The Money Cure, by Linda Peer
This comic romantic adventure, set in the near future, asks, “What if the dread disease of billionaire-ism could be cured?”
Jemma is a beautiful loner with aspirations as a graphic novelist. In a near future of extreme housing crisis, she lives in illegal “underhousing.” Employed in a menial job at a rejuvenation spa for the ultra-wealthy, Jemma wants, desires, covets, enough money to buy time for creative work. Jemma also wants to move out of her van. Financially challenged and stuck in a dead end job, and “housed” illegally, Jemma devises an only slightly illegal plan to fix her money problem.
Oz Vasquez is a sociable, outgoing biologist. He is one of a group of scientists who believe the solution to the deepening housing crisis is a change in how people, especially billionaires, regard the acquisition of vast hoards of money. The scientists believe the ultra-wealthy behave as crudely and irrationally as dragons sitting on hoards of gold in fairy tales. They are searching for a cure for what they call the dread moneypox. If they find such a cure, some of them intend to administer it to the ultra-wealthy by any means necessary.
When Jemma and Oz meet, each secretly intends to use the other to advance their scheme. Then they fall in love. Their intentions toward each other change, but their plans are already in motion. Their situation is complicated when they become entangled with a group of minor criminals called the Candy Mommies and Daddies. The Candies are masters of the misdemeanor who sometimes step over the line into felony.
Will either Jemma or Oz, or both, succeed? Will they betray each other, or help each other? Will their love survive their ambitions?
About the author
This author wishes for everyone to thrive, financially, in happiness, and in every other way.
You'll also love
A perfect woman is inspired to search among the few remaining un-perfected men for an answer to the mystery of sexual attraction before perfection.
Twenty years after the perfection of the human body in 2040, Aldora, a cuvaceous brunette of other-worldly beauty, discovers a pre-Genetic Patch Tool® era women’s magazine, Willing Wife. At first she is shocked by its contents, but after further reading she grows disturbingly curious about the mystery of sexual attraction before perfection. Although her friends disapprove, she begins to investigate. She meets a time-gambler, Guy, who has not submitted to perfection. He insists that the only way she can truly understand joy without perfection is by personal experience. What should Aldora do?
After being ripped off in the gig economy, three desperate people try to repair their finances by becoming a shadow bank for a crypto exchange. Does that sound like a good idea?
Omar and Peter are broke and living in a friend’s dismal basement after a gig-economy employer cheats them out of their pay. Omar meets Eva, a beautiful, older woman who says her assets were stolen in a crypto-scam. She claims she learned from that. Now she has a plan for a crypto-business that will lead to real wealth. After some clever convincing, cool Omar and hotheaded Peter agree to team up with beautiful Eva.
Eva says the three will provide services to crypto exchanges, “Like merchants who sold picks and shovels to gold miners in the old days. Most miners stayed poor, while the merchants made out like bandits.”
The three confederates overestimate their understanding of the crypto-universe, and they should have paid attention to that phrase, “like bandits.”
How the Conspiracy Theory Generator Saved the World, another futurist story by Linda Peer, is included in The Flesh of Your Future Sticks Between My Teeth, an anthology of stories from the Gristle Cli-Fi Parody contest, edited by John Michael Greer.
What happens when AI dogs, created by humans, conspire to prevent humans from destroying the environment, especially the parts dogs consider most important?
Copyright © 2023 Linda Peer, dreams and schemes; the.written.photon@gmail.com
References and Information for The Money Cure:
If you have anything interesting you think could be added to this, please let me know at the.written.photon@gmail.com
1. Income inequality
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/
1-a) Methods of Income Inequality: Wage Theft
1-a-1) “This report assesses the prevalence and magnitude of one form of wage theft—minimum wage violations (workers being paid at an effective hourly rate below the binding minimum wage)—in the 10 most populous U.S. states. We find that, in these states, 2.4 million workers lose $8 billion annually (an average of $3,300 per year for year-round workers) to minimum wage violations—nearly a quarter of their earned wages. This form of wage theft affects 17 percent of low-wage workers, with workers in all demographic categories being cheated out of pay. https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/
1-a-2) “This report estimates nearly $728 million in wage theft annually in Colorado.
