Aretha Franklin – Bridge Over Troubled Water
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Iran’s Universal Basic Income
Fears of robots taking jobs has prompted talk of the need to institute a universal basic income. Putting aside for the moment that, as of yet, robots are not massively replacing humans, so current robotic deployments are not a reason to institute a universal basic income, one of the fears of such a policy is it would discourage work. Lazy Ed down the street would take his basic income and play video games all day rather than finding a job, or so the theory goes. But did you know that in 2011, Iran, of all places, instituted a universal basic income? They did so when replacing a large scale energy subsidy policy. “In 2011, Iran started monthly deposits of cash into individual accounts covering more than 70 million people and amounting to 28% of the median per capita household income.” A paper was recently published in Science Direct that finds “no evidence that cash transfers reduced labor supply, in terms of hours worked or labor force participation. To the contrary, we find positive effects on the labor supply of women and self-employed men.” This is a surprising result, at least to us, who were one of those expecting such a policy to be a disincentive to work. We do expect more disruption to the labor market from automation in the future. Perhaps a universal basic income will be a possible remedy after all, although we await further study of Iran’s program.
Solving the Graying of China
In some people’s view of the world, China is an all-powerful entity, organized and run better than the democracies of the world. And though China has been remarkably successful the last 40 years—since discarding ideas some are now advocating to get elected to the U.S. Congress—the truth of China is more prosaic, or at least complicated. It is seizing opportunities but also grappling with difficult challenges. One of those challenges is the graying of its population—17 percent of China’s population is over the age of 60 (15 percent of Americans are 65 or older). Sixth Tone reports that “according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, by 2022, retirees will be growing at a 3 percent faster rate than pension fund contributors.” How to confront this inconvenient fiscal fact? Sixth Tone also tells us that the Chinese government has developed a reverse mortgage initiative for elderly Chinese. China’s State Council encouraged “anyone aged 60 or above with full legal ownership of a property…to apply for a reverse mortgage.” Thus far, very few Chinese are taking up the government on the offer. Or as Sixth Tone poetically puts it, “The public’s response, however, was the equivalent of a single ripple in a vast, otherwise glass-surfaced sea. As of this May, there is only one insurance company in all of China that offers reverse mortgage services, and only 132 people have taken out policies.” China is one of many countries struggling to figure out how to deal with an aging population, but they are the largest, and perhaps, the most important. Our aging, near-sighted eyes will continue monitoring it.
Wage Stagnation is Worldwide
Our American readers are surely aware of the slow wage growth in this country. But perhaps it is not as well known that this is a phenomenon around the world. The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), a consortium of 35 mostly developed countries, recently noted that among these countries, “Wage growth remains remarkably more sluggish than before the financial crisis. At the end of 2017, nominal wage growth in the OECD area was only half of what it was ten years earlier.” This is especially true for the lower rung of wage earners. What’s causing this wage stagnation? The OECD asserts, “Low inflation and the major productivity slowdown have contributed to wage stagnation, as well as a rise in low-paying jobs.” Much of what is dividing America also afflicts the rest of the world. We may all become Iranian some day.
A friend on Facebook (which is to say they are a Russian spy), linked to a New York Times article (recently bought by Pravda) about a woman who was arrested after leaving her four-year-old son in the car in the parking lot on a cool day with the windows ajar and child locks engaged. Our Facebook friend was outraged at the woman’s arrest, and for good reason. A couple years ago we protested a “driving while using our cellphone” ticket (as in all matters, we were completely innocent) and while we waited watched the case before ours where a sixteen-year-old girl had been arrested for being in a park after dark. The girl was accompanied in court by her Mom, and was let go eventually with a fine. We found the fact she was arrested at all to be ridiculous. If she was in the park after dark, just tell her to get out. Everything is criminalized in America nowadays. A book that, full confession, we have not read but confirms our bias (even INTN is susceptible to bias) so we quote it anyway, asserts that the average American commits 3 felonies per day without knowing it. So even as we aim to commit a fourth infraction today, we discuss China’s household debt, explore the young of Africa and examine where size matters. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, the Jesse James, Pretty Boyd Floyd, John Dillinger of international information and data.
