Kruse Kronicle

Trends in Extreme Poverty (Spoiler: The Poor Are Not Getting Poorer)

Globally, the number of people living in extreme poverty ($1.25 a day) is shrinking. The global poor are not getting poorer. The world population grew from 4.5 billion people in 1981 to 6.9 billion in 2010 - a 60% increase. The percentage of people living in extreme poverty in developing nations dropped from over 50% to 21%. (From about 1.95 bil. to 1.2 bil., estimates are now well below one bil. in 2015.)

That doesn't mean life just above the extreme poverty line is desirable. That doesn't mean there isn't a great deal more to do. But let's be honest about the trajectory. And let's also be honest that central to the decline in extreme poverty has been the inclusion of the poor in networks of productivity and exchange - that is to say, they embraced some form of market capitalism. Unqualified dismissal of "capitalism" (rarely defined by critics), as some religious leaders are prone to do, should be challenged.

Source: World Bank - State of the Poor

China and India Overtake Mexico for Inflow of Foreign-Born US Residents

Conversable Economist: China and India Overtake Mexico for Inflow of Foreign-Born US Residents

Religion in China: Cracks in the atheist edifice

Economist: Religion in China: Cracks in the atheist edifice

The rapid spread of Christianity is forcing an official rethink on religion. ...

... In April one of Wenzhou’s largest churches was completely demolished. Officials are untroubled by the clash between the city’s famously freewheeling capitalism and the Communist Party’s ideology, yet still see religion and its symbols as affronts to the party’s atheism. ...

... Christianity is hard to control in China, and getting harder all the time. It is spreading rapidly, and infiltrating the party’s own ranks. The line is blurring between house churches and official ones, and Christians are starting to emerge from hiding to play a more active part in society. The Communist Party has to find a new way to deal with all this. There is even talk that the party, the world’s largest explicitly atheist organisation, might follow its sister parties in Vietnam and Cuba and allow members to embrace a dogma other than—even higher than—that of Marx.

Any shift in official thinking on religion could have big ramifications for the way China handles a host of domestic challenges, from separatist unrest among Tibetan Buddhists and Muslim Uighurs in the country’s west to the growth of NGOs and “civil society”—grassroots organisations, often with a religious colouring, which the party treats with suspicion, but which are also spreading fast. ...

... Buddhism, much longer established in China than Christianity, is surging too, as is folk religion; many more Han are making pilgrimages to Buddhist shrines in search of spiritual comfort. All this worries many officials, for whom religion is not only Marx’s “opium of the people” but also, they believe, a dangerous perverter of loyalty away from the party and the state. Christianity, in particular, is associated with 19th-century Western imperial encroachment; and thus the party’s treatment of Christians offers a sharp insight into the way its attitudes are changing.

It is hard even to guess at the number of Christians in China. Official surveys seek to play down the figures, ignoring the large number who worship in house churches. By contrast, overseas Christian groups often inflate them. There were perhaps 3m Catholics and 1m Protestants when the party came to power in 1949. Officials now say there are between 23m and 40m, all told. In 2010 the Pew Research Centre, an American polling organisation, estimated there were 58m Protestants and 9m Catholics. Many experts, foreign and Chinese, now accept that there are probably more Christians than there are members of the 87m-strong Communist Party. Most are evangelical Protestants.

Predicting Christianity’s growth is even harder. Yang Fenggang of Purdue University, in Indiana, says the Christian church in China has grown by an average of 10% a year since 1980. He reckons that on current trends there will be 250m Christians by around 2030, making China’s Christian population the largest in the world. Mr Yang says this speed of growth is similar to that seen in fourth-century Rome just before the conversion of Constantine, which paved the way for Christianity to become the religion of his empire. ...

... A new breed of educated, urban Christians has emerged. Gerda Wielander of the University of Westminster, in her book “Christian Values in Communist China”, says that many Chinese are attracted to Christianity because, now that belief in Marxism is declining, it offers a complete moral system with a transcendental source. ...

... Some Chinese also discern in Christianity the roots of Western strength. They see it as the force behind the development of social justice, civil society and rule of law, all things they hope to see in China. ...

... The paradox, as they all know, is that religious freedom, if it ever takes hold, might harm the Christian church in two ways. The church might become institutionalised, wealthy and hence corrupt, as happened in Rome in the high Middle Ages, and is already happening a little in the businessmen’s churches of Wenzhou. Alternatively the church, long strengthened by repression, may become a feebler part of society in a climate of toleration. As one Beijing house-church elder declared, with a nod to the erosion of Christian faith in western Europe: “If we get full religious freedom, then the church is finished.

The Populations Of The US, China, And Japan. 1990-2050

Business Insider: Epic Demographic Chart Shows What's Happening To The Populations Of The US, China, And Japan

Why the West Progressed in Ways No One Else Had

I just read Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages by Frances & Joseph Gies. The book focuses on technological development during the 1,000 years from 500-1500 C.E. The Middle Ages was once cast as an age of regression from the golden age of Greece and Rome until the Renaissance and the Enlightenment saved the day. Furthermore, capitalism is often seen as a product of the last two or three centuries. Modern scholarship debunks these characterizations. This book does a great job at showing the cultural and technological ferment of the Middle Ages, as well as showing how many of the key components of the modern economic world (companies, risk management, double-entry bookkeeping, finance, technological innovation, labor specialization, factories, to name a few) were already coming to flower by 1500. Here are two insights from the end of the book:

… "Asian priority in a wide range of [technological] innovations is established. Asia, however, showed little inclination to borrow, and so, after giving much to others, allowed its own technology to wither, as demonstrated in the history of the two epoch-making inventions of printing and firearms. Each originated in China, but each was allowed to languish, while Europe seized them in both hands to make them major instruments of change. An authority [Timo Myllyntaus] on technology transfer in the modern world asserts that the process 'is not just a matter of moving some piece of hardware from one place to another… A material infrastructure is not enough. There must also be sufficient nonmaterial infrastructure.' In the 'nonmaterial infrastructure' of medieval Europe was a spirit of progress whose ingredients included intellectual curiosity, a love of tinkering, an ambition 'to serve God' and also 'to grow rich as all men desire to do.'

A sense of progress implies a sense of history, something missing among the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. 'Lacking any objective understanding of the past – that is, lacking history,' says [D. S. L.] Cardwell, 'the hierarchical and slave-owning societies of classical antiquity failed to appreciate the great progress that had been achieved by and through technics.' On the contrary, the ancients were fond of looking back to what they conceived as a vanished 'golden age,' a conception the reverse of progress. The Christian Church, whose pioneering monastic orders made many practical and material contributions to medieval technology, also supplied a noncyclical, straight-line view of history that allowed scope for the idea of progress." (287-288)

The book concludes with this paragraph:

"' Technology,' says Melvin Kranzberg, founder of the Society for the History of Technology, 'is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.' It is what each age and each society make of it. The Middle Ages used it sometimes wisely, sometimes recklessly, often for dubious purposes, seldom with a thought for the future, and with only a dim awareness of the scientific and mathematical laws governing it. But operating on instinct, insight, trial and error, and perseverance, the craftsman and craftswoman, the entrepreneurs, the working monks and the clerical intellectuals, and the artist-engineers all transformed the world, on balance very much to the world's advantage." (291)

I've read a number of books on the history of technology. This is one of the best short surveys I have read, reading more like a novel than a history book.

Economic Development Links

1. Economist: March of the Middle Class

2. Chrsitianity Today: Poverty Is a Moral Problem - Interview with William Easterly

... The sad thing is that the field and practice of development have too often been on the wrong side of this debate. They've implicitly painted themselves into a corner where they're on the authoritarian side. Then they're backing the autocrats, backing the oppressors against the oppressed. ...

... Any advice for a 20-year-old reading this article who wants to "change the world"?

I love young people who want to change the world!

I think we need rebalancing. A large share of the effort has been going to direct technical solutions to poverty. But this has neglected the other option of advocacy and education for rights as an important moral goal. Rights also work to promote development. ...

3. BBC: Ending poverty needs more than growth, World Bank says

... "This is simply not enough, and we need a laser-like focus on making growth more inclusive and targeting more programmes to assist the poor directly if we're going to end extreme poverty." ...

4. Mashable: 64% of World's Extreme Poor Live in Just 5 Countries

... Using the most recent data from 2010, the report shows that nearly two-thirds of the extremely poor — that is, those who live on less than $1.25 a day — live in just five countries: India, China, Nigeria, Bangladesh and the Democratic Republic of Congo. ...

5. Wired: The Hyper-Efficient, Highly Scientific Scheme to Help the World’s Poor

... How did ICS know the campaign would work? It made sense in theory—free textbooks should mean more kids read them, so more kids learn from them—but they had no evidence to back that up. On the spot, Kremer suggested a rigorous way to evaluate the program: Identify twice the number of qualifying schools as it had the money to support. Then randomly pick half of those schools to receive the textbooks, while the rest got none. By comparing outcomes between the two cohorts, they could gauge whether the textbooks were making a difference.

What Kremer was suggesting is a scientific technique that has long been considered the gold standard in medical research: the randomized controlled trial. At the time, though, such trials were used almost exclusively in medicine—and were conducted by large, well-funded institutions with the necessary infrastructure and staff to manage such an operation. A randomized controlled trial was certainly not the domain of a recent PhD, partnering with a tiny NGO, out in the chaos of the developing world. ...

6. Christianity Today: How Female Farmers Could Solve the Hunger Crisis

... This gender inequality carries desperate consequences. Lack of basic tools and training means women grow and harvest significantly lower yields than men – not because they can't farm as well, but because they don't have necessary resources. In fact, female farmers do more to increase food security in rural communities than men. Women cultivate vegetable gardens and edible crops close to home, which allows them to watch their children and cook meals. In contrast, men tend to travel further from the house to grow cash crops like tobacco, coffee, and corn – crops that do little to supplement diet. ...

7. Businessweek: Have Higher Food Prices Actually Helped the World's Poor?

... Data, however, pointed in the other direction: The number of people in developing countries who reported that there had been times in the past 12 months when they didn’t have enough money to buy the food their family needed fell by hundreds of millions (PDF) from 2005 to 2009. In 2013 improved FAO estimates backed up the earlier polling reports: The numbers suggested that 842 million people in the 2011-13 period were unable to meet their dietary energy requirements, down nearly 6 percent (PDF) from 893 million people in the 2005-07 period. ...

... Heady suggests the fundamental assumption of previous poverty prediction models—that because poor people eat more food than they grow, they’re hurt by higher prices—did not account for the impact of food prices on wages. In a lot of places, as the prices of food rose, poor people earned more money. Even though they were paying more for food, their increased incomes more than made up for that and they got a little richer. In Bangladesh, for example, rural wages adjusted for the price of food increased by about a third from the middle of 2006 to the end of 2010. (Urban wages remained essentially unchanged.) ...

8. MR University: Water and common pool problem

The general logic here applies to a large number of problems in economic development, not just water. This is one of the key ideas of the theory of property rights.

9. Atlantic: How Sanitary Pads Can Help Women Improve Their Health and Education

... That's the little formula that's fueling Arunachalam Muruganantham's thriving sanitary-pad machine business, an undertaking that's not only making Muruganantham money, but one that will improve women’s hygiene in India and throughout the developing world.

Many women living in poverty use rags, newspaper, or even mud to manage their menstrual periods. None of these work very well and can introduce infections or injuries; they also circumscribe women’s movement. Often, women fear being in public without protection from blood staining. ...

10. Business Insider: Here's Why Mexico Is Increasingly Becoming A Crucial Global Manufacturing Hub...

However, another big beneficiary of rising Chinese labor costs and U.S. economic growth has been Mexico. This has come despite concerns about crime and safety.

Mexico benefits from the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). At 44, it also has more free-trade agreements than any other country. Mexico also benefits from having its natural gas prices tied to those in the U.S. where prices are substantially lower relative to the rest of the world.

Average electricity costs are about 4% lower in Mexico than in China, and the average price of industrial natural gas is 63% lower, according to a study by the Boston Consulting Group.

The same study found that by 2015, average manufacturing-labor costs in Mexico are projected to be 19% lower than in China. In 2000, Mexican labor was 58% more expensive than in China. ...

11. US AID: Full Speed Ahead on Malaria

Today, the greatest success story in global health is anchored by a continent once known mostly for famine and war. Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are making unprecedented gains in child survival and reducing the devastating burden of malaria—a disease carried by mosquitoes and a major killer of children.

According to the World Health Organization an estimated 3.3 million lives were saved as a result of the scale-up of malaria control interventions over the last decade. Over the same period, malaria mortality rates in African children were reduced by an estimated 54 percent. ...

12. Huffington Post: Africa Is Richer Than You Think

Africa suffers from another kind of poverty: lack of accurate statistical data. And it is a tragic, messy situation. Nigeria nearly doubled the size of its economy overnight -- a whopping 89 percent -- surpassing South Africa to become Africa's largest economy and the world's 26th largest. What was thought to be a $270 billion economy one day became a $510 billion economy the next day, adding some $240 billion to its economy. To put the change into perspective, it is almost like adding Israel's economy, or more than Portugal's, to Nigeria's economy. It sounds like magic but it is not. Inaccurate economic data is commonplace across much of Africa. ...

13. Atlantic: How to Make Solar Panels Affordable—for Billions

Like the installment plans of the Great Depression, Simpa Networks' "Progressive Purchase" agreements are enabling customers in rural India to get solar power for their homes. ...

14. PBS: Capitalism in Cuba? It’s closer than the U.S. may think

... As an economist who had the opportunity to observe, first-hand, the difficult transitions of China and Russia from state to largely market-based economies, I was astounded by the counter-productive actions of my government. On its own, Cuba was well into a carefully planned transition to a market-based economy. The only impact of additional U.S. meddling would be to set back this process. ...

15. Mashable: 750 Million People Still Don't Have Access to Clean Drinking Water

... Since 1990, 2.3 billion people have gained access to drinking water from improved sources. But despite this progress, 748 million people — 90% of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia — still use unimproved drinking water sources, according to an updated report the World Health Organization and UNICEF released on Thursday. ...

16. New York Times: What’s So Scary About Smart Girls?

... Why are fanatics so terrified of girls’ education? Because there’s no force more powerful to transform a society. The greatest threat to extremism isn’t drones firing missiles, but girls reading books.

In that sense, Boko Haram was behaving perfectly rationally — albeit barbarically — when it kidnapped some of the brightest, most ambitious girls in the region and announced plans to sell them as slaves. If you want to mire a nation in backwardness, manacle your daughters. ...

 17. Businessweek: The Relentless Rise Of Global Happiness

... The rest of the world, however, is different: The average surveyed person planet-wide reports greater happiness than 10 years ago—which was happier than many reported 30 years ago. That said, it turns out that the factors that lead people to self-report as happy aren’t as obvious as you might think. And this suggests the limits of using happiness as a guide for making public policy. ...

... The World Values Survey presents an additional conundrum: While the share of the world population reporting itself happy has climbed since the 1980s, the average score on a question asking people if they are satisfied with life seems to have declined marginally. ...

 18. Atlantic: Having Kids Probably Won't Destroy the Planet

An overpopulated planet is not necessarily doomed. What matters most is how those billions of people choose to live. ...

Economic Development Links

1. You Decide: Save the People or Save the Planet #StopTheMyth

2. New York Times: The End of the ‘Developing World’

BILL GATES, in his foundation’s annual letter, declared that “the terms ‘developing countries’ and ‘developed countries’ have outlived their usefulness.” He’s right. If we want to understand the modern global economy, we need a better vocabulary.

Mr. Gates was making a point about improvements in income and gross domestic product; unfortunately, these formal measures generate categories that tend to obscure obvious distinctions. Only when employing a crude “development” binary could anyone lump Mozambique and Mexico together.

It’s tough to pick a satisfying replacement. Talk of first, second and third worlds is passé, and it’s hard to bear the Dickensian awkwardness of “industrialized nations.” Forget, too, the more recent jargon about the “global south” and “global north.” It makes little sense to counterpose poor countries with “the West” when many of the biggest economic success stories in the past few decades have come from the East.

All of these antiquated terms imply that any given country is “developing” toward something, and that there is only one way to get there.

It’s time that we start describing the world as “fat” or “lean.” ...

3. Huffington Post: The Paradox of Africa's Growth

... So why is Africa's job growth so weak while its economic growth outlook is just fine, even robust? The reasons are structural in nature and three-fold.

First, much of that 'robust' economic growth in the past decade in Africa has been driven by export of commodities or natural resources. ...

... Second, while Africa needs investments in sectors such as infrastructure, technology and education, much of its finances keep leaking out to the rest of the world. ...

... Third, there is no industrialization, not even in agricultural production, taking place when it should. ...

4. The World Post: Amartya Sen: What India Can Learn From China

The implication of your most recent book is that while democracy, as in India, prevents the worst man-made famine such as we've seen in China during the Great Leap Forward, it does not do well at all in building "human capability" -- literacy, rights of women, basic health care or effective public services and infrastructure.

Both China and India are characterized by rapid GDP growth, widespread corruption, inequality and the princeling problem -- 30 percent of India's parliament members are "princelings"

Yet, as you point out, "China made enormous progress -- even before market reforms -- towards universal access to elementary education, health care and social security." After dismantling and then starting to rebuild its safety net, 95 percent of Chinese today are covered by a publicly funded health care system."

And none of this is to speak of physical infrastructure -- the energy grid, bullet trains, roads, Internet access, sewage systems, etc.

You conclude quite decisively that "Indian democratic practice has failed."

What is the key differentiating factor between India and China with respect to building "human capability?" ...

5. BBC: India's family firms modernise to stay in business

... The family is integral to Indian culture and business. Nearly 85% of all companies in the country are family businesses - and these include big conglomerates such as Tata, Reliance and the Wadia Group.

"In other businesses, what is important is competence and profit. That is the measure of success. But in family businesses it's different," says Mr Bahl.

"What is important is that you are together, that you're working together and living together.

"You care for the reputation, you care for the principles of your forefathers and success or profit or that kind of yardstick is not paramount." ...

6. NewJersey.com: Opinion: Muhammad Yunus reaveals social business as powerful weapon against poverty

Muhammad Yunus pioneered microcredit loans to the poor without requiring collateral, empowered poor women worldwide and won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition. Through his newest innovation, social business, Yunus has declared all-out war on the nefarious blight that is poverty.

The objective of social business is to augment healthcare, housing and financial services for the poor, education and nutrition for malnourished children and safe drinking water for all, and introduce renewable energy, such as solar power, to the poor.

Yunus realized that, like cancer, poverty is a multi-layered systemic malady whose cure requires a holistic approach. Microcredit loans alone are not the panacea. To obliterate poverty, microcredit must be bolstered with multi-pronged assaults against all of its components.

Existing business models focus on making a profit and have failed to mitigate poverty. Free-market capitalism is thriving worldwide, yet half of the world’s population lives on $2 a day or less. Centuries of experience have demonstrated that government alone cannot eliminate poverty. Trickle-down economics practiced by charities administered through aid agencies and non-governmental organizations fails when the money supply dries up. International agencies, such as the World Bank, set up to assist developing nations, focus solely on economic growth as the antidote for poverty.

Mixed models that conflate a non-profit model with some profit are inherently antithetical. To those who say, “Why can’t social business investors take some profit, such as a 1 percent dividend?” Yunus’ response is: This is like someone trying to quit smoking asking, ‘Can I take just one puff occasionally?’” Yunus argues that someone willing to take a small profit can be persuaded to take zero profit.

Yunus concluded that poverty cannot be eliminated through economic growth or philanthropy; it has to be targeted exclusively. ...

7. Bloomberg: The Best Way to Spread Democracy Abroad? Welcome Foreign Students

... As it turns out, soft power may be far more effective. In particular, educating future leaders here in the U.S. could be one of the most powerful and cost-effective ways to spread democracy that we have. In 2008, about one in five of the 3.3 million foreign students enrolled worldwide were studying in the U.S., and while that’s still a tiny share of the planet’s 7 billion population, foreign-educated students have an outsize impact on their home countries. Not least, a lot of them end up in very important positions. As many as two-thirds of developing country leaders in the middle of the last decade had studied abroad. A few years ago, a State Department list of senior government officials worldwide who had studied in the U.S. included more than 40 presidents and about 30 prime ministers. The full total may be more than 200. ...

8. Business Insider: Two Simple Charts Show Why China Is Losing Business To Its Emerging Market Neighbors

9. Conversable Economist: Latin America: Modest Progress on Inequality

 

10. Associated Press: Mexico to Trump Japan as NO. 2 Car Exporter to US

CELAYA, Mexico (AP) — Mexico is on track to become the United States' No. 1 source of imported cars by the end of next year, overtaking Japan and Canada in a manufacturing boom that's turning the auto industry into a bigger source of dollars than money sent home by migrants. ...

11. "Immigration Myths Debunked" | LearnLiberty

12. Matt Ridley: William Easterly's new book explores the aid industry's autocratic instincts

... This book is not an attack on aid from rich to poor. It is an attack on the unthinking philosophy that guides so much of that aid from poor taxpayers in rich countries to rich leaders in poor countries, via outsiders with supposed expertise. Easterly is a distinguished economist and he insists there is another way, a path not taken, in development economics, based on liberation and the encouragement of spontaneous development through exchange. Most development economists do not even know they are taking the technocratic, planning route, just as most fish do not know they swim in a sea. ...

13. Mashable: 5 Organizations to Support on World Water Day

In honor of this year’s World Water Day, a number of organizations are working on forward-looking clean-water initiatives.