Nearly 440,000 low-wage workers experience wage theft every year.
Wage theft results in over $45 million annually in lost tax revenue for the state.
https://www.coloradofiscal.org/wage-theft-colorado-2022/issues/economic-prosperity/
1-a-3) “Over the last four decades, the U.S. economy has been marked by extreme inequality, which has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the midst of this global pandemic and an economic crisis, the number of individuals with household weekly earnings below the poverty line rose to 65.1 million, a 28% increase from February to June 2020 (Saenz and Sherman 2020). In contrast, CEO pay rose by nearly 19% in 2020 (Mishel and Kandra 2021). This rise in poverty and pay inequality is compounded by wage theft, which robs millions of workers of billions of dollars from their paychecks each year (Cooper and Kroeger 2017).
What this report finds: Each year millions of workers across the country are victims of wage theft—meaning they are paid less than the full wages to which they are legally entitled. Between 2017 and 2020, more than $3 billion in stolen wages was recovered on behalf of workers by the U.S. Department of Labor, state departments of labor and attorneys general, and through class and collective action litigation.
Why it matters: This staggering amount represents just a small portion of wages stolen from workers across the country. And while wage theft impacts workers broadly, it disproportionately affects low-wage workers, many of whom already are struggling to make ends meet. Wage theft also disproportionately impacts women, people of color, and immigrant workers because they are more likely than other workers to be in low-wage jobs. Finally, these stolen wages hurt local economies and tax revenues.”
https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-2021/
1-a-4) If trickle down economics worked, the following would not be the case: “According to a groundbreaking new working paper by Carter C. Price and Kathryn Edwards of the RAND Corporation, had the more equitable income distributions of the three decades following World War II (1945 through 1974) merely held steady, the aggregate annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been $2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone. That is an amount equal to nearly 12 percent of GDP—enough to more than double median income—enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $1,144 a month. Every month. Every single year.
Price and Edwards calculate that the cumulative tab for our four-decade-long experiment in radical inequality had grown to over $47 trillion from 1975 through 2018. At a recent pace of about $2.5 trillion a year, that number we estimate crossed the $50 trillion mark by early 2020. That’s $50 trillion that would have gone into the paychecks of working Americans had inequality held constant—$50 trillion that would have built a far larger and more prosperous economy—$50 trillion that would have enabled the vast majority of Americans to enter this pandemic far more healthy, resilient, and financially secure.
https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/
The original research: https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html ; https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html
1-a-5) Corporate profits, who gets them? “Why does that matter?” you ask. Corporate profits increase financial inequality because they go to shareholders and a few executives, and:
…The 1% hold 53% of stocks, worth $16.76 trillion.
…The bottom 50% of American adults hold only 0.6% of stocks, worth $19 billion.
https://www.fool.com/research/how-many-americans-own-stock/ (June 2, 2023)
A graph of “Corporate Profits After Tax (without IVA and CCAdj) / Gross Domestic Product” meaning Corporate profits as a percent of US GDP, over time. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Pik
Note that the graph is from the St. Louis Fed. The percent of GDP that has gone to profits has risen, eanwhile,
The percent of GDP that goes to wages has shrunk: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG
In 2020, Tyson, one of the 4 big meat processors in the US, increased profits while it’s volume of sales decrease. That means it made more profit on each unit of meat sold.
1-a-6) Reddit, Urban Car Living; https://www.reddit.com/r/urbancarliving/ This is mostly young people who are living in vehicles while they work.
2) Healthcare
Conservative oppositions to Obama Care, aka the Affordable Care Act, ACA, and to other attempts to organize universal health care for Americans:
2-a) “The Affordable Care Act is back before the U.S. Supreme Court in the latest of dozens of attacks against the law by conservatives fighting what they now perceive to be a government takeover of health care.
Yet, in an odd twist of history, it was Newt Gingrich, one of the most conservative speakers of the House, who laid out the blueprint for the Affordable Care Act as early as 1993. In an interview on “Meet the Press,” Gingrich argued for individuals’ being “required to have health insurance” as a matter of social responsibility.
