I am really sure that everyone on the planet has seen this TWENTY times by now, but I am going to post it anyway. Here is the second Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer. Here are some facts and thoughts:
1. the desert planet in the clip is Jakku, not Tattooine. It is cool to see a downed X-Wing and Star Destroyer in the sand there. They are a nice reminder of a time gone by in a galaxy far, far away.
2. Chewie hasn`t aged a day. Han looks OK for his age as well. Maybe there is a reason Luke and Leia haven't been shown in the trailers yet. Just saying...
3. The Chrome Trooper you get a glimpse of is Gwendoline Christie of Game of Thrones fame (Breanne of Tarth).
4. We see Luke`s (presumably) metal hand reach out and touch R2-D2 when Luke says ``I have it.``
5. I am sure we have all heard the controversy over what Luke means when he says ``My father has it.`` Was this just a soundbyte from Return of the Jedi like it sounds like or is Vader`s spirit somehow still alive?
6. The dude with the cross-hilt lightsaber is Kylo Ren and he is played by Adam Driver (tall, longish-haired guy from the show Girls). He may be a new Sith who has a thing for old relics (Darth Vader's burnt helmet perhaps?). Is he trying to re-awaken the dark side a couple generations after the demise of Darth Vader and his emperor? And is it possible he is the offspring of Luke or Han/Leia? Maybe.
7. Leia (most likely) is given Luke's ORIGINAL lightsaber in a scene in the trailer where Luke says "My sister has it," She is given it by an alien creature who is much shorter than her. How did anyone find Luke's original weapon? Everyone assumed it was lost in the bowls of Cloud City with Luke's hand (that Vader sliced off in Empire Strikers Back) forever.
8. The back of the ship that the Millennium Falcon flies into towards the end of the trailer does NOT appear to be the same one that is seen at the beginning. The engines make it look more like the back of a Super Star Destroyer. Interesting.
9. I wonder who the man at the front of the platform in the clip showing row upon row of new storm troopers is. Seems like a new military leader a la Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin (yes, that is his real name in A New Hope). Rumors suggest he is played by Max Von Sydow and he is likely the leader of the First Order, the military faction trying to take the place of the old Empire as ruler of the galaxy. The whole thing looks very communist Soviet Union to me, with the big red banners and whatnot. By the way, for those interested, The Rebellion is now known as The Resistance in the sequal trilogy.
10. I have no problem whatsoever with a black storm trooper. Obviously others have been allowed to join since the days of the clones, which were at least 50 years before Episode 7. Not every storm trooper in the history of... ever... is a clone of a now-famous Maori actor, so stop your whining and racist comments (if you are complaining or making nasty remarks).
Anyway, the trailer is below. Enjoy!
OTTAWA—A new paper by
researchers at the International Monetary Fund appears to debunk a tenet
of conservative economic ideology — that taxing the rich to give to the
poor is bad for the economy.
The paper by IMF researchers Jonathan Ostry, Andrew Berg and Charalambos Tsangarides will be applauded by politicians and economists who regard high levels of income inequality as not only a moral stain on society but also economically unsound.
Labelled as the first study to incorporate recently compiled figures comparing pre- and post-tax data from a large number of countries, the authors say there is convincing evidence that lower net inequality is good economics, boosting growth and leading to longer-lasting periods of expansion.
In the most
controversial finding, the study concludes that redistributing wealth,
largely through taxation, does not significantly impact growth unless
the intervention is extreme.
In fact, because redistributing wealth through taxation has the positive impact of reducing inequality, the overall affect on the economy is to boost growth, the researchers conclude.
“We find that higher inequality seems to lower growth. Redistribution, in contrast, has a tiny and statistically insignificant (slightly negative) effect,” the paper states.
“This implies that, rather than a trade-off, the average result across the sample is a win-win situation, in which redistribution has an overall pro-growth effect.”
While the paper is heavy on the economics, there is no mistaking the political implications in the findings.
In Canada, the Liberal party led by Justin Trudeau is set to make supporting the middle class a key plank in the upcoming election and the NDP has also stressed the importance of tackling income inequality.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have boasted that tax cuts, particularly deep reductions in corporate taxation, are at least partly responsible for why the Canadian economy outperformed other G7 countries both during and after the 2008-09 recession.
In the Commons on Tuesday, Employment Minister Jason Kenney said the many tax cuts his government has introduced since 2006, including a two-percentage-point trim of the GST, has helped most Canadians.
Speaking on a Statistics Canada report showing net median family wealth had increased by 44.5 per cent since 2005, he added:
“It is no coincidence because, with the more than 160 tax cuts by this government, Canadian families, on average, have seen their after-tax disposable income increase by 10 per cent across all income categories. We are continuing to lead the world on economic growth and opportunity for working families.”
The authors concede that their conclusions tend to contradict some well-accepted orthodoxy, which holds that taxation is a job killer.
But they say that many previous studies failed to make a distinction between pre-tax inequality and post-tax inequality, and so often compared apples to oranges, among other shortcomings.
The data they looked at showed almost no negative impact from redistribution policies and that economies where incomes are more equally distributed tend to grow faster and have growth cycles that last longer.
Meanwhile, they say the data is not crystal clear that even large redistributions have a direct negative impact, although “from history and first principles . . . after some point redistribution will be destructive of growth.”
Still, they also stop short of saying their conclusions definitively settle the issue, acknowledging it is a complex area of economic theory with many variables at play and a scarcity of hard data.
Instead, they urge more rigorous study and say their findings “highlight the urgency of this agenda.”
The Washington-based institution released the study Wednesday morning but, perhaps due to the controversial nature of the conclusions, calls it a “staff discussion note” that does “not necessarily” represent the IMF views or policy. It was authorized for distribution by Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s chief economist.