The Economist (Web Edition) - November 23, 2024

[11月 22, 2024]
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The world this week
Politics
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
Ukraine fired the first longer-range missiles supplied by America into

Russia, after Joe Biden gave permission for the weapons to be used. The
Army Tactical Missile System has a range of 300km (186 miles). ATACMS
targeted a military facility in Russia’s Bryansk region. Russia said it shot
the missiles down; Ukraine said it had hit an arms depot 110km inside
Russia. Britain reportedly allowed Ukraine to use long-range Storm
Shadow missiles, which targeted Russia’s Kursk region. America closed its
embassy in Kyiv after receiving information about a specific Russian air
attack. American officials said the decision to close the building was made
out of “an abundance of caution.
Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, signed an order that lowers the threshold for
Russia’s use of nuclear arms. The new doctrine allows Russia to launch
nuclear missiles at a nuclear-armed country that merely supports any other
country’s attack on Russia. And also to fire the weapons in response to a
“critical threat” to Russia’s sovereignty. The decree was planned for a long
time, but the timing of Mr Putin’s signature rattled some in the West.
The G20’s statement at the conclusion of its summit in Rio de Janeiro

weakened its support for Ukraine compared with its recent declarations,
omitting any mention of Russia. The G20 also failed to promise any
transition away from fossil fuels, though it did call for more aid for climate
change, as well as taxes on the very rich and poverty relief.
Germany described the latest damage to two underwater communications

cables in the Baltic Sea as sabotage. Suspicion fell on a Chinese-registered
vessel that had docked in Russia. Separately, Britain, France, Germany,
Italy, Poland and Spain issued a joint statement declaring that “Russia is
systematically attacking European security architecture.”
Huge protests against a Russian-investment bill in Abkhazia, a region of

Georgia that declared its independence in 1999, caused Aslan Bzhaniya to
step down as its leader. The protesters, who support Abkhazia’s ties with
Russia, said the bill had been designed to favour the interests of the
Bzhaniya regime. Only Russia and a handful of other countries recognise
Abkhazia’s independence.
Rural affairs
Thousands of British farmers descended on London to protest against the

government’s decision to apply inheritance tax to farms. Officials claim that
the changes will affect 500 estates. Farmers disagree, and say 70,000 farms
will be hit. Celebrity farmers, such as Jeremy Clarkson, supported the
tooting tractors. Farmers also demonstrated in France, over an EU-
Mercosur trade deal, but were more robust in their protest than the genteel
Brits. The French dumped manure and rotting food outside government
buildings and burned hay bales.
Donald Trump filled out more appointments for his new government with
loyal supporters. They include Howard Lutnick, the boss of Cantor
Fitzgerald, who was nominated as commerce secretary, and Linda
McMahon, best known for her connections to professional wrestling. She
was nominated to lead the Department of Education, which Mr Trump
hopes to grip in a half nelson by threatening to abolish it.
Transit officials in New York approved a rejigged congestion-charging

scheme, which could come into force in Manhattan’s central business
districts on January 5th. The scheme was supposed to start in June, but it
was paused by New York state’s governor, Kathy Hochul. She claimed the
cost was too high for working- and middle-class households. The daily
charge has been reduced to $9.
Antony Blinken, the American secretary of state, took to X to declare that

Edmundo González is the “president-elect” of Venezuela. It was the first
time that the United States has recognised the opposition candidate as
president-elect since July’s election. Nicolás Maduro’s regime maintains
that it won, but has refused to release voting tallies which might provide
evidence of its victory. Mr Maduro is due to be re-inaugurated on January
10th.
Brazilian police arrested four members of an elite army unit and one police
officer who are accused of plotting to kill President Luiz Inácio Lula da
Silva days before his inauguration in January 2023. The plot was part of a
plan to keep the then incumbent president, Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right former
army captain, in power after he lost the 2022 election. Separately, a
supporter of Mr Bolsonaro blew himself up outside Brazil’s Supreme Court.
Doctors Without Borders, widely known as MSF, suspended its operations

in Haiti’s capital over worsening security. The charity’s staff have been
threatened and an assault on one of its ambulances killed two patients. It
will be missed; only around a quarter of Port-au-Prince’s health facilities
are operating.
Judges in Hong Kong sentenced 45 pro-democracy figures to between four
and ten years in prison in the city's biggest-ever national-security trial. The
activists’ crime was to have held a primary election in 2020 in the hope of
winning control of the legislature. They then planned to demand greater
democracy—or else to vote down the government’s budget and so force the
chief executive to resign. The state called this subversion. America and the
EU criticised the case as politically motivated.
China suffered two more attacks on civilians. Eight people were killed by a
frustrated former student at a vocational college in the city of Yixing. Days
later a man rammed his car into a crowd of school children and pedestrians
in the city of Changde. These follow a similar incident in Zhuhai, where a
man reportedly angry at his divorce settlement killed at least 35 people by
driving his car into a crowd. China has seen a spate of so-called “revenge
on society” attacks in recent months.
American prosecutors charged Gautam Adani, one of India’s best known

businessmen and one of the world’s richest people, in connection with a
scheme that allegedly paid $250m in bribes to Indian officials to obtain
state contracts for a renewables-energy firm owned by his conglomerate.
The prosecutors claim that Mr Adani and seven others defrauded American
investors. The Adani Group denied the allegations. The share prices of its
companies swooned.
Left turn
Sri Lanka’s snap parliamentary election was a landslide win for the left-
wing coalition that supports the president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake. It
took 159 seats in the 225-member legislature. Mr Dissanayake is also the
finance minister and must present a budget, which the IMF will note as it
prepares to release the latest tranche of its loan to the country.
Almost 100 lorries carrying food aid to Gaza were looted by armed
gunmen. Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, the UN’s agency for
Palestinians, said that the breakdown of civil order in Gaza meant it had
become impossible to operate there. The UN said that almost no aid had
reached parts of northern Gaza for 40 days and repeated its warning that
famine was imminent.
At least 36 people were killed in Israeli strikes on the Syrian town of

Palmyra. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that
the attacks had hit a weapons depot and other sites in and around an area
inhabited by families who have relatives in Iranian-backed militias.
Senegal’s ruling party won a parliamentary election. It is a big victory for

the president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who was elected in March
promising radical reforms, which include fighting corruption and having a
bigger say in the country’s oil-and-gas industry.
Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi won an election for president of

Somaliland, defeating the incumbent, Muse Bihi Abdi. Somaliland
declared independence from Somalia in 1991, but it is not recognised by
any country.
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/the-world-
this-week/2024/11/21/politics
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The world this week
Business
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
Spirit Airlines filed for bankruptcy protection, the first big carrier in
America to go bust since American Airlines in 2011. Spirit, a low-cost
airline, has not made an annual profit since 2019 and, like other discount
rivals, has seen ticket prices plunge amid a surplus of seats. In January a
judge blocked its takeover by JetBlue Airways on competition grounds. A
mooted merger with Frontier Airlines also came to naught. Spirit regularly
features at the top of lists of America’s most hated airline, a crowded field.
America’s Department of Justice asked a judge to force Google to sell its

Chrome browser. The judge is considering what Google must do to comply
with his landmark antitrust ruling, which found that it had used improper
means to maintain a monopoly in online search. Google said the
government was pursuing a “radical agenda that goes far beyond the legal
issues”. By next August, well into the Trump administration, the judge will
issue a decision on Google’s remedies, which it may then challenge.
Nvidia produced another solid set of earnings. The chip company’s revenue
rose by 94% in its latest quarter, year on year, to $35.1bn. Net profit soared
by 109%, to $19.3bn. Amid strong demand for its next-generation chips for
artificial intelligence, Nvidia forecast that revenue for this quarter would
come in at $37.5bn, ahead of Wall Street expectations.
The Biden administration finalised an agreement that provides TSMC,

which manufactures about three-quarters of the world’s most cutting-edge
computer chips for Nvidia and others, with $6.6bn in grants to build
factories in America. With an additional $5bn in loans, it is the first big deal
to be completed under the Chips Act of 2022. In October Donald Trump
said that the “chip deal is so bad” because it benefits only “rich companies”.
Xiaomi, a Chinese company best known for its smartphones, provided an

update on its nascent business in electric vehicles. It delivered more than
67,000 of its SU7s in the first nine months of the year, and expects to have
delivered 130,000 by the end of December. Revenue from the EV unit grew
by 52% in the third quarter over the second quarter.
Wither the German miracle
Volkswagen replaced the head of its business in North America. The

German carmaker wants to expand in America to offset declining sales in
China, but its ambitions on that front will become more complicated if Mr
Trump imposes stiff tariffs on foreign-made vehicles. In another indication
of the troubled state of European carmaking Ford announced that it was
cutting 800 jobs in Britain and 2,900 in Germany, which is already
contending with huge lay-offs at VW.
Thyssenkrupp, a German engineering conglomerate, wrote down the value

of its steelmaking business by a further €1bn ($1.1bn) and reported a 12-
month €1.4bn net loss. Daniel Kretinsky, a Czech billionaire with interests
in Britain, including an investment in West Ham football club, owns a 20%
stake in the steel business and is considering raising it to 50%.
The annual rate of inflation in Britain jumped from 1.7% in September to
2.3% in October. Energy bills have gone up after an increase to the cap on
energy prices. But the core inflation rate, which strips out energy and food,
also rose, to 3.3%.
Comcast announced that it will spin off its portfolio of cable channels
housed under NBCUniversal, which includes MSNBC and CNBC, into a
new company. It will retain NBC’s other assets, including the TV broadcast
network, sports coverage and films. More and more viewers are ditching
their cable subscriptions in the age of streaming. Comcast is also keeping
Peacock, the streaming service for NBC programming and movies.
Shareholders in News Corporation voted against a proposal from activist

investors to end the company’s dual-class share structure. The Murdoch
family controls the media group through its voting power in class B shares,
which News Corp argues provides stability.
A judge in New York sentenced Bill Hwang, the founder of Archegos

Capital Management, to 18 years in prison for artificially inflating the value
of stocks in his portfolio. The collapse of Archegos in 2021 led to hefty
losses at banks that dealt with the fund.
Seasonal joy, and pain
Walmart issued a bumper set of earnings and lifted its profit forecast. The
retailer expanded its market share, mostly because more households earning
at least $100,000 are buying its goods. The company’s share price has risen
by 60% this year. By contrast, profit shrank and sales barely grew at
Target. Whereas Walmart raised its outlook heading into the Christmas
shopping season, Target lowered its forecast.
this-week/2024/11/21/business

The world this week
The weekly cartoon

11月 21, 2024 04:45 上午
Dig deeper into the subject of this week’s cartoon:

The opportunities—and dangers—for Trump’s disrupter-in-chief
Elon Musk and Donald Trump seem besotted. Where is their bromance
headed?
How to make Elon Musk’s budget-slashing dreams come true
The editorial cartoon appears weekly in The Economist. You can see last
week’s here.

this-week/2024/11/21/the-weekly-cartoon
The Economist
This week’s cover

How we saw the world
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
THIS WEEK we had two covers. Our cover in most of the world focuses on
Elon Musk. In 2017 Mr Musk called Donald Trump a “con man” and “one
of the world’s best bullshitters”. Now he is the president-elect’s right-hand
man. The alliance of the world’s leading politician and its richest man
creates a concentration of power both want to use to explosive effect: to
slash bureaucracy, detonate liberal orthodoxies and deregulate in the name
of growth. Mr Musk has already begun speaking to foreign leaders and has
been appointed to lead an advisory body, called DOGE, tasked with cutting
government spending. America may have much to gain from reforming the
government. But there are big risks that cronyism and graft, as well as Mr
Musk’s own erratic judgment, could cause harm. If he mounts a half-baked
programme that ends in spectacular failure, the ambition to tackle spending
will be set back for years.
Leader: The opportunities—and dangers—for Trump’s disrupter-in-chief
Briefing: Elon Musk and Donald Trump seem besotted. Where is their
bromance headed?
Briefing: Elon Musk’s transformation, in his own words
Finance: How to make Elon Musk’s budget-slashing dreams come true
In Britain our cover focuses on the debate over assisted dying. We believe
in the liberal principle that people should have the right to choose the
manner of their own death. So do two-thirds of Britons, who for decades
have been in favour of assisted dying for those enduring unbearable
suffering. Yet opposition is growing and Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s prime
minister, has taken up a position on the fence. Westminster MPs look as if
they could vote down a bill on November 29th that would legalise assisted
dying in England and Wales. Most of those who oppose the bill say they do
so because of worries about its details. They would be squandering an
opportunity to enrich people’s fundamental liberties. MPs should reassure
themselves about the details of the bill, and then they should vote for it.
Leader: Why British MPs should vote for assisted dying
Britain: Where British MPs should look before the vote on assisted dying
Britain: Assisted dying and the two concepts of liberty
The World Ahead: Assisted dying could become law in parts of Britain in
2025
By invitation: My assisted-dying bill safely solves a grave injustice, says
Kim Leadbeater
By invitation: Assisted-dying advocates’ claims of freedom have it
backward, says Danny Kruger
this-week/2024/11/21/this-weeks-cover

| Next section | Main menu | Previous section |
Leaders
Why British MPs should vote for assisted dying
It’s time :: A long-awaited liberal reform is in jeopardy
The opportunities—and dangers—for Trump’s disrupter-

in-chief
On another planet :: Elon Musk is given the ultimate target: America’s government
Germany cannot afford to wait to relax its debt brake

Act now, Mr Merz :: It should move before the election
Too many master’s courses are expensive and flaky

Diminishing returns :: Governments should help postgraduates get a better deal
From Nixon to China, to Trump to Tehran

Danger and deals in the Middle East :: Iran is weak. For America’s next president that creates
an opportunity

It’s time
Why British MPs should vote for

assisted dying
A long-awaited liberal reform is in jeopardy
11月 21, 2024 08:28 上午
THIS NEWSPAPER believes in the liberal principle that people should
have the right to choose the manner of their own death. So do two-thirds of
Britons, who for decades have been in favour of assisted dying for those
enduring unbearable suffering. And so do the citizens of many other
democracies—18 jurisdictions have passed laws in the past decade.
Despite this, Westminster MPs look as if they could vote down a bill on
November 29th that would introduce assisted dying into England and
Wales. They would be squandering a rare chance to enrich people’s
fundamental liberties.
The proposal—put forward as a private member’s bill by Kim Leadbeater, a

Labour backbencher—seeks to set out the safeguards that would govern
assisted dying for the terminally ill. This will be a free vote, in which MPs
follow their conscience rather than a party line and Ms Leadbeater has
received no help from the government, even though the prime minister, Sir
Keir Starmer, has said he is in favour. A few weeks ago, it looked as if her
bill would pass. Now opposition is growing and Sir Keir has taken up a
position on the fence.
You might think the debate over assisted dying would be about principles.
But appealing to God or the sanctity of life would no longer succeed in
today’s Britain. Such arguments, however sincere, operate in a space that is
governed by individual conscience, not the state.
What is more, the principle of assisted dying has already been established.
The courts have ruled that doctors can withdraw life support from patients
in a vegetative state. And Britons are free to travel to Switzerland for an
assisted death. Between 2016 and 2022, about 400 people did so.
Ms Leadbeater’s bill extends this logic. Going to Switzerland to die costs

about £15,000 ($19,000); companions risk prosecution. The bill would
make assisted dying open to anyone who qualifies, rich or poor, including
those who need their family to be with them.
Those who can no longer defeat the bill on principle have therefore joined
those who worry about the details. But these arguments do not withstand
scrutiny either.
Much of the running is being made by Wes Streeting, who as health

secretary has argued that access to palliative care is too hit-and-miss to give
terminally ill patients a genuine choice. That is a red herring. The closest
analogue to Ms Leadbeater’s proposed system is in the Australian state of
Victoria, which passed its law in 2017. It gathers data on palliative care and
has found that assisted dying does not happen more often in places where
access is patchier.
In any case Mr Streeting could afford to improve access to palliative care.

Those in the hospice sector in England believe that an extra £350m-400m
of annual statutory funding, around 0.2% of the NHS budget, would allow
them to meet demand fully. Even then, the need for assisted dying would
remain. One reason is that in around 1% of cases, the best palliative care
does not ease physical pain; another is that most people choose assisted
dying because they want autonomy.
In a bold piece of ministerial judo, Mr Streeting also argues that the health
service, which he runs, is too broken to take on the burden of assisted
dying. Yet doctors already routinely make decisions over life and death.
Through the principle of “double effect”, doctors can administer painkillers
to terminal patients knowing that they will cause death. One salutary
consequence of Ms Leadbeater’s bill would be to bring these obscure
judgments into the light, and to involve patients in them.
Critics also raise concerns about the risk of coercion. But that is not
credible in this case. In Ms Leadbeater’s bill a person with around six
months to live must make sustained requests approved by two doctors and a
judge. The idea that an evil relative might go to great lengths to kill
someone who will shortly be dead makes no sense.
Someone may choose an assisted death for fear of being a burden, which is
cited as a reason in four out of ten cases in Oregon, which has had an
assisted-dying law for longest. It would be better if people didn’t feel
burdensome, obviously, but that does not stop them from making rational
choices. Indeed, the option to die may be all the comfort people seek: a fifth
of those handed the medication in Victoria never take it.
Even if opponents of the bill are reassured by these arguments, some cannot
shake the fear that Ms Leadbeater’s law would be a slippery slope. If they
mean that the criteria would sneakily be broadened to include the mentally
ill or disabled without further legislation, then the facts are against them. In
no case has an assisted-dying law restricted to the terminally ill expanded in
this way. In Canada the scope widened, but that was because the courts
enforced broad eligibility criteria derived from the country’s existing
Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
If they mean that future legislation could extend the right to assisted dying
after due debate and consideration, then that is not an argument against, but
a recommendation. In the view of The Economist, Ms Leadbeater’s bill is
drawn too tightly. Oregon and Victoria have shown that a doctor does not
need to be present for the medication to be safe. A High Court judge is
unnecessary when two doctors have already given their opinions. A
prognosis of six months or less to live is arbitrary and imprecise. A 21-day
cooling-off period is too long for people with only a very limited time to
live; in 2021 California reduced this period from 15 days to two. None of
that is an argument for voting down the current bill—indeed it can improve
as it passes through Parliament.
Ms Leadbeater’s bill would have been better if the government had helped
her prepare it, or if Sir Keir had set up a citizens’ assembly that weighed up
the evidence and presented MPs with an agenda. The fact that he did not is
one more example of his passive style of government. But that is not a
reason to reject it, either. We would sooner that more Britons benefit from
greater freedom, choice and dignity than none does. MPs should reassure
themselves about the details of the bill, and then they should vote for it. ■
For subscribers only: to see how we design each week’s cover, sign up to
our weekly Cover Story newsletter.
This article was downloaded by calibre from
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/11/21/why-british-mps-should-vote-for-
assisted-dying

On another planet
The opportunities—and dangers—

for Trump’s disrupter-in-chief
Elon Musk is given the ultimate target: America’s government
11月 21, 2024 08:45 上午
IN 2017 ELON MUSK branded Donald Trump a “con man” and “one of
the world’s best bullshitters”. Now he is known at Mar-a-Lago as Uncle
Elon and is in the president-elect’s inner circle. This week they watched a
rocket launch together. The alliance of the world’s leading politician and its
richest man creates a concentration of power both want to use to explosive
effect: to slash bureaucracy, detonate liberal orthodoxies and deregulate in
the name of growth.
Mr Trump has a mandate for such disruption. Despite America’s economic
prowess, much of Main Street, Wall Street and Silicon Valley is frustrated
by government profligacy and incompetence. They are right to be. The state
needs an overhaul. Yet Musk-led reform risks creating a new problem for
America: the emergence of a combustible, corrupt oligarchy.
Weeks after helping Mr Trump win the election Mr Musk has climbed to
the apex of power. The president-elect has appointed him to a new advisory
body, called DOGE, tasked with slashing spending. Mr Musk is already in
touch with foreign leaders and lobbying for cabinet appointments. It is
hardly the first time a tycoon has had extraordinary influence in America. In
the 19th century robber barons such as John D. Rockefeller dominated the
economy. In the early 20th century, when there was no Federal Reserve,
John Pierpont Morgan acted as a one-man central bank.
Mr Musk’s firms are more global than the big 19th- and 20th-century
monopolies, and smaller if measured by profits to GDP. Musk Inc is worth
the equivalent of just 2% of America’s stockmarket. Its main units are Tesla,
an electric-car firm; SpaceX, his satellite-communications and rocket
business; X, formerly Twitter; and xAI, an artificial-intelligence startup that
was valued at $50bn in a deal this week. These mostly have market shares
below 30% and face real competition. The Economist reckons that 10% of
Mr Musk’s $360bn personal fortune is derived from contracts and freebies
from Uncle Sam, and 15% from the Chinese market, with the rest split
between domestic and international customers.
Mr Musk is also different because he is a disrupter. Rather than exploiting

monopolies to raise prices, or creating a stable banking system as the
foundation for finance, most of Musk Inc uses technology to slash costs in
competitive markets. This disruption is central to Mr Musk’s messianic
ideology, in which innovation conquers humanity’s intractable challenges
from climate change to colonising Mars. Realising these distant goals
depends on a genius for constantly rethinking industrial processes. His
desire for freer action helps explain his contempt for orthodoxies, including
what he regards as woke conformism. From the bureaucrats who allowed
the American government’s space-launch market to be rigged by defence
firms to the Californian box-tickers who regulate Tesla’s factories, he views
the state as an impediment to growth.
Both Mr Trump and Mr Musk want to disrupt the entire federal

government. Mr Musk has said DOGE may aim to cut as much as $2trn
from the $7trn annual federal budget and abolish many agencies. It is easy
to ridicule such goals as naive—$2trn is more than the government’s entire
discretionary spending. But with a budget deficit of 6% of GDP and debt of
almost 100%, reform is needed. The creaking Pentagon machine is
struggling to adapt to the age of drones and AI. Lobbying by incumbent
firms helps explain why federal regulations have reached 90,000 pages,
near an all-time high. Even if Mr Musk achieved only a fraction of his
liberalisation, America could have much to gain.
What, though, are the dangers? One is cronyism and graft. The president-
elect is an economic nationalist and the industries Mr Musk has interests in
have become strategic, thanks to rivalry with China, the militarisation of
space and cross-border disinformation wars. Proximity to power could let
him skew regulations and tariffs and hobble competitors in fields from cars
and cryptocurrency to autonomous vehicles and AI. Since the start of
September the total value of Musk Inc’s businesses has risen by 50% to
$1.4trn, far outperforming the market and its peers, as investors bet that its
boss will be able to extract exceptional rents from his friendship with the
president.
At the same time Mr Musk could bungle, especially when he is outside his
areas of expertise. He has shown erratic judgment in foreign affairs, by
micromanaging the use of the Starlink satellite service in Ukraine and
comparing Taiwan’s status to Hawaii’s. His love of the limelight and
conspiracies, and of the swirl of social media, are worrying. With $50bn of
his personal wealth tied up in China, which hosts half of Tesla’s production,
he is an obvious target for manipulation.
He could also fail before he even starts, because of the combustibility of the
Trump-Musk combination. The next president loves hiring and firing. The
tech tycoon burns through executives and relationships, too. The fusion of
Silicon Valley libertarianism and techno-utopianism with the MAGA
nationalism of Mr Trump’s world is inherently volatile. Reforming
government requires patience and diplomacy, neither of them Mr Musk’s
strong suits.
On another planet
If Mr Musk’s political career proves to be brief, it could still have two

lasting, pernicious effects. One would be to turn politicians away from
reforming government. With his appointment, that goal has received more
attention than ever. But if he mounts a half-baked programme that ends in
spectacular failure, the ambition to tackle spending will be set back for
years.
The other effect would be to normalise collusion between politicians and

tycoons. As the state expands into trade, industrial policy and technology,
the incentives for state capture are growing. At the same time, Mr Trump’s
method involves weakening institutions and practices supposed to guard
against conflicts of interest. America is a long way from behaving like an
emerging market. But if oligarchic business titans habitually worked with
dominant politicians, it would suffer great harm. That used to be
unthinkable; no longer. ■
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our weekly Cover Story newsletter.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/11/21/the-opportunities-and-dangers-for-
trumps-disrupter-in-chief

Act now, Mr Merz
Germany cannot afford to wait to

relax its debt brake
It should move before the election
11月 21, 2024 04:43 上午
GERMAN POLITICIANS and economists have bickered over the

country’s “debt brake” for years. So it was no surprise that a row over the
rule, a constitutional provision that bars the federal government from
running anything other than minuscule budget deficits, finished off Olaf
Scholz’s despised “traffic-light” coalition earlier this month. The good news
is that the consensus for easing the brake to allow more public investment
in bridges, buildings and brigades is now stronger than ever. The bad news
is that a quirk of Germany’s electoral system could stop reform in its tracks.
Germany’s early election, expected on February 23rd, is likely to see Mr
Scholz, from the Social Democrats (SPD), tossed out of the chancellery and
replaced with Friedrich Merz, leader of the centre-right Christian
Democrats (CDU)—assuming that the SPD does not first ditch Mr Scholz
as its candidate for chancellor in favour of Boris Pistorius, the popular
defence minister.
The debt brake was written into the constitution under Angela Merkel, the
previous CDU chancellor, in 2009. But thanks in part to pressure from the
party’s regional chiefs, the CDU is coming round to the need for reform.
Germany’s stagnant economy, which in real terms has barely grown since
before the pandemic, and the need to fund Ukraine and its own army, the
Bundeswehr, have added to the pressure.
The Economist’s preference would be to do away with the debt brake

entirely, but we accept that may be a step too far for many voters. Instead, a
Chancellor Merz would probably agree to ease the debt brake after the
election in exchange for concessions from his coalition partners, perhaps on
welfare or on immigration, as part of the give and take of coalition talks in
Germany. The trouble is that, because the debt brake sits inside the
constitution, amendments to it need two-thirds majorities in both houses of
parliament. And polls suggest that when Germany votes next year, enough
small parties could fall below the 5% threshold needed to enter the
Bundestag to bestow a blocking minority on a pair of fringe parties—the
hard-right Alternative for Germany and the new “left-conservative” Sahra
Wagenknecht Alliance.
To forestall that, the SPD and the Greens, who now form a minority
government, have asked Mr Merz to help them act immediately. Together
with the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, they hold more than two-thirds
of the seats in parliament. The Greens suggest another special fund for the
armed forces, like the one pushed through by Mr Scholz in the wake of
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The SPD has proposed changing the
rules of the debt brake itself.
In the normal course of things, working out the details of such far-reaching
changes would be left until after the election. Making legally sound
distinctions between productive investments and government consumption
is hard. In addition, legal appeals to Germany’s powerful constitutional
court would be inevitable. Mr Merz seems minded to follow this logic,
hoping to obtain as high a price as possible from his coalition partners after
the election.
But the dangers of waiting are too great. Should the AfD and the BSW
achieve their blocking minority, Mr Merz may find himself leading a
government that cannot tackle urgent problems, including Germany’s
crumbling public sector and Ukraine, which could be vulnerable if it had
been forced into a bad peace. In that case, the cash-strapped Mr Merz might
end up being a one-term chancellor. For his own sake, as well as Germany’s
and Europe’s, he should act now. ■
Subscribers to The Economist can sign up to our new Opinion newsletter,

which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and
reader correspondence.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/11/20/germany-cannot-afford-to-wait-to-relax-
its-debt-brake

Diminishing returns
Too many master’s courses are

expensive and flaky
Governments should help postgraduates get a better deal
11月 21, 2024 08:33 上午
FOR YOUNG people with big ambitions, bagging a measly bachelor’s

degree no longer seems enough. Students in America have been rushing
into postgraduate courses, even as demand for higher education among the
general public has declined. These days nearly 40% of university-educated
Americans boast at least two degrees. In Britain a surge in demand from
foreign students has created a huge boom in postgraduate education.
Universities there now dole out four postgraduate qualifications for every
five undergraduate ones.
Master’s degrees lasting one or two years are the biggest draw. These
courses are necessary for jobs, such as teaching in academia, that are
appealing even if poorly paid. Yet many of the people who enroll in
postgraduate study are taking part in an educational arms race. Now that
undergraduate degrees are common, goes the thinking, it takes extra
credentials to get ahead. The hope is that advanced qualifications will boost
all manner of careers.
That is often a mistake. New data are helping researchers compare the
earnings of postgraduates with those of peers who are equally bright but
have only a bachelor’s degree. One analysis suggests that more than 40% of
America’s master’s courses provide graduates with no financial return or
leave them worse off, after considering costs and what they might have
earned anyway. A study in Britain concludes that completing a master’s has,
on average, almost no effect on earnings by the time graduates are 35.
Dreadful returns to lofty qualifications should worry students and

politicians alike. Governments are right to think that investing in skills can
pep up growth—but not when universities are flabby and inefficient. It is
not just students who suffer if poor courses burden them with outrageous
debts; taxpayers do, too. About half the money the American government
lends to students each year is for postgraduate degrees. Generous repayment
and forgiveness schemes mean a big chunk of that will never be repaid.
Governments should respond in two ways. First, they should abandon

policies that are distorting the market for postgraduate study. America does
not limit what it will lend postgraduates for tuition fees. This blank cheque
has created a culture of profligacy in which universities raise fees,
obliterating the financial returns students might ultimately make. Britain
has also slipped up, though in a different and sneaky way. For a decade it
has mostly declined to let universities increase fees for undergraduates,
even as inflation has caused their costs to rise. In order to make up for that
financial shortfall, vice-chancellors have vastly expanded expensive
postgraduate programmes, some of which are of dubious quality.
The second priority for governments should be to give students the data
they need to make better choices. A chasm divides the riches that flow from
getting the most lucrative master’s, such as in computer science, from the
meagre returns of English or film studies. Fees vary wildly by institution,
even for very similar programmes. And yet people shopping for
postgraduate education find it much harder to get hold of information—on
matters such as drop-out rates or probable future earnings—than people
applying for their first degrees.
Masterstroke
America is trying to change this. Under new rules, graduate colleges may
soon be compelled to warn applicants before they sign up for courses that
have a record of saddling students with low wages and high debts. Donald
Trump, who likes to lambast college presidents, should make sure these
changes take place. And regulators in other countries should consider
similar schemes. Higher education ought to make students brainier and
richer. It too often fails to do either. ■

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/11/21/too-many-masters-courses-are-expensive-
and-flaky

Danger and deals in the Middle East
From Nixon to China, to Trump to

Tehran
Iran is weak. For America’s next president that creates an opportunity
11月 21, 2024 08:39 上午
IN WASHINGTON THE “Nixon to China” tagline has lost its attraction.

Both parties are too hostile towards the People’s Republic for a miraculous
reconciliation to be possible. Perhaps, though, Donald Trump can find a
replacement—with Iran. In his first term he ditched the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a nuclear deal signed in 2015, and
promised to negotiate a better one by applying “maximum pressure”. That
didn’t work. Joe Biden sought to reduce tensions with Iran but is leaving
office with the Middle East on fire. In January the president-elect will have
a second chance. He should use it to rescue a relationship that has poisoned
America’s presence in the Middle East for almost five decades.
Mr Trump’s failing the first time round was that no one knew what he
wanted. Was maximum pressure supposed to produce a stronger nuclear
pact? Or was it to force Iran into changing its foreign policy? Or to remove
the regime altogether? Mr Biden made the opposite mistake. His aides
fiddled with the JCPOA and got too soft. Lax enforcement of sanctions
meant that Iran’s oil exports more than tripled after 2020, helping keep the
regime afloat.
A new Iran policy needs to combine stronger pressure with a negotiating

path and more ambitious goals. The pressure is justified. Iran’s behaviour
has been worse than ever. It has produced four bombs’-worth of highly
enriched uranium. Its proxies wage war with Israel and menace trade in the
Red Sea, and its arms-makers churn out missiles and drones for Russia.
People close to Mr Trump say he will move quickly to choke off Iran’s oil
sales. Better enforcement of sanctions would deprive Iran of billions of
dollars in revenue. European signatories to the JCPOA should trigger
“snapback” provisions to restore multilateral sanctions, and America should
put pressure on key trading hubs, including Dubai. America should also
make clear that it holds open the option of a sustained campaign of
bombing to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme.
Pressure is only half the equation. Less obviously, America should match
harsh actions with the promise of something better. Even Gulf states that
once urged maximum pressure now welcome detente. For one thing,
pressure alone may bring about a repeat of Mr Trump’s first term. Tensions
will spiral, and Iran may lash out at Gulf states and American interests.
Another snag is that reviving the JCPOA would not be enough. Stricter
limits on Iran’s nuclear work and intrusive monitoring are needed. A deal
must also include a pledge from Iran that it will limit its missile-
development programme and stop backing regional militias.
Iran has rejected such demands before. Why would it agree now? The
Islamic Republic is at its weakest since the war with Iraq in the 1980s. Its
strategy of deterrence is in tatters. Hizbullah, its strongest proxy, has been
battered by Israel, which has also destroyed much of its air defences,
making bombing nuclear sites easier. Inflation is high and young Iranians
are angry. Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, 85, lacks a successor.
Mr Trump should make clear that regime change is not his goal and avoid
surprises by ensuring that Israel co-ordinates any military action with
America. If Iran meets his demands he could offer a big reward: the
prospect of normal ties. America’s prize would be the prospect of security
in the Middle East, freeing it to focus on Asia. Countless obstacles oppose
such a grand bargain. But Mr Trump loves photo ops. It would be hard to
top the first ever meeting between an American and an Iranian president.
Just imagine: Trump to Tehran. ■

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/11/21/from-nixon-to-china-to-trump-to-tehran

Letters
Letters to the editor
On ADHD, America’s election, Antarctica, canals, difficulties, Quincy Jones, Justin Trudeau ::
A selection of correspondence

On ADHD, America’s election, Antarctica, canals, difficulties, Quincy Jones, Justin Trudeau
Letters to the editor

A selection of correspondence
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
Letters are welcome via email to letters@economist.com
Researching ADHD
I read your article on research that questions whether attention-deficit

hyperactivity disorder should in fact be seen as a disorder (“Coming into
focus”, November 2nd). The use of the term “neurodiversity” is misleading.
An individual does not “have” a neurodiversity, any more than he or she
can “have” any other kind of human diversity. Diversity in, say, the ability
to control one’s attention or susceptibility to distraction is a description of a
statistical fact, not a condition that one catches, inherits or develops. It
arises from innate differences in the biology of individuals as well as the
accuracy of measurements used to describe those differences.
We might add a third kind of diversity based purely on differences in social

constructions about individuals made at different times or in different places
by different families, communities, cultural groups, professional
organisations and so forth. Divergent conclusions are often reached
depending on who is observing one’s manifestations of self-control and
attention.
Moreover, contrary to what your article implies, there are no data to show
that any scientific consensus about ADHD exists. And there is much less
evidence supporting what any specific educational or social response is
required to help optimise individual outcomes over a lifespan. Implying that
there is a consensus has serious policy consequences, not merely scientific
ones.
DR MICHAEL GERBER
Professor emeritus
Gevirtz Graduate School of Education
University of California, Santa Barbara
ADHD has become so common that it often feels as if everyone has it. We
need more scrutiny of the demand and misuse of powerful stimulants that
have a potential for abuse. Could it be that these diagnoses are driven not by
genuine disorder but by societal pressures to boost productivity in adults
and academic performance in children? From my own experience in white-
collar suburbia, it’s an emphatic yes.
TYLER DOERSCHUK
Columbus, Ohio
Trump’s win in perspective
After allowing the election to sink in, I find myself perplexed by your
description of Donald Trump’s victory as “resounding” (“Comeback king”,
November 9th). Ballots are still being counted, but Mr Trump’s margin of
victory in the popular vote is now less than two percentage points, or fewer
than 2.8m votes. Joe Biden won in 2020 with a 4.5-point margin, but it was
never characterised as “resounding”.
Mr Trump’s win in the electoral college was middle of the road, hardly
historic, and not the mandate from the American people it is claimed to be.
Some parts of the media are overreaching in their narrative that this election
shows that Americans hate the Democrats. It is quite fair to analyse why the
Democrats lost, but these sweeping pronouncements may fail the test of
time when in two years the House of Representatives swings away from the
party in power, as has been the case in the mid-terms.
LARRY FATA
New York
The profit motive
“Diplomacy on ice” (November 2nd) described how, without clear

sanctions or accountability, well-intended policies are not enough to protect
the Antarctic from unchecked exploitation. The Antarctic treaty says no one
can own Antarctic real estate. Yet all are welcome to extract resources.
As it turns out, the budding private space industry has long viewed the
treaty as an ideal template for future space-settlement policy. The notion of
not owning land fits neatly with its idealism. But now that the industry’s
focus is shifting from satellites and space stations to commercial and
military bases on or proximate to the Moon, the idealistic arrangements of
the Antarctic treaty seem unrealistic and unenforceable at best. Going to
space for purely scientific inquiry has been eclipsed by the same factors that
fuelled European expansion in the New World and unleashed interest in
Antarctica: profit and power.
DR JACK GREGG
Whittier, California
Great canal journeys
The value of Britain’s extensive and historic canal network is much greater
than providing a cheaper place to live than on land (“Life on the water”,
November 2nd). The towpaths themselves are heavily used for cycling,
walking, fishing and tourism. The waterways are vital habitats for wildlife
and vegetation. Plans to transfer water from the north-west to the south and
east will provide vital environmental benefits as the climate changes. Canal-
boat trips and water sports, or simply messing about in boats, are an
incalculable contribution to well-being and mental health. Underfunding the
Canal and River Trust, which is hard pressed to look after them properly, is
a short-sighted way of planning for the generations to come.
DAVID WOLFSON
Chair
Milton Keynes Canals
A difficult problem
Thank you, Francis Cubitt, for drawing attention to the disappearance of the
word “problem” (Letters, November 2nd). The same fate has befallen
“difficult”, which has been linguistically cleansed in favour of
“challenging”. Circumstances can be challenging but often they are difficult
or just plain impossible. Calling the situation in Ukraine or Gaza
challenging befits one of Oscar Wilde’s dowagers. Equally, saying your
child has issues rather than problems might sound kinder, but the prejudice
remains.
Other words that have fallen foul of modern middle-class mores are
“discuss”, “debate” and “argue”. All have been submerged by
“conversation”. For me, a conversation is about the weather or a friend’s
holiday. Would that Wilde or George Orwell were here to mock these verbal
gymnastics.
WILLIAM DOLBEN
Madrid
The dude
Your obituary on Quincy Jones said rightfully, or maybe only hopefully,

that, “After ‘Thriller’ there was no ‘white music’ and ‘black music’; all cats
sang all sorts” (November 9th). I like the story of when Jones studied with
Nadia Boulanger, who taught Aaron Copland. After teaching sessions he
would bring her canned peaches and she’d bring a bottle of Beaujolais. She
told him that “Your music will never be more or less than you are as a
human being.”
Jones later pondered that “It’s okay to play fast and all that other stuff, but
unless you have a life experience, and have something to say that you lived,
you have nothing to contribute at all. So I decided to live my life, and I
did.”
STEVE CROCKETT
St John’s College
Annapolis, Maryland
Can’t get no satisfaction
You described Justin Trudeau’s identity politics as “sanctimonious” (“The

dying of the light”, October 19th). A local journalist once remarked that the
Canadian system of government is a sanctimocracy: rule by the holier-than-
thou.
ROBERT GENTLE
Johannesburg
The antipathy of Canadians towards their prime minister was quite apparent
when, in the middle of this summer’s Rolling Stones concert in Vancouver,
Mick Jagger commented on his long-standing friendship with the Trudeau
family and was roundly booed. Mick quickly pivoted to the recent success
of the Canadian soccer team.
GARY PHILLIPS
Seattle
https://www.economist.com/letters/2024/11/21/letters-to-the-editor
By Invitation
My assisted-dying bill safely solves a grave injustice, says
Kim Leadbeater
Britain’s end-of-life debate :: One of a pair of essays in which members of Parliament argue
their cases
Assisted-dying advocates’ claims of freedom have it

backward, says Danny Kruger
Britain’s end-of-life debate :: One of a pair of essays in which members of Parliament argue
their cases

Britain’s end-of-life debate
My assisted-dying bill safely solves

a grave injustice, says Kim
Leadbeater
One of a pair of essays in which members of Parliament argue their cases
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
MEMBERS OF BRITAIN’S Parliament will soon get their first opportunity

in almost a decade to vote on extending the choices available to terminally
ill people at the end of their lives. The second-reading debate on November
29th is an important occasion, although it will be far from the last word on
the matter.
If my bill passes, it will be scrutinised by a representative committee of

MPs, followed by detailed debates in both parliamentary houses, the
Commons and the Lords. It is open to amendment and will only become
law if both houses approve it.
If the bill is rejected, however, it is unlikely to be considered again for

many years. The government maintains that it is for Parliament to decide
through a private members’ bill, so there is no prospect of government
ministers proposing their own bill. And if this law—widely acknowledged
as the most thorough, well-drafted and safest piece of legislation on the
subject ever debated in Parliament—should fail, no other MP is likely to
have any prospect of success.
So the choice before MPs is between continuing the debate on my bill, with
all the protections and safeguards it contains, or agreeing that the status quo
is acceptable—and with it, in the words of the prime minister, Sir Keir
Starmer, “an injustice…trapped within our current arrangement”.
That injustice, which Sir Keir identified when he was director of public
prosecutions (DPP) and voted to change when first elected as an MP, is
profound. The 1961 Suicide Act makes it a criminal offence punishable by
up to 14 years in prison to assist another person in taking their own life. Sir
Keir, as DPP, issued guidance that there should be a presumption against
prosecution when assistance was given purely on compassionate grounds.
But he said, and I agree, that it is for Parliament, not prosecutors, to resolve
the injustice.
I have heard so many heartbreaking stories from individuals and families

affected by the current law. It is those voices that I have been encouraging
MPs to listen to above all others, and not just the voices of those whose
loved ones suffered an agonising death despite receiving the best palliative
care. Although those accounts are particularly distressing, there are also the
many husbands, wives, partners and children who have had to wave
goodbye as a terminally ill person goes abroad, if they can afford it, to die
alone. Or those who have had to deal with the trauma of a suicide by
someone who felt they had no choice but to take matters into their own
hands. In most cases these deaths take place before a person is ready to go,
because they need to be well enough to act. They are denied the comfort of
a final goodbye surrounded by love and support, and those left behind must
add feelings of guilt and anguish to their grieving.
So the status quo is indefensible. My job has been to propose an alternative
that addresses these injustices, offers the strongest possible protections and
safeguards for a person seeking assistance to shorten their death, and is
workable for the medical profession and the judiciary in particular.
We can learn from what has worked well in other jurisdictions and also see
where things have gone in a direction we would not wish to follow. Under
my bill no one would be eligible for assistance because they were disabled
or mentally ill, or had an eating disorder, depression or anything other than
a terminal illness. The courts, both domestic and European, have made clear
that if Parliament votes for my very restrictive legislation, they would not
and could not broaden its scope as has happened in Canada and elsewhere.
At every stage, a person requesting assistance must have a clear, settled and
informed wish to end their life. Periods of reflection mean the process
cannot be rushed and they can change their mind at any time. Two
independent doctors and a High Court judge must be satisfied that a patient
is eligible under the legislation, is mentally competent to express their
decision and has not been coerced. I have had lengthy discussions with the
British Medical Association, individual doctors and the judiciary at the
highest level. They have reassured me that medical practitioners and judges
are experienced in detecting coercive and abusive behaviour in difficult,
even life-and-death circumstances.
This is not about ending a person’s life but allowing them to shorten their
deaths. My bill would not create a new cohort of patients: those eligible will
be in the last months of their lives and already receiving care and
medication. Fears of a significant extra burden on National Health Service
resources are unfounded. Nor would it detract from the provision of
palliative care. The opposite is the case. The parliamentary Health and
Social Care Select Committee found that elsewhere in the world, palliative
care improved alongside the introduction of assisted dying. Here at home I
am delighted that the debate around my bill has already renewed attention
on palliative care and the hospice sector. We have started talking about
death, something we have historically avoided. So I hope MPs will
conclude that offering the possibility of a good death is a compassionate,
just and ethical decision that rights serious wrongs and brings comfort to
many of our fellow citizens—whether or not they elect to exercise that
choice.■
Kim Leadbeater, a Member of Britain’s Parliament for the Labour Party,

introduced the “Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill”, which will be
debated in Parliament on November 29th.
To read an opposing view on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill by
Danny Kruger MP, click here.
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/by-
invitation/2024/11/21/my-assisted-dying-bill-safely-solves-a-grave-injustice-says-
kim-leadbeater

