• Rate cuts to date are an acknowledgement of growing confidence that inflation is on the path to 2% goal
• Hope productivity growth can outrun the effects of slowing population growth
• Won't let enthusiasm over rising productivity get ahead of data or commitment to reaching Fed goals

There isn't much of a hint on anything here.

The data is here from earlier:

• Australian October unemployment rate 4.1% (vs. 4.1% expected)
• AUD/USD little changed after the October employment report showed a steady jobless rate
  • (ps. AUD/USD has slid a little since this post, broadly stronger USD the culprit)

Westpac with the recap, in brief:

Australian labour market remains in relatively solid health

• employment growth slowing broadly in line with population growth
• average hours holding steady
• few signs that labour demand is capitulating to an extent that warrants concern
• labour market conditions remain somewhat tight ... this is not translating to stronger wage inflation pressures
• On balance, today’s update will see the RBA continue to remain focused on the dynamics around underlying inflation.

***

Speaking of the RBA, we heard from Bullock earlier, not dovish:

• RBA Bullock says rates are restrictive enough, staying there until confident on inflation

***

AUD/USD update:

The long lost remains of Thomas Kent, one of the 16 men executed in 1916 following the Easter Rising, have been identified by scientific DNA analysis...

1. Gold prices fall for 4th straight day, silver remains steady; check the latest prices in your city  Upstox
2. Business News Live Today November 14, 2024: Niva Bupa share price dips over 3% after rising into the green on debut, See details of its ₹2,200 crore IPO  Hindustan Times
3. Gold prices today: Key market trends investors should know  CNBCTV18
4. Gold and silver prices today on 14-11-2024: Check latest rates in your city  Mint
5. Gold slips to further lows today on November 14: Know gold, silver rates in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and other cities  The Financial Express

The remains of U.S. Army Air Forces Pvt. 1st Class Bernard J. Calvi were identified more than 82 years following his death in a Japanese POW camp in the Philippines.

Jayarajan claims that circulating excerpts from his ‘autobiography’ are baseless nonsense and asserts that he had not granted publishing rights for his autobiography to any establishment

Zero-metre visibility was recorded at the Indira Gandhi International Airport at 8.30 am with the Runway Visual Range varying between 125 and 500 metres at different locations, the IMD said. One of the officials said six flights were diverted to Jaipur and one to Lucknow.

In 1643, the English Parliament called upon "learned, godly and judicious Divines", to meet at Westminster Abbey in order to provide advice on issues of worship, doctrine, government and discipline of the Church of England. Their meetings, over a period of five years, produced the confession of faith, as well as a Larger Catechism and a Shorter Catechism. For more than three centuries, various churches around the world have adopted the confession and the catechisms as their standards of doctrine, subordinate to the Bible. -- The Westminster Confession of Faith was modified and adopted by Congregationalists in England in the form of the Savoy Declaration (1658). Likewise, the Baptists of England modified the Savoy Declaration to produce the Second London Baptist Confession (1689). English Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists would together (with others) come to be known as Nonconformists, because they did not conform to the Act of Uniformity (1662) establishing the Church of England as the only legally approved church, though they were in many ways united by their common confessions, built on the Westminster Confession. -- Evangelical Presbyterian Church: The Evangelical Presbyterian Church, which broke from the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1981 in order to provide a conservative alternative to the older denomination, holds to the Westminster Confession of Faith composed of a combination of different editions, but based on the American version of the 1647 text.[4] The EPC holds to the Westminster Confession in light of a brief list of the essentials of the faith as drafted at its first General Assembly at Ward Church outside of Detroit, Michigan.