Over time, he drew on ideas from the conservative Heritage Foundation and Milton Friedman to suggest “that means finding ways through tax credits and through vouchers so that every American can buy insurance, including, I think, a requirement that if you’re above a certain level of income, you have to either have insurance or post a bond.”
2-b) Republican Donors close check books until they get what Trump promised: an end to the ACA and tax cuts:
https://www.denverpost.com/2017/06/26/donors-refuse-gop-money-demand-reform/
(They expect to get what they paid for with donations, right?)
2-c) About the 3.8% tax on specific profits of wealthy individuals that goes to fund the ACA:
“The net investment income tax (NIIT) is a 3.8% tax on net investment income, such as capital gains, dividends, and rental and other income after allowable deductions, to the extent the net amount exceeds the MAGI (Modified Adjusted Gross Income, on your tax form) threshold.
This tax only applies to high-income taxpayers, such as single filers whose MAGI exceeds $200,000 and married couples filing jointly whose MAGI exceeds $250,000, as well as certain estates and trusts.”
(So, only if you are single and your net profits cause your taxable income to exceed $200,000 in a year, then you pay 3.8%, only on the excess that comes from profits (not wages) specifically to fund health care in the US. Got it?)
(note that this is not a tax on wage income, but only on non-wage realized profits. Non wage profits are taxed at a lower rate than wages for high wage individuals. They are taxed as if they are like the wage income of poorer people.)
2-d) Cost to have a baby in the US: https://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy/pregnancy-costs/
(“Giving birth costs $18,865 on average, including pregnancy, delivery and postpartum care, according to the Peterson-Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) Health System Tracker.” Average out of pocket cost is about $3000.)
3) Billionaire behavior, the price of influence:
3-a) “A conservative dark money group led by former President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser Leonard Leo bankrolled Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation campaign with nearly $22 million in anonymous cash, while another nonprofit that Leo helps steer saw a fundraising bonanza and showered cash on other organizations boosting Barrett, according to tax returns obtained by The Daily Poster…. The new tax returns https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21164749-the-85-fund-2020-990 ) shed light on how Barrett’s successful last-minute confirmation campaign was aided by a flood of dark money. …. In Barrett’s first year, she has already sided with corporate interests on a landmark climate case involving an oil giant that employed her father for decades, and she refused to recuse herself in a donor transparency case involving a foundation tied to a dark money group that backed her confirmation.”
https://www.levernews.com/how-dark-money-bought-a-supreme-court-seat/
3-b) “Is Bezos holding Seattle hostage? The cost of being Amazon’s home
…Amazon reacted to the city’s latest tax proposal, which would have charged large businesses an annual $275 per employee, by resorting to what critics call blackmail. In mid-June, less than a month after unanimously passing the tax, Seattle’s council abandoned it in the face of threats from the corporation. …”
4) Billionaire-ism:
4-a) “The New York Times published an editorial comment on its front page in January 2019, provocatively entitled “abolish billionaires.” The editorial raised a serious question: what if instead of being a sign of economic success, billionaires are a sign of economic failure?”
https://inequality.org/research/billionaires-sign-econ-failure/
4-b) “There are 2,604 billionaires in the world, and 55.8% of them are self-made.
That’s according to the Billionaire Census published Thursday by market research firm Wealth-X.
Taken together, self-made billionaires have a total of nearly $5 trillion.
Another 30.9% of billionaires made at least some of their wealth themselves, according to the report, while 13.3% inherited their wealth entirely.”
(Linda’s comment: If you (or a billionaire) invested in the whole stock market, completely passively, you (or a billionaire) have made some of your wealth yourself, as you do if you have a 401k. Part of the definition of an asset, according to the Howey Test, is that profits are made from someone else’s work. Billionaires who use their inherited money to make more in the stock market, by buying and selling assets, do not work, as we understand work. In general, they also avoid risks. But that is a different issue.)