Britain’s end-of-life debate
Assisted-dying advocates’ claims of

freedom have it backward, says
Danny Kruger
One of a pair of essays in which members of Parliament argue their cases
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
WHAT IS THE purpose of the campaign to give people the right to

summon the state to kill them? The answers campaigners give are dignity
and choice. Note that these are not in themselves related to the condition of
dying—to the practical realities of pain, fear and the emotions that assail a
person as they contemplate their own end. These are meta-objects, higher
goods which transcend the immediate circumstances of a deathbed. They
reflect a religious idea about what it is to be human. To be human,
according to this faith, is to be in control. The end, the object, is power.
The practical problems with the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill are
stark and inescapable. The proposed law would require doctors and judges
—both are needed, in a reflection of the fact that neither is really competent
to do so—to confirm that a patient may reasonably be expected to die
within six months, and that he or she genuinely and freely wishes to die.
As we see in places where assisted dying happens, however, all this means
is that someone with a chronic condition can refuse their drugs, or an
anorexic can refuse their food, and a doctor will be found to confirm that
their condition is terminal. We are all within six months of death if we
choose to be.
If our only object were—as it should be—to relieve suffering at the end of
life, to address the practical realities of death, there is a simple solution: to
properly resource palliative care. Modern pain-relief drugs mean almost no
one needs to die in unbearable physical agony. Everyone can be helped to
die well, but end-of-life care at the moment is patchy and shamefully
underfunded.
But the campaign is not about these things. Indeed, a subset of campaigners
is open in declaring this bill as merely the beginning, and that once the
right-to-die principle is established access to it will soon be widened—as
has happened in other jurisdictions that have started down this road. The
idea that animates the bill is that of absolute patient autonomy.
Yet the crucial paradox is that it will have precisely the opposite effect. A
religion of individual control, of personal freedom, is not liberating in
practice, but rather deeply disempowering. There remain Labour members
of Parliament who remember that “progressive” politics used to be about
protecting the vulnerable from abuses of power—that individual autonomy
is not the highest good, because different people have different degrees of
agency and in a liberal free-for-all the powerless get trampled.
Under the bill, doctors will be allowed to suggest assisted dying to patients
who have not mentioned the idea themselves. If the patient requests it from
a doctor who does not agree with the practice, that doctor will be obliged to
refer them to a colleague who does. Here we see the dynamic established:
this is presented as a plausible, even a good choice for patients to make, and
the system will help them to make it. The echoes of the Liverpool Care
Pathway, a notorious scheme of ten years ago by which patients were
essentially assigned by the National Health Service to die, should sound in
our ears.
The law’s very existence would put pressure on each patient and their
family to have “the conversation”, whether openly at the bedside or
whispered outside the room: is it time for Mum or Dad to die? Patients
would bear the awful responsibility of deciding whether to go now—
sparing their loved ones the cost and distress of caring for them—or to hold
on selfishly, messily, expensively.
This is not freedom. It is not autonomy. It is a terrible burden to place on

people at their most vulnerable. It is not “choice” when one option is so
total and potentially compelling. It speaks of a profound disrespect for the
frail, and raises over the disabled a spectre that haunts them: the awareness
that others might think them better off dead.
The dignity that we need at the end of life is to be fully cared for as we die.
There is no disgrace in dependence or being a “burden” to others. And the
choice we need is that over our care, including using advanced health-care
directives to provide clear wishes on being resuscitated or kept alive if we
were to lose cognition or the ability to communicate.
Not for nothing do campaigners for assisted dying call it “the last right”.
For this is the unintended object of the theology of control. Cross this
Rubicon and, as with Julius Caesar, the republic of liberty falls. In the name
of progress we will obliterate the key protection which all of us have need
of as we grow old and ill and burdensome: that the people at our bedside
will not connive to kill us.■
Danny Kruger is a Member of Britain’s Parliament for the Conservative

Party.
To read an opposing view by Kim Leadbeater MP, who proposed the

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, click here.
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/by-
invitation/2024/11/21/assisted-dying-advocates-claims-of-freedom-have-it-backward-
says-danny-kruger

Briefing
Elon Musk and Donald Trump seem besotted. Where is
their bromance headed?
The first buddy :: Past precedent is not encouraging
Elon Musk’s transformation, in his own words

Poster boy :: Our analysis of 38,000 posts on X reveal a changed man

The first buddy
Elon Musk and Donald Trump

seem besotted. Where is their
bromance headed?
Past precedent is not encouraging
11月 21, 2024 07:55 上午 | Los Angeles and Washington, DC
DURING HIS victory speech on election night, Donald Trump touched on

most of the standard topics for such occasions. He thanked his supporters
and his staff. He praised his wife and children. He pledged to keep faith
with voters. But mostly, he talked about Elon Musk. Fully 17% of his
remarks—as much time as he spent sketching out his plans for his
presidency—were devoted to the “super-genius” who had taken a break
from managing his various businesses to help Mr Trump’s campaign. He
banged on about Mr Musk’s generosity, his efficiency and, most of all, the
technological prowess of his firms: “That’s why I love you, Elon.”
Mr Musk, the world’s richest man, and Mr Trump, soon to be the world’s
most powerful, are in the throes of a heady bromance. The pair have been
inseparable since the election, with Mr Musk accompanying Mr Trump to
Washington to meet Republicans in Congress and Mr Trump heading to
Texas with Mr Musk to watch a test flight of a rocket built by SpaceX, one
of Mr Musk’s firms.
Mr Musk, who styles himself “the first buddy”, appears to be involved in

every element of the presidential transition. He is sitting in on interviews
with prospective nominees to the cabinet. He has himself been named as the
co-head of a new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), which
is supposed to slash both red tape and wasteful spending. He has joined Mr
Trump’s calls with world leaders, such as Volodymyr Zelensky, the
president of Ukraine. He has also conducted freelance diplomacy on his
own, meeting Iran’s ambassador to the UN, according to the New York
Times.
Friendly advice
The hope that Mr Musk may bring a little business nous and technical
wizardry to the Trump administration is alluring. Some blue-sky thinking
could help diminish America’s yawning budget deficit, of about 6% of
GDP, and overhaul its often clunky bureaucracy. But there are also many
reasons to worry about Mr Musk’s ascendancy. There will certainly be
troubling conflicts of interest: in part Mr Musk is interested in deregulation,
after all, owing to the many pesky rules hemming in his companies. Critics
also fear that America’s government may become dangerously reliant on a
single individual, especially in the realm of space and satellites. Mr Musk’s
forays into foreign policy could jeopardise both his own business interests
and America’s diplomatic goals. Perhaps the most pressing question is
whether the bromance can last, given that both men are known to have
massive egos and frequent fallings-out with friends and colleagues. The
stage is set, in short, for a tumultuous psychodrama with global
ramifications.
Both Messrs Musk and Trump have already benefited hugely from their
friendship. Mr Musk is thought to have spent about $200m to help get Mr
Trump elected, an enormous amount given that the total declared spending
so far of the campaign and outside groups is about $1.1bn (that will rise as
final disclosures are filed). Mr Musk played a big part in efforts to turn out
voters in swing states, focusing especially on those with little interest in
politics. At the very least, that allowed the campaign to divert its limited
funds to other purposes. It may also have helped galvanise support for Mr
Trump among young men. Mr Trump, whose electoral pitch stresses his
success as a businessman, clearly revelled in the endorsement of such a
celebrated entrepreneur. That Mr Musk owns X, a social-media platform
favoured by political types, and used it to cheerlead energetically for Mr
Trump, was another bonus.
Friends with benefits
The benefits to Mr Musk of the bromance have been even bigger. Since the
election, the market capitalisation of Tesla, the electric-vehicle (EV) firm
that accounts for about two-thirds of his wealth, has grown by $300bn. That
increment alone is more than double the combined market value of General
Motors, Ford and Stellantis, the “big three” carmakers of Detroit. Although
America’s stockmarket has risen across the board, Tesla’s ascent has been
steeper (see chart). As Mr Musk owns roughly 20% of the firm, its surge
has boosted his personal wealth by $60bn. The next biggest firm in Mr
Musk’s portfolio, SpaceX, is privately held, so the jump in its value is
harder to gauge. But reports suggest its shares also command a much higher
price than before the election.
Investors clearly think that Mr Trump’s presidency will be good for Mr
Musk’s firms. There are three broad explanations. First, the government is a
big customer of SpaceX, in particular, with which it has signed over $15bn
in contracts over the past decade. NASA accounts for most of this, but some
transactions are for military purposes. SpaceX has a $14m contract with the
US Space Force (the little sister of the air force) to provide communications
to the Ukrainian armed forces and government until November 30th
through its Starlink satellite network. Space Force is also paying SpaceX
$733m to carry satellites into orbit. The Pentagon has plans to incorporate
100 satellites from SpaceX’s military division, Starshield, into its own
communications network. Starshield also has a $1.8bn contract to help the
secretive National Reconnaissance Office build spy satellites. The Space
Development Agency has a $149m contract to send messages between
SpaceX satellites by laser, and so on.
Presumably, more such custom could be forthcoming, especially from an

administration well disposed towards Mr Musk. As it is, SpaceX conducted
90% of all orbital launches in America in 2023. Government agencies
accounted for more than 20% of its business. By the same token, during Mr
Trump’s first term, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
offered Starlink subsidies to help expand access to broadband in rural areas.
But a payout of almost $900m was rescinded during Joe Biden’s
presidency. It could be reinstated in Mr Trump’s second term.
The stringency with which the government enforces regulations also has an
impact on Mr Musk’s firms. They are the subject of 20-odd investigations
and reviews by different federal agencies. The National Labour Relations
Board, for example, is upset about how Mr Musk has handled workers’
campaigns to unionise at Tesla. The Department of Transportation has
complained about the way Neuralink, Mr Musk’s brain-implant company,
moves hazardous materials around. And the Fish and Wildlife Service
thinks SpaceX has not done enough to protect the nests of birds near a
launch site for its rockets in Texas. A less exacting administration could
make all these problems go away.
In the grand scheme of Mr Musk’s business empire, however, his contracts

with the government are small change and the regulators’ complaints are
minor irritations. His companies are worth well over $1trn. His personal
wealth is estimated at about $360bn. For all SpaceX’s government
contracts, the majority of its revenue comes from Starlink, almost all of
whose customers are commercial.
By far the most material way the Trump administration could affect his
fortunes is by drafting new regulations and rescinding old ones. Mr Musk
has long maintained that Tesla’s future hinges on the successful
development of autonomous vehicles. At the moment, autonomous driving
is regulated at the state level, putting Tesla at a disadvantage to Waymo, a
subsidiary of Alphabet, the firm that owns Google. Waymo already operates
“robotaxis” in a handful of cities, whereas Tesla has yet to launch any fully
autonomous services. After Bloomberg reported on November 17th that Mr
Trump’s transition team had told advisers it plans to make a federal self-
driving framework a priority, Tesla’s shares soared, while those of Uber and
Lyft, which could be hit by the competition, fell. Mr Trump is also reported
to have invited Mr Musk to join a call with Sundar Pichai, the boss of
Alphabet—an extraordinary opportunity for a commercial rival.
Another potential Trump policy, the scrapping of a generous tax credit for
EVs, would also have a big impact on Tesla. Although it would make the
firm’s cars more expensive, it would hurt other American producers more,
since Tesla’s costs are lower. “It would be devastating for our competitors,”
gloats Mr Musk. In fact, the end of the credit along with higher tariffs
(another Trump pledge) might be especially advantageous to Tesla, whose
EVs have the highest share of parts made in North America in the industry.
Both domestic and foreign rivals would be hamstrung.
SpaceX’s fortunes, too, are heavily dependent on regulators. It has received

the FCC’s approval to launch 12,000 satellites (it already has more than
6,000 in orbit), but has requested permission for 30,000 more. Mr Musk has
also complained often and loudly about the lethargy of the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA), which he accuses of “smothering” innovation with
“Kafkaesque paperwork”. He quips that he can build a rocket faster than the
agency can process the relevant approvals. SpaceX develops new spacecraft
through frequent testing and redesign. Its commercial and government
rivals tend to be more plodding and methodical. Byzantine bureaucracy thus
burdens SpaceX more. A more permissive approach would be a boon.
The sensitivity of Mr Musk’s firms to regulation creates blatant conflicts of

interest in his proposed role as co-head of DOGE. Yet neither Mr Trump nor
Mr Musk seems to have any qualms. Mr Trump neatly captured the problem
on the campaign trail when he grumbled, “I’m for electric cars. I have to be
because Elon endorsed me.” Mr Musk, for his part, has stated that his
dream and SpaceX’s explicit corporate goal of colonising Mars will be
possible only with DOGE’s help: “The Department of Government
Efficiency is the only path to extending life beyond Earth.”
The potential conflicts are so glaring that Mr Trump seems to be designing

DOGE to skirt the relevant regulations. He specified, when announcing the
department’s creation, that Mr Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a
businessman-turned-politician who will be its joint boss, would provide
ideas about reforming the bureaucracy “from outside of government”. As an
adviser, rather than a federal employee, Mr Musk will not be subject to
various ethics rules, notes Kathleen Clark of Washington University in St
Louis.
But this arrangement may also diminish DOGE’s effectiveness, since it will
resemble a commission more than a conventional government department.
In fact, the prevailing wisdom in Washington is that DOGE will not amount
to much. This is not because of any doubts about Mr Musk’s sincerity or
abilities. He has campaigned against red tape for years, long before there
was much prospect that he would be given an official mandate to trim it. He
moved Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas in part in protest at
California’s bureaucratic ways. Last year he railed, in a typical tweet, “Like
Gulliver, tied down by thousands of little strings, we lose our freedom one
regulation at a time.”
At both Tesla and SpaceX, Mr Musk has proved himself a master of
efficiency, reducing the cost of previously rarefied technologies to an extent
incumbents had thought impossible. Mr Trump calls him “the greatest
cutter”. (The president-elect seems to be especially impressed by Mr
Musk’s decision after buying X to sack some three-quarters of its staff,
although X’s value has shrunk dramatically under Mr Musk’s ownership,
leaving it almost irrelevant to him financially.) Mr Musk himself has talked
about cutting $2trn, or about a third, from the federal budget, and
dramatically simplifying the tax code.
But the history of efforts to slash regulation and government spending in

America is not encouraging. The sticking-point tends to be Congress, whose
members are not keen to eliminate jobs in their own districts. Ronald
Reagan set up a similar outfit, known as the Grace Commission, with an
explicit mandate to “drain the swamp”. Congress shelved its proposals.
Messrs Musk and Ramaswamy have therefore said that they will
recommend changes that Mr Trump can order unilaterally, without any new
legislation. They claim the scope for this is huge because of two recent
Supreme Court rulings that have curtailed the authority of the bureaucracy
and thus called into question many existing rules. But legal challenges to
any reforms are inevitable, and the pair will have only 18 months to make
anything happen: DOGE cannot formally start work until Mr Trump
becomes president on January 20th and is supposed to wind itself up by
July 4th 2026.
Indeed, it is possible that Mr Musk’s influence has already reached its peak.
He has lots of businesses to run and cannot put corporate life on hold
indefinitely for endless backslapping at Mar-a-Lago, Mr Trump’s estate in
Florida, or—in time—the White House. Presidential transitions are by their
nature fluid and their direction malleable, especially before the most
important personnel have been chosen. But in less than two months the
transition will end and the more rigid, bureaucratic structures of Washington
will replace it.
Unfriended
There is no exact historical precedent for Mr Musk’s influence over Mr
Trump, but presidents and their business backers tend to fall out. William
Hearst, a newspaper magnate, quickly became disillusioned with Franklin
Roosevelt, whose first campaign for president he had enthusiastically
backed. Andrew Carnegie, a steel baron who was the world’s richest man in
his day, could not get Theodore Roosevelt to listen to him about foreign
policy. Theodore Roosevelt also ended up crossing swords with J.P.
Morgan, the founder of the bank of the same name, after having enlisted his
help to end a mining strike.
There are already signs that Mr Trump is not entirely in thrall to Mr Musk.
Although Mr Musk had called publicly for Howard Lutnick, a Wall Street
financier, to be named Treasury secretary, Mr Trump gave him the less
prestigious job of commerce secretary instead. Mr Musk is rumoured to be
bickering with Trump advisers of long standing. Mr Trump displayed a hint
of fickleness at a recent gathering at Mar-a-Lago, when he joked about Mr
Musk, “I can’t get him out of here.”
At the very least, fears of Mr Musk’s overweening influence are probably

overblown. SpaceX’s domination of a strategic industry is not
unprecedented. IBM had an 88% share of the market in tabulating
equipment in 1932 and a 70% share of the nascent computer industry in
1967. Its devices were crucial to the Pentagon and intelligence agencies,
used for everything from air defence to cryptanalysis. AT&T had a
monopoly on telephone services for most of the 20th century and thereby
made itself indispensable to American spooks. Both firms were eventually
hobbled by antitrust suits—although the success of SpaceX and Tesla stems
from superior products, not a monopoly.
In practice, Mr Musk’s influence over military affairs is not as

untrammelled as it seems. For one thing, SpaceX’s position in space launch
is commanding but not a monopoly, argues Doug Loverro, a former senior
official at the Pentagon and NASA. The vast majority of its launches are of
its own satellites, he notes. Strip those out and the picture looks more
balanced. The US Space Force’s launch contracts for 2022 to 2027 are split
roughly evenly between SpaceX and a rival consortium, he says. The
Pentagon’s plans for mega-constellations for communications involve a
dozen different contractors. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, is setting up a
rival firm, Blue Origin. Starship, meanwhile, is well suited to sending large
numbers of small satellites into low-Earth orbit and getting humans to
Mars, he argues—not sending larger military and spy satellites to higher
orbits. “The fact of the matter is it’s a very competitive field out there,”
concludes Mr Loverro, “especially on the DoD side.”
Nor is it clear that Mr Musk could actually use his leverage. “As much as
the US government needs SpaceX,” says John Plumb, who until recently
was assistant secretary of defence with responsibility for space, “SpaceX
needs the US government.” The company requires operating licences from
the FCC and launch licences from the FAA. Although Mr Musk is an
increasingly dominant supplier, the government is also a buyer with unusual
purchasing power. “In my experience SpaceX has been an excellent partner
for the Department of Defence. But if SpaceX for some reason decided to
take on the full force of the US government,” concludes Mr Plumb, “that
would be a terrible, terrible business decision and frankly crippling for
them.” If need be, a president could even invoke the Defence Production
Act of 1950, which allows the government to compel private firms to act in
service of national security.
Even the idea that Mr Musk might wield undue influence over foreign
policy can be flipped on its head. Mr Musk’s closeness to Mr Trump could
be seen as a liability for his companies outside America. The most obvious
test is China, where just over half of all Teslas are made. The firm’s
dependence on China is, if anything, growing: in May, it broke ground on a
second factory in Shanghai, to make batteries.
The leverage this gives the Chinese authorities over Tesla already appears
to constrain Mr Musk’s actions. Although, in the name of free speech, he
provides Starlink access to Iranians with smuggled terminals despite the
objections of their government, he has not done anything similar in China.
He tends to toe the official Chinese line on Taiwan and is fulsome in his
praise for China as a place to do business.
Friendly fire
The risk that Tesla could get caught up in Mr Trump’s dealings with China
is obvious. “I think that the Chinese are thinking very carefully about how
to use Musk to make clear to Trump that there are costs for tariffs,” says
Zack Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank. He notes
that China has few contacts within the Republican Party and may be hoping
that Mr Musk can help manage relations with the Trump administration. “If
Musk wants to continue making significant amounts of money in China,
then they’re going to expect him to play a positive role,” says Mr Cooper,
noting that China needs only to tweak rules on EVs to have a big impact on
Tesla’s fortunes.
Similar risks apply to Mr Musk’s involvement in politics in general. He is

now so strongly associated with Mr Trump that he may put some people off
buying Teslas, says Tu Le, of Sino Auto Insights, a consultancy. Although X
saw record traffic during the election, since then the number of people
leaving the platform for less MAGA-ish rivals such as Threads and Bluesky
has surged. Moreover, the alliance between tech libertarians like Mr Musk
and nativist populists that are the bedrock of Mr Trump’s support is fragile.
One camp yearns for change, the other resents it. That is an irresolvable
contradiction.
If things go wrong, Mr Musk may suffer dire consequences. His control of

Tesla is not ironclad. Unlike other tech tycoons such as Mark Zuckerberg,
who owns super-voting shares in Meta, Facebook’s parent, Mr Musk’s 21%
stake in Tesla does not fully insulate him from other shareholders. If his
politics end up harming the company, he could still be booted out. His
bigger stake in SpaceX offers more protection—but a good relationship
with Uncle Sam is essential to its operations. Mr Musk is entering an even
more complex realm than rocket science. It will take a super-genius to
navigate it without mishap. ■
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/11/21/elon-musk-and-donald-trump-seem-
besotted-where-is-their-bromance-headed

Poster boy
Elon Musk’s transformation, in his

own words
Our analysis of 38,000 posts on X reveal a changed man
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
“SURE, YOU might say something silly once in a while, as I do, but that
way people know it’s really you!” As part of a plea for “political &
company leaders” to join him in holding forth on X, his social network,
Elon Musk has repeatedly stressed that such posts offer an unusual and
engaging authenticity. We have taken him at his word. What do his tweets
say about him?
To work out what subjects preoccupy Mr Musk and how his views have
changed over time, The Economist analysed his activity on Twitter (as it
was) and X (as it became in 2023). Using artificial intelligence to trawl
through his 38,358 posts between December 2013 and November 2024, we
found that he is posting far more often and with a far more political bent.
Climate change and clean energy used to be the realm of policy on which he
opined the most, but he now bangs on much more about immigration and
free speech (see chart 1).
Mr Musk posts vastly more than he used to. From December 2013 to the
middle of 2018, he tweeted just over a dozen times a week, on average.
Between then and October 27th 2022, when he completed the purchase of
X, he was posting 50 times a week. Since the takeover, that has risen to
around 220 a week.
Those who follow him—and over 200m do—may also have noticed a shift
in subject-matter. From 2016 to 2021 between 30% and 50% of his tweets
each year were about Tesla or SpaceX, his two biggest companies. These
days only 11% are. Meanwhile the share of his posts that are political has
risen from less than 4% in 2016 to over 13% this year (see chart 2).
The shift in the topics of such posts is even more dramatic. In 2022, as he
was buying Twitter, posts about free speech surged. This was followed by a
leap in 2023 and 2024 in talk of immigration, border control, the integrity
of elections and the “woke mind virus”. (The vicissitudes of poor regulation
has remained a common topic throughout.)
Despite his considerable business interests outside America, few posts

mention other countries. Between 2017 and 2020 around 1% touched on
China, but often in passing (“China & Japan have awesome trains…”) or to
praise Tesla’s unit there. His interest in the country has since waned. Before
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mr Musk showed little interest in either
country, but in 2022 they featured in almost 3% of his tweets. The only
other country to crop up in more than 1% of his posts in recent years is
Brazil, after the country briefly blocked X in August this year.
To his followers Mr Musk advocates a fierce focus on missions he sees as

urgent, such as making humans an “interplanetary species” by colonising
Mars. But his own posts reveal shifting interests over the past few years,
with the only truly intense focus on the act of posting itself. He may have
more money than anyone else on Earth and the ear of the next president, but
to a casual observer, he may not seem that different from any other
American man in his 50s: lurching rightward politically, online a huge share
of the time, complaining about immigration and mocking the left.■
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/11/21/elon-musks-transformation-in-his-own-
words

United States
Democrats are still processing their defeat
Donkey Rashomon :: Three factions are competing to explain the party to itself
Los Angeles decides it is sick of scandal

Farewell to the five queens :: A county of 10m people conducts a civilised revolution
Congestion pricing in New York gets the go-ahead after all.

Maybe
Stop, start :: NYC is in a race against the incoming Republican trifecta
What will Donald Trump do about legal immigration?

Deporting the suits :: Highly skilled workers are already preparing for the worst
Will Donald Trump now pardon the January 6th rioters?

Capitol offences :: He has the power to do so, but it would be another norm-smashing act
How gaga is MAHA?

Fries with that :: RFK junior, Dr Oz and co. have the potential to do harm, but also some good
How Donald Trump could win the future

Lexington :: The Democrats’ appeal to Silicon Valley is eroding

Donkey Rashomon
Democrats are still processing their

defeat
Three factions are competing to explain the party to itself
11月 21, 2024 08:30 上午 | WASHINGTON, DC
THESE ARE NOT the reports Democrats were hoping to prepare. Instead
of transition plans for the incoming Kamala Harris administration, draft
executive orders and legislative outlines, Democrats are producing post-
mortem analyses of how their campaign came apart in 2024. Those
Democrats who are honest with themselves are recognising an
uncomfortable truth: as awful, immoral and weird as they consider the
Republican Party, the American people considered it to be the better option
for governing America.
Dissect the emerging election data and the diagnosis looks even worse than
it first seemed. The Democratic Party’s idea of itself as a party of the young,
ethnic minorities and the working class has been punctured. The best
available data suggest that, compared with Barack Obama’s performance in
2012, Ms Harris did 16 percentage points worse among voters without a
college degree, 19 points worse with young voters, 26 points worse with
African-Americans and 27 points worse with Hispanics. “We have only
begun to internalise the ways in which all the basic tenets of the emerging
Democratic majority have now been completely reversed. There is not a leg
standing of it any more,” says Patrick Ruffini, who wrote a prescient book
on growing Republican strength among the multiracial working class.
Among Democrats brave enough to believe in their own agency, a much

knottier debate has emerged over identity politics. Throughout the first
Trump presidency, elite institutions embraced previously radical ideas of
equity over equality, the tyranny of objectivity and the violence of speech.
Democratic politics were downstream of this cultural shift, leading to an
embrace of ideas (including by Ms Harris) such as defunding the police,
paying for gender-affirming care for illegal immigrants and banning
fracking. Whole ethnic groups were rebranded by those who knew better:
Hispanics were now Latinxs; Asian-Americans were now AAPI; the
collective lumping of non-whites as POC (“people of colour”) was
upgraded to “BIPOC”. By 2022, Democrats realised that such talk, voguish
in 2020, was a political liability and began to edge away from it.
By 2024 Ms Harris spoke like a different woman from her previous

presidential campaign iteration, revoking her former positions without
explanation. It didn’t work. According to a survey of swing voters released
by Blueprint, a Democrat-aligned firm, majorities of persuadable voters
believed that the earlier, progressive Harris was the real one. Among those
who chose to vote for Mr Trump, 83% believed that she would use taxpayer
dollars to pay for transgender surgeries for undocumented immigrants in
prison, 77% believed she would decriminalise border-crossing, and 74%
believed that she would ban fracking. The political advertisement that even
Democrats concede was the ad of the century was one that Mr Trump’s
campaign released that ended with the line: “Kamala’s for they/them.
President Trump is for you.” Ms Harris’s campaign did not rebut it, and
tried instead to focus on economic messaging. But the two “are not
completely separate or mutually exclusive…it creates a portrait of a party
that’s out of touch with ordinary voters, particularly ordinary working-class
voters”, says Ruy Teixeira of the American Enterprise Institute.
The attempt to jettison that unappealing brand is already underway. “I
personally think that identity politics needs to go the way of the dodo,”
Elissa Slotkin, the newly elected Democratic senator from Michigan, told
reporters. Seth Moulton, a Democratic representative from Massachusetts,
caused a furore by saying that he did not want his daughters to get hurt
playing sports with trans girls. That attracted 200 protesters at his district
office in Salem, condemnation from the state’s leading official and one
comparison to a Nazi collaborator, made by a local party official. “The
backlash proves my point,” says Mr Moulton. “We go around the country
saying if you don’t agree with my absolutist view, you fail the litmus test:
You’re not only wrong—you’re a bad person.”
With that attitude, many voters do not even bother to consider policy. “I felt
this was a cultural election. I think that people don’t trust us on the
economy and on immigration, not because they’re analysing our policy, but
they just feel that Democrats are preachy, arrogant and out of touch,” says
Mr Moulton. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a congresswoman from
Washington who won re-election in a rural district by overperforming Ms
Harris by around five points, agrees. “You can’t have a conversation about
policy if you signal to somebody that you’re not listening to them, or you
think you’re better than them. Everything else is off the table after that,” she
says. Mr Trump’s performance among Hispanic voters ought to stir
Democrats awake, Ms Perez adds. “Asking people to have some kind of
generic loyalty to a brand because of ethnic or racial identity is much less
compelling to people.”
Others in the party think that the answer lies in plainer economic
messaging. Chris Deluzio, a Democratic congressman from the suburbs of
Pittsburgh, won his own tight race even as Ms Harris floundered in the
state. “I hope my party pays attention to races like mine, where you’ve got
candidates clear about who they’re fighting for and who they’re fighting
against,” he says, citing his stances on protecting workers from powerful
corporations and opposing trade deals that hollowed out the rustbelt.
“There’s often a tendency in my party for people to look for win-win
framing, but also sometimes there’s a bad guy.” This is similar to the
economic strategy that Mr Biden tried at the national level, through
industrial policy, infrastructure spending, and pro-union rhetoric; he may
simply have lacked the oratorical capacity to explain it.
And then there are some Democrats who spy a middle road. “The
Republicans engage in identity politics that is intertwined with Christian
nationalism. The Democrats engaged in identity politics that is intertwined
in evaluating individuals based on group identity, rather than as individuals.
I think the path for Democrats is to reject both,” says Jake Auchincloss,
another Democratic congressman from Massachusetts. “I’m worried that
the version that Democrats are going to align on is Diet Coke when MAGA
is Coca-Cola: dial down the wokeism and then amplify the economic
populism.” There is a version of a Democratic Party that embraces supply-
side progressivism rather than the preachy variant; and one that rejects
protectionism and instead embraces free trade as a tool for containing
China. It is closer to the iterations of the party that thrived under Bill
Clinton and Barack Obama, even if it is unfashionable now.
In Rashomon style, political actors will all tell different stories about why
parties lose. But the one that dominates is powerful. It structures how the
party remakes itself in its wilderness years. Fresh elections for the
leadership in the coming months will be important because the victors will
write the definitive post-mortem of the 2024 election. After their loss to Mr
Trump in 2016, Democrats chose not to conduct a formal autopsy, and
drifted into a movement of mass resistance. With hindsight, this backfired.
No comparable resistance movement appears to be mounting towards
Trump II. But ruling out one strategy that didn’t work before is not the same
as alighting on a new one. ■
Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter
with fast analysis of the most important electoral stories, and Checks and
Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the
state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/united-
states/2024/11/21/democrats-are-still-processing-their-defeat

Farewell to the five queens
Los Angeles decides it is sick of

scandal
A county of 10m people conducts a civilised revolution
11月 21, 2024 04:51 上午 | Los Angeles
LESS NOTICED among recent political events, Los Angeles is reckoning

with a small revolution. Los Angeles County is home to nearly 10m people,
making it more populous than all but ten states. Its five supervisors wield a
$50bn budget. What happens in this sprawling conglomeration of suburbs
and highways affects a quarter of all Californians. And, as in the rest of the
country, Angelenos voted for change.
In contrast to many Midwestern and east-coast population centres, county

governments in California are run by five supervisors, who combine
executive, legislative and quasi-judicial powers. In LA “each supervisor is
an autocrat in their district”, says Fernando Guerra, director of the Centre
for the Study of LA at Loyola Marymount University. That is about to end.
Voters narrowly chose to expand the board of supervisors to nine, elect

(rather than appoint) a county chief executive and create an ethics
commission to increase oversight of the whole shebang. The measure’s
passage marks the first time voters have approved board expansion since
1913, when the county adopted its charter and its population hovered
somewhere near 500,000. In the city of Los Angeles, which is run by a
mayor and a powerful city council, voters favoured ballot measures to
implement independent redistricting of the council and school board, as
well as to strengthen the city’s ethics commission. The sum of these results
is a repudiation of the corrupt and ineffective politics that has dogged Los
Angeles in recent years.
The decisions to overhaul the structure of local government are largely a

reaction to a series of scandals. Four former or sitting city-council members
have faced criminal charges in as many years for embezzlement, bribery or
lying to the feds. In 2022 a leaked recording of three other council members
and a labour leader revealed the group of Hispanic powerbrokers making
disparaging remarks about other ethnic groups as they discussed how to
slice up the city during redistricting. Three of the four lost their jobs, and
the final holdout lost his bid for re-election.
Their ousting did not placate Angelenos. The ballot measure that will create
an independent redistricting commission is meant to combat the kind of
back-room politicking caught on tape. For structural reform to happen
“there usually has to be something…that has really got people agitated”,
says Raphael Sonenshein of the Haynes Foundation, which supports
research on governance and democracy in Los Angeles. The last time LA
saw such a reckoning was in the 1990s, when the Rodney King riots
prompted police reform, among other efforts.
What will the county’s measure achieve? The five supervisors are known as
the “five little queens”. Their fiefs of roughly 2m constituents each will be
nearly halved in size when four new colleagues join the board in 2032, after
the next census reapportionment. Governance wonks hope that budgets will
be better allocated for homelessness and that supervisors will be more
responsible to their voters. “Local government works best when…elected
officials have to pay attention to their constituents,” says Mr Guerra. “When
districts get too big, that just cannot happen.”
Zev Yaroslavsky sat on the county board for 20 years, and the city council
for 20 years before that. He argues that the most consequential reform is
actually the creation of an elected county chief executive. He likens LA
County’s government to a business without a CEO or a state without a
governor. The county’s size and wealth demand a different system, he
reckons, and a leader that can take decisive action rather than dithering. The
person who is elected to that position will be among the most important—if
not the most important—local-government executives in the biggest state in
America, he argues.
Many bits of the reform have yet to be finalised, including how exactly the
county will pay for the new positions (taxes have been ruled out). Mr
Yaroslavsky relishes those details, while knowing that they will make
others’ eyes glaze over. “Governance makes a difference,” he says, even if
“it’s boring as hell”.■
states/2024/11/19/los-angeles-decides-it-is-sick-of-scandal

Stop, start
Congestion pricing in New York

gets the go-ahead after all. Maybe
NYC is in a race against the incoming Republican trifecta
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | NEW YORK
NOVEMBER 20TH MARKS the first “Gridlock Alert” day of New York
City’s holiday season. This is the official designation for the city’s busiest
traffic days of the year. But traffic is bad most days, with more than
900,000 cars entering Manhattan’s central business district. INRIX, a
traffic-data firm, found that New York City leads the world in urban traffic
congestion among the cities scored, with the average driver stationary for
101 hours a year. After years of false starts, including a cowardly pre-
election pause by Kathy Hochul, New York’s Democratic governor,
congestion pricing has the green light.
Back in June, Ms Hochul claimed the toll of $15 could “break the budget of
a working- or middle-class household”. Sceptics point out that parking in
Manhattan often costs $30 an hour. An early-bird all-day special might cost
$60. Ms Hochul’s real concern was the congressional districts on Long
Island and in Westchester County, where commuters were not happy. But
with the election of Donald Trump, no fan of road pricing, and with House
Democrats flipping some swing districts, last week Ms Hochul gave the go-
ahead, albeit at a reduced price of $9.
The scheme is not only designed to cut traffic: it also is a revenue stream
for repairs and upgrades for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority
(MTA). The authority runs the subway, buses and commuter lines to the
suburbs, as well as some tunnels and bridges, and will now implement
congestion pricing. On November 18th its board approved the new $9 toll.
Eventually it will increase to $12 and then $15 in 2031 (if it actually
happens this time).
The scheme, a cousin of the one that in London made traffic better,
improved air quality and raised revenue, is not quite a sure thing. The MTA
is primarily New York’s business, but it receives 10-20% of its capital
budget from the federal government, which gives Washington leverage. And
the incoming administration is not over-fond of schemes for pricing
externalities dreamt up by economists. Advocates of the toll think a speedy
implementation is therefore key. Kate Slevin of the Regional Plan
Association, which has been pushing for pricing for decades, is delighted
congestion pricing has been resurrected, but says: “There is a sense of
urgency to get the scheme up and running.” Sam Schwartz, better known to
New Yorkers as “Gridlock Sam”, fears “There is a snowball’s chance in hell
to get this passed with the Trump administration.”
His fears are valid. Had Ms Hochul gone ahead with the scheme in June, it
may not have been on Mr Trump’s radar. Now New York’s House
Republicans are urging him to kill pricing once he is back in the White
House. Mike Lawler, a Republican who represents the Hudson Valley and is
a possible challenger to Ms Hochul in 2026, has been particularly
outspoken. There are also several legal challenges, including one filed by
neighbouring New Jersey. In Washington, Josh Gottheimer, a Democratic
congressman from New Jersey, hopes the House will advance a bipartisan
bill to deprive the MTA of federal dollars.
Mr Schwartz finds the opposition galling: “People seem to think that free
passage was guaranteed when our country was created in our constitution.”
Tolls were in place until 1911 on the four East River bridges. “I haven’t met
anyone who loves congestion, have you?” asks Michael Shamma of TYlin,
an engineering firm. He says pricing was presented as a means to raise
money for the MTA, and that was “the wrong reasoning”: emphasis should
have been put on the benefits of reduced traffic, from clean air to a stronger
economy. The city has just hosted a marathon; it now needs to sprint. ■
states/2024/11/21/congestion-pricing-in-new-york-gets-the-go-ahead-after-all-maybe

Deporting the suits
What will Donald Trump do about

legal immigration?
Highly skilled workers are already preparing for the worst
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | CHICAGO
IN THE FINAL weeks of his campaign, speaking to a “town hall” hosted

by Univision, a Spanish-language television network, Donald Trump made
a point he doesn’t make very often. Asked about the need for immigrant
workers, he replied: “We want workers, and we want them to come in.” The
problem, he said, was illegal immigration. “I want them in even more than
you do,” he said. “And we’re going to make it so that people can come into
our country legally.”
Is it a promise he can make good on? Some in Mr Trump’s camp hope so.
Immigration lawyers report they have already had a flood of calls from
nervous visa-holders worrying about what it means for their ability to stay
in America. One reason why is that on November 11th the president-elect
announced his intention to appoint Stephen Miller, one of his long-standing
advisers, to be his deputy chief of policy. Mr Miller says that America
should be “for Americans only”.
In his 2016 campaign Mr Trump promised to create a “big beautiful door”

for legal immigration. But his administration—largely under the direction
of Mr Miller, who served in a similar role then—quietly ground sand in the
gears of the machine that issues visas and work permits. “They created an
invisible wall,” says Dimo Michailov, an immigration lawyer based in
Washington, DC. Denial rates for key work visas, such as the H1B (which
allows foreigners with degrees or equivalent specialist skills to take jobs in
America) and the L1 (which allows multinational companies to post
workers to America) rose. So too did “requests for evidence”, where
applicants are required to provide lengthy documentation to prove they
qualify.
From 2016 to 2019, average waiting times rose by 46%, according to

analysis by the American Immigration Lawyers Association, an industry
group. It was “more red tape, more paperwork, more interviews”, says Julia
Gelatt of the Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank. Total legal
immigration did not in fact fall much until the pandemic, she notes—
lawyers worked out how to navigate the new rules and the total number of
work visas issued levelled off. But it got costlier and slower.
Under Joe Biden, the government has slowly ungummed the system. It has,
for example, lessened scrutiny for visa renewals, instead of treating them
like new applications, and waived the requirement for interviews in many
cases. These sorts of policies seem likely to be undone. “I kind of have a
presumption that anything the Biden administration did they’ll try to rip out
every little vestige of,” says David Bier, of the Cato Institute, a libertarian
think-tank. That could mean, for example, the spouses of H1B-holders
being denied the right to work, and those of L1-holders being made to apply
for work permits. Graduates of American universities, who can currently
work for up to three years, depending on their degree, may see that right
curtailed. More people converting to green cards (permanent residency),
either from work visas or through family ties, could be required to be
interviewed.
The immigrants with the most to fear are Indians and Chinese nationals.
Since 1991 there has been a cap on the number of employment-based green
cards that can be issued to citizens of any one country. Indians and Chinese
disproportionately arrive in America by studying at universities and then
taking jobs on graduation, but thanks to the cap only a vanishingly small
share can hope to ever get permanent residency. Instead many stay stuck on
nominally temporary visas even as they build lives. If someone with an
H1B loses their job, they have just 60 days to find a new qualifying one
before having to leave the country (a grace period Mr Trump could cut).
Having a child who is a citizen offers no protection to a parent, and their
non-American children lose their right to stay when they become adults.
Longer waits and tighter renewals could force many long-term residents to
leave.
Jules, a Chinese-born corporate lawyer who has lived in America since

arriving as an exchange student at high school, says that during the last
Trump administration one of her visa renewals was delayed for two years.
She carried on working, but she could not travel abroad. “It’s been so
traumatic, I am kind of numb about it,” she says. With Mr Trump’s re-
election, she is looking at whether she might be able to get permanent
residency elsewhere. For her and others, America was first, but Canada or
Australia may be second. ■
states/2024/11/18/what-will-donald-trump-do-about-legal-immigration

Capitol offences
Will Donald Trump now pardon

the January 6th rioters?
He has the power to do so, but it would be another norm-smashing act
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | ATLANTA
MANY AMERICANS hope that Donald Trump will fulfil his campaign
pledges to bring down prices and deport illegal immigrants. But a small
group of convicted rioters are on tenterhooks over another electioneering
promise. Mr Trump has repeatedly vowed to free his supporters who were
imprisoned for storming the Capitol on January 6th 2021. He has repeatedly
called them “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots” while recasting the
attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power as “a day of love”. “Why
are they still being held?” Mr Trump mused weeks before the election. His
return to the White House means he could soon pardon them all.
Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, a far-right group, who
is serving a 22-year sentence for his role in the attack, told The Economist
in June that he reckons Mr Trump will “right all the injustices and
inequalities of the past four years”. After the election his lawyer issued a
statement applauding the result. In Miami, Mr Tarrio’s hometown, Proud
Boys are making plans for reunions. “Our boys, and all other political
prisoners, are now coming home!” says a friend of Mr Tarrio.
To date, the federal government has charged 1,561 people for crimes arising
from the Capitol attack; 979 pleaded guilty and 645 went to prison. At least
seven, including Mr Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes, the head of the Oath
Keepers, a far-right militia, were put away for more than a decade. The
Department of Justice (DoJ) has not said how many remain in custody but
the number probably runs into the hundreds. What would it mean for them
to be freed?
The cases were politically fraught from the start. Within the DoJ, higher-ups
feared infringing on defendants’ rights to free expression. Some prosecutors
were frustrated by that: “If they were al-Qaeda this would have been a
national emergency, but these were good ol’ boys from rural America so it
was different,” says one.
Yet the evidence in many of the Capitol cases was rock-solid—security

footage was supplemented by screenshots of defendants bragging about
what they did on social media. A consensus gradually developed within the
DoJ that the law required extensive prosecutions.
The result was a sweeping success. Jury after jury sided with the
prosecutors and found the rioters guilty of assaulting police officers,
causing civil disorder and other crimes. Although judges often handed down
lighter sentences than the government asked for, the verdicts disrupted
groups like the Oath Keepers.
A president’s power to pardon people convicted of federal crimes is

enshrined in the constitution. Yet if Mr Trump frees hundreds of January 6th
prisoners early in his term, he would depart dramatically from precedent.
Historically, the justification for mass amnesty—for low-level marijuana
offenders, for example—has been to remedy past injustices and bring the
country together, says Kimberly Wehle, a law professor at the University of
Baltimore. Mr Trump would be ratifying his own claims of innocence over
January 6th.
Prosecutors worry that freeing January 6th prisoners will affect how justice
is meted out during Mr Trump’s second term. “If violent [Trump]
supporters are pardoned, prosecutors will have to assume that ordinary
supporters” such as businessmen close to the president “will also be
pardoned” if charged with wrongdoing, says Louis Manzo, who prosecuted
25 Oath Keepers before leaving the government.
On November 8th, William Pope, a January 6th defendant who has pled not
guilty to disorderly conduct charges, warned a judge that advancing his case
before Mr Trump’s inauguration could “lead to a dangerous cycle of
escalating retribution” and that it would “be wise” for the court to take up
this “final opportunity to make peace” before setting him free. His words
suggested how emboldened some of the accused already feel. ■
states/2024/11/21/will-donald-trump-now-pardon-the-january-6th-rioters

Fries with that
How gaga is MAHA?

