Ukraine’s baby factories rake in record profits amid chaos of war

While average Ukrainians suffer amid NATO’s proxy war against Russia, business is booming for the surrogate baby industry, which requires a steady supply of healthy and financially desperate women willing to lease their wombs to affluent foreigners.

Ukraine’s baby factories rake in record profits amid chaos of war

Related:

Archived: How Ukraine’s Surrogate Mothers Have Survived the War

Archived: In War, Who Is a Surrogate Responsible to First?

The Scandal-Plagued Company behind Stranded Surrogacy Babies is Also Promoting a Controversial IVF Technique

Human trafficking and forgery of documents: the police accused the largest surrogate motherhood clinic in Ukraine

America’s $52 Billion Plan to Make Chips at Home Faces a Labor Shortage + manufacturing chips in the US could make smartphones more expensive

America’s $52 Billion Plan to Make Chips at Home Faces a Labor Shortage

Another possible fix would be to keep people in the workforce longer, by raising the age at which workers can begin collecting Social Security or tapping into their pensions or 401(k)s. Yet Harry Holzer, a former US Department of Labor chief economist now at Georgetown University, says that neither feels politically feasible right now. Immigration has been a toxic issue in American politics for years, and Social Security has long been an untouchable entitlement. “None of that is doable,” Holzer says, which means “our labor force growth is going to continue to be modest.”

Related:

How manufacturing chips in the US could make smartphones more expensive

Morcos says a top concern of his is the narrowness of the CHIPS Act. Without bringing related device manufacturing back to the U.S., such as device batteries, sensors, cameras, antennas, and hundreds of other components, the manufacturing process could require the most critical component to be produced stateside, then shipped overseas to be assembled with hundreds of other components into a device that is then shipped back to the U.S. for the American consumer.

Work longer, for less pay, and you still won’t be able to afford the latest smartphone or laptop?! 🤷🏼‍♀️

Malthusianism is alive and well as feminists celebrate declining birth rate

In recent years, much has been made of declining birth rates around the world, particularly in western countries. Whilst occasionally some fears are expressed about how this may impact social care for pensioners, the most common reaction tends to be a dismissive: “So what? The planet has too many people anyway.”

Malthusianism is alive and well as feminists celebrate declining birth rate

Russian Allegations of Rampant Nazism in Europe

by Gilbert Doctorow

A couple of weeks before Vladimir Putin announced his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, he met in the Kremlin with Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz. At their joint press conference following the meeting, Putin mentioned in passing that Ukraine is controlled today by neo-Nazis. This remark was famously ridiculed by Scholz as “laughable,” thereby earning for him the Kremlin’s utter contempt. German-Russian relations have undergone a sharp deterioration ever since, with Germany gradually stepping up its supplies of cutting-edge lethal weaponry to Kiev and Russia, in its internal political discussions, placing Germany alongside the United States and Britain as de facto ‘co-belligerents’ which may be subjected to Russian missile attacks if the war escalates further.

Russian Allegations of Rampant Nazism in Europe