These initiatives are helping protect our planet's water supply in a variety of ways, from providing water-filtration systems to inventing dynamic clean-water technology. ...

14. Atlantic Cities: Air Pollution Now Linked to 1 out of Every 8 Deaths in the World

According to a new report by the World Health Organization, air pollution is the cause of 7 million deaths a year worldwide, and is the single largest environmental health risk in the world today.

The staggering number — one in eight of all deaths, globally — is more than double previous WHO estimates of those killed by air pollution. WHO says that there is a stronger link between pollution and cardiovascular diseases like stroke and heart disease, and between air pollution and cancer, than previously thought. ...

15. USA Today: Blindness rates plummet in developed countries

Blindness is not a thing of the past, but rates have plummeted in developed countries in the past two decades, thanks largely to the spread of cataract surgery, a new study shows.

Visual impairment that falls short of blindness also has become less common in places such as the USA, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and Japan, says the report published Monday by the British medical journal BMJ.

The international research review, which includes Eastern and Central

Europe, shows rates of blindness dropped 50%, and rates of moderate to severe visual impairment fell 38% overall from 1990 to 2010 in 50 countries. Declines in the USA and Canada have not been that big, but rates already were low by international standards in 1990, the analysis shows. ...

16. Huffington Post: This Invention That Uses Aquarium Pumps Could Save 178,000 Babies Each Year

A new invention uses fish tank aquarium pumps to save the lives of babies in the developing world.

In an effort to battle the high cost of medical equipment, a group of Rice University students developed an affordable machine to help premature babies breathe. Machines called bubble Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (bCPAP) devices help struggling babies born prematurely by breathing for them, but the machines cost thousands of dollars and are, therefore, too expensive for many hospitals in developing countries, according to Rice News.

The design team at Rice invented new bCPAP machines by using affordable aquarium pumps -- making them a fraction of the cost and easier to maintain than the traditional machines. The device costs about $350 to make, while the cost of traditional bCPAP machines used throughout hospitals today is about $6,000, according to CNN. ...

17. BBC: World now 80% polio free, World Health Organization says

The World Health Organization has declared its South East Asia region polio-free.

The certification is being hailed a "historic milestone" in the global fight to eradicate the deadly virus.

It comes after India officially recorded three years without a new case of polio.

The announcement means 80% of the world is now officially free of polio, although the disease is still endemic in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. ...

18. Business Insider: Bill And Melinda Gates Think These Are The Most Important Charts In The World

 19. Applied Methodology: Thoughts About Norm Borlaug on the 100th Anniversary of His Birth

Norman Borlaug would have been 100 years old today.  He has been called "The Man Who Fed The World," and "The Father of The Green Revolution."  Norm Borlaug was the first plant pathologist to be awarded a Nobel Prize (1970) - for contributions to world peace. For all of use who are fellow plant pathologists, his work has been particularly inspiring. ...

Economics Links

1. AEI - James Pethokoukis: What MinuteClinics and Google Fiber teach about crony capitalism

... Andy Kessler explains how established Internet service providers are trying to block Google from deploying Google Fiber, its superfast, gigabit broadband service. His solution: “The FCC can change this overnight. Instead of allowing municipalities to dictate onerous terms and laws that lock in (slow) incumbents, the FCC can mandate right-of-way rules similar to those granted Google Fiber to all credible competitors. If only the federal regulator would promote progress and focus on what’s best for the U.S. economy rather than for those it regulates.” Regulation should promote innovation and competitive churn, not protect revenue streams of existing players.

There is a big difference between being pro-business and pro-market. One does the bidding of incumbents, with the result being a static economy. The other promotes competition. Safety nets are for people, not businesses. The result is innovation and dynamism. Right now, America has too much of the former, not enough of the latter.

2. Economist: The politics of poverty. Another two cents.

... Within this miscellany [of the Ryan budget] there are some clues as to the future direction of Republican anti-poverty policies. Mr Ryan recently gave a speech in which he praised Britain’s Universal Credit, a plan to roll lots of government anti-poverty programmes into one. In some ways Britain is a strange place to seek inspiration: the British scheme is hopelessly behind schedule, a victim of the kind of IT snafu that has hobbled the Affordable Care Act. But the thinking behind it is sensible.

The other initiative that looks to have Mr Ryan’s blessing is the expansion of the Earned-Income Tax Credit (EITC) to people who do not have children (at the moment the childless are eligible for this credit but there is a low cap on the maximum payment they may receive). Marco Rubio has already spoken in favour of this. The report from the House budget committee cites plenty of evidence on the power of EITCs to boost the number of people in work. The president’s budget, published on March 4th, includes an expansion of this programme too. ...

3. Bloomberg: Free-Market Bashers Aren't Helping the Poor

... There's a more basic flaw in the thesis that markets have done nothing to help the poor while government programs have done a lot: Where does the government get the money to fund these programs? Economic growth is what enables Social Security checks to get fatter over time. Unless you're prepared to argue that the government is responsible for 100 percent of economic growth and markets for none, markets have to get some of the credit for whatever good government does. ...

... Both markets and government are necessary to improve the lot of the poor, and we ought to reform government programs so that they do a better job of helping the poor participate in markets. That's just common sense, and no study or statistic has given us a good reason to reject it.

4. AEI - James Pethokoukis: Has America finally reached peak food-stamp enrollment?

5. Carpe Diem: US household net worth increased to a new record high of $80.6T in Q4, fueled by stock market and housing gains

6. Bloomberg: Decoupling Happened: U.S. Stocks Soared, China's Shrugged

The idea that emerging markets could keep growing smartly despite the collapse of the U.S. was something romanced quite a bit in recent years. Decoupling, as it’s called, was at least numerically possible. After all, China, Brazil, India, and Russia—the planet’s four biggest emerging economies, which chipped in two-fifths of global economic growth in the year leading up to Wall Street’s 2008 collapse—stood out as the least dependent on exports to America. Upwards of 95 percent of China’s double-digit growth was attributable to domestic demand.

Turns out a decoupling did transpire in the five years since peak meltdown—only it’s the U.S. market that seems to be doing fine while China founders. It’s a divergence of fortunes few would have predicted. ...

7. Slate: The “Made in China” Fallacy

... But are iPhones really “made in China”? More than a dozen companies from at least five countries supply parts for them. Infineon Technologies, in Germany, makes the wireless chip; Toshiba, in Japan, manufactures the touch screen; Broadcom, in the U.S., makes the Bluetooth chips that let the devices connect to wireless headsets or keyboards.

Analysts differ over how much of the final price of an iPhone or an iPad should be assigned to which country, but no one disputes that the largest slice should go not to China but to the U.S., where the design and marketing of such devices take place at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. The largest source of an iPhone’s value—and this goes for thousands of other high-tech products—lies not in its physical hardware but in its invention and the work of the individuals who conceived, designed, patented, packaged, and branded the device.

Taking these facts into account would leave China, the supposed country of origin, with a paltry piece of the pie. The Asian Development Bank estimates that as little as $10 of the value of every iPhone or iPad actually ends up in the Chinese economy.

Now magnify this across hundreds, even thousands of finished goods. Those Nike shoes that count as imports from China, all those flat-screen televisions, Android phones, clothing, furniture, Disney toys and figures. Almost all are the result of ideas generated in the U.S. (or Japan, or Germany, or Korea, and so on), with parts sourced globally and then assembled in China to be sold elsewhere. ...

8. Project Syndicate: The Poverty of Renewables

... Forcing everyone to buy more expensive, less reliable energy pushes up costs throughout the economy, leaving less for other public goods. The average of macroeconomic models indicates that the total cost of the EU’s climate policy will be €209 billion ($280 billion) per year from 2020 until the end of the century.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe burden of these policies falls overwhelmingly on the world’s poor, because the rich can easily pay more for their energy. I am often taken aback by well-meaning and economically comfortable environmentalists who cavalierly suggest that gasoline prices should be doubled or electricity exclusively sourced from high-cost green sources. That may go over well in affluent Hunterdon County, New Jersey, where residents reportedly spend just 2% of their income on gasoline. But the poorest 30% of the US population spend almost 17% of their after-tax income on gasoline. ...

9. New York Times - Economix: Q. and A.: A Development Expert on Narrowing Inequality

Branko Milanovic has been studying income inequality around the world for a long time. ...

... Inequality calculated among all individuals in the world, as if they were part of one single nation, has been edging slightly downward over the past 10 to 15 years, mostly thanks to very high growth rates in China and India. These relatively poor giants (particularly India) have pulled quite a lot of people out of poverty and into something that can be called “the global middle class.”

That is the key factor behind the decline of global inequality: The distance between their incomes and the rather stagnant incomes of the middle class in rich countries has diminished. Yet global inequality is still extremely high by the standards of any single country. It is, for example, significantly higher than inequality in South Africa, which is the most unequal country in the world. ...

10. Prospect: “I started off as a libertarian economist, but I’ve come full circle”—Gregory Clark on social mobility

... If you look at England, for example, what we measure is whether you were at Oxford or Cambridge; how long you live, which is another good indicator of social status; occupational status; are you a member of parliament? Now one of the interesting findings here is that it doesn’t really matter which measure you use. For the families we’re looking at, all these things are actually highly correlated. The wealthy at any time are also the educated, members of parliament, those who live long. What the book shows is that there’s an underlying physics of social mobility which all of our political efforts seem to have no effect upon. And the startling conclusion is that we may never be able to change social mobility rates. ...

11. Business Insider: Every 25-Year-Old In America Should See This Chart

12. Business Insider: 13 Money Lies You Should Stop Telling Yourself By Age 40

... By the time you hit 40, rationalizing away your bad money management habits starts to have a serious impact on your financial future (not to mention age you).

Here are some of the top money lies that you should stop telling yourself by age 40: ...

13. Huffington Post: 5 Tools to Tackle Finances in Your Twenties

Your twenties are hard enough already: matriculating from college, finding your first "real" job, moving out on your own, learning how to pay bills for the first time and learning how to navigate adult relationships without the structure of college or free flow of alcohol. It is a scary and awkward time, no one disputes that -- but mastering your finances in your twenties will reduce your stress and increase your net worth in the long run. Below are 5 tools you need to tackle finances in your twenties. ...

Is China the new idol for emerging economies? - Dambisa Moyo

TED: Is China the new idol for emerging economies? - Dambisa Moyo

"The developed world holds up the ideals of capitalism, democracy and political rights for all. Those in emerging markets often don't have that luxury. In this powerful talk, economist Dambisa Moyo makes the case that the west can't afford to rest on its laurels and imagine others will blindly follow. Instead, a different model, embodied by China, is increasingly appealing. A call for open-minded political and economic cooperation in the name of transforming the world."

Economic Development Links

1. EconLog: On Sweatshops: They're Better Than the Alternative - Art Carden

... Here's some of what I wrote them specifically:

Sweatshops are an important exercise in appreciating the difference between what we see (people in sweatshops) and what we don't see (the jobs they would have if they didn't have sweatshop opportunities). Sweatshops employ children because the children are available for work and because their next-best opportunities (agriculture or, in some cases, prostitution) are usually worse than sweatshop labor. It is definitely good that the workers at least have opportunities to work in sweatshops because, as research by Powell and others has shown, their other alternatives are even worse. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but sweatshop earnings are better than they are in other lines of employment.

Perhaps I'm reading uncharitably, but I think a lot of sweatshop critics misunderstand the economist's argument. The argument isn't that sweatshop conditions and wages are good in some cosmic sense. Rather, they are better than the available alternatives. ...

2. Business Insider: Child Labor Bans Actually Make Things Worse For The Poorest Children

This is straight from the "good intentions gone bad" file.

... But banning child labor outright may not work in countries with systemic, widespread poverty and no social security programs to help out poor families in dire straits. 

This is according to a new NBER study by Prashant Bharadwaj of UCSD, Leah Lakdawal of Michigan State University and Nicholas Li of the University of Toronto. 

The study uses data from India, a country where the problem of child labor is particularly egregious. According to official estimates, the number of child laborers between the ages of 5 and 14 lay at nearly 5 million in 2010.  In 1986, India instituted a ban on child labor through the Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, which sought to ban children under the age of 14 being employed in "hazardous" occupations, which included construction work, some factory work and work in automobile garages. It also restricted the number of hours children could work in "non-hazardous" occupations, such as food service. 

The ban's intended effect was to make it riskier, and hence more costly for employers to employ child labor.

But the only people sending their children out to work were the poorest and most desperate families who had no other means of reaching a minimum level of subsistence. Employers took advantage of this desperation and responded by cutting the wages they would pay a child laborer as a means of passing on the higher cost of the risk of employing them.  Families that would earlier have sent only one of their children to work, were now forced to send more of their young children into the workforce. The fall in child wages due to the ban actually led to an increase in child labor.

The research found that child labor increased 12.5% over the pre-ban average, and the likelihood of a business employing a child versus employing an older person increased by 1.7 to 1.9 percentage points.  ...

3. BBC: Maid to entrepreneur: Rising out of poverty in Brazil

... The changes have been particularly marked for Brazilian women. Falling birth rates mean mothers have smaller families to care for and often do better in their chosen professions.

According to Sebrae, a body that promotes entrepreneurship, the number of Brazilian women who became business owners grew by 21% in the past decade, at twice the rate of men. ...

4. New York Times: In Middle of Mexico, a Middle Class Rises

... Education. More sophisticated work. Higher pay. This is the development formula Mexico has been seeking for decades. But after the free-market wave of the 1990s failed to produce much more than low-skilled factory work, Mexico is finally attracting the higher-end industries that experts say could lead to lasting prosperity. Here, in a mostly poor state long known as one of the country’s main sources of illegal immigrants to the United States, a new Mexico has begun to emerge.

Dozens of foreign companies are investing, filling in new industrial parks along the highways. Middle-class housing is popping up in former watermelon fields, and new universities are waving in classes of students eager to study engineering, aeronautics and biotechnology, signaling a growing confidence in Mexico’s economic future and what many see as the imported meritocracy of international business. In a country where connections and corruption are still common tools of enrichment, many people here are beginning to believe they can get ahead through study and hard work. ...

5. Forbes: Three Young Entrepreneurs Fighting Poverty Have Big Impact

Jake Harriman says that if the company he’s founded still exists in 30 years, “we’ve failed.” You see, Harriman believes Nuru International can end extreme poverty in that time.

Harriman and I met at the Social Innovation Summit at Stanford this week, where I found a number of young entrepreneurs who are working to end poverty.

Beth Schmidt created a crowdfunding site called Wishbone to help poor high school students to raise funding to attend special university programs that help them prepare for college.

Leila Janah created Samasource to help U.S. companies crowdsource affordable staff from the developing world, providing women and young people with quality jobs that lift them out of poverty. Janah notes, “There are 1.4 billion people living on $1.25 per day or less. This is not acceptable.”...

6. Businessweek: Want to Fight Poverty? Just Give the Poor Cash

A new study by economists at Harvard and from MIT suggests that the best way to fight global poverty (PDF) is simply to give people cash and let them spend it however they want. The study was conducted with Innovations for Poverty Action, with funding from the National Institutes of Health Common Fund. ...

7. Businessweek: Is Land Reform Finally Coming to China?

China’s leaders raised a multitude of reforms as priorities at the plenum that closed a week ago. A key one, a change in land ownership so that farmers can more freely rent, sell, and mortgage their land, is hoped to boost China’s still laggard household consumption.

“The Party leadership has given its blessing to land reforms that should shift more income to rural households. Change will happen slowly but the result should be a boost to consumer spending,” wrote Mark Williams and Julian Evans-Pritchard, economists at London-based Capital Economics in a Nov. 20 note. ...

8. Atlantic: One of the World's Tiniest, Poorest Countries Is Redefining HIV Care

In Rwanda, success is measured not by how many people live and die, but by how many take their medication and lead normal lives.

... Yet in Rwanda, where just 20 years ago a genocide claimed approximately 1 million lives, the government has transformed HIV care for the poor by redefining the standards for successful treatment. More than three decades into the epidemic, many national and international agencies are still counting the basics—how many people get infected, how many people receive medication, how many patients die. Success in Rwanda, meanwhile, is measured not in the number remaining alive, but rather in how many are actually able to take their medications as directed and suppress the virus in their bodies to a level where it is essentially non-existent. In Rwanda, success is achieved when people living with HIV can earn a living, support their family, raise their children, and care for their community no differently than their peers. ...

9. Slate: We're Not Sending Poor Countries the Stuff They Want

The paper looked what people identified as the most pressing problems facing their countries on public attitude surveys from 42 African and Latin American countries. In the case of Africa, Leo found that the overwhelming priorities as “(1) jobs and income; (2) infrastructure; (3) enabling economic and financial policies; and (4) inequality. Since 2002, these issues have steadily accounted for roughly 70 percent of survey responses.” (Notice that health, education, and political instability are not on that list.)

So is this what U.S. aid to Africa has focused on? Not even close. According to Leo, “percentage of US development commitments aligned with what Africans have cited as the three biggest problems has exceeded 50 percent in only two African countries over the last decade.” Those would be Botswana, where PEPFAR programs addressed AIDS, and Burkina Faso, where a Millennium Challenge Corp. grant focused on infrastructure.

Most countries are more like Kenya, where only 6 percent of the $5 billion in U.S. development commitments over the last decade has gone toward the three problems Kenyans consistently identify as the country’s biggest: unemployment, bad infrastructure, and unfriendly economic conditions. ...

10. Wired: The Hyper-Efficient, Highly Scientific Scheme to Help the World’s Poor

...At the time, there was a campaign, spearheaded by the World Bank, to provide free textbooks throughout sub-Saharan Africa, on the assumption that this would boost test scores and keep children in school longer. ICS had tasked Kremer’s friend with identifying target schools for such a giveaway.

While chatting with his friend about this, Kremer began to wonder: How did ICS know the campaign would work? It made sense in theory—free textbooks should mean more kids read them, so more kids learn from them—but they had no evidence to back that up. On the spot, Kremer suggested a rigorous way to evaluate the program: Identify twice the number of qualifying schools as it had the money to support. Then randomly pick half of those schools to receive the textbooks, while the rest got none. By comparing outcomes between the two cohorts, they could gauge whether the textbooks were making a difference. ...

... But soon after Kremer returned to the US, he was startled to get a call from his friend. ICS was interested in pursuing his idea. Sensing a rare research opportunity, Kremer flew back to Kenya and set to work. By any measure it was a quixotic project. ...

11. Businessweek: Poor Countries Need Relief From Climate Change. They Need Electricity More

... Campaigners pointed out that those with the most to lose from the failure of the climate talks are the world’s poorest people—certain to suffer the greatest impact of the floods, droughts, and rising temperatures that climate change is bringing. At the same time, the world’s poorest people are also those with the lowest access to modern sources of energy such as electricity and natural gas. In order to foster economic growth and improvements in health, developing countries will need to generate huge amounts of additional power. How to achieve considerable reductions in carbon dioxide at a time of massive increases in global energy consumption is of the most complex—and urgent—challenges facing policymakers in the developed world. ...

12. Atlantic: Here's Why Developing Countries Will Consume 65% of the World's Energy by 2040

One bit of good news: Energy consumption per gross domestic product is expected to decline worldwide in the coming decade, with developed and developing nations reaching parity by 2040.

13. Huff Post Impact: How Is Technology Driving Job Creation In Poor Countries? - Jessica Long

... In the developing world, the pace of change may be slower than many would like but, nonetheless, there are marked examples of technology's role in raising incomes and driving employment opportunities.

It's not just the supply chain and information-based jobs spawned by technological innovation that create jobs in less developed countries. In many cases, it's the technology firms themselves that need trained IT programmers and other professionals to fill knowledge gaps and keep up with the demands of the rapidly growing economy. ...

14. Forbes: Why Gates Is Wrong About Poverty And Development And Zuckerberg Is Right

... For the main problem in the world is not disease, nor malnutrition, nor education: it’s poverty. Solve the poverty and all of the other problems become infinitely more malleable, hugely easier to solve. We also need to recall that it is not poverty that is made: no one has caused the poor of the world to be destitute. This is in fact the natural condition of mankind. This is how our own ancestors lived for millennia. ...

Just to give you an idea Mozambique, Guinea, Togo, the sort of places that we regard as the poorest of the poor these days. GDP per capita of around $1,000 a year. These places are richer than the Roman Empire. As rich as England was in 1600 AD and richer than Scotland or Wales were at that time.

What is made is the wealth to lift people up out of that destitution. Thus the great need of our time is to bring the tools of wealth creation to those places that don’t have it. ...

15. Huffington Post: Capitalism for Human Rights? - Carol Te

... There seems to be this justification that promoting civil and political freedoms are sufficient because they are necessary vehicles for procuring social and economic security -- but what if it is the other way around?

It is not a coincidence that many non-profits right now take care of the economically and socially disadvantaged -- economic and social rights are not recognized as important human rights as is evidenced by their absence in international law. So instead the international community pushes aid to both non-profits and the government to even out the structural inequality between civil and political rights and economic and social rights. But it is not enough. Basic economics stipulates that incentives are required for innovation. When organizations or governments are given aid, they aren't going to increase levels of productivity. They are simply not given the incentives to work hard to invest in the future. In fact, economist William Easterly finds that the larger the aid, the lower the savings on the recipient's part -- in effect, aid creates disincentives for the recipient in gathering his or her own resources for development. So, if we cannot count on traditional human rights organizations to make a leap forward, then what should we count on? The answer is trade.