RFK junior, Dr Oz and co. have the potential to do harm, but also some
good
WHEN MICHELLE OBAMA suggested in 2010 that American children

should eat less junk food, it triggered outrage in conservative circles. “Get
your damn hands off my fries, lady,” Glenn Beck, then a Fox anchor, told
his audience, adding that “if I want to be a fat-fat fatty and shovel French
fries all day long, that is my choice.” Right-wing commentators criticised
“food-police” overreach. Within months of Donald Trump becoming
president in 2017, his administration said it would roll back some of the
healthy school-lunch requirements (it failed).
The idea that Americans should be free to eat whatever they want, that the
government has no business in their fridges, and that companies should be
able to make money with as few regulatory hurdles as possible, has long
been core to Republicanism. But “make America healthy again” (MAHA),
championed by Robert F. Kennedy junior, Donald Trump’s pick for
secretary of health, challenges these orthodoxies. Indeed, his merry band of
followers is anything but orthodox. The latest to join is Dr Mehmet Oz, a
star known for promoting pseudoscience and having psychics on his TV
show, who has been nominated to lead the Centres for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (CMS), which provides health coverage for nearly half
of Americans.
If confirmed, Mr Kennedy will be responsible for leading 13 agencies,

including CMS, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centres
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He would be in charge of
managing national health crises, from the current opioid epidemic to a
future pandemic, and will have power to direct the agencies’ priorities.
Putting a vaccine-sceptic conspiracy theorist in charge of the country’s
health policy, and the largest department in terms of federal budget, is nutty.
Yet underneath the tinfoil hat Mr Kennedy—who calls ultra-processed
foods “poison” and waxes lyrical about regenerative farming—advocates
some things liberals have long favoured.
In a video promoting MAHA, Mr Kennedy promised that he and Mr Trump

would “transform our nation’s food, fitness, air, water, soil and medicine”.
To achieve this, he has pledged to replace “corrupt industry-captured
officials” in the health agencies with “honest public servants”, take a tough
approach with big business, use government regulation to ban harmful
substances from food and farming, and support alternative medicine.
MAHA supports interventions which under a Democratic administration

would be termed “nanny state”. Mr Kennedy wants to ban pharmaceutical
advertisements and has promised to “get [ultra-] processed food out of
school lunch immediately.” Calley Means, a rising star in the MAHA
movement, recently said that “Michelle Obama was right,” in her efforts to
make school lunches healthier. Where most Republicans ridiculed Joe
Biden’s efforts to insist on clearer food labels, Mr Kennedy wants much the
same.
The MAHA agenda is outspokenly hostile to big business and Mr Kennedy
—a former environmental lawyer who successfully sued corporations for
using harmful chemicals—makes no secret of his plans to go after Big
Pharma, Food and Agriculture. He advocates stricter regulation and has said
he wants to eliminate “1,000 ingredients in our food that are banned in
Europe”. Although it seems unlikely Mr Trump read the small print on Mr
Kennedy, he has (for now) endorsed his criticisms of industry, writing in his
nomination announcement that “For too long, Americans have been crushed
by the industrial food complex and drug companies.”
The third and final area where MAHA looks less like traditional
conservatism and more like hippy progressivism is in its embrace of
alternative medicine and unorthodox approaches to health. Mr Kennedy
advocates bringing a range of experimental treatments into the mainstream.
He has berated the FDA for “suppressing” alternative therapies, from the
kooky to the dangerous, and has suggested Medicaid should cover health
food and gym memberships. He wants half of the National Institutes of
Health’s research budget to be spent on “preventive, alternative and
holistic” treatments. And he wants to legalise psychedelics for therapeutic
use—a departure for the party of “Just say no”.
Ultimately, Mr Kennedy will be able to act only at the behest of his boss
who, having promised to let the bear-botherer “go wild”, has also sent a few
mixed signals about his commitment to MAHA. In a picture posted last
weekend by his son, Donald Trump junior, Mr Trump and Mr Kennedy
posed with McDonald’s meals and Coca-Cola. The accompanying text read
“Make America Healthy Again starts TOMORROW.” It did not look like a
happy meal for Mr Kennedy. ■
states/2024/11/20/how-gaga-is-maha

Lexington
How Donald Trump could win the

future
The Democrats’ appeal to Silicon Valley is eroding
11月 21, 2024 08:31 上午
THEIR NICKNAME may not have aged well, but their ideas proved
powerful. In the early 1980s a group of rising Democratic congressmen
started calling for the American government to promote a “high-tech
revolution”, to stoke the economy, to counter competition from Japan, and
to help their own party shuck its statist, retrograde image. They became
known as the Atari Democrats, after the company that turned television sets
into platforms for a breakthrough video game, Pong. One of those
Democrats, Al Gore, succeeded in passing a law in 1991 that, as he put it,
would “link your computer to millions of computers around the country,
give you access to huge ‘digital libraries’ of information, and deliver
services we cannot yet imagine”.
Money from that law financed a supercomputing centre at the University of

Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where a young programmer named Marc
Andreessen helped create the first popular Web browser, Mosaic. Mr
Andreessen went on to co-found Netscape and to become one of the most
successful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Like many other
technologists, he assumed that he would support Democrats in election after
election, until Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump came along.
After Mr Trump won earlier this month, Mr Andreessen summed up his

reaction this way: “It felt like a boot off the throat.” Speaking on the
podcast he hosts with his VC partner, Ben Horowitz, another longtime
supporter of Democrats who also backed Mr Trump this year, Mr
Andreessen added, “Every morning I wake up happier than the day before.”
Ms Harris easily carried the counties that include Silicon Valley. But her
margin shrank compared with Joe Biden’s in 2020, and technologists say
that high-profile defectors such as Elon Musk are eroding the stigma that
once accompanied support for Mr Trump, just as it accompanied support for
Democrats before the Atari insurgents appeared. Once the cool kids,
Democrats have begun to seem the party of caution and even priggishness,
more preoccupied with word-choice than productivity growth. As the Atari
Democrats once did, Mr Trump and his vice-president, J.D. Vance, a former
VC, have the chance to identify their party with progress and the future, at
least as technologists define them.
An almost spiritual faith that technology can solve any problem, including
those created by technology, turns some denizens of Silicon Valley into
single-issue voters. That is the case with Messrs Andreessen and Horowitz.
They support politicians of either party they think will help “Little Tech,” or
startup firms, a focus that also aligns with their financial interest. On their
podcast they argued that stifling regulation and lack of clarity from the
Biden administration have hampered innovation in cryptocurrency, artificial
intelligence, nuclear energy and defence technology, putting America in
some critical fields behind China, which Mr Andreessen called the “USSR
2.0”. They despised a proposal from the Biden administration to tax
unrealised capital gains, saying it would ruin equity-rich but cash-poor
founders of startups.
It did not help that Mr Biden and his top regulators would not meet the duo,
who issued their endorsement in July, while Mr Trump not only had dinner
with them but gave out his mobile number. They were heartened that, when
it came to any emerging technology, he assured them, “we have to win”.
Some Democrats recognise their party risks being identified with

bureaucracy and stasis. “The Democratic Party needs to be the party that is
for building things, for dynamism, for new industry,” says Congressman Ro
Khanna, whose district includes Silicon Valley. “We’ve lost some of that to
Trump.” Mr Khanna, a possible candidate for president in 2028, looks more
to Franklin Delano Roosevelt than the Atari Democrats for a model. They
“were blind to inequality”, he says, and as a result were “accomplices in the
creation of an America that today has such a different outlook if you’re
living in Cupertino then if you’re living in Youngstown, Ohio”. The right
approach, he says, is “not marrying deregulation and tax cuts with
dynamism, which I would argue is the Trump phenomenon with Elon Musk
and Andreessen. It’s marrying this innovation and dynamism with an FDR
progressivism.”
Truth Socialism
To be Silicon Valley’s new champion Mr Trump may have to soften some

views, including on climate change, and resolve some contradictions within
his movement. Vivek Ramaswamy, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur and
former Republican candidate for president, has identified a rift over
regulation. In a speech in July, he noted that while “national protectionists”
praised antitrust regulation and consumer protection under President Biden,
“national libertarians” like him “believe in dismantling the regulatory state
altogether”. He added, “I don’t care to replace a left-wing nanny state with
a right-wing nanny state.”
Mr Trump has put him, along with Mr Musk, in charge of proposing cuts in
government, and Mr Ramaswamy has spoken of eliminating “countless”
regulatory agencies and 75% of the federal bureaucracy. But foremost
among the “national protectionists” is Mr Vance, a protégé of Peter Thiel,
another Trumpist VC from the Little Tech world. Mr Vance has praised Mr
Biden’s Federal Trade Commission chair, Lina Khan, and advocated such
aggressive government intervention as breaking up Google.
Further complicating the picture is that Mr Trump, who as president will be

exempt from conflict-of-interest and disclosure laws that apply to other
officials, now has his own social media company, Truth Social, as well as a
cryptocurrency business, World Liberty Financial. He will be a competitor
in the tech industry as well as its regulator-in-chief. When it comes to
technology, Mr Trump has several possible ways to win. ■

states/2024/11/21/how-donald-trump-could-win-the-future

The Americas
Brazil courts China as its Musk feud erupts again
A match made in the Middle Kingdom :: Xi Jinping, China’s leader, spies a chance to draw
Brazil closer
Parlacen, a bizarre parliament, is a refuge for bent

politicians
Institutional failure :: A seat in the Central American body offers immunity from prosecution
The mafia’s latest bonanza: salmon heists

Operation Holy Salmon :: Fish farming is big business in Chile. Stealing fish is, too

A match made in the Middle Kingdom
Brazil courts China as its Musk

feud erupts again
Xi Jinping, China’s leader, spies a chance to draw Brazil closer
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | São Paulo
THE RE-ELECTION of Donald Trump on November 5th rather

overshadowed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s big bash. Lula, as Brazil’s
president is known, hosted the G20 leaders’ summit in Rio de Janeiro on
November 18th and 19th. Heads of state from 19 of the world’s largest
economies, as well as the European and African Unions, convened to talk
shop.
Lula had three goals for the summit: the creation of a global alliance to
reduce hunger and poverty; an agreement to reform global institutions like
the IMF and the UN; and an increase in countries’ financial commitments to
combat climate change. He also wanted to whip up support for a global tax
on billionaires. Lula got a declaration signed by all G20 participants to
broadly support these ambitions. Mr Trump, soon to be the most powerful
person in the world, will not share the zeal.
Mr Trump’s return to the world stage may scupper Lula’s plans, but he has a
consolation prize: his relationship with Xi Jinping. After the G20 China’s
president travelled to Brasília, the capital, to meet his Brazilian counterpart.
To celebrate 50 years since their countries established diplomatic ties they
signed 37 agreements, covering everything from Brazilian grape exports to
co-operation on satellites. Sino-Brazilian relations “are at their best moment
in history,” said Mr Xi, with Lula by his side. In recent months, “anyone
who is anyone in Brazil has been to China,” says a former Brazilian
ambassador to Beijing.
Several factors have been pushing Brazil and China together. In Brazil’s
case they are mostly political. Shortly before the election in the United
States, Lula threw veiled support behind Kamala Harris, Mr Trump’s rival.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump is close to Jair Bolsonaro, Lula’s far-right populist
predecessor and nemesis. Elon Musk has become Mr Trump’s right-hand
billionaire. The tech entrepreneur had a months-long feud with Brazil’s
highest court this year, which culminated in his social-media platform, X,
being banned in Brazil for over a month. On November 16th Lula’s wife,
Rosangela da Silva, said “Fuck you, Elon Musk,” at a public event. Mr
Musk replied on X, “They are going to lose the next election”. This means
Lula will not expect a warm reception in Washington after Mr Trump is
inaugurated in January.
China’s problems with the United States run deeper. Mr Trump has said he
will slap 60% tariffs on all Chinese goods as soon as he takes office. And so
China is keen to do everything it can to expand the markets for its goods
beyond the United States. Brazil, the world’s ninth-largest economy, is an
important part of that puzzle. Brazil also shares China’s multipolar view of
the world, and is keen to rely less on the dollar for international
transactions.
But perhaps the most important component of Sino-Brazilian friendliness is

that China wants to buy what Brazil is selling. China guzzled Brazilian oil,
iron ore and soyabeans though the 2000s as the Chinese middle class grew
rapidly. It overtook the United States as Brazil’s biggest trade partner in
2009, during Lula’s second term (see chart). Commerce continues to
expand despite slowing Chinese growth. Brazilian exports to China are
running at record highs. Brazil is one of a handful of countries that boast a
trade surplus with China; last year it exported $51bn more to the Asian
giant than it imported from it.
And that surplus could yet grow. During Mr Trump’s last term, between
2017 and 2021, Brazilian exports to China nearly doubled as China bought
soyabeans, corn and chicken from Brazil instead of the United States. On
this visit, Mr Xi and Lula signed deals that could soon allow Brazil to
export grapes, sesame, sorghum and fish products to China, which could be
worth a combined $450m per year. TS Lombard, an investment firm in
London, reckons that a 10% increase in Chinese demand for Brazilian
products could boost GDP growth from a projected 2% in 2025 to 2.6%.
But it is Chinese investment in technology, industry and green energy which

most excites Lula, a former carworker who has pledged to slash Brazil’s
carbon emissions. The United States remains the biggest source of foreign
investment into Brazil by far. Chinese investment in the region—and in
Brazil—has fallen in recent years. But the composition of that investment
still suits Lula. Last year fully 72% of it went to clean-energy projects.
Exports of electric vehicles, solar panels and lithium-ion batteries from
China to Latin America rose from $3.2bn in 2019 to $9bn in 2023. Brazil
absorbed 63% of the total by value.
“Five years ago China was investing in expensive fixed assets like
electricity infrastructure, oil and gas,” says Hsia Hua Sheng, a professor at
the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo who also works for Bank of
China. “Today it invests in manufacturing, renewables, services and
logistics.” He claims that these are “higher-quality” investments because
they often involve partnerships with local firms, job creation and
technology transfer. BYD and Great Wall Motors, two Chinese rivals to
Tesla, are opening electric-vehicle factories in Brazil next year. BYD’s is in
a former Ford factory. It will be the firm’s biggest factory outside Asia.
A high-tech Chinese factory built on the site of a fading American industrial

champion is hard enough for officials in Washington to stomach. But no
subject is likely to ruffle as many feathers in a Trump-Musk White House
as a deal on satellites. During Mr Xi’s visit a memorandum of
understanding was signed between Brazil’s state telecommunications
company, Telebras, and SpaceSail, a Chinese maker of low-Earth orbit
satellites that competes with Mr Musk’s Starlink. Brazil’s communications
minister, Juscelino Filho, said he hoped SpaceSail will offer its services in
Brazil “as soon as possible”. In October, Mr Filho had visited SpaceSail’s
headquarters in Shanghai and those of another satellite-maker in Beijing.
The visit followed a spat about free speech and disinformation between Mr
Musk and Alexandre de Moraes, a powerful judge on Brazil’s Supreme
Court. In August Mr Moraes froze Starlink’s bank accounts in Brazil to
force Mr Musk to take down social-media accounts on X, the platform he
owns. Starlink controls almost half of the market for satellite-internet
services in Brazil. SpaceSail plans to have 600 satellites in orbit by the end
of 2025—around a tenth of the number that Starlink does.
Beyond this, Lula and Mr Xi could further their countries’ financial co-
operation. In 2023 they agreed to settle all trade in their countries’ own
currencies rather than in dollars. In October that same year they carried out
the first transaction in yuan and reais. The scale of these transactions is
currently puny, but they carry symbolic weight and may provoke Mr
Trump’s ire. He has warned that he would slap tariffs of 100% on goods
imported from countries that try to “leave the dollar”.
Such radical actions by Mr Trump would probably have unintended

consequences. “The relationship between Brazilian and Chinese
businessmen is way more consolidated today compared with five or ten
years ago,” says Mr Hsia. That is thanks in part to the trade war Mr Trump
waged in his first term. In his second, he may end up making Chinese and
Brazilian businessmen friendlier than ever. ■
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americas/2024/11/17/brazil-courts-china-as-its-musk-feud-erupts-again

Institutional failure
Parlacen, a bizarre parliament, is a

refuge for bent politicians
A seat in the Central American body offers immunity from prosecution
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | Panama City
THE CENTRAL AMERICAN PARLIAMENT (Parlacen) is not popular. It

is a space of “impunity, nepotism and waste” according to one Guatemalan
congressman. José Raúl Mulino, Panama’s president, laments that he cannot
“sign a decree to pull us out of Parlacen today”. In El Salvador’s general
election in March many voters refused to fill in Parlacen ballots. “Look for
honest work, stop being parasites,” read one spoiled paper.
Parlacen was set up in 1991 with the lofty goal of becoming a “symbol of
liberty, independence and reconciliation” in a region devastated by civil
wars in the 1980s. Each of the member states—Guatemala, Nicaragua, El
Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Panama—sends 20
delegates to the monthly meetings in Guatemala City. Former presidents
and vice-presidents are automatically entitled to a seat; they choose whether
to take it. In practice however, most of the work on regional integration and
co-operation—including free movement, trade and standardising
regulations—has been done by a different institution, the Central American
Integration System. Parlacen has been reduced to the status of a talking-
shop. Its decisions are non-binding.
It has found one use: a mechanism by which Central American politicians

who are accused of corruption can delay prosecution. A seat at Parlacen
confers the same broad immunity from prosecution as do seats in most
Central American national assemblies. In Panama, for instance, sitting
Parlacen members must be tried by Panama’s overworked Supreme Court.
Take the case of Juan Carlos Varela, a former president of Panama. He

declined to take up his seat in Parlacen when he left office in 2019.
Afterwards, as the Odebrecht corruption scandal unfurled, the US State
Department banned Mr Varela from entering the United States, accusing
him of accepting bribes. In 2024, with his trial scheduled in Panama, Mr
Varela changed his mind about Parlacen and took up a seat. His case must
now be transferred to Panama’s Supreme Court. Mr Varela denies
wrongdoing. The immunity from prosecution in lower courts that is
afforded by Parlacen means that “a case that should take two years can last
ten years,” says Alonso Illueca, a specialist in international law.
Panamanian law moved more quickly against Mr Varela’s successor,

Laurentino Cortizo, who stepped down in July. On October 17th the
country’s attorney-general confirmed that Mr Cortizo had been formally
accused of mismanaging public finances. But he also said that his office had
not been able to open investigations, as it was not clear if Mr Cortizo had
taken up his seat in Parlacen. We could find no public comment by Mr
Cortizo on the matter.
Politicians’ discovery of dutiful feelings towards Parlacen just as their legal

affairs become dicey is sometimes too much for people to bear. In 2020
Guatemala’s outgoing president, Jimmy Morales, who had been accused of
illicit campaign financing (which he denies), had to be sworn in at a hotel
after protesters swarmed into Parlacen’s headquarters in Guatemala City.
And though politicians on the campaign trail decry the waste (Parlacen’s
wage bill is $14m per year) and the impunity, they may secretly value its
protection. Mr Morales’s successor, Alejandro Giammattei, vowed to pull
Guatemala out of the parliament, only to seek its protection when under
investigation in January 2024. Ricardo Martinelli, Panama’s president from
2009 to 2014, once called Parlacen a “cave of thieves” and attempted to
withdraw Panama from it. After his term ended he took up his seat while
under investigation for corruption. He has spent most of 2024 holed up in
the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama City, having received a ten-year
sentence for money-laundering. (He and Mr Giammattei both deny
wrongdoing.)
Parlacen has also been cosying up to authoritarian regimes. In the past two
years deputies have voted to grant Russia and China permanent observer
status, the latter replacing Taiwan. Both countries use this status to boost the
position of their authoritarian ally, Nicaragua, according to Mr Illueca.
China also uses it to forge diplomatic links with Guatemala, which
maintains official ties with Taipei.
Several regional leaders besides Mr Martinelli have proposed to withdraw

their country from Parlacen. But this is not straightforward. Mr Martinelli’s
effort was deemed unconstitutional by Panama’s Supreme Court because it
had not sought the unanimous support required from Parlacen’s member
states. But Mr Mulino’s apparent defeatism has prompted other Panamanian
delegates to give it another go. They are proposing a plebiscite on Panama’s
membership, believing that a popular rejection of the parliament would
represent a sovereign claim that trumps Parlacen’s rules under the
constitution.
With the exception of Salvadoreans, Central Americans have steadily lost

faith in their political institutions over the past decade, according to
Latinobarómetro, a polling company. Stories like Parlacen’s help make the
case that those institutions serve politicians more than the people. ■
americas/2024/11/21/parlacen-a-bizarre-parliament-is-a-refuge-for-bent-politicians

Operation Holy Salmon
The mafia’s latest bonanza: salmon

heists
Fish farming is big business in Chile. Stealing fish is, too
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
WEARING HI-VIS jackets and heavy boots, the men in the CCTV footage
almost look as though they are meant to be there—until one pulls out a gun.
On March 20th at least ten men burst into a cold-storage facility in San
Antonio, a port in central Chile, threatened its employees and made off in
four lorries filled with salmon worth some 600m pesos ($616,000). Their
plot was soon foiled. In April police recovered some of the fish in San
Felipe, a nearby commune. And in August they arrested 11 people in
connection with the heist. Officials behind the sting—dubbed Operación
Santo Salmón (Operation Holy Salmon)—think the gang was planning to
sell the goods during Lent, when Catholics forgo meat in favour of fish.
Robberies have become a big problem for Chile’s second-largest export
business; salmon farming generated 6trn pesos in revenue and supported
some 70,000 jobs in 2023. There were just two robberies in 2018, according
to SalmonChile, which represents the country’s fish farmers. That number
has since leapt sharply. Between 2019 and 2023 there were 158 salmon
robberies, most of which targeted cargoes of fish being delivered by lorry.
Many more are thought to go unreported.
The crime wave has battered the industry. SalmonChile puts losses since
2019 at more than 67bn pesos. Firms are spending more on insurance and
tracking equipment. Lorry drivers are afraid, as the heists sometimes turn
violent; two drivers were abducted during robberies earlier this year. Many
firms are avoiding their usual delivery routes in the south. Some drivers
have started wearing bulletproof vests. Ricardo García of Salmones
Camanchaca, a fish-farming business, reckons that these additional
expenses, combined with the losses, are costing the industry around 1% of
its gross operating profits each year.
A couple of factors lie behind the recent rise in crime. Making off with a
lorry-load of salmon—typically worth around 200m pesos—was always
bound to be lucrative. But since domestic demand has risen by almost 20%
between 2013 and 2020, gangs can probably net more cash than ever before
by selling fish in local markets. At the same time, the government’s
crackdown on wood theft may have encouraged the country’s “timber
mafias” to target shipments of salmon instead. Salmon heists are most
frequent in the Biobío region, which has long been among those worst
affected by timber theft.
Chilean lawmakers are starting to act. It isn’t just that crime is hurting
business. Markets awash with stolen salmon that has been stored (and
sometimes even processed) in dodgy conditions pose a risk to public health.
Some members of the Chamber of Deputies, Chile’s lower house of
Congress, have proposed a bill—modelled on laws targeting timber
smugglers—that would make salmon robbery a specific crime with harsh
penalties. Mr García says that closer co-ordination between businesses and
the police has already led to fewer crimes this year: just 12 robberies have
been recorded so far, down from 24 last year. For now, though, salmon-
jacking is still going all too swimmingly for Chile’s fish-farm mafias. ■

americas/2024/11/21/the-mafias-latest-bonanza-salmon-heists

Asia
The surprising stagnation of Asia’s middle classes
Middle-class malaise :: It could shake up everything from profits to politics
The mystery of India’s female labour-force participation

rate
Women in the workforce :: A good news story? Maybe
Racial tensions boil over in New Zealand

A fight over rights :: A controversial bill regarding Maori people punctures its relative
harmony
Why is it so hard for Indians to get a visa?

Extra baggage :: Outsourcing firms are capitalising on Indians’ misery
The Caspian Sea is shrinking rapidly

Water woes :: This has big implications for Russia, which has come to rely on Central Asian
ports
Once a free-market pioneer, Sri Lanka takes a leap to the

left
Banyan :: A new president with Marxist roots now dominates parliament too

Middle-class malaise
The surprising stagnation of Asia’s

middle classes
It could shake up everything from profits to politics
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | Singapore
IN AUGUST AMALIA ADININGGAR, Indonesia’s statistician-in-chief,

appeared in parliament with bad news. The country’s middle class had
shrunk. Between 2021 and 2024, 6m Indonesians had fallen into the
“aspiring middle class”, an official euphemism for being a stone’s throw
away from poverty. The middle-class share of the population had fallen to
17% from 22% before the pandemic. Asked about the grim trend the next
day, Joko Widodo, then the president, deflected: “This issue exists in almost
all countries.”
He was not wrong. Asia’s middle class is not growing as it once did.
Between 1991 and 2014, the average annual growth rate in the number of
Asian middle-class households was 6%, according to our analysis. In the
past decade, it has slowed to 2%. In a few countries, including China, it has
shrunk. Exclude India, where the middle class is still growing, and Asia’s
middle classes have stagnated. At stake are the futures of 2.7bn people in
the middle class, or 72% of the population of developing Asia.
The pace of middle-class growth matters enormously—and not just for

poverty reduction or the profits of big international firms. An empowered
middle class can expand individual rights and lead to a more accountable
state. One influential argument holds that a rising middle class spurs
regulations on child labour: as technological change raises the returns to
skilled labour, middle-class parents face incentives to educate their children
instead of sending them to the factories. Most stable democracies have a
large middle class.
Who counts as “middle class” can be defined either absolutely, by using

fixed income thresholds across countries, or relatively, by measuring from
the centre of a country’s income distribution. Many countries and scholars
have their own favoured definitions. The best data are patchy and released
with long lags.
To handle this, we have created a measure to track the Asian middle class
using data from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), our sister company
(see chart 1). We opted for an absolute measure, defining “middle class” as
households making between $3,000 and $25,000 in disposable income a
year, in inflation-adjusted terms and holding exchange rates fixed. Our data
covers 3.7bn people, nearly 80% of Asia, leaving out the rich economies of
Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore, and also places
where data is scarce, such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia,
Myanmar and Nepal.
The most striking finding is a steady deceleration in the growth of the

middle class. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, an average of 19m
households in Asia joined the middle class every year, and did so at an
increasingly rapid pace. That acceleration tailed off over the 2010s.
Since 2021 just 12m households have been added to the middle class per
year, and the vast majority of growth is coming from a single source: India.
Without it, the post-pandemic rate of addition collapses to only 1.7m
households a year. EIU forecasts suggest that, outside India, the Asian
middle class will soon stop growing, and could even shrink. This is not just
down to slower overall population growth. Indonesia’s middle class is
stagnating despite a demographic tailwind. In our numbers China’s middle
class began declining before its population did, and the shift has been
sharper, too. In six out of nine countries we considered, the share of
households in the middle class has stopped rising and in four of nine it is
falling.
Even in India, impressive middle-class growth has been lopsided. It has
been propelled by the 130m households in India’s upper-middle class, or
those making between $5,000 and $25,000. By contrast, real incomes
among the 150m households earning between $1,000 and $5,000 have
stagnated (see chart 2).
Partly, this points to upward mobility: in this century the Indian upper-
middle class has added over 100m households. But it also reflects a
divergence in fortunes within the country. Since the pandemic, per-
household real income has grown 9% slower in the lower-middle than in the
upper-middle. The gap is forecast to widen.
Stuck in the middle
Why is Asian middle-class growth stalling? In part it is a by-product of

getting richer. As countries develop, their middle classes (measured in
absolute terms) tend to approach a stable share of the population.
Yet in developing Asia, this is not the whole story. Unsolved structural
problems still hold back the middle class. Several developing Asian
countries face widespread informality of the workforce. A study from 2021
found that Indonesian workers who fell into informality because of the
Asian financial crisis of 1997 suffered a lasting 32% drop in subsequent
earnings. Covid-19 caused informal employment to rise by five percentage
points in Indonesia after 2020, to 61% of workers. Meanwhile in Thailand
high household debt strangles middle-class borrowers.
Once reliable drivers of growth have also stopped working. In the past
decade foreign direct investment and exports have kept Vietnam’s middle
class growing at an average 3% annual rate, faster than the regional
average. But that is half the pace it grew at between 1990 and 2014.
Vietnam has struggled to train its workforce. Labour productivity lags peer
countries and firms face shortages of skilled workers.
Even as real income growth has slowed in some places, higher inflation has
created a perception of eroding living standards, enraging many middle-
class voters. Especially important is the price of food. In developing Asia it
makes up a third of consumption, compared with 9% in America. Food
prices were mostly stable during the 1990s and 2000s, until droughts caused
food-price crises in 2007-08 and again in 2010-12. The surge never entirely
reverted. Food prices were on average 46% higher during the 2010s than in
the 2000s, in nominal terms, according to the UN. The war in Ukraine, and
its disruption of grain markets, has had a painful effect. Average food prices
have risen another 15% in this decade, compared with the last.
How will this affect politics? Asia has remarkably flimsy social-safety nets
for its degree of prosperity; some rankings put it ahead only of sub-Saharan
Africa. In some places leaders respond with handouts. Thailand is currently
rolling out one-off transfers of 10,000 baht ($300) to Thais making less than
840,000 baht a year.
In others, unassuaged middle-class anger threatens those in power. Jakarta

was rocked this year by protests against legislative machinations meant to
install one of the sons of Jokowi (as Indonesia’s former president is known)
as governor of Central Java. Polls showed that, compared with other
classes, middle-class Indonesians were the most concerned about corruption
and the most dissatisfied with Jokowi’s rule, though he remains popular. It
is unlikely to be the last bout of protest.
Similarly, even though middle-class Indians have fared better economically

than lower-class ones, it was they who punished the ruling Bharatiya Janata
Party in this year’s elections. The party’s middle-class vote share fell three
percentage points compared with the election in 2019, according to the
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, a think-tank in Delhi.
The case of Malaysia is instructive. In the 1990s and 2000s, a rising activist
middle class demanded reformasi: greater freedom of speech, clean
elections and an end to security crackdowns. Reformasi “was able to
coalesce opinion across ethnic divides, because we also had a rising
[majority ethnic] Malay middle class,” creating a “middle-class
consciousness”, says Johan Saravanamuttu, a political scientist. But as the
country’s middle class has been pinched, reform has faded and identity
politics has risen, including a resurgence in fundamentalist Islamist politics.
Anwar Ibrahim, the prime minister, has realised “now is not yet the time for
liberal reforms,” and has portrayed himself instead as an investment-
courting job creator, says Ben Suffian, a Malaysian pollster.
It is too early to say if the current middle-class stagnation in Asia will lead
to more demands for reform, or the unwinding of liberal politics. Either
way, a disgruntled middle class is here to stay. ■
https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/11/21/the-surprising-stagnation-of-asias-middle-
classes
Women in the workforce
The mystery of India’s female

labour-force participation rate
A good news story? Maybe
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | MUMBAI
IN 2018 THE statistics office of the government of India released the first
“periodic labour force survey”, designed to provide quarterly and annual
snapshots of employment in the country. That year the proportion of women
aged 15 and above who were in work was a miserable 23.3%, far below the
global average of 53%. By contrast, the labour-force participation rate
(LFPR) among Indian men was 75.8%.
But the rate has picked up healthily every year since, rising to 41.7% in the
latest survey released in September. For a country marked by deep gender
inequality, a change this rapid and in the correct direction seems like
unalloyed good news. Is it?
Not everyone is convinced. One explanation offered by sceptics is that the

rise is the result of changes in the way the government measures the rate.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO), which does not include
unpaid workers (such as those who help out on the family farm), pegs
female LFPR lower, at 33% last year against the official 37%. Yet there is
no disputing the trend. The ILO, like the government, shows the rate rising
sharply in recent years, especially since the pandemic (see chart). Moreover,
measurement changes may have had a one-time effect, says Amit Basole of
the Azim Premji University in Bangalore, author of the “State of Working
India” report. But it would not explain consistent rises.
Another cause for caution is that the rise does not appear to be driven by
shifts in social norms. In many families it is considered a matter of some
shame for the women of the house to work, carrying the implication that the
men cannot provide. In rural areas, where much of the rise has occurred, the
likelihood that a woman is in work declines with every extra thousand
rupees her husband earns. There is no evidence that these long-established
norms have shifted in recent years.
For clues about what is driving the rise, economists look at what work
women are doing. “A lot of it is an increase in self-employment,” points out
Ashwini Deshpande of the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis at
Ashoka University near Delhi. This includes working on the family farm or
running a small shop out of the home, but also things like rolling bidis, a
type of cigarette, or making poppadums.
Mr Basole is of the view that the entry of large numbers of women into self-
employment is the result of economic distress in rural areas. Rates of
female participation in casual labour or fixed employment have declined in
recent years even as more rural women work on family farms or on their
own account, which “points to people trying to generate some sort of an
income in the absence of opportunities,” he says. If economic distress is the
cause, women’s LFPR could fall again as their families’ prospects improve.
The other, more optimistic, explanation is that women are taking advantage
of new opportunities. The government is serious about getting more women
into the workforce, says Ms Deshpande, and has been pushing schemes to
promote self-employment. Women have received more than two-thirds of
loans under a government microfinance scheme aimed at encouraging non-
farm businesses in rural areas. “This initiative likely encouraged more
women to take up entrepreneurship, reflected in the growing number of
self-employed female workers,” reckon analysts at Goldman Sachs, a bank.
Yet average earnings from self-employment for women in rural areas
remain stagnant. Ms Deshpande counsels patience: “We should give it
time.” More women in the workforce is good news for India, and for its
women. But it is only when they earn more, too, that it will be time to
celebrate. ■
Stay on top of our India coverage by signing up to Essential India, our free
weekly newsletter.
https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/11/21/the-mystery-of-indias-female-labour-force-
participation-rate

A fight over rights
Racial tensions boil over in New

Zealand
A controversial bill regarding Maori people punctures its relative harmony
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | Sydney
BARE-CHESTED MAORI warriors led 42,000 protesters to New

Zealand’s parliament on November 19th. Some of the demonstrators,
waving red, black and white Maori flags, had marched hundreds of miles to
oppose a bill that would pare back their rights. The protest was one of the
largest in support of Maori people. The bill, declared Jenny Shipley, a
former conservative prime minister, is “inviting civil war”.
That is hyperbole. But it has been decades since race relations were so
fractious in New Zealand, a country known for its relative harmony. It has
tried to honour a treaty struck in 1840 between Maori chiefs and British
settlers. It has embraced its indigenous language and culture. But the tone
has changed since New Zealanders elected a conservative coalition
government, led by Chris Luxon, last year. It has revoked policies
introduced by previous Labour governments. It has cut back the use of
Maori language and abolished a Maori health agency.
Tempers frayed when ACT, a small libertarian party within the ruling
coalition, introduced a bill that would erode the rights handed to Maori
people under the treaty. Since the 1970s a tribunal has investigated past
breaches of the treaty and compensated tribes for them. The treaty has
wound its way into laws aimed at redressing colonial wrongs. Such
measures have helped improve Maori lives. Though still disadvantaged,
they live longer and are wealthier than Aboriginal Australians.
David Seymour, ACT’s leader (who has Maori heritage), complains that
“activist judges have twisted the meaning of our founding document” to
hand out ever-growing privileges to Maori, who make up 20% of the
population. Ethnic quotas and shared-governance initiatives are giving them
unfair advantages, he argues. His bill aims to curb the treaty’s modern
applications. By trying to “rewrite the treaty”, it would undermine
democracy, over 40 barristers wrote in an open letter. The bill is not likely
to pass. Mr Luxon promises that his National Party will vote it down after a
public consultation. Yet many worry that the damage has already been done.
■
https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/11/21/racial-tensions-boil-over-in-new-zealand

Extra baggage
Why is it so hard for Indians to get

a visa?
Outsourcing firms are capitalising on Indians’ misery
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
APPLYING FOR a visa to Europe’s border-free Schengen zone can be a

humbling experience. “One must set aside ego,” says an applicant from
Bangalore. “I feel stripped bare each time I apply,” says another from
Mumbai. The bureaucratic grind can wear down even the most seasoned
traveller. Tourists and businesspeople wanting to visit Europe must provide
heaps of paperwork—forms, months of bank statements, pay slips and tax
returns. After all that, successful applicants are typically granted visas that
cover only the length of their trip. For those needing to return, the whole
ordeal begins anew.
Citizens of rich countries do not need a visa for short stays in most parts of
the world. But those from the developing world often do. Indians are among
the worst off (see chart). For them, the high fees, long waits and application
hurdles of the visa process make travel, whether for business or leisure,
much tougher.
A handful of private firms are cashing in. Outsourcing companies now
handle 40% of visa applications on behalf of governments. Although
consulates still make the final decision, these contractors verify paperwork,
collect fingerprints and gather other biometric data from applicants. Three
firms—VFS Global, TLScontact and BLS International—control over 70%
of the market, with VFS alone holding half the overall share. An early
entrant, VFS processed 6m applications for 25 governments in 2008. By
last year, that number was 26m applications for 67 governments. In
October, Singapore’s state-owned investor Temasek acquired a stake in the
company, valuing it at $7bn.
As disposable incomes rise in developing countries, and as travel rebounds

after the pandemic, the market is primed for further growth. Nuvama
Group, an investment firm, predicts the visa-outsourcing industry will
expand by more than 9% annually, crossing $5bn by 2030. For
governments, visas are a nice little earner. In 2023 the European Union
pulled in over $900m from visa fees.
For travellers, however, the process has only become harder. Between 2013
and 2023, the rejection rates of visa applications for the Schengen area
more than tripled from around 5% to 16%. Visiting America is no easier.
Appointments for tourist and business visas at the American consulate in
Mumbai take about 14 months. In Bangkok it takes six months.
There is also the price tag. A study by the European University Institute
found that citizens from poorer countries pay far more for visas than those
from wealthier ones, and when the fees are measured against national
incomes, the gulf between rich and poor countries is even wider. The
standard fee for a short-term Schengen visa is $95, a British visa $151 and
an American one $185. For frequent travellers to the Schengen area, which
grants visas for very short durations, the costs add up.
Adding to the burden is the service fee travellers pay to the outsourcing
firms handling their application. For example, Indians pay an additional $23
for a Schengen visa. Then come the optional add-ons to make the
experience more comfortable (or just bearable): for $40, applicants can
relax in a special lounge with personalised service; for $30, paperwork can
be submitted outside regular hours; for $200, it can be done from home.
These extras are highly profitable. BLS International, which is based in
India, generated nearly a third of its revenue from such “value-added”
services, with a robust 20% profit margin.
Governments defend outsourcing by arguing that consulates still make the

final decisions on visas; private contractors simply reduce the
administrative load. Federica Infantino, a researcher who studies migration
at Université Côte d’Azur, believes there is another benefit. Visas are often
a “touchy” issue, she says, and when dealing with visa denials having an
intermediary can be useful for governments.
Restrictive border policies do not just complicate travel; they are

economically damaging. Tourists from countries such as India and China
are among the biggest spenders, according to UN Tourism, a multilateral
agency. Research by Camilo Umana-Dajud of CEPII, a French think-tank,
shows that visa restrictions significantly reduce bilateral trade. Easing
access has the opposite effect. ■
Stay on top of our India coverage by signing up to Essential India, our free
weekly newsletter.
https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/11/21/why-is-it-so-hard-for-indians-to-get-a-
visa

Water woes
The Caspian Sea is shrinking

rapidly
This has big implications for Russia, which has come to rely on Central
Asian ports
11月 21, 2024 04:54 上午
FOR MANY living on Kazakhstan’s coast, it was obvious long ago. The
Caspian Sea is drying up. The world’s largest inland body of water has
dropped by two metres since the mid-1990s, shrinking by 15,000 square
km, an area bigger than Connecticut. Each year in Aktau, a coastal city, the
sea retreats further from the shore.
Two factors lie behind the Caspian’s decline. Growing water use along
Russia’s Volga river, which provides 80-90% of the Caspian’s inflows, has
caused volumes entering the sea to drop. Meanwhile rising temperatures
have pushed up evaporation rates, leaching more water from the sea itself.
Researchers at the University of Bremen predict that if global warming
continues on present-day trends, the Caspian could drop by around eight
metres by the end of the century. If temperatures rise faster, it could fall by
as much as 20 metres. A decline in that range would cause swathes of the
sea to vanish, particularly in the north-east, where it is shallowest.
The most immediate impact would be felt by the Caspian’s wildlife. Species
such as the Caspian seal are already suffering from falling water levels, says
Assel Baimukanova, a researcher at Kazakhstan’s Institute of Hydrobiology
and Ecology. But the Caspian’s retreat would also have unpredictable
environmental consequences for the wider region. In time, a smaller
Caspian would lead to lower rainfall in Central Asia, where water is already
scarce.
Central Asia’s economies could suffer, too. Since the beginning of the war
in Ukraine, trade has boomed in the region, particularly through the “middle
corridor”, which bypasses Russia by linking East Asia to Europe via the
Caspian’s ports. Money has poured into Kazakhstan’s ports, too, which are
expanding to deal with increasing volumes. But as the Caspian shrinks,
investments in new infrastructure will start to look riskier. Ships already
leave Aktau before they are fully loaded because of shallower waters.
Authorities in Kuryk, another Kazakhstani port, have ordered large-scale
dredging in an effort to boost capacity. Kazakhstan’s oil business has been
disrupted, too. The operator of the Kashagan oilfield in the northern
Caspian was recently forced to dig channels in the seabed to allow ships to
reach its facilities, after a drop in the sea level blocked access for normal
vessels.
Last year the local authority in Aktau declared a state of emergency over the
fall in water levels. This summer Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s president,
complained to Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart, that the situation
could become “catastrophic”. In principle, under the 2003 Tehran
Convention, the countries surrounding the Caspian are committed to
preserving its environment. But their governments—a mixture of post-
Soviet regimes and autocracies—are slow to act, despite the looming
economic consequences. ■
https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/11/21/the-caspian-sea-is-shrinking-rapidly

Banyan
Once a free-market pioneer, Sri

Lanka takes a leap to the left
A new president with Marxist roots now dominates parliament too
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
SRI LANKA was once a pioneer of free-market capitalism in South Asia.