4-c) Billionaire “philanthropy,” How billionaires and other ultra-wealthy change charity into self-service:
“Abstract: Elite philanthropy—voluntary giving at scale by wealthy individuals, couples and families—is intimately bound up with the exercise of power by elites. This theoretically oriented review examines how big philanthropy in the United States and United Kingdom serves to extend elite control from the domain of the economic to the domains of the social and political, and with what results. Elite philanthropy, we argue, is not simply a benign force for good, born of altruism, but is heavily implicated in what we call the new age of inequalities, certainly as consequence and potentially as cause. Philanthropy at scale pays dividends to donors as much as it brings sustenance to beneficiaries. The research contribution we make is fourfold. First, we demonstrate that the true nature and effects of elite philanthropy can only be understood in the context of what Bourdieu calls the field of power, which maintains the economic, social and political hegemony of the super-rich, nationally and globally. Second, we demonstrate how elite philanthropy systemically concentrates power in the hands of mega foundations and the most prestigious endowed charitable organizations. Third, we explicate the similarities and differences between the four main types of elite philanthropy—institutionally supportive, market-oriented, developmental and transformational—revealing how and why different sections within the elite express themselves through philanthropy. Fourth, we show how elite philanthropy functions to lock in and perpetuate inequalities rather than remedying them. …” https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijmr.12247
(Mairi Maclean, School of Management, University of Bath, UK)
4-d) https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/09/20/coinbases-1b-crypto-philanthropy-disappointment/
5) Billionaire scams? Want to start a financial scam? Rip off customers and investors? Here’s some how-to:
5-a) Choose a technology that is talked about, and in an early stage…
5-a-1) Quantum computing, https://iceberg-research.com/2022/10/05/quantum-computing-inc-qubt-on-its-way-to-vacuum-state/
5-a-2) Hydrogen powered vehicles, https://hindenburgresearch.com/nikola/
5-a-3) Of course, there is crypto https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/18/how-sam-bankman-fried-ran-8-billion-fraud-government-prosecutors.html
5-a-4) This space is for an AI scam.
5-a-5) Financial/Influencer Ponzi schemes, https://youtu.be/45sJJpS1OEM Coffeezilla exposing Trader’s Domain; a very amusing presentation.
5-a-6) Blockchain and DiFi! Jack Dorsey’s Cash App/Block Inc: “Block Inc., formerly known as Square Inc., is a $44 billion market cap company that claims to have developed a “frictionless” and “magical” financial technology with a mission to empower the “unbanked” and the “underbanked.”
Our 2-year investigation has concluded that Block has systematically taken advantage of the demographics it claims to be helping. The “magic” behind Block’s business has not been disruptive innovation, but rather the company’s willingness to facilitate fraud against consumers and the government, avoid regulation, dress up predatory loans and fees as revolutionary technology, and mislead investors with inflated metrics.
Our research involved dozens of interviews with former employees, partners, and industry experts, extensive review of regulatory and litigation records, and FOIA and public records requests. …
CEO Jack Dorsey has publicly touted how Cash App is mentioned in hundreds of hip hop songs as evidence of its mainstream appeal. A review of those songs show that the artists are not generally rapping about Cash App’s smooth user interface—many describe using it to scam, traffic drugs or even pay for murder. [See our compilation video on this here]”
https://hindenburgresearch.com/block/ (3-23-2023)
6) If you are caught, settle the case for less than the amount you made on the scam: Walmart wage theft and other violations– https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/walmart (It is a publically traded company, but at last count the Walton family owned abot 49% of the stock)
https://iceberg-research.com/2022/08/29/how-singapores-regulators-have-failed-nobles-investors/
7) But why do the laws allow you to settle for less than your profit from the scam? That will not discourage crime.
Ah! Political contributions and lobbying.
7-a) “OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma should not be able to make any more political contributions without a judge’s permission, lawyers for its creditors said in a court filing.
The issue came up this week after it was reported that the company, which has a long history of influencing policymakers, made contributions to national associations representing state attorneys general and governors.
The money was sent after Purdue entered bankruptcy protection last year in an effort to settle thousands of lawsuits accusing it of helping spark an opioid addiction and overdose epidemic that has contributed to more than 400,000 deaths in the U.S.. State attorneys general are among those trying to negotiate a nationwide settlement.