Economic growth requires a free global market. Trade is good for poor countries -- it gives them access to markets in the developed world, it creates more competition for workers, which increases wages, and foreign investment introduces new capital, technology and skills. As economist Dambisa Moyo argues, once there is economic growth, then a middle class can be created to hold the government accountable -- robust institutions can form to create stability. New market potential can reap extraordinary benefits for both natives of the country and the investor. And most important of all, it is sustainable. That is, the infrastructure will not fall apart simply because a donor decides to pull out of a project -- a fate that many NGOs fall prey to. ...

16. Jeffery Sachs: Development, Structure, and Transformation: Some Evidence on Comparative Economic Growth

ABSTRACT:

We suggest that the geographical patterns of income differences across the world have deep underpinnings. We emphasize that economic development is a complex process driven by economic, political, social, and biophysical forces. Some economists have argued that the patterns reflect mainly the historical footprint of colonial rule and political evolution, and that geography’s effects on development occurred exclusively through its effects on this historical institutional development.

We believe that economic development has also been shaped very importantly by the biophysical and geophysical characteristics of economies. Per capita incomes differ around the world in no small part because of sharp differences across regions in the natural resource base and physical geography (e.g. distance to coast), and by the amplification of those differences through the dynamics of saving and investment. We posit that the drivers of economic development include institutions, technology, and geography, and that none of these alone is sufficient to account for the diverse patterns of global growth. We survey the relevant literature, and empirically show that a multi-causal framework helps to explain when countries achieve middle income; the distribution of economic activity around the world today; the patterns of growth between 1960 and 2010; the patterns of income per person within large economies; and the structural characteristics of the remaining countries still stuck in poverty today.

17. Real Clear World: Elections Don't Matter, Institutions Do - Robert Kaplan

... And yet no passports or customs police are required to go from one state to the other.

Well, of course that's true, they're only states, not countries, you might say. But the fact that my observation is a dull commonplace doesn't make it any less amazing. To be sure, it makes it more amazing. For as the late Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington once remarked, the genius of the American system lies less in its democracy per se than in its institutions. The federal and state system featuring 50 separate identities and bureaucracies, each with definitive land borders -- that nevertheless do not conflict with each other -- is unique in political history. And this is not to mention the thousands of counties and municipalities in America with their own sovereign jurisdictions. Many of the countries I have covered as a reporter in the troubled and war-torn developing world would be envious of such an original institutional arrangement for governing an entire continent.

In fact, Huntington's observation can be expanded further: The genius of Western civilization in general is that of institutions. Sure, democracy is a basis for this; but democracy is, nevertheless, a separate factor. For enlightened dictatorships in Asia have built robust, meritocratic institutions whereas weak democracies in Africa have not.

Institutions are such a mundane element of Western civilization that we tend to take them for granted. ...

18. Huffington Post: Why Can't We Innovate Our Way Out of Poverty?

It is one of those unproven-but-probably-true facts that developing countries have an easier time getting out of poverty than getting into prosperity. They go from "low-" to "middle-income" level relatively fast, but rarely make it to "high-income" status. [A country is considered middle-income if its average citizen makes between $1,200 and $12,000 a year, give or take a few dollars]. Somehow, they get stuck in a dreaded middle-income "trap". For them, the typical development story goes like this. They get an initial boost by reforming their agriculture or exploiting their oil and minerals. This releases the labor and the money needed to build industries that can use basic technology to produce cheaply the kind of goods that consumers in rich countries want to buy. Think of Brazil, China, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, or Turkey -- chances are that your T-shirt, tool-box, tea-pot, and TV set were manufactured or assembled in a middle-income country like these. But when those countries try to climb up the technological ladder, sell more valuable stuff, be more productive, and create better-paying jobs, things get complicated. Then the game is no longer to sell cheap but to sell new, not just to be efficient but to be innovative. ...

... How on earth can governments promote that!?

A new book called Mass Flourishing, written by Edmund Phelps, says they can't. Or, rather, it says that they need cultural change. ...

19. Businessweek: Farewell to the Age of Free Trade - Joshua Kurlantzick

Since the end of World War II and the birth of the modern global economy, business leaders have come to accept an iron law: International trade always expands faster than economic growth. Between the late 1940s and 2013, that assumption held true. Trade grew roughly twice as fast as the world economy annually, as fresh markets opened up, governments signed free-trade pacts, new industries and consumers emerged, and technological advances made international trade cheaper and faster.

Now this iron law may be crumbling. Over the past two years, international trade has grown so slowly that it has fallen behind the growth of the world economy, which itself is hardly humming. ...

Not sure I agree, but some interesting thoughts.

20. New York Times: Inequality and Good Intentions - Casey Mulligan

... Progress begets inequality, and the resulting inequality can either encourage more progress or impede it, or both. Professor Deaton suggests that inequality in the modern United States has had both of these effects.

He points to a third influence of progress and inequality on outcomes for those left behind: good intentions. As part of the world becomes rich and no longer worries about day-to-day survival, it can look outward. Many residents of developed countries have a “need to help” those less fortunate.

But the attempts to help often – perhaps even usually – go awry. ...

21. The Telegraph: The world has never had it so good - thanks partly to capitalism

We live in largely peaceful times, with better access to medicine and education - the world is easily in the best place it’s ever been. 

Demography Links

1. New York Times: Why Are Americans Staying Put?

... “This decline in migration has been going on for a long time now, through all sorts of ups and downs in the housing market,” said Greg Kaplan of Princeton University, who, along with Sam Schulhofer-Wohl of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, has studied the issue in depth. But even with the pressure of high housing costs in many areas, Americans are moving less, Kaplan said. “That might explain why people are moving from San Francisco to, I don’t know, Houston,” he said. “But you’ve seen a decline in migration from Texas to California as well as California to Texas.”

This is not a short-term supply-and-demand issue or a side effect of a slow-growth economy or a shift in demographics. The change is deeper. Kaplan and Schulhofer-Wohl have won applause from other economists for developing a novel theory to explain this creeping inertia: labor markets in the United States have simply become more homogeneous. Earnings have become more similar across the country, meaning there is less incentive to move from one place to another in search of a raise. The country has also become less diverse, work-wise. Pick any two cities, and chances are they offer a more similar mix of jobs than they did 20 or 50 years ago. We have become less a nation of Pittsburghs and more a nation of Provos. ...

... Even so, many economists believe that if Kaplan and Schulhofer-Wohl’s narrative is right, there is reason to suspect that a less-mobile populace might not mean a less-dynamic economy. Workers haven’t stopped moving because housing prices or other financial or social concerns are holding them back. They’ve stopped moving because they just don’t see the need to. “Whether it’s a good thing depends on why,” Kolko said. “If your job prospects don’t depend on having to move someplace else, the decline in mobility might be a good thing.”

2. The Atlantic: Stuck: Why Americans Stopped Moving to the Richest States

... "Americans are moving far less often than in the past, and when they do migrate it is typically no longer from places with low wages to places with higher wages," Tim Noah wrote in Washington Monthly. "Rather, it’s the reverse." Why America lost her wanderlust is not entirely clear—perhaps dual-earner households make long moves less likely; perhaps the Great Recession pinned underwater homeowners on their plots—but those still wandering a ren't going to the right cities. ...

... Americans aren't simply moving to the states with the lowest unemployment (Oregon, Tennessee, and North Carolina all have jobless rates above the national average). More importantly, we aren't moving to states with the best records for low-income families getting ahead. In fact, we're often fleeing the best places for a upwardly mobile middle class. ...

... This doesn't make much sense if you envision American families rushing to the most promising metros. It does make sense if you see American families rushing to the most affordable homes. ...

3. Huffington Post: U.S. Population Grows At Slowest Rate Since The Great Depression

... The U.S. population grew by just 0.72 percent in the year ended July 1, 2013, the Census Bureau reported Monday. That’s the slowest growth rate since 1937. Population growth has hovered at super-low levels for the past few years, according to William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan research organization. The trend is "troubling," Frey said, and is due largely to the weak economy. ...

4. New Geography: The Geography Of Aging: Why Millennials Are Headed To The Suburbs

One supposed trend, much celebrated in the media, is that younger people are moving back to the city, and plan to stay there for the rest of their lives. Retirees are reportedly following suit. ...

... But a close look at migration data reveals that the reality is much more complex. The millennial “flight” from suburbia has not only been vastly overexaggerated, it fails to deal with what may best be seen as differences in preferences correlated with life stages.

We can tell this because we can follow the first group of millennials who are now entering their 30s, and it turns out that they are beginning, like preceding generations, to move to the suburbs. ...

5. Business Insider: Female Mortality Rates Are One Of The Strangest And Most Disturbing Trends In The United States

Change in female mortality rates from 1992–96 to 2002–06 in US counties

6. Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States

Here you will find one of the greatest historical atlases: Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932. This digital edition reproduces all of the atlas's nearly 700 maps. Many of these beautiful maps are enhanced here in ways impossible in print, animated to show change over time or made clickable to view the underlying data—remarkable maps produced eight decades ago with the functionality of the twenty-first century.

7. Forbes: What Would The U.S. Be Like If We Had 124 States?

8. NPR: Overweight People In Developing World Outnumber Those In Rich Countries

... "Over the last 30 years, the number of people who are overweight and obese in the developing world has tripled," says , of the Overseas Development Institute in London.

One-third of adults globally are now overweight compared with fewer than 23 percent in 1980, the report . And the number of overweight and obese people in the developing world now far overshadows the number in rich countries. ...

9. Economist: The high rate of suicide in Asia

 10. PBS Newshour: Japanese population declined by record number in 2013

The Japanese population, which has been shrinking for the last couple of years, declined by a record 244,000 people in 2013, according to health ministry estimates.

If the current trend persists, the BBC reports the country will lose a third of its population in the next 50 years. ...

 11. Real Clear World: Easing China's One-Child Policy Won't Stop Demographic Decline

In an attempt to mitigate a near-certain demographic future of rapid aging, shrinking labor force and critical gender imbalance, the Chinese government has adjusted its one-child policy. The decision demonstrates that, irrespective of a nation's politico-economic system, governments cannot avoid demography's juggernaut consequences. This mid-course correction in population policy will have marginal effect as China is aging at a much faster pace than occurred in other countries. This, along with a shrinking workforce and critical gender imbalance, will increasingly tax the government. ...

(Related: New Geography: China Failing its Families)

 12. Business Insider: These Facebook Maps Reveal Migration Trends Around The World

... The maps use two simple data points offered up by its 1 billion users — where you live and your hometown — to draw a map of how groups of people migrate from place to place. The Facebook Science team was looking specifically for “coordinated migration,” when a significant proportion of a population from one city moves collectively to another city. This could be the result of economics, wars, natural disasters or even state policies. ...

13. Atlantic Cities: Our Favorite Maps of 2013

Dustin Cable's stunning Racial Dot Map actually put every person in America (308,745,538 of us) on a map as individual dots of different colors.

14. Business Insider: Where Drivers Drive On The Left And Where They Drive On The Right

15. Top Public Health Risks

 

Science and Technology Links

1. Scientific American: Scientific American's Top 10 Science Stories of 2013

A carbon threshold breached, commitments to brain science made, mystery neutrinos found and human evolution revised—these and other events highlight the year in science and technology as picked by the editors of Scientific American

2. Reuters: "Peak farmland" is here, crop area to diminish: study

(Reuters) - The amount of land needed to grow crops worldwide is at a peak, and a geographical area more than twice the size of France will be able to return to its natural state by 2060 as a result of rising yields and slower population growth, a group of experts said on Monday.

Their report, conflicting with United Nations studies that say more cropland will be needed in coming decades to avert hunger and price spikes as the world population rises above 7 billion, said humanity had reached what it called "Peak Farmland". ...

... "We believe that humanity has reached Peak Farmland, and that a large net global restoration of land to nature is ready to begin," said Jesse Ausubel, director of the Program for the Human Environment at the Rockefeller University in New York.

"Happily, the cause is not exhaustion of arable land, as many had feared, but rather moderation of population and tastes and ingenuity of farmers," he wrote in a speech about the study he led in the journal Population and Development Review. ...

3. Mashable: The Universal Translator Is Real and Its Name Is Sigmo

Ever since Star Trek explained away how all alien races could speak English through a piece of future tech called the Universal Translator, technology companies have worked to create just such a device. One may have succeeded in developing a 1.0 version with the Sigmo.

The Sigmo is a small, pillbox-sized device equipped with a microphone and speaker, but with a cloud-connected twist. Select the language you'd like to translate into, then hold the Sigmo up and speak to it. The Sigmo records your voice, then sends the recording to the cloud for translation via Bluetooth connection with your smartphone.

4. Inhabit: Africa's First Plastic Bottle House Rises in Nigeria

... the nearly-complete home is bullet and fireproof, earthquake resistant, and maintains a comfortable interior temperature of 64 degrees fahrenheit year round!

5. Wired: The World’s Largest Mega-Ship Launches for the First Time

... At 600,000 tons and 243 feet wide, when the Prelude left its dry dock in South Korea after a year-long build, it unseated the Emma Maersk (1,302 feet) as the world’s largest ship. But calling it a ship is almost a misnomer. The Prelude is a floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility that will be posted off the coast of Western Australia and will stay there for the next quarter-century.

As an FLNG plant, the Prelude handles everything involved in capturing, processing, and storing liquid natural gas, sucking the stuff from deep within the Earth and refining 3.9 million tons each year before it’s offloaded onto smaller ships that bring it back to the mainland. ...

6. Business Insider: The Number Of Smartphones In Use Is About To Pass The Number Of PCs

7. Scientific American: China Moon Rover Landing Marks a Space Program on the Rise

China cemented its reputation as the fastest rising star on the space scene this weekend by landing a rover on the moon—a challenging feat pulled off by only two nations before: the U.S. and the Soviet Union. “This is a very big deal indeed,” says lunar scientist Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. “Landing on the moon is not something easily attained—it requires precision maneuvering, tracking, computation and engineering. It is a delicate task and the Chinese success reflects a mature, evolving and capable program.” ...

8. Scientific American: Study Linking Genetically Modified Corn to Rat Tumors Is Retracted

Bowing to scientists' near-universal scorn, the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology today fulfilled its threat to retract a controversial paper claiming that a genetically modified (GM) maize causes serious disease in rats, after the authors refused to withdraw it.

The paper, from a research group led by Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen, France, and published in 2012,  showed “no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data,” said a statement from Elsevier, which publishes the journal. But the small number and type of animals used in the study mean that “no definitive conclusions can be reached.” The known high incidence of tumors in the Sprague–Dawley strain of rat ”cannot be excluded as the cause of the higher mortality and incidence observed in the treated groups,” it added. ...

9. Forbes: Scientists Make More Eye Cells - With An Inkjet Printer

British researchers have used an inkjet printer to successfully print retinal cells for the first time, in what could be a breakthrough for the treatment of optic nerve injury and diseases like glaucoma. ...

10. Berkley Earth (via Watts Up With That): Explaining and Understanding Declines in U.S. CO2 Emissions

11. Carpe Diem: Fossil fuels will continue to supply > 80% of US energy through 2040, while renewables will play only a minor role

12. Slate: $7 Trillion to Fight Climate Change? Bjorn Lomborg

The EU proposes spending that much on projects that will barely reduce temperatures or lower sea levels. ...

... This does not mean that climate change is not important; it means only that the EU’s climate policy is not smart. Over the course of this century, the ideal EU policy would cost more than $7 trillion, yet it would reduce the temperature rise by just 0.05^o Celsius and lower sea levels by a trivial 9 millimeters. After spending all that money, we would not even be able to tell the difference. ...

... We need a smarter approach to tackling climate change. Rather than relying on cutting a few tons of incredibly overpriced CO₂ now, we need to invest in research and development aimed at innovating down the cost of green energy in the long run, so that everyone will switch. ...

13. New York Times: The Poor Need Cheap Fossil Fuels

... About 3.5 million of them die prematurely each year as a result of breathing the polluted air inside their homes — about 200,000 more than the number who die prematurely each year from breathing polluted air outside, according to a study by the World Health Organization.

There’s no question that burning fossil fuels is leading to a warmer climate and that addressing this problem is important. But doing so is a question of timing and priority. For many parts of the world, fossil fuels are still vital and will be for the next few decades, because they are the only means to lift people out of the smoke and darkness of energy poverty. ...

... The developed world needs a smarter approach toward cleaner fuels. The United States has been showing the way. Hydraulic fracturing has produced an abundance of inexpensive natural gas, leading to a shift away from coal in electricity production. Because burning natural gas emits half the carbon dioxide of coal, this technology has helped the United States reduce carbon dioxide emissions to the lowest level since the mid-1990s, even as emissions rise globally. We need to export this technology and help other nations exploit it.

At the same time, wealthy Western nations must step up investments into research and development in green energy technologies to ensure that cleaner energy eventually becomes so cheap that everyone will want it.

But until then they should not stand in the way of poorer nations as they turn to coal and other fossil fuels. This approach will get our priorities right. And perhaps then, people will be able to cook in their own homes without slowly killing themselves.

14. NPR: Environmentalists Split Over Need For Nuclear Power

15. BBC: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

Harnessing fusion - the process that powers the Sun - could provide an unlimited and cheap source of energy.

But to be viable, fusion power plants would have to produce more energy than they consume, which has proven elusive.

Now, a breakthrough by scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) could boost hopes of scaling up fusion. ...

 16. Popular Technology.net: 97% Study Falsely Classifies Scientists' Papers, according to the scientists that published them

The paper, Cook et al. (2013) 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature' searched the Web of Science for the phrases "global warming" and "global climate change" then categorizing these results to their alleged level of endorsement of AGW. These results were then used to allege a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming.

To get to the truth, I emailed a sample of scientists whose papers were used in the study and asked them if the categorization by Cook et al. (2013) is an accurate representation of their paper. Their responses are eye opening and evidence that the Cook et al. (2013) team falsely classified scientists' papers as "endorsing AGW", apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors. ...

Social Science and Culture Links

1. Business Insider:  Meaningful Work — Not Money — Makes People Happy

... Decades of research have boiled human happiness down to just three factors: genes, events, and values. About half of how happy you feel is hardwired into your genetic make up, according to the article. Meanwhile, one-off events like getting married or landing a big promotion can contribute up to 40% of your happiness, but tend to offer just a temporary boost that lasts a few months. ...

2. Atlantic Cities: The Hidden Beauty of a Walmart Store

[4 minute video] A short documentary follows an artist as he paints the inside of the supermarket chain.

3. Atlantic Cities:  The Paradox of Diverse Communities

... Their simulations of more than 20 million virtual “neighborhoods” demonstrate a troubling paradox: that community and diversity may be fundamentally incompatible goals. As the authors explain, integration “provides opportunities for intergroup contact that are necessary to promote respect for diversity, but may prevent the formation of dense interpersonal networks that are necessary to promote sense of community.” ...

... After 20 million-plus simulations, the authors found that the same basic answer kept coming back: The more diverse or integrated a neighborhood is, the less socially cohesive it becomes, while the more homogenous or segregated it is, the more socially cohesive. As they write, “The model suggests that when people form relationships with similar and nearby others, the contexts that offer opportunities to develop a respect for diversity are different from the contexts that foster a sense of community.” ...

4. Time: Globalization Isn’t Dead, It’s Only Just Beginning

Once upon a time, globalization simply meant the export of Western culture to the rest of the world. Now the world is turning the tables. ...

... In the past, globalization was to a great degree a one-way street — from the developed to the developing world. Money and technology flowed from the U.S. and Europe into China, India and other low-income countries, drawing them into the global trading system. The process was the same with ideas (democracy, capitalism, Marxism) and culture (popular music, social networking, fast food, Hollywood movies). Emerging nations had few connections between themselves, and limited influence over world politics and finance.

Now, though, the rise of China, India and other emerging economies is shifting that old, one-way globalization into a new, vibrant multilateral globalization, with major consequences for how our world works.

Look at what’s happening in the global economy these days. ...

5. The Interpreter: Unfriending: Japanese public opinion on China <http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2013/01/22/Unfriending-Japanese-public-opinion-on-China.aspx?>

6. Atlantic: Countries With Higher Math Scores Have Unhappier Kids

Is there be a relationship between math and misery? Economist Justin Wolfers runs the math. The variation is pretty large (Eastern Europe seems egregiously unhappy, while southeastern Asian students seem to be having a unduly good time in class), but the correlation is statistically significant.

7. BBC:  Modern life 'turning people off sex'

A once-a-decade poll of 15,000 Britons found those aged 16-44 were having sex fewer than five times a month.

The figure compared with more than six times a month on the last two occasions when the official National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles was carried out, in 1990-91 and 1999-2001.

The study's authors say modern life may be having an impact on libidos. ...

8. Atlantic Cities: Across Europe, a Growing Sense That Legalized Prostitution Isn't Working

... France is not alone in its fresh efforts to curb prostitution. The move follows similar bans in Sweden and Norway, while other European countries are also scaling back laissez-faire prostitution policies. Germany is poised to change its liberal sex trade laws, while Ireland is also debating a measure similar to France's. Is the end of legal prostitution in Europe in sight?

It may partly depend on how well France's new laws work. Unlike historical prostitution bans that penalize sex workers, the new laws target customers, making the purchase of sex illegal rather than its sale. Anyone caught paying for sexual services in France will be subject to a fine of €1,500, rising to a maximum of €3,750 for repeat offenders. This follows a model established in Sweden in 1999, but no country as large as France has yet tried anything similar. ...

9. Atlantic: Modern Moms Aren't as Busy as 1960s Moms Were

Moms now spend more time on activities like TV and the computer than on housework, playing with kids, and exercising combined.

