagues argue. Much scholarly work has been done examining how inequality has persisted between parents and children since the 1960s and beyond, but researchers have lacked data on previous generations.

That limited historical insight is a problem, says Ferrie, because families can see one-generation fluctuations in education and income. For example, suppose you have a banker whose son decided to become a poet, surrendering a huge income in favor of a more fulfilling career. But the poet’s daughter decides to go back to the family business and become a banker.

If you just looked at the poet and his daughter, you might think that economic mobility is alive and well in America -- she probably makes a lot more money than her father does. But actually, the daughter might be drawing on much older, preexisting family resources – such as financial resources, personal connections, or knowledge about how Wall Street works from her grandfather – that make it easier for her to become a banker than it is for the average kid.

Looking across multiple generations gives researchers a better idea of the real state of inequality, “because there can be these one-generation blips that obscure the total amount of generational mobility,” says Ferrie.

The new calculations suggest that these one-generation blips have obscured a lot. Adding in data about past generations, Ferrie and his colleagues find that conventional measures of immobility, which just look at parents and children, have underestimated mobility by 20 percent compared to looking at three generations or more.

For example, Ferrie and his colleagues cite five previous studies that found that the correlation in educational attainment between a parent and a child is generally around .4 to .6. This basically means that, if my parent has one more year of schooling than your parent, I will automatically end up with 4/10 to 6/10 of an extra year of school than you have, all else equal. In other words, the amount of education you and I receive is highly determined by the achievements of our parents.

The new research, which takes account of grandparents, suggests that the correlation in education across generations is 20 percent higher than previously thought -- it is actually between .5 and .7. If my parent has an extra year of schooling compared to your parent, I will end up with roughly an extra half to 7/10 of a year of school than you have, all else equal. And that means that, measured by educational attainment, social inequality is more likely to persist over time than previous estimates of educational correlations between just parents and children had implied.

The study focuses specifically on how the educational attainment of families changes over time, which the researchers use as a proxy for economic mobility. That lack of mobility should be especially worrying for Americans, said Ferrie.

If the U.S. were to be a fairly unequal place but also have a lot of social mobility, that might be less worrying for economists, ethicists and others, Ferrie said. That would imply that America has a sharp divide between the rich and poor, but that the people at the bottom of the economic ladder could work their way up through luck or hard work. In fact, that has been a popular view of how the U.S. works ever since Horatio Alger published his rags-to-riches stories in the mid-19th Century.

Unfortunately, evidence now abounds that this idyllic version of America -- a place where men and women can attain their highest potential regardless of the circumstances of their birth -- is not one that many Americans experience.

“Any measure of mobility we have is too high,” says Ferrie. “Whatever you thought, it’s worse.”

Ferrie cautions that their research does not yet provide clues as to why this is occurring. It could be that grandparents and parents are passing on financial resources, or intangible resources like information and values. Or it could be something else entirely. The researchers are continuing to study the topic, and they expect to have more data soon on why these trends might occur. Eventually, they aim to link six generations of data together, to create family lines that stretch from 2013 all the way back to 1850.

Their findings could have big implications for how the government addresses poverty. If exposure to a good role model is enough to lift educational outcomes in children, that would have very different implications for public policy than if inequality stems from deeper, more intractable reasons. Regardless, the new research suggests those policy solutions are more needed than ever.

Wow.

The Bank of England may need to revise up its growth forecasts after double-counting some of the costs of economic uncertainty linked to the country's Brexit vote, policymaker Kristin Forbes said in an interview published on Thursday.

"We may be over-counting the effects," Forbes was quoted as saying by Bloomberg News. "I've worried a bit in our forecast that we control for many of the measures that simultaneously control for uncertainty, and then we put in uncertainty effects, so we're putting them in twice," she added.

Last week the BoE said it expected the economy to slow less rapidly in the three months to September than it had previously estimated, but most of its policymakers were still likely to back a rate cut later this year. Earlier on Thursday, Forbes said she did not see a case for a further rate cut.

(Reporting by David Milliken; editing by William Schomberg)

WSJ

Germany seems to be softening its stance on Brexit, and not a moment too soon.

“Given Britain’s size, significance, and its long membership of the European Union, there will probably be a special status which only bears limited comparison to that of countries that have never belonged to the European Union,” Michael Roth, Germany’s minister of European affairs, said last month. Mr. Roth’s comments mark a departure from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s declaration, made shortly after the Brexit referendum in June, that Britain would receive no special treatment, nor would it be allowed to “cherry pick” benefits such as full access to the single market.

The change in tone was probably inevitable. Mrs. Merkel’s initial response was a negotiating tactic that stalled when new British Prime Minister Theresa May refused to trigger formal exit negotiations immediately. Mrs. Merkel apparently hoped that the lack of any Brexit plan might lead the British government to call a second referendum or an early election.


Instead, the passage of time is revealing how weak Germany’s and the EU’s negotiating position actually is. Politically, Mrs. Merkel is committed to “ever closer” integration within the EU and wants to transform Germany into a “moral superpower.” But these goals, which have manifested partly in a willingness to bail out bankrupt eurozone member states and partly in controversial policies, such as welcoming more than 1.5 million migrants over the past 18 months, carry spiraling economic and social costs that German voters might not be prepared to bear.

