LInks - 26th January 2020 (1)

Christians on brink of extinction in Middle East, warns Archbishop of Canterbury - "Christians who were the first founders of the church are on brink of “imminent extinction”, the Archbishop of Canterbury is warning.Describing the “daily threat of murder” faced in the Middle East, the Most Reverend Justin Welby says Christians are experiencing “the worst situation since the Mongol invasions of the 13th Century”... just one in 400 Syrian refugees given asylum in the UK last year were Christians despite them being subjected to “horrendous persecution”... just 11 of those admitted to Britain under the Government’s flagship Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme (VPRS) in 2017 were Christian. This is despite an estimated 10 per cent of the Syrian population being Christian at the start of the civil war."

Lesbians more likely to be overweight as experts find sexuality is linked to health - "Lesbian and bisexual women are more likely to be overweight than heterosexual women, research has shown for the first time, as experts said sexual identity should now be viewed as a health risk factor... For women, being gay increased the odds of them being overweight by 41 per cent, an increased overall risk of 14 per cent... Bisexual women were 24 per cent more likely to be overweight or obese, however for men the opposite was the case, with gay men at three times the risk of being underweight... “We also found that gay men are significantly less likely than straight men to be overweight or obese... Researchers are unclear what is driving the increased risk, but say that gay people are more likely to experience social stress and live less healthy lifestyles. The new results showed that more than one third of gay people smoke, compared with around one quarter of straight people.  Likewise 48 per cent were living with a long standing illness compared with 28 per cent of heterosexuals."
The fact that there is a dose-response effect (of a kind) and that we see the opposite in men is very good evidence that this is people responding to what their target market want - men prize physical appearance (though the researchers appear to be unable to say that)

18 Strange Japanese Foods That Are Actually Pretty Good! - "4. Raw Chicken - Torisashi
6. Fish Sperm - Shirako
7. Whale Meat - Kujira
10. Sea Grapes - Umi Budo
15. Locusts - Inago
18. Monjayaki
There is no English word for this food but a good description would be runny batter. I am not going to lie but it looks like vomit on a grill... Popular in the Kanto region, monjayaki is a pan fried batter similar to Okonomiyaki but uses a lot more water making it runny looking"

Malaysia can’t enforce, but penalty for leaving Islam is death, mufti reminds apostates - "Islam prescribes death against Muslims who leave the religion for atheism, if they are “stubborn” and refuse to repent, according to Negri Sembilan mufti Datuk Mohd Yusof Ahmad.However, he conceded that Shariah courts in the country cannot yet implement such punishments, and as such religious authorities must redouble their efforts to curb the spread of atheism... “If they are still stubborn, then the individual must be punished by death. That is the consensus of Muslim scholars”... The punishment for the offence of apostasy under the controversial Islamic penal law of hudud is death... Kelantan and Terengganu’s hudud enactments prescribe death for apostates who fail to repent, but cannot yet implement it due to restriction in federal laws. PAS’ president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang is seeking to remove this restriction with a private member’s Bill in the Parliament. A photo of the gathering by the Kuala Lumpur chapter, or “consulate”, of the Atheist Republic has caused uproar from some in the Muslim community recently after it was highlighted by pro-Islamist blogs, leading to violent and death threats on social media.Deputy minister in charge of Islamic affairs Datuk Dr Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki said yesterday Putrajaya will investigate the local group, even roping in the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, as it allegedly involved the faith of Muslims in the country. Yesterday, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim had even said that atheists in Malaysia should be “hunted down” by authorities, allegedly since there is no place for groups like this under the Federal Constitution."
We need a white westerner to come in and progressivesplain/liberalsplain Islam to the mufti