After J.R. Jayewardene took power with a super-majority in 1977, he
introduced a French-style executive presidency and economic reforms that
overturned the left-wing orthodoxy of the previous two decades. Cheered
on by Western governments concerned about Soviet influence, Sri Lanka
became the first country in the region to liberalise its economy.
South Asia’s most developed nation has now leapt back to the left. It was
surprising enough that Anura Kumara Dissanayake, an outlier from a party
with Marxist roots, won a presidential election on September 21st. More
stunning still was his National People’s Power (NPP) coalition’s landslide
victory in a parliamentary poll on November 14th. It won 159 of 225 seats,
more than enough to change the constitution. Previously, the NPP had just
three.
Mr Dissanayake’s mandate is another clear warning to South Asia’s

political and business elites in 2024, following electoral upsets in Pakistan
and India and a student-led revolution in Bangladesh. Considering his
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) party’s past links to China, his victory
could intensify that country’s tussle with India for influence in the region. It
is also a test for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), given his pledge to
review a bail-out.
But the outcome raises questions for Mr Dissanayake too. What exactly
does “Comrade President” (as he was introduced at rallies) plan to do with
his vast powers and how will ideology shape those plans? Can he meet
voters’ high expectations within the IMF’s constraints? And how open to
criticism and political opposition will he be if public support wanes?
His campaigns were based on broad promises to end endemic corruption

and cronyism. That proved hugely effective among voters still reeling from
Sri Lanka’s first debt default, in 2022. Mass protests ousted the president
that year, and though his successor stabilised the economy and secured a
$2.9bn IMF bail-out, voters penalised him in September over continuing
corruption and austerity measures.
Opponents portrayed Mr Dissanayake as a dangerous radical. They cited the

JVP’s two failed uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s (the party renounced
violence in 1994). They pointed to his paltry government experience—he
was briefly an agriculture minister two decades ago. And they said he
would cause a financial crisis by trying to renegotiate the IMF bail-out.
So far, such warnings have been unwarranted: Mr Dissanayake has been far
more of a pragmatist than a revolutionary. As he often boasted in election
rallies, he has run the country with a cabinet of just three for almost two
months without spooking markets. Harini Amarasuriya, the prime minister
whom he reappointed on November 18th, is widely respected. And the
cabinet of 21 people he named after this month’s election includes a
sensible balance of academics, seasoned politicians and new faces.
His handling of the IMF has been especially telling. While it may be
possible to adjust tax rates and other parts of the existing plan for meeting
bail-out benchmarks, some feared that he would demand much more,
potentially re-opening debt-restructuring talks with creditors, including
India and China. But in a meeting with an IMF team that arrived in Sri
Lanka on November 17th, Mr Dissanayake committed to the existing
agreement, according to people familiar with the discussions. “That
question is at least resolved in the short term and that is important for the
stability of the economy,” said one.
At the same time, in a nod to the public pressure he faces to increase social
spending, Mr Dissanayake urged the IMF to maintain a “balanced approach
that considers the hardships faced by citizens”. And his government did not
provide details on longer-term questions, such as its growth strategy and its
views on trade or the role of the state sector. “That’s where you will have an
ideological issue,” predicts Murtaza Jafferjee of Advocata Institute, a think-
tank in Colombo, the capital. He fears that the government’s protectionist
and statist instincts could stifle badly needed productivity growth.
Some answers may become clearer in the next few weeks, when Mr
Dissanayake is expected to present an interim budget. Not all Sri Lankans
may like what they hear. For the moment, though, most are just glad to be
rid of a political old guard that pushed their once promising economy to the
brink of collapse. ■

https://www.economist.com/asia/2024/11/21/once-a-free-market-pioneer-sri-lanka-
takes-a-leap-to-the-left

China
Helping America’s hawks get inside the head of Xi Jinping
The Sino-American rivalry :: China’s leader is a risk-taker. How far will he go in confronting
America?
Trump, trade and feeding China’s pigs

A hill of beans :: As a trade war looms, China looks to cut its reliance on America
Snuffing out the flame of freedom in Hong Kong

Human rights in China :: Dozens of pro-democracy activists are thrown into jail for up to a
decade

The Sino-American rivalry
Helping America’s hawks get inside

the head of Xi Jinping
China’s leader is a risk-taker. How far will he go in confronting America?
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
AS DONALD TRUMP assembles his foreign-policy team, many of his

picks display a common characteristic: they are strident China hawks.
Those seeking a tougher approach towards America’s rival range from Mike
Waltz, Mr Trump’s proposed national security adviser, to Marco Rubio, his
nominee for secretary of state. Part of their job will be to grasp how
relations have changed in the four years since the last Trump
administration, a period in which the Chinese economy has sagged, tensions
around Taiwan and in the South China Sea have grown, and the war in
Ukraine has further divided the world’s biggest powers. When weighing up
the risks Xi Jinping is prepared to take in his competition with America,
new calculations are needed. Forming them must involve studying what
motivates China’s leader.
A valuable tool is the vast body of literature purporting to have been written
by Mr Xi. The number of volumes bearing his name, explaining his views
on China’s main concerns at home and abroad, far exceeds that of books by
Mr Trump or Mr Putin—or, indeed, previous Chinese leaders (see chart).
According to an estimate by the China Media Project, he published 120
volumes in the first decade of his rule. This year at least nine have been
added to the pile (“Excerpts from Xi Jinping’s Discourses on Natural
Resources Work” is hot off the presses this month).
These books are tedious, but they are also important. They reflect the
ideology that guides the party and show how Mr Xi is trying to reshape it to
justify his distinctive approach to ruling the country and projecting Chinese
power. In 2017, during Mr Trump’s first term, “Inside the Mind of Xi
Jinping” by François Bougon, a French journalist, became the first critical
book-length study of what is commonly known as “Xi Jinping Thought”.
Mr Bougon argued that Mr Xi “manoeuvres, tinkers, and seeks his balance”
between conflicting ideological forces in China. “There is no indication that
he is the author of a coherent doctrine of his own.”
Analysts now have much more of Mr Xi’s thought to sift through. Among
global statesmen, Kevin Rudd is rare in having undertaken this task. Mr
Rudd was Australia’s prime minister between 2007 and 2010, when Mr Xi
was China’s heir apparent, and again in 2013, after Mr Xi became leader. In
a recent book, “On Xi Jinping: How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is Shaping
China and the World”, Mr Rudd, who is now his country’s ambassador to
America, says “the outline of Xi’s brave new world is now hiding in plain
sight for us all.” His bibliography lists well over 50 of Mr Xi’s books. More
than a quarter were published after Mr Trump left the White House.
In Mr Rudd’s telling, ideology is the main impulse behind Mr Xi’s actions.

China’s leader sees powerful historical forces leading to the decline of the
West and the ineluctable rise of the East. The process can be hastened by a
disciplined Communist Party that understands the dialectical process. In his
pursuit of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” by 2049, when the
party marks the centenary of its rule, a defining objective is “reunification”
with Taiwan. Like his predecessors, Mr Xi does not rule out the use of
force.
Mr Xi has steered China towards what Mr Rudd calls Marxist Nationalism.

In other words, he has purged the party and strengthened its control, shifted
economic policy away from market forces towards greater central planning,
and embarked on a more bellicose foreign policy. In Mr Rudd’s view, Mr Xi
would want to take Taiwan—ideally without a war—by the end of his
fourth term in 2032. “The only thing that would prevent him would be
effective and credible US, Taiwanese, and allied military deterrence—and
Xi’s belief that there was a real risk of China losing any such engagement,”
writes Mr Rudd.
Therein lies the rub. Who knows how Mr Xi would weigh up the risks? By
surrounding himself with yes-men, he may have made it more difficult for
dissenting views to percolate upwards. And Mr Xi is certainly a risk-taker.
His purges of high-level officials, ostensibly for corruption, are a sign of
that (millions must be quietly fuming at him). So are his displays of military
muscle around Taiwan and shoals claimed by the Philippines. In both places
a small clash could escalate. Even if Mr Xi’s behaviour so far has not been
as reckless as Mr Putin’s, it may become more so.
Risk v endure
Yet Mr Xi’s writings (or those of his ghostwriters, overseen by Wang

Huning, his chief ideologue and author of a gloomy book on the United
States called “America against America”) are also laced with anxiety about
threats to the party. He often urges officials to learn lessons from the Soviet
Union’s collapse. In another book published this year, “The Political
Thought of Xi Jinping”, Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung of the School of
Oriental and African Studies in London argue that Mr Xi’s ideology is
mostly a cover. It is less about socialism and more about strengthening the
party’s power. If the authors are right, it may suggest that Mr Xi’s focus is
on preventing collapse. He would reckon that losing a war could trigger a
regime-threatening backlash at home.
Indeed, it is far from clear that Mr Xi is really a Maoist or Marxist. Mao

called for endless class struggle against bureaucratic elites and “capitalist
roaders”. Mr Xi’s writings stress the need for stability. He has no truck even
with protests by nationalists—there have been no large ones during his rule,
unlike in preceding years.
In his handling of the economy, Mr Xi has scared entrepreneurs with his

left-leaning talk. His “common prosperity” campaign, launched in 2021,
raised the spectre of big new redistributive schemes. That effort coincided
with a regulatory crackdown on large tech firms which smacked to some of
an ideologically driven assault on the titans of private enterprise. But in the
past year or two Mr Xi has been struggling to revive the economy. This has
involved treating private firms with a softer touch and promoting high-tech
manufacturing. It is hard to spot much in the way of socialism in his efforts.
Some economists argue that more spending on welfare would help the
economy by encouraging people to save less and spend more, but Mr Xi
criticises doling out money for such purposes.
Two strands of Mr Xi’s thinking are far less in doubt to those who have
studied him. One is his Leninism, meaning his emphasis on the party as an
instrument of control. He blames the Soviet collapse on ideological laxity.
He wants his officials to parrot well-worn doctrinal lines, rather than debate
them.
The other strand is Mr Xi’s chest-thumping nationalism. The message

conveyed by his works contrasts with that of Deng Xiaoping, who said
China should “hide its capabilities and bide its time”. Mr Xi says China
must move to the “centre of the global stage”. Some of Mr Trump’s picks
for senior jobs believe this means more than a mere desire for great-power
status (China has that already). “They are seeking to supplant us and they
are seeking to replace democracy and capitalism with their one-party-form-
of-rule techno-state,” said Mr Waltz last year.
Mr Xi is careful to avoid such language, but Mr Tsang and Ms Cheung

agree that he wants global leadership. This is not “about taking over from
the United States as the global hegemon, with all the baggage of US
leadership”, they say. “It is also not about overtly overturning the liberal
international order. The ultimate goal is to capture or ‘modernise and
transform’ the international order into one that fits in with Xi’s thoughts.”
That, clearly, would be a chilling world for democracy.
Yet for all the words Mr Xi has published, it is possible to misread them. “I
sometimes worry that the sheer volume of Xi’s musings obfuscates more
than it illuminates,” says Jonathan Czin, a former analyst of China at the
CIA. “In China’s system, Xi is in effect both pope and emperor—
responsible for ruling, as well as promulgating ideological justifications that
read like an obscurantist theological treatise from the Middle Ages.”
As America and China struggle to make sense of each other during the new
Trump era, misinterpretations will abound. That will make a fraught
relationship all the more dangerous. ■
Subscribers can sign up to Drum Tower, our new weekly newsletter, to

understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the
world.
https://www.economist.com/china/2024/11/21/helping-americas-hawks-get-inside-the-
head-of-xi-jinping
A hill of beans
Trump, trade and feeding China’s

pigs
As a trade war looms, China looks to cut its reliance on America
11月 21, 2024 12:04 下午 | BEIJING
ONE OF THE many legacies of Donald Trump’s first trade war with China
is that pigs in the country now have a more varied diet. In response to Mr
Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods in 2018, China imposed a 25% levy on
American farm products. That included soyabeans, which China uses for
protein in animal feed. Much of the levy was waived in 2019, but the
damage was done. When Mr Trump’s first term began, some 40% of
China’s soyabean imports came from America. As he prepares for his
second, only 18% do.
Officials in Beijing think that number is still too high. They have been
obsessed with food security ever since Mao Zedong’s policies led to a
famine in the 1950s. The Communist Party believes its legitimacy rests in
part on securing affordable food for the masses. Couple that with the
country’s insatiable appetite for pork and the importance of soyabeans
becomes clear. China uses over 110m tonnes of them every year, of which
80% are imported. They are a dangerous “choke-point” for the food supply,
say state media.
Mr Trump’s threat of a new trade war puts China’s leaders in a tricky spot.
America’s president-elect has talked of imposing tariffs of 60% on Chinese
goods. Even if he settles on lower levies, China will feel the need to
respond. American soyabeans are an obvious target. Even today, about half
of them go to China, bringing in $15bn for American farmers in 2023. If
China slapped tariffs on them it would cause pain in places like Iowa, but it
would also make it more expensive for China to feed its pigs, pushing up
the price of pork.
In the longer term, Chinese officials are trying to further reduce their
reliance on American soyabeans. One way they are doing this is by
strengthening China’s trade links with Latin America. No country sends
more soyabeans to China than Brazil (see chart). As Mr Trump returns to
the White House, the two are drawing closer. Meanwhile, it is hoped that a
China-backed megaport in Peru will cut shipping times and open new lines
of trade between Latin America and China. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, was
on hand to inaugurate the port on November 14th.
Back at home, China’s farmers are being offered big subsidies to grow
soyabeans. And, despite public suspicion of genetically modified (GM)
crops, since 2021 some farmers have been allowed to plant GM soyabeans.
Such efforts have helped China increase its annual production of soyabeans
from 15m tonnes to 20m over the past five years. On the demand side, a
number of farmers are trimming the soyabean content of pig feed or using
alternative sources of protein. Then there are the fur farmers of Shandong
province, who are experimenting with feeding minks and foxes the
processed carcasses of skinned animals, rather than soyabeans.
China’s labs might provide the ultimate solution. In January a team at the
Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology said they had synthesised
proteins suitable for animal feed. The process was fuelled by methanol, a
chemical which the scientists had derived from coal. The final product, they
claimed, was made cheaply enough to be competitive with soyabeans. If it
all works at scale, it will be a game-changer. China lacks farmland, but it
has lots of coal. And pigs are not fussy eaters. ■

world.
https://www.economist.com/china/2024/11/21/trump-trade-and-feeding-chinas-pigs

Human rights in China
Snuffing out the flame of freedom

in Hong Kong
Dozens of pro-democracy activists are thrown into jail for up to a decade
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | HONG KONG
WHETHER A CRIME was even committed is debatable. Nevertheless, on

November 19th judges in Hong Kong’s biggest-ever national-security trial
sentenced 45 activists to between four and ten years in prison. Those jailed
are among 47 pro-democracy figures, known as the “Hong Kong 47”, who
were rounded up in 2021 for having organised a primary to choose
candidates for the local legislature. Fourteen of the defendants were found
guilty in May of conspiracy to commit subversion. Thirty-one had already
pleaded guilty. Two were acquitted. The entire case has been widely
criticised as politically motivated.
The plan for the primary, held ahead of an election scheduled for September
2020, was probably legal at the time the activists drew it up. It was also
clever. Rather than split the pro-democracy vote in a system already rigged
against them, they hoped to run a single slate of candidates. If their camp
went on to win a majority, they planned to vote down the budget and so
force the chief executive at the time, Carrie Lam, to resign.
The activists had been emboldened by the huge pro-democracy protests that
rocked the city in 2019. By the time the primary took place, though, the
environment had changed dramatically. In the interim, covid-19 had put an
end to the demonstrations. And just days before the primary was held—
attracting 600,000 of Hong Kong’s 4.5m voters—the central government
imposed a draconian national-security law on the city. It was under this
measure that the Hong Kong 47 were arrested.
The pandemic eventually provided the government with an excuse to

postpone a general election it was fearful of losing. But that did not
diminish the crimes of the activists, said officials. The justices in the case
called Benny Tai, an affable law professor, “the mastermind” of the primary
plan. He received the longest sentence: ten years.
During the trial hundreds of people queued to secure a seat in court

(pictured), suggesting a level of latent support for the pro-democracy
movement. But the security law enacted in 2020 and a new one passed this
year have instilled fear in Hong Kong’s liberals.
Their mood is unlikely to improve in the near term. On November 20th the
trial of Jimmy Lai resumed. Mr Lai is accused of sedition and colluding
with foreign forces. The former media mogul and generous supporter of
anti-Communist causes, who is 76, has been held in solitary confinement
for more than three years. His friends say he is resigned to dying in prison
—and that his real crime, like that of the Hong Kong 47, is supporting
democracy.■

world.
https://www.economist.com/china/2024/11/19/snuffing-out-the-flame-of-freedom-in-
hong-kong

Middle East & Africa

Get ready for “Maximum Pressure 2.0” on Iran
America and the Middle East :: The Trump White House may bomb and penalise the regime
into a deal
Israel’s hardliners want no one else to control Gaza

More chaos in Gaza :: Only 11 out of a recent convoy of 109 aid trucks managed to get in
A genocidal militia’s quest for legitimacy

Sudan’s civil war :: A warring party in Sudan claims it wants to talk peace
Why GM crops aren’t feeding Africa

The non-appliance of science :: Despite decades of research, few countries grow them there

America and the Middle East
Get ready for “Maximum Pressure

2.0” on Iran
The Trump White House may bomb and penalise the regime into a deal
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | DUBAI
OCCASIONALLY, THERE are second acts in American diplomacy. During

his first term, Donald Trump abandoned the nuclear pact agreed on in 2015
by Iran and world powers. He went on to pursue “maximum pressure”,
crippling sanctions meant to compel Iran into a stricter agreement. It was
only half successful: the sanctions battered Iran’s economy, but Mr Trump
left office without a deal.
Now he may get another chance. Many of the sanctions have remained in
effect under Joe Biden, but American enforcement has flagged: Iran’s oil
exports climbed from less than 600,000 barrels per day (b/d) in 2019 to a
high of 1.8m b/d earlier this year, almost all of them sold to China. People
close to the president-elect are keen to resume the pressure in January—but
such talk has prompted unease in the Middle East, and not only in Iran.
Though Mr Trump has been vague about his plans, many of his cabinet
nominees support tougher sanctions. Marco Rubio, his pick for secretary of
state, opposed the original nuclear deal and criticised Mr Biden for his
failure to enforce an oil embargo. Mike Waltz, Mr Trump’s choice as
national security adviser, wants to “reinstate a diplomatic and economic
pressure campaign” against Iran.
There may be dissenting voices, such as Tulsi Gabbard, who is tipped to be

director of national intelligence. But advocates of fierce embargoes have
spent four years making detailed plans for how to implement them and the
sceptics have no clear alternative. The new administration will probably go
with the ready-made policy.
Tougher American enforcement could well block up to 1m b/d of Iranian

exports. That could halve Iran’s oil revenue at a time when its budget
deficits are already widening fast. What is more, Mr Trump might be able to
avoid a big rise in American petrol prices. The International Energy Agency,
a global forecaster, predicts an oil-supply glut of more than 1m b/d in 2025.
The market could probably absorb the loss of some Iranian crude.
Still, the effect might be temporary, since Iran has built a resilient network
to defy sanctions. So the question is what America wants to achieve;
sanctions are meant to be a means, not an end. For some hardliners in
Washington, the ultimate goal has always been regime change.
That may be a minority view, but there is broad consensus beyond the
incoming administration that a new nuclear deal is necessary. Even some
supporters of the original agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA), think there is no going back to it. The JCPOA sought to
keep Iran’s “breakout time”, the period it would need to produce a bomb’s-
worth of enriched uranium, to around one year. It limited Iran’s uranium
stockpile to 300kg enriched to 3.67% purity.
Iran has blown past those limits. The International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, estimated in October that Iran had
more than 6,600kg of uranium enriched to various levels. That included
182kg at 60% purity, a hair’s breadth from weapons-grade. It has also
resumed production of uranium metal, which can be used to make the core
of a nuclear bomb. Iran could probably produce a bomb’s-worth of enriched
uranium in less than two weeks. Reviving the JCPOA would lengthen that
time-frame—but it would still be far less than a year.
Ask and ye might receive
America could ask for many things in a new deal. It could insist that Iran
dismantles some of its nuclear facilities, particularly those that were used in
the past for weapons research. It could require Iran to implement the
Additional Protocol, an addendum to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
which gives the IAEA further inspection powers. Beyond capping
enrichment, a new deal could also try to restrict Iran’s missile programme,
or demand that Iran curtails its military support for its proxies.
The problem is that diplomats have tried to negotiate some of these

provisions in the past. Iran refused. This is where advocates of maximum
pressure think Mr Trump is their secret weapon: he could threaten to attack
Iran’s nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails, and he might seem crazy enough
that Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, would take him seriously.
Mr Khamenei may not, though. After a year of back-and-forth missile

attacks between Iran and Israel, many conservatives in Iran would be
reluctant to negotiate away their nuclear programme. Instead he could try to
call Mr Trump’s bluff. He knows that the new president does not want a war
with Iran and that some of his allies are keen to disengage from the Middle
East in order to focus on China. Rather than a comprehensive accord, Iran
could propose a limited one that simply pulls its nuclear programme back
from the threshold. It could offer to get rid of its stockpile of 60%-refined
uranium, by blending it down or by shipping it out of the country, and to
cap enrichment once again.
This would be hard for Mr Trump to defend, a far weaker agreement than
the one he abrogated in 2018. But he could argue that his predecessor left
him a mess. A more limited deal would find some support in Iran, too.
Hardliners seem to have accepted that they cannot muddle along without
sanctions relief.
Binyamin Netanyahu opposed the JCPOA and has dreamed for years that
America might attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. But he would struggle to
sabotage the new administration’s diplomacy. The Israeli prime minister has
long promoted Mr Trump as Israel’s greatest champion in America; it would
be ironic if Mr Trump ended up securing Republican support for a watered-
down agreement with Iran.
Gulf states, meanwhile, worry that he will fail. Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi
foreign minister, supported maximum pressure during Mr Trump’s first
term; now he talks cheerily about how Saudi Arabia’s relations with Iran are
“on the right path”. The Saudis are keen to avoid a repeat of Mr Trump’s
first term, when Iran targeted their oilfields. Prince Faisal visited Iran last
summer, the first such trip in seven years. There is talk of joint military
exercises.
The kingdom has also tried to distance itself from Israel. At a conference in
Riyadh earlier this month, Muhammad bin Salman, the crown prince,
condemned Israel not only for its wars in Gaza and Lebanon but also for its
recent air strikes on Iran. The Saudis worry that Mr Trump may want them
to cut ties with Iran and have urged the coming administration not to shatter
their fragile detente. With the Middle East mired in an ever-widening war,
few are in the mood to take risks. ■
Sign up to the Middle East Dispatch, a weekly newsletter that keeps you in
the loop on a fascinating, complex and consequential part of the world.
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/middle-east-
and-africa/2024/11/19/get-ready-for-maximum-pressure-20-on-iran

More chaos in Gaza
Israel’s hardliners want no one else

to control Gaza
Only 11 out of a recent convoy of 109 aid trucks managed to get in
11月 21, 2024 07:23 上午 | JERUSALEM
AMID THE catastrophic destruction of Gaza, new buildings are rising. Not
shelters for Palestinians left homeless by the war, or hospitals for the sick
and injured, but bigger outposts for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) along
the new roads it has paved in key spots, bisecting the coastal strip and
cutting it off from Egypt.
On November 12th the army opened another new road, at the Kissufim
crossing on the border with Israel. For the moment this one is not meant for
Israeli troops but to let aid into central and southern Gaza. Israel is eager to
rebuff accusations that it is starving Gaza’s people. But on the first day the
crossing was operating an aid lorry was stolen after entering the strip. The
next day 14 out of 20 lorries trying to get in were stolen, some by
Palestinian gunmen who shot and wounded the drivers.
One of the few things Israel and aid groups agree on is that Gaza’s growing
chaos makes it ever harder to distribute aid to the 2.2m people there, most
of them displaced by the war. Little is getting in. Nearly a third of the
lorries entering Gaza are hijacked, reckons an Israeli officer. On November
18th, only 11 lorries in a convoy of 109 trucks made it into southern Gaza,
says UNRWA, the UN’s agency for Palestinians.
Some looters run their own fiefs. Some are stronger than Hamas which,
despite being battered by Israel, still controls parts of Gaza. One Israeli
general admitted that IDF units do not always try to stop looters because
commanders are loth to risk their soldiers’ lives in the crossfire.
The situation in northern Gaza is dire. The UN says that virtually no aid has
reached parts of the area for 40 days, repeating its warnings that famine is
imminent. Fishermen heading out to sea have been shot by Israeli troops.
Prices of basics have soared. Onions cost 400 times as much as they did
before the war, eggs 16 times and sugar over 25 times. Few people have
cash to pay for food anyway: banks no longer function.
Israel has no clear plan for delivering aid to Gaza. Currently the lorries are
brought in by international aid organisations or paid for by foreign
governments. But once through Israeli checkpoints the convoys may come
under fire from looters, the IDF and Hamas.
Israel and the international groups blame each other. Israeli officials claim
that they co-ordinate with them but say they are inefficient at dishing out
the aid. UN agencies say Israel rejected 27 of 31 aid missions to northern
Gaza between November 1st and 18th. In a recent deposition to Israel’s
Supreme Court, the IDF admitted that it does not have enough forces on the
ground, so “doesn’t effectively control Gaza Strip” and therefore Hamas
retains some “governmental authority”.
Israel’s security establishment wants to set up an alternative Palestinian

force, aligned with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, to replace
Hamas and take over running the strip. But Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s
prime minister, is against this. Rather than present a day-after strategy for
Gaza, he sacked its main proponent, the then defence minister, Yoav
Gallant. After he was fired Mr Gallant privately told relatives of Israeli
hostages still in Gaza that there was no longer a security reason for the IDF
to remain there.
Mr Netanyahu is under pressure from his far-right allies to reject a

ceasefire. They make no secret of their desire to build settlements in Gaza.
They want the IDF to control civilian affairs there as a prelude to permanent
occupation. The generals oppose this. Mr Netanyahu has wavered,
suggesting private security contractors (a polite word for mercenaries)
should protect aid convoys. Senior IDF officers say this would be expensive
and ineffective.
Concern is growing that the far right will exploit this lack of strategy to
secure Israeli control of Gaza. Air strikes continue, but since October 5th
the only major IDF operation in Gaza has been in Jabaliya refugee camp,
north of Gaza City, where many of Hamas’s remaining fighters are
concentrated. The IDF says it killed 1,200 of them. Palestinians and aid
groups say many of the casualties were civilians.
“Our mission in Jabaliya is to move the civilians out of the area so we can
ensure that no terrorists or terror infrastructure remains,” says an officer
involved in the operation. The generals insist that Palestinian civilians will
be permitted to return to the north. But they will not say when. None has
been allowed back so far. And the generals’ political masters may have
other ideas. Israeli lawyers, including some who have advised the
government on international humanitarian law, have warned that the current
operations “raise a heavy concern of war crimes of forced deportation”.
With northern Gaza almost empty of civilians and most of its buildings
destroyed, it looks ever likelier that Israel will insist on maintaining control
to pave the way there for new Jewish settlements. ■
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Sudan’s civil war
A genocidal militia’s quest for

legitimacy
A warring party in Sudan claims it wants to talk peace
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | NAIROBI
A YEAR AGO the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seemed to be on a roll. The
Sudanese paramilitary group, which had been battling the Sudanese Armed
Forces (SAF), Sudan’s regular army, since April 2023, had taken over much
of Khartoum, the capital. Almost all of Darfur, its ethnic base in the far
west, was under its control. And equipped with weapons reportedly
supplied by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), its most powerful foreign ally
(which denies sending them), it was even on the cusp of capturing the
army’s traditional heartlands in the south-east. Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo
(better known as Hemedti), the group’s leader and Sudan’s most feared
warlord, prepared to embark on a tour of African capitals, where he would
be welcomed like a president-in-waiting.
These days there is less talk of a clear military victory for the RSF. Its
troops may be close to seizing full control of the Darfur region’s capital, el-
Fasher. But elsewhere it has seen setbacks. Since the end of the rainy season
in September, the army has made inroads into RSF-controlled parts of
Khartoum. With allied militias, it has held the line in the south. And in late
October, a top RSF commander in Gezira state defected. This led to a wave
of retaliatory attacks against civilians so brutal that observers likened them
to the ethnic cleansing of non-Arab tribes from RSF-occupied parts of West
Darfur last year.
For those hoping to negotiate an end to a war which has caused the world’s
worst humanitarian crisis, all this makes the task of understanding the RSF
—its goals and its capacity to achieve them—more pressing. The most
recent talks, held in Switzerland in August, were a resounding failure. Yet
that was largely because the SAF refused to attend them. By contrast the
RSF “believes there is no way out of this war through total victory for one
side”, one of its top negotiators told The Economist in a rare interview on
November 18th. Analysts are divided on whether the group’s demand for
negotiations is genuine. But if it is, it prompts an important question. What
kind of deal would be acceptable to the RSF and its foreign backers?
According to the official, Elzeddain el-Safi, the RSF is fighting to

overthrow a narrow group of northern Sudanese who have dominated the
state and the army since independence from Britain in 1956. He calls the
conflict Sudan’s “final war”. It has displaced about a third of the population
and triggered what experts fear may be the worst famine the world has seen
in 40 years. By “final” he means that it will not end until the root causes of
perennial instability are dealt with, above all the marginalisation of remote
areas such as Darfur. Mr el-Safi also argues that the war was instigated by
Islamists from the former ruling party of Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s long-
standing dictator, who was toppled in peaceful protests in 2019. The
Islamists, Mr el-Safi claims, are fighting to return themselves to power. The
RSF, he insists, is struggling to “secure the people’s choice”.
The RSF’s claim to be waging war for democracy is unconvincing. The
group grew out of the Janjaweed, militias notorious for rape and butchery of
civilians in Darfur in the 2000s. There is little to suggest it has
fundamentally changed. In 2021 Mr Dagalo, then the de facto vice-
president in a transitional government alongside the SAF’s leader, Abdel-
Fattah al-Burhan, took part in a coup against the civilian prime minister. Mr
el-Safi says the RSF soon recognised that this was a mistake. But he does
not deny that Mr Dagalo still wants to govern Sudan: “He has full right to
lead the people.” Yet a warlord loathed by large swathes of the population
would find it hard to do so democratically.
The army insists that it is fighting to prevent the break-up of Sudan. Yet
some observers suspect that there are many within the SAF’s ranks who
would willingly relinquish Darfur, a rebellious region whose diverse
population they see as having little in common with northerners from
Khartoum and its hinterlands. In response, the RSF now trumpets a firmer
commitment to the country’s territorial integrity. “The RSF will never allow
a divided Sudan,” says Mr el-Safi. “Sudan will stay united.”
There are reasons to take seriously the RSF’s commitment to Sudanese

unity. Darfur, a landlocked, water-scarce region the size of France, is not an
obvious candidate for independent statehood. And the UAE (whose military
support Mr el-Safi denies) is understood to regard securing access to the
Red Sea coast as core to its interests in Sudan. Any deal which would force
the RSF to withdraw its troops from Khartoum and the fertile farmland
along the Nile valley would probably be a non-starter.
Instead, Mr el-Safi outlines the RSF’s idea for a negotiated settlement. It

should begin, he says, with a cessation of hostilities. The war’s current
battle lines should be frozen in place, but both sides would withdraw from
“civilian installations” such as residences and schools. A demilitarised
buffer zone could potentially be enforced by African peacekeepers. After
that should come a “national dialogue” involving all political forces in the
country except for Islamists and the former ruling party. These groups
would be allowed to take part in national politics only after a period of
perhaps five years, once “we’ve reset the rules …and stabilised the
country”.
It is not hard to understand why the RSF is emphasising its commitment to
talks. Most outside powers, including the UN, reckon the SAF has more
legitimacy in the eyes of most Sudanese. Yet the army’s dogged refusal to
engage seriously in negotiations has weakened its international standing,
particularly among Western diplomats. The RSF is trying to position itself
as the more reliable partner for peace.
This remains questionable. Despite promising to allow aid into the areas
under its control, the RSF has kept el-Fasher under siege for months.
Elsewhere, aid workers complain of deliberate bureaucratic obstacles.
Moreover, the RSF’s leaders continue to deny atrocities which have been
extensively documented. Mr el-Safi blames “mainstream media” for
spreading false information about ethnic cleansing in Darfur. Sexual
violence committed by RSF soldiers is well-attested, yet one of Mr el-Safi’s
colleagues recently claimed the group had recorded just one rape in areas it
controls. The militia’s professed desire for talks is welcome, but it has a
long way to go before its word will be trusted. ■
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The non-appliance of science
Why GM crops aren’t feeding

Africa
Despite decades of research, few countries grow them there
11月 21, 2024 04:52 上午
THE SPECIES of bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis produces proteins that

some caterpillars find toxic. Insert the underlying genes into a maize plant,
and creepy-crawlies will be poisoned by their lunch. That is the idea behind
Bt maize, a genetically modified (GM) variety that has been grown in
dozens of countries worldwide.
Soon Kenya might join them. In 2022 its government lifted a long-standing
ban on GM crops, including Bt maize. On November 7th a judge threw out
lingering legal challenges from activists which had blocked cultivation. The
ruling is the latest skirmish in a long struggle to bring GM crops to Africa,
which both sides frame in Manichean terms. Enthusiasts say genetic
wizardry could feed a hungry continent. Sceptics warn of a sinister plot by
multinational corporations to ensnare unwitting African farmers.
Neither claim is quite right. The most striking fact about GM crops in
Africa is that they are hardly sown at all. Only in South Africa have they
really taken off (see chart). Until recently an insect-resistant cowpea in
Nigeria was the only GM food crop being grown elsewhere. Varieties of
maize are now being introduced in Nigeria, and cowpea in Ghana. Eight
countries cultivate GM cotton. But after decades of costly research that is a
modest harvest.
The scientists behind GM crops blame prohibitive regulation. Only 11 of
Africa’s 54 countries have ever officially approved their cultivation. Some
politicians repeat myths, such as claims that eating GM food will make men
grow breasts and women grow testicles. Other critics focus on how big
business might exploit small farmers. Mariam Mayet of the African Centre
for Biodiversity argues that GM crops “entrench a certain industrial model
of agriculture” that undermines local seed systems and harms the planet.
Debates about GM are really about rival visions of African farming. One is
high-input, high-tech; the other favours a more organic eco-ideal.
But profits matter just as much as politics. It is difficult to make money by

serving small farmers, so the crops they grow can be overlooked. “If we
waited for big biotech companies to research and develop cassava, we could
wait for ever,” says Francis Nang’ayo of the African Agricultural
Technology Foundation (AATF), which brokers the transfer of technology
into African markets.
Crop development therefore relies on a constellation of interests. The

world’s biggest biotech firms hold patents on the genetic know-how behind
certain “traits”, such as drought tolerance or insect resistance. In one
approach, they agree to share this technology under licence with the AATF.
The Gates Foundation, the American government and other donors stump
up money for research. New crops are developed with African scientists and
sub-licensed to local seed companies, often royalty-free. The biotech firms
participate not only because it is “the right thing to do” but also with an eye
to growing markets for the future, says Mark Edge of Bayer, one of the
biggest such companies.
In practice collaborations are hard to make work. A project might falter if a

donor cuts funds or a company pulls out. In 2016 Burkina Faso suspended
the cultivation of insect-resistant cotton that had been developed by local
scientists and Monsanto (now Bayer), which was taking a royalty. The
reason was not anti-GM activism, but that the fibres were too short and
cotton firms were losing money. ■
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Europe
Once dominant, Germany is now desperate
The Germans don’t do it better :: As an election looms its business model is breaking down
Ukraine’s secret army in France

The struggle with Russia :: A new force is being marshalled to take on the Kremlin’s men
Ukraine can, at last, use its Western missiles inside Russia

Attack ’em :: Joe Biden wants to send North Korea a message
A rise in antisemitism puts Europe’s liberal values to the

test
Charlemagne :: The return of Europe’s oldest scourge

The Germans don’t do it better
Once dominant, Germany is now

desperate
As an election looms its business model is breaking down
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | BERLIN AND HANOVER
THE FINANCE ministry of the southern German state of Baden-

Württemberg, home to giants like Bosch, Mercedes and ZF Friedrichshafen,
is not a bad spot from which to probe Germany’s anxieties. The country is
gripped by fears of deindustrialisation as it heads into an election that seems
certain to throw its chancellor, Olaf Scholz, out of his job if his party does
not dump him first. That ministry’s occupant, Danyal Bayaz, frets that
Germany has squandered the “globalisation dividend” of the past 15 years,
underfunding the public realm in an era of low interest rates. Now, facing
an energy squeeze, growing competition from China and the prospect of
Donald Trump’s America slapping 10-20% tariffs on imports, the country’s
business model, fears the minister, is “collapsing”.
Mr Bayaz laments Germany’s inability to get to grips with new tech, despite
its strengths in basic research and engineering. He notes that Germany’s last
successful big startup was SAP, a software firm, founded just as an
intensely sideburned Franz Beckenbauer led the West German football team
to victory in the 1972 European championships. Germany has over 60 times
as many people as Estonia, but only 15 times as many “unicorns” (privately
owned startups worth over $1bn).
It is a familiar litany. German industry, especially its small and medium-

sized Mittelstand firms, has focused on incremental innovation, leaving it
unprepared for technological shocks like the advent of electric vehicles.
Cosy links between business, banks and politicians bred complacency and
resistance to reform. Dogmatic adherence to fiscal rules led to rusting
bridges, decaying schools and delayed trains. Growth in foreign markets
fattened Deutschland AG’s profits (and treasury revenues) for a while, but
that export-led model left Germany exposed when the winds of
globalisation turned chill.
Now Germany, which last year replaced Japan as the world’s third-largest
economy, is reaping the harvest. It is difficult to discern any net growth in
real GDP since before the pandemic. Forecasts are little better, and do not
account for the risks of a Trumpian trade war. Volkswagen, Europe’s
biggest carmaker, is mooting the first factory closures in its 87-year history;
up to 30,000 jobs could be lost. Unemployment is ticking up, albeit from a
low base.
High energy prices, especially after Germany had to divest from Russian
gas following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, are a common
grumble among firms in a country where manufacturing still accounts for
20% of gross value added. That remains almost twice the figure for France,
even though industrial production peaked in 2018 and has since sagged
more quickly than elsewhere in the EU (see chart 1), especially in energy-
intensive sectors such as steelmaking. Order books are down, and planned
investments have been postponed or shifted abroad. The CEO of
Thyssenkrupp, a lossmaking steelmaker, has said Germany is “in the midst
of deindustrialisation”. Even retailers have been hit. After Russia’s invasion
Raoul Rossmann, who runs a pharmacy chain headquartered near Hanover
that bears his family name, toured its branches to work out how to save on
energy bills.
Other laments include a lack of skilled workers as Germany ages, and

layers of red tape, much of it emanating from Brussels, that the Ifo Institute
in Munich reckons cost the economy €146bn ($154bn) a year. One crucial
development, according to Sander Tordoir of the Centre for European
Reform (CER), a think-tank, is the changing relationship with China. In the
2000s and 2010s Germany was perfectly placed to satisfy Chinese appetites
for its cars, chemicals and precision-engineered widgets: goods exports to
China rose by 34% between 2015 and 2020, even as those to other countries
fell. As recently as 2020 China was a net importer of cars, but last year it
became the world’s largest exporter. Chinese firms are morphing from
customers to competitors, coming to eat the lunch not only of the German
auto industry but also of the Mittelstand. “The car story is emblematic, but
it’s also about machines and chemicals,” says Mr Tordoir.
As Clemens Fuest of Ifo notes, China now accounts for just 6% of total
German exports, around the same share as the neighbouring Netherlands.
But the China story is not just about export dependence. In a forthcoming
paper for the CER, Mr Tordoir and Brad Setser, an economist at the Council
on Foreign Relations, an American think-tank, describe how the “second
China shock” could worsen Germany’s industrial woes. China’s domestic
market cannot soak up the excess production of its state-subsidised
manufacturers, and as they seek customers abroad the country’s trade
surplus has exploded. This presents difficulties for German firms at home
and in markets abroad. “China’s state-directed markets could provide
irrational levels of financing for Chinese investment in new capacity for
longer than swathes of German manufacturing can remain solvent,” write
the pair.
As German exports to China have declined, America has partly stepped into
the breach (see chart 2). Some firms have been able to exploit opportunities
opened by America’s decoupling from Chinese tech; others have grown fat
on the subsidy bonanza triggered by the Inflation Reduction Act. But Mr
Trump threatens all that. Not only do tariffs loom—the Bundesbank thinks
they could lop a percentage point off German GDP—but new American
restrictions could hit German manufacturers that use Chinese inputs. They
will also accelerate Chinese exporters’ hunt for alternative markets,
including Europe.
German industry is split on China, notes a diplomat: although many

Mittelstand companies, especially machinery firms, back the policy of “de-
risking”, carmakers and conglomerates like BASF are doubling down.
Volkswagen and BMW are planning big new investments in Chinese
production, as are car-parts firms like Continental. Lobbying by the car
sector helped ensure Germany was one of only five countries to vote
against EU tariffs on Chinese EV imports in October. Inside Germany’s
government there are tensions between diplomats and spooks, who want to
punish China with trade restrictions for propping up Russia’s military effort,
and industry-minded types who fear that is a measure low-growth Germany
cannot afford.
Ending the fetish
The deindustrialisation story can be more complicated than it looks. Losing

manufacturing jobs cuts into Germany’s already sagging productivity. But
gross value added in manufacturing has remained stable even as production
has slumped. Some German manufacturers, in other words, may be making
more valuable stuff while selling less of it. This “quality over quantity”, as
Deutsche Bank puts it, suggests a future for German firms in high-end tech,
including fancy cars. Germany retains an edge in green technology,
including wind turbines and electrolysers.
But this can hardly compensate for losses elsewhere. Germany must get
over its “industry fetish”, reckons Moritz Schularick of the Kiel Institute for
the World Economy. Energy-intensive industries have not grown for two
decades. The car sector has been shedding jobs for six years, and a reversal
seems unlikely. “For years they had this belief that ‘We are the best’, and
suddenly it’s over,” says an EU official.
Deep structural forces are driving changes to Germany’s industrial model.