Much has changed since 1994 when the U.S. government implemented an initiative to spend at least 5% of its contracting dollars on women-owned businesses. Today, women-owned businesses in the U.S. account for approximately 9.4 million companies and generate more than $1.5 trillion in revenue nationwide. Although it has taken more than two decades to reach its goal, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has announced that small businesses  that are majority owned by women earned $17.8 billion in federal contracting dollars, which amounts to about 5% of the $400 billion budget for federal contracts.

complete article

It’s almost comforting that such invidious fluffy-minded sludge as this is floating around, as it seems, like religion, to keep the middle-brows hypnotized by “beautiful sentiments” which are so vague as to keep them from actually getting together and doing anything. It’s sort of weird to hear this weakly Marxist social-democratic pap which used to be shouted from the rooftops now being whispered in a low monotonous whine. The author avows his fealty to Jeremy Bentham, not Marx, and calls it utilitarianism not Marxism, but there are many illegitimate fathers along this line of thought.

The root of the idea is that, now that neuroscience has supposedly made it possible to actually identify what makes us happy, the idea of happiness has become quantifiable, and hence a program of providing the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people has become objectively possible. However, the author does not make the slightest effort to apply these wonders of modern science to actually determining what the alleged sources of human happiness are. The neuroscience tack is really just a defensive ploy to ward off the eternal charges that utilitarinism is simply a euphemism for an authoritarian imposition of values. As for espousing his positive program for what constitutes human happiness, it is simply the usual liberal middle-class canards, with not surprisingly a socialist edge: more time to spend with family, a decent wage for everyone, blah blah blah. But he seems to make two pretty criminally unsubstantiated assumptions: one is these sources are essentially the same for everyone, or at least could be under certain conditions, and the other is that they do not inherently conflict with anyone else’s.

I say under certain conditions could be, because in evaluating our current society he seems to privilege envy of other’s material well-being as the principal determinant of happiness. His theory is that above a certain level of material subsistence people are motivated primarily by status-seeking and the desire for a high rank within their social group. Therefore, the increasing wealth of the society will not increase happiness because people measure their well-being relative to the group, not by their absolute prosperity. This is always been a flaw in the concept of the “war against poverty”; I’m not sure it’s much of an argument for socialist economic redistribution. But actually if you read his section on the value of income taxes carefully, he doesn’t even seem to be arguing that they are useful insofar as they can be redirected to the less prosperous, although he does evidently believe that a certain amount of money contributes more to the happiness of a poor person than to a rich one’s. Rather, he seems to think that taking money away from the properous is valuable in and of itself, because it will supposedly make them less focused on the “rat race,” more family-oriented, etc., etc. In short he seems to be advocating a net impoverishment of society.

All of which may be consistent with the program of a good little socialist, but does not necessarily accord marvelously with his own evidence about the supposedly quantified happiness of humanity. The research that he cites non-specifically supposedly indicates that people’s feeling of happiness has not risen in the last half-century, but he does not cite anything which indicates that it has necessarily declined. He cites rising rates of depression and crime as presumably implicit indicators of greater unhappiness, but he does not seem to acknowledge the possibility that in our hyper-medicated and surveillance-based society perhaps people simply report depression and crime more. In any event, if roughly similar numbers of people today as in the ‘50’s report themselves happy (and we believe them), despite the increase in prosperity, that might perhaps indicate that happiness is not fixed to material well-being. Which may be consistent with his general point, but not with his idea of increasing happiness by manipulating income levels.

And even if it did, it seems rather difficult to countenance any social program predicated upon appealing to one of humanity’s most depraved instincts, namely envy. The author acknowledges that his ideal of taxation is mainly motivated by the desire to pander to people’s envy, but he seems to think that their envy will be sated by the loss of prosperity of those around them and that after that point there will be no more. So the envy of the less prosperous will be satisfied by the losses accrued by the more prosperous, which will somehow not be counter-balanced by the chagrin of the more prosperous at the prospect of seeing their status diminished. Very logical.

One of the more egregious presumptions of utilitarians is that non-utilitarian social systems somehow aren’t concerned with seeking the greatest good for the greatest number of people. On the contrary, that’s the defining problem of practically every social and political theory I can think of, and they all either seek or claim to have found the answer—whether such a solution exists, I have my doubts, but that’s why I’m a skeptic about politics. This is a handy trick by utilitarians: they say “I believe in the greatest good for the greatest number of people.” Which is practically begging the question: “As opposed to whom?” It’s useful because it tends to conceal the fact that their real agenda is generally somewhat more specific, and tends to consist in the autocratic notion that one or two measures of social living can be authoritatively determined to be the sources of happiness, and then divided up in a centralized fashion. Those that are the most insistent on the idea of liberty are generally those that are the most skeptical about the possibility of the notion of happiness being either quantitatively defined or generalizable. In other words, only indviduals can determine their own sources of happiness.