France's Wealth Tax Should be a Warning for Warren and Sanders - Bloomberg - "In recent years, several prominent economists have brought attention to the problem of growing inequality. These scholars include Thomas Piketty, author of the best-selling book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” and Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, who in a new book chronicle the rise in American wealth inequality. All three embrace the same solution:  much higher taxes. Piketty has declared that billionaires should be taxed out of existence, and he called for a global wealth tax, while Saez and Zucman helped Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren design her proposal for a U.S. wealth tax. Piketty and Saez have also suggested taxing top incomes at a rate of more than 80%... One way to predict the possible effects of the taxes is to look at a country that tried something similar: France, where Piketty, Saez and Zucman all hail from. During the past few decades, as income inequality rose in most rich countries, it stayed relatively constant in France. The biggest reason is government redistribution in the form of taxes and social-welfare spending. France leads its rich-country peers, including the legendarily egalitarian Scandinavian countries, on both measures. France, therefore, shows that inequality, at least to some degree, is a choice. Taxes and spending really can make a big difference. But there’s probably a limit to how much even France can do in this regard. The country has experimented with both wealth taxes and very high top income taxes, with disappointing results... The wealth tax might have generated social solidarity, but as a practical matter it was a disappointment. The revenue it raised was rather paltry; only a few billion euros at its peak, or about 1% of France’s total revenue from all taxes. At least 10,000 wealthy people left the country to avoid paying the tax; most moved to neighboring Belgium, which has a large French-speaking population. When these individuals left, France lost not only their wealth tax revenue but their income taxes and other taxes as well. French economist Eric Pichet estimates that this ended up costing the French government almost twice as much revenue as the total yielded by the wealth tax. When President Emmanuel Macron ended the wealth tax in 2017, it was viewed mostly as a symbolic move.Another French experiment was the so-called supertax, a 75% levy on incomes of more than 1 million euros. Introduced by socialist President François Hollande in 2012, the supertax added to the exodus of wealthy individuals, most notably actor Gerard Depardieu and Bernard Arnault, chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. Star soccer players threatened to go on strike, and there was fear that France would become a wasteland for entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, the supertax raised much less money than even the wealth tax had -- only 160 million euros in 2014. The unpopular tax was repealed two years after its adoption... Despite repealing the supertax, France managed to increase government revenue and to reduce inequality. The end of the wealth tax will probably be a similar story. France simply didn’t need these flamboyant taxes on the rich to have very high levels of taxation and social spending. That means the U.S. probably doesn’t need them either. Tax increases across the board -- on top incomes, capital gains, estates, pass-through businesses, corporations, and so on -- might not excite populist firebrands, but they’re probably a more effective strategy for fighting inequality."

OECD Tax Policy Studies, The Role and Design of Net Wealth Taxes in the OECD - "The number of OECD countries levying individual net wealth taxes dropped from 12 in 1990 to 4 in 2017 (Figure 1.1). There are many OECD countries that used to have wealth taxes but that repealed them in the 1990s and 2000s including Austria (in 1994), Denmark (in 1997), Germany (in 1997), the Netherlands (in 2001), Finland, Iceland, Luxembourg (all three in 2006) and Sweden (in 2007)... Many factors have been put forward to justify the repeal of net wealth taxes. The main arguments relate to their efficiency costs and the risks of capital flight, in particular in light of increased capital mobility and wealthy taxpayers’ access to tax havens; the observation that net wealth taxes often failed to meet their redistributive goals as a result of their narrow tax bases as well as tax avoidance and evasion; and concerns about their high administrative and compliance costs, in particular compared to their limited revenues (i.e. high cost-yield ratio). To some extent, the limited revenues collected from wealth taxes have made their elimination more acceptable and feasible from a political point of view (Kopczuk, 2012)... Wealth taxes have generally accounted for a very small share of tax revenues. In 2016, tax revenues from individual net wealth taxes ranged from 0.2% of GDP in Spain to 1.0% of GDP in Switzerland. As a share of total tax revenues, they ranged from 0.5% in France to 3.7% in Switzerland (Figure 1.3). Looking at longer-term trends, Switzerland has always stood out as an exception, with tax revenues from individual net wealth taxes which have been consistently higher than in other countries... Looking at longer time periods, most of the countries that have or have had net wealth taxes experienced either stable or declining revenues from these taxes... Stable or declining net wealth tax revenues in most countries contrast with trends in wealth accumulation. There has been a rapid growth in wealth across countries"