Convincing Germans that there is an alternative to being an
Exportweltmeister is the work of years, not months. Even compensating for
declining trade elsewhere is a marathon: despite Germany’s best efforts the
EU’s free-trade negotiations with Mercosur, a big South American trading
bloc, have dragged on for 25 years. (France, among others, remains
opposed.)
For some, a handier tool for juicing the economy would be to reform
another piece of the German model that no longer seems fit for purpose: the
debt brake, a peculiarity of the constitution that limits the federal
government’s annual structural budget deficit to 0.35% of output. The debt
brake is an artefact of a bygone age, says Max Krahé of Dezernat Zukunft,
a Berlin-based research outfit, when Germany relied on other countries
running deficits to stoke its economy. In a world where globalisation has
stalled, that model no longer works.
Meanwhile Germany’s public-investment requirements—one widely cited
estimate puts them at €600bn over ten years—have become too big to
ignore (see chart 3). Moreover, fresh funds will have to be found for
defence. This year Germany at last reached the NATO target of 2% of GDP,
but only thanks to a special fund that will soon expire. Even more is likely
to be needed to appease the new Trump administration.
For these reasons, there is a growing sense that the next coalition, probably
led by Friedrich Merz, leader of the centre-right Christian Democrats, will
be open to a modest reform of the debt brake. (Germany will hold an
election in February, following the collapse of the three-party coalition this
month.) If so, says Mr Tordoir, an investment boom could help compensate
for export losses in the short term; done well, investments in education,
where Germany lags its peers, and infrastructure could lift Germany’s long-
term growth rate. There are plenty of ideas for reform around, including
raising the permitted deficit (or replacing it with broader guidelines),
exempting public investment from borrowing limits, or establishing off-
books funds for infrastructure or defence.
Yet as changes to the constitution, all these would require a two-thirds

majority in both houses of parliament. And there is every chance that
spoiler parties on the extremes might command a one-third blocking
minority in the Bundestag after the next election. The governing Social
Democrats have therefore asked Mr Merz to consider lending his support to
reform now, as that would give pro-reform parties the numbers they need.
He has so far refused.
Thorsten Benner, who runs Berlin’s Global Public Policy Institute, says
Germany has swung from the “facile optimism” of the Angela Merkel years
to a “gloom trap” in which dysfunctional politics, the constraints of the debt
brake, overbureaucratisation and public distrust reinforce one another. He
hopes the next government can act as a “circuit-breaker”.
That does not seem implausible. So despondent has the mood become that,
in contrast even to six months ago, there is a growing sense that deep-seated
change is unavoidable. That will form the backdrop to the next coalition
agreement, which may see a “grand bargain” in which Mr Merz accepts
debt-brake tweaks if his partners agree to tax cuts or welfare reform. But
there would be a grim irony to parliamentary arithmetic thwarting change
just as the stars align for it. ■
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https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/11/20/once-dominant-germany-is-now-desperate

The struggle with Russia
Ukraine’s secret army in France

A new force is being marshalled to take on the Kremlin’s men
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | SOMEWHERE IN EASTERN FRANCE
THREE UKRAINIAN soldiers, clutching Soviet-made AKM assault rifles,

creep stealthily along zig-zagging trenches. In the distance, enemy soldiers
are moving in the woods. Gunfire crackles across the plain. Plumes of
smoke rise into the cold air. Tiny drones hover overhead. It is an all-too
familiar scene from a war that drags on along Europe’s eastern fringe.
Except that this simulation is taking place at an undisclosed site in eastern
France, where the French army is playing the enemy and training over
2,000 Ukrainian soldiers to form the backbone of a combined-arms brigade
ready for deployment at the front.
It was during a visit to Paris in June by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr

Zelensky, that his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, announced the
idea. In September the French air force flew in the Ukrainian soldiers. Since
then they have been training on French kit, including Caesar howitzers and
Milan anti-tank guided-missile systems, as well as taking part in battalion-
level military exercises in the field. The men are aged between 25 and 45;
90% of them are freshly drafted. At the French barracks, where cooks offer
menus that alternate between Ukrainian (cabbage and sausages) and local
(croissants at breakfast), off-duty soldiers in combat fatigues hang around,
lifting gym weights or smoking outside.
The training programme, says its director, Colonel Guillaume (the French
army does not disclose family names), represents a “major shift” from those
already in place elsewhere. As part of the European Union’s training
mission, it was “co-constructed” with Ukrainian instructors, who are also
on-site to supervise the new recruits along with 1,400 French soldiers. At
nine weeks of hands-on training, it is longer than the standard five-week
programme used by the British army in East Anglia under Operation
Interflex, which has already trained 45,000 Ukrainians.
The novelty is the decision by a European force to train, deliver and equip a
brigade. (Before last year’s Ukrainian counter-offensive, America led a
similar effort in Germany.) It will be joined by 1,500 soldiers already
trained in Ukraine. “Anne of Kyiv”, as the new brigade is known, will be
made up of two command posts, three infantry battalions and full logistical
support units. The brigade will get armoured vehicles, Caesar howitzers,
short-range air-defence systems, anti-tank missile launchers and other kit,
which the Ukrainians will know how to use and maintain. French Mirage
2000 fighter jets, which are being adapted to carry French SCALP cruise
missiles, will arrive in Ukraine in the new year.
The latest training scheme, suggests Sébastien Lecornu, the defence

minister, could help secure more of a tactical return on the battlefield. In a
report published in July by the Royal United Services Institute, a British
think-tank, Jack Watling and co-authors point to the Ukrainians’
unfamiliarity with donated equipment and to the lack of collective training
as two shortcomings that help explain the failings of counter-offensive
operations in 2022 and 2023.
The French have had to adapt the scheme to the changing situation on the
front, says Colonel Philippe, who is in charge of the final exercise. The
French had to dig wider trenches to match those the Ukrainians use. The
visitors asked for more time with drones. Also at the Ukrainians’ request,
the focus of the final exercise is on defence. Troops have been out since the
night before, with French planes and helicopters flying overhead, to test
resistance to fatigue and stress. Grenades are used to simulate air strikes.
French military trainers insist that, despite Mr Zelensky’s troubles with
conscription, these trainees—with an average age of 38—are motivated.
“They learn twice as fast as our own new recruits,” says one instructor.
For all its merits, this effort may come too late. In recent months Ukraine
has lost territory to Russia at multiple points. Its forces are stretched. It is
struggling to mobilise fresh conscripts. In September Mr Zelensky said he
needed 14 new brigades, suggesting not even four were yet equipped,
despite allied pledges. The election of Donald Trump has shifted the
diplomatic mood. Mr Macron may now have become one of Europe’s most
outspoken hawks. “Nothing should be decided about Ukraine without the
Ukrainians, nor in Europe without Europeans,” he declared on November
12th. But he and his fellow Europeans worry that in practice they will get
little say over what happens next. Helping Ukrainians gain whatever tactical
advantage they can in order to strengthen their negotiating hand may be the
best they can hope for. ■
https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/11/16/ukraines-secret-army-in-france

Attack ’em
Ukraine can, at last, use its Western

missiles inside Russia
Joe Biden wants to send North Korea a message
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
THE NAME of the weapon, designed in the late 1980s, was both an
acronym—Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS)—and, when said
aloud, an exhortation—“attack ’ems”. But Ukraine could not, in fact, attack
’em—at least not inside Russia, not until November 17th, when it became
clear that Joe Biden, America’s president, had changed course and given
Ukraine permission to fire the longer-range missiles onto Russian soil. The
decision will not dramatically change Ukraine’s flagging fortunes on the
front lines, though it will boost morale and strengthen the country’s hand
ahead of negotiations likely to be pursued by Donald Trump after January
20th. Until then, a tumultuous two months lie ahead.
America first gave Ukraine HIMARS rocket launchers in the summer of
2022, though equipped only with shorter-range rockets. In late 2023, after
over a year of debate, it relented and provided the 300km-range ATACMS.
Ukraine used them to devastating effect in Russian-occupied territory,
including Crimea. It destroyed nine helicopters in two strikes that October,
but it was denied permission to fire them over the border into Russia against
the airfields, ammunition depots and command posts that were being used
against it.
Mr Biden imposed that restraint for three reasons. One was the Pentagon’s
argument that it had limited stocks of ATACMS and that these were needed
for war plans in other parts of the world. The second was that their military
effect would, supposedly, be limited. In September the Pentagon said that
90% of Russian jets launching glide bombs at Ukrainian positions had
already moved east, out of range of ATACMS. The third was the risk of
escalation. Ukraine has frequently used its own drones and missiles to strike
inside Russia—one attack at Toropets in September took out several
month’s-worth of ammunition—but ATACMS strikes typically require
American assistance with intelligence and targeting. Vladimir Putin,
Russia’s president, has said that the use of Western missiles in Russia would
constitute “direct involvement” in the war.
Ukraine and its backers bat these arguments away. They say there are more
than enough ATACMS in America’s inventory—more than 1,000, by some
estimates—and they are being gradually replaced with newer and longer-
range missiles. Russian jets may be out of range, but other targets abound.
Besides logistics hubs and the like, they could include helicopters and
attack aircraft providing close-air support to troops. Escalation concerns are
also overdone, they argue. After all, Mr Putin considers Crimea to be an
inalienable part of Russia and yet did nothing in response to ATACMS
strikes there. Likewise, he has failed to take any dramatic retaliatory steps
in response to the West’s steady intensification of arms supply, from small
arms to missiles to tanks to fighter jets.
Mr Biden’s decision now leaves three big questions. One is the extent of his
reversal. Initial reports suggested Ukrainian strikes would be confined to
Kursk province, where North Korea is helping retake territory seized by
Ukraine. But the first ATACMS strike appears to have hit an ammunition
dump in the Bryansk region next door. That suggests Ukraine may have
more latitude than is thought, though America is likely to be vetting every
target.
The second question is whether the decision catalyses more action by

America’s allies. On November 20th Ukraine appears to have fired as many
as a dozen British Storm Shadow cruise missiles into Kursk province,
suggesting that Mr Biden had also reversed his earlier opposition to their
use in Russia. France’s identical SCALP missiles are likely to follow. All
eyes are now on Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, who will come under
mounting pressure to send German Taurus missiles—a step he ruled out,
again, a week ago.
The third and most consequential issue is how Mr Putin will choose to
respond. America was throwing oil on the fire, said a spokesman for the
Kremlin. “If such a decision has been taken, it means a whole new spiral of
tension.” On November 19th Russia published a revised nuclear doctrine
which lowered the threshold for nuclear use. And on November 21st,
Ukraine said that Russia had hit the city of Dnipro with a (conventionally-
armed) intercontinental-range ballistic missile (ICBM). If true, that would
be the first time such a missile has been used in combat anywhere; but the
missile type has not yet been confirmed.
Actual nuclear use remains far-fetched. More likely is Russian action

elsewhere. One concern is that Russia might provide advanced missiles to
Houthi rebels in Yemen. Another is that Russian assets will intensify their
campaign of sabotage inside Europe. That may already have occurred. On
November 18th a pair of undersea data cables in the Baltic Sea were cut.
Western security officials from several countries told The Economist they
did not have hard evidence of sabotage. But Boris Pistorius, Germany’s
defence minister, offered a blunt assessment: “Nobody believes that these
cables were cut accidentally.”
Mr Biden may be hoping that Mr Putin will choose not to respond too
aggressively, in order to keep open the prospect of cutting a deal with Mr
Trump next year. The president-elect is said to have told Mr Putin in a
phone call that he should not escalate the war. The Kremlin denies that the
phone call took place. If the account is true, then both Mr Biden and Mr
Trump will have had their answer in the skies above Ukraine in the early
hours of November 17th: the largest air attacks since last year crippled
Ukraine’s power grid and killed a reported 18 people. ■
https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/11/18/ukraine-can-at-last-use-its-western-
missiles-inside-russia

Charlemagne
A rise in antisemitism puts

Europe’s liberal values to the test
The return of Europe’s oldest scourge
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
IN 1945, AS Europe smouldered and the moral reckoning of the Holocaust

lay ahead, Karl Popper pondered the paradox of tolerance. An open society
needs tolerance to thrive, the Austrian-born philosopher posited. But
extending that intellectual courtesy to the prejudiced would result in the
undermining of the very tolerance that made their intolerance possible in
the first place. Popper concluded it was on balance better to nip the bigots
in the bud early on and save everyone the kind of trouble his home
continent (and Popper personally, given his Jewish heritage) had just been
through. The history of post-war Europe, at first in the west and then in the
former communist bloc, is one of polities striving to balance the right of
allowing everyone to say what they please while preserving the liberal
society Popper sought to bring to life.
A form of intolerance that should have seen its last in 1945 has made a
discomfiting return. Antisemitism, never quite expunged from the continent
but once banished beyond the political pale, is so rife in Europe now that
96% of Jews say they have experienced it in the past year. More than half
say they fear for their safety; the same number have either emigrated or
considered doing so in recent years. Physical attacks, while rare, are rife
enough that three-quarters of Jews occasionally avoid wearing religious
symbols in public. Even more worrying these statistics, compiled by the
European Union for a report released in July, were based on data gathered
before the terrorist attacks by Hamas in October 2023, and the brutal Israeli
response. Every indicator has become worse since then. A dispiriting flow
of antisemitic incidents reached an apogee in the wake of a football match
involving a team from Tel Aviv playing in Amsterdam on November 7th,
after which Israeli visitors—some of them behaving even more boorishly
than is customary for football fans, including tearing down Palestinian flags
and worse—were chased in the streets by mobs in what the city’s mayor
described as a “pogrom”. Rabbi Menachem Margolin, chairman of the
European Jewish Association, warned of Europe “going down the darkest
path again”.
The continent suffers from three sorts of antisemitism. The first is the kind
of bigotry, soft or hard, that people in Popper’s era might have recognised.
It is the prejudice that puts the greedy Jew (preferably with a hooked nose)
at the centre of all manner of conspiracy theories, from hoarding gold to
controlling the media/banks/politics. An offshoot of ancestral intolerance, it
became the preserve of the extreme right: think of Jean-Marie Le Pen,
founder of the French party now known as the National Rally, describing
the Nazi gas chambers as “a detail” of history. The resurgence of this type
of prejudice has been fuelled by the advent of the internet, whose dark
corners are the spiritual home of crackpots.
The second antisemitism is one that can be thought of as an unwelcome

import through waves of migration. New arrivals to Europe in the past six
decades or so often came from Muslim-majority countries. Some lacked the
liberal cultural mores which most Europeans (debatably) believe
themselves to exemplify, and justifiably felt no guilt for the Holocaust nor
what preceded it. A sympathy for the Palestinian cause hardened attitudes to
Jews in ways that sometimes resembled Mr Le Pen’s tirades. Even as the
migrants became the parents of European-born children, the bigotry all too
often endured. In France, the EU country with both most Jews and
Muslims, 55% of the latter think the former are too powerful in politics (a
claim that can easily be dismissed as fanciful). Across Europe, perceptions
of prejudice against Jews have risen most in places that have taken in lots of
migrants in recent years, such as Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.
Add to this a third antisemitism linked to some Europeans’ anger at the

Israeli government of the day, which shoots up in the wake of strife in the
Middle East (ie, all too regularly). Protesting against the actions of Israel in
Gaza is legitimate, everyone agrees, but also acts as a pretext for those who
hold less acceptable views about Jews. Drawing the line between what is
fair criticism and what is covert bigotry can be hard: Germany recently
passed a resolution combating antisemitism that critics—including Jewish
ones—say stymies legitimate discussion of any Israeli misdeeds.
Whose antisemitism is it anyway?
This confluence of hatred can lead hostility towards Jews to pop up in

unexpected places. In France it is now the radical-left Unsubmissive France
party that many think fits the antisemitic bill, given its full-throated backing
of Palestinians has veered into bigotry (one party grandee called Hamas a
“resistance movement”). Over half of French Jews say they might leave if
its leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, came to power. That is nearly twice the
number who might go if Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie and now
party figurehead, were to lead France. Like other hard-right leaders, such as
Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Viktor Orban in Hungary, she now
ardently supports Jews and Israel: being on their side is a way of
stigmatising the bigger Muslim minority. This hard-right embrace of Jews
can lead to odd moments, such as Mr Orban cheering Israel while
presenting George Soros, a liberal Jewish philanthropist, as an all-
controlling bogeyman (hint, hint).
Bigotry against Jews holds a special place in Europe, given its history. But
one lesson of Amsterdam is that antisemitism can itself be used to bludgeon
another minority. Within days of the scenes there, its mayor, Femke
Halsema, expressed anxiety that the violence, and the use of the word
pogrom, were being weaponised by the hard right. The actions of a few
Muslims, though vile, had been seized upon by the likes of Mr Wilders to
stigmatise millions; a minister of Moroccan descent resigned, threatening a
fragile coalition. Fighting prejudice is a moral duty, as Popper concluded.
Doing it with more prejudice is no answer. ■

https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/11/21/a-rise-in-antisemitism-puts-europes-
liberal-values-to-the-test

Britain
Where British MPs should look before the vote on assisted
dying
The Victorian example :: The closest analogue to Kim Leadbeater’s bill is not Canadian but
Australian
How to fix palliative care in Britain

False dilemma :: A big point of contention in the assisted-dying debate can be resolved fairly
easily
Britain’s new government may cut the number of Channel

crossings
Asylum-seekers :: Dropping the crazy Rwanda plan was a good start
Britain’s government wants bigger pension funds

Megafund pool party :: That will help savers but won’t boost growth much
The story of Britain’s “ginaissance”

Sloedown :: Are things about to turn bitter?
A sticking-plaster policy for Britain’s strained courts

Criminal justice :: Magistrates get more power. Will they get punch-drunk on it?
Assisted dying and the two concepts of liberty

Bagehot :: Isaiah Berlin would recognise the debate unfolding in Britain over the right to die

The Victorian example
Where British MPs should look

before the vote on assisted dying
The closest analogue to Kim Leadbeater’s bill is not Canadian but
Australian
11月 21, 2024 07:17 上午 | Melbourne
MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT in Britain usually have a party line to toe.

But occasionally, on matters of conscience, they are given a “free vote” and
the chance to exercise their judgment independently. On November 29th
MPs must make up their minds on one of the most consequential issues of
all: whether people in England and Wales have the right to an assisted
death. That is the date of the second reading of a private member’s bill put
forward by Kim Leadbeater, a Labour backbencher, which would legalise
assisted dying for terminally ill adults.
The public debate draws heavily on the experience of other countries, some
of which passed assisted-dying laws decades ago. Yet comparisons can
mislead as well as inform. Opponents of assisted dying frequently point to
Canada to warn of the risk of a “slippery slope”: the scope of the law there
has widened over time and the number of people choosing to end their lives
in this way has risen sharply. But Canada’s law has been shaped by
successive court cases, and had relatively expansive eligibility criteria from
the outset.
When legislatures are in charge of the process and define eligibility

narrowly, as is the case with the proposed bill in Britain, the picture is very
different. Both the domestic courts in Britain and the European Court of
Human Rights have indicated that assisted dying is a matter for a
parliament or state to legislate, notes Stevie Martin of the University of
Cambridge. Nineteen Anglophone jurisdictions have passed assisted-dying
laws restricted to the terminally ill. None of these has broadened.
As MPs weigh up their votes, a much more instructive comparison than

Canada lies in Australia, and in one state in particular: Victoria. Its assisted-
dying law was the first passed Down Under, in 2017, and is almost a mirror
image of Ms Leadbeater’s. A terminally ill person there can be prescribed a
lethal drug only after making multiple requests; if they have less than six
months to live and are of sound mind; and if two independent doctors agree,
pending approval by a senior civil servant. Mental illness cannot be grounds
to apply. All these measures feature in Ms Leadbeater’s bill (though the
approver in England and Wales would be a High Court judge).
Victoria’s experience offers MPs in Westminster three lessons in particular.

The first concerns how Britain should have approached such contentious
legislation. First, a parliamentary inquiry into end-of-life care built
consensus for a change. Next the state government convened an advisory
panel that consulted hundreds of experts and the public to work out the
details. The resulting private member’s bill, introduced by the health
minister, finally passed after over 100 hours of debate.
Contrast that meticulous, government-backed approach with the process in

Westminster. Ms Leadbeater had not thought much about the issue until she
topped a private members’ ballot in September. She has had to rely on the
unpaid help of a former parliamentary drafter to write the bill. Although Sir
Keir Starmer, the prime minister, supports the principle of assisted dying,
his government is neutral (and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, is active
in his opposition). The debate next week will last only five hours.
“The 29th of November is the start of the parliamentary process,” says Ms

Leadbeater. The government has pledged to allow proper time for scrutiny
if the bill passes its second reading. But Rachel Maskell, a Labour MP and
opponent of assisted dying, is right to argue that the process feels “rushed”.
The second takeaway from Victoria’s regime, after five-and-a-half years in

operation, is that a law that looks an awful lot like Ms Leadbeater’s bill can
be implemented safely. The number of cases each year is rising but small:
0.84% of all deaths in Victoria in 2023-24 were assisted. Three-quarters of
assisted deaths are cancer-related; the median patient age is 73.
The explicit coercion some fear seems not to have occurred. Dr Anna
Negus, a doctor in Western Australia, has assisted around 80 deaths there;
she has never seen a hint of coercion. “To the contrary,” she says: “Families
often try to talk their loved ones out of it.” It is reasonable to worry that
some people might choose an assisted death because they fear being a
burden. But some seem to find reassurance in having the option: a fifth of
those who are given the medication in Victoria never take it.
Victoria collects feedback from families after a death. With over 500
responses, it is the largest survey of its kind in the world. “The most
common word in the narratives is ‘peaceful’,” says Professor Michael
Dooley, who heads the statewide pharmacy service for assisted dying.
There is no evidence that uptake is higher in areas where access to palliative

care is patchier (see next story). Four-fifths of those who take advantage of
the law are receiving palliative care, funding for which has increased every
year, notes Euan Wallace, the most senior civil servant in Victoria’s health
department and the official who approves the requests.
One thing is especially striking: how uncontroversial the law now is. When
the law first passed, “I had clinicians pushing a finger in my chest telling
me I’m a monster”, says David Speakman, who was then chief medical
officer of Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. “That’s no longer the case.”
Not everyone is reconciled to the law. Robert Clark, a former lawmaker

who opposed the assisted-dying bill, remains convinced that the safeguards
are a “charade”. For him, a civil-servant review amounts to little more than
a “tick-box exercise”. But Professor Wallace, the civil servant in question,
rejects this characterisation of his role. He reads three to four applications a
day, and requests more information if he is unsure whether they are
compliant. He was initially uneasy about the law but changed his mind
when he saw its impact on patients and their families. “It is a deep privilege
to be involved,” he says. “It’s an amazing piece of human kindness.”
Indeed, the third lesson from Victoria is that Ms Leadbeater’s bill risks
being not too lax, but too restrictive. It is telling that other Australian
jurisdictions, all of which have since followed Victoria’s lead, have
included fewer safeguards, not more. In June, for example, the Australian
Capital Territory passed a law for those with a terminal prognosis without
specifying a time-frame for how long they had left to live.
There is little prospect that Victoria’s law will liberalise soon, some small
tweaks aside. A five-year review, which is also built into Ms Leadbeater’s
bill, can consider only its operation and not the legislation itself.
“Sometimes I wish it hadn’t passed,” admits Jane Morris, who runs Dying
With Dignity Victoria, a pro-assisted dying lobby group.
Yet the proposed regime in England and Wales would be even stricter than
Victoria’s. As part of the approvals process, doctors could be forced to
appear in court. In contrast to Victoria, where a pharmacist leaves
medication with the patient under lock and key, they would have to be
present for the death. Under Ms Leadbeater’s bill, to ensure that the wish to
die is settled, patients must usually reflect on their decision for 21 days; the
cooling-off period in Victoria is nine days. Far from being a slippery slope,
the biggest risk with Ms Leadbeater’s bill is that it is a straitjacket. ■
For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in Britain, sign up to Blighty,
our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.
https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/11/21/where-british-mps-should-look-before-
the-vote-on-assisted-dying

False dilemma
How to fix palliative care in Britain

A big point of contention in the assisted-dying debate can be resolved fairly
easily
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
MISAPPREHENSIONS ABOUND about palliative care. That it happens in

hospices when most are cared for at home. That it is about death when it is
about improving quality of life. As a parliamentary vote on whether to
allow assisted dying in England and Wales approaches, another
misconception risks taking hold.
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, asserts that the state of palliative care
“wouldn’t give people a real choice” if assisted dying were to be legalised.
In fact, this is something well within Mr Streeting’s power to fix.
It is true that 100,000 Britons a year die needing palliative care but without
being able to get it. Although Britain routinely tops international rankings
for this kind of treatment, a service is not gold-standard if not everyone has
access to it. Spiralling costs and stagnant statutory contributions mean that
most hospice funding now comes from charitable donations; informal carers
often pick up the pieces.
The hospice sector requires an immediate injection of cash to cover its

deficits, estimated to be £50m-60m ($64m-76m) last year. It also needs a
longer-term plan to make it sustainable. Around 660,000 Britons died in
2023; that number is forecast to rise to almost 800,000 by 2040. The best
solution is probably for the NHS to cover hospices’ clinical-care costs,
leaving extras like bereavement services to be funded by donations.
A sustainable new contract for adult hospice care (including wider

community services and at-home care) would probably cost the NHS in
England an extra £350m annually, reckons Toby Porter of Hospice UK, a
charity. That is around 0.2% of its budget.
But, as Amanda Pritchard, the NHS’s chief executive, has acknowledged, a

third of all NHS hospital-bed days are accounted for by the 1% of Britons
who are in their last year of life. Moving just 10% of their care into the
community would suit patients and free up beds equivalent to the capacity
of three large hospitals. Funding palliative care properly is morally right
and financially wise, whichever way the vote in Parliament goes. ■
https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/11/21/how-to-fix-palliative-care-in-britain

Asylum-seekers
Britain’s new government may cut

the number of Channel crossings
Dropping the crazy Rwanda plan was a good start
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
BRITISH HISTORY is filled with stories of miraculously helpful weather,

from the “Protestant wind” that scattered the Spanish Armada in 1588 to the
calm, cloudy conditions that enabled the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940.
The weather has been less kind to Britain’s new government in one area
where it is desperate to succeed.
October was unusually calm on the southern coast—good weather for

piloting a rickety inflatable craft filled with asylum-seekers across the
English Channel from France or Belgium. Boats arrived on 16 days last
month, up from nine the previous October. More than 5,400 migrants
landed, setting a monthly record for this year and pushing the annual tally
above last year’s total (see chart).
For a government keen to show it can get a grip on the nation’s problems,
this is unfortunate. Britons may sympathise with people fleeing oppression,
but they dislike the evident lack of control over their borders. Labour is
creating a new Border Security Command and it promises tougher measures
against people who facilitate irregular border crossings. Earlier this month
Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, told Interpol, an international police
agency, that people-smuggling should be seen as a threat to global security,
like terrorism.
The number of people seeking asylum is strongly influenced by population

growth elsewhere and the amount of chaos in the world—things over which
Britain has scant influence. But the new government may soon be able to
boast that the figure is coming down. One reason is that Europe’s borders
are tightening. Another is that the new regime is taking a more pragmatic
approach than its Conservative predecessor, which clung to the fantasy that
it could make the problem disappear by sending people to Rwanda.
From January to the end of September, the number of irregular crossings

into the EU was 42% lower than the previous year, according to Frontex,
the agency that oversees the bloc’s borders. That snapped a three-year trend
of increases. Agreements with transit countries like Tunisia and Egypt,
which receive cash in exchange for tighter policing of migrants, have
probably helped cut the numbers. More such deals are likely. Britain, which
knows that most asylum-seekers reaching its shores have traipsed through
the EU, seems keen to help, and could cut deals of its own.
The new government also wants to maintain better relations with France,
which (with the help of British cash) harries migrants on its coast and
prevents many of them from leaving for Britain. An improvement should
not be difficult, because the Tories were so inept. In 2021 the then prime
minister, Boris Johnson, wrote to Emmanuel Macron, France’s president,
breezily suggesting that his country take back every asylum-seeker who
crossed into Britain. “My officials will share draft text with counterparts,”
he added, helpfully. France reacted by disinviting the home secretary from a
meeting about migration.
The number of people seeking asylum in Britain tends to track the number
applying in the EU, but not exactly. In the year to June 2016, when many
Syrians fled to Europe, 32 times more first-time claims were made in the 27
countries that are now EU members than in Britain. Then the ratio began to
fall. By the year to June 2019, claims in the EU were 14 times higher. In the
year to June 2024 they were 11 times higher. Something seems to have
made Britain more attractive.
One likely suspect is Brexit. When Britain left the EU, it lost access to a
fingerprint database known as Eurodac, which allows countries to see if a
person has already claimed asylum somewhere else. It also ceased to be
covered by the Dublin Regulation, which enables EU countries to return
asylum-seekers to each other. That may have enticed migrants. “They know
that once they reach the UK, the chance of being returned to the EU is
small,” says Peter Walsh of the Migration Observatory, a think-tank at
Oxford University.
Rectifying this situation will not be easy. The EU is already struggling to

hold member states to a migration pact that they agreed on last year, and
may not have the time or the inclination to cut a separate deal with Britain.
But at least the new Labour government is taking a more sensible tack than
its predecessor. It cannot control what other countries will do, just as it
cannot control the weather. It has some influence over the climate. ■
https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/11/21/britains-new-government-may-cut-the-
number-of-channel-crossings

Megafund pool party
Britain’s government wants bigger

pension funds
That will help savers but won’t boost growth much
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
OVER THE past decade of political turmoil, few goals of government

policy have been quite so consistent as that of rationalising the country’s
mishmash of pension schemes. In a speech in the City of London on
November 14th Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, announced plans to
consolidate local government pension schemes (LGPSs) into “megafunds”.
Back in 2015 George Osborne, a previous chancellor, inaugurated his own
push to merge them into “British wealth funds”.
Such proposals do tackle a genuine problem. Britain’s pension market is the

world’s third-largest by assets but has an unusually fragmented system. A
proliferation of smaller schemes means duplicated management costs.
Larger funds have economies of scale for hiring pricey in-house expertise,
which is especially important for unlisted assets like private equity, venture
capital or infrastructure.
Previous governments made some progress. Mr Osborne’s reforms created

“pools” to help centralise the management of LGPS assets. By March 2022,
though, only 39% of LGPS assets had been transferred to these pools.
Another 31% was managed by the pools but remained under LGPS
ownership. Last year Jeremy Hunt, Ms Reeves’s immediate predecessor, set
a deadline of March 2025 for all LGPS funds to transfer their assets to the
pools; she has now promised new legislation to force that through. She also
announced plans, which might prove even more consequential, for
consolidating defined-contribution pension schemes that will cover the bulk
of future pension savings.
The main winners from these reforms, if they are done well, should be
pension savers. They would benefit from more competent portfolio
management and lower fees, which ought eventually to translate into faster-
growing retirement savings. Over the past decade pension schemes in
Britain have performed a little worse than those in peer markets like Canada
or Australia. Ms Reeves’s reform agenda is the right one to help close that
gap.
But successive chancellors have taken such an interest in pension

consolidation for another reason, too: to use pension savings to boost
investment and unlock growth in Britain. In her speech Ms Reeves
lamented that “more often than not, it is Canadian teachers and Australian
professors reaping the rewards of investing in British productive assets
through their pensions schemes, rather than British savers”. These reforms,
she promised, “will deliver real change in our economy”.
This is a less persuasive pitch. British pension funds do make up a very
small share of the investor base for British assets (see chart). But an
underallocation to British companies and projects is not the reason for their
underperformance. Quite the opposite. British asset markets have lagged
behind global benchmarks; British pensions would have done even worse
without diversification. If anything, finance textbooks would counsel
underweighting of domestic assets. Savers already have plenty of
inescapable exposure to the local economy through their salaries, property
and so on. No need for even more.
If pension funds do choose to increase their British investments, that could

give domestic capital markets a boost; foreign investors are likelier to
encourage startups eventually to incorporate or list abroad. Redirecting
billions of pounds of pension cash might also nudge down the cost of
capital for a few British firms. But the City of London is among the world’s
best-developed financial centres, with access to plenty of foreign capital.
For sufficiently compelling investment opportunities, financing is not likely
to be the bottleneck.
Both main political parties have made occasional noises about incentivising
or compelling more domestic investment. In his final budget Mr Hunt set up
a “British ISA“ to extend tax breaks for retail investors buying British
stocks; Ms Reeves, sensibly, shut that down. But Emma Reynolds, the
pensions minister, recently hinted to the Financial Times that if the new
megafunds do not choose to increase British investments, they could be
forced to. That would be precisely the wrong way round. The British
economy needs reforms to make it easier to build, hire and export. Do that
and there will be no shortage of capital, whether domestic or foreign. ■
https://www.economist.com/2024/11/18/britains-government-wants-bigger-pension-funds

Sloedown
The story of Britain’s “ginaissance”

Are things about to turn bitter?
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
COLONSAY IS A tiny Scottish island, only 15km long, in the Inner

Hebrides. Its 135 inhabitants have access to one school, one shop and one
post office. Residents have more choice when it comes to local spirits. The
island is home to two gin distilleries: Wild Island, which was launched in
2016, and Wild Thyme, which followed a year later.
It has been an intoxicating few years for British ginmakers. Between 2015
and 2024 the number of distilleries jumped from 190 to 920, according to
the Office for National Statistics. Britons are guzzling the stuff: domestic
sales totalled $1.7bn (£1.3bn) in 2023—up from $662m in 2008—
according to IWSR, a data firm. The country is also the world’s biggest
exporter of the spirit; over the same period British sales abroad rose from
£396m to £578m.
Deregulation kickstarted the “ginaissance”. For centuries, producers were

subject to the Gin Act of 1751, which prescribed the way gin could be made
and sold. The law dictated that gin had to be made in stills with a capacity
of 1,800 litres or more, in effect banning all but the largest manufacturers.
The act was an attempt to suppress a “gin craze”. In early 18th-century
London, adults were drinking half a pint (almost 300ml) of low-quality gin
a day; the disorder that ensued was captured in vivid drawings by William
Hogarth.
By the early 21st century the tipple was thought of more as a civilised
aperitif than a harbinger of chaos. But the law remained—as Sam
Galsworthy, Fairfax Hall and Jared Brown discovered in 2007 when they
tried to set up a company with a 300-litre still. After two years of ginning
up support for a repeal of the law, they succeeded. When they launched
their brand in 2009, Sipsmith was only the 12th gin distillery in Britain.
Doing away with the 18th-century edict set off a second gin craze. Today
almost 90% of distilleries have fewer than ten employees. You can buy a
gin made in Gatwick airport or steeped with botanicals grown at
Buckingham Palace. By making small batches, microdistilleries can
experiment with flavours and focus on seasonality. In the lead-up to
Christmas, shelves are stocked with sloe, clementine and spiced varieties.
Fortnum and Mason, a luxury department store, offers a mince-pie-and-
marmalade gin liqueur.
Yet after 15 years of good times, many gin-makers are dispirited. In January
the UK Spirits Alliance (UKSA), an industry group, observed that “80% of
an average spirits bottle is taken as tax” and that Britain’s spirits duty was
“77% higher than the average across EU member states and the highest in
the G7”. In its October budget the government increased the duty per bottle
of gin by another 4%. The UKSA says a “national success story” is
imperilled.
Patrick Fisher of IWSR predicts that sales in Britain will decline over the
next five years. As well as steep duties, distillers are grappling with high
costs for raw materials such as grains and glass. They are passing on the
cost to consumers, many of whom are cutting back on indulgences because
of the high cost of living. Lots of drinkers are thinking of their livers as well
as their wallets, and turning to low- or no-alcohol alternatives. The gin
industry may soon find itself in need of a tonic. ■
https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/11/19/the-story-of-britains-ginaissance

Criminal justice
A sticking-plaster policy for

Britain’s strained courts
Magistrates get more power. Will they get punch-drunk on it?
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | Stratford
IT HAS BEEN a long day in courtroom number 5 at Stratford Magistrates’

Court by the time Charlie Mendajami enters the dock. The trio of
magistrates have presided over eight cases, including those of a pale
teenager who admitted to sharing indecent images (he gets a 24-month
community order and 200 hours of unpaid work); a man who attacked a
noisy neighbour’s door with a hammer (£650, or $820, fine; hammer
confiscated); and a serial offender who stole a bike and punched a stranger
(five weeks in prison).
Mr Mendajami, who wears sunglasses and gesticulates behind the
plexiglass, has pleaded not guilty to drunkenly hurling a glass bottle at a
customer in a petrol station, before attempting to spray fuel and then
“simulating a sex act with the nozzle”. The court will have to decide at a
later hearing whether that is merely a publicorder offence or meets the bar
for affray, which could carry a longer sentence. “As of today,” the
prosecutor tells the magistrates, “and congratulations by the way, that can
all still be done here.”
He is referring to the fact that on November 18th magistrates’ courts in

England and Wales—including this one in east London—were given more
powers. Magistrates, lay judges who are volunteers with little formal
training, will now be able to send people to prison on charges that carry a
maximum tariff of a year, up from a previous maximum of six months. The
government says this will free up space in crown courts and,
counterintuitively, relieve pressure on prisons. Court-watchers have some
doubts.
The plan has several moving parts. The worst backlogs in the judicial
system by far are in crown courts, which deal with more serious offences
and where 28% of cases wait over a year for a trial. The most crowded bits
of the prison estate, in turn, are reception and remand prisons, which hold
people awaiting trial or sentencing; the number of such inmates has
increased by 84% to 16,500 in the past five years. Pushing more cases down
to the magistrates should, ministers say, free up 2,000 days per year in
crown courts.
Getting through the backlog more quickly would cause an initial uptick in
the prison population, according to the justice department’s modelling. In
2022 the government tried exactly the same reform of magistrates’ powers,
only to backtrack after less than a year as prisons reached capacity. The
government hopes that its decision to release some prisoners early means it
has more breathing-space to cope with a similar surge this time. Over time,
however, the prison population should fall as reception and remand prisons
become less full. “It’s a bit like trying to do a 3D jigsaw,” says Tom
Franklin of the Magistrates’ Association, a membership body.
Some have concerns about the quality of justice in magistrates’ courts. They
can be a “Wild West” in which proper processes are not followed, according
to Transforming Justice, a think-tank. Giving magistrates more power could
be trading speed for quality. Some barristers see magistrates as excessively
punitive, as well as lacking legal training. “They go around like they are
little emperors,” says one. Handed more serious cases—such as fraud,
assault or weapons possession—they may be less minded to trust that
offenders can be managed in the community.
There is no robust evidence, though, that magistrates do sentence more

harshly. Some lawyers think they have become more consistent as
sentencing guidelines have been tightened in recent years. It is in any case
possible that magistrates will find their extra prerogatives to be short-lived.
David Gauke, a former justice secretary, will complete a sentencing review
in the spring. He has previously argued for a presumption against the use of
short sentences of under a year.
If the government adopted that approach, magistrates’ role would be

transformed. Punitively minded or not, they would be able to send far fewer
people to prison. But that would have other consequences: few think the
probation system is in any state to deal adequately with thousands more
people in the community. Mending the dire state of Britain’s justice system
will require a ten-year strategy, says Mr Franklin. For now, the government
is still using sticking plasters. ■
https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/11/21/a-sticking-plaster-policy-for-britains-
strained-courts

Bagehot
Assisted dying and the two

concepts of liberty
Isaiah Berlin would recognise the debate unfolding in Britain over the right
to die
11月 21, 2024 07:17 上午
SIR KEIR STARMER was born in 1962 in a Britain that was still cloaked
in an austere, suppressive fug. The lord chamberlain censored plays.
Abortion was outlawed, and divorce permitted only rarely beyond cases of
adultery. Gay sex was a criminal act. This world was largely swept away
before the future prime minister started secondary school. Individual
liberties triumphed over collective moral prohibitions. My rights beat your
qualms.
Assisted dying is, for its advocates, the next and last step of this liberal
revolution. A private member’s bill, brought before Parliament by Kim
Leadbeater, a Labour MP, would give terminally ill patients in England and
Wales a right to request their death. It will be debated in a second reading
on November 29th but its chances of passing are unclear. On this issue
Britain, once a pacesetter in liberalising legislation, is behind other Western
countries. Why?
The problem does not lie with the public, which has consistently supported
change since the early 1980s. Nor does the cause of assisted dying lack
friends in high places: successive bills have been brought before Parliament
since the first was debated in 1936. It remains unresolved because the
debate on this issue is no longer a fight between the liberal idea of personal
autonomy and a Christian idea of public morality. It has become a fight
within liberalism, between two rival ideas of liberty.
Isaiah Berlin, a political theorist, would have recognised this battle. In 1958
he delivered a lecture entitled “Two Concepts of Liberty”, which set out
two big strands of philosophical thought on freedom. “Negative liberty”, or
“freedom from”, was the ability of a person to do as they wished without
interference from others. This was the realm of English thinkers such as
Thomas Hobbes and John Stuart Mill. It means the right to property,
religion and speech beyond the grasp of the state.
In contrast, “positive liberty”, or “freedom to”, said Berlin, was about “self-
mastery” and the triumph of a person’s “higher nature” over his low
impulses and outside influence. It reflected a sense of a deeper autonomy:
“a doer—deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted upon
by external nature”. But, he went on, liberating people’s true will would
invariably mean the state placing constraints on what they could legally do
for their own benefit—just as children are compelled to go to school, even
if they do not grasp why. In other words, negative and positive liberty were
in conflict. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Swiss liberal thinker, had said one
could force people to be free. This, Berlin said, was the logic of paternalists,
tyrants and Marxists.
Berlin’s lecture can serve as a guide to today’s debate. Ms Leadbeater and

her supporters preach a negative liberty: picking the time and manner of
your death is an essential question of freedom, choice and autonomy. Berlin
argued that negative liberty requires privacy: “a frontier…drawn between
the area of private life and that of public authority”. Liberals of the 1960s
wanted the government to get out of the bedroom; advocates of assisted
dying want it out of the hospice.
Opponents of assisted dying cast their arguments in terms of autonomy and

choice, too. Under Ms Leadbeater’s regime, they argue, patients would
inevitably feel under pressure, implicitly or overtly, to end their lives. For
the frail and sick who fear themselves to be a burden, argues Danny Kruger,
a Conservative MP, “the conversation” about an assisted death would not
be an expansion of liberty but a mockery of it, robbing the dying of the
freedom that comes with knowing their nearest and dearest are not
conspiring to kill them. This argument is a version of Berlin’s positive
liberty: a constrained legal choice but greater real autonomy. For
paternalists, the philosopher said, oppression was justified if it liberated the
“‘true’, albeit submerged and inarticulate, self”.
Post-war moralists approved of a strong state. Today’s opponents of assisted

dying have a libertarian suspicion of it. Given the long list of geriatric-care
scandals, the argument runs, the National Health Service seems all too good
at finishing people off already. The idea of meaningful choice, on which the
concept of negative liberty rests, is hard to apply to a bureaucracy that
struggles to provide people with decent dinner options.
Give me liberty and give me death
In this clash of two liberties, listen to what the assisted-dying debate is not.
God loomed over the bill in 1936: Lord FitzAlan, a former lord lieutenant
of Ireland, declared it an impertinent usurpation of the Almighty. God’s
presence was also felt the last time the Commons debated a bill on assisted
dying, in 2015. (“Although some may believe that suffering is a grace-filled
opportunity to participate in the passion of Jesus Christ, which is selfishly
stolen away by euthanasia, I say ‘Please count me out’,” sighed Crispin
Blunt, a Tory supporter of that bill.)
But society is becoming more secular at a striking pace, as is the House of
Commons. Christian groups know that if they relied on appeals to Christian
ethics, they would lose. There is less talk of the sanctity of life and the
moral injury of suicide, more focus on notions of “safeguarding” and
“informed consent”.
For advocates, Ms Leadbeater’s bill may turn out to be another missed

opportunity. It has been hastily prepared. Sir Keir, despite his support for
the cause, has decided to follow Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister
of his childhood, in being an aloof bystander rather than a participant. But
the debate is inexorably shifting onto their preferred terrain. The argument
has inched from moral prohibitions to policy design. It centres not on
whether assisted dying is tolerable but whether the British state is able to
implement it. This clash of two concepts of liberty explains why the debate
has persisted for so long. But a battle fought on liberal terms is also one the
liberalisers will, in the long run, surely win. ■

https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/11/20/assisted-dying-and-the-two-concepts-of-
liberty

International
Is your master’s degree useless?
University in America and Britain :: New data show a shockingly high proportion of courses
are a waste of money
The perils of appeasing a warlike Russia

The Telegram :: Finland’s cold-war past offers urgent lessons for Ukraine’s future

University in America and Britain
Is your master’s degree useless?

