U.S. should sell ‘useless’ Montana to Canada for $1 trillion, says new petition

That's one way to reduce the national debt.

  • The tongue-in-cheek petition, whose stated aim is to reduce the national debt, has been signed more than 8,600 times as of Tuesday.
  • Selling Montana, the fourth largest state in the country, would constitute the largest land deal since the Louisiana Purchase.
  • The national debt is often a source of concern for individuals, but the chances of the U.S. defaulting on its debts are relatively low — in part because the bulk of the national debt is owned by the American public.
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comedy policy money united states economics

Hannah Arendt on why some people are immune to fact-checking

Why do people buy into stories that are clearly lies? Hannah Arendt can help us understand.

  • People who don't believe facts or news that disagree with their worldviews can be impossible to deal with, and boy there are a lot of them lately.
  • Hannah Arendt tells us this isn't all new; it happened before around 1936.
  • It isn't easy to convince a person who has given up on facts that they really should face reality again, but it can be done.
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news government politics history philosophy

Billionaire warlords: Why the future is medieval

The world's next superpower might just resurrect the Middle Ages.

  • Russia? China? No. The rising world superpower is the billionaire class. Our problem, says Sean McFate, is that we're still thinking in nation states.
  • Nation states have only existed for the last 300-400 years. Before that, wealthy groups – tribes, empires, aristocracies, etc – employed mercenaries to wage private wars.
  • As wealth inequality reaches combustion point, we could land back in the status quo ante of the Middle Ages. Who will our overlords be? Any or all of the 26 ultra-rich billionaires who own as much as the world's 3.8 billion poorest. What about Fortune 500, which is more powerful than most of the states in the world? Random billionaires, multinational corporations, and the extractive industry may buy armies and wage war on their own terms.
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capitalism war money economics history military future

Standardized tests: Finland’s education system vs. the U.S.

Finland and the U.S. have chosen opposing answers to the question of how much standardized testing is too much.

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Politics & Current Affairs
  • Imperial China developed the first standardized tests for bureaucratic hopefuls.
  • Finland has all but done away with standardized tests, and its education system remains one of the best in the world.
  • The United States relies heavily on these tests and scores lower than Finland in academic rigor, yet provides a more balanced educational system for boys and girls, as well as immigrants
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I reported the news in print and online. Here’s the difference.

Former NYTimes executive editor Jill Abramson dissects the big problem with internet news.

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Videos
  • Jill Abramson, former executive editor of The New York Times, describes what life was like for a journalist in the 1980s – a "stone age" when news was governed by the printing press schedule.
  • Today, many journalists will break stories on Twitter before writing it, eliminating nuance and increasing the chance of error.
  • Social media in particular has added a fatal speed to journalism. Errors erode public trust in the media, and allow those in power to undermine the free press.
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media journalism trust news internet social media history technology

Canada wants to take in more than 1 million new immigrants in the next 3 years

...and hopes for big benefits.

A cab drops off a couple of asylum seekers at the US/Canada border near Champlain, New York, August 20, 2017. AFP PHOTO / Geoff Robins /Getty Images
Politics & Current Affairs

Want to live and work in Canada? That dream could become a reality now the government has announced plans to accept more than a million immigrants in the next three years.

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immigration politics global development global issues inequality foreign policy