If a Wealth Tax is Such a Good Idea, Why Did Europe Kill Theirs? - "Normally progressives like to point to Europe for policy success. Not this time. The experiment with the wealth tax in Europe was a failure in many countries. France's wealth tax contributed to the exodus of an estimated 42,000 millionaires between 2000 and 2012, among other problems. Only last year, French president Emmanuel Macron killed it.In 1990, twelve countries in Europe had a wealth tax. Today, there are only three: Norway, Spain, and Switzerland. According to reports by the OECD and others, there were some clear themes with the policy: it was expensive to administer, it was hard on people with lots of assets but little cash, it distorted saving and investment decisions, it pushed the rich and their money out of the taxing countries—and, perhaps worst of all, it didn't raise much revenue... the U.S. government will have to get very good at valuing art, diamonds, superyachts, and all the other fabulous things the super rich collect. Indeed, Warren's plan includes a call for "a significant increase in the IRS enforcement budget." It was the hefty cost of enforcement that played a big part in Austria killing their wealth tax back in 1993. It turns out it costs a lot to track and value rich people's stuff every year.  And a wealth tax may not even be legal. The ability of the federal government to tax is tightly curtailed by the U.S. Constitution. Legally imposing the first income tax in 1913 required a constitutional amendment. Legal scholars are currently debating whether a wealth tax would need another amendment"

‘Peak Car’ and the End of an Industry - Bloomberg - "This is especially true in big cities where people are becoming more inclined to share rather than own a vehicle that sits idle most of the time. The number of Germans 25 and under getting driving licenses slid 28 percent in the past decade, and it’s a similar story in pretty much every other major economy."

Boomers Win With Unprecedented $9 Trillion Inheritance Surge - Bloomberg - "“Wealth equal to nearly two times the size of the U.S. GDP is expected to be gifted to charities and heirs over the next few decades,” said United Income founder Matt Fellowes. “It’s a historically unprecedented amount that is almost incomprehensibly large.”The beneficiaries aren’t all that young themselves. The study, which uses Federal Reserve and academic data, shows that from 1989 to 2016 U.S. households inherited more than $8.5 trillion. Over that time, the average age of recipients rose by a decade to 51. More than a quarter of bequests now go to adults 61 or older. "Instead of diapers and school, inheritances are increasingly going toward medical bills and retirement savings"... The median recipient gets about $55,000, which is more than double their typical retirement savings."

Meme - Anna Blaze on Twitter: "Ideally There Could Be a Site or Two for Porn for Kids. Parents Can Monitor Content but Generally There Would Be a High Standard. Queer & Nonwhite Content Front & Center. A FAQ or Forum to Ask Questions They're Not Comfortable Asking Parents & Teachers, Resources to Help Victims
Nonpenatrative Porn! Videos That Focus on Foreplay! Videos That Show Someone Saying No and Their Partner Respecting That Without Shaming Them! Make Safe & Healthy Sex the Norm From a Young Age!"

Indonesians quitting 'rice addiction' over diabetes fears - ""In my first week without rice I felt like I was being possessed by ghosts"... The push, partly driven by social media, has been backed by local governments including cultural capital Yogyakarta which last year rolled out a campaign to convince residents to go without rice at least one day a week. Indonesia's legacy of rice politics makes the task tougher.Rice - and rice production - was the cornerstone of dictator Suharto's ambitious bid for food self-sufficiency.The programme began in the 70s and in a couple of decades had weaned much of the population off corn, sweet potatoes and other staples in favour of rice... The policy turned rice from a food that many in the sprawling archipelago rarely consumed into a staple that Indonesians now gobble down at a rate almost three times the global average of 53kg annually.But the strategy launched by Suharto - who died in 2008 - ended up working too well, with demand outstripping supply. Indonesia now relies on rice imports to fill the gap. "The struggle isn't only in our stomachs, but also in our minds because we have been living this myth that you won't be full without rice""