New data show a shockingly high proportion of courses are a waste of
money
11月 21, 2024 08:32 上午
IN THE COMING months millions of people across the northern

hemisphere will apply to do postgraduate study. Most will top up an
undergraduate qualification with a one- or two-year master’s degree in the
hope that this will set them apart in a job market crowded with bachelor’s
degrees.
“The number-one reason people get these degrees is insecurity,” reckons

Bob Shireman of the Century Foundation, a left-leaning think-tank in New
York. “The feeling that if they are going to get a job—or keep their job—
they need a master’s degree.” Yet on average these provide a much smaller
bump to wages than an undergraduate degree does. And a new body of data
and analysis suggests that a shockingly high share of master’s courses leave
graduates worse off.
In America close to 40% of workers with a bachelor’s also boast a

postgraduate credential of some sort. In the decade to 2021 the number of
postgraduate students there increased by 9% even as undergraduates fell by
15%. PhDs required by academics and long professional degrees of the sort
needed by doctors and lawyers are becoming more popular. But master’s
courses still account for most of the growth.
They are an even bigger business for universities in Britain, which hand out
four postgraduate degrees for every five undergraduate ones. This has much
to do with a boom in master’s students from places such as India and
Nigeria. Britons have been getting in on the action, too. The number
enrolling in taught master’s courses has grown by about 60% over 15 years.
In part this has been driven by employers demanding higher qualifications

as jobs in science and technology, in particular, grow more complex. But
universities are also keen. In Britain, undergraduate fees are capped by the
government and have barely increased in a decade. Enrolling more
postgraduates—who may be charged whatever the market will bear—is one
way to cope. America’s university-age population will soon start declining.
College presidents there hope that repeat customers can keep their
institutions afloat.
Since 2000 the cost of postgraduate study in America has more than tripled
in real terms, according to the Centre on Education and the Workforce at
Georgetown University. The median borrower now acquires around
$50,000 in debt while completing their second degree, up from $34,000 20
years earlier (in 2022 dollars). Almost half of the money America’s
government lends to students goes to postgraduates, even though they are
only 17% of learners. In Britain domestic master’s students paid about
£9,500 ($13,000) a year in 2021, some 70% higher than in 2011 after
accounting for inflation.
Students have put up with these fees in part because they assume that lofty
credentials will usually increase their earnings. “Gaining a financial return
is not the only reason to pursue education,” acknowledges Beth Akers of the
American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think-tank. But “for the vast
majority of students...that is the ambition.” At first glance they are making a
reasonable bet. In America full-time workers with a bachelor’s earn about
70% more than high-school graduates. And those who tack on a master’s
can expect an additional 18%.
Yet earnings vary enormously by subject and institution. Moreover,

postgraduates are usually from richer families and got better grades as
undergraduates than did their peers. They would tend to do well in life,
regardless of additional credentials. Working out the real returns requires
comparing the outcomes of this brainy cohort with those of similarly
impressive people who decided against further study.
Seen through that lens, the average master’s student will bank no more than
$50,000 extra over their lifetime as a result of their qualification, reckons
Preston Cooper, an analyst formerly of FREOPP, a think-tank in Austin,
Texas, who also considered fees paid and potential earnings forgone while
studying. Worse still, students enrolled on about 40% of America’s master’s
courses will either make no extra money or incur a financial loss. That is a
higher risk than for undergraduate courses, which Dr Cooper believes
provide positive returns about 75% of the time.
Because American data remain somewhat patchy, reaching conclusions

such as these still involves vast amounts of guesswork. Things are a bit
clearer in Britain, where researchers who ask nicely may crunch a database
linking the tax histories and educational achievements of millions of young
adults. In 2019 analysts at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank in
London, concluded that one-fifth of undergraduates would be better off if
they skipped university all together.
More recently the institute has investigated returns from master’s courses—
with even more striking results. It has found that by the age of 35, master’s
graduates earn no more than those with just a bachelor’s (after accounting
for their better-off backgrounds and higher previous attainment). That
finding was “genuinely surprising” says Jack Britton, one of the study’s
authors. It also differed markedly from research that used less-granular data.
On both sides of the Atlantic, choice of subject is the single biggest factor
determining whether a master’s boosts earnings. In America returns are
especially large in computer science and in engineering. They are slightly
smaller in other science subjects, in part because an undergraduate degree in
these already bumps up salaries by quite a lot. Teachers who bag graduate
degrees in education tend to earn more, even if wages for the profession as
a whole are fairly low, because many American school districts
automatically raise the pay of those who have them.
More striking are the large negative returns in some subjects. British men
who complete master’s degrees in politics earn 10% less in their mid-30s
than peers who do the same subject at undergraduate level only. For history
the hit to earnings is around 20%; for English it is close to 30% (see chart
1). Many of the people on these courses are targeting careers that they know
will be low-earning, but which they think they will enjoy, explains Dr
Britton. But some drift into advanced study because they have not yet
decided what profession to pursue. It should probably not be a surprise that
these people tend to earn less in the medium term than peers who have
rocketed straight from bachelor’s courses into jobs.
Choice of institution matters, though in most cases less than is commonly

assumed. In America costs range widely by university. But there is no
strong connection between the price of a master’s course and the amount its
graduates go on to earn, according to Tomás Monarrez and Jordan
Matsudaira from the US Department of Education (see chart 2). “Brand-
name schools have realised that they can trade on their reputation to offer
programmes that look very prestigious on paper,” says Dr Cooper, “but
which don’t have outcomes that justify the hype.”
MBA courses are a notable exception: graduates from the most celebrated
institutions make far more than everyone else. But in other walks of life,
acquiring swanky networks while studying is not quite so crucial to success.
The upshot is that splurging on an elite university is not nearly as clever as
picking a well-priced course somewhere less fancy.
Women have a higher chance than men of getting a boost to earnings from
doing a master’s. The British study finds that these qualifications increase
earnings for women in 14 out of 31 subject areas; for men that is true in
only six of them. This seems surprising: men’s hourly earnings are higher
than women’s and the gap widens further with education. But women with
higher qualifications do better than women without them because they also
tend to work longer hours, particularly when they become parents and are
put under pressure to go part-time or stop working.
The poor returns from many master’s degrees should worry applicants. But
they also raise thorny questions for governments. In Europe and America
politicians have been accused of inadvertently pushing up costs. In 2016
master’s students in Britain became eligible for government-backed loans
with generous repayment terms. America’s federal government limits how
much it will lend to undergraduates—but since 2006 has allowed
postgraduates to borrow whatever their universities choose to charge. In
both cases easy money has led to price inflation.
A related debate is whether governments ought to be more picky about

which postgraduate courses they fund. In America credit is offered as freely
to people studying “underwater basket-weaving” as to those who study law,
says Dr Akers. In 2026 profit-making universities could be prevented from
enrolling students who borrow federal money in courses that have saddled
graduates with unmanageable debt, or which have not boosted their
incomes. But the new rules will not be applied to public and non-profit
universities, which enroll most students. These institutions will instead
simply have to warn applicants about courses with poor returns.
Americans from both the right and left of politics agree that graduate
education is “a bit out of control”, says Mr Shireman. That could make it
easier to make changes to, say, the postgraduate loan system. But it remains
to be seen how the incoming administration will choose to handle these
issues, says Dr Akers. The worry, she says, is that Donald Trump’s team
might “focus more on publicly shaming institutions that are bastions of
progressivism, than on thoughtful reform”. ■
https://www.economist.com/international/2024/11/18/is-your-masters-degree-useless

The Telegram
The perils of appeasing a warlike

Russia
Finland’s cold-war past offers urgent lessons for Ukraine’s future
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
IN BARRACKS SQUARE in old Helsinki stands an unusual monument to

a war. A towering sculpture of a soldier’s winter snowsuit, its polished steel
body is pierced with large round holes, as if still standing after a strafing by
cannon fire. It is Finland’s national memorial to the winter war of 1939-40.
During that conflict, Finnish troops withstood a huge Soviet force for 105
days, inflicting heavy casualties on the invaders before succumbing to the
Red Army’s larger numbers. The Soviet Union imposed harsh terms, taking
10% of its neighbour’s territory. Peace proved fragile, and Finland was soon
swept up into the second world war, fighting with Nazi Germany against
the Soviet Red Army from 1941 to 1944.
Unveiled in 2017, the memorial’s message is more timely than ever. The
winter war has new resonance for Finns. Their country has known 80 years
of peace. It boasts one of Europe’s most capable armies, backed by
extensive military service for young men and large reserves. Yet even after
ditching decades of neutrality to join NATO in April 2023, Finland remains
haunted by Russia, its former imperial ruler and neighbour along a 1,340km
shared border. “When Russia attacked Ukraine it was as if Finland’s wars
were happening yesterday,” says a member of Finland’s tight-knit
establishment. Indeed, this old hand worries about younger Finns being
“too bold” in denouncing Russia. Membership of the European Union and
NATO is all very well. But Finland is a small country whose fate has often
been decided by great powers, and Russia will always be there. “We know
that the big guys can always agree things above our head. We can always be
alone.”
This is a moment for all Europe to ponder that memorial in a Helsinki

square. For that battered but still-recognisable uniform—hollow and
headless, with the sky visible through its many holes—presents an
important question. What can a country afford to lose, and what must it
preserve, and still be true to itself?
When the cold war divided Europe, Finland made many sacrifices to
survive as an independent nation. To preserve its capitalist system and
parliamentary democracy, it became a neutral buffer state between the West
and the Soviet Union. Until 1956 the Soviet navy was allowed to lease a
base on the Finnish coast, within artillery range of Helsinki. KGB officers
meddled shamelessly in Finland’s politics and society (though some Finnish
officials and military officers quietly sent intelligence to the West, too).
Bound by treaty to take Soviet security interests into account, the country’s
compromised form of sovereignty was dubbed “Finlandisation” by critics.
Finnish defenders of close relations with the USSR described their mission
as “co-operating without losing one’s soul”.
Today, Finlandisation is back, this time as a model for Ukraine’s post-war

relations with Russia. On a doomed peace mission to Moscow, days before
Russia’s invasion in 2022, France’s president Emmanuel Macron called
Finlandisation “one of the options on the table” for Ukraine. Mr Macron
might not use the term now, for his line on Russian aggression has hardened
greatly since then. But if the war ends soon, as America’s president-elect
Donald Trump insists it must, leaders in Kyiv can expect pressure from
many quarters to make painful compromises. A loss of some territory will
surely be one price of peace. Then will come a hard question: how to secure
Ukraine’s sovereignty in the future. Some Western governments may put
their faith in deterrence of Russia, encouraging Ukraine to build a strong
army and economy and to align its political system with European values.
Other world leaders may push Ukraine to appease its neighbour by
declaring itself neutral and accepting a place in Russia’s sphere of
influence.
In Helsinki foreign-policy thinkers have strong views on those seemingly

opposite approaches to security, because cold-war Finland tried both at the
same time. Finland maintained armed forces strong enough to make Soviet
leaders recoil from the potential costs of trying to occupy the country
formally. At the same time, it bought peace with many compromises, some
of which look distinctly shabby in hindsight. In Helsinki today, the term
Finlandisation is taken as a slur.
Realism but not fatalism
Circumstances imposed foreign-policy realism on Finland. The country’s

survival could not be taken for granted in the late 1940s. It focused on
preserving the essential elements of its sovereignty, without provoking the
superpower next door. But this was realism with a purpose, rather than
defeatism. Finland turned its agrarian economy into an industrial
powerhouse and worked hard to expand its trade with Nordic neighbours
and the wider world. The country signed a free-trade pact with Europe in
the 1970s, despite growling opposition from Moscow. The post-war history
of Finland saw “a step-by-step inching of our way towards the West”, says
Hiski Haukkala, a former chief of staff to Finland’s president and incoming
director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. “If a Ukraine peace
is predicated on allowing Russia to dictate the terms, that would not be the
Finnish lesson,” he adds. “That would be capitulation.”
A plaque next to the winter-war memorial offers a strikingly geopolitical
take on those long-ago horrors. It blames the conflict on Hitler’s and
Stalin’s secret agreement in 1939 to push Finland into “the sphere of
influence of the Soviet Union”. The loss of over 25,000 Finnish lives is
presented as an investment in a better tomorrow: a sacrifice to preserve
Finland’s “independence, freedom and potential to develop into the Nordic
welfare state that it is known as today”. Finland did not choose its
geography. But—even in its darkest hour—it fought to choose its own fate.
Literal Finlandisation would be a terrible model for Ukraine, turning it into
a Russian satellite. But Finland’s sense of itself as a nation, and its will to
survive, is an example worth studying.■

https://www.economist.com/international/2024/11/16/the-perils-of-appeasing-a-
warlike-russia

Business
How Chinese is Shein?
A corporate identity crisis :: For the fast-fashion giant, nationality has become a vexed
question
Nvidia’s boss dismisses fears that AI has hit a wall

All’s well that’s Blackwell :: But it’s “urgent” to get to the next level, Jensen Huang tells The
Economist
What ChatGPT’s corporate victims have in common

Death by LLM :: The first casualties of generative AI offer lessons for other businesses
Donald Trump’s victory has boosted shares in private-

prison companies
Breakout :: A hard line means hard cash
Gautam Adani faces bribery charges in America

Indian business :: Prosecutors allege one of India’s richest men paid off local officials
Spirit’s woes reveal the dismal state of America’s budget

airlines
Flying low :: Its bankruptcy shows how strained the low-cost model has become
How to behave in lifts: an office guide

Bartleby :: Life in an elevator
Does Dallas offer a vision of Trumpian America?

Schumpeter :: The Texan city embodies the allure of small government

A corporate identity crisis
How Chinese is Shein?

For the fast-fashion giant, nationality has become a vexed question
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | Guangzhou
TO WHICH COUNTRY does Shein belong? The online apparel giant,

headquartered in Singapore, is expected to list its shares in London in the
coming months. Earlier this year Donald Tang, its executive chairman,
proclaimed it to be American, by virtue of its values and the fact that it
makes most of its money there. Meanwhile, most of Shein’s employees are
in China, where the company was founded in 2012. All this might suggest
Shein is multinational, beholden to no single country. Unfortunately, the
matter is not so straightforward for a firm that straddles China and the West.
Shein is part of a new generation of innovative Chinese companies that has

taken the rich world by storm. It now accounts for half of fast-fashion sales
in America, and is expected to sell around $50bn-worth of cheap blouses,
skirts and other clothing and accessories globally this year, up from roughly
$32bn in 2023 (see chart). That is about as much as H&M and Zara, the
West’s two biggest fast-fashion brands, combined. Temu, an overseas
offshoot of Pinduoduo, a Chinese e-commerce company, has had similar
success. Some 170m Americans use TikTok, a video-sharing app controlled
by ByteDance, a Chinese tech firm. Chinese companies in industries from
gaming to electric vehicles have also been expanding in Western markets.
Consumers in the West have lapped up these new offerings. The
enthusiasm, however, has not been shared by their governments, which fear
that Chinese firms will pilfer citizens’ data or undermine national security.
Last year America passed a law requiring ByteDance either to sell TikTok
or leave the country (though its future is uncertain under Donald Trump,
who has flip-flopped on the issue). American lawmakers are investigating
Shein and Temu over allegations of forced labour in their supply chains
(which the companies deny). And in September America’s government said
it planned to remove a trade rule that exempts imports worth less than $800
from customs duties, which would hurt the two firms. At the same time,
Chinese officials have also grown suspicious of these globe-trotting
companies, fearing that they will leak sensitive information to foreign
adversaries or wriggle their way out of the Communist Party’s grip.
In response, many Chinese multinationals are playing down their ties to the
country. On November 14th BeiGene, a drugmaker whose name is a nod to
China’s capital city, said it would rebadge itself as BeOne Medicines.
Hundreds of Chinese firms have, like Shein, moved their headquarters to
Singapore. But Shein has gone further than most in its efforts to redefine
itself as a global, rather than a Chinese, company. It does not sell its wares
in China (where it goes by the name Xiyin) and says that it increasingly
resembles any other global firm that sources its products from the country.
Yet its experience shows just how difficult it is for companies born in China
to untether themselves from it.
Consider first Shein’s operational footprint. About 10,000 of its 16,000-

strong workforce were based in China at the end of last year, according to
regulatory disclosures. Partly that is because Shein relies heavily on
Chinese factories. The company’s former headquarters in Guangzhou, still
its biggest office globally with almost 5,000 staff, is focused mainly on
logistics and managing relations with its suppliers. In a nearby area known
as “Shein Village”, tens of thousands of people work in factories making
garments for the company (they are not directly employed by Shein). The
office in Guangzhou is nondescript; there is no logo on the building
identifying its main tenant. When your correspondent visited last month the
only indication of Shein’s presence was a large cake-shaped balloon inflated
in the entryway to celebrate the company’s 12th birthday.
Shein’s base in China is about more than managing its supply chain,
though. The company’s ability to use data to develop algorithms that can
accurately predict customer demand has been central to its success. The vast
majority of that work still happens at home. It would be very difficult, says
a consultant familiar with the company, to replace or relocate the people
needed to maintain those operations.
In Nanjing, where the company was founded, executives work on its

branding strategy. Shein still refers to the office there as its “global
operations centre” in some documents. Two subsidiaries in Shanghai, which
employed around 500 people between them at the end of last year, work on
product design, digital marketing and managing relations with TikTok
influencers who are paid to advertise for the company. What is more,
Shein‘s footprint in the country is expanding. As of last month the firm was
hiring for nearly 1,900 positions in 13 cities, including Shenzhen and
Shanghai, where it is adding to a team that processes data and helps develop
its algorithms.
A second illustration of the difficulty of Shein’s position comes from its

proposed overseas listing. Foreign initial public offerings (IPOs) by Chinese
firms have plummeted in recent years as China’s government has shown its
disapproval, most visibly by forcing DiDi, a ride-hailing firm, to delist in
America in 2022. Chinese businesses raised a record $53bn through foreign
listings in 2014, according to LSEG, a financial-markets group. This year
they have raised less than $5bn.
Shein may have hoped that, having forgone the domestic market, its IPO
would attract less scrutiny from China. Firms with fewer than 1m online
Chinese users do not need to submit to a review by the country’s
cybersecurity administration before listing their shares abroad. Shein has
also been careful to keep a low profile in China. Xu Yangtian, its founder
and chief executive, has eschewed media interviews; few photos exist
online of the 40-year-old billionaire. The company’s reluctance to shift
work abroad may further reflect its wariness of incurring the government’s
displeasure. A person close to the business says that Chinese authorities
keep tabs on what digital operations are done within the country and what is
moved overseas.
Never gonna give you up
Despite all this, Shein has not been spared. The cybersecurity watchdog has
launched a review of how the company manages data on its suppliers and
logistics within China, according to the Wall Street Journal, and Shein has
had to seek permission from China’s government for its foreign flotation.
The murky, unofficial process it must now go through highlights the
“embedded political risks” that investors will have to consider when
valuing the business, says Drew Bernstein of MarcumAsia, an accounting
firm.
Growing concern over those risks has contributed to the downward

revisions to Shein’s valuation over the past two years. A funding round in
2022 that included General Atlantic and Tiger Global, two American
private-equity firms, valued Shein at around $100bn. Last year it was
valued at just $66bn, and private share sales earlier this year are said to
have put the figure at less than $50bn. Shein’s base in China has helped it
develop an innovative service that millions of shoppers around the world
enjoy, with little care for its nationality. As long as both Washington and
Beijing view it as Chinese, though, investors may have to do the same. ■
To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to

the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.
https://www.economist.com/business/2024/11/19/how-chinese-is-shein

All’s well that’s Blackwell
Nvidia’s boss dismisses fears that

AI has hit a wall
But it’s “urgent” to get to the next level, Jensen Huang tells The Economist
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | SAN FRANCISCO
WHEN SAM ALTMAN, boss of OpenAI, posted a gnomic tweet this

month saying “There is no wall,” his followers on X, a social-media site,
had a blast. “Trump will build it,” said one. “No paywall for ChatGPT?”
quipped another. It has since morphed from an in-joke among nerds into a
serious business matter.
The wall in question refers to the view that the forces underlying
improvements in generative artificial intelligence (AI) over the past 15
years have reached a limit. Those forces are known as scaling laws.
“There’s a lot of debate: have we hit the wall with scaling laws?” Satya
Nadella, Microsoft’s boss, asked at his firm’s annual conference on
November 19th. A day later Jensen Huang, boss of Nvidia, the world’s most
valuable company, said no.
Scaling laws are not physical laws. Like Moore’s law, the observation that
processing performance for semiconductors doubles roughly every two
years, they reflect the perception that AI performance in recent years has
doubled every six months or so. The main reason for that progress has been
the increase in the computing power that is used to train large language
models (LLMs). No company’s fortunes are more intertwined with scaling
laws than Nvidia, whose graphics processing units (GPUs) provide almost
all of that computational oomph.
On November 20th, during Nvidia’s results presentation, Mr Huang

defended scaling laws. He also told The Economist that the first task of
Nvidia’s newest class of GPUs, known as Blackwells, would be to train a
new, more powerful generation of models. “It’s so urgent for all these
foundation-model-makers to race to the next level,” he says.
The results for Nvidia’s quarter ending in October reinforced the sense of
upward momentum. Although the pace of growth has slowed somewhat, its
revenue exceeded $35bn, up by a still-blistering 94%, year on year (see
chart). And Nvidia projected another $37.5bn in revenues for this quarter,
above Wall Street’s expectations. It said the upward revision was partly
because it expected demand for Blackwell GPUs to be higher than it had
previously thought. Mr Huang predicted 100,000 Blackwells would be
swiftly put to work training and running the next generation of LLMs.
Not everyone shares his optimism. Scaling-law sceptics note that OpenAI
has not yet produced a new general-purpose model to replace GPT-4, which
has underpinned ChatGPT since March 2023. They say Google’s Gemini is
underwhelming given the money it has spent on it.
But, as Mr Huang notes, scaling laws not only apply to the initial training of
LLMs, but also to the use of the model, or inference, especially when
complex reasoning tasks are involved. To explain why, he points to
OpenAI’s latest model, o1, which has stronger reasoning capabilities than
GPT-4. It can do advanced maths and other complex tasks by taking a step-
by-step approach that its maker calls “thinking”. This enhanced inference
process uses far more computing power than a typical ChatGPT response,
Mr Huang says. “We know that we need more compute whatever the
approach is,” he says.
The more AI is adopted, the more important inference will become. Mr

Huang says that Nvidia’s previous generations of GPUs can be used for
inference, but that Blackwells will make performance dozens of times
better. Already at least half of Nvidia’s infrastructure is used for inference.
Mr Huang clearly has an interest in portraying scaling in the best possible

light. Some sceptics question how meaningful the advances in reasoning
are. Although a handful of business models are being disrupted, many firms
are struggling to adopt AI at scale, which could eventually weigh on
demand for the technology. These are early days, though. Tech giants
continue to spend big on GPUs, and Mr Huang points out that new
technologies take time to digest. Nvidia’s back is not against the wall yet. ■

https://www.economist.com/business/2024/11/21/nvidias-boss-dismisses-fears-that-ai-
has-hit-a-wall

Death by LLM
What ChatGPT’s corporate victims

have in common
The first casualties of generative AI offer lessons for other businesses
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
IN LESS THAN four years the share price of Chegg, an online education
service, has dropped by 99%. A post-pandemic slump in digital learning is
partly to blame for its tumble. A bigger problem for the company, though, is
artificial intelligence (AI). Its customers are mostly students who want help
answering their homework assignments, which often involves the virtual
support of a human tutor. The rise of ChatGPT and its kind have created a
free substitute for that service. On an earnings call on November 12th
Nathan Schultz, Chegg’s boss, admitted that “technology shifts have created
headwinds”. The same day the firm said that it would fire a fifth of its
workforce.
Chegg is one of an emerging group of firms that have already been
pummelled by ChatGPT-like generative AI. Two others stand out: Stack
Exchange, which runs Stack Overflow, an online forum for software
developers, and RWS, a translation service. These emerging AI victims
offer clues as to when a business may be strengthened by the technology
and when it will be upended.
For years Stack Overflow was the go-to place for developers to get help
with tricky coding problems. Many are now turning to code-writing AI
assistants instead, such as Microsoft’s Github Copilot. Two-fifths of coders
say they use such tools. According to Similarweb, a data provider, Stack
Overflow’s monthly internet traffic has fallen by half over the past two
years. Last year the company went through two rounds of layoffs, firing
about a third of its workforce in total. “Death by LLM,” is how Elon Musk
described the company’s fate on X, the social media-site he owns, referring
to the large language models that underpin generative AI.
Translation services have been hit by AI, too. In the six months to March
RWS’s revenue fell by 4%, year on year, while profits fell by 16%.
Investors, fearful of AI’s impact, have sent its share price down by 57%
since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. Last year the company
held an event for investors where it sought to convince them that AI will
benefit its business; few, it seems, were convinced. Other problems, such as
the launch of a new EU-wide patent scheme which hurt RWS’s patent-
translation business, have not helped the firm. Earlier this year, Ian El-
Mokadem, its boss, said he would resign in 2025.
Examining these AI victims suggests three lessons for businesses. The first
is that the threat to incumbents from the technology is greater in industries
where the potential damage done by AI hogwash (known as hallucinations)
is low. Error-strewn code is a worry for developers, but problems are
typically easy to spot before the software is deployed. Flawed translations
can be easily corrected. If an AI tool makes up facts when writing an
undergraduate’s history essay, the ramifications are small (though perhaps
less so for the student if they are caught using an AI tool). Errors when
writing up a legal contract or a medical prescription, by contrast, are more
costly. AI services will take longer to gain ground in industries that are
more sensitive to made-up nonsense.
A second lesson is that businesses are most at risk when off-the-shelf AI

can replicate what they do with little customisation. Tools like ChatGPT can
already help with translating text, writing code or rattling off events from
history. There is a long tail of things that, with further tailoring, an AI tool
could potentially do, such as planning and booking holidays or finding and
liaising with job candidates. But for now, travel agents and recruiters look
safe.
A final lesson is that, if your company is squarely in the AI firing line, using
the technology to develop an original product may help shield you. Chegg
is working with Scale AI, a startup, to offer students machine-generated
answers to questions that would have previously been written by humans.
RWS has an AI-powered translation tool. Stack Overflow now helps users
perform an advanced search of its website, among other things.
The problem is that these applications are rather uninspired. But consider
Duolingo, a language-learning app. ChatGPT can imitate a half-decent
French tutor and the cost to users of an AI-induced error is low.
Nevertheless, shareholders are starting to think of Duolingo as an AI
winner. In September it unveiled a video-chat feature that lets customers
practise their language skills with an AI-generated character called Lily. On
November 6th this sarcastic, purple-haired avatar joined the firm’s earnings
call and presented its results. Analysts and investors swooned; the firm’s
share price rose by 6% over the next few days. As AI upends more
industries, clever innovation is the best way for would-be victims to escape
their fate. ■

https://www.economist.com/business/2024/11/20/what-chatgpts-corporate-victims-have-
in-common

Breakout
Donald Trump’s victory has

boosted shares in private-prison
companies
A hard line means hard cash
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
AS THE DUST settled on Donald Trump’s election victory, what

businesses did investors think would benefit most from his return to the
presidency? Tesla? Big oil? Rustbelt manufacturers? No: two firms that
lock people up. Shares in GEO Group and Core Civic, which own and run
prisons, soared by two-thirds in the three days after the election, beating the
rest of America’s 1,500 most valuable firms.
Investors’ reasoning may be cold, but it is clear: Mr Trump takes a hard line
on criminal justice. He is expected to revoke Joe Biden’s executive order
phasing out the federal government’s use of private prisons, having
rescinded a similar edict by Barack Obama in his first term. Other votes
from election day may also provide a boost. Californians approved a ballot
measure increasing penalties for some thefts and drug crimes, including
prison terms for sellers of certain drugs.
More important is Mr Trump’s promise to secure America’s borders by

deporting a record number of illegal immigrants. Although privately run
prisons hold less than one-tenth of the country’s inmates, private owners
and operators supply almost all the detention beds used by US Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency responsible for removing
migrants. GEO and Core Civic already earn 43% and 30% of their revenue,
respectively, providing detention centres, electronic monitoring and more to
ICE.
Mr Trump’s ambition implies much more business. Between them GEO and
Core Civic have about 36,000 unused beds suitable for ICE (thanks in part
to Mr Biden’s order on prisons). That would almost double ICE’s current
funded capacity of 41,500. GEO’s boss, Brian Evans, has estimated that
contracts for 18,000 extra beds would reap his firm around $400m a year—
a 15% rise in total revenue. Electronic monitoring, he added, could be
scaled up too.
Investors, though, may be too optimistic about the divisive industry. Similar
enthusiasm abounded after Mr Trump’s first victory in 2016: Core Civic’s
shares rose by as much as 60% in the hours after the election. And before
the pandemic, ICE did detain more people. But amid public distaste,
especially at the separation of immigrant children from their families, social
activists applied pressure. The value of GEO and CoreCivic sank after a
string of banks ceased doing business with the industry.
Will this time be different? GEO and CoreCivic have worked to insulate
themselves from squeamish investors, paying down debt and reducing their
reliance on banks. The wave of socially activist investing has receded since
Mr Trump’s first term. Still, the private-prison industry could again come
under fire. Mass deportations may prove harder to watch on the news than
they were to vote for. ■
https://www.economist.com/business/2024/11/21/donald-trumps-victory-has-boosted-
shares-in-private-prison-companies

Indian business
Gautam Adani faces bribery

charges in America
Prosecutors allege one of India’s richest men paid off local officials
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | Mumbai
FOR THE second time in two years, the Adani Group, one of India’s largest
conglomerates, has been accused of criminal activity from the other side of
the globe. The first barrage came from Hindenburg Research, a short-seller
in New York which accused the group of fraud last year. The second came
on November 20th, when federal prosecutors in New York filed a 54-page
indictment against Gautam Adani, chairman of the group and one of India’s
richest men, along with his nephew, Sagar Adani, and six others. The
prosecutors allege that “senior executives and directors” engaged in a
scheme “to pay over $250m in bribes to Indian government officials, to lie
to investors and banks to raise billions of dollars, and to obstruct justice,”
according to Lisa Miller, the deputy assistant attorney general for the case.
The indictment centres on the connection between the conglomerate’s

renewable-energy arm, referred to as the “Indian Energy Company”, and
the Solar Energy Corporation of India, a state-controlled business that was
created to increase the use of renewables in India. The prosecutors allege
that officials at Indian state-controlled electricity-distribution firms were
promised more than $250m to enter into contracts with the Solar Energy
Corporation of India under which power would be provided by the Adani
company and its subsidiaries.
The indictment says that Mr Adani himself met with the Indian government
to “advance” the bribery scheme, and that the defendants had discussed the
plot on messaging apps. The prosecutors also allege that Mr Adani and
others misrepresented the company’s anti-bribery practices to American
investors and international financial institutions when it sought financing
for the project in America, where the firm raised $3bn in funds through
syndicated loans and private-bond offerings. A parallel civil lawsuit has
been put forward by America’s Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Adani Group has rejected the charges. “The allegations made by the US
Department of Justice and the US Securities and Exchange Commission
against directors of Adani Green are baseless and denied,” it said on
November 21st. It plans to pursue “all possible legal recourse”.
As we published this, share prices for Adani Group companies had fallen by
as much as 20%. Adani Green Energy also announced that it would suspend
the planned issuance of a bond in America. Foreign financing will be hard
to achieve for as long as the case continues.
The case sheds light on just how complex India’s energy industry is. It
involves a bewildering mix of national and local entities, both public and
private, that control the generation, distribution and—importantly—
purchasing of power. This often leads to stalled projects, litigation and
unpaid bills.
The Adani company was pursuing a contract in which it would sell power to
the Solar Energy Corporation and, through it, to the state power-distribution
companies. The second part of that contract, however, was being stymied
by the proposed price, according to the indictment, leading to the offers of
bribes. The largest amount was allegedly to be paid to officials in Andhra
Pradesh, a state in south-eastern India, but other states the indictment also
says were involved include Odisha, Jammu & Kashmir, Tamil Nadu and
Chhattisgarh.
Another striking point is where the case is being prosecuted from. The
indictment relies on a detailed investigation into the nuances of India’s
power industry conducted from thousands of miles away. The prosecutorial
office involved, the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn), is across the
river from the Manhattan-based Southern District, whose jurisdiction covers
New York’s investment banks, making it the usual source for big
prosecutions tied to financial crimes.
Prosecuting the case is likely to take time. Whatever happens next, though,
it could have a lasting impact on more than just the Adani Group.
Businesses around the world may tread more carefully before they turn to
America’s financial markets for investment. ■
https://www.economist.com/business/2024/11/21/gautam-adani-faces-bribery-charges-in-
america

Flying low
Spirit’s woes reveal the dismal state

of America’s budget airlines
Its bankruptcy shows how strained the low-cost model has become
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
BUDGET AIRLINES are rarely loved by passengers. Cutting costs to the

bone and charging for every conceivable extra makes for cheap fares but
often unpleasant journeys. Few will therefore have much sympathy for the
tribulations of Spirit Airlines, perhaps America’s most despised low-cost
carrier (LCC), which filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on
November 18th. Yet its failure, which illustrates the parlous state of
America’s budget airlines, should worry travellers.
Spirit is the first big carrier in the country to go bust since American
Airlines in 2011. Back then American blamed high fuel and labour costs,
sagging demand and growing competition as LCCs expanded rapidly on
domestic routes. Spirit, currently America’s seventh-largest flyer by
passenger traffic, can also blame pricey fuel and labour. But this time
demand for flying is growing, and the competition is coming instead from
legacy carriers.
A busy year for flying in America has not translated into profits for most
budget airlines. Passenger numbers in North America are forecast to hit
2.2bn in 2024, a 7% increase on 2023, the year when flying regained its
pre-pandemic altitude. Yet with the exception of Southwest, which now
operates more like the legacy carriers it once sought to disrupt, America’s
other big budget airlines—Frontier, JetBlue and Allegiant—all made losses
or the slimmest of profits in the third quarter.
Spirit has not turned an annual profit since 2019 (see chart). It has suffered
alongside other LCCs from a glut of seats and a resulting slump in ticket
prices; its average fare was down by 19% in the first half of the year,
compared with a year earlier. Since then the LCCs have made swingeing
cuts to capacity. Although analysts at Deutsche Bank expect overall
domestic airline capacity in America to grow by 1.6% in the three months
to December, compared with the previous year, capacity is projected to
contract by 5.3% for LCCs.
The problem for Spirit and other LCCs has been a change of strategy by
legacy airlines, which have been doing comparably well. Legacy carriers
are filling up their planes by offering cheap fares of their own. They are also
in a better position to cater to the shifting preferences of consumers who
have tired of budget flying. More passengers are now willing to pay extra
for a little pampering, such as a drink or two. Attempts by LCCs to offer
more upmarket travel, such as introducing business fares and more lenient
rules about luggage, seem to have had little impact so far.
Spirit’s difficulties were compounded by the hefty debts it took on during

the pandemic and a level of service frequently among the worst in the
industry when it came to late flights and lost luggage. Its managers may
also have been distracted by a failed effort to merge with Frontier Airlines,
announced in early 2022. That deal was scuppered by a counter-offer from
JetBlue, which then abandoned its courtship in March after a judge deemed
that the deal was anti-competitive, given the overlap between the pair’s
routes.
Spirit hopes to emerge from bankruptcy early next year and will continue to
operate while it restructures. Frontier has dismissed rumours that it will
revisit the idea of a merger. Such a deal could have given the two budget
carriers a fighting chance against America’s ascendant legacy carriers. As
Keith McMullan of Aviation Strategy, a consultancy, notes, a tie-up would
have created a carrier with 75m passengers a year, nearing half the size of
Ryanair, Europe’s budget champion. An American LCC with such
competitive heft would surely have been appreciated—even if not loved—
by the travelling public. ■

https://www.economist.com/business/2024/11/19/spirits-woes-reveal-the-dismal-state-
of-americas-budget-airlines

Bartleby
How to behave in lifts: an office

guide
Life in an elevator
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
CONGRATULATIONS ON JOINING our internship programme. For most

of you this is your first experience of the workplace, and with that in mind
we have prepared a guide to office etiquette. Other chapters cover what to
wear (more), when to use emojis (less) and when to speak in meetings (it
depends).
The first chapter is on lifts. If this is your first job, you may have a vague
idea that this is where people make elevator pitches. Wrong. However much
time you spend in a lift, you will never hear anyone proposing ideas that
will change the world or ignite their careers. Instead, you will be exposed to
a mixture of disappointment, incompetence and awkwardness as you
gradually make your way to your destination. As a way of understanding
what it’s like to be at work, in other words, it’s an ideal place to start. Here
are a few basic tips.
When people are waiting for a lift, someone will stand right in front of the
doors, so close that their breath mists the metal. In the lift that is descending
towards them, someone else will be standing as close as possible to their set
of doors. When the doors open, these two individuals will be utterly
shocked by the proximity of the other. They will then perform an elaborate
little dance, like bowerbirds ducking and bobbing in search of a mate,
before moving out of the way. You should always stand well back and let
people out first.
When you enter a ground-floor lift on your own, there will be an

agonisingly long wait for the doors to close. This wait will be prolonged
enough that you will assume the lift is broken. Do not do anything. If you
try to step out, the doors will start to close and you will curse and step back
inside. When they finally start to shut again, someone unseen will put an
arm into the gap, causing the doors to open once more. A body will
eventually follow. This may well be repeated several times until you want
to cry. If you are prone to stress, take the stairs or, if that is not feasible,
listen to a meditation app.
When you are catching a lift back down, someone will come out of it on
your floor while looking at their phone. They will eventually look up and
realise that this is not where they were meant to get out. They will emit a
small, high-pitched noise and scurry back into the lift. They will then
describe what has just happened, even though you were there. “I thought
that was the ground floor,” they will say. When this happens you must laugh
in a friendly way. It is an oddly disturbing experience for people to enter
another company’s territory without permission, a bit like being parachuted
behind enemy lines in error.
Deciding whether to start a conversation in a lift depends on three factors:

familiarity, fullness and floor. If you are in a lift with someone you don’t
know, it’s very simple: say nothing, smile thinly and then look fixedly at the
ceiling. If you must, say “Good morning”, but nothing more. You cannot
network or form friendships in a lift; you can only make strangers fear for
their safety.
If you get in with someone you work with and know well, chat away. But if
there are other people in there, tailor your behaviour to take account of who
might be earwigging. Do not say “Isn’t Keith amazingly short?” when
Keith’s friends might be in there with you. Or, buried deep among the
crowd, Keith.
If you get in a lift with someone you know vaguely, you are in very tricky
territory. A nod may suffice but you may have to speak to them. You must
calibrate conversation to the length of the journey. If you have just two
floors of ascent or descent together, do not ask for their views on the
Geneva Convention. (Actually, no matter what the circumstances, don’t ask
for their views on the Geneva Convention.)
Whenever a crowd is entering a lift, the person who has to exit first must
stand at the very back. No one knows why this rule exists but it is crucial.
So if you are getting out on the second floor, make sure to squeeze right in.
Offices are tribal places, and so are lifts. Entering a crowded lift on the way
down is the equivalent of going into a saloon in a Western. No one is
pleased to see you; the air crackles with hostility. Do not take it personally:
just get in and take up as little space as possible. By the time someone on
the next floor tries to enter, you will be part of the in-group and can glare at
them.
There are other rules. That mirror is not actually for getting dressed.
Reaching across someone to press the buttons requires extreme care. But
these will do for starters. Let’s move on to tattoos.■

https://www.economist.com/business/2024/11/21/how-to-behave-in-lifts-an-office-guide
Schumpeter
Does Dallas offer a vision of

Trumpian America?
The Texan city embodies the allure of small government
11月 21, 2024 05:05 上午
ASK ORDINARY Americans about Dallas and you are likely to elicit a few
common responses. American-football fans will tell you that the Dallas
Cowboys, once the country’s most formidable team, have seen better days.
Soap-opera junkies, at least those alive in the 1980s, may reminisce about
the long-running series named after the north-Texas city. The few who paid
attention in history class may recall that it is where Lee Harvey Oswald shot
John F. Kennedy. You will probably not hear breathless comparisons to the
world’s industrial capitals.
Unless, that is, you are talking to captains of industry, especially those who
are happy to see Donald Trump back in the White House. Dallas is their
idea of heaven. Forget snooty New York, libertine Los Angeles or woke San
Francisco. In America Inc’s fever dreams, more cities turn Dallas-like in
their pro-business temperament—and America as a whole transforms into a
continent-size small-government Texas.
There is, therefore, no better place than Dallas to understand why many
chief executives held their noses and voted for Mr Trump, despite his
various shortcomings. And also why they did so regardless of the ideas he
campaigned on, such as trade wars and mass deportations, that could hurt
the city, and its home state, disproportionately.
Dallas may lack physical topography—pancakes have starker reliefs—but

its commercial ascent in recent years has been about as breathtaking as it
gets. Public companies collectively worth $1.5trn are based in the Dallas-
Fort Worth (DFW) “metroplex”, which encompasses Dallas’s sister city 30
miles (48km) west and spills into the surrounding towns and prairies. That
is double the amount from five years ago. And unlike Houston (an oil
boomtown in south Texas) or Austin (which has the state capitol and a tech
cluster), Dallas’s big businesses are among the most diverse of any
American city.
DFW’s five most valuable listed firms make diggers (Caterpillar),

manufacture chips (Texas Instruments), run telecoms networks (AT&T),
offer brokerage services (Charles Schwab) and distribute drugs
(McKesson). Three moved there in the past five years: Caterpillar from
Illinois, Charles Schwab and McKesson from San Francisco. Toyota put its
North American headquarters nearby in 2017. Goldman Sachs is increasing
its local headcount from about 970 in 2016 to a planned 5,000, behind only
New York, at a new campus it is building uptown. “It’s fun living in a
growing city,” says Aasem Khalil, who runs the bank’s office there.
In contrast to Tesla and Oracle, two Californian tech giants whose right-
leaning founders relocated them to Austin in part to troll progressives,
corporate newcomers to DFW are driven by pragmatic considerations.
Some of these are Texan more broadly. The state levies no tax on corporate
profits or personal income (which amounts to a 5-10% pay rise for
Californians or New Yorkers earning over $70,000 a year). It hates red tape
and has a can-do attitude to building things. Roads, pipes and cables are
typically in place before new homes arise from the featureless prairie.
Oncor, the state’s biggest grid operator, is investing $27bn over the next
five years to that effect. “When a six-lane highway gets congested, we put
in a seventh lane,” points out a local honcho.
Other attractions are DFW-specific. These include a handful of excellent

universities, a vast freight hub and the world’s third-busiest airport, with
direct routes just about anywhere in America in under four hours and as far
afield as Sydney, Shanghai and São Paulo. By next year Dallas may have its
own stock exchange, with lower fees and fewer rules than in New York.
The city boasts an enviable standard of living. Scorching summers are a

small price to pay when a typical house costs a fifth less than in Austin and
half as much as in San Francisco. “You don’t need to know some secret
handshake to get your kid into a private school,” gushes a banker. Co-
workers raise eyebrows when you do not go to your child’s 2 o’clock school
play, marvels another.
Best of all, enthuses a venture capitalist, Dallas is “unabashedly American”

in its embrace of meritocracy and free enterprise. “If you are successful,
any prejudice melts away,” agrees a CEO. The result is a virtuous circle.
Business begets growth, growth brings people, people draw restaurants,
culture and buzz—in the past week or so Dallas got its first Michelin star
and a satellite town hosted a Netflix-sponsored boxing match between Mike
Tyson, a 58-year-old former heavyweight champion, and Jake Paul, a
YouTuber half his age. This attracts more businesses, and so on.
The consensus view among corporate chiefs is that this process was sped up
by the leftie lunacy of coastal cities, which kept schools shut and faces
masked for too long during the covid-19 pandemic. They are equally
unanimous in their belief that Mr Trump and his Republican Party, which
controls all levers of power in both Washington and Austin, will not be so
stupid as to derail it with their own right-wing madness.
Don’t mess with Texas. Please!