For the author, on the other hand, the fact that certain stimuli trigger certain areas of the brain at the times when test subjects profess pleasure has solved the problem of determining happiness. Of course, as mentioned, he never really bothers with the results that those studies have yielded. Somehow the fact that he considers envy to be a principal element of human happiness does not place very severe limits on the harmoniousness of individual happiness. Nor does it constitute a tyranny of the majority, because he claims that in an ideal utilitarian society the happiness of the most unhappy would be considered of pre-eminent importance. Of course, at the beginning of the article he cited the equal importance of each individual’s happiness as the fouding tenet of his theory, but I’m sure it all sorts out in the end.

Among social factors responsible for unhappiness, he cites divorce and unemployment as of pre-eminent importance. Of course, rates of both divorce and unemployment in the crassly materialistic and religious United States are much lower than in the much more overtly utilitarian-embracing Europe, but it would be a bit embarassing for him to admit this after avowing that all traditional value-systems outside of utilitarianism and “individualism” are dead.

Personally the question of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people doesn’t exactly compel me constantly, although the issue of personal happiness tends to impose itself intransigently. I would have thought that evolutionary biology would have provided an adequate explanation of this, as well as the recurrence of what we call altruism. But such an idea of course suggests that happiness, whatever that is, is not really the point of our little existences, and that the more imperious competitiveness of life will ultimately subvert all of these little trifles of pleasure and pain. But in the meantime, we have these debased statistical notions of happiness to amuse us in an idle hour.

It seems to me that if one’s “objective” measure of happiness is electrical stimulation in the cerebral cortex, the most efficient utilitarian solution to the problem of human happiness would be strap everyone onto hospital gurneys and stimulate the “happiness” part of their brain all day long. If one does not wish to be this deterministic about it, perhaps one should allow more latitute to individuals to discover their own conception of happiness. Personally, I have found happiness generally to be an idea for the unhappy and something rarely spoken of by the happiness; mention of practically guarantees that it is not present in the environment where it is uttered. I don’t deny that what you might call love is the real bridge between personal happiness and moral obligations, and the only true means by which the desires of oneself and of others are united, but such a sentiment can never be mandated; it is entirely resistant to intellectual compulsion. Utilitarianism, which sometimes does a decent job of faking morality, is nevertheless ultimately predicated on the pleasure principle, and hence is wholly inadequate to uniting the moral and the pleasurable except when love truly pertains. In that case, of course, political theory is entirely superfluous, which is why this is all a waste of time.

p.s. I don’t claim that people’s behavior necessarily reflects what really would make them happy, but presumably it does at least reflect what they consciously value. Hence, if I were the author I would have been a bit skeptical of using the results of “surveys” of what people claim to value when the results don’t correlate with their behavior, i.e. they claim that spending time with family is most important, but they spend a disproportiante amount of time working (at least according to him). So either people are not really being forthright (consciously or unconsciously) in responding to surveys, or there is not actually a problem of priorities. In either case, he’s way over-valuing surveys as a guide to what will make people happy.

Concentration Camp Lichterfelde in Berlin was a sub-camp of Concentration Camp Sachsenhausen.

Site in German:
http://www.ikz-lichterfelde.de/

Cloud computing has driven, and continues to drive, a paradigm shift for enterprise IT. Mastering the cloud has become essential for businesses amp;hellip; but what does that mean, and how can it be achieved? In a recent report titled 'From Taming Cloud Complexity to Achieving Cloud Mastery,'amp;nbsp;EPAM Continuum, the integrated business, technology and experience consulting practice of EPAM Systems, Inc. (NYSE: EPAM),amp;nbsp;answers the most pressing questions on the topic and reveals how to achieve the ultimate goal, mastering cloud complexity.