7-b) “In recent years, Amazon.com Inc has killed or undermined privacy protections in more than three dozen bills across 25 states, as the e-commerce giant amassed a lucrative trove of personal data on millions of American consumers.
Amazon executives and staffers detail these lobbying victories in confidential documents reviewed by Reuters.
In Virginia, the company boosted political donations tenfold over four years before persuading lawmakers this year to pass an industry-friendly privacy bill that Amazon itself drafted. In California, the company stifled proposed restrictions on the industry’s collection and sharing of consumer voice recordings gathered by tech devices. And in its home state of Washington, Amazon won so many exemptions and amendments to a bill regulating biometric data, such as voice recordings or facial scans, that the resulting 2017 law had “little, if any” impact on its practices, according to an internal Amazon document.”
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-privacy-lobbying/
7-c) What else might the ultra-wealthy want to lobby for? Tax and accounting rules, perhaps?
https://www.sightline.org/2019/02/11/fracking-financial-depreciation-dodge/
8) Tax avoidance and tax fraud, easily available for the wealthiest:
8-a) A massive trove of tax information obtained by ProPublica, covering thousands of America’s wealthiest individuals, reveals what’s inside the billionaires’ bag of tricks for minimizing their personal tax bills — sometimes to nothing.
https://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files
8-b) The Paradise Papers, “A major global collaboration reveals secrets from one of the world’s most prestigious offshore law firms, a specialized trust company, and 19 company registries in secrecy jurisdictions.”
https://www.icij.org/investigations/paradise-papers/ (2017)
8-c) The Paradise Papers, “A giant leak of more than 11.5 million financial and legal records exposes a system that enables crime, corruption and wrongdoing, hidden by secretive offshore companies.”
https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/
9) Bankruptcy. Sounds bad, but with the Texas two-step it can be very good.
9-a) “Koch Industries’ Texas two-step bankruptcy move challenged; Cancer sufferer files motion to dismiss bankruptcy of Bestwall unit alleging company is not in financial distress.
Lawyers have filed a motion to dismiss the Chapter 11 filing of a unit of Koch Industries in a test case that could help determine the future of controversial bankruptcy schemes deployed by companies to handle personal injury claims. The motion to the bankruptcy court in the Western Division of North Carolina alleges the Chapter 11 filing by Bestwall — a unit of Koch’s building materials subsidiary Georgia Pacific — was made in “bad faith” because the company was not in financial distress.
The motion late on Friday alleges that Georgia Pacific has distributed $5.38bn in dividends to Koch Industries since the bankruptcy petition was filed in 2017, enriching the debtor’s equity holders while thousands of asbestos claimants remain uncompensated. Bestwall, Georgia Pacific and Koch Industries have engaged in a “years long strategy of delay”, which has deprived victims of their rights to fair resolution in the tort system, it claims.
https://www.ft.com/content/b1d80321-5ccd-4ddc-908c-8efaa7fa84b0
10) Monopolies: good for a few and bad for you.
10a) https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/25/meatpackers-prices-coronavirus-antitrust-275093
10-c) Chokepoint Capitalism, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaSwWYemLek (Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctrow)
At the chokepoint, the business has a monopoly.
11) Housing
11-a) Reddit, Urban Car Living; https://www.reddit.com/r/urbancarliving/
11-b) From the US Census Bureau: “When a household has a cost ratio of over 30%, it is considered cost-burdened, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Severely cost-burdened households have cost ratios of over 50%.
The median cost ratio for all renter-occupied households increased from 29.3% (of income) in 2019 to 30.6% in 2021
This increase shifted the number of households considered cost burdened from 46.3% to 49.0% of all renter-occupied units. That means just under half of all renter-occupied households in the United States were cost burdened in 2021.
In 2021, 20.1 million renter-occupied households met the over 30% income threshold and were cost burdened, an increase of about 1 million households since 2019.
The number of severely burdened households rose to 25.4% (about 10.4 million renter-occupied units) from 23.0% in 2019 (9.4 million). …
… Renter-occupied households in the lowest income quintile (fifth) had a median cost ratio of 62.7% in 2021. That means that half of the renter-occupied households in this quintile (fifth) paid gross rent that was more than 62.7% of their total household income, 3 percentage points higher than in 2019. (A cost ratio of 62.7% is over twice the HUD cost burden threshold.)