 

10. NPR: Forget Golf Courses: Subdivisions Draw Residents With Farms

When you picture a housing development in the suburbs, you might imagine golf courses, swimming pools, rows of identical houses.

But now, there's a new model springing up across the country that taps into the local food movement: Farms — complete with livestock, vegetables and fruit trees — are serving as the latest suburban amenity.

It's called development-supported agriculture, a more intimate version of community-supported agriculture — a farm-share program commonly known as CSA. In planning a new neighborhood, a developer includes some form of food production — a farm, community garden, orchard, livestock operation, edible park — that is meant to draw in new buyers, increase values and stitch neighbors together. ...

 11. Gallup:  Majority in U.S. Say Healthcare Not Gov't Responsibility

12. Business Insider: Americans Don't Trust Each Other Anymore

... These days, only one-third of Americans say most people can be trusted. Half felt that way in 1972, when the General Social Survey first asked the question.

Forty years later, a record high of nearly two-thirds say "you can't be too careful" in dealing with people. ...

13. Atlantic: Homelessness Is Up in New York City, But It's Down Everywhere Else

14. Archaeology: Top 10 Discoveries of 2013

15. Business Insider: 25 Books That Changed The Course Of History

Every reader knows that a book can change your life.

But what about the lives of an entire generation? Can a book change the future?

Miriam Tuliao, assistant director of central collection development at the New York Public Library, helped us come up with a list of 25 books that changed the course of history.

From the Torah to Orwell's "1984," these 25 titles have had a major impact (listed here in alphabetical order).

16. Seth's Blog: What do we get when we give to a good cause?

Why on earth would a rational person give money to charity--particularly a charity that supports strangers? What do they get?

A story. ...

... If people aren't donating to your cause, it's because you're not telling a story, or telling the wrong story to the wrong people (in the wrong way). Non-profits make change, and the way they do this is by letting us tell ourselves stories that nurture our best selves.

17. Also on the topic of giving, here is some practical advice. Forbes: How To Give Away Money When It Feels Like You Don't Have Any

Great Short Video on Declining Fertility Rates

This short video gives a wonderful presentation of declining fertility rates over the past fifty years and explains what falling fertility rates mean for the world. Go to the website here: The Baby Bust

 

Economics Links

1. Your personality type determines your paycheck

2. New York Times editorial: Yes, Economics Is a Science

... But the headline-grabbing differences between the findings of these Nobel laureates are less significant than the profound agreement in their scientific approach to economic questions, which is characterized by formulating and testing precise hypotheses. I’m troubled by the sense among skeptics that disagreements about the answers to certain questions suggest that economics is a confused discipline, a fake science whose findings cannot be a useful basis for making policy decisions.

That view is unfair and uninformed. It makes demands on economics that are not made of other empirical disciplines, like medicine, and it ignores an emerging body of work, building on the scientific approach of last week’s winners, that is transforming economics into a field firmly grounded in fact.

It is true that the answers to many “big picture” macroeconomic questions — like the causes of recessions or the determinants of growth — remain elusive. But in this respect, the challenges faced by economists are no different from those encountered in medicine and public health. Health researchers have worked for more than a century to understand the “big picture” questions of how diet and lifestyle affect health and aging, yet they still do not have a full scientific understanding of these connections. Some studies tell us to consume more coffee, wine and chocolate; others recommend the opposite. But few people would argue that medicine should not be approached as a science or that doctors should not make decisions based on the best available evidence.

As is the case with epidemiologists, the fundamental challenge faced by economists — and a root cause of many disagreements in the field — is our limited ability to run experiments. ...

For a related post: People Are Wondering If Economics Is Really A 'Science'

3. The Guardian: Economics students need to be taught more than neoclassical theory

... Despite this dominance, the few who did predict the financial crisis were economists from non-mainstream backgrounds. This clearly shows that alternatives have much to contribute to the discipline of economics. Neoclassical economics is the mainstream and it is vital for economics students to understand it, and there are reasons it has proved so alluring to so many great minds. While in recent decades it has often been used to advocate free markets, it can be used to argue for a socialist economy, and indeed was in the 1930s. So it doesn't necessarily restrict us to a single political viewpoint. However, it does not comprise the whole of economics – and nor should it. This is not about ideology, it is about improving economics education. ...

4. Does Studying Economics Breed Greed?

... Consider these data points: 

Less charitable giving: In the US, economics professors gave less money to charity than professors in other fields—including history, philosophy, education, psychology, sociology, anthropology, literature, physics, chemistry, and biology. More than twice as many economics professors gave zero dollars to charity than professors from the other fields.

More deception for personal gain: Economics students in Germany were more likely than students from other majors to recommend an overpriced plumber when they were paid to do it.

Greater acceptance of greed: Economics majors and students who had taken at least three economics courses were more likely than their peers to rate greed as “generally good,” “correct,” and “moral.”

Less concern for fairness: Students were given $10 and had to make a proposal about how to divide the money with a peer. If the peer accepted, they had a deal, but if the peer declined, both sides got nothing. On average, economics students proposed to keep 13% more money for themselves than students from other majors. ...

The author offers some remedies.

6. Six signs you’re reading good criticism of economics

1. The criticism is by an economist ...

2. They know the difference between academic economists, economic consultants, business, bureaucrats and politicians ...

3. They distinguish “good for business” and “good economics” ...

4. They criticise a particular, clearly defined area or use of economics ...

5. They criticise a specific economist ...

6. They recognise that economics and values cannot be untangled, no matter who is doing the analysis ...

5. We Don’t Need a ‘Third Way’, We Need More Non-Profits

The problem with advocating for third way economic system between capitalism and socialism is, as Matt Perman notes, there is no realistic third way. Fortunately, a third way isn’t needed since capitalism can do everything that so-called “third alternative” (e.g., distributism) want their system to do. For instance, one aspect of how capitalism can create a more “people-centered economy” is to increase the amount of capital that is dedicated to non-profits. ...

6. Deficits have fallen to 4% of GDP: Source

7. So why, exactly, is labor’s share of income on the decline?

... But e21′s Scot Winship trots out a differently theory (as seen below in a reverse-order Twitter exchange). He theorizes that the labor share of income used to be artificially high, reflecting overpayment to workers during the strong union era so wives could stay at home and raise the kids. Then as women entered the workforce, there was a “Great Correction” where male compensation stagnated, female compensation rose, and the labor share fell. Looking forward to Winship’s extended essay and research on the topic.

8. 1 In 8 Suffers From Chronic Hunger Globally, U.N. Report Says

Worldwide, roughly 1 in 8 people suffered from chronic hunger from 2011 to 2013, according to a new report from three U.N. food agencies.

They concluded that 842 million people didn't get enough food to lead healthy lives in that period, a slight drop from the 868 million in the previous report. ...

 9. BBC: Economy woes pile up for Latin America's leftists

Since the start of the global economic crisis, left-leaning Latin American politicians and pundits have been foretelling the end of economic "neo-liberalism" in their part of the world.

But now, five years after the collapse of US bank Lehman Brothers, we may instead be witnessing the twilight of economic "neo-leftism" in Latin America. ...

10. Why China’s middle class supports the Communist Party

... The common belief of the last 20 years outside China is that economic growth, a growing middle class, and the rise of entrepreneurs inevitably lead to democracy. Everyone knows democratic countries do not go to war with each other, and that a democratic China means thereby less of a "China threat."

The China threat may indeed disappear, but this is unlikely to be because of a rising middle class. The problems with these various equations are that different meanings of the middle class have been elided, even though they may have nothing in common. However it is conceptualized, the middle class in China is actually small despite the current rhetoric. And last but by no means least, China’s socio-political experience is not that of Europe or North America. The middle class in China remains an essential part of the state from which it has emerged and is not very likely to be the Chinese equivalent of the European or North American bourgeoisie with whom it is often equated. ...

11. How to Cut the Poverty Rate in Half (It's Easy)

... Using the dataset from the latest Census poverty report, I determined that if we cut a $2,920 check to every single American—adults, children, and retirees—we could cut official poverty in half. Economists consider this sort of across-the-board payment a “universal basic income.” You can think of it as Social Security for all, not just the elderly. 

The upside of giving everybody about $3,000 is that it’s a very easy policy to run and a surefire way to cut poverty in half. But it's a large program: it would require about $907 billion in 2012, or 5.6 percent of the nation’s GDP. (In a real implementation, we might exclude the more than 45 million Americans receiving OASI Social Security benefits from a basic income, bringing the cost down substantially.) ...

A challenge with this model is that as someone's income rises to the top of the poverty line, they will lose the $3,000 payment as they move past that line. They need a jump of $3,000 over the line to break-even. Some method is needed for the transition out of poverty if people are not to be trapped there.

12. NPR: Debate: For A Better Future, Live In A Red State?

13. Adam Smith on Self-Interests, Not Greed

... Smith’s views were clear: we are in “almost constant occasion for the help of[(our]brethren, and it is in vain for [us] to expect it from their benevolence only. [We] will be more likely to prevail if [we] can interest their self–love in [our] favour, and shew them that it is for their own advantage to do for [us] what [we] require of them”. 

Of course the same is true for solely self-interested greedy “butchers, brewers, and bakers”!  They will prevail only if they “lower their” price demands to what their customers “can go along with”.  For both self-interested buyers and for self-interested sellers they must mediate their self-interests to arrive at successful transactions.

The process by which they mediate their self-interests is by persuasion, as outlined by Adam Smith in his “Theory of Moral Sentiments” and how that is best achieved in negotiations or bargaining exchanges is explained in the sentence immediately before the “butcher, beer, baker” example: “Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of.” (Wealth Of Nations, above).

I hope this is made clear by tutors at Harvard University and that you also make it clear in your classes too.

Greed is not good!  That is the opposite of what Adam Smith taught.

 14. PBS: The Three Reasons Countries Get Rich: Location, Location and Location (I'm not endorsing this view. It is much too deterministic. But it makes for interesting discussion.)

 15. Emerging Economies Nearing Half of Global Warming Emissions

... Developing nations' emissions are rising fast and the report predicted that their share of cumulative emissions would reach 51 percent by 2020. ...

How iPhone Is Made: A Surprising Report on How Much of Apple’s Top Product is US-manufactured

Finances Online: How iPhone Is Made: A Surprising Report on How Much of Apple’s Top Product is US-manufactured

... In this infographic we trace the iPhone supply and manufacturing chain. We’re providing snippets of information on both of the existing flagship model plus early breaking rumors for the next-gen iPhones. Did you know, for example, that 90% of all the rare-earth minerals used on an iPhone 5’s circuitry, screen, speakers, and glass cover are mined in China and Inner Mongolia? And did you know that Foxconn might soon be overtaken by Pegatron as Apple’s biggest manufacturing partner in China?

What does the rest of the world contribute to the making of the iPhone? Let’s find out!

 

Republished from www.financesonline.com

Saturday Links

Pickings have been slim this week, and I'm late getting the links posted. Hopefully, we will get back on track this week.

1. Hidden environmentalists: India's waste pickers

In Pune, India, a city that suffered a waste disposal crisis in 2010, an alliance of waste pickers has established an inclusive, sustainable model for solid waste management that presents a potential blueprint for the future.

... They formed SWaCH – India's first wholly-owned cooperative of self-employed waste pickers. Since 2005, SWaCH has worked in partnership with city authorities, providing door-to-door collection for a small fee and – unlike other contractors that favor landfills and incineration units – recycling and composting the city's rubbish.

However, as Vishnu, head of operations, explains, it is an initiative driven primarily by social, rather than environmental forces. Before SWaCH, waste pickers rummaged through landfills to find scraps to sell. "They were not working in a clean area – there are snakes and pigs and dogs. And they were not getting enough sellables to sustain their families." By incorporating waste pickers into the municipal mechanism for waste collection and formalizing what had previously been a completely unregulated economy, SWaCH has provided increased economic security and social uplift for thousands of families in Pune. ...

2. Discover asks How Many People Ever Lived?

While I was writing The Cancer Chronicles, I came to a point, early on, where I wondered how many people had ever been alive in the world. The best answer I could find came from a study by an organization called the Population Reference Bureau: 108 billion.

I was stunned by the magnitude of the number. It is still common to hear that more people are alive today than have ever lived. Or an even more extreme claim: that 75 percent of everyone who ever walked the earth is living today. But that is not even close to being correct. By the Population Reference Bureau's reckoning, the proportion of living to dead is only about 6 percent. ...

3. The Rise Of The Renting And Sharing Economy Could Have Catastrophic Ripple Effects

... "The potential impacts of renting/leasing as a long-term trend, though, are worrisome: Renting and sharing could lead to lower home sales (and, subsequently lower home values and net worths), as well as lower auto and retail sales," write the strategists. "The ripple effects could also be catastrophic: Adjusting to a consumer who does not necessarily buy, but rather rents, would necessitate a shift in production, sales, and even employment structures. Everything interesting in economics happens at the margin, so if the nth consumer chooses to rent an apartment instead of buying a house or making do with a car-share program instead of purchasing a new vehicle, then demand for new houses and cars drops."...

4. Lawrence Berkeley National Labs: Solar Costs Continue To Fall

... Lawrence Berkeley National Labs (LBNL) recently released their report summarizing the trends in installed costs of solar installations from 1998 to 2012. They looked at over 92,000 installations over the past two years, and found that the cost dynamics continue to move strongly downward.

Some of the main findings:

Installations in the U.S. more than quadrupled from 2009 to 2012, going from 7,000 megawatts to 31,000.

Costs continue to fall at a healthy clip, with the most recent year-over-year declines of 14% for systems less than 10 kilowatts (kW), 13% for systems in the 10 – 100 kW range, and 6% for systems larger than 100 kW. Median installed prices were $5.3, $4.9, and $4.6 per watt respectively. LBNL attributes these declining U.S. prices mainly to falling module prices, which accounted for 80% of the total price drop.

The trend in 2013 appears to be continuing. The initial data available from the California Solar Initiative shows prices falling by 10-15% in the first six months of this year.

LBNL did note that the module prices appeared to be stabilizing in 2013, but the report also commented that experience from other countries suggests the price declines can and will continue. The median installed price of small residential PV systems last year (without tax) was $2.6 in Germany (fully half the price in the U.S.), $3.1 in Australia, and $3.1 per watt in Italy.

Many of these additional gains will come about as a result of reductions in soft costs, as permitting becomes streamlined, and companies develop more efficient customer acquisition and financing tools. ...

5. Germany Fights Population Drop

... In its most recent census, Germany discovered it had lost 1.5 million inhabitants. By 2060, experts say, the country could shrink by an additional 19 percent, to about 66 million. ...

... Germany, however, an island of prosperity, is spending heavily to find ways out of the doom-and-gloom predictions, and it would seem ideally placed to show the Continent the way. So far, though, even while spending $265 billion a year on family subsidies, Germany has proved only how hard it can be. That is in part because the solution lies in remaking values, customs and attitudes in a country that has a troubled history with accepting immigrants and where working women with children are still tagged with the label "raven mothers," implying neglectfulness.

If Germany is to avoid a major labor shortage, experts say, it will have to find ways to keep older workers in their jobs, after decades of pushing them toward early retirement, and it will have to attract immigrants and make them feel welcome enough to make a life here. It will also need to get more women into the work force while at the same time encouraging them to have more children, a difficult change for a country that has long glorified stay-at-home mothers....

... Demographers say that a far better investment would be to support women juggling motherhood and careers by expanding day care and after-school programs. They say recent data show that growth in fertility is more likely to come from them. ...

6. A Surprising Map of the World Shows Just How Big China's Population Is

In order to comprehend what it means for one country to have one-fifth of the world's population, this nifty map (from the indispensable @Amazing_Maps on Twitter) divides the world into five regions, each with the same population of China.

Saturday Links

1. Phillip Swagel with a good piece on Inequality and Opportunity

... I am not convinced, however, that the president's proposals are well matched to the problem he describes. Indeed, Mr. Obama is better at describing the outcomes he seeks than at putting forward a coherent set of policies to reach those outcomes. But I think I see what he has in mind.

Mr. Obama is looking at two horizons. The main determinant of inequality is what the Harvard economics professors Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz call a "race between technological change and educational attainment." Technology has increased the demand for skilled workers but educational attainment has not kept up, leading to rising payoffs for those at the top. Widening inequality reflects the fact that too many Americans do not have the skills needed for today's economy. But changing this takes time. So while he proposes universal preschool to benefit the future work force and new training programs delivered through community colleges for existing workers, Mr. Obama seeks to foster a stronger economy here and now, to drive higher earnings for people at all income levels rather than just those at the top. ...

2. Shared Justice: Beyond Purely Economic Solutions to Poverty

Christians must agree on a holistic definition of poverty that includes relational and spiritual elements. ...

... But is the problem of poverty really that simple, a lack of opportunity given to those in the lowest economic class? It depends on how you define the terms "poverty" and "opportunity," as well as the terms "justice" and "charity"—all of which require multi-dimensional definitions if we hope to build a constructive conversation around the problem of poverty. Throughout the next two months at Shared Justice, we'll be fostering that conversation; to do so, though, we first must return to the basics and refine the questions. In other words, the question is: What are the right definitions?

But is the problem of poverty really that simple, a lack of opportunity given to those in the lowest economic class? It depends on how you define the terms "poverty" and "opportunity," as well as the terms "justice" and "charity"—all of which require multi-dimensional definitions if we hope to build a constructive conversation around the problem of poverty. Throughout the next two months at Shared Justice, we'll be fostering that conversation; to do so, though, we first must return to the basics and refine the questions. In other words, the question is: What are the right definitions? ...

... Broken relationships lie at the root of all of these things, so solving poverty demands that we meet more than just material needs—and that isn't easy. Generally Christians today have engaged in one-way giving and service amounting to little more than charity in the end, which is only part of our calling. And the result? Christians and the church have been relatively ineffective at providing lasting opportunities for the poor to overcome their situations. ...

3. Charitable Giving: Baby Boomers Donate More, Study Shows

4. Economist: Rewriting history - "A new measure for GDP adds billions to America's economy"

5. Why the Church and Charity Aren't Enough - Derek Penwell

...My friend argues that taking care of the poor is the church's responsibility -- that people who work hard shouldn't have to give so much of what they earn back to the government in taxes. Government is notoriously inefficient and sloppy.

So, I tell him that all of that might be true, but to people on the outside looking in, to folks who don't share his strong faith in the church's ability to get it right either, such a theology of social organization looks suspiciously like a dodge -- a flimsy attempt to baptize selfishness. To them it sounds like "I got mine … through a paradoxical admixture of my hard work and God's blessing, which means God wants me to have all this stuff; and conversely, it means God doesn't want poor people to have any stuff, let alone my stuff."...

6. Why China's 'Dominance' of Manufacturing Is Misleading

Gaudy statistics aside, the country has struggled to do what it needs to do -- move up the value chain.

On Monday, The Atlantic wrote a story based on an International Business Times infographic that portrayed China's enduring prominence in manufacturing. Remember, though; prominence is not the same as success. (Just consider this sentence: "Alex Rodriguez continues to be a very prominent baseball player.") China will play a major role in global manufacturing for years -- and probably decades -- to come. But the country's role is not a healthy one, and the weaknesses in Chinese manufacturing outshine the huge numbers displayed in the graph. ...

 

7. The Average American Car Is Older Than Ever Before

 

"The average age of the 247 million light vehicles on American roads today is 11.4 years, an all-time high, according to a new study from Polk. ..."

 

8. Redistributing Wealth Is the Wrong Way to Fix a Rigged Game

 

Elites shouldn't be forced to share ill-gotten gains -- they should be prevented from ever getting them.

 

9. How should the US deliver food aid?

 

Food shipped from America has saved the lives of millions of people since the Food for Peace programme was set up in 1954, but the strict rules demanding almost all of the food has to be sourced in the US and sent on American ships are coming under increasing attack.

10. Many Americans have no friends of another race: poll

About 40 percent of white Americans and about 25 percent of non-white Americans are surrounded exclusively by friends of their own race, according to an ongoing Reuters/Ipsos poll.

 

Communism vs. Democracy and Markets. Are these the only viable options?

The past century has been a competition between two metanarratives: communism vs. democracy and markets. Is it possible that there are other viable ways of organizing human societies? Eric Li offers a fascinating window into Chinese culture and suggests that there may indeed be viable alternatives. The Chinese model may not be feasible in other cultures, but that is his point. The future may be a variety of societal structures, not evolution toward one common mode of governance.

Saturday Links

1. Mark Buchanan asks Is Economics a Science or a Religion?

2. Poverty has moved to the suburbs

I don't think this should be seen as necessarily a bad thing. A few decades ago, the idea was to "warehouse" the poor in large urban complexes. There has been an intentional effort at dispersal through various means including creating mixed-income neighborhoods.

3. Crime has plummeted in the rich world, even amid the recession.

4. 5 Charts That Perfectly Capture The Incredible Rise Of China

5. How (and why) Africa should solve its own problems

Africa cannot rely on outside people to come and feed our poor or treat our sick, says African businessman and philanthropist Mo Ibrahim. The key is good governance, in both the public and private sectors.

6. World Bank: Africa held back by land ownership confusion

Africa's economic growth is being held back by confusion over who owns vast swathes of agricultural land, according to a World Bank report.

7. Deforestation in Africa's Congo Basin rainforest slows

Tree loss in one of the world's largest rainforests has slowed, a study suggests.

Satellite images of Africa's Congo Basin reveal that deforestation has fallen by about a third since 2000.

Researchers believe this is partly because of a focus on mining and oil rather than commercial agriculture, where swathes of forest are cleared. ...