[Namibian] The family members of a woman (27) who exhumed her baby's body in the Zambezi region on Saturday say they are still stunned by the incident.

[allAfrica] This election didn't make Kamala Harris America's first female president, but what her campaign achieved reaches far beyond the vote count. As the former president of Liberia and the first woman elected to lead an African nation, I know what it means to take on a challenge where the odds feel stacked against you.

Fr. Steven Ritter answers the question "why do people today avoid the topic of death?"

MP Chris Bloore wants increased fan representation on club boards to protect the game.

Forensic work is ongoing and police say they are not aware of any suspicious circumstances.

KUALA LUMPUR: As the takaful industry contends with escalating medical inflation and the rising costs of healthcare, the Malaysian Takaful Association (MTA) has called for increased government and private sector collaboration to ensure affordable, accessible protection options for all Malaysians.

MTA CEO Mohd Radzuan Mohamed envisions takaful becoming a leading option for Malaysians seeking protection.

With only 60% of the population currently insured or covered by takaful, he sees untapped potential among the remaining 40%, primarily in underserved and unserved communities.

“Our goal is to make takaful an accessible option, particularly for groups like the BM40 (top 20% of B40 and bottom 40% M40), who often do not receive enough attention from traditional agents,” he told SunBiz at the recent launch of Hijrah27.

Radzuan said the takaful sector has struggled to expand its market share, currently at about 20% after four decades.

In response, he said, they are considering how digital transformation, distribution enhancements and technology can address these challenges.

“Malaysia’s transformation plan and recent initiatives, like the financial sector blueprint, outline steps to close this gap by focusing on underserved communities, leveraging financial literacy campaigns, and engaging technology to make takaful accessible,” he added.

Additionally, he said co-payments, a shared cost model between the insurer and the insured, is seen as a potential solution to rising premiums fuelled by medical inflation.

“Collaborating with the Ministry of Health and Bank Negara Malaysia, takaful providers aim to develop cost-sharing models that help balance affordability and coverage. With co-payments, premiums could become more manageable, helping to mitigate the effects of medical inflation and making Takaful accessible for more people.”
While the adoption of co-payments is currently optional, Radzuan said, making it mandatory could have far-reaching implications on the takaful industry. “A balanced co-payment structure can be beneficial, but affordability must remain a priority to avoid defeating the purpose of protection,” he emphasised.

Looking forward, Radzuan said the association is exploring new technology-driven initiatives, such as the Hijrah27 framework, to improve customer service and operational efficiency. “Collaborations with fintech firms and the rise of AI-based solutions also show promise in elevating the industry’s standards and expanding reach,” he added.

A combination of images shows the World Health Organisation logo seen near its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland and a test tube labelled "Mpox virus positive". — Reuters/File

The World Health Organisation will convene a meeting of its Emergency Committee on November 22 to...

It is of note that incoming first lady Melania Trump's autobiography remains No. 1 on Amazon's "most sold" bestseller list. Her book -- which was published Oct. 8 by Skyhorse -- has also reached No. 1 in the categories of memoirs, political leader biographies and -- interestingly enough -- in traveler and explorer biographies.

The Maryland Terrapins are used to hoeing a difficult road during the football season. In 2024, however, the difference is a team that has not only failed to reach rather mild expectations, but one that is severely underperforming.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday on whether a law that legislators adopted more than a decade before the Civil War bans abortion and can still be enforced.

“While an increase in population is hopeful, the North Atlantic right whales washing up dead on our shores speak for themselves — we must stop killing them."

The post Right whale population grows 4 percent but extinction remains a threat appeared first on Boston.com.

Nearly a third of charity chief executives have experienced discrimination or barriers during their career in the sector, Acevo says

Orlando, FL — For the 11th consecutive fiscal year, Fall Protection – General Requirements is OSHA’s most frequently cited standard, the agency and Safety+Health announced Oct. 12 during the 2021 NSC Safety Congress & Expo.

Watertown, SD — Workforce expansion in the communication tower industry has created “a huge untapped potential for women” while enhancing the need for proper safety training for all workers, Andrea Lee, the National Tower Erectors’ Women of NATE committee chair, said during a recent Federal Communications Commission podcast.