So Mrs. Merkel has sought to disguise the true costs of European union by shifting the book value of Germany’s total euro rescue loans and guarantee exposure to the Bundesbank, the European Central Bank and the European Stability Mechanism. But this strategy has turned those three institutions into “bad banks” holding nonperforming assets such as Greek sovereign debt. With taxpayers on the hook in the event of losses at those institutions, Berlin can’t afford many more financial shocks.


Meanwhile, Germany has stood by while, for the sake of holding the euro together, the ECB has pursued policies that hurt Germans. German savers lost interest income worth €125 billion ($140 billion) between 2011 and 2015 as a result of the ECB’s ultralow rates and quantitative easing, according to a study from Germany’s Postbank. And the open door to migrants will cost €50 billion in 2016 and 2017 alone and nearly €400 billion over the next 20 years, assuming optimistically that most of these refugees eventually find work. If integration fails or many more refugees arrive, the costs will be significantly higher.

Due to continuing euro crisis measures and the increasing costs of its refugee policy, Germany’s economy and public finances are likely to weaken while German unemployment should start rising again beginning next year. With economic growth chronically sputtering, Berlin (and the EU overall) will have to depend on trade-induced moderate growth to minimize the future costs of these various policies to taxpayers.

Trade with the U.K. will be a crucial component. Nine EU member states send at least 5% of their total exports to Britain, and in Germany that percentage is around 7.5. Germany’s trade surplus with the U.K. was €51 billion in 2015, around 20.5% of Germany’s entire trade surplus.

Yet even these figures understate Germany’s economic dependence on Britain. Around 36% of Germany’s total exports in 2015 went to countries within the eurozone. However, under the so-called Target2 payments system operated by the ECB, Germany’s balance-of-payments surplus with the eurozone is financed not by the transfer of foreign-currency reserves, gold or other near-liquid assets, but by an open-ended overdraft facility granted by the Bundesbank.

Under this peculiar system, the exporter is paid not by the importing country but by Germany’s central bank, which itself never receives payment. Rather, a credit note is issued by the importing country’s central bank, which it has no obligation ever to pay.

The Bundesbank’s Target2 balance stood at more than €660 billion as of July. If Germany’s eurozone exports were paid for in the same way as its other exports, it would be a much richer country.

That Germany is moderately prosperous at all under this system is owed in large measure to its trade surplus with partners outside the eurozone. This surplus is paid for in the traditional way, by transferring actual money to Germany. Germany and other export-driven eurozone economies thus depend on trade with Britain as a key partner outside the dysfunctional eurozone much more than is commonly realized.

ECB President Mario Draghi is well aware of the EU’s fragility. According to ECB and Italian political sources, he has assured investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, that Germany won’t do anything to put trade relations at risk. Mr. Draghi has also reportedly expressed confidence that French and European Commission resistance to concessions to Britain could be overcome and that, in return, Mrs. Merkel would be open to French demands for a eurozone finance ministry after the 2017 German election, as well as new bail-out facilities for Italy’s moribund banks. According to Wells Fargo, Italian banks are currently sitting on €350 billion in nonperforming loans.

If the British government plays its hand well, it will be able to choose its terms of renegotiation with the EU. By postponing the official start of withdrawal negotiation until 2017, Mrs. May has made a promising start.

Long live our noble memes
God save the memes
Send them dankly forward
Overused and tortured
God save the memes

O Lord our Pepe arise
Scatter the normies
And make $hillary fall
Counfound their waifus
Smite all the weeaboos
We give our memes to you
Pepe save us all

Thy choicest gifs in store
The dankest memes of all
Long may Pepe reign
May you defend our boards
From newfag cringe galore
We sing with Pepe's voice
God save the memes

Not in this forum alone
But be Pepe's dankness known
From board to board
Pepe make the internets see
That dank should memes be
And make fun of the normie
Under Trump's gaze

From every normie fag
From $hillary's Saudi swag
God save the memes
O'er memes Pepe's arm extends
For dankness sake he defends
Our jpegs, gifs and macros
God save the memes

Pepe grant that Marshal Meme
May by thy politically incorrect theme
Our dankness he repays 
May he $hillary hush
And with high energy rush
Normie faggots to crush
God save our Pepes

Haven't they done enough?

Microsoft recently posted a brand-new blog post regarding the upcoming Windows 10 update which will launch this Aug. 2. Among the updates, it has been stated that every game Microsoft published from that point on will use the Xbox Play Anywhere platform, guaranteeing upcoming games like "Halo 6" will be on both the PC and the Xbox One.

"Every new title published from Microsoft Studios will support Xbox Play Anywhere and will be easily accessible in the Windows Store," reads the official statement from Microsoft. Given that "Halo 6" comes out much later than the Windows 10 update it is likely that it will also be affected by this, ensuring it will play on both platforms.

PC Gamer confirms that "Halo 6" is indeed in development right now and 343 Industries does have plans to keep the franchise going for another decade or two. The game is also rumored to start yet another trilogy in the series, meaning "Halo 7" to "Halo 9" will see the main hero, the Master Chief, dealing with a new set of enemies than before.

Fuck. Off.

This is getting fucking ridiculous.

https://plug.dj/aoki

Because a veiled woman killed two jihadists.

was supposed to be here at 3:15, then they added ten minutes to the delivery time

it's now 3:28.

what the fuck man

W E W
E
W

that was some dank memery