While such behaviour by global corporations is perfectly legal, it is clear that they are also economically indefensible assignment of profits to subsidiaries in low-tax jurisdictions. Whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong
Australia and authoritarian China In the end, it appears money rules the world
Australia is doing well from its relationship with China, and seems to have few qualms about how its wealth is generated.
• Kapital; [ China dilemma: Interview with Prof Zhiqun Zhu ; Tackling food insecurity ] • · Young “knowledge economy” workers moving to Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit. It’s not just the cheap housing. Gritty Rust Belt cities, once left for dead, are on the rise -- thanks to young people priced out of cooler locales It’s a demand for decay. ; Next week, when I land in Kraków, in a country I have never visited, where people speak a language alien to mine, it’s their faces I’ll read, hoping they’re composed in a dialect of Esperanto I understand. Adam Zagajewski, a poet who has spent much of his life in Kraków, writes in “Faces” (Unseen Hand, 2011):It is five years since Rudd promised to stop Australia becoming a quarry to Asia, yet Labor now urges more Chinese to come here as workers, students, and even rich investors. I suppose it is the logical move for Labor, a party that now specialises in promising much but doing little. At least such policies will add economic growth and revenue to help perpetuate its claim to economic expertise. China is indeed the easy way of obtaining wealth. In the end, money, money, money makes the world go around.
• · · · Now Anyone Can Publish A Book (And Traditional Publishers Struggle To Catch Up) "Publishers want to know what to publish. Readers want to know what to read. The traditional models are being smashed." What pushes your buttons?; One, we have choices now that we didn't have before, now that industry gatekeepers no longer control the sole means of distributing books in the digital-forward era. Two, publishing is a business, not an ideology," and as such, innovation shouldn't be frozen in place to keep brick-and-mortar booksellers afloat. And three, Amazon is not the great Satan Books: What's good for Amazon is good for writers, readers
• · · · · "Third only to the USA and Britain, it's set to become the biggest in the world as India's middle class continues to expand rapidly over the next 10 years. Keen to get a piece of the action, international publishers are flocking to set up offices in India, while many canny Indian publishers have already been reaping big rewards from backing emerging homegrown talent." Publishers Flock To India's Growing Book Market ; "The digital age has transformed the physical act of reading and will alter journalistic literary criticism as well. ... The full effect of these changes will have on book reviews isn't clear, but they're already shifting in ways that would both please and alarm Orwell." Could The Internet Save Book Reviews? (Of Course!)
• · · · · · From Henry James to Heidi Julavitis, writers seem to delight in publishing manifestos that outline the book review's shortcomings and inadequacies Why Do Lovers Of Literature Love Beating Up On Critics So Much? ; For the wolf of a writer, the family is a crowd of sitting ducks. There they assemble at the Thanksgiving table, poor dears — blithering uncles, drugged-out siblings, warring couples — posing for a painting, though they do not know it. The Consequences of Motherhood