Dallas business elites acknowledge that, at the state level, anti-abortion and
pro-gun laws could scarcely get nuttier. But so far these have not scared
away their liberal employees. Deporting millions of migrants? Impossible
to pull off. And the chaos at the border really does need to be stopped, even
if the resulting labour shortages cost Texas half a percentage point of output
in the short run. Although Mr Trump’s idea of slapping a 10-20% tariff on
all foreign goods would hurt a state which imported $383bn-worth of them
last year, second only to California, it is seen by many bosses as little more
than a threat to be used in negotiations. “The fly is circling the ointment,”
acknowledges a financier. The belief in Dallas is that it will never land. ■
If you want to write directly to Schumpeter, email him at

schumpeter@economist.com

https://www.economist.com/business/2024/11/20/dallas-utopia-for-the-trump-curious-
ceo

Finance & economics

How to make Elon Musk’s budget-slashing dreams come
true
Slash and burn :: We offer some suggestions
Donald Trump’s gas war is about to begin

Europe’s revenge :: It could annoy some of his most loyal supporters
Is China really a nation of slackers?

Lying flat :: A new survey raises the question
Should investors just give up on stocks outside America?

Buttonwood :: No, but it is getting a lot harder to keep the faith
Vladimir Putin is in a painful economic bind

The 21% war :: Russia’s reliance on China is becoming a problem
Computers unleashed economic growth. Will artificial

intelligence?
Dotcom dreaming :: Two years after ChatGPT-3.5 arrived, progress has been slower than
expected
What Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders get wrong about

credit cards
Free exchange :: Forget interest rates. Rewards are the real problem

Slash and burn
How to make Elon Musk’s budget-

slashing dreams come true
We offer some suggestions
ELON MUSK and Vivek Ramaswamy plan to whip the American state into
shape. On November 14th their newly created Department of Government
Efficiency (DOGE) announced that it wants to hire “super-high-IQ small-
government revolutionaries” to work on cost-cutting. It is easy to ridicule
the enterprise. Mr Musk has talked of ripping $2trn from the federal budget,
an amount that, if done in a year, would exceed the government’s entire
discretionary spending. His focus on deregulation, job cuts and fraud is
unlikely to provide the requisite savings. Donald Trump has given DOGE
less than two years. The entity is an advisory body. And its name is inspired
by a joke cryptocurrency.
But it would be a mistake to make light of DOGE’s mission, because it does
get at two essential truths. First, America’s fiscal trajectory is unsustainable.
The national debt is approaching 100% of GDP, up from 35% in 2007. With
the federal deficit running at 6% of GDP—a level once associated with
wars and economic downturns—debts are bound to climb higher still,
raising the risk of a crisis. Second, the situation is not actually hopeless.
There are plenty of ways that American officials can, in theory, put the
country on a sounder fiscal footing, even if getting budget cuts through
Congress is another matter.
None of the small-government revolutionaries at The Economist has applied

for a job at DOGE, as far as we know. We do, though, have a few
suggestions. One point is that time matters. Whereas cutting $2trn in a year
is absurd—it would leave public offices incapable of performing basic
functions, and most likely involve slashing the defence budget—achieving
those sorts of savings over the course of a decade is eminently doable.
Moreover, DOGE would not be starting from scratch. There are already
plenty of well-researched blueprints for sorting out America’s finances. It is
useful to break them into four categories: conventional spending cuts;
tweaks to entitlement eligibility; changes to health-care spending; and tax
reform.
Across-the-board spending cuts appear to be what Messrs Musk and

Ramaswamy mainly have in mind when they rail against government waste.
This raises an obvious problem. Consider the $6.8trn spent by the federal
government in the last fiscal year. After excluding interest on existing debt
as well as mandatory allocations to pensions and health insurance, just 25%
or so—around $1.8trn—remains. These are the discretionary funds at the
heart of the annual budget process. Almost half goes to defence, which Mr
Trump is loth to cut. So that leaves roughly $900bn allocated annually by
the federal government to transport, education, science, national parks and
law enforcement.
Nevertheless, paring back discretionary spending ought to be part of the

solution. It has grown by nearly a third since 2019, propelled by big
increases during the covid-19 pandemic. Rather than making outright cuts,
DOGE could call for strict caps on future discretionary allocations, a simple
budgeting technique used on and off since the 1990s. If, for instance,
discretionary-spending growth were capped at 2% a year (in line with
expected inflation) until 2035, it would work out to a saving of about
$500bn over the next decade relative to the forecast of the Congressional
Budget Office (CBO), a non-partisan scorekeeper. That would be a good
start.
Next is a recognition that America cannot fix its finances without tackling
Social Security and Medicare, two giant programmes that together gobble
up more than a third of the budget. Although Mr Trump vowed in his
campaign platform he would make no cuts to them, that should not stop
DOGE from weighing the options. America is experiencing much the same
demographic pressure as other rich countries: people are living longer, and
assets meant to support them in their retirement are being stretched to cover
more years. One response would be to raise the age of eligibility. To be
sure, this would not be politically easy, as demonstrated by the backlash in
France when Emmanuel Macron raised the retirement age there. But Mr
Trump is no stranger to controversy.
Barking up the right tree
The Penn Wharton Budget Model, a research group, has examined the
effects of delaying Medicare coverage to the age of 67, up from 65 today.
Such a change would be phased in by two months a year, meaning that it
would take a dozen years to fully implement it. The savings would come to
about $50bn a year. Similarly, the Penn Wharton modellers looked at
raising the age for full Social Security benefits (in effect, a national
pension) to 70 from 67. Doing so would also reduce the government’s
obligations by about $50bn a year. Over the next decade, the combined
savings from these two delays to when programmes start would be around
$1trn.
DOGE could then get to work on the government’s broader health-care

spending. States design and operate Medicaid—health insurance for lower-
income Americans—but the federal government funds about two-thirds of
the programme. This leads to a misalignment in incentives: the federal
commitment is open-ended, so if spending at the state level rises, federal
spending does, too. The CBO has examined tweaks. One would set a
federal cap on payment per person enrolled. Were the cap to increase at the
rate of inflation, it would reduce the federal deficit by almost $900bn over
the next decade.
Much else can be done to reduce medical spending. There is ample

evidence of waste in parts of America’s fiendishly complex Medicare
system. DOGE would do well to get acquainted with MedPAC, an
independent commission that advises Congress on how to manage health
care. Among the commission’s many recommendations, it has called for
closer scrutiny of billing, more competitive bidding between providers and
mandating that the same medical service costs basically the same at every
facility (currently, hospital outpatient departments charge more than
clinics). The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-partisan
group, totted up several such ideas and concluded that they could save the
federal government about $550bn over a decade. And if Mr Trump were to
build on the Biden administration’s efforts to negotiate lower prices for
prescription drugs, there could be another $200bn-worth of savings.
If DOGE were truly courageous, its final target would be America’s tax
system. Given Mr Trump’s oft-professed desire to slash taxes, it is
unrealistic to expect him to raise them instead. But it would be irresponsible
to look at America’s fiscal health today without considering whether, and
how, to generate more revenue. The good news is that the government does
have options short of outright tax increases. Reducing tax deductions for
health-insurance plans bought through employers could lower the deficit by
at least $500bn over a decade, according to the CBO. Covid-era tax credits
for companies that retained employees are, shockingly, still being
processed; ending these would save another $80bn. Arguably the best
investment the government can make, in terms of its potential return, would
be to modernise and strengthen the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), in order
to crack down on fraud and make filing tax returns less onerous. If Mr
Trump sustains funding increases approved by Mr Biden, tax collectors
could bring in about $850bn in extra revenue over the next decade,
according to the Treasury. Alas, many Republicans would rather shrink the
IRS.
Implementing the various proposals laid out above would save the
government about $4.5trn over the next decade. And there is much more
that can be done: in a report in 2022 the CBO offered 76 different policy
options for reducing the deficit. The main obstacle, therefore, is not
intellectual firepower but political will. Budget cuts are never popular. What
is more, the White House cannot act on any of this alone. Serious fiscal
policies must go through Congress. That may end up being the biggest test
of DOGE and Mr Trump: not whether they can draw up cost-cutting
proposals, but whether they can win the support of their fellow
Republicans.■
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This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/finance-and-
economics/2024/11/17/how-to-make-elon-musks-budget-slashing-dreams-come-true

Europe’s revenge
Donald Trump’s gas war is about to

begin
It could annoy some of his most loyal supporters
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | New York
IN THE BARREN, post-apocalyptic setting of the “Mad Max” film series,

the outpost of Gas Town plays a vital role. It is swimming in fossil fuels,
meaning that holding it confers great power in a world of ultra-violent,
road-based conflict.
Even the most zealous free-traders do not foresee such a scenario when
Donald Trump returns to the White House on January 20th. But gas will
almost certainly feature heavily in the trade wars that will begin then.
Disputes over it could upset a tight-knit alliance between the energy
industry and the Trump administration.
America is now a gas-exporting superpower—a development that has
transformed the global energy market. Last year the country sold over four
times as much natural gas overseas as it did in 2015, when Mr Trump
previously announced his intention to run for the presidency. The rise has
largely been driven by shipments of liquefied natural gas. Because LNG
does not require pipelines to be transported, it can be sold all over the
world. And Mr Trump has pledged to reverse a restriction introduced by
President Joe Biden that paused approvals for new LNG export facilities.
Mr Trump has also suggested broad tariffs of 10-20% on imports of goods,
as well as higher tariffs on countries including China and Mexico. Most of
America’s LNG exports go to places that have trade surpluses with
America, and will thus probably be the target of the incoming president’s
protectionist ire. South Korea buys 6% of America’s LNG exports, for
instance, while Japan takes 7%. China, the destination for 4% of America’s
LNG last year, deployed duties on American energy exports as part of the
tit-for-tat tariffs imposed by the two countries in 2018 and 2019.
This time, though, the most obvious source of energy strife is Europe. More
than half of America’s LNG exports went to the EU last year, up from less
than a quarter in 2021. The share of American exports going to Europe rose
rapidly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which led to reductions
in flows of Russian energy.
America appears to have the upper hand going into a gas war. Europe’s
memories of energy-price spikes in 2022, and the desire of the continent’s
policymakers to reduce Russian imports, limit its ability to take a tough line
with Mr Trump. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European
Commission, has even suggested that Europe could buy more American
LNG, in the hope of avoiding tariffs.
But this calculation is likely to change over the course of Mr Trump’s

presidency, since a wave of new LNG supply—the largest yet—is forecast
to hit the global market between 2025 and 2028. As well as new export
facilities in America, others will open in Canada, Qatar and across Africa.
New suppliers will make it considerably easier for America’s trading
partners to threaten and deploy retaliatory tariffs.
At the same time, European appetite for gas will probably shrink. The
Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a research firm,
suggests that demand will fall by 11% from 2023 to 2030, partly as a result
of the transition to renewable energy sources. As a consequence, Capital
Economics, another research firm, expects European natural-gas prices to
drop from around €45 ($47) per megawatt-hour to nearer €25 by the end of
2026.
If gas prices fall, and America is hit by European tariffs, American suppliers
would struggle to find new buyers. Parts of the developing world, like
India, could become purchasers. But the International Energy Agency, an
official think-tank, estimates that prices of $14 per megawatt-hour—around
half the price required to make recent investments profitable—would be
needed to make LNG competitive with coal. If the forecasts of a gas glut
prove to be right, the coming trade wars will frustrate a promising export
industry. In doing so, they will irritate some of Mr Trump’s most vociferous
supporters. ■
economics/2024/11/21/donald-trumps-gas-war-is-about-to-begin

Lying flat
Is China really a nation of

slackers?
A new survey raises the question
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | Hong Kong
CHINA IS FAMOUS, even infamous, for hard graft. Prodigious amounts of

toil and elbow grease helped the country become the workshop of the
world. More than 175m migrant workers labour in cities far from home,
often leaving their children in the care of relatives. And the sacrifices are
not confined to the poor. Even some of China’s more sophisticated firms are
known for their “996” office culture, encouraging unfortunate employees to
work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week.
Many Chinese people therefore reacted with surprise and no little scorn to a
new official survey of how they spend their time. The study, only the third
of its kind, claimed that the average resident devotes less than three and a
half hours a day to paid labour. “They must have surveyed government
workers only,” quipped one on social media. “Did they go to kindergartens
and care homes?” asked another.
Many official statistics in China invite scepticism or even ridicule because

they appear to unduly flatter the government. However, this result would
appear to do the opposite. China’s leaders would like citizens to remain
industrious and diligent even as the country advances. Indeed, they worry
that prosperity will induce decadence and indolence. Many younger
Chinese have, for example, rebelled against the rat races of professional
employment and decided instead to “lie flat”, resigning themselves to low-
key, bit-part jobs that at least offer a less stressful life. Is this phenomenon
now showing up in the national statistics? Does the survey show that China
is beginning to slack off?
The survey was certainly thorough. China’s National Bureau of Statistics

got in touch with more than 100,000 people, asking them to record what
they were doing at 15-minute intervals, both on a weekday and at the
weekend. But this introduces the first complication. One reason why
China’s daily workload appears surprisingly light is because the hours are
averaged across all seven days of the week. If someone works a regular
eight-hour shift and enjoys a two-day weekend, their paid labour averages
less than six hours a day in the survey. Even a slavish 996er would log not
12 hours a day, but ten hours, 17 minutes, once their solitary day off was
taken into account.
Although online critics were wrong to suggest the survey extended to
children in kindergarten, they were not that wrong. The survey encompasses
children as young as six, as well as the retired. That is another reason why
the headline average appeared low: it was dragged down by people not in
the labour market at all. When the young and the old are excluded, China’s
work hours still look onerous by international standards (see chart).
Working weeks tend to shorten as countries get richer, but China’s hours are
longer than you might expect given its level of economic development.
Excluding non-workers, Chinese people aged between 18 and 59 logged six
hours and 32 minutes a day on average, an amount that produces an average
working week of over 45 hours.
On top of paid work, of course, is the unpaid kind. The survey shows that
more than four in five women and two in three men carried out child care,
housework, shopping or some other form of unremunerated labour. The
women put in almost three and a half hours on average; the men did only
half as much. The gender split was even worse than in the last survey in
2018, when men did 60% as much as women.
The survey does not therefore reveal China to have transformed into a
nation of slackers. At the same time, its people do genuinely seem to be
working a little less intensely than they were last time they were surveyed.
All told, they are spending nine fewer minutes on housework, and 23
minutes less on caring for other family members. They also sleep for 27
extra minutes on average. But the biggest change in their daily habits is not
lying flat but logging on. Chinese people spend five hours and 37 minutes a
day surfing the internet, up by almost three hours since 2018.
Apart from extra minutes in bed and online, Chinese people have also
increased the time devoted to less sedentary and perhaps more worthwhile
activities. Almost half of Chinese residents now take part in sports and
exercise, compared with less than one-third in 2018. Maybe the country’s
exacting leaders need not fear: when the Chinese people are not working
hard, more of them are working out. ■
economics/2024/11/21/is-china-really-a-nation-of-slackers

Buttonwood
Should investors just give up on

stocks outside America?
No, but it is getting a lot harder to keep the faith
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
SPARE A THOUGHT for the analysts, bankers and fund managers who
make a living from European shares. If your salary depends on talking up
the stockmarkets of the continent that invented them, you have learned to
live with disappointment. For much of the past two decades, you could have
pointed out that European stocks were cheaper, relative to earnings, than
American stocks. You could have reasonably argued that this portended
better investment returns and less risk of crashes. And for all that time you
would have been utterly, gloriously wrong.
Suppose you had invested in an index of American shares at a trough in
2009, and held on to it until today. Your portfolio would now be getting on
for triple the size it would have been if you had instead picked a basket of
stocks listed on the old continent (see chart). Just about whenever American
share prices crashed, European ones fell about as far or further; when
American prices rocketed, European ones trailed them.
Even considering this dismal record, the past few weeks have tested the
most battle-hardened European equity bulls. Investors greeted Donald
Trump’s re-election by sending American share prices to record highs.
European stocks have dropped by 4% since the morning of the result, and
by 5% since a peak in September. They are not alone—stocks in much of
Asia fell alongside them. It is enough, after so many years of American
outperformance, for investors to finally throw in the towel and give up on
the rest of the world altogether.
The case for doing so is certainly compelling. Firms listed in America now
constitute nearly two-thirds of the value of MSCI’s broadest index of global
stocks. Higher valuations (and higher salaries for executives) have long
enticed the most exciting international companies to complete initial public
offerings in the world’s biggest economy. Europe’s latest kick in the teeth
came on November 12th when Klarna, a Swedish fintech star and once the
continent’s biggest startup, announced that it had filed regulatory
documents for an American flotation. If the fastest-growing firms keep
fleeing bourses elsewhere, those markets will have good reason to remain
cheap.
What is more, investors are right to think that Mr Trump’s second term
bodes better for American businesses than for their rivals overseas. He will
most probably extend the cuts to personal income tax he made in his first
term, which might otherwise have expired next year, and may slash
corporation tax, too. The combination would boost both American firms’
revenues and post-tax profits. Meanwhile, their large—and rich—domestic
hinterland stands them in better stead to weather tariffs and other trade
barriers than, say, companies in Asia’s and Europe’s poorer, more
fragmented markets.
Time for investors to go all in on America, then? Not quite, though not
because of the familiar argument about the power of diversification to de-
risk portfolios. America’s stockmarket, after all, is increasingly the world’s,
owing to its sheer size and tendency to poach other countries’ star firms.
Rather, the reason to look beyond America is the disparity between how
exposed its stockmarket is to the rest of the world and how differently it is
valued. Some 40% of American firms’ earnings come from abroad.
Meanwhile, foreign firms receive 20% of their earnings from America.
Thus a big chunk of the profits of the two groups are made, broadly
speaking, in the same places.
In spite of this, American companies are valued eye-poppingly higher,

relative to earnings, than non-American ones. The difference is often
justified by their fatter profit margins, better management and stronger
growth. Fair enough. However, another way of looking at the valuation gap
is that, in order to get from earnings to share prices, the market scales them
up by radically different multiples based on whether they are made inside or
outside America. This is peculiar, and much harder to justify, suggesting
that valuations may have fallen out of whack and may eventually be subject
to a correction. With American shares more expensive than at almost any
other time in history, that would hardly stretch belief.
It is a lot more difficult to believe, after such a long and consistent spell of
exceptionalism, that American stocks might no longer be investors’ best bet.
For a while, they may well be. But do not write off the chances that, sooner
or later, those European fund managers will be singing a cheerier song.■

economics/2024/11/21/should-investors-just-give-up-on-stocks-outside-america

The 21% war
Vladimir Putin is in a painful

economic bind
Russia’s reliance on China is becoming a problem
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
MOST CENTRAL BANKS are cutting interest rates. Not Russia’s. Last
month policymakers raised rates to 21%, a two-decade high; markets expect
them to reach 23% by the year’s end. The shift is all the more unusual as it
is happening at a time of war, when central bankers are normally loth to
suppress economic activity.
Russia’s economy has confounded analysts since the country invaded

Ukraine in February 2022. Despite facing one of the tightest sanction
regimes in modern history, it has undergone its fastest expansion in more
than a decade. Russia enjoyed growth of 3.6% last year and is expected to
maintain such a pace this year. Yet rather than being a demonstration of
strength, the central bank’s decision to lift interest rates is a warning of
trouble to come.
Government outgoings are increasingly difficult to sustain. Russia’s budget,

unveiled in September, included a plan to increase defence spending by a
quarter next year. Taken together, annual expenditures on defence and
security—a separate budget item that covers the intelligence services—are
now expected to rise to 17trn roubles ($170bn), an amount representing
more than 40% of all government spending or 8% of Russia’s GDP.
Defence spending alone will be 6% of Russian national income, the most
since the cold war.
Although that is a lot, it is not unusual for a country at war. America’s

defence spending, for example, was 8-10% of GDP during the Vietnam war.
In the second world war the great powers devoted 40-60% of their
economic output to military ends. The crucial difference is to be found in
monetary policy. British policymakers in the early 1940s endeavoured, and
mostly succeeded, in fighting what they termed “a 3% war”, keeping
interest rates near that level. America’s Federal Reserve held rates at 2.5%
during the same conflict. Lower borrowing costs helped keep the large
deficits affordable. By contrast, in Russia, the yield on ten-year sovereign
debt has risen from around 6% before the war to 16%.
Hard labour
Conscripting prisoners and hiring North Korean soldiers is an

unconventional indicator of a hot jobs market, but it is one nonetheless.
Russia’s unemployment rate sits at a mere 2.4%. Spare capacity has been
used up and the economy is showing all the classic signs of overheating.
Annual inflation is running at more than 8%. Although increasing interest
rates is the textbook response to such a situation, it raises borrowing costs.
In the 1940s America and Britain kept inflation in check through a
combination of steep increases in personal taxation, designed more to hold
back household spending than to raise revenues, and rationing. In today’s
Russia such measures would be deeply unpopular, as well as difficult to
square with Vladimir Putin’s propaganda.
There is another reason why the country has been forced to tighten
monetary policy. For most of the second world war neither Britain nor
America had to be especially concerned about the external value of their
currency. The dollar benefited from being seen as a haven, while America’s
“Lend Lease” programme provided Britain with both military equipment
and resources such as oil and food, doing so pretty much for nothing. Had
Britain lacked an ally with the deep pockets and industrial capacity of
America, willing and able to supply two-thirds of its imports, then the fall
in the value of the pound would have become a military problem.
Mr Putin’s difficulty is that he lacks such an ally. China has become

Russia’s most important trading partner, providing a third of all imports and
more than 90% of microelectronics, which are used in drones, missiles and
tanks. Yet such support is not being offered free. Russian officials must
therefore keep an eye on the value of their currency in terms of the yuan;
this year it has fallen by 7%, to near its lowest since shortly after the war
began. Russia, unlike the allies in the second world war, faces an external
vulnerability. That, rather than inflation, is ultimately what has pushed
interest rates to record highs.
Until recently, the Russian government had cushioned the economy from
higher borrowing costs. A variety of schemes made it easier for households
to suspend debt payments and for firms to borrow at lower subsidised rates,
with the government stepping in to compensate banks for lost income.
There are signs, though, that such programmes are becoming unaffordable.
A mortgage-subsidy scheme, which had allowed borrowing at a cost of just
8% when official rates were much higher, ended on July 1st. Mortgage
volumes fell by half the next month. Corporate bankruptcies have risen by
20% this year. The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, a
trade body, reckons investment plans for next year are being put on hold
because of heavy borrowing costs.
Higher interest rates will crimp spending by both companies and

consumers. The IMF expects Russian economic growth to slow sharply to
1.3% next year. Even VEB, the state-run development bank, has cut its
growth estimate to 2%. A combination of lower investment and manpower
lost to the front is taking a toll. The need to maintain the value of the rouble
in order to pay for crucial imports is a vulnerability for Mr Putin, and one
which could soon undermine his ability to fight. He may be hoping that
Donald Trump keeps his promise to bring the conflict to an end. Waging a
3% war is one thing; a 21% war is quite another. ■
economics/2024/11/18/vladimir-putin-is-in-a-painful-economic-bind

Dotcom dreaming
Computers unleashed economic

growth. Will artificial intelligence?
Two years after ChatGPT-3.5 arrived, progress has been slower than
expected
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午 | Washington, DC
ALMOST TWO years have passed since OpenAI released GPT-3.5 to great
fanfare. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, compared the technology’s
arrival to his first encounter with the graphical user interface—a
breakthrough that reshaped personal computing—in the 1980s. Others
predicted that generative artificial intelligence (AI) would rapidly transform
economies around the world, leaving many millions unemployed. Yet
despite the hype and the worries, AI’s impact has been muted thus far.
According to America’s Census Bureau, only 6% of businesses use AI to
produce goods and services. Output and labour-productivity growth,
meanwhile, remain far below the soaring heights of the computer age in the
1990s.
Why has AI so far failed to live up to its promise? Lessons from the
computer age can shed light on the question. As with AI today, the early
years of the computer age were marked by predictions of economic
transformation. In 1965 Herbert Simon, a giant of computer science,
declared that “machines will be capable within 20 years of doing any work
that a man can do.” Two decades after Simon’s prediction, the promised
productivity revolution remained elusive. In 1987 Robert Solow, a Nobel
laureate, famously quipped that “you can see the computer age everywhere
but in the productivity statistics.” Only in the late 1990s did the economic
transformation at last materialise, leading Solow to acknowledge—three
decades after the initial exuberance—that computers had begun to reshape
the economy.
Three main factors contributed to the eventual arrival of a computer-age
productivity boom: companies ramped up investment in information
technology, computer and software prices fell rapidly (see chart), and
bosses found new ways to integrate the tech into their operations. Are these
factors in evidence today?
Begin with IT investment. Starting in 1995, firms ramped up spending on
computer hardware, network infrastructure and software. Between 1995 and
2000, their investment in information-processing equipment and software
rose by an average of 20% a year in real terms. Research by Kevin Stiroh of
the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has found that firms were investing
nearly $400bn in such technologies by 1999, accounting for over 30% of all
non-residential fixed investment.
By contrast, recent capital expenditure has been underwhelming. Over the

past two years, business investment in information-processing equipment
and software has grown by around 4% a year. AI investment may be more
focused on intangible assets, such as algorithms and data, which are more
difficult to measure than physical capital. Payments to startups for custom
tools may show up as operating expenses in the statistics, for example.
Even so, you would expect at least a rise in software investment. Instead,
spending on both pre-packaged commercial software—such as Microsoft
365—and custom-built systems, including AI tools tailored to specific
workflows, is surprisingly low. Growth in software investment over the past
year was about three times lower than in the late 1990s in real terms, and
remains well below the long-term average.
The second half of the 1990s also witnessed a dramatic fall in the quality-
adjusted price of computer hardware and software. From 1995 to 2000
prices for information-processing equipment and software dropped by a
third, producing cheaper and better computers. The AI era has yet to see a
corresponding decrease in prices: over the past five years, those for
software and information-processing equipment have barely budged.
Indeed, in the most recent quarter, the price index for these goods rose at an
annualised rate of 4%. Even as the underlying technology is becoming
cheaper, middlemen who repackage AI tools are increasingly adding
margins and driving up prices.
What about the final ingredient in the economic revolution of the 1990s?
For a technology to provide productivity gains, companies must retool
operations and business models to integrate it. Consider the example of
Walmart. In the 1990s the retailer boosted productivity by embedding a new
software system—Retail Link—into its operations, granting suppliers real-
time access to sales and inventory data. AI adoption today remains largely
confined to narrow applications within existing operations, such as a
financial-services firm using an AI app for fraud detection. Most firms do
not have the data infrastructure required to train custom firm-specific
models. To unlock AI’s full potential, more fundamental changes will be
required.
Given these constraints, it might be prudent to recall the words of Rudi

Dornbusch, an economist who spent his career at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology: that in economics things happen slower than you
thought they would and then faster than you thought they could. AI may
eventually produce extraordinary productivity growth, but at present it
appears to be some distance from the take-off experienced in the 1990s.
Perhaps a more fitting comparison is to the 1970s—a period when

technological promise mingled with disappointing productivity growth. The
memory chip and silicon microprocessor, which powered the personal
computer, were introduced around 1970. Yet 20 years later, less than 10% of
the world’s businesses were using computers. As the world moved into the
information age with the arrival of email, mobile phones and the internet,
productivity growth remained stubbornly low. From 1975 to 1994 labour
productivity in America averaged a lacklustre 1.7%. Then things finally got
going. The AI revolution seems to be following a similar path. ■
economics/2024/11/21/computers-unleashed-economic-growth-will-artificial-
intelligence

Free exchange
What Donald Trump and Bernie

Sanders get wrong about credit
cards
Forget interest rates. Rewards are the real problem
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
DEMOCRATS SPENT much of the presidential-election campaign calling

Donald Trump a fascist. Mr Trump is hardly known for his conciliatory
nature. So few American politicos expect there to be much bipartisanship in
his second term. Yet in one place there is already a flicker of cross-aisle
agreement: a proposal to cap interest rates on credit-card repayments at
10% has won the support of both Mr Trump and Bernie Sanders, perhaps
the most prominent left-wing Democrat.
Sadly, the policy is unwise. Like most price controls, capping interest rates
would distort the market and hurt ordinary punters. Card issuers would
probably respond by locking out less reliable borrowers, not by offering
cheaper rates. Worse still, Messrs Trump and Sanders are looking past
genuine problems with American credit cards. That may be because the
problems stem from something stupendously popular: ultra-generous
rewards.
Credit-card rewards are meagre in much of the rich world, especially

Europe. But in America they are chunky, and many are hooked. The Points
Guy, a website with the strapline “Maximise your travel”, which
recommends strategies to accumulate and spend credit-card points, has
garnered almost 30m visits in the past three months. More than 600,000
people subscribe to the r/churning forum on Reddit, a social-media site,
where members construct elaborate strategies to “churn” through different
cards, capitalising on introductory offers. A common piece of advice for
would-be churners is to beware the “5/24 rule”. JPMorgan Chase, a bank, is
thought to issue blanket denials to anyone who has signed up to five or
more cards over the previous 24 months.
Options run from relatively straightforward cashback cards, which might

offer 1.5% back on each transaction, to jazzier, more expensive ones. Some
charge hefty annual fees: $695 for the American Express Platinum card, for
instance. Customers can, in theory, recoup these with points and benefits
such as credits for flights, food delivery and subscriptions. In practice,
clawing back fees can be tricky and distort spending. Your columnist,
desperate to spend a $50 American Express voucher for Saks Fifth Avenue,
a department store, before it expired, once found himself ordering an
entirely unnecessary $49 geranium-scented-soap dispenser.
To the sufficiently obsessed, optimising credit-card spending can be a

lucrative hobby. However, beneath the bonanza is a problem: the rewards
are funded by the least well-off. This happens in two ways. First, customers
who do not use credit cards subsidise those who do. Half of all transactions
by households earning more than $150,000 a year are done by card,
compared with just one in ten for those earning less than $25,000. The
subsidy occurs because every time a card is used, merchants are charged an
interchange fee. In America that is usually around 2% of the value of the
transaction, though it can easily be higher for premium cards. The fee then
gets split three ways: between the credit-card company (most often
Mastercard or Visa), the issuer (usually a bank) and the customer (via
cashback or rewards). Each beneficiary, unsurprisingly, enjoys this
arrangement: banks and credit-card companies make a tidy profit; shoppers
get a little closer to funding that business-class flight to the Maldives.
Merchants are rather less grateful, but they generally fold the fee into their
prices—meaning those who do not use credit cards share the pain.
Merchants could, in theory, demand higher prices from credit-card users.

This happens occasionally; for instance, some stores offer discounts when
payments are made by cash or else only accept card payments for larger
transactions. Rent payments often cannot be done by credit card, or at least
not without sizeable additional fees. But until recently adding surcharges
for credit-card payments was banned, both in retailers’ agreements with
credit-card companies and, in some states, by legislation. In 2013 a class-
action lawsuit put an end to surcharge bans by Mastercard, Visa and the
like. Most state-level laws are also getting pared back. In New York credit-
card surcharges were outright illegal until 2018, when the state Court of
Appeals ruled that surcharges were permitted as long as they were
adequately disclosed. Still, a widespread shift in pricing norms looks
unlikely. Americans are too used to the current way of doing things.
A second issue is that rewards function as a tax on those with credit cards
but without the ability or inclination to keep up with the panoply of options.
Sumit Agarwal of the National University of Singapore, Andrea Presbitero
of the IMF, and André Silva and Carlo Wix of the Federal Reserve find that
American credit-card-reward programmes redistribute around $15bn a year
from “naive” to “sophisticated” consumers. In cash terms, the biggest losers
are actually the unsophisticated well-off. Yet financial sophistication, which
the researchers approximate with credit-rating scores, also correlates with
education, income and race. High-school graduates, the poor and ethnic
minorities are the least likely to earn credit-card rewards.
The Brussels route

What could Mr Trump do? One answer lies on the other side of the Atlantic.
In 2015 the European Union capped credit-card interchange fees at 0.3%.
Research by the European Commission estimates that 70% or so of the
reduction has been passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices. At
the time, The Economist was sceptical of the EU’s move. Better, we
thought, to let competition yank down fees than to do so by state diktat:
startups could profit by undercutting incumbents. Although that is still the
best solution, there is little sign of such disruption. If Mr Trump can
stomach taking inspiration from Europe, and is willing to incur the ire of
r/churning, he could support legislation to lower interchange fees—ideally
by enough to scupper reward programmes. ■

economics/2024/11/21/what-donald-trump-and-bernie-sanders-get-wrong-about-credit-
cards

Science & technology

Scientists are building a catalogue of every type of cell in
our bodies
The Human Cell Atlas :: It has thus far shed light on everything from organ formation to the
causes of inflammation
Scientific publishers are producing more papers than ever

Fit to print :: Concerns about some of their business models are building
The two types of human laugh

Funny business :: One is caused by tickling; the other by everything else
How squid could help people get over their needle phobia
Moving the needle :: Cephalopod ink propulsion is inspiring an alternative to syringes

The Human Cell Atlas
Scientists are building a catalogue

of every type of cell in our bodies
It has thus far shed light on everything from organ formation to the causes
of inflammation
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
AN ADULT HUMAN body consists of some 37trn cells. Not so long ago,
these were thought to come in 220 different types. That number, the product
of painstaking decades spent peering through microscopes at slides bearing
tissue sections coloured by chemical stains, gave a sense of the division of
cellular labour needed to keep a body running.
A sense, but only a superficial one. Tools now exist that are capable of
looking inside the cells, breaking them open one at a time to release their
complements of messenger RNA(mRNA), the molecule which carries
genetic information from a cell’s nucleus to its protein factories. Molecules
of mRNA indicate which genes are active, thus revealing a cell’s inner
nature. Cells that look alike under a microscope often turn out to be quite
diverse. The cell-type count has thus risen above 5,000.
The leader of this histological revolution is the Human Cell Atlas (HCA)
consortium, which was set up in 2016 and currently involves more than
3,600 collaborators in 190 laboratories in 102 countries. Other cell-atlas
projects are limited to mapping particular organs or types of tissue. The
HCA aspires to catalogue the whole caboodle: identifying and locating all
the cell types, healthy and diseased, in every human tissue over the course
of a lifetime. Its remit extends even to “organoids”, science’s fumbling first
attempts to grow living simulacra of organs.
The hope, according to Sarah Teichmann of Cambridge University and Aviv

Regev of Genentech, an American biopharma firm, who set the whole thing
up, is to have a first draft of the atlas available next year. Their latest
progress report has just been published as a set of papers in Nature and
several of its sister journals.
As Dr Teichmann and Dr Regev point out, HCA maps are of two sorts. One,
similar in concept to geographers’ maps, ties each cell type to a four-
dimensional site in the human body (sampling at different stages of life
adds the dimension of time to those of space). The other sort are less
familiar. These, called manifolds, are normally used by mathematicians to
represent multidimensional mathematical hyperspaces. In the case of the
HCA, the numerous dimensions in question are not space and time but,
rather, molecular features, such as mRNA profiles, characteristic of
different cell types. By plotting different cell types on the same map, charts
of manifolds thus enhance understanding of their similarities and
differences.
No cell left behind
The geography of the real world also plays a part. From the start, Dr
Teichmann and Dr Regev have been determined not to oversample parts of
the world (Europe, North America and certain bits of Asia) where scientists
are concentrated. Instead, they have sought participants from all six
inhabited continents—a decision that has already been rewarded with
insights into the cellular basis of geographical differences in immune
responses and susceptibility to breast cancer.
The subjects of this week’s papers show the scope of the endeavour.
Placentas, the embryonic development of the skeleton, gut inflammation
and the formation of the thymus (the organ which generates the immune
system’s T-lymphocytes, the cells ravaged by AIDS) are all discussed.
The findings of these studies break new ground. They confirm earlier
suspicions that some cellular processes involved in the formation of
cancerous tumours are involved in the placenta’s rapid growth. They
identify genes expressed in developing bone and cartilage cells that may
lead to arthritis in later life. They show, by comparing healthy and
unhealthy guts, that one source of disease-causing inflammation seems to
be intestinal cells accidentally developing into a type normally found in the
stomach. And they give a detailed description of the thymus based on a
standardised representation of that organ.
Perhaps the most intriguing paper of the lot, though, is on brain-mimicking

organoids. Organoids composed of human brain cells, themselves derived
from laboratory-created stem cells, are the sort of thing to give bio-ethicists
jitters. At the moment, bereft of the blood supply needed to grow, they
reach only three or four millimetres across, so are unlikely to develop any
form of consciousness. But some worry that larger versions might.
They are, however, useful for research, as they permit the study of living
human brain tissue without the need to remove any. But they would be even
better if the particular types of neuron in particular versions of them could
be reliably predicted—for neurons collectively make up a large fraction of
known cell types, and each has a different job to do.
The HCA will make this easier. A paper co-ordinated by Barbara Treutlein
of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich looked at mRNA data from
36 such organoids, created using 26 different protocols. The researchers
involved were able both to identify the neuron types generated in each
organoid and to determine how closely they resembled their natural
equivalents. The results, stitched together, create a single manifold chart for
such organoids that shows the strengths and weaknesses of the various
protocols, and will help with planning future research.
Besides publicising the project members’ latest findings (though the raw
data have been online since they were collected), the papers also allow Dr
Teichmann and Dr Regev to set out their vision for using artificial
intelligence (AI) to turn the atlas into something closer to a model of how a
human being works.
Both are computational biologists by training, and it was this background

which led them to conceive the HCA in the first place. Without the software
underpinning the project, which turns data into maps and permits those
maps to be interrogated, the project would not exist. But the pair have
bigger visions. They were early adopters of foundation models, a class of
AI (such as the large language models that have gained prominence in
recent years) which feeds on vast quantities of training data in order to
recognise patterns not discernible to humans.
The HCA’s foundation models are trained not on passages of text, but
collections of cells. And their goal is not human-like composition but the
creation of better and more useful maps. Some learn from mRNA data
about cell types. Others rely on conventional histology slides and more
modern iterations thereof—such as light-sheet imaging, which scans
sections through three-dimensional samples. These models are now good
enough to be used to annotate the cells in new specimens, to search for
similar cells in different specimens and to discover the gene programs
behind particular characteristics. In the future they should be able to predict
how cell lineages will develop and even to envisage as-yet-unknown
varieties of cell. Such models are not only faster than human researchers,
but can also perform tasks beyond human capability.
The result is a system that can be (and has been) used not just for enhancing
the atlas, but putting it to work. Drug companies are already, for example,
using HCA data and models to screen potential drugs “virtually” before
they are tested experimentally; to predict side-effects by discovering non-
target tissues where the gene a drug candidate interacts with is expressed;
and, conversely, to spot opportunities in such non-target tissues to extend a
drug’s range of therapeutic targets.
One day all this effort may contribute to a human “digital twin”, which
would also incorporate foundation models about how proteins work (such
as AlphaFold, a protein-folding model developed by Google DeepMind)
and how bodies develop. That day is still far distant. But it now seems more
likely to arrive. ■
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This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/science-and-
technology/2024/11/20/scientists-are-building-a-catalogue-of-every-type-of-cell-in-
our-bodies