 8. Brazil's Evangelicals A Growing Force In Prayer, Politics

... Recent polls show that evangelical Christianity is the fastest-growing sect in Brazil. According to the Pew Research Center, 22 percent of the Brazilian population identifies as evangelical Christian — up from 5 percent in 1970. Unfortunately for the Catholic Church, most of them switched from Roman Catholicism.

These days, only about 62 percent of people in Brazil say they are Catholic. In absolute numbers, however, this still makes Brazil the country with the most Catholics in the world. ...

9. For Developing World, a Streamlined Facebook

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Facebook has been quietly working for more than two years on a project that is vital to expanding its base of 1.1 billion users: getting the social network onto the billions of cheap, simple "feature phones" that have largely disappeared in America and Europe but are still the norm in developing countries like India and Brazil.

Facebook soon plans to announce the first results of the initiative, which it calls Facebook for Every Phone: More than 100 million people, or roughly one out of eight of its mobile users worldwide, now regularly access the social network from more than 3,000 different models of feature phones, some costing as little as $20.

Many of those users, who rank among the world's poorest people, pay little or nothing to download their Facebook news feeds and photos, with the data usage subsidized by phone carriers and manufacturers. ...

10. The Huge Threat to Capitalism That Republicans Are Ignoring (I don't agree with a couple of points but I think his thesis is spot on.)

11. Big Racial Divide over Zimmerman Verdict

12. The Wal-Mart Slayer: How Publix's People-First Culture Is Winning The Grocer War

Family-run Publix is both the largest employee-owned company and the most profitable grocer in America. Those two facts are linked, and they might be the formula for fending off Bentonville's retail behemoth. ...

... When a middle-aged woman asks about a box of crackers, no aisle number is blurted out. Instead, an employee races off to find the item, just as he is trained to do. At checkout, shoppers move to the front quickly, thanks to a two-customer-per-line goal enforced by proprietary, predictive staffing software. Baggers, a foggy memory at most large supermarket chains, carry purchases to the parking lot. Even Publix's president, Todd Jones, who started out as a bagger 33 years ago, stoops down to pick up specks of trash on the store floor.

"We believe that there are three ways to differentiate: service, quality and price," Jones says. "You've got to be good at two of them, and the best at one. We make service our number one, then quality and then price."...

... Publix, the seventh-largest private company in the U.S. ($27.5 billion in sales) and one of the least understood thanks to decades of media reticence, is also the largest employee-owned company in America. For 83 years Publix has thrived by delivering top-rated service to its shoppers by turning thousands of its cashiers, baggers, butchers and bakers into the company's largest collective shareholders. All staffers who have put in 1,000 work hours and a year of employment receive an additional 8.5% of their total pay in the form of Publix stock. (Though private, the board sets the stock price every quarter based on an independent valuation; it's pegged at $26.90 now, up nearly 20% already this year.) How rich can employees get? According to Publix, a store manager who has worked at the company for 20 years and earns between $100,000 and $130,000 likely has $300,000 in stock and has received another $30,000 in dividends. ...

 13. Grocery shopping online: Can it replace trips to the store?

The website mySupermarket.com compares the prices of groceries online and works to reduce shipping costs. But a limited selection means grocery store runs aren't a things of the past just yet.

14. 25 Everyday Things Made Obsolete This Century. What would you add to the list?

katmere via Flickr

The new middle class revolution: Facts and figures

BBC: The new middle class revolution: Facts and figures

Saturday Links

1. More deaths than births among whites

Last year, more people who are white and not Hispanic died than were born, the Census Bureau reported Thursday. That group is still the USA’s largest but its share of the total has been shrinking for years.

2. Human Population Growth Creeps Back Up

Earth's human population is expected to coast upward to 9.6 billion by 2050 and 10.9 billion by 2100, up from 7.2 billion people alive today, a United Nations agency has projected.

The U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs yesterday released revised numbers for the coming century, raising median estimates for population growth in 2050 and 2100. The agency's prior best guess had humanity at 9.3 billion in 2050 and 10.1 billion in 2100. ...

3. New homes still getting bigger

At 2,306 square feet, the typical new home is about 50% larger than its 1973 counterpart while the typical family is 10% smaller and the typical household 15% smaller. The Census Bureau defines a family as two or more people living in the same home who are related by birth, marriage or adoption. A household consists of anyone living in a home regardless of their relationship.

4. American Suburbia Is Shrinking For The First Time Ever

The population of rural and small-town America contracted over the past two years for the first time on record as young people left to search out work in the cities and birth rates fell, according to official data.

An analysis of US Census Bureau data by the Department of Agriculture found that although population growth in America’s rural heartland has risen and fallen for decades with changes in the US economy, the pace of decline accelerated in the years 2010-2012. And for the first time, the so-called “natural increase” in population – total births minus deaths – was insufficient to offset the loss from those migrating away.

5. Business Insider says Online Courses Have Reached A Turning Point That Should Scare Colleges but Mashable says Millennials Prefer Traditional Classrooms Over Online Ones.

6. NYT: Data Reveal a Rise in College Degrees Among Americans

7. Homeschooling Growing Seven Times Faster than Public School Enrollment

A recent report in Education News states that, since 1999, the number of children who are homeschooled has increased by 75%. Though homeschooled children represent only 4% of all school-age children nationwide, the number of children whose parents choose to educate them at home rather than a traditional academic setting is growing seven times faster than the number of children enrolling in grades K-12 every year.

8. The Wedding Industry’s Pricey Little Secret

In 2012, when the average wedding cost was $27,427, the median was $18,086. In 2011, when the average was $27,021, the median was $16,886. In Manhattan, where the widely reported average is $76,687, the median is $55,104. And in Alaska, where the average is $15,504, the median is a mere $8,440.

 And speaking of weddings, here is an excellent piece on the economics of wedding dresses.

9. Why Men Still Are Still Scared To Take Paternity Leave

But even when offered paternity leave, studies show most men won’t take it. A 2012 study of tenured track college professors found that only 12% of fathers took paid parental leave when it was offered compared with 69% of mothers. When new dads in the study did take paternity leave, many were still involved in projects at the office.

10. Dads, Feel Your Babies Kicking With Huggies Pregnancy Belt

11. Online Petitions Combat Corruption Abroad

According to Change.org, 44% of international petitions among the 100 largest petitions on the site target government corruption. In stark contrast, none of the petitions among the 100 largest campaigns that originated in the U.S. focus on corruption.

12. Wanting Expensive Things Makes Us Happier Than Actually Buying Them

The evidence is unequivocal: Money makes you happy. You just have to know what to do with it.

So what should you do with it?

Stop buying so much stuff, renowned psychologist Daniel Gilbert told me in an interview a few years ago, and try to spend more money on experiences.

13. Nuclear power seemed to be back in the news this week. New Yorker says Time to Go Nuclear, New Geography says No Solar Way Around It: Why Nuclear Is Essential to Combating Climate Change, and The Energy Collective had a great piece The Bigger Picture: Nuclear Energy vs. Fossil Fuels.

14. Nicaragua Congress approves ocean-to-ocean canal plan

15. China's Plan To Build The World's Tallest Skyscraper In 90 Days Is 'Revolutionary'

16. Singapore's Vegetable Towers

With more than 5 million people crammed into 274 square miles, commercial land values in Singapore are among the highest in the world. Therefore, the island nation needs to get creative when it comes to growing food in a limited space.

17. US breweries have exploded, from 89 in the late 1970s to more than 2,400 today, a 2,600% increase

18. The 'Star Trek' Medical Scanner Is About To Become A Reality

The small device is similar to the medical tricorder scanners featured in Star Trek, and is used by simply placing it against your forehead. 

A few seconds later you can see your blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen levels, respiratory rate, and body temperature.

The Scout then records and stores the information on your smartphone, allowing you to track your vitals or share them with a doctor.

19. The Economy Is Not 'Only Creating Bad Jobs'

While not strong, the pace has not been any weaker than the pace for wages in the fixed-weighted employment cost index—the ECI. That pattern disproves the widespread impression that mainly “bad” below-average-wage jobs are being created. Average hourly earnings would be declining relative to wages in the ECI if job growth were disproportionately weighted toward below-average-wage jobs.

20. A Christian Walmart for the poor? Willow Creek's new care center

Consider the Chicago-area Willow Creek Community Church, one of the bigger "brands" in the non-denom world, which just built a new "care center" where those in need can come and "shop" for food, children's clothing, even eyeglasses. It's 60,000 square feet are laid out, according to the Chicago Tribune, "less like a thrift shop or food pantry, and more like an upscale mall, complete with cheery colors, welcoming seating areas and designer lighting," according to the Chicago Tribune. Clients pay something if they are able--$5 to visit the children's "boutique," for example, or a $20 copay for an eye exam.

Consider the Chicago-area Willow Creek Community Church, one of the bigger "brands" in the non-denom world, which just built a new "care center" where those in need can come and "shop" for food, children's clothing, even eyeglasses. It's 60,000 square feet are laid out, according to the Chicago Tribune, "less like a thrift shop or food pantry, and more like an upscale mall, complete with cheery colors, welcoming seating areas and designer lighting," according to the Chicago Tribune. Clients pay something if they are able--$5 to visit the children's "boutique," for example, or a $20 copay for an eye exam. - See more at: http://www.uscatholic.org/blog/201306/christian-walmart-poor-willow-creeks-new-care-center-27430#sthash.OhuyPOdG.dpuf

A Christian Walmart for the poor? Willow Creek's new care center - See more at: http://www.uscatholic.org/blog/201306/christian-walmart-poor-willow-creeks-new-care-center-27430#sthash.OhuyPOdG.dpuf

The Economy Is Not 'Only Creating Bad Jobs'

The Economy Is Not 'Only Creating Bad Jobs'

U.N.: World population to reach 8.1B in 2025

USA Today: U.N.: World population to reach 8.1B in 2025

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations forecast Thursday that the world's population will increase from 7.2 billion today to 8.1 billion in 2025, with most growth in developing countries and more than half in Africa. By 2050, it will reach 9.6 billion.

India's population is expected to surpass China's around 2028 when both countries will have populations of around 1.45 billion, according to the report on "World Population Prospects." While India's population is forecast to grow to around 1.6 billion and then slowly decline to 1.5 billion in 2100, China's is expected to start decreasing after 2030, possibly falling to 1.1 billion in 2100, it said.

The report found global fertility rates are falling rapidly, though not nearly fast enough to avoid a significant population jump over the next decades. In fact, the U.N. revised its population projection upward since its last report two years ago, mostly due to higher fertility projections in the countries with the most children per women. The previous projection had the global population reaching 9.3 billion people in 2050. ...

Saturday Links

 1. The High Calling published an article I wrote. I linked it earlier, but here it is again in an act of shameless self-promotion. It goes to some core issues I'm trying to put into a book. Six Ideas on How to Lead Congregations to Integrate Work and Discipleship

2. Should Pastors Know How Much Church Members Give?

A recent study found that churches where pastors know how much is donated and by whom were more likely to be doing well financially. However, only half of the 3,000 responding congregations (and only 39 percent of evangelical ones) told the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving that their pastors knew this information.

What experts said (starting with "yes" and moving to "no" ): ...

3. Model for megacities? Mexico City cleans up its air.

... With urbanization advancing, economies expanding, and climate change a concern, Mexico City has emerged as an unlikely environmental example for cities in developing countries suffering similar air quality issues.

Mexico City recorded only eight days with air quality considered "good" in 1992. That compares with 248 "good" air days in 2012, reflecting the success of initiatives to relocate industry, kick clunkers off the capital's streets, encourage cleaner technologies, and expand public transit and cycling options. ...

4. Unmanned Drones May Have Their Greatest Impact on Agriculture

Talk about beating swords into plowshares. The mention of drones may conjure up images of Star Wars-like spacecraft or hell-fire war machines. But the controversial technology may prove to have its greatest impact in a peaceful endeavor: farming. ...

... The market for agricultural drones lies in the technology's ability to provide farmers with a bird's-eye view of their land. Historically, farmers have walked their land to survey it—looking for areas that need more fertilizer or water. More recently many have begun using small passenger planes to look at their lots from the air. But since airplane rental and fuel costs can quickly run into five figures, there's strong demand for cheaper alternatives. ...

... "Eighty percent of the utilization, once we are allowed to have Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the national airspace, in the first 10 years is going to be in precision agriculture," said Michael Toscano, CEO of AUVSI. "You will have a situation where you can spray crops by a UAS that flies 2 or 3 feet above the plants. You can control the downwash because you can put the pesticides on the plants and not in the ground where it gets to the groundwater."

"It sounds trivial but those numbers really add up a lot," said Rory Paul of Volt Aerial Robotics. "If we could save farms 1 percent on inputs like herbicide and pesticide and increase their yields by 1 percent, you are looking at multibillion dollar savings."...

5. Fascinating piece about the The Historical Horror of Childbirth

... Such stories were not at all shocking, as a woman's chances of dying during childbirth were between one and two percent -for each birth. If a woman gave birth to eight or ten children, her chances of eventually dying in childbirth were pretty high. The infant mortality rate was even higher. The chances of a child dying before his fifth birthday were estimated to be around 20 percent, depending on the community (accurate records are scarce). In addition to the fear of death or the fear of the child dying, there was no pain relief during labor, except for whisky in some places. ...

6. "INDIA will soon have a fifth of the world's working-age population." India's moment

7. 'Late-life crisis' hits the over-60s

"Of the 33% who went through a crisis, bereavement was the most common trigger, followed by personal illness or injury."

8. Hispanic High School Graduates Pass Whites in Rate of College Enrollment

 

9. Atlantic Cities asks the question that has interested me for years: Why Do So Many People Think Gun Violence Is Getting Worse?

"Twenty years into this safer era, we still don't know quite how we got here. Perhaps in absence of a logical narrative, many Americans simply find it hard to believe this is true."

10. People Don't Wear A Shocking Amount Of Their Clothes.

"The average person only wears about 20% of the clothing in his or her closets. Most clothing goes unworn because it's the result of an impulse buy or doesn't fit correctly, Ray A. Smith at the Wall Street Journal reports."

11. This week was the 20th anniversary of the birth of the World Wide Web. The Day Distance Disappeared

12. Great piece! The Tech Trends to Fear the Most: It's Not All Good

13. The market 'bubble' you've never heard of: "Some economists are worried that farmland prices are nearing bubble territory. How bad can it be if no one's heard of it?"

14. Michael Barone says College Bubble Bursts After Decades of Extravagance

15. Whatever happened to these Fortune 500 companies? "Here are seven companies from the first Fortune 500 that have since been merged, split up, or put out to pasture."

16. Dwight Lee has a thought-provoking piece about The Two Moralities of Ebenezer Scrooge.

17. The global economy: Welcome to the post-BRIC world

18. Development finance in Africa

19. Toxic Waste Sites Take Toll on Millions in Poor Nations

New studies attempt to quantify just how harmful the rampant exposure to lead and other chemicals is in the developing world.

20. James Pethokoukis with a provocative article about income inequality: Why A Decline In Income Inequality Would Be Bad News

Why has income inequality been rising in advanced economies — it's not just the US, people — over the past few decades? The economic consensus mostly explains the phenomenon as a race between accelerating technological change and expanding education. And the rise of inequality shows, as JPMorgan economist Mike Feroli puts it in a new report, that the "pace of technological advance has outstripped the ability of the educational system to supply the human capital skills needed to utilize this technology, leading to out-sized earnings gains for those who have such skills (the so-called college wage premium)."...

Saturday Links

Some weeks the pickin's are thin. Not this week.

1. Asians are now the largest immigrant group in Southern California: New Suburban Dream Born of Asia and Southern California

2. Surge in unwed mothers: Deep in the stats, it's not what you think

According to the US Centers for Disease Control, 42 percent of children will have lived with cohabitating parents by the time they are 12 years old, almost twice as many who will have divorced parents. And this particular sort of family structure is on the rise, a number of studies show.

3. In a sharp trend reversal, highway fatalities rise

"The news, while disheartening, is not surprising," said Barbara Harsha, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. "With the improving economy and historically low levels of motor vehicle deaths in recent years, we expected deaths to increase. Highway deaths have been declining significantly in recent years."

4. We live in a house that is 105 years old. IMO, most houses built after 1940 are boring. How Americans' Taste in Houses Has Evolved Over the Last Century

5. Are we purging the poorest?

In a new book, MIT urbanist Lawrence Vale examines the downsizing of public housing.

6. Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen have been popping up everywhere promoting their new book, The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business. Here is a PBS interview:

Watch Google's Schmidt, Cohen Describe a 'New Digital Age' on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

7. Love this story: Alleviating Poverty with a Washing Machine Powered by Your Feet

The GiraDora uses the principles of a salad spinner to make cleaning clothes less back-breaking and time-consuming work for millions of people in poverty.

8. Amen to this article. Good charities spend more on admin but it is not money wasted

The popular idea that charities fritter money on unnecessary admin has been proven wrong. You must spend to be effective.

9. Why US firms are turning to Mexico, leaving China behind

 ... Mexico has more international trade deals than any other country, and exports as many goods as the rest of Latin America combined.

There has always been an electronics manufacturing hub in Tijuana, but Chinese competition damaged its business a decade ago.

Now rising wage costs in Asia and a higher exchange rate are prompting many companies targeting the US market to take another look at Mexico. ...

...The new Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto wants to put a new spin on the country with the image of a booming economy and as a good place to do business.

Security and the drugs problem still dominate talks between the US and Mexico, but its southern neighbour's increasing importance in the global economy is changing the relationship. ...

10. The Manufacturing Cost Components For A Bunch Of Different Things

11. Five Innovative Technologies that Bring Energy to the Developing World

12. No-Wash Shirt Doesn't Stink After 100 Days

13. Craig Stanford, 'Planet Without Apes' Author, Says Eco-Tourism Could Save The Primates

A slice of the money that tourists pay can run $500 an hour at some of the sites in East Africa and goes to build hospitals and hire teachers." Although it's not philosophically or altruistically driven, the bottom line is the animals are more valuable alive than dead, since there's an incentive to protect them.

14. Approaching Nutrition From An Investor's Mindset

How does one succeed in nutrition when nobody seems to agree on anything? How can one get the benefits that arrive in the early stages of a diet without staying too long and compromising their health? What has worked well for me is thinking about nutrition like an investor thinks about investment opportunities.

15. The Lies You've Been Told About the Origin of the QWERTY Keyboard.

The QWERTY configuration for typewriters can be traced, actually, to the telegraph.

16. Money Buys Happiness and You Can Never Have Too Much, New Research Says

Here again we have to revisit the differences between happiness, joy, meaning, and satisfaction.

17. Baseball as a Road to God

Watch Baseball and Religion on PBS. See more from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

18. Why Older Minds Make Better Decisions

Recent research has already challenged what we thought we knew about the capability of the brain. What has become clear, says Dr. Gregory Samanez-Larkin of Vanderbilt University, one of the network's co-directors, is that despite a decline in some types of cognitive function, "older people often make better decisions than younger people."

19. Moon Landing Faked!!!—Why People Believe in Conspiracy Theories

New psychological research helps explain why some see intricate government conspiracies behind events like 9/11 or the Boston bombing.

20. Scot McKnight answers the question So What's an Anabaptist?

21. Beneath the stereotypes, a stressful life for preachers' kids

22. When and Where Is It Okay to Cry?

23. 10 Reasons Why Humor Is A Key To Success At Work

24. Scientists May Be On Brink Of Major Discovery In Hunt For HIV Cure

Danish scientists are expecting results that will show that "finding a mass-distributable and affordable cure to HIV is possible."

They are conducting clinical trials to test a "novel strategy" in which the HIV virus is stripped from human DNA and destroyed permanently by the immune system.

Is It Crazy to Think We Can Eradicate Poverty?

New York Times: Is It Crazy to Think We Can Eradicate Poverty?

... Fortunately, this deadly and cyclical form of poverty [living on less than $1.25 a day] is already on its way toward obsolescence, and much faster than many development economists expected. The first Millennium Development Goal — to halve the proportion of the world population living in dire poverty by 2015 — was met five years early, as the rate fell to an estimated 21 percent in 2010, from 43 percent in 1990. Some economists had feared that the recession would arrest or even reverse the trend, given how interconnected the global economy is, but the improvement continued, unabated. Annual growth dipped for developing economies in 2009 but has since rebounded to about 5.3 percent a year, a figure dragged down by weaker peripheral European economies.

For much of the improvement, the world can thank one country: China, which alone accounts for about half of the decline in the extreme poverty rate worldwide. It has also driven significant gains across the region. In the early 1980s, East Asia had the highest extreme-poverty rate in the world, with more than three in four people living on less than $1.25 a day. By 2010, just one in eight were. But other middle-income countries, like Brazil, Nigeria and India, have experienced significant growth, too — in no small part because tens of millions of the very poor have moved from rural areas to cities, where they become richer, healthier and more productive for their economies....

... For the poor living in poor countries, particularly the profoundly unstable ones, gains have been harder-fought and slower, a trend that the World Bank’s own economists describe as worrisome. But that is not to play down the successes so far. In 2008, for the first time since the bank started measuring the statistics, the number of people living in dire poverty and the dire-poverty rate fell in every region around the world. Extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa has at last dipped below the 50 percent mark. Still, many within the development world doubt the ability of NGOs to cure the world’s most troubled nations of their woes. “I don’t think we have a recipe for fixing the Congo or South Sudan or Afghanistan,” says Birdsall, of the Center for Global Development. ....

 

 

Do Foreigners Really Own America?