PS INTN will be MIA next week but back the week after.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
How Many Miles Do I Earn Buying that Condo?
As the U.S. slid into the Great Recession in 2007, U.S. household debt was both a worry and a possible culprit for the cause of the economic destruction. In the ensuing years, Americans deleveraged though recently we are again incurring more debt. But what if we told you China, the land of the great saver, now has a household debt to income ratio larger than the United States? Actually it’s Christopher Balding telling you in an article in the Nikkei Asian Review, “Despite China’s reputation as a nation of savers, its households embarrassingly now hold more debt than those of the U.S. and Japan…” Chinese are still savers but they are also on a borrowing binge, with household debt growing around 20% per year. Much of this borrowing, including worrisomely borrowing on credit cards, is focused on buying housing which has been such a great investment for Chinese over the last 20 years. We sometimes view Balding as being too hard on China, but the household debt situation is one to keep an eye on.
The Young and the Restless
Last week we wrote of the underrated Ethiopia, touting as one of its assets its young demographics. As it turns out, the ten youngest populations are all located in Africa with Niger* the youngest, followed by Uganda, Chad and Angola. The African Institute for Development Policy (AIDP) considers these demographics with both a dose of optimism and worry. It notes, as we have, that there is a demographic dividend for young countries since GDP only grows through a combination of increased productivity and increased working-age populations. These young African countries will all have growing working age populations in the coming years. But what about productivity? As the AIDP notes, “What kind of future is in store for another billion plus African people? The answer to this very much depends on the policies that Africans undertake to ensure their populations receive quality education, affordable and quality health care, decent jobs, and so on. The demographic dividend is neither guaranteed nor is it automatic.” Perhaps Ethiopia will be a model for them as early Asian Tigers were for countries throughout Asia.
*We recently discovered the Niger musician, Bombino. As you see in this video, he’s a revelation as a guitar player and performer.
Bombino – Adounia Idagh-Live musée des confluences Lyon
Size Matters
Speaking of population, there is increasingly a change from worries about overpopulation to trying to increase the size of a countries population. Japan, of course, started shrinking a couple years ago. But China has concerns too, thus the end of the one-child restriction in 2016 changing to allowing two children per family. Now some are calling for even that more lenient restriction to be abolished. China’s slowing population growth is creating a variety of challenges, including an aging population. The situation has become so dire that, according to Inkstone News, the province of Liaoning is considering paying people to have babies.” Desperate for a baby boom, the local government is exploring ways to reward couples for having a second child, which may include tax, education and housing benefits, according to a development plan released this month.” The province is desperate because the region’s fertility rate is only 0.9. We expect China’s central government to weigh in on this issue soon.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, we majored in mathematics in college. One upper division class we took in our junior year focused on complex numbers. We were in a haze all semester unable to grasp the concepts, but we dutifully crunched our equations and got an A nonetheless, making us suspicious of good grades ever since. We were reminded of this when reading the article, The Peculiar Math that Could Underlie the Laws of Nature. It features the mathematician Cohl Furey who does understand complex numbers and uses them to explain fundamental forces of the universe. But Cohl Furey, it turns out, is also a fan of New Orleans, which in an alternate, more sane universe, (one explained by complex numbers apparently) would be at its center. Like many trailblazers, Furey’s theories were disbelieved at first but “she told a colleague that if she didn’t find work in academia she planned to take her accordion to New Orleans and busk on the streets to support her physics habit.” We still don’t understand complex numbers but we do understand New Orleans. So even as we explore the Life of Xi, identify the world’s most underrated country and determine who wants self-driving cars the most, we present the video below in honor of Furey’s work to understand the laws of nature. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, the string theory of international news and data, but more understandable.
The Honeypots, Latin Girls, 9th Ward Fest
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Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
The Life of Xi
China is changing profoundly under President Xi Jinping. As we have noted in this space, Xi is more assertive on the world stage, inaugurated the ambitious One Belt One Road Initiative, has instituted a corruption crackdown (your definition of “corruption” may vary) and has introduced far more censorship into Chinese society, especially on the Internet. And, of course, President Xi has taken a more central role in governance, including eliminating the two term presidential limit. And now comes data that Xi receives more mentions in the People’s Daily (the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party) than any Chinese leader since Mao. As you see in the graph below provided by China data tweeter Air Moving Device, “Comparing Xi to previous Chinese leaders in terms of People’s Daily front-page mentions, Xi is close to being mentioned every single day, which is Mao’s record during the Cultural Revolution.” Of course, who knows if Xi will maintain this rate of mentions for as long as Mao did or if Xi will march down the dark roads Mao trod, or one hopes, instead hike up sunnier, more beneficial paths.