White squatter camps in South Africa: https://abovewhispers.com/2016/02/26/the-white-squatter-camps-of-south-africa-shanty-towns-built-after-the-fall-of-apartheid-are-now-home-to-hundreds-of-families/
Irregular housing in the US: “DALY CITY (KPIX 5) – A sharp increase in the number of recreational vehicles in San Mateo County is coinciding with the growing homeless situation, but not all of the RVs are housing the homeless. Officials say a number of the campers are providing shelter for workers who can’t afford to live in the county.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/rv-dwellers-homeless-workers-san-mateo-county/
Positive Perspectives on Mobile Living: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO-pKYzcY_8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dignity_Village
12) Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) and “forever” chemicals
12-a) “Almost three decades have passed since a diverse group of 21 experts assembled at the Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wisconsin, USA (July 26–28, 1991), to assess the impact of industrial and agricultural chemicals (and their capacity for altering endocrine systems) on wildlife and humans. Wingspread, as the meeting came to be known, introduced the terms ‘endocrine disruption’ and ‘endocrine disruptor’ into our vocabulary, produced the first Consensus Statement on endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), and marked the dawn of the endocrine disruption field as we know it today.
EDCs (such as bisphenol A and phthalates) are chemicals that dysregulate normal endocrine homeostasis by mimicking, blocking, or interfering with hormones in the body; are pervasive in our environment, food, and consumer products; and have been linked to an array of endocrine-related conditions such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and thyroid disorders. Given the rapid increase in incidence of these conditions in recent decades (which makes a genetic cause unlikely), the role of EDC exposures as potential environmental drivers of these non-communicable disease epidemics cannot be discounted.
In this issue of The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, we publish a two-part Series on EDCs: implications for human health; and economic, regulatory, and policy implications The overarching message from the Series is that the growing body of evidence implicating EDCs as human health hazards supports urgent action to reduce exposure to EDCs and this can be best achieved through regulation.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(20)30242-4/fulltext
12-b) Endocrine glands, distributed throughout the body, produce the hormones that act as signaling molecules after release into the circulatory system. The human body is dependent on hormones for a healthy endocrine system, which controls many biological processes like normal growth, fertility, and reproduction. Hormones act in extremely small amounts, and minor disruptions in those levels may cause significant developmental and biological effects.
How Do We Encounter These Chemicals?
Endocrine disruptors are found in many everyday products, including some cosmetics, food and beverage packaging, toys, carpet, and pesticides. https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/index.cfm
12-c) “Impact of EDCs on Neurological and Behavioral Systems:
The endocrine and nervous systems are intimately intertwined. For example, the brain stimulates the thyroid gland and thyroid hormone production, which play a key role in neurological development. Neurological function is affected by melatonin and cortisol, hormones that regulate sleep and stress. Normal neurological development and behavior rely on these hormone balances.
Unfortunately, the brain is highly vulnerable to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which can cause widespread disruption of hormone receptors, enzymes, and nerve signals. The renewal, maintenance, and death of neurons are also highly hormone-sensitive.
The World Health Organization, the United Nations and the US National Toxicology Program are just a few of the leading agencies concluding that EDCs may cause a variety of neuroendocrine dysfunction that negatively effects the brain and behavior. EDC exposures have been linked to decreased IQ, increased neurodevelopmental problems, and other neurocognitive conditions.”
https://www.endocrine.org/topics/edc/what-edcs-are/common-edcs/neurological
12-d) “Caporale et al. examined chemical exposure data in a large cohort of human mother-child pairs and identified a set of common endocrine-disrupting chemicals (see the Perspective by Liew and Guo). The authors then showed that a mixture of these substances could cause abnormalities in two model organisms and may also be associated with language delay in humans.” https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe8244
13) Activist short sellers, and a reporter about short selling, for your entertainment and education:
https://hindenburgresearch.com/
Edwin Dorsey from The Bear Cave <thebearcave@substack.com>
14) General:
Robert Reich Wealth and Poverty Class, UC Berkley, 2022, part 1- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVNdvkXTe1E