Source: Business Insider

Saturday Links

1. The World's Fastest-Growing Megacities

The modern megacity may have been largely an invention of the West, but it's increasingly to be found largely in the East. The seven largest megacities (defined as areas of continuous urban development of over 10 million people) are located in Asia, based on a roundup of the latest population data released last month by Wendell Cox's Demographia. The largest megacity remains the Tokyo-Yokohama area, home to 37 million, followed by the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, Seoul-Incheon, Delhi, Shanghai and Manila.

2. Houston Rising—Why the Next Great American Cities Aren't What You Think

America's urban landscape is changing, but in ways not always predicted or much admired by our media, planners, and pundits. The real trend-setters of the future—judged by both population and job growth—are not in the oft-praised great "legacy" cities like New York, Chicago, or San Francisco, but a crop of newer, more sprawling urban regions primarily located in the Sun Belt and, surprisingly, the resurgent Great Plains. ...

... Why are these people flocking to the aspirational cities, that lack the hip amenities, tourist draws, and cultural landmarks of the biggest American cities? People are still far more likely to buy a million dollar pied à terre in Manhattan than to do so in Oklahoma City. Like early-20th-century Polish peasants who came to work in Chicago's factories or Russian immigrants, like my grandparents, who came to New York to labor in the rag trade, the appeal of today's smaller cities is largely economic. The foreign born, along with generally younger educated workers, are canaries in the coal mine—singing loudest and most frequently in places that offer both employment and opportunities for upward mobility and a better life. ...

3. Cohabitation first is new norm for unmarrieds with kids

... For almost half of women ages 15-44, their "first union" was cohabitation rather than marriage, says the report from the National Center for Health Statistics. For less than one-quarter, the first union was marriage. The report was based on in-person interviews conducted between 2006 and 2010 with 12,279 women ages 15-44. ...

"Instead of marriage, people are moving into cohabitation as a first union," says demographer Casey Copen, the report's lead author. "It's kind of a ubiquitous phenomenon now."...

4. James Taranto says the decline of marriage has a more significant impact on boys. Boys Hardest Hit

5. Hunger Games: Reporters and pundits greatly exaggerate hunger in America

... In stark contrast, the latest USDA/Census data on hunger (page 12) reveals that 1.3% of households with children had a child who was hungry at least once during 2011. The same report (page 19) also shows that on any given day, an average of 0.18% of households with children had a child who was hungry. This first measure of hunger (at least once during 2011) is 22 times lower than the "29.2 percent" figure cited by Zaimov, and the second measure (the average on any given day) is 162 times lower. ...

6. Interfaith marriage: Across the aisles

... Americans are more likely to marry someone of a different faith than someone who supports a different political party. Jews spotted the trend early, with a survey triggering alarm in 1990 when it claimed that more than half of American Jews were marrying out. Interfaith marriage remains most frequent among Jews (and rarest among Mormons, of all creeds studied). But others have been catching up, with overall rates of such unions more than doubling since the 1960s. ...

So, is this a positive sign of increasing religious tolerance or just a sign of how insignificant religion is to people's lives that they do not care what others believe?

7. Emily Temple has a list of 21 Books Written by and About Women That Men Would Benefit From Reading

8. Kyle Roberts Reflecting on "The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work" by Darrell Cosden.

9. An interesting interview with Douglas Rushkoff on his new book: Why Living in the Present Is a Disorder

We're living in the now, we no longer have a sense of future direction, and we have a completely new relationship to time. That's the premise of Douglas Rushkoff's latest book Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, a sort-of update to Alvin Toffler's influential Future Shock from decades ago. ..

10. Annie-Marie Slaughter suggests that if women want more balanced sharing of household work, they need to discover The Immense Value of Giving Men More Control of Household Tasks

As women are experiencing the satisfaction that comes from a professional career, men should also get to know the joy of investing in home life.

11. China Is No Longer A Low-Cost Producer

12. Forbes says The Death of the PC Has Not Been Exaggerated

It really wasn't that long ago that a new computer every 3 years was a rite of passage. A fancy new chip from Intel or a nifty update to Windows sent both people and corporations out to replace PCs that felt awfully obsolete for shiny new ones. The latest data from IDC shows how things have changed: PC shipments down 14% year-over-year, despite the launch of Windows 8. While Microsoft and its fans might not want to admit it yet, Windows 8 is a flop. The failure to generate new sales is bad; the acceleration of a trend of declining PC shipments is downright awful. "At this point," IDC said, "It seems clear that the Windows 8 launch [has] slowed the market."...

13. Here is an interesting article about some really "crappy" furniture. Sustainable Furniture Made From Agricultural Waste and Poop

14. Mashable says E-Books Now 23% of U.S. Publisher Sales.

15. This was an encouraging story amidst the strife in the PCUSA: Fremont Presbyterian's schism divides congregation - but they still share sacred spaces

16. This is a great piece: FLASHBACK: This Was The Internet In 1995

Saturday Links

1. Atlantic: Could Earth's Population Peak in 2050?

"For the past two decades, demographers have generally agreed that global population growth will continue to inch steadily higher in the coming century, raising concerns about everything from pollution to housing to the world's water supply.

But a new study out of Spain suggests those estimates may be way off—we're talking several billion people off—and that the earth's population could instead peak as soon as 2050. Applying a mathematical model to global population trends, these researchers believe that there will be fewer people living on earth in 2100 than there are today. ..."

Since I started studying demography thirty years ago, low fertility estimates seem the closest to actual outcomes. People seem to be moving to lower fertility rates faster than most expected.

2. Speaking of world population, Chatham House writes about The End of Youth

"Advances in medicine and health care mean that people all over the globe are living longer, much longer. At the same time mothers in most countries are having fewer babies. The combination is a demographic timebomb. Sarah Harper looks at the challenges that lie ahead and the changes needed to cope with a grey new world."

3. Pew has published an interesting report on Demographics of Asian Americans

4. Forbes on Why China Is Finally Abandoning Its One Child Policy

"The policy was originally justified as necessary because of excess population and to promote economic development. Much has been written and can be found on the Internet about this policy and the current and long-term effects it is having and will have on China. The reluctance by China's central government to abandon the one child policy is not out of a failure to recognize its shortcomings. Rather, it is because the policy has been highly successful in achieving a principal objective, a unification of the public in support of an unelected, autocratic central government."

5. World Bank Aims To Eliminate Extreme Poverty By 2030

To reach that goal, Kim said the world need to reduce the number of people living below the poverty line of $1.25 per day to 3 percent globally by 2030, and raise the per capita incomes of the bottom 40 percent of every developing country.

The 3 percent level is a new target for the World Bank, which estimated in 2010 that 21 percent of the global population, or 1.2 billion people, lived extreme poverty.

Some World Bank estimates have put the 3 percent target at about 600 million people living below the poverty line by 2030.

6. Susan Brown writes about A 'gray divorce' boom

Until recently, it would have been fair to say that older people simply did not get divorced. Fewer than 10% of those who got divorced in 1990 were ages 50 or older. Today, 1 in 4 people getting divorced is in this age group.

7. Science reports on the prospects of One Drug to Shrink All Tumors.

8.  The Genetic Literacy Project on Monsanto Protection Act? Separating the facts from the fury

9. Dean Kalahar says Economics Is Easy, And Can Be Learned In 5 Minutes

10. Rebecca Schuman on why you shouldn't pursue that Ph.D.: Thesis Hatement

11. Facebook 'Dislike' Button Not A Good Idea, Says Product Engineer Bob Baldwin In Reddit AMA

12. Finally, we have an answer to one of the most important questions of our generation: How Many Spaces After a Period? Ending the Debate.

13. ABP News with some interesting data on the future of Mega Churches: Small is big for Millennials

14. Goal Control 4D. How referees will be automatically informed of goals in World Cup 2014.

15. For those of you who have deficiencies in your cultural education about all things Whovian, here is a primer for you: 'Doctor Who' Explained in 25 GIFs

When it comes to world GDP, BRICS are carrying the load

Economist

Saturday Links

1. The United States had its financial bubble. Europe is having one too. Is China next? If it is, it could reshape the global economy and radically reshape the Chinese government. Here is an interesting piece about China's real estate bubble.

2. Robert Tracinski thinks we are in the midst of a Third Industrial Revolution.

... I like the idea of a breaking the Industrial Revolution into stages, but I would define them in more fundamental terms. The first Industrial Revolution was the harnessing of large-scale man-made power, which began with the steam engine. The internal combustion engine, electric power, and other sources of energy are just further refinements of this basic idea. The second Industrial Revolution would be the development of interchangeable parts and the assembly line, which made possible inexpensive mass production with relatively unskilled labor. The Third Industrial Revolution would not be computers, the Internet, or mobile phones, because up to now these have not been industrial tools; they have been used for moving information, not for making things. Instead, the rise of computers and the Internet is just a warm-up for the real Third Industrial Revolution, which is the full integration of information technology with industrial production.

The effect of the Third Industrial Revolution will be to collapse the distance between the design of a product and its physical manufacture, in much the same way that the Internet has eliminated the distance between the origination of a new idea and its communication to an audience. ...

3. Tyler Cowen has some thoughts about the impact of our technological revolution as well Are we living in the early 19th century?

... Eventually all of the creative ferment of the industrial revolution pays off in a big "whoosh," but it takes many decades, depending on where you draw the starting line of course.  A look at the early 19th century is sobering, or should be, for anyone doing fiscal budgeting today.  But it is also optimistic in terms of the larger picture facing humanity over the longer run.

4. You may have seen a deeply flawed viral video about wealth inequality this past week. I am working on my own response, but economist Mark Perry's response is here.  In response to the viral 'Wealth Inequality in America' video

5. What are the contours of income inequality in the United States? This 40-minute video by Emmanuel Saez offers some important insights.

6. Futurist Ray Kurzweil is a little too sensationalist for my taste, but this vid offers interesting food for thought about nanotechnology and the future of sports. Will we even be able to have meaningful sports competitions?

7. Atlantic takes up a frequently perpetuated myth. 'Women Own 1% of World Property': A Feminist Myth That Won't Die

8. First, there was I, Pencil. Then I Smartphone. Now "I Coke." What Coke Contains

9. U.S. household wealth regains pre-recession peak but ...

The recovered wealth - most of it from higher stock prices - has been flowing mainly to richer Americans. By contrast, middle class wealth is mostly in the form of home equity, which has risen much less.

10. When looking at decisions in your own context, Seth Godin explains why Macro trends don't matter so much

11. It's a big, fat myth that all scientists are religion-hating atheists.

Whether or not you think science is wonderful, the stereotype of all scientists being atheists is unrealistic. There is, however, a special dance.

12. I consider this good news. Old Earth, Young Minds: Evangelical Homeschoolers Embrace Evolution

More Christian parents are asking for mainstream science in their children's curricula.

13. Remember to keep Syria and Egypt in your prayers. Nearly 1 in 20 Syrians are now refugees

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/07/4106038/us-household-wealth-regains-pre.html#storylink=cpy

Saturday Links

1. Christian History magazine has an entire issue devoted to Christians in the New Industrial Economy: The World Changed, the Church Responded. It is a priceless collection of essays on how various religious traditions responded to (or failed to) the challenges of the Industrial Revolution.

Issue 104 examines the impact of automation on Europe and America and the varying responses of the church to the problems that developed. Topics examined are mission work, the rise of the Social Gospel, the impact of papal pronouncements, the Methodist phenomenon, Christian capitalists, attempts at communal living and much more.

2. Orange County Register says Don't count out mainline Protestants yet.

As flocks shrink, denominations that once defined America fight to stay relevant with new ways of reaching out.

3. The Washington Post reports that Megachurches thriving in tough economic times.

"Despite the tough economy, many of the nation’s largest churches are thriving, with increased offerings and plans to hire more staff, a new survey shows.

Just 3 percent of churches with 2,000 or more attendance surveyed by Leadership Network, a Dallas-based church think tank, said they were affected “very negatively” by the economy in recent years. Close to half — 47 percent — said they were affected “somewhat negatively,” but one-third said they were not affected at all. ..."

4. Harvard Business Review: Steve Blank on Why Big Companies Can't Innovate

... It's not surprising that younger entrepreneurial firms are considered more innovative. After all, they are born from a new idea, and survive by finding creative ways to make that idea commercially viable. Larger, well-rooted companies however have just as much motivation to be innovative — and, as Scott Anthony has argued, they have even more resources to invest in new ventures. So why doesn't innovation thrive in mature organizations? ...

... First, he says, the focus of an established firm is to execute an existing business model — to make sure it operates efficiently and satisfies customers. In contrast, the main job of a start-up is to search for a workable business model, to find the right match between customer needs and what the company can profitably offer. In other words in a start-up, innovation is not just about implementing a creative idea, but rather the search for a way to turn some aspect of that idea into something that customers are willing to pay for. ...

... discovering a new business model is inherently risky, and is far more likely to fail than to succeed ...

... Finally, Blank notes that the people who are best suited to search for new business models and conduct iterative experiments usually are not the same managers who succeed at running existing business units. ...

5. A fascinating, if sobering, look at the conflict over islands off the coast of East Asia. Trouble at sea

6. The rise of post-industrial China? (Economist)

7. New Geography thinks U.S. LATE TO THE PARTY ON LATIN AMERICA, AFRICA.

"President Barack Obama's proposed tilt of U.S. priorities toward the Pacific – and away from the historical link to Europe – represents one of the most encouraging aspects of his foreign policy. Although welcome, we should recognize that this shift comes about three decades too late and that it may miss the rising geopolitical centrality of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The emergence of these longtime historically impoverished backwaters has been largely missed as American policy-makers and businesses are now obsessed with the challenges and opportunities posed by the emergence of China and, to a lesser extent, India. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, over the past decade has produced six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies. Through 2011-15, according to the International Monetary Fund, seven of the fastest-growing countries will be African, and Africa as a whole will surpass the slowing growth rates in Asia, particularly China.

This growth has caused the region's poverty rates, still unacceptably high, to fall from 56.5 percent in 1990 to 47 percent today. Further growth will likely push poverty levels down further."

8. New Geography also asks, Is the Family Finished? Some interesting thoughts about the impact of declining birthrates in the U.S.

9. A Portrait of U.S. Immigrants

Pew Research Center has compiled key findings from a new analysis of the nation’s foreign-born population, based on U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey.

10. Marketing Daily says More Latinos See Themselves As Bicultural

With more than half the population of many U.S. cities who are multicultural and Hispanics comprising more and more of the U.S. population, when does it become meaningless and redundant to execute marketing strategy that is directed to a general market and a Latino market perceived to be homogenous?

11. Committee on Economic Development has an interesting piece looking at both the ideological and economic aspects underlying the debate about the minimum wage. Raising the Minimum Wage: “Which Side Are You On?”

"It is an easy call if you are either (a) a strict libertarian or (b) an enthusiastic advocate of the less fortunate with limited concern about the scarcity of resources.  (If you belong to both of those groups, there is little advice that I can offer.)  However, in between those poles of opinion, things become rather murky, rather quickly."

12. Being a Republican or a Democrat may all be in your head: Republican Brains Differ From Democrats' In New FMRI Study

... Comparing the Democrat and Republican participants turned up differences in two brain regions: the right amygdala and the left posterior insula. Republicans showed more activity than Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk and reward.

Meanwhile, Democrats showed more activity in the left posterior insula, a portion of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. The particular region of the insula that showed the heightened activity has also been linked with "theory of mind," or the ability to understand what others might be thinking. ...

... The functional differences did mesh well with political beliefs, however. The researchers were able to predict a person's political party by looking at their brain function 82.9 percent of the time. In comparison, knowing the structure of these regions predicts party correctly 71 percent of the time, and knowing someone's parents' political affiliation can tell you theirs 69.5 percent of the time, the researchers wrote. ...

13. Health Care Without the Doctors Coming to a Walmart Near You

STERLING, Va. - Perched by a computer monitor wedged between shelves of cough drops and the pharmacy in a bustling Walmart, Mohamed Khader taps out answers to questions such as how often he eats vegetables, whether anyone in his family has diabetes and his age.

He tests his eyesight, weighs himself and checks his blood pressure as a middle-aged couple watches at the blue-and-white SoloHealth station advertising "free health screenings." ...

... As Americans gain coverage under the federal health law, putting increased demand on primary care doctors and spurring interest in cheaper, more convenient care, unmanned kiosks like these may be part of what their manufacturer bills as a "self-service healthcare revolution." ...

14. Is this a case of marketing going too far? Young Japanese Women Rent Out Their Bare Legs as Advertising Space

15. Nanotechnology Rebuilds the Periodic Table

Recent developments in the field of nanotechnology might give new meaning to the phrase “nothing gold can stay.” Atoms and bonds developed not by Mother Nature, but by scientists, are gaining momentum as the building blocks for cutting-edge materials.

Using nanoparticles as “atoms” and DNA as “bonds,” Chad Mirkin, the director of Northwestern University’s International Institute for Nanotechnology, is constructing his very own periodic table. So far Mirkin has built more than 200 distinct crystal structures with 17 different particle arrangements. ...

16. ExtremeTech says NASA’s cold fusion tech could put a nuclear reactor in every home, car, and plane.

17. Atlantic Cities has some great maps showing the impact of railroads on travel time in the early 19th Century, thus shrinking the nation. A Mapped History of Train Travel in the United States

18. A soccer goalie's worst nightmare.

19. You might want to think twice before a game of horse with this cheerleader.

Saturday Links

1. The new global top dog in international trade is China. China Eclipses U.S. as Biggest Trading Nation

"U.S. exports and imports of goods last year totaled $3.82 trillion, the U.S. Commerce Department said last week. China's customs administration reported last month that the country's trade in goods in 2012 amounted to $3.87 trillion."

2. As U.S. birth rate drops, concern for the future mounts

The drop in U.S. births to their lowest level since 1920 is sounding alarms about the nation's ability to support its fast-growing elderly population.

As public concern mounts, a growing number of books, reports and columns are laying out challenges the United States will face because of this demographic upheaval: Fewer babies are being born while the wave of 78 million older Baby Boomers have only begun to retire (the oldest turn 67 this year). ...

3. Raising the minimum wage has become a hot topic once again. Jared Bernstein makes Obama's case in the Huffington Post, saying that numerous careful studies say raising the minimum wage does not have an impact on employment. While that is true, there are also many careful studies that suggest that it does have an impact. My perception is that raising the minimum wage helps some working poor who already have jobs but makes it more difficult for low-skilled unemployed workers, particularly minority men in urban contexts. It is interesting that 25 years ago, the New York Times came out in opposition to the minimum wage: New York Times Called To Abolish The Minimum Wage In 1987. Fiscal Times makes their case against the minimum wage hike: Raise the Minimum Wage and Get Minimum Jobs

4. Speaking of low-income workers, The 20 Companies With The Most Low-Wage Workers

5. Last week, I wrote a post that linked a Salon article that said we are often swayed toward liking policies we have previously disliked when a political figure we like adopts those policies. (See When liberals ignore injustice) A prime example of rationalizing this inconsistency is this article in the Atlantic: MSNBC Host: Trusting Obama More Than Bush Isn't Hypocritical. The willingness of Krystal Ball to alter the degree of power and discretion a president has based on personal affinity rather than on an impartial assessment of the office's role is disturbing (and this is true of left and right.)

6. Gleaming skyscrapers are springing up in major cities of many developing nations. Partly because of practical concerns and partly as status symbols. But not in India. Why India Keeps Its Cities So Short

7. Does the time of year you were born relative to the date that determines which year you start school have any impact on your life? How Birth Date Affects Future Success

8. This technology is pretty cool! Follow the self-made road: Incredible machine that lays out a carpet of bricks removing back-breaking hard work

9. Let us give thanks for the demise of this publishing niche. A Midcentury Travel Guide for African-American Drivers Navigating Jim Crow

10. My former professor at Palmer Theological Seminary is in the news again. Resigning From the AARP

"The AARP is a selfish lobby demanding things for seniors even though modest sacrifices would help us reduce the deficit and enable us to spend more on crucial things like better education for our children. In fact, John Rother (long-time chief lobbyist for the AARP) suggested that in 2011 and promptly lost his job. Selfish seniors protested loudly and the AARP quickly backpedalled."

(For the record, I have never joined AARP. I'm still in denial that I am old enough to join.)

11. There are only a few seconds left in the basketball game. Your team is up by three, but the other team is about to inbound the ball. Do you quickly foul to force two free throws, or do you simply play defense against any score? Yet another study about fouling when up 3

How China Became Capitalist

CATO: How China Became Capitalist

... Nonetheless, China has been transformed from the inside out over the past 35 years. This transformation is the story of our time. The struggle of China, in other words, is the struggle of the world. ...

Conclusion

Given our account of how China became capitalist, what can we say about the form of capitalism that has emerged in China? A persisting feature of China’s market transition is the lack of political liberalization. This is not to say that the Chinese political system has stood still over the past 35 years. The Party has distanced itself from radical ideology; it is no longer communist except in name. In recent years, the internet has increasingly empowered the Chinese to exercise their political voice. Nonetheless, China remains ruled by a single political party.

This continuity hides a fundamental change in China’s political reality. With the death of Deng Xiaoping, “strongman” politics was brought to a closure. Under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, China is no longer ruled by a charismatic leader. In that sense, Chinese politics today is qualitatively different from the time of Mao and Deng. But the Chinese government has not come to terms with this political change on the ground; there have been few efforts at institution-building to prepare China for the new political reality.