The World’s Most Underrated Country?
Ethiopia is bucking troubling world trends and in doing so is sneakily competing for the title of world’s most underrated country. It has been the fastest growing economy in Africa for the last ten years, is the 12th largest country by population and has young demographics (40 percent of the population is under the age of 14), which is important for continued GDP growth and innovation. And in the last two weeks not only has Ethiopia formally ended hostilities with its former combatant, Eritrea, but this week Ethiopia’s Prime Minister has called for the country to become a multi-party democracy. Reuters reports that the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff tweeted, “PM Abiy concluded: Given our current politics, there is no option except pursuing a multiparty democracy supported by strong institutions that respect human rights and rule of law.” The PM’s party, Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (always be suspicious of parties that combine the words “people, revolutionary and democratic”), has maintained power since 1991. But the winds are a changing and Ethiopia could become Africa’s first economic Lion similar to the tigers that once rose out of Asia. Our fingers are crossed.
Who Wants Self-Driving Cars the Most?
We have long asserted that because of regulatory and cultural factors, self-driving cars are likely to first take off commercially in countries other than the United States.A new survey by Ipsos buttresses our assertion. IPSOS surveyed 21,000 people across 28 countries and found that the United States came in 18th among country populations who “would own a self-driving car as their main form of use.” Malaysia came in first, followed by Peru, Colombia, Chile and Argentina. In fact, developing countries favored the use of self-driving cars far more than developed countries, perhaps reflecting their worse traffic and unfamiliarity with Uber (We joke! Kind of). Among those countries’ populations who “would not use a self-driving car,” Germany tops the list, followed by Great Britain, Canada, France and the United States. If we are to guess, we predict self-driving cars will first become ubiquitous commercially in Singapore, followed by China.
Update: Waymo and Walmart aim to prove us wrong
Memory is a funny thing. It is remarkably unreliable. We have a memory that we once met one of the Russian interpreters for Mikhail Gorbachev but for the life of us we don’t remember the circumstances. We think it may have been on one of our business trips to Russia many years ago. We are fairly certain the interpreter worked the Reykjavik Summit for Gorbachev when he and Reagan agreed to radically reduce nuclear armaments, but we have no memory of any stories the interpreter told us of Reykjavik, or anything else for that matter. This seems odd and makes us question whether we really did meet this person. There have been many studies that show eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. But so often we take eyewitness testimony as gospel. If I ever testify in a trial, don’t believe me, or at least verify what I say. It’s like the lyric from the song, Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues: “Don’t believe anyone and most of all don’t believe me.” What you can believe, however, is how coal has been hit in the Solar Plexus in India, AI medical progress in China and the surprising news about which countries are most inclusive. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, hoping to someday meet and talk with one of the two interpreters who worked the Helsinki summit.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Coal Hit in the India Solar Plexus
Since practically the inception of INTN, we have pointed out the Moore’s Law-like increase of solar power generation. New data from India shows this trend continuing. You’ll notice in the chart below that solar generation nearly doubled from 2016 to 2018 (there was a blip reversal from 2014 to 2015). You’ll also note that the generation of new coal plants are falling off a cliff. That’s because, as James Wimberely points out, “new solar can beat existing coal on price by 20%.” Even more important for the future, gains in storage efficiency and price continue to make remarkable progress: “With the rate of decline in battery prices, they will be competing directly with peakers [INTN: power plants for peak demand times] in a few years and beating them consistently by the mid-2020s. The energy revolution is in full swing even if not everyone is recognizing it.
Doctors and Truck Drivers?