Fit to print
Scientific publishers are producing

more papers than ever
Concerns about some of their business models are building
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING has long been a money-printing operation,

with many big publishing houses reporting profit margins of between 30%
and 40% year after year. The long-standing business model is watertight.
Articles, which are written and reviewed by academics, are locked behind
paywalls. Universities and research institutions then pay through the nose
for access to them via subscriptions that cost millions of dollars a year.
In the past decade, however, this model has been challenged by a rise in
funders mandating that the research they pay for must be free for anyone to
read. A host of publishers have, therefore, adopted a new business model to
enable “open access”: levying an article-processing charge—ranging from
$1,000 to $10,000 per paper, paid for by the scientists submitting the
research—to cover their publishing costs.
Both business models continue to do well; the number of academic papers

published each year has doubled since 2010 (see chart 1). In a new study
published in Quantitative Science Studies, Mark Hanson of the University
of Exeter and colleagues set out to identify where this explosion of papers
has come from and—if possible—to assess whether a drive for quantity has
affected quality.
For their paper, entitled “The strain on scientific publishing”, the authors
analysed publicly available data from journal websites managed by ten big
publishing houses. According to the paper, of the ten publishers in their data
set, all those operating for profit had increased their output since 2013. But
the authors found that this increase occurred in different ways depending on
the publishers’ business model.
Roughly half of the new papers since 2013 came from the large traditional
publishers Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Springer, Nature and Wiley (although
these publishers operate some journals that have a fully or partially open-
access model, the majority still require subscriptions). Together, these five
increased their yearly output of papers by roughly 61% between 2013 and
2022. They did so by increasing both the number of journals in their
portfolio and the number of papers per journal.
The study found that the remainder of the increase came from the newer
for-profit open-access-only publishers, Frontiers, Hindawi and MDPI. A
decade ago, these companies published around 4% as many papers as the
traditional publishers. By 2022 they were publishing a third as many. Dr
Hanson and his colleagues determined this rapid growth was achieved
mainly through the embrace of special issues: groups of articles published
together and focused on a single topic outside the journal’s usual
publication schedule.
Rather than being managed by the journal’s permanent editorial staff,
special issues are typically the responsibility of guest editors. These
temporary editors solicit submissions from other scientists in their network.
According to Dr Hanson’s team, between 2016 and 2022 the number of
special-issue articles produced by the three largest for-profit open-access
publishers rose by a factor of 12. These companies now publish four times
as many special issues as regular papers (see chart 2).
This rise in special-issue papers comes alongside signs that they are being
edited more quickly. For traditional publishers the median turnaround time
for articles across all issues is roughly 130 days, but with huge variability
(in some cases, reviewers may ask for an experiment to be re-run from
scratch). In the for-profit open-access journals the median turnaround time
was squeezed down from around 74 days in 2016 to just 38 in 2022, with
markedly reduced variability (see chart 3). The researchers also found that,
within MDPI and Hindawi’s portfolio of journals, those with more special
issues were rejecting fewer submissions.
The worry is that lower-quality articles could be slipping into these special
issues. In May this year Wiley, which bought Hindawi in 2021, announced
it would be shutting down 19 former Hindawi journals after more than
11,300 papers, mostly published in special issues, were retracted.
The publishers themselves reject any suggestion that these data imply a
decline in quality. Wiley stressed its commitment to research integrity.
MDPI attributes its shortened turnaround times to more staff and new tools
to improve efficiency. A spokesman from Frontiers said that “Review
turnaround time cannot be used as a simple proxy for either research
integrity or quality.” Both MDPI and Frontiers insist that special issues are
subject to the same peer-review process as regular papers. And there are
upsides to special issues: they can be valuable ways for scientists to
aggregate information from different research communities, for example,
said Hannah Hope, who leads open-research initiatives at Wellcome, a
funder.
Still, some funding bodies are trying to stem how much science is published
in such journals. In February this year the Swiss National Science
Foundation (SNSF) stopped paying processing charges for papers published
in special issues. Previously, according to Matthias Egger, the president of
the National Research Council of the SNSF, 80-90% of the publishing fees
paid by the SNSF went towards such special-issue articles, to the tune of
around SFr10m ($10.6m) between 2018 and 2023.
From January 2025 the Gates Foundation will stop paying open-access fees
altogether—any researchers they fund must instead use free-to-access
preprint servers to share their work. The foundation says the move will help
avoid some of the issues Dr Hanson and his team have identified. By
making it more expensive for researchers to place their work in open-access
journals, it may also limit the number of papers these journals publish. Until
more funders join in, however, the tide of new papers is likely to keep on
rising. ■

technology/2024/11/20/scientific-publishers-are-producing-more-papers-than-ever

Funny business
The two types of human laugh

One is caused by tickling; the other by everything else
11月 21, 2024 05:04 上午
ANGLOPHONE NOVELISTS describing amusement are laughing all the

way to the bank. Depending on context, characters can chortle, chuckle,
titter, hoot, giggle, snigger, howl or guffaw. This richness of language may
suggest to some that laughter, itself, is a phenomenon of infinite variety, one
that lends itself to endless subcategorisation. The joke would be on them.
New work led by Roza Kamiloglu, a psychologist at the Free University of

Amsterdam, provides evidence that there are just two primary types of
laughter: one generated when people find something funny and one that can
be induced only through the physical act of tickling.
The work started with the serious business of laugh collection. Dr
Kamiloglu instructed research assistants to search YouTube, a video
platform, for footage featuring spontaneous laughter. They collected a total
of 887 videos that were then categorised based on the inciting comic
incident, ranging from tickle attacks to Schadenfreude and verbal jokes.
Roughly 70% of these videos were then used to train a laughter-

categorising machine-learning algorithm to connect different forms of
laughter with the activities that caused them. The algorithm was then asked
to deliver its verdict on the remaining 30%. After a quick listen, Dr
Kamiloglu and her colleagues thought the different laughs would be too
varied for any connections to be made. The algorithm disagreed.
Based on acoustic traits like loudness, rhythm and changes in frequency

brought about by vocal-cord vibrations, the algorithm was able to correctly
identify laughter produced by tickling 62.5% of the time. All other forms of
laughter, whether they came from viewing stand-up comedy or watching
someone pour salt into their tea instead of sugar, were nowhere near as easy
to tell apart. This suggested there was something unique about the post-
tickling laugh. When Dr Kamiloglu ran the experiment again, this time
asking human observers to categorise the laughs, a similar phenomenon
presented itself: the observers correctly identified tickling laughter 61.2%
of the time.
The findings, published this week in Biology Letters, are more than light
entertainment. They could, instead, point scientists towards the evolutionary
roots of laughter. After all, many mammals including dogs, squirrel
monkeys, Barbary macaques and chimpanzees produce vocalisations during
play that sound remarkably like laughter. One of the first things that infants
do early in life is laugh. Even babies born deaf spontaneously produce
laughter. Humans are not the only animals that tickle either. Macaques and
chimpanzees both engage in the activity too.
All this suggests that laughter from tickling evolved over 10m years ago
with the common ancestor that humans shared with these other primates. Dr
Kamiloglu suspects that this early sort of laughter probably evolved to help
primates build friendly relations, especially during play. With this in mind,
she is now keen to study how infectious different sorts of laughs are. If the
tickling laugh is one that truly evolved to bring primates together, it ought
to be particularly infectious—but nobody has yet tested if it is.
As for all the other forms of laughter that only people produce, these
probably evolved millions of years after tickling came along, when the
human brain became complex enough to understand irony, slapstick and
puns. But he who laughs last, it would seem, laughs longest. ■

technology/2024/11/20/the-two-types-of-human-laugh

Moving the needle
How squid could help people get

over their needle phobia
Cephalopod ink propulsion is inspiring an alternative to syringes
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
NEEDLES, THOUGH essential for delivering a great many vital

medications, are not universally popular among patients. This distaste has
serious consequences: an aversion to needles leads one in six American
adults to skip vaccinations, and is an important reason why people who rely
on injectable drugs such as insulin fail to keep up with their dosage. Now
new work led by Giovanni Traverso at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology is revealing a way to get medication into patients without
having to jab them at all, by copying the jet-propulsion techniques used by
squid and their kin.
This is not Dr Traverso’s first foray into the field of alternative drug
delivery. Most of his previous inventions, however, have involved tiny
automated syringes packaged inside capsules that can be swallowed. Once
in the digestive tract, the capsules dissolve, leaving the syringes free to
inject a drug payload through the mucosal surface layer of the stomach or
the intestines and into the subsurface tissues below. As the walls of the
digestive system are extremely rich in blood vessels, it is an excellent place
to deploy drugs. Patients treated in such a way need never feel or even see
the needle.
Such techniques, though usable, are far from reliable. For a syringe to
properly deliver a drug, it must be nearly perpendicular to the target tissue.
This is as true for shots going into arms as it is for those jabbed into the
lining of the gut. When it comes to penetrating the skin, a medical
professional can set the alignment manually. In the depths of the digestive
tract, such alignment is extremely challenging.
Keen to find a better way forward, Dr Traverso considered the cephalopod.

Just as cephalopods are able to propel ink and water at high pressure in all
directions, Dr Traverso theorised a similar system might be able to propel
drugs with sufficient force to penetrate the soft tissues lining the digestive
tract without needing the perfect angle required by needles. To build such a
device he worked with a team of colleagues at Novo Nordisk, a
pharmaceutical company, as well as researchers at Brigham and Women’s
Hospital in Boston and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. The
collaboration resulted in tiny spring-loaded devices capable of releasing
high-velocity jets when triggered.
To test the efficacy of the system, the team loaded the devices with green
dye and tested them out on digestive tissues taken from pigs and dogs.
Microscopic analysis revealed that the green dye was frequently able to
cross the mucosal layer. Crucially, the team found that the devices were still
able to propel most of their dye into tissues even when the angle between
the spring-loaded device and the tissue layer dropped below 70°.
Eager to try the devices inside living animals, the researchers designed two
versions of their drug-propulsion technology. One, bearing a resemblance to
a miniature lunar lander, is designed to navigate the cavern of the stomach
and squirt its contents downwards as soon as it makes contact with a
surface. The second, designed to deliver its cargo in long narrow spaces
such as the oesophagus, looks like a cylinder that can launch drugs out of its
sides.
The team armed both sets of devices with a range of drugs including insulin
and an analogue for GLP-1 (a hormone that helps the body regulate blood
sugar) and inserted them into the digestive tracts of pigs (which are very
similar to those found in humans) for testing. In results published this week
in Nature the researchers reveal the jets were, once more, able to
consistently deliver their drug payloads to a range of sites, including the
oesophagus, the stomach and the intestines.
Though tests in humans have yet to be carried out, Dr Traverso and his
colleagues hope that individuals with diabetes will be able to make use of
this technology soon. Given that proper management of the condition
involves multiple insulin jabs a day, a more convenient delivery mechanism
could transform treatment. But the technology will hardly be limited to this
group. The researchers expect that similar devices could one day be used to
administer vaccines. If all goes well, needle anxiety may be a thing of the
past. ■

technology/2024/11/20/how-squid-could-help-people-get-over-their-needle-phobia

Culture
The cult of Jordan Peterson
Love him or loathe him? :: What the Canadian intellectual gets right about young men
Woodrow Wilson’s reputation continues to decline

Dove or raven? :: A dispassionate new biography chronicles the former president’s hostility to
suffrage
The best podcasts of 2024, as picked by The Economist

In earshot :: They cover AI, war and mass hysteria
Tech and religion are very much alike

Valley and the gods :: They both have gods, rich institutions and secretive cultures
The New York-London arbitrage for musicals

Sing it from the rooftops :: Can you guess which is more expensive: Broadway or the West
End?
Canadian v American football: can you catch the

difference?
It’s a whole new ball game :: This weekend’s Grey Cup, the Canucks’ “Super Bowl”, gives
Canadian football a chance to shine

Love him or loathe him?
The cult of Jordan Peterson

What the Canadian intellectual gets right about young men
11月 21, 2024 06:28 上午
We Who Wrestle with God. By Jordan Peterson. Portfolio; 576 pages;

$35. Allen Lane; £30
JORDAN PETERSON’S new book is titled “We Who Wrestle With God”.
Quite what God has done to provoke this fight is not clear. Open it, and two
things become apparent. First, this is a friendly skirmish: the Canadian
psychologist is less wrestling God than trying to understand him.
He retells the big hits of the Bible—the fall, the flood—through a mixture
of theology, psychology and symbolism. Often, alas, that symbolism comes
from Disney. So the story of Adam and Eve is compared to “Beauty and the
Beast”, and Cain is likened to evil Scar in “The Lion King”. The overall
effect is as if a Victorian vicar had been given a streaming subscription to
Disney+ (and possibly some opium), then sat down to write his sermon.
The second thing that becomes clear is that by far the greater struggle here
is between Mr Peterson and his prose. Mr Peterson has never been an easy
read: even an academic review once described one of his books as a
“tome”. This doorstopper is little easier. Flip it open at random, and your
eye will invariably light on phrases such as this one: “The modern meta-
Marxists, the post-modern power players, have, as it were, metastasised
Marx.” Got that? Good. Because there are hundreds more pages where that
came from.
Those of you who wrestle with Jordan Peterson might wonder why you
would want to fork out good money to wade through nearly 600 pages of
Mr Peterson wrestling with God. For many the answer will be celebrity.
Both sides are well known. God is God. Mr Peterson is a contrarian who
has hitherto wrestled with students over free speech (he won); feminists
over whether you can compare lobsters to men (it was a draw); and Richard
Dawkins, an atheist biologist, over the reality of dragons (it was
excruciating).
These fights have propelled Mr Peterson from academia to celebrity. He has

been called both “the world’s most famous public intellectual” and “the
stupid man’s smart person”. He is certainly hard to place. His most famous
work, “12 Rules for Life”, offers a strange mix of humdrum domesticity
and existential philosophy, as if a nanny was mixed with Nietzsche and
started barking orders: Stand up straight! Shoulders back! Consider the
existential void of modernity! His (mostly male) fans loved it and bought
over 10m copies.
Millions despise him. In 2017 academics at the University of Toronto

signed an open letter to take away his tenure, in part because he objected to
being required by law to use gender-neutral pronouns. He later resigned.
For a time, to have an opinion on him felt both socially necessary (he came
up so often) and socially dangerous (the wrong answer could bring odium).
No mere man, he was a purity test personified.
Like Donald Trump and Joe Rogan, an American podcaster, he is one of a
group of men who despite—or perhaps because of—being disdained by
intellectual sorts are beloved by their “bro” followers. The number of
authors who can, as he does in this new book, use phrases like “the
collective meta-space of human imagination”, and also fill arenas with fans,
is tiny. Probably it totals one. Few, least of all him, saw this coming. “In a
sensible world”, he has said, “I would have got my 15 minutes of fame.”
That was in 2017. He is still going.
On November 18th a crowd gathered for the first night of his book tour in a
village near New York City. It felt more like a concert. There was merch
(Peterson posters and mugs) and a guitar warm-up act. When he came on
stage, in a three-piece linen suit, the crowd—by no means all young or male
—whooped. The subject for this evening’s sermon, he told the congregation
of fans, was sacrifice.
An entire Peterson industry has flourished for those willing to sacrifice their
money: there is a Jordan Peterson newsletter (“Mondays of Meaning”), a
“Peterson Academy” ($500 a year gets you lectures on manly things by
people with beards) and a “self-authoring programme”. People who spend
time writing about themselves, it promises, “become happier, less anxious
and depressed”. Who knew? Certainly not Ernest Hemingway or Virginia
Woolf—or, apparently, Jordan Peterson. As he reached the climax of the
evening’s talk, his voice cracked. He is famous for weeping in speeches:
YouTube offers a video compilation of “Jordan Peterson crying”.
Mr Peterson’s new book is as old-fashioned as his appearance. It reads as if

it “could have been written in the 1950s”, says a publisher. Or, indeed, the
1850s. It refers to sermons and Victorian biblical scholars. The reader has to
wade through pages of archaisms from the King James Bible such as
“liveth”, “heareth”, “beeves” (an old plural of “beef”) and phrases like “an
handful” of grain. The reader’s “beeve” with this is not that the King James
version lacks beauty. It does not. But when added to those metastasising
post-modernists, it is all a bit of an handful.
However, to really understand Mr Peterson, forget his books. Do not look at

the “supply side”, but instead consider the “demand side”, urges Richard
Reeves, author of “Of Boys and Men”, a book about how the modern male
struggles. In other words: look at his fans. Not long after Mr Peterson came
to prominence in 2016 with a public debate about gender-neutral pronouns,
the #MeToo movement started to spread. Phrases like “toxic masculinity”,
“mansplaining” and “manspreading” were gaining ground, and there was
anger at men’s treatment of women.
But young men also had problems. The world has long been moving to an
information economy that favours brains, not brawn. Women thrived. Men?
Not always. In America and Britain boys lag behind girls in primary,
secondary and university education. The appeal of Mr Peterson, and even
Mr Trump, is “really driven by a big…socio-economic shift”, says Francis
Fukuyama, a professor of political science at Stanford University.
Discussing men’s problems can prompt pushback and questions of “Is there
a violin small enough?” according to Mr Reeves. But not for Mr Peterson.
“Boys”, he wrote in “12 Rules for Life”, “are suffering, in the modern
world.”
After America’s recent election, the consequences of all this are well
known. We “rolled our eyes at young men when they said ‘I’m suffering’,”
says Mr Reeves. So “of course they went somewhere else.” Mr Trump is
one beneficiary. Mr Peterson is another, because he was “offering
something people needed”. Which—in true nanny style—was partly
sympathy and partly a dose of stern advice. As he wrote in “12 Rules”:
“Toughen up, you weasel.”
From the stage in New York, he spoke for well over an hour about pain,
death, “the void” and the “full existential catastrophe of life”. Then he told
his rapt fans how to deal with these things. Broadly speaking it was a softer
version of: “Toughen up, you weasels.” His audience scurried into the
November night, looking absolutely delighted. ■
For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies,
sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter
https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/11/19/the-cult-of-jordan-peterson
Dove or raven?
Woodrow Wilson’s reputation

continues to decline
A dispassionate new biography chronicles the former president’s hostility to
suffrage
11月 21, 2024 06:28 上午
Woodrow Wilson. By Christopher Cox. Simon & Schuster; 640 pages;

$34.99
HOW WILL Joe Biden and Donald Trump be remembered a century from
now? Presidential legacies change over time. For decades, Woodrow
Wilson, America’s president from 1913-21 who died 100 years ago, enjoyed
a reputation as an enlightened internationalist. He established the Federal
Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission; he backed the creation of the
League of Nations, a precursor to the UN, and was a staunch advocate for
democracy abroad. In 1948 Arthur Schlesinger senior, a historian at
Harvard, asked 55 other historians to rank the presidents in order of
greatness: Wilson came fourth, behind Abraham Lincoln, George
Washington and Franklin Roosevelt.
More recently Wilson has been downgraded, with his racism and sexism
eclipsing his accomplishments. In 2020 Princeton stripped his name from
its public-affairs school; Washington, DC’s biggest high school did the
same in 2022. In “Woodrow Wilson”, Christopher Cox, a Republican who
served in Congress for eight terms before running the Securities and
Exchange Commission, offers a doggedly researched and soberly told story
of American progress—and the president who stood in its way.
A Democrat and the first president from the South since the civil war,
Wilson opposed constitutional amendments that extended citizenship and
voting rights to all, arguing that it “put the negroes upon a footing of civil
equality with the whites”. He allowed the white supremacists he chose for
his cabinet to resegregate the federal workforce.
Prickly and arrogant, Wilson was also hostile to women voting. Two weeks
after assuming office Wilson held his first meeting with suffrage activists;
he ended it peremptorily after ten minutes. A more confrontational meeting
a year later ended similarly: Wilson stormed out after being asked a
question, telling the assembled women, “I cannot permit myself to be cross-
examined.”
His response stemmed in part from his character: he hated being challenged
or questioned, especially by those he considered inferior. While teaching at
Bryn Mawr, a women’s college, he wrote that teaching women history and
politics was “about as appropriate and profitable as would be lecturing to
stonemasons on the evolution of fashion”. Later, as governor of New Jersey,
he revealed he was “strongly against” women’s suffrage, because of “the
social changes it would involve”.
As president, he framed suffrage as a question for states rather than the

federal government. When he assumed office, women could vote in only
nine states. From 1914-17, another eight states, including New York,
extended to women the right to vote. But as activists grew bolder, Wilson’s
government grew more repressive. Pro-Wilson newspapers called for
curtailing free speech during wartime. Mobs assaulted suffrage
demonstrators (often with police complicity), and judges imposed lengthy
sentences for the dubious crime of “obstructing traffic”. Wilson may not
have directed these crackdowns, but he did not stop them.
Eventually, however, the tension between supporting democracy abroad and

denying it at home grew too great, and in late 1918 Wilson tepidly endorsed
what would become the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right
to vote. After Congress’s approval, it went into effect in time for the
election in 1920, which Republicans won handily, due in part to the influx
of female voters. Wilson’s presidency is a reminder of Congress’s essential
role as a change-maker. It is where “so many of the nation’s important
victories have been won”, writes Mr Cox.
Years later, noting the zeal with which American women picked up their
ballots, he wrote to a colleague, “I shall be very much disappointed in them
[if] they have forgotten that they are chiefly indebted to me for the
suffrage.” It was he who was being forgetful: Wilson had been an opponent
only until that stance became politically untenable. ■
https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/11/21/woodrow-wilsons-reputation-continues-
to-decline

In earshot
The best podcasts of 2024, as

picked by The Economist
They cover AI, war and mass hysteria
11月 21, 2024 06:29 上午
“Broomgate”
Subcultures often make for podcast gold. This show relives the greatest
controversy in curling, a sport that marries ice hockey and shuffleboard.
John Cullen, a comedian and former curler, narrates the scandal with
authority.
“The Butterfly King”

Most true-crime podcasts explore recent history. Here Becky Milligan, a
former BBC journalist, examines a very cold case: the possible murder of
King Boris III of Bulgaria in 1943.
“D-Day: The Tide Turns”

The Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France 80 years ago changed the
course of history. This beautifully produced series tells the story of D-Day
by focusing on the people who made it possible.
“Hysterical”
In 2011 a Tourette’s-like syndrome affected a group of teenage girls in New
York. Dan Taberski, an American podcaster, dives into the history and
mystery of mass hysteria, speaking to victims and doctors.
“Not All Propaganda is Art”

A look at how culture became entwined with cold-war politics. Benjamen
Walker, a radio host, corrals unexpected case studies. For example, to
promote American interests, the CIA funded a film adaptation of George
Orwell’s “1984” and a journal aimed at left-wing intellectuals.
“The Rest is Entertainment”

One of the latest shows from Goalhanger, a production company behind
“The Rest is History”, is devoted to film, journalism and television. Those
industries take themselves so seriously that it is a relief to spend time with
people who do not.
“Shell Game”
Evan Ratliff, a journalist, clones his voice and lets his AI counterpart speak
to scammers, spammers and even his wife. “What will it do to us,” he asks,
“when more and more of the people we encounter in the world aren’t real?”
“Strangers on a Bench”
Ever wonder what those people sitting on a bench are thinking about? Tom
Rosenthal, a singer-songwriter, joins them and finds out.
“Thief at the British Museum”

A curator at the British Museum stole objects and offered them for sale on
eBay. Katie Razzall, the BBC’s culture editor, meets Ittai Gradel, an
antiquities dealer who uncovered the crime.
“The Wonder of Stevie”

In an age of fleeting fame, Stevie Wonder abides. Wesley Morris, a Pulitzer-
prizewinning critic, interviews an eclectic cast of experts and fans
(including Barack Obama). The show focuses on 1972-77, when the artist
evolved from boy wonder to, well, Mr Wonder. ■
https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/11/15/the-best-podcasts-of-2024-as-picked-by-
the-economist

Valley and the gods
Tech and religion are very much

alike
They both have gods, rich institutions and secretive cultures
11月 21, 2024 06:28 上午
Tech Agnostic. By Greg Epstein. MIT Press; 368 pages; $29.95 and £27
“ENTIRE SUBWAY CAR mesmerised by small gizmo clutched in hand.

Some sort of worship?” The tweet by Joyce Carol Oates in 2019, alongside
a photo of riders holding mobile phones, as if in prayer, neatly captures the
way that society holds technology sacred. Most people check their phones
on waking and just before sleeping (and glance at the screen throughout the
day), replacing an earlier generations’ ritual of prayers.
“Technology has become religion,” writes Greg Epstein, a “humanist”
(atheist) chaplain who works at Harvard University and Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, in a provocative new book. Believe him?
There are plenty of parallels. Both tech and religion have gods, which in
Silicon Valley might be mythical leaders such as Steve Jobs or Elon Musk,
and reverential followers. Tech firms and religions are also considered all-
powerful (by some) and claim institutions that have amassed almighty
riches. Any journalist who has spent time in Silicon Valley can attest that
tech companies are secretive and boast unique cultures and rules, like
monastic orders. They also demand vows of allegiance—in the form of non-
disclosure agreements and non-compete clauses.
Techies can sound as if they are spouting religious principles, too. Google’s
original motto—“Don’t be evil”—has biblical overtones. Mr Musk has
described his interplanetary ambitions as aiming to “extend the light of
consciousness to the stars”. Marc Andreessen, an investor in Silicon Valley,
has compiled a list of the “patron saints of techno-optimism” who are
“liberating…the human soul” in a manifesto that contains the words “we
believe” almost 115 times.
The first half of “Tech Agnostic” does an excellent job of teasing out how
tech companies have persuaded people to faithfully believe in their mission
and people. It includes portraits of figures who have held great influence.
One is Sam Bankman-Fried, the head of a once high-flying crypto firm,
later found guilty of fraud. Another is Nick Bostrom, formerly a professor
at Oxford University, who posits that there is a good chance everyone on
Earth lives in a computer simulation.
Mr Epstein is at his best when he brings religious scholarship to his

research on tech to offer original analysis. His observations are intriguing
and perceptive, for example, when it comes to the “effective altruism”
movement, a philosophy (read: eschatological doctrine) espoused by Mr
Bankman-Fried that urges focus on long-term existential harms rather than
short-term problems to save humanity.
But such insights are rare in the second half of the book, where the author
recites a litany of familiar worries about technology, blaming it for too
much screen time, “toxic masculinity”, the precarious lives of workers in
the gig economy and heavy surveillance through facial recognition and
online advertising. Whatever the technology, Mr Epstein has found a person
to interview who will criticise it in an overstated way, only for the author to
soften it a smidgen (to give the devil his due), but let the point stand.
This represents a missed opportunity. Too few have examined the theism of
tech leaders, from several AI pioneers’ interest in the golem of Jewish
mysticism to Jobs’s practice of Zen Buddhism. Meanwhile, Pope Francis
has convened several high-profile meetings in Rome with AI experts. At the
start of the book, Mr Epstein asks: “Am I speaking literally, or have I
written this book to weave the most elaborate and annoying metaphor you’ll
ever read in your entire life? Yes.” He does not bear false witness. The book
posits an intriguing thesis that is marred by a failure to do justice to the
subject. ■
https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/11/21/tech-and-religion-are-very-much-alike

Sing it from the rooftops
The New York-London arbitrage

for musicals
Can you guess which is more expensive: Broadway or the West End?
11月 21, 2024 06:28 上午
WHEN “HADESTOWN”, a musical that sets the myth of Orpheus and

Eurydice to New Orleans-style jazz, was produced in 2019 and opened on
Broadway, it took an initial investment of $11.5m. Since then American
consumer prices have risen by more than 20%. But one producer of
“Hadestown” has estimated it would cost $18m to put on today—a rise of
57%. Talk about hellish inflation.
Mounting a show in New York has become so astronomically expensive

that it is there, where the modern musical was born, that producers and
investors are more afraid to take risks. Increasingly they are looking to
London, where it is unexpectedly cheaper, to open musicals instead.
According to documents seen by The Economist, the revival of Andrew

Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard”, which opened on Broadway on
October 20th, starring Nicole Scherzinger (formerly of The Pussycat Dolls,
a band), required investors to stump up $13.5m before the curtain could
rise. The same revival’s initial run in London, also starring Ms Scherzinger,
at the Savoy Theatre in late 2023, took an upfront investment of just £2.3m
($3m). Operating costs told a similar story: the Broadway production was
forecast to burn through $950,000 each week, nearly three times more than
the West End one had.
Why have theatre costs in particular spiralled so much higher of late? One
reason is dearer raw materials. The price of timber, which theatre sets tend
to use a lot of, has risen by some 40% since the end of 2019. Electricity
costs have risen too, by around 40% per kilowatt-hour in New York. Yet
energy costs have soared even higher in Britain, and productions on both
sides of the Atlantic need timber.
The biggest factor explaining the difference between New York and London
is the price of labour, and in particular the effectiveness of American
theatre-worker unions in bargaining it up. This started during the covid-19
pandemic. Many cite a desire to fight racial inequality as a reason for
demanding better pay and working conditions, since junior technical staff
with the worst deals are disproportionately from ethnic minorities.
In theory such negotiations take place between unions and representatives

from the Broadway League, a trade body. Some producers, however,
describe pay deals as being struck in effect between unions and theatre
owners. The owners are more worried about strikes that would send their
theatres dark than they are about wage costs. (Strikes would force theatres
to give up money from tickets they have already sold; the wage bill can
simply be passed on to producers and their investors.) And so salaries have
continued to crescendo.
Unions in London, meanwhile, are less prevalent and far less aggressive in
calling for strikes. Seen from New York, the result is a bemusing degree of
naivety on the part of British actors. An American producer describes
congratulating one of the young stars of “Next to Normal”, a musical about
mental health, on an outstanding performance in London, only to later find
out they were being paid “something like £500 a week”—an unthinkably
low sum for any Broadway lead.
The incentives to develop new shows and revive old ones away from
Broadway are growing. That is in spite of a deep bench of theatrical and
technical talent, and the fact that New Yorkers tend to be more enthusiastic
about musicals than just about anyone else. “I know lots of producers with
projects in development who are saying they’ll just go to the UK,” says
Heather Shields, an American producer of a recent revival of “Cabaret” that
started in London before heading to Broadway. “It might be less convenient
for me, but I can jump on a plane.”
The higher costs mean Broadway will continue to become a less attractive
place to take the sort of risks that are a prerequisite for brilliant, ground-
breaking theatre. Shows by the likes of Lord Lloyd Webber will always find
a home there, as will those fronted by stars whose names can pull in
punters. But if you want to catch the next Stephen Sondheim, it is
increasingly likely that you will need to turn your back on Times Square. ■
https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/11/18/the-new-york-london-arbitrage-for-
musicals

It’s a whole new ball game
Canadian v American football: can

you catch the difference?
This weekend’s Grey Cup, the Canucks’ “Super Bowl”, gives Canadian
football a chance to shine
11月 21, 2024 06:28 上午 | MONTREAL AND OTTAWA
THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE (NFL) in America is not known

for being understated. Military jets sometimes fly in formation over
stadiums; many games feature orchestrated flag presentations and deafening
firework displays to celebrate home-team touchdowns and victories. Pop
divas sing “The Star-Spangled Banner”, and players take the field at a
healthy distance from fans.
Football is different up north. A recent game in Ottawa between the home

team, the Redblacks, and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats featured a couple of
fireworks when the home team was introduced, but they were the sort a
daring dad might set off impromptu outdoors. Fans stood for the national
anthem, but there were no flyovers or ostentatious displays of patriotism.
Before the game, players and fans chatted casually over the low fence
separating the field from the stands. When the Redblacks scored, a man in
flannel resembling the team’s lumberjack mascot chainsawed a disc off a
giant wooden log. The whole experience, in other words, was friendly, a
little goofy, low-key and fun.
On November 17th the Toronto Argonauts and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers
competed for the Grey Cup, as the Canadian Football League (CFL)
championship is known. The Toronto Argonauts were victorious (pictured).
Although the Grey Cup came first—this was the 111th, compared with just
the 59th Super Bowl—the game is much less popular and well known than
the NFL’s championship match. Two days beforehand, tickets to the Grey
Cup were still available for around C$200 ($143), whereas tickets for the
Super Bowl in February could easily cost 60 times that, if they can be found
at all.
This reflects a more general disparity: the NFL draws more fans, pays
players more, makes more broadcast revenue and has more teams (32,
compared with the CFL’s nine) that are worth more money. But Canadian
football has one huge advantage: it is a better game.
The CFL field is 30 yards longer, including end zones, and nearly 12 yards
wider, than an NFL field. Each team has 12 rather than 11 players, and has
three downs (chances to advance the ball ten yards) rather than four. CFL
teams can score a single point if they kick or punt a ball into their
opponent’s end zone, and the opponent’s team fails to advance it out (no
such chance exists in the NFL).
These differences in rules make for a passing-friendly, higher-scoring game,

in which possession changes more often, as well as who is in the lead.
Micah Awe, a linebacker for the Calgary Stampeders and former NFL
player, explains, “No team is ever out of it. If there’s three minutes left and
you’re down by two touchdowns, that’s plenty of time” to come back.
Mr Awe is American, as are many CFL players. More than 80,000 students
play college football in America each year; a minuscule share make it to the
NFL, where the average career lasts just over three years. The CFL is an
enticing alternative for those who just miss the cut. According to the
league’s bylaws, each team is allowed just 19 Americans (not including
quarterbacks) on their 45-man roster; 21, including eight starting players,
must be Canadian.
Americans tend to play most of the skilled positions, such as quarterback

and running back. For decades, the CFL was more hospitable to black
quarterbacks than the NFL. Not until 2023 did two black starting
quarterbacks face each other in a Super Bowl, 42 years after J.C. Watts and
Warren Moon faced off in the Grey Cup (Mr Watts later served four terms
in Congress, while Mr Moon thrived in the NFL).
Even with this history and faster-paced game, the CFL sometimes struggles.
In its biggest markets—Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver—football
competes with hockey, which is more popular, and other types of
entertainment. Toronto, Canada’s biggest city, is just a couple of hours’
drive from Buffalo, home to the NFL’s Bills, which advertise heavily north
of the border. The Lions and Vikings, in Detroit and Minneapolis
respectively, also cultivate loyal fan bases in Canada.
This has led to very different fortunes. Two of the three most popular teams,
the Blue Bombers and the Saskatchewan Roughriders, are “community-
owned” non-profits; some teams have faced financial difficulties, and
ownership tends to change more often than for NFL franchises. CFL teams
remain heavily dependent on game-day revenue from tickets and
concessions, which means they can suffer during a bad season, if fans stay
away (as they did during covid).
One former executive suggested stabilising the CFL by making it the NFL’s
minor league, where players not quite good or healthy enough could
develop. However, he says he “got so much hate mail from Canadians”
accusing him of wanting to give away a source of national pride. Such a
merger seems unlikely.
Randy Ambrosie, the outgoing CFL commissioner, argues that game-day
revenues, TV ratings and team revenues are all rising just as television
rights are up in 2026, positioning the league well for a more lucrative deal
than it has now. And as long as Americans who love football but do not
quite make the NFL head north each year, the game will remain great fun to
watch. As Mr Awe, the linebacker, notes, “We don’t have million-dollar
contracts. None of us will retire off the money we’re making in the CFL,
but that’s not the point. It’s really for the love of playing.” ■
https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/11/15/canadian-v-american-football-can-you-
catch-the-difference

Economic & financial indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets
Indicators ::

Indicators
Economic data, commodities and

markets
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
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financial-indicators/2024/11/21/economic-data-commodities-and-markets

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Obituary
Frank Auerbach aimed only at one memorable image
Layering up, scraping off :: Britain’s most obsessive figurative painter died on November 11th,
aged 93
| Main menu | Previous section |

Layering up, scraping off
Frank Auerbach aimed only at one

memorable image
Britain’s most obsessive figurative painter died on November 11th, aged 93
11月 21, 2024 04:22 上午
ALMOST EVERY day of the week, for more than six decades, Frank
Auerbach would stride along Mornington Crescent. It was, and is, a typical
North London street: tall terraced houses of soot-red brick and stucco, with
a railed garden on one side. Often he carried a plain pad and a stick of
graphite, to make sketches at sunrise before his neighbours stirred. He
enjoyed the early, oily yellow light on the buildings and the sleeping cars.
This, with gritty Camden Town and the green slopes of Primrose Hill, was
his complete world. He needed no other. Its radius was perhaps a mile and a
half, but it contained all the things he most liked painting, over and over
again. “His” chimney stack, at the back of the Black Cat cigarette factory;
“his” Tube station, in original crimson tiles; Camden High Street, a chaos of
awnings, signage, buses and vivid buildings; Primrose Hill in slabs of
viridian, red and blue; and the little wicket gate, along the crescent, that led
down to his studio. By 2023 a painting of the crescent, done in 1969,
fetched more than $7m. But fame had not displaced him.
His studio was a paint explosion. On canvases, of course, but also on the
walls and, inches deep, on the floor. Once a brush was in his hand, he was
instantly happy. He worked in a sort of storm, often squeezing the paint-
tubes directly on the canvas and leaving the squidges as they were. The
paintings he became most famous for, from the late 1940s, were so thickly
built up that they were as heavy as bas reliefs. His first portrait of his
longtime lover, Estella Olive West, seemed to have been cast from wet
cement. His paintings of London bomb sites, which he found intensely
dramatic, even sexy, were nightmares of muddy disruption. Yet it was one
of those, “Summer Building Site” (1952) with black and orange forms
embracing two delicate yellow ladders, that seemed to declare he had
broken a barrier and made art that was new. Steadily, though slowly,
galleries and collectors caught on.
His task for the rest of his life was to make his art memorable. Just one
image lodged in the public mind was all he wanted: one image that would
also satisfy him and stand up by itself. But he was not a man to be satisfied.
His muttered mantra as he painted was “Rubbish, complete rubbish.” To
prove the point, at the end of almost all his sessions he would scrape the
canvas clean again. To produce one good picture, anything that was merely
adequate had to be obliterated with more paint, or destroyed. One portrait
took 300 sittings. His bills for paint—blacks, browns and dull greens,
“Rembrandt and Hals colours”, in the early years, bright chromium and
cadmium colours once he had the money—were extraordinary, because he
reckoned that 95% of it went into the bin. Charcoal and graphite were
expunged with an eraser, leaving faces behind that were poignant in their
ghostliness.
Enclosed in his studio with his ceaseless pursuit, often sleeping there, he
might have been a gloomy recluse. Not so. He painted because it was fun,
and much the most interesting thing he could think of doing. He resisted
interviews and shows because they deflected him. His only memory of his
early childhood (a Berlin childhood sharply interrupted by a
Kindertransport journey to England and the murder of his parents in
Auschwitz) was the good feel of a wet brush being plunged into a paintbox
and the colour soaking through the paper. By the age of 16 he wanted to be
an artist; when he left art college he started to sell his paintings from the
pavement. For years he was extremely poor, and would take any job: acting,
frame-making, or working in his friend Leon Kossoff’s family bakery in
Brick Lane. Leon took the cake side and he the bread side, two young
artists hungering to excel. He was saved from penury when the Beaux Arts
in the early 1960s gave him an annuity, and he could devote himself to art.
He was not a hermit, therefore, but he still demanded a tightly focused life.
Just as he had his own corner of London, he had his own small circle of
friends and sitters, half a dozen or so, including Estella and Julia
Wolstenholme, his wife. For years they would come to the studio at the
same time every week—he fretted if they were late—and sit for two
sessions of an hour. Gradually they would emerge as impasto in a broken
black outline, with slashes of colour contrast here and there. It was vital to
keep to the faces he knew well, as to the places, so that he could seize more
life and see more truth in them. (He kept using himself as a subject for the
same reason, and he was infinite.) He thought how well Monet had known
waterlilies, in order to paint them as he did.
Though his work did not often shout it out, his artistic influences were
many: Titian, Rembrandt, Matisse, Monet, Ingres, Cézanne. It was
impossible to match their standard and scope, as it also was to do anything
that had never been done before. His most influential teacher was David
Bomberg at the Borough Polytechnic; his circle included Francis Bacon and
Lucian Freud, who collected his pictures from early on. Although he
seemed in many respects a loner, his mind was crowded with painters he
admired. Their presence made it all the harder to produce that one indelible
image he was striving for.
Nonetheless, he kept grappling. He had analysed his task as a painter: not to

reproduce the material object on the canvas, but to try to depict the way his
mind had grasped it. Portraits demanded the same approach: he painted his
friends as they felt, to him, to be. Depending on his mood, the context, the
time of day, his subjects were continually changing, as were the colours
they called for. As the years passed, his paint got brighter and lighter and
his studio almost clean. He did not think he had ever been an Expressionist
painter. But if his frantic thick layering had expressed impatience with the
challenge he had set himself, his later works seemed more relaxed. He
would never quite pin down his friends, his lovers, himself, or Mornington
Crescent. The dawn light on brick and stucco was different every day. ■
https://www.economist.com/obituary/2024/11/20/frank-auerbach-aimed-only-at-one-
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[11月 22, 2024]

The world this week

The world this week

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The world this week

Ukraine fired the first longer-range missiles supplied by America into

The G20’s statement at the conclusion of its summit in Rio de Janeiro

Germany described the latest damage to two underwater communications

Huge protests against a Russian-investment bill in Abkhazia, a region of

Thousands of British farmers descended on London to protest against the

Transit officials in New York approved a rejigged congestion-charging

Antony Blinken, the American secretary of state, took to X to declare that

Doctors Without Borders, widely known as MSF, suspended its operations

American prosecutors charged Gautam Adani, one of India’s best known

At least 36 people were killed in Israeli strikes on the Syrian town of

Senegal’s ruling party won a parliamentary election. It is a big victory for

Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi won an election for president of

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The world this week

America’s Department of Justice asked a judge to force Google to sell its

The Biden administration finalised an agreement that provides TSMC,

Xiaomi, a Chinese company best known for its smartphones, provided an

Wither the German miracle

Volkswagen replaced the head of its business in North America. The

Thyssenkrupp, a German engineering conglomerate, wrote down the value

Shareholders in News Corporation voted against a proposal from activist

A judge in New York sentenced Bill Hwang, the founder of Archegos

Seasonal joy, and pain

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The world this week

The weekly cartoon

Dig deeper into the subject of this week’s cartoon:

This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/the-world-

This week’s cover

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The opportunities—and dangers—for Trump’s disrupter-

Germany cannot afford to wait to relax its debt brake

Too many master’s courses are expensive and flaky

From Nixon to China, to Trump to Tehran

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Why British MPs should vote for

The proposal—put forward as a private member’s bill by Kim Leadbeater, a

Ms Leadbeater’s bill extends this logic. Going to Switzerland to die costs

Much of the running is being made by Wes Streeting, who as health

In any case Mr Streeting could afford to improve access to palliative care.

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The opportunities—and dangers—

Mr Musk is also different because he is a disrupter. Rather than exploiting

Both Mr Trump and Mr Musk want to disrupt the entire federal

If Mr Musk’s political career proves to be brief, it could still have two

The other effect would be to normalise collusion between politicians and

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Act now, Mr Merz

Germany cannot afford to wait to

GERMAN POLITICIANS and economists have bickered over the

The Economist’s preference would be to do away with the debt brake

Subscribers to The Economist can sign up to our new Opinion newsletter,

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Too many master’s courses are

FOR YOUNG people with big ambitions, bagging a measly bachelor’s