The combination of rapid economic liberalization and seemingly unchanged politics has led many to characterize China’s market economy as state-led, authoritarian capitalism, which many people have rightly recognized as fragile and unsustainable. When and how China will embrace democracy, and whether the Party will survive democratization, are the main questions asked about China’s political future. In our book, a different perspective is offered. It provides a different diagnosis of the main flaw of the Chinese market economy: China has developed a robust market for goods, but it still lacks a free market for ideas.

The market for ideas points to an alternative way of thinking about China’s political future. Our reasoning is mainly based on the following two considerations. First, multiparty competition does not work unless it is cultivated and disciplined by a free market for ideas, without which democracy can be easily hijacked by interest groups and undermined by the tyranny of the majority. The performance of democracy critically depends on the market for ideas, just like privatization depends on the market for capital assets. Second, multi- party competition had virtually no precedent in Chinese history. Indeed, the Chinese word for the “party” (党) has a strong negative connotation in traditional Chinese political thinking. “Forming a party and pursuing self-interest” (结党营私) has been consistently denounced as undermining the political ideal, which is “what is under heaven is for all” (天下为公). In contrast, the market for ideas has a deep and revered root in traditional Chinese thinking; “let one hundred schools of thought contend” has been respected as a political ideal since the time of Confucius. In our view, the market for ideas promises a more gradual and viable approach to rebuilding Chinese politics on the principles of tolerance, justice, and humility.

Over the past 35 years, China has embraced capitalism not just in the economy. The Theory of Moral Sentiments has more than a dozen Chinese translations; the book has won the heart and mind of premier Wen Jiabao. The message of Adam Smith resonates strongly with the Chinese, not least because of its striking affinity with the traditional Chinese thinking on economy and society. A surprising outcome of China’s transition to capitalism is that China has found a way back to its own cultural roots. ...

China blazes trail for 'clean' nuclear power from thorium

Telegraph: China blazes trail for 'clean' nuclear power from thorium

The Chinese are running away with thorium energy, sharpening a global race for the prize of clean, cheap, and safe nuclear power. Good luck to them. They may do us all a favour.

... The aim is to break free of the archaic pressurized-water reactors fueled by uranium -- originally designed for US submarines in the 1950s -- opting instead for new generation of thorium reactors that produce far less toxic waste and cannot blow their top like Fukushima. ...

... The thorium story is by now well-known. Enthusiasts think it could be the transforming technology needed to drive the industrial revolutions of Asia -- and to avoid an almighty energy crunch as an extra two billion people climb the ladder to western lifestyles.

At the least, it could do for nuclear power what shale fracking has done for natural gas -- but on a bigger scale, for much longer, perhaps more cheaply, and with near zero CO2 emissions. ...

... The beauty of thorium is that you cannot have a Fukushima disaster. Professor Robert Cywinksi from Huddersfield University, who anchor's the UK's thorium research network ThorEA, said the metal must be bombarded with neutrons to drive the process. "There is no chain reaction. Fission dies the moment you switch off the photon beam," he said. ...

... Yet it leaves far less toxic residue. Most of the mineral is used up in the fission process, while uranium reactors use up just 0.7pc. It can even burn up existing stockpiles of plutonium and hazardous waste.

Cambridge scientists published a tantalising study in the Annals of Nuclear Energy in February showing that it is possible to "achieve near complete transuranic waste incineration" by throwing the old residue into the reactor with thorium.

In other words, it can help clean up the mess left by a half a century of nuclear weapons and uranium reactors, instead of transporting it at great cost to be encased in concrete and buried for milennia. It is why some `greens' such as Baroness Worthington -- a former Friends of the Earth activist -- are embracing thorium. Though there are other reasons.

The thorium molten salt process takes place at atmospheric pressures. It does not require the vast domes of conventional reactors, so costly, and such an eyesore.

You could build pint-size plants largely below ground, less obtrusive than a shopping mall, powering a small town the size of Tunbridge Wells or Colchester. There would be shorter transmission lines, less leakage, and less risk of black-outs. The elegance is irresistible....

Saturday Links

1. Building Congregations Around Art Galleries and Cafes as Spirituality Wanes

"... Although the number of evangelical churches in the United States declined for many years, the trend reversed in 2006, with more new churches opening each year since, according to the Leadership Network's most recent surveys. This wave of "church planting" has been highest among nondenominational pastors, free to experiment outside traditional hierarchies.

"I hear a lot of pastors say, 'I'm not just trying to be creative and avant-garde, I think this is maybe the last chance for me,'" said Doug Pagitt, the founder of Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis.

Mr. Pagitt has written several books on church innovations, many of which were first developed in the "emergent" church movement of the last decade or among "missional" churches whose practices focus on life outside the church.

Many of their innovations are being adopted by an increasing number of pastors in the mainstream.

..."

2. Signs of Changes Taking Hold in Electronics Factories in China

... But in March, unbeknown to Ms. Pu, a critical meeting had occurred between Foxconn's top executives and a high-ranking Apple official. The companies had committed themselves to a series of wide-ranging reforms. Foxconn, China's largest private employer, pledged to sharply curtail workers' hours and significantly increase wages — reforms that, if fully carried out next year as planned, could create a ripple effect that benefits tens of millions of workers across the electronics industry, employment experts say.

Other reforms were more personal. Protective foam sprouted on low stairwell ceilings inside factories. Automatic shut-off devices appeared on whirring machines. Ms. Pu got her chair. This autumn, she even heard that some workers had received cushioned seats.

The changes also extend to California, where Apple is based. Apple, the electronics industry's behemoth, in the last year has tripled its corporate social responsibility staff, has re-evaluated how it works with manufacturers, has asked competitors to help curb excessive overtime in China and has reached out to advocacy groups it once rebuffed.

Executives at companies like Hewlett-Packard and Intel say those shifts have convinced many electronics companies that they must also overhaul how they interact with foreign plants and workers — often at a cost to their bottom lines, though, analysts say, probably not so much as to affect consumer prices. As Apple and Foxconn became fodder for "Saturday Night Live" and questions during presidential debates, device designers and manufacturers concluded the industry's reputation was at risk. ...

3. Yet another reflection on the impact of 3-D printing in Spiegel: Technology May Bring New Industrial Revolution

4. Some states are no longer requiring that cursive writing be taught. The Wall Street Journal laments The Lost Art of the Handwritten Note

5. Speaking writing, an e-company has developed a new spin on celebrity autographs: Is This Really the Future of the Autograph?

"...Launched in July, the Seattle-based Egraphs' business model is simple, but pretty clever. Fans can peruse the company website to see if their favorite athlete has partnered up with Egraphs. Each player's section has a number of professionally shot action photographs included, typically priced between $25 and $50. The fan pays and sends the athlete a message through the website, including some personal details or memories.

The athlete then receives that message on his custom iPad app, using the the information provided to write a personalized note and electronic autograph on the selected photo. The photo is then sent electronically to the fan, who can save it digitally, share it on social media or order a physical print. Revenue is split between company and athlete. ..."

6. Hispanic Pregnancies Fall in U.S. as Women Choose Smaller Families

7. Huffington Post ponders whether or not Biblical Baby Names Falling In Popularity

8. This month is the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion nationwide. Time magazine has a feature article about the Pro-Choice movement this week that suggests 1973 may have been the high-water mark for the movement. Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall. Here is a short clip summarizing their take.

9. Why Are College Textbooks So Absurdly Expensive?

"...Academic Publishers will tell you that creating modern textbooks is an expensive, labor-intensive process that demands charging high prices. But as Kevin Carey noted in a recent Slate piece, the industry also shares some of the dysfunctions that help drive up the cost of healthcare spending. Just as doctors prescribe prescription drugs they'll never have to pay for, college professors often assign titles with little consideration of cost. Students, like patients worried about their health, don't have much choice to pay up, lest they risk their grades. Meanwhile, Carey illustrates how publishers have done just about everything within their power to prop up their profits, from bundling textbooks with software that forces students to buy new editions instead of cheaper used copies, to suing a low-cost textbook start-ups over flimsy copyright claims. ..."

10. Feeling thirsty? Consider that Bottled Water Is More Dangerous Than Tap Water.

11. Good news for history mystery buffs. Amelia Earhart Plane And Flight 19 Wreckage Could Be Found By New NOAA Technology

12. Baseball Pitchers like Phil Niekro, Tim Wakefield, and now, R. A. Dickey did their magic by throwing a knuckleball. Pitchers who master usually do very well, and it puts less stress on the arm. So why don't more pitchers throw it? Why the Knuckleball Isn't Thrown by More Pitchers in Major League Baseball

(Like the Kruse Kronicle on Facebook.)

Chinese Academics Are Openly Warning Of 'Violent Revolution' Without Reform

Business Insider: Chinese Academics Are Openly Warning Of 'Violent Revolution' Without Reform

A group of Chinese intellectuals has called on the government to implement urgent political reforms and respect human rights or risk "violent revolution".

In an open letter 71 top academics warned that growing economic imbalances were fuelling social unrest and an uprising could erupt if reforms were not implemented immediately, Hu Xingdou, one of the signatories, told AFP Monday.

"If urgent systematic reforms needed by Chinese society continue to suffer setbacks and stagnate, then official corruption and social dissatisfaction will boil up to a crisis point," said the letter, posted on the Internet last week.

"China will once again miss the opportunity for peaceful reform, and slip into the turbulence and chaos of violent revolution." ...

... While the latest call for reform steered away from Charter 08's advocacy of western-style democracy, it called on the Communist Party fully to implement the freedoms of speech, press and association that are protected by the constitution but routinely ignored by the authorities and police. ...

Saturday Links

(Like the Kruse Kronicle on Facebook if you want links to daily posts to appear in your Facebook feed.)

I hope you had a great Christmas and are enjoying the holidays.

1. The Huffington Post offers their top religion stories of 2012: 2012 Religion Stories: The Top 10

2. David Gushee reflects on Glen Stassen's A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age: The illnesses of American Christianity

"... The first kind of Christianity avoids reactionary authoritarianism but is often a therapeutic or vanilla mush that fails to ask anything of anybody out of fear of giving offense. The second kind of Christianity offers stern, clear moral directives that attract people seeking the "specific instruction, even confrontation that calls us to grow in discipleship" (p. 6), but disastrously embraces right-wing ideology and baptizes that as the content of Christianity.

Both of these versions of Christianity are so deeply flawed, says Stassen, that both are contributing to the alarming spread of secularism in the U.S. The first version of Christianity is so thin as to lack any particular reason why one would want to get out of bed on Sunday and go to church; the second is so reactionary as to drive thoughtful people into an anti-religious posture if they conclude that religion equals right-wing authoritarianism.

I believe this is a stark but actually quite accurate depiction of the primary problems afflicting the Protestantisms of the left and of the right in the current U.S. setting. ..."

3. When New England Progressives Won't Tolerate Evangelicals. "Once a center of 19th-century evangelism, Northfield, Mass., is unsettled by the prospect of a school with religious aims."

4. Peter Enns with another provocative post: What do Turkey, Bethlehem, and Tennessee Have in Common? They Don't Bode Well for the Conservative Christian Subculture

5. Peter Liethart offers a book review of Peter Brown's new book, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 Ad, at Christianity Today: How the Early Church Made Peace with Prosperity. (And, no, I don't know why everyone seems to be Peter this week ... Enns, Liethart, and Brown.)

6. Why Latin Americans top the happiness rankings

"While not exclusive to Latin America, the culture of family, support, and living a life to spend time with your family, I think, is an important part of Latin American culture that keeps people positive. Being with those close to you and finding other friends and partners that value that way of life is a key part of Latin American culture. That might be the main reason why people remain positive: they are never truly alone. Interestingly, many discussions and documentaries about immigrant groups in the United States show an internal conflict among many who move to the US and who do not wish to lose their support systems in a new culture rooted in individualism. While being motivated and entrepreneurial is valued, a life being with your family, where you are never truly alone, is the basis for many cultures in many parts of the world. Many new Americans frown on the thought that children can detach themselves from their family at 18 years of age. They believe people can only truly thrive as a family."

7. In contrast to Latin American happiness based in family connection, this survey of British children revealed that A 'dad' is tenth most popular Christmas list request for children.

8. Christian Science Monitor reports on Parental leave global comparison: US still among least generous

9. And yet another story on familial collections China orders children to visit their elderly parents.

10. Scientific American reports some positive news: Early Childhood Obesity Rates Might Be Slowing Nation-Wide

11. Men may want to think twice before taking up yoga. It seems men are more prone to serious injury from yoga. Wounded Warrior Pose

12. What are the ten most popular books of all time? The 10 Most Read Books In The World

13. Traditional Books On Decline, Survey Says

"A Pew Internet Research Center survey released Thursday found that the percentage of Americans aged 16 and older who read an e-book grew from 16 percent in 2011 to 23 percent this year. Readers of traditional books dropped from 72 percent to 67 percent. Overall, those reading books of any kind dropped from 78 percent to 75 percent, a shift Pew called statistically insignificant."

14. Here are nine interesting findings about state-by-state data from the Census Bureau: Here Are The States Where People Are Leaving, Moving To, And Having Lots Of Babies

• Puerto Rico, Vermont, and Rhode Island are the only states (and territory) that saw a net decrease in population over the year.
• The fastest growing region was the South (1.06% population growth) followed by the West (1.03% population growth).
• North Dakota and the District of Columbia had the highest population growth, with 2.5% and 2.3% population growth, respectively. Texas, Wyoming, and Utah also saw major growth.
• West Virginia and Maine are the only two states where people are dying faster than they are being born, with 0.93 and 0.99 births for each death.
• Utah (3.44) and Alaska (3.33) had the highest birth to death ratio in 2012. That means 3.44 babies were born for each death in Utah.
• Domestic migration determines the rate that people leave and enter states to and from other states. Per capita, more natives left New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island to move somewhere else than any other states.
• On the other hand, people flocked to North Dakota, D.C., Wyoming and South Carolina.
• The states that had the highest rates of international migration — that is, the rate of immigrants coming in — were Hawaii, New Jersey, Florida, New York and D.C.
• Puerto Rico is seeing a massive exodus — 1% of their population left last year.

15. When we think of transportation in the United States, few of us think about river and coastal water transportation. Yet a great many goods and commodities are shipped on our rivers. The Midwest drought is having an impact on a major artery of that transportation network. The Mississippi River's Water Levels Are Dropping, And Could Shut Down Trade Next Week

16. Facebook?! Twitter?! Instagram?! We Did That 40 Years Ago. "Three decades before Yelp and Craigslist, there was the Community Memory Terminal. ..."

 

 17. America's Stuff Is Getting Really Old, And That's Bullish

"In other words, Americans are increasingly likely to have to purchase and replace these goods some time soon as they get more and more worn out. That's bullish for spending, jobs, and the economy as a whole."

18. From right here in my hometown, just a mile or two from where I live: In a Kansas City Neighborhood, Deep Investments and an Uncertain Future. The Atlantic Cities reports on Kansas City's experiments with Green Impact Zones.

19. Why are men, in the aggregate, better navigators than women? National Geographic: Of Men, Navigation, and Zits

"... Yet a few differences between the sexes do seem to hold up to scrutiny. One is spatial abilities. If men look at an object, for example, they are slightly faster at guessing what it would look like if it were rotated 180 degrees. There are plenty of women who do better than individual men. But overall there's a stasticially significant difference in their average performance. This kind of difference carries over from one culture to another. It's even detectable in babies. ...

... Whenever we reflect on human evolution, it pays to compare our species to other animals. And in the case of spatial abilities, the comparison is fascinating. Almost a century ago, the psychologist Helen Hubbet found that male rats could get through a maze faster than females. The difference can also be found in a number of other species. ...

... Clint and his colleagues propose a different explanation: male spatial ability is not an adaptation so much as a side effect. Males produce testosterone as they develop, and the hormone has a clear benefit in terms of reproduction, increasing male fertility. But testosterone also happens to produce a lot of side effects, including male pattern baldness and an increased chance of developing acne. It would be absurd to say acne was an adaptation favored by natural selection. The same goes for the male edge in spatial ability, Clint and his colleagues argue. They note that when male rats are castrated, they do worse at navigating a maze; when they are given shots of testosterone, they regain their skill. ..."

Working Conditions in China: Supply and Demand - Alex Tabarrok

Marginal Revolution: Working Conditions in China: Supply and Demand - Alex Tabarrok

... The Times articles, part of a larger series, are well written and informative and no doubt they have prodded some changes at certain companies. China, however, is a very big place and the real story of better working conditions is a story of supply and demand.

Wages in Chinese factories have been low because wages in China’s agricultural interior were even lower and the great migration from the country to the city, one of the largest migrations in human history, meant that there was a ready supply of workers desperate for work and the more work the better. Even today many workers want longer hours:

In March, when Foxconn announced that workers’ hours would be reduced to China’s legal limits, employees began complaining. “Absolutely I’d like to do overtime to work more than 60 hours, but now there’s a ceiling on it,” said Ma Changqiao, a 23-year-old at Foxconn’s Chongqing factory.

As the great migration leveled off, however, wages began to rise. At first, workers wanted all of the increase in wages in money but as the more basic needs of workers and their families have been met the demand for better working conditions and more leisure has increased and this has made it profitable for firms to supply better working conditions.

Thus, the real story of better working conditions is not a spate of negative publicity, a mere blip in the face of much larger forces, but rising wages with a touch of Maslow’s hierarchy. ...

In short, economic development happened. Given relatively stable social institutions, this is what happens with expanded trade and improvement in productivity.

Saturday Links

(Like the Kruse Kronicle on Facebook if you want links to daily posts to appear in your Facebook feed.)

1. Pray for Egypt Today!

More than 50 million Egyptians are voting today on a constitution that would be a giant step backward for Egypt and much of the Middle East, marginalizing women and religious minorities. A nation that has historically been a voice of moderation, the largest Muslim nation in the region, will likely move toward becoming an Islamist state. Remember to pray for Egypt. (See the Economist's The Founding Brothers)

2. Our prayers are with the victims' families at the Sandy Hook elementary school. Grace and peace to the entire community.

In the wake of the horrific shooting, more debate about gun control will surface. The Atlantic has some useful charts showing Americans' nuanced take on gun rights and control. Do Americans Want More or Less Gun Control? Both, Actually The Christian Science Monitor also has this piece: What gun control laws might US voters support?

3. Traffic deaths in 2011 fewest in six decades

Traffic deaths in the USA continued their historic decline last year, falling to the lowest level since 1949, the government announced Monday.

A total of 32,367 motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians died in 2011, a 1.9% decrease from 2010. Last year’s toll represents a 26% decline from 2005, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said. ...

4. Obesity in Young Is Seen as Falling in Several Cities

... The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white students.

“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011....

5. In Girl’s Last Hope, Altered Immune Cells Beat Leukemia

....The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells. ...

... The research is still in its early stages, and many questions remain. The researchers are not entirely sure why the treatment works, or why it sometimes fails. One patient had a remission after being treated only twice, and even then the reaction was so delayed that it took the researchers by surprise. For the patients who had no response whatsoever, the team suspects a flawed batch of T-cells. The child who had a temporary remission apparently relapsed because not all of her leukemic cells had the marker that was targeted by the altered T-cells. ...

6. The CDC says Chlamydia, gonorrhea cases increasing

....In 2011, 1.4 million chlamydia infections were reported to the CDC. The rate of cases per 100,000 people increased 8%, to 457.6 in 2011 from 423.6 in 2010.

The CDC reported 321,849 gonorrhea infections. The rate increased 4% to 104.2 cases per 100,000 in 2011 from 100.2 in 2010. Like chlamydia, gonorrhea can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, a major cause of infertility in women.

Last year, 13,970 primary and secondary syphilis cases were reported. The rate of 4.5 cases per 100,000 was unchanged from 2010. ...

7. You may be bilingual, but can you write in two languages, one with each hand, at the same time?!

8. Washington State Senate: Republicans Claim Majority After Democrats Defect. That makes two states where Democrats have won majorities in the state Senate and then a small number of Democrats decide to caucus with Republicans, giving Republicans the majority. The same thing happened in the New York Senate last week.

9. One-party dominance grows in states

10. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones speculates on why liberals have more exaggerated perceptions of political differences. We Are More Alike Than We Think

11. A surprising "right to work" bill was signed into law in Michigan. That has spurred much debate about unions and the right to work. Michael Kinsley wrote a thoughtful piece opposing RTW, The Liberal Case Against Right-to-Work Laws. David Henderson has a piece in support of RTW, The Economics of "Right to Work".

12. Slate has a piece about The Great Schism in the Environmental Movement. Keith Kloor opines on the division between modernist environmentalists (or eco-pragmatists) and conservation traditionalists.

... Modernist greens don't dispute the ecological tumult associated with the Anthropocene. But this is the world as it is, they say, so we might as well reconcile the needs of people with the needs of nature. To this end, Kareiva advises conservationists to craft "a new vision of a planet in which nature—forests, wetlands, diverse species, and other ancient ecosystems—exists amid a wide variety of modern, human landscapes."

This shift in thinking is already under way. For example, ecologists increasingly appreciate (and study) the diversity of species and importance of ecosystem services in cities, giving rise to the discipline of urban ecology. That was unthinkable at the dawn of the modern environmental movement 50 years ago, when greens loathed cities as the antithesis of wilderness. ...