There is much fear mongering about China. China’s closed markets are a concern, as are its continued and deepening censorship. But fears of China’s rapidly developing AI capability are misplaced. The world’s economy is a bakery not the standard metaphorical pie. When China, or any other country, develops new technology it will benefit the world, not just themselves. We are not competing over finite slices of pie–the more bakers the more treats. Case in point is the joint ventureof a Singaporean tech company, Hanalytics, and China’s prestigious Tiantan Hospital that has developed a medical AI dubbed Biomind. “After months of deep learning, the machine was ready for a competition against 25 experienced doctors at Beijing’s China National Convention Center testing their ability to analyze images of the brain.” Spoiler alert, Biomind won. Quite easily. Biomind and the doctors competed both on detecting brain tumors in brain images and on images related to strokes. “When the results came in, Biomind beat the doctors squarely in both rounds. In round one, it correctly answered 87% of the questions, versus 66% for the doctors. In round two, it won by 83% to 63%.” The machines will only get better, more adaptable and able to do more medical procedures. Humans? We’ll still be running the medical equivalent of four minute miles. This will be a challenge for human employment but that would be the case whether AI is developed in China, the U.S. or Burkina Faso.
Who is Most Inclusive?
Immigration and border disputes around the world are illustrative of our seemingly divisive age. But even in today’s climate, some countries are more inclusive than others. It won’t surprise you that according to an annual IPSOS Global Advisor survey, Canada is the most inclusive country in the world. But you may be surprised, given recent developments, to see the United States ranked second. In fact, on the question on how accepting people are for naturalized citizens, the U.S. tops the rankings. The IPSOS index scores countries on inclusiveness “reflecting social acceptance of diversity as it applies to religion, immigration, sexual orientation and gender identity, political views, and criminal background.” They surveyed 20,000 people in 27 countries. Of these 27, and we’re not sure how they picked these three cubed number of countries, Saudi Arabia came in last, just behind Malaysia and Serbia.
We traveled on business to Eastern Washington state earlier this week. Because the area is sparsely populated, when we finished our dinner meeting we drove outside the small town to gaze at the star-lit sky, something usually obscured in city-lit Seattle. But nature, ever mysterious, hid the stars with a layer of clouds. It was a windy night and we patiently waited for the sky to reveal itself. Of course, nature is full of revelations, three of which we discovered over the last week when we learned spiders can fly, ants pass the mirror test and Panamanian monkeys can use tools. Wait, spiders can fly?!!! Yes, arachnophobes out there, spiders use the positively charged atmosphere and their negatively charged webs to fling themselves into the air, often traveling miles at a time. Are you frightened? Not nearly enough. And, yes, ants are one of only nine known animal species that recognize themselves in a mirror. And Panamanian monkeys have recently been discovered to use stones to smash nut shells. No word on whether an obelisk has been discovered in that part of Panama. So while humans distract themselves with short-term, inane distractions, political, cultural and otherwise, remember there’s a whole universe out there waiting to be understood better. And in that manner, as we await a break in the clouds, we present the real reason for Mexico’s elevated violence, insights from China’s box office, and where in the world there’s the most corruption. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, closing our agape mouth whenever we are outside now that we know spiders can fly.
Spiders Spin Balloons to Fly Away | National Geographic
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Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Mexico, Lead and Violence
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador won a relatively easy election for president in Mexico a few weeks ago. Mexicans want change, including and especially because of the crime and violence in the country. In fact, in declaring victory election night, AMLO (as he is known, which is a strange acronym for a politician to adopt–“Am low”—granted that’s in English, but still), said, “We are absolutely certain that this evil [corruption] is the principle cause of social inequality and of economic inequality,” he said. “Because of corruption, violence has erupted in our country.” We take no position on whether AMLO (it is easier to type than his full name!) will be a good or bad president, but in regards to crime we again remind ourselves of the role lead plays in the rise and fall of crime. Our go-to person on this is Kevin Drum who recently wrote, “Mexico didn’t start to phase out leaded gasoline until 1990, and average blood lead levels were at or above 15 μg/dl until then, especially in rural areas… Mexico…had a generation of kids born as late as 2000 with BLLs this high. The fact that violence is endemic 18 years later is no big surprise. In another decade, things should be a lot better.” We predict a decade from now, when violent crime is way down in Mexico, there will be many claiming credit, including possibly AMLO, but not enough attention will be paid to the elimination of lead from the environment as the cause.
