On Ms. Paige on Twitter.
Sunday, September 11, 2022
Don't Try This at Home
Unbelievably wild.
And it's a Hoonigan.
WoW so good! 👌 pic.twitter.com/wRtQGGOqn3
— Figen (@_TheFigen) September 10, 2022
Saturday, September 10, 2022
King Charles III Formally Proclaimed U.K. Monarch With Pomp and Ceremony (VIDEO)
At the Wall Street Journal, "Ancient ceremony was first to be televised, draw together all living former prime ministers":
LONDON—King Charles III was officially proclaimed monarch during a historic televised Accession Council ceremony on Saturday, as Britain’s new king undertook the first formalities of his reign while still grieving for his late mother. For the first time, live television images were beamed from the throne room in St. James’s Palace as King Charles oversaw his first Privy Council meeting. For nearly all Britons, it was the first time they had seen the ceremony, giving them a glimpse at time-honored rituals that have ushered in kings and queens over the centuries. LONDON—King Charles III was officially proclaimed monarch during a historic televised Accession Council ceremony on Saturday, as Britain’s new king undertook the first formalities of his reign while still grieving for his late mother. For the first time, live television images were beamed from the throne room in St. James’s Palace as King Charles oversaw his first Privy Council meeting. For nearly all Britons, it was the first time they had seen the ceremony, giving them a glimpse at time-honored rituals that have ushered in kings and queens over the centuries. The last time the accession ceremony took place was when Queen Elizabeth II acceded the throne in 1952, before televisions were common. The last prime minister to witness such a ceremony was Winston Churchill. Large crowds gathered around the palace, first built by King Henry VIII, to catch a glimpse of history in the making. Charles became king the moment his 96-year-old mother died so the proclamation of his role as monarch is now a largely ceremonial process. Historically, however, it was a way of formally announcing the new monarch to the nation before the era of mass media. “It is my most sorrowful duty to announce the death of my beloved mother, the Queen,” said King Charles, dressed in tails and standing before a red-velvet throne inscribed with the late Queen Elizabeth’s insignia “ER.” “My mother’s reign was unequaled,” he said. “I shall strive to follow the inspiring example I have been set.” More than a hundred privy councilors, including all living former prime ministers, watched on as King Charles signed an oath to guarantee the security of the Church of Scotland and declared the day of his mother’s funeral a national holiday. He was also flanked by his son and heir apparent, William, now the Prince of Wales. The Privy Council advises the monarch and is mainly made up of current and former British politicians. Later in the day, the king’s sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, emerged together with their wives outside Windsor Castle to view a sea of flowers placed at the castle gates, and then greeted and chatted with well-wishers. It was a moment of unity after years of tension sparked by Harry’s and his wife’s, actor Megan Markle, decision to quit royal duties in 2020 to build a new life in the U.S. Prince Harry has a tell-all book about his life as a royal coming out soon. That, combined with allegations by the Duchess of Sussex of racism in royal ranks, has strained relations between the two brothers, officials say. All four, the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, spent more than half an hour meeting visitors, shaking hands, accepting condolences and occasionally smiling. Prince William issued his first statement since the death of his grandmother, praising her life of service. The prince, now the heir apparent to the throne, said that while he had lost a grandmother, he felt grateful he and his family got to spend so much time with her. “She was by my side at my happiest moments. And she was by my side during the