British shared wall neighborhood
Credit: pexels.com

LONDON — In decades past, it wasn’t uncommon at all for the average family to know each and every one of their neighbors living close by on the same street. Those dwelling on the same block would regularly gather for holiday parties in the winter, and barbecues during the summer. As the years have gone by, however, people have slowly become more inclined to keep to themselves and shy away from even greeting or speaking to their neighbors.

Now, a new survey of 2,000 British adults shows the staggering extent to which the concept of a neighborhood community has fallen by the wayside. In all, 75% say they consider their neighbors mere acquaintances at best. Sadly, nearly a quarter wouldn’t dream of knocking on one of their doors uninvited because there is “no sense of community spirit” in their neighborhood.

The survey, commissioned by Lottoland, also found that one in 10 modern adults mine as well be living next to an empty house as they only see their neighbors less […]

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President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence examine a wheel loader from Caterpillar Inc. on the South Lawn of the White House in 2017.

President Donald Trump’s strategy to use import tariffs to protect and boost U.S. manufacturers backfired and led to job losses and higher prices, according to a Federal Reserve study released this week.

“We find that the 2018 tariffs are associated with relative reductions in manufacturing employment and relative increases in producer prices,” concluded Fed economists Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce, in an academic paper.

While the tariffs did reduce competition for some industries in the domestic U.S. market, this was more than offset by the effects of rising input costs and retaliatory tariffs, the study found.

“While the longer-term effects of the tariffs may differ from those that we estimate here, the results indicate that the tariffs, thus far, have not led to increased activity in the U.S. manufacturing sector,” the study said.

Tit-for-tat trade retaliation is an idea best relegated to the past, given the presence of globally […]

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Germans believe that President Donald Trump is a bigger threat to global peace than several world leaders accused of regularly violating the human rights of those within their own borders, according to the results of a new poll.

The survey, conducted by YouGov, reveals that Germans believe Trump poses a significantly bigger threat to world peace than North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Some 41 percent of Germans think Trump is the most dangerous, followed by Kim at 17 percent, Khamenei and Putin at 8 percent and Xi at 7 percent.

The latest results are similar to those reported in past polls. In a similar YouGov survey conducted last year, 48 percent of Germans surveyed said Trump presented the greatest hurdle to global peace, followed by Kim and Putin. That poll, notably, did not include Xi or Khamenei as options.

Earlier this year, YouGov posed a similar question to Americans of all ages: Who do you think is more dangerous — Trump, Kim, Putin, Xi  […]

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The entire world gives $400 billion in subsidies to oil companies. An article by The Atlantic asks this question: Is that bad? The answer, to me, is obvious — yes.

The article, noting that we spend $400 billion on oil subsidies globally, indicates that taxpayers want their governments to stop subsidizing this rich, over-mature industry, yet politicians keep the money funneling toward them. It is estimated that Tesla Gigafactory 4 in Germany will cost approximately $4.4 billion. That means you could build ~91 gigafactories for the cost of one year of global oil subsidies.

They sign treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol, which called for the governments to stop subsidizing these greenhouse gas emitting sectors, or they make agreements as they did at the G20 summit to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. But they don’t do it. President Obama declared that “a century of subsidies to the oil companies is long enough.” Despite all of this, our global governments are still giving taxpayer money to the oil companies.

We are talking the talk but not walking the walk. Each government is going around saying, “stop this,” while also doing the very thing it’s asking other […]

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A wind turbine amid the downtown skyline on October 9, 2016, in Cleveland, Ohio.
Credit: Joe Robbins/Getty

With no shortage of wide-open land, Ohio is ripe for a transition to renewable energy, but instead the state has become a hotbed for corporate-driven attacks on wind energy. As a result of increasingly restrictive laws on renewables, the state was recently ranked second to last among U.S. states in its renewable energy generation, with only 2.3 percent of its energy generated through renewable sources.

A closer look at the workings of the anti-wind-energy movement in Ohio offers a glimpse of the dynamics that are also at work to suppress wind energy generation elsewhere throughout the country.

One of the most recent attacks on wind energy in Ohio came in July, when the Ohio state legislature passed a bill that essentially neutralized renewable energy standards and bailed out dying coal plants, all under the guise of maintaining a free market and helping ratepayers. The bill, HB 6, was called the “worst energy bill of the 21st […]

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