Boxing Office China
The cultural trends in movies used to be a good barometer for a country. That’s changed a bit with the explosion of other media, but two recent developments in China’s cinema are still worth taking note of and perhaps illustrative of its challenges as it continues to step up to the top rung of influential countries. Last week, Chinese authorities called for the capping of movie stars’ salaries: “The salaries of on-screen performers should be capped at 40% of the total production costs, according to a joint notice from five government agencies. Leading actors should receive no more than 70% of total wages for the cast, according to the announcement, published in Xinhua.” The unintended consequences of this directive will be fascinating to watch play out: Scene 1: a fancy house with an actor lying by the pool. She gets off the phone with her agent who has negotiated a contract that works around the pay restrictions. And, cut. Scene 2: Male actor in the executive lounge at the airport preparing to fly outside of China for a role that pays more than the restriction allows. And cut. This new directive takes place at the same time that one of the most popular movies in China is a black comedy based on a true story of a leukemia patient smuggling cancer drugs from India into China. Such imported drugs were previously taxed at draconian levels. We expect most people, including officials, will miss the connection between these two China movie articles. Incentives/disincentives often are ignored in policy makers efforts to shape the world to their desires.
《我不是药神》Dying to Survive || 曝国际版预告 双面徐峥异国寻药 金钱欲望戏剧性彰显
Where is the Corruption
We see corrupting influences every day, or at least they’re splashed across our screens. But what are the least and most corrupt countries? Transparency International’s recentlyreleased annual Corruptions Perception Index aims to provide the answers. The least corrupt countries last year were New Zealand, Denmark (also ranked the happiest country in the world—is there a correlation?), Finland, Norway and Switzerland. The most corrupt? You can probably guess the axis of the crooked: Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen. The best performing region is Europe, the worst are Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It turns out a free press is important to shooing corruption away. According to the report, “Further analysis of the results indicates that countries with the least protection for press and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) also tend to have the worst rates of corruption.” Support your local journalist and you will save money on bribes.
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A few years ago a friend of ours posted a video on Facebook of their then young daughter playing the drums. At one point, the delightfully cute girl does a complicated riff and then flashes a smile at her Dad holding the camera, pleased at pulling off the complicated percussion maneuver. We were reminded of this watching the viral video earlier this week of young miss Yoyoka Soma playing the drums to Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times Bad Times.” Yoyoka, who was competing in the 2018 Hit Like a Girl contest, a percussion competition designed to encourage little, old and every other type of drummer girls. Yoyoka, as you see below, is a remarkable drummer, especially for an 8-year-old, but really she bangs the drums well for anyone of any age. John Bonham, the late Led Zeppelin drummer, is her idol. Yoyoka is already able to drum like Bonham, seems to be much better emotionally, and is on her way to becoming a worldwide sensation despite the fact she did not win the contest (??!!!!–hard to imagine someone better than her). The future is in good hands, or at least the future of drumming. Meanwhile, Yoyoka’s crazy good riffs inspire us to examine how the U.S. has created a time machine to the future for China, worry over Saudi Arabia’s hate canal, and present you with our favorite story of the year. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, deciding international cases of international information and data with Solomonic-like judgment.
『Hit Like A Girl Contest 2018』Good Times Bad Times – LED ZEPPELIN / Cover by Yoyoka , 8 year old drummer
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In honor of America’s Independence Day Celebration, INTN will be off next week marinating a variety of international data to throw on the grill and shooting off fireworks of international information that will land on your laps on July 12th. Be prepared for the international BBQ of your life.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Accelerating Into the Future
Many have forecast that as the 20th was the American Century, the 21st is likely to be the Chinese Century. Although we are nearly a fifth of the way through the 21st (yikes, how did that happen?), most felt China would not solidify its leadership until perhaps the 2040s or 2050s. But the current U.S. president’s actions to upturn the global order are accelerating us into the future Marty McFly-like (with hair eerily similar to Doc Brown’s). We have new evidence of the China Power Acceleration (CPA). According to the South China Morning Post, “China and the European Union will set up a working group to revamp the World Trade Organisation to counter US unilateralism.” Whether this working group can be successful, given the EU has the same concerns about China’s protectionism and closed markets as the U.S. does, is an open question. But the fact that the EU and China are trying is remarkable and would have been unthinkable before the U.S.’s recent trade skirmishes with both regions. Meanwhile, a retired major general in the Chinese army during a panel discussion on the South China Sea called for a rewriting of the international based order to accommodate China’s growth. The article says the Major General claimed “the shortcomings of the rules-based order was they either had limited capacity to accommodate China’s growth or China’s rapid rise meant it had outgrown the rules.” She went on to say, “We and other players have to think of a way to fix this rules-based order to update it.” And finally, in a major foreign policy speech, President Xi said China will “advance power diplomacy” on its own terms. Like continental drift or losing a sock in the laundry, China’s ascent was inevitable. But U.S. political and policy chaos is an earthquake or dropped laundry basket accelerating it.
