The Missing Children

November 4, 2019

“Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.”

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”

– Cicero

Will Humanity Become an Endangered Species

Population growth is vital to the world’s economy, yet fertility rates world-wide are declining. In the 1960s the rate was five live births per woman, ample to insure population growth from generation to generation. But by 2017, the fertility rate had fallen to 2.43, critically close to the lowest threshold for population sustainability — two children per woman.

50 years ago only 1 in 20 countries fell short of the population replacement threshold, but by 2017 about half of all countries had fallen below the mark. Loosening immigration policies in popular destinations like the US and parts of Western Europe could make up for low birthrates. In other places less attractive to immigrants, more drastic policy interventions may be required.

However, population growth alone does not determine economic destiny. It’s just one of three factors influencing national economies, the other two being employment rate and labor productivity. A 2018 found that on average, for most major economies between 2000 and 2017, rising productivity was a more important driver of gross domestic product growth than population growth or change in the employment rate.

That means there’s a lopsided burden on women, who’ll be relied upon not only to bear children but also to help fill widening gaps in the workforce. So the question becomes not just how many babies women will have in the future, but how well women will be integrated into the workforce, what slice of the income pie they’ll get, and what level of education they’ll attain. As it stands today in most countries, women still earn less than two thirds of what a man earns.

Additional movie trailer: Children of Men

A Dangerous Desperate Journey

The 39 people found dead in a refrigerated truck in southeastern England last month were believed to be Vietnamese. It would have been their last leg of a grueling and perilous 6,000 mile trek across Asia and into Western Europe. Vietnamese smugglers call it the “CO2” route: a poorly ventilated, oxygen-deficient trip across the English Channel in shipping containers or trailers piled high with merchandise.
Those who climb into such a stuffy container have risked everything for a chance at a better life. They are called by some “box people” — successors to the “boat people” who left Vietnam after the war ended in 1975.
Some 18,000 Vietnamese still put their lives on the line each year to take the journey — paying smugglers $10,000 to $50,000 and enduring unimaginable hardships and violence along the way. But if they make it to Britain and get a low wage job, they’ll make five times what they can earn at home. (NYT)

Last Exit To Brexit

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in the throes of a frantic general election, hoping his Conservative Party can win away parliamentary seats in northern England and the Midlands that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labor Party currently holds. Johnson is focusing on wooing people that voted for Brexit in the 2016 referendum and are frustrated it hasn’t happened.
He’s running on a simple message: Get Brexit done quickly, under the agreement he negotiated with the EU, so that Britain can begin its shiny new future of profitable trade deals with the US and other countries.
Johnson’s party is currently leading Labor by double digits in the polls, but a few experts cautioned that something could happen that could shift the narrative unpredictably in ways that could hurt the conservative party, like happened to Theresa May in 2017.
Perhaps something like what President Trump said last week in a radio interview with Nigel Farage, the insurgent leader of the Brexit Party. Trump called in from Washington to disparage Corbyn and urge Johnson to forge a hard-line pro-Brexit alliance with Farage. Then in the next breath Trump inexplicably said Johnson’s Brexit deal would foreclose the possibility of a trade agreement with the US, undercutting Johnson’s whole messaging. (NYT)
Super-rich prepare to leave UK ‘within minutes’ if Labour wins election: Wealthy see potential taxes imposed by Jeremy Corbyn as bigger threat than Brexit
George Soros: ‘Brexit hurts both sides – my money was used to educate the British public’: The philanthropist who has spent billions promoting democracy talks populism, Trump and powerful enemies

No Use Crying Over Some Spilled Tear Gas

21 straight weeks of antigovernment protests and clashes with riot police have sunk the international financial hub that is Hong Kong into a recession. In the latest battle on Saturday, a rally being held in Victoria Park was declared an unlawful assembly by police.
The rally had been billed as a campaign event for local elections but quickly descended into chaos as police tried dispersing the crowds with tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets. The city’s central financial district and several dense commercial neighborhoods were enveloped in clouds of tear gas, and the Hong Kong offices of China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency were damaged. (NYT)
China Says It Will Roll Out ‘National Security’ Steps for Hong Kong: Communist Party leaders announced the move after months of protests in the city, but gave no details. Here is an explanation of that measure and others they approved.
Professors, Beware. In China, Student Spies Might Be Watching.

Additional World News