13. One of the creepiest Twilight Zone episodes I remember from childhood was when this woman ends up trapped in a department store at night. The mannequins begin calling to her. She discovers she is actually a mannequin who has overstayed her time out in the world, and it is time for the next mannequin to spend some time outside the store. This story confirms my worst nightmares: In Some Stores, the Mannequins Are Watching You

14. Carpe Diem: World manufacturing output, 2011

15. One of the biggest concerns about fracking technology is the enormous amount of water it uses. A company has figured out how to recycle water so that far less water is used in fracking. Solving fracking's biggest problem

16. Scientific American has an interesting article on the potential impact of 3-D Printing: Why 3-D Printing Matters for "Made in U.S.A."

... 3D printing represents the latest version of what industry experts call "additive manufacturing" — a way to turn practically any computer designs into real objects by building them up layer-by-layer using plastics, metals or other materials. The technology could end up affecting every major industry — aerospace, defense, medicine, transportation, food, fashion — and have an even bigger impact on U.S. manufacturing than the robot revolution. ...

17. Popular Mechanics is celebrating its 110th anniversary. In celebration, they are publishing 110 Predictions For the Next 110 Years.

18. Scot McKnight has a great post reflecting on the (false, IMO) equation of progressive with prophetic: The Prophetic is the Progressive

19. Dirk Kurbjuweit offers some interesting insights into Why Germany Can't Shed Its Troubling Past.

20. Michael Cheshire has a great piece in Leadership Journal on "What I learned about grace and redemption through my friendship with a Christian pariah." Going To Hell with Ted Haggard

".... A while back I was having a business lunch at a sports bar in the Denver area with a close atheist friend. He's a great guy and a very deep thinker. During lunch, he pointed at the large TV screen on the wall. It was set to a channel recapping Ted's fall. He pointed his finger at the HD and said, "That is the reason I will not become a Christian. Many of the things you say make sense, Mike, but that's what keeps me away."

It was well after the story had died down, so I had to study the screen to see what my friend was talking about. I assumed he was referring to Ted's hypocrisy. "Hey man, not all of us do things like that," I responded. He laughed and said, "Michael, you just proved my point. See, that guy said sorry a long time ago. Even his wife and kids stayed and forgave him, but all you Christians still seem to hate him. You guys can't forgive him and let him back into your good graces. Every time you talk to me about God, you explain that he will take me as I am. You say he forgives all my failures and will restore my hope, and as long as I stay outside the church, you say God wants to forgive me. But that guy failed while he was one of you, and most of you are still vicious to him." Then he uttered words that left me reeling: "You Christians eat your own. Always have. Always will."

He was running late for a meeting and had to take off. I, however, could barely move. I studied the TV and read the caption as a well-known religious leader kept shoveling dirt on a man who had admitted he was unclean. And at that moment, my heart started to change. I began to distance myself from my previously harsh statements and tried to understand what Ted and his family must have been through. When I brought up the topic to other men and women I love and respect, the very mention of Haggard's name made our conversations toxic. Their reactions were visceral."

21. Leonardo Bonucci got a yellow card for faking a collision during a soccer game. It should have been a red card. No one deserves to be a professional soccer player with acting skills this bad!

Global Trends 2030

AP: Report: Asian economies will surpass US, Europe

AP has a story summarizing Global Trends 2030, a report put out by the U.S. Intelligence community.

... The study said that in a best-case scenario, Americans, together with nearly two-thirds of the world's population, will be middle class, mostly living in cities, connected by advanced technology, protected by advanced health care and linked by countries that work together, perhaps with the United States and China cooperating to lead the way.

Violent acts of terrorism will also be less frequent as the U.S. drawdown in troops from Iraq and Afghanistan robs extremist ideologies of a rallying cry to spur attacks. But that will likely be replaced by acts like cyber-terrorism, wreaking havoc on an economy with a keystroke, the study's authors say.

In countries where there are declining birth rates and an aging population like the U.S., economic growth may slow.

"Aging countries will face an uphill battle in maintaining living standards," Kojm said. "So too will China, because its median age will be higher than the U.S. by 2030."

The rising populations of disenfranchised youth in places like Nigeria and Pakistan may lead to conflict over water and food, with "nearly half of the world's population ... experiencing severe water stress," the report said. Africa and the Middle East will be most at risk, but China and India are also vulnerable.

That instability could lead to conflict and contribute to global economic collapse, especially if combined with rapid climate change that could make it harder for governments to feed global populations, the authors warn.

That's the grimmest among the "Potential Worlds" the report sketches for 2030. Under the heading "Stalled Engines," in the "most plausible worst-case scenario, the risks of interstate conflict increase," the report said. "The U.S. draws inward and globalization stalls." ...

Here is the overview from the report:

Over the next two decades, the relative power of major international actors will shift markedly.  Around 2030,  after nearly a century as the preeminent global economic power, the United States will be surpassed by China as the world’s largest economy. With its trade in goods expected to nearly double that of the U.S. and Europe, China’s international economic clout will reach new heights.  By 2030, India will become the world’s most populous country and third-largest economy, while Brazil’s economy will rank fourth in size.  India and Brazil will join China at the high table of 21^st century international politics alongside the United States, even as the relative weight of Russia and Japan diminishes.  The European economy will remain in the top tier, but it is not clear whether Europe will be able to act with common purpose to leverage this source of strength.

With its enhanced economic base, Beijing could rival Washington in overall military spending, even as a slowing Chinese economy and internal political conflict complicate China’s ability to lead internationally.  The United States will remain primus inter pares in light of its continued advantages across the full spectrum of national power and the legacy benefits of its leadership.  It will, however, be operating in a post-Western world in which the bulk of global economic power is held by countries whose per capita incomes are far below those of the traditional great powers.  This reality will leave China, India, Brazil, and other players focused on internal development and domestic challenges, torn between their desire to be global powers and their interest in free-riding on Western management of the interna­tional system.

How will the rise of the rest impact the international system?  The National Intelligence Council’s draft Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds maps out three broad scenarios:

Reverse Engines. Under this scenario, the international system would consist of several powerful countries — but no single state or bloc of states would have the political or economic leverage to drive the international community toward collective action. Such a world, characterized by a global vacuum of power, assumes that the United States will no longer be willing or capable of sustaining the predominant leadership role it has assumed since 1945.   With no other country able to step in to replace the U.S. as a global leader, the resulting diver­gence of interests would lead to fragmentation and the inability of great powers to work cooperatively to solve global issues.  Mercantilism and protectionism could lead economic globalization to go into reverse, constraining technological breakthroughs required to manage scarce global resources.  Conflict and disorder would follow.

Great Power Convergence.  An alternative scenario is what the NIC calls a “fusion” world, in which major powers work together to adopt and enforce a set of globally accepted rules and norms. As U.S. predominance over the international system recedes, other emerging powers would step in to assume greater responsibility for the management of international affairs commensurate with their swelling economic might.  Emerging powers emerge as full stakeholders in a global order that is transformed by power shifts but remains liberal and pluralistic.  Great power concert (perhaps enabled by democratization in China) to meet global challenges increases the stability of the international system even as power is diffused within it.  U.S. resilience enables it to create enduring partnerships with rising powers to sustain the basis of liberal order.   Technological advances create new possibilities for joint management of key global challenges, rewarding positive-sum behavior by the great powers.

Multipolar Divergence—U.S. Primacy.  A third scenario, one the NIC calls “fragmentation,” involves a multipolar system characterized by a divergence of views among great powers that challenges global governance.  The United States would continue to maintain disproportionate global influence and leverage that influence to address global challenges by working through coalitions of like-minded states.  A multispeed global economy accelerates the diffusion of power but an alternative coalition to the West does not form, with developing giants consumed by their domestic challenges – even as the global middle class explodes in ways that transform politics within the rising powers.  With inclusive global institutions effectively stalemated, the United States instead turns to its old and new allies in Europe and Asia, who would continue to see Washington as their partner of choice in advancing the norms and rules of a liberal order.  The risk of conflict increases with the continued rise of new powers like China and the rapid pace of technological change.

One key conclusion of the NIC study is that the future role of the United States in the international system is a decisive variable in determining what kind of “alternative world” will exist in 2030.  The choices U.S. leaders make – about how to marshal (and preserve) domestic resources, how vigorously to assert U.S. military and economic leadership overseas, and how much to invest in alliances old and new – will be central to determining which of the above pathways the international system will follow over the coming 20 years.  To a certain extent, the answer to the question of how the “rise of the rest” impacts the U.S.-led international system is that it is not up to them… so much as it is up to us.

China leaders consider internal democratic reform

Reuters: China leaders consider internal democratic reform

(Reuters) - China's outgoing leader and his likely successor are pushing the ruling Communist Party to adopt a more democratic process this month for choosing a new leadership, sources said, in an attempt to boost its flagging legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

The extent of the reform would be unprecedented in communist China where elections for the highest tiers of the party, held every five years, have been mainly exercises in rubber-stamping candidates already agreed upon by party power-brokers.

The Communist Party, which has held unbroken power since 1949, is struggling to maintain its popular legitimacy in the face of rising inequality, corruption and environmental degradation, even as the economy continues to bound ahead.

President Hu Jintao and his heir, Xi Jinping, have proposed that the party's 18th Congress, which opens on Thursday, should hold elections for the elite Politburo where for the first time there would be more candidates than available seats, said three sources with ties to the party leadership. ...

One theory of economic development is that as long as the masses are poor, there is little incentive to develop sound economic and governmental institutions. As prosperity begins to emerge, those who have benefited have more to lose through arbitrary and ineffective institutions. The presence of a rising middle class creates hope among the poor that they too can prosper. Citizens begin to press for better institutions and greater accountability. Better institutions and accountability lead to more prosperity. And on the cycle goes.

Is that happening here? Let's hope so.

Higher costs forcing firms to relocate (from China)

China Daily: Higher costs forcing firms to relocate

Jobs going to other countries in China's 'great industry transfer'

Rising wages and shrinking export demand are forcing manufacturers to relocate to neighboring Southeast Asian nations and many that remain are seriously considering moving, a foreign trade official from the Ministry of Commerce said.

The official, who declined to be named, said that "nearly one-third of Chinese manufacturers of textiles, garments, shoes and hats" are now working "under growing pressure" and have moved all, or part, of their production outside China in what he called the great industry transfer.

Favored destinations are usually members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, especially Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia.

And in all likelihood, "the trend will continue" with more traditional labor-intensive manufacturers transferring production, he told China Daily. ...

... China's labor costs have surged recently by 15 to 20 percent annually, squeezing margins and driving some companies to bankruptcy.

According to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, from January to June the minimum wage was raised, on average, by 20 percent in 16 provinces.

The minimum wage in Shenzhen now stands at 1,500 yuan ($238) per month, setting the highest standard for the whole Chinese mainland.

Many developing countries in Southeast Asia have lower labor costs.

The monthly wage for manufacturing jobs in Vietnam was, on average, 600 yuan in 2011, equivalent to the level of 10 years ago in Dongguan, an industrial town in South China's Pearl River Delta....

...But lower costs in other countries could soon change, some said.

"The advantage (of labor and production costs) in Southeast Asian countries will only last for a few years," said Chen Jian, a general manager of a garment company headquartered in Foshan, on the Pearl River Delta.

"The trend is just like what happened some 10 years ago when many manufacturing industries in Hong Kong and Taiwan moved to the Pearl River Delta to chase cheap labor. But now you can see how much our labor costs have gone up."

Online Grocery Shopping Is Returning to the Physical World

Atlantic Cities: Online Grocery Shopping Is Returning to the Physical World

... Grocery stores that found success on the internet are instead returning to the physical world with a hybrid business model: the "virtual" supermarket, a shop for smartphone users that carries photographs and bar codes instead of food. After the success of locations in mass transit stations from Seoul to Philadelphia, the virtual supermarket is about to hit the city above ground. Chinese supermarket giant Yihaodian announced this week it is opening 1,000 brick-and-mortar locations. ...

... Grocery stores want to reach time-starved commuters, but they also seem to be capitalizing on consumers' desire to browse. It's one of the reasons why many people at least claim to still prefer physical bookstores, even as the monstrous success of websites like Amazon seem to negate that notion.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Yihaodian has also experimented with subway stores, but the announcement this week marks a big move back into physical space. No longer will "virtual supermarkets" be only in mass transit stations. They'll occupy actual retail space in the city.

See my earlier post, The Grocery Store of the Future?

Leslie T. Chang: The voices of China's workers

An interesting piece on how Chinese workers experience their changing lives. Very insightful.

China Confronts Mounting Piles of Unsold Goods

New York Times: China Confronts Mounting Piles of Unsold Goods

GUANGZHOU, China — After three decades of torrid growth, China is encountering an unfamiliar problem with its newly struggling economy: a huge buildup of unsold goods that is cluttering shop floors, clogging car dealerships and filling factory warehouses.

The glut of everything from steel and household appliances to cars and apartments is hampering China’s efforts to emerge from a sharp economic slowdown. It has also produced a series of price wars and has led manufacturers to redouble efforts to export what they cannot sell at home.

The severity of China’s inventory overhang has been carefully masked by the blocking or adjusting of economic data by the Chinese government — all part of an effort to prop up confidence in the economy among business managers and investors. ...

... China is the world’s second-largest economy and has been the largest engine of economic growth since the global financial crisis began in 2008. Economic weakness means that China is likely to buy fewer goods and services from abroad when the sovereign debt crisis in Europe is already hurting demand, raising the prospect of a global glut of goods and falling prices and weak production around the world.

Corporate hiring has slowed, and jobs are becoming less plentiful. Chinese exports, a mainstay of the economy for the last three decades, have almost stopped growing. Imports have also stalled, particularly for raw materials like iron ore for steel making, as industrialists have lost confidence that they will be able to sell if they keep factories running. Real estate prices have slid, although there have been hints that they might have bottomed out in July, and money has been leaving the country through legal and illegal channels. ...

The Future of Manufacturing Is in America, Not China

Foreign Policy: The Future of Manufacturing Is in America, Not China

How new technology is driving a U.S. industrial comeback.

... But Ralph Lauren berets aside, the larger trends show that the tide has turned, and it is China's turn to worry. Many CEOs, including Dow Chemicals' Andrew Liveris, have declared their intentions to bring manufacturing back to the United States. What is going to accelerate the trend isn't, as people believe, the rising cost of Chinese labor or a rising yuan. The real threat to China comes from technology. Technical advances will soon lead to the same hollowing out of China's manufacturing industry that they have to U.S industry over the past two decades.

Several technologies advancing and converging will cause this.

First, robotics. The robots of today aren't the androids or Cylons that we are used to seeing in science fiction movies, but specialized electromechanical devices run by software and remote control. As computers become more powerful, so do the abilities of these devices. Robots are now capable of performing surgery, milking cows, doing military reconnaissance and combat, and flying fighter jets. Several companies, such Willow Garage, iRobot, and 9th Sense, sell robot-development kits for which university students and open-source communities are developing ever more sophisticated applications.

The factory assembly that China is currently performing is child's play compared to the next generation of robots -- which will soon become cheaper than human labor. ...

... A type of manufacturing called "additive manufacturing" is now making it possible to cost-effectively "print" products. In conventional manufacturing, parts are produced by humans using power-driven machine tools, such as saws, lathes, milling machines, and drill presses, to physically remove material until you're left with the shape desired. This is a cumbersome process that becomes more difficult and time-consuming with increasing complexity. In other words, the more complex the product you want to create, the more labor is required and the greater the effort.

In additive manufacturing, parts are produced by melting successive layers of materials based on three-dimensional models -- adding materials rather than subtracting them. The "3D printers" that produce these parts use powered metal, droplets of plastic, and other materials -- much like the toner cartridges that go into laser printers. This allows the creation of objects without any sort of tools or fixtures. The process doesn't produce any waste material, and there is no additional cost for complexity. Just as, thanks to laser printers, a page filled with graphics doesn't cost much more than one with text (other than the cost of toner), with 3D printers we can print a sophisticated 3D structure for what it would cost to print something simple.

Three-D printers can already create physical mechanical devices, medical implants, jewelry, and even clothing. The cheapest 3D printers, which print rudimentary objects, currently sell for between $500 and $1,000. Soon, we will have printers for this price that can print toys and household goods. By the end of this decade, we will see 3D printers doing the small-scale production of previously labor-intensive crafts and goods. It is entirely conceivable that, in the next decade, manufacturing will again become a local industry and it will be possible to 3D print electronics and use giant 3D printing scaffolds to print entire buildings. Why would we ship raw materials all the way to China and then ship completed products back to the United States when they can be manufactured more cheaply locally, on demand? ...

Remember that the above does not mean there will be more manufacturing jobs in the U.S. We will still see a decline in manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing as a percentage of GDP has remained very constant since World War II, but technological innovation has eliminated the need for much human labor. About 32% of the labor force was in manufacturing in 1947, but it is about 12% (and declining) today. The loss of manufacturing jobs has much less to do with China and more with ongoing technological innovation.

Source

Why Americans are becoming more pro-life

Washington Post: Why Americans are becoming more pro-life

... The polling shows that rather than embracing abortion with increasing gusto, Americans--especially young Americans--are rejecting it with increasing disgust, and not just for religious reasons.

Why?

First, the fetus has been humanized. Modern science has helped us to understand with intricate detail the amazing phenomenon that occurs at the moment of fertilization. From then on, a pregnant woman can track the extraordinary chain of events that is triggered in the new life within her with a slew of Web sites and iPhone apps. She learns her baby’s heart starts beating at a mere 21 days after conception (before many women learn they are pregnant). She meets her baby on the ultrasound screen at eight weeks as opposed to at the end of nine months.

Second, we have seen the way abortion is used in the world to undermine the rights of women, whether it is forced abortion in China, gender-selective abortion worldwide or its concentration among poor and minority women. Abortion is increasingly hard to square with women’s empowerment when it is the single greatest contributor tipping the scale towards a world with fewer women.

Finally, the pro-life movement has caught on to the importance of framing. You can’t win a debate if you are trying to take away the “rights” of a group. And that is a good thing – this is a nation where rights mean something. Which is why pro-lifers are increasingly framing abortion as a civil rights issue. It is a civil rights issue. At stake is the most elemental right we have as a human being, the right to be alive, the right not to be killed, regardless of one’s race, gender, or “viability.”

Many past civil rights movements in this country, such as the move to end slavery or the fight for women’s suffrage, were deeply rooted in religious conviction. Such is the case with the pro-life movement. But with each of these movements there was a tipping point where Americans saw that one need not be a devoutly religious person to recognize the social justice issue at stake and to get behind the cause. This is happening with abortion in America. ...

Source: Gallup

We need a few more years of data to see if anything has really changed. 50 to 41 pro-life is not out of line with where things have been for the past decade.

Dire Poverty Falls Despite Global Slump, Report Finds

New York Times: Dire Poverty Falls Despite Global Slump, Report Finds

WASHINGTON — A World Bank report shows a broad reduction in extreme poverty — and indicates that the global recession, contrary to economists’ expectations, did not increase poverty in the developing world.

The report shows that for the first time the proportion of people living in extreme poverty — on less than $1.25 a day — fell in every developing region from 2005 to 2008. And the biggest recession since the Great Depression seems not to have thrown that trend off course, preliminary data from 2010 indicate.

The progress is so drastic that the world has met the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals to cut extreme poverty in half five years before its 2015 deadline. ...

... The report contained a raft of statistics showing broad declines in poverty throughout the 2000s. For the first time since the World Bank started keeping statistics in 1981, poverty fell in every region of the world on a three-year timeframe. In sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion of the population living in extreme poverty fell below 50 percent for the first time. And between 1981 and 2008, poverty fell to just less than a quarter of the developing world’s population from more than half .

Much of the story was about China, which moved nearly 700 million people out of poverty between 1981 and 2008, with the proportion of its population living in extreme poverty falling to 13 percent from 84 percent during that period. The country’s annual pace of economic growth never dipped below 9 percent, even in 2009, when the world’s economy contracted.

But perhaps the most surprising success story is sub-Saharan Africa, where the proportion of people living in extreme poverty actually increased through the 1990s, before declining in the 2000s.

“People used to worry, ‘Is Africa going to be poor forever?’ ” said Mr. Kenny of the Center for Global Development. “Well, it doesn’t really look like it, does it?”

Extreme poverty in the Middle East and North Africa fell to just 2.7 percent in 2008 from 4.2 percent in 2002. And extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa fell to 47.5 percent in 2008 from 55.7 percent in 2002. ...

New Math Will Drive a U.S. Manufacturing Comeback

Harvard Business Review: New Math Will Drive a U.S. Manufacturing Comeback

Making the United States an even more attractive location for factories and investments is critical for the health of our nation. More domestic factories would help create more balanced trade flows and a more stable global economy. But company decisions on what and where to place production facilities, while influenced by many factors, ultimately depend on the math.

Thankfully, the math these days is starting to work in America's favor again.

Our research last year suggested to us that changing conditions in China would bring home some of the manufacturing work that migrated overseas during the past decade. We originally saw this "insourcing" phenomenon, as the White House now refers to it, starting around 2015.

We were deliberately conservative in our estimates and made clear that the coming manufacturing renaissance would benefit some industries more than others, with seven sectors benefitting the most: vehicles and auto parts, appliances and electrical equipment, furniture, plastic and rubber products, machinery, fabricated metal products, and computers and electronics. These seven sectors currently account for nearly two-thirds of the more than $325 billion the U.S. imports from China.

We noted that several factors had combined to push these sectors toward a tipping point, when U.S. manufacturing becomes an attractive alternative to China. These factors include China's rapidly rising labor costs, which we discussed in an earlier HBR blog; the increased value of the yuan; the challenge of managing long-distance supply chains; the quality control concerns that continue to haunt many manufacturers that have offshored production; and the significantly higher productivity of U.S. workers. ...