No Man is an Island, but a Country?
You may remember that Saudi Arabia has been in a simmering conflict with its neighbor Qatar the past year over a number of issues. That has been covered in the news numerous times. But you may not know that Saudi Arabia is so upset it has plans, in fact is taking bids from private companies, to build a canal on its 38-mile border with Qater and turn the isthmus into an island. According to Business Insider, “reports indicate five international companies have been invited to bid for the project, called the “Salwa Channel,” with a deadline set for Monday. Sources told Makkah, a Saudi Arabian newspaper, that Saudi authorities will announce the winner of the contract deal within 90 days, and hope to complete the canal by the end of the year.” That’s definitely upping, or rather uprooting, the stakes of the Saudi cold war with Qatar. Perhaps more alarming, the Makkah newspaper further reports that “part of the canal would also be converted into a military base and a nuclear waste burial site.” Saudi Arabia is literally trying to turn Qatar into an island with a moat of nuclear waste. Stay tuned.
Our favorite Story Yet: Angry Tea Table Flipping Contest
In an age of anger and outrage, at a time when it is easy to feel helpless and alone, leave it to Japan—the most unique culture in the world—to provide the perfect anecdote. Last week, you see, was the 12th Annual Angry Tea Table Flipping Contest. And yes we are ashamed it took us a dozen years to discover this contest in which “participants must shout a phrase of anger, frustration, passion, or hope, while upending a small table and sending it flying.” How does it work specifically, you ask? According to Sora News 24, “An elderly woman in cooking garb is seated next to the contestant and when she touches their shoulder and gently asks them to ‘stop,’ that’s their cue to flip out both figuratively and literally.” That is, they flip the small tea table which holds various items, including a plastic fish. Winners are determined both on style points and the distance the plastic fish travels in the air. And what are the participants to shout before flipping the table? “Participants can shout about whatever their hearts desire. Rages this year included a man addressing all women with a ‘What’s wrong with me?!’ On the other hand, affirmations such as ‘I want a job offer’ or ‘I deserve a raise’ could also be heard.” We feel that if this contest was made mandatory worldwide, 73 percent of the problems plaguing this orbiting globe would be solved.
心の叫びで「サンマ」飛ばす 岩手でちゃぶ台返し大会
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We realize we live in an age where people, including presidents, assert up is down, down is up and cages are chain-linked fences, but nonetheless we rage, rage against the dying of the light of truth, as Dylan Thomas’ ne’er-do-well cousin might write. While stuck in Seattle’s increasingly bad traffic (this is a fact), we listened to someone on the radio discussing Seattle’s expanding homeless problem (also a fact though what to do about homelessness is more complicated) note that the homelessness problem is leading to an increase in crime (not a fact). The news media continues to cover crime like it’s a crisis. But as Kevin Drum points out, it’snot. Crime rates in Seattle, and just about everywhere, are down. Murder, rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, thefts, auto thefts and arson are all down from past years. Way down from ten years ago and way, way down (excuse the technical statistics term) from twenty and thirty years ago. Seattle, the United States, much of the world, is far more safe than in the past. And yet we act and talk as if it’s the opposite. Certainly the U.S. president does so for political reasons, it’s advantageous to him if we are scared. What’s the rest of our excuse? As we walk in the park late at night, fearless and confident, we examine all the beer in India, worry about the great separation in China and consider TV versus the Internet. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, avoiding baseball mascots so we can safely bring you news of the world.
*Note we have late breaking news that we could not fit into this week’s edition, but look for our favorite story of the year next week.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
All the Beer in India
We are not as worried about climate change as some people. Not because we don’t think it is happening or because we are unconcerned about its effects but because we observe increasing evidence we are going to solve this large problem. Case in point, Anheuser-Busch is starting to brew its beer in India using solar power. According to Quartz, “Anheuser-Busch’s Mysuru plant that brews Budweiser beer will soon be powered up to 80% by solar energy, making it the company’s third facility globally to run on renewable power.” In fact, the world’s largest brewer said late last year that by 2025 it plans to produce all of its beer using solar power. Now if they could only brew beer that’s worth drinking. The point is, of course, that no matter how the U.S. government or other government’s change policy, in the mid-term technology is making renewable energy more affordable than polluting energies. Industry will gravitate to these sources. Now the mid-term may be too long to prevent some of the effects of climate change gas emissions. Ice is already melting rapidly in Antarctica, for example, which will lead to seas rising sooner than anticipated. People are right to be alarmed at the specter of climate change. And we’re worried too but heartened that Canadian scientists have developed a technology that allows them to capture carbon at a cost of $94 per ton (time to impose tariffs on Canadian scientists). At that price they use the captured carbon to produce fuel at $1 per liter, according to the research published in the scientific journal Joule. Climate change is real, its effect possibly devastating, but there are solutions on the way. We don’t advocate complacency but we keep at least one eye on other worries for which there are not yet solutions coming down the pike.
The Separation
China is an amazing place and it deserves praise and notice for its economic development that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty the last thirty years. But China also has faults and challenges and one that is not receiving enough attention is its treatment of Muslims. A scary and sobering post in The Interpreter, a publication of the Australian Lowry Institute, details the apparent building of concentration camps for Muslim minorities throughout the far west of China. The article claims “recent research by a handful of academics and journalists has meticulously documented the construction of a vast network of “collective re-education centres” across Xinjiang.” The article cites a variety of other research documenting the camps and the abuse of Muslims. We now have a handful of accounts about life inside Xinjiang’s secretive gulag, where detainees are subjected to around-the-clock political indoctrination and forced to denounce their culture and religion. Omir Bekali was detained without a legal warrant and held for eight months in a squalid, overcrowded camp in Karamay. After his release, he told AP News that he was placed in solitary confinement, physically tortured, and deprived food.” This is not something we have tracked very closely–there is limited attention spans for outrages and more than enough outrageous behavior to go around, but this one deserves more of our attention.
Internet vs. TV: The Media Medium Cage Match
We end on a slightly lighter note. Or do we? It depends on your view of TV and the Internet, I suppose. According to the media agency, Zenith, which tracks these things, next year for the first time the world will spend more time on the Internet than watching TV. Personally, we’ve been doing that for years, though sometimes we do both at the same time, especially when watching sporting events. So the world is catching up with us. “People will spend an average of 170.6 minutes a day, or nearly three hours, using the internet for things like shopping, browsing social media, chatting with friends, and streaming music and video in 2019, a recent report by media agency Zenith estimated. That’s a tad more than the 170.3 minutes they’re expected to spend watching TV.” The Internet already rules over what once was derided as the Idiot Box (and yet the reverse Flynn Effect–IQ scores going down–didn’t occur in the age of television but only now in the Internet age) in Asia and the Middle East but still lags far behind in Latin America and Western Europe. Europeans and Latinos clearly need to watch more cat videos.
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Forget the Fish, Eat the TouristsMaybe a decade ago we were chatting with our Uncle in New York City, while eating a 
The Most Educated SocietiesWhich countries are most educated, or at least have the highest percentage of their population with a tertiary (college or above) education? It turns out Canada is number one, followed by Japan, Israel, South Korea and the U.K. The U.S. comes in number six, just ahead of Australia and Finland. All of these countries are above the OECD average of 35.7 percent. Italy, Tukey and Mexico bring up the rear among OECD countries. Note the correlation, or lack thereof, to today’s first story.