Orlando, FL — For the 14th consecutive fiscal year, Fall Protection – General Requirements is OSHA’s most frequently cited standard, the agency and Safety+Health announced during the 2024 NSC Safety Congress & Expo.

Washington — The Senate has confirmed Jennifer Homendy for a second term as chair of the National Transportation Safety Board.

SCI Floor Covering, backed by Ranier Capital, is expanding through strategic acquisitions in the Midwest. Despite some market softness, SCI President and CEO Dave Elberson remains optimistic about the flooring industry's outlook. Learn about his acquisition strategy, business outlook and SCI's career path for installers. 

The post States’ Share of Medicaid Costs Remains Low but Is Set to Increase was curated by information for practice.

Born 100 years ago today, Nat King Cole topped the charts year after year, sold more than 50 million records, pushed jazz piano in a new direction and paved the way for later generations of performers.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday on whether a law that legislators adopted more than a decade before the Civil War bans abortion and can still be enforced.

Kamila Valieva's doping test revealed the presence of three substances to improve the heart function, the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) said. According to The New York Times, these drugs can be aimed at increasing endurance, if used in combination. According to USADA's chief Travis Tygart, Kamila Valieva's doping test revealed the presence of trimetazidine, L-carnitine and hypoxen. Of these three drugs, it is only trimetazidine that is included in the list of drugs prohibited for athletes. "It's a trifecta of substances — two of which are allowed, and one that is not allowed. The benefits of such a combination "seem to be aimed at increasing endurance, reducing fatigue and promoting greater efficiency in using oxygen," Travis Tygart said.

The V engine has been a favorite among car lovers for many years. Known for its unique design and powerful performance, it is the engine of choice for many vehicles today.

PayComplete has unveiled a report that...

While the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides mental health care of comparable or superior quality to care provided in private and non-VA public sectors, accessibility and quality of services vary across the VA health system, leaving a substantial unmet need for mental health services among veterans of the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Among various sources of ocean oil pollution, oil in runoff — primarily from cities and vehicles — is the top source of oil entering the ocean, and is 20 times higher than it was 20 years ago. A new report recommends actions to better understand how oil reaches and affects ocean environments and to minimize oil pollution.

Originally celebrated, asbestos was widely used across various industries from construction to automotive manufacturing for many years. However, the same properties that made it so valuable have also made it a lingering danger.

Unearthing Secrets, Unlocking Mysteries: Award-Winning Author Kay A. Oliver Unveils "Disturbing Remains": The Highly Anticipated Third Installment in the Award-Winning Dr. Kaili Worthy Series

More than 1.8 million smokers attempted to quit smoking and an estimated 104,000 Americans quit smoking for good because of the nine-week-long 2014 Tips From Former Smokers ( Tips ) campaign.

An increase in average temporary disability duration drove a nearly 10% increase in average indemnity benefits per claim in Wisconsin in 2022, according to a recent study from the Workers…

Use of cannabis and hallucinogens remained at historically high levels in 2023 among adults aged 19- 30 years and 35-50.

New report highlights how Mexico remains unsafe, particularly for people affected by HIVToronto, ON – Canada should remove Mexico from its refugee ‘safe’ list because of the country’s serious human rights abuses, the University of Toronto’s International Human Rights Program (IHRP) said in a new report released today. Failure to do so could place Canada in […]

As emerging technologies like AI and robotics capture attention, foundational engineering principles remain crucial. Essential for innovation, these include material science and control theory. ASME’s Y14.5 Standard on geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T) is key for advanced manufacturing.

Ducts play a crucial role but are often overlooked.

CABA was founded in 1988. As ASHB, its mission — to empower connectivity among people, spaces, and technology to deliver a more livable, sustainable, and efficient connected world — remains unchanged.

Packaging is a critical concern for manufacturers and brands aiming to enhance efficiency, sustainability, and safety. The dairy sector faces unique challenges in both primary and secondary packaging, particularly in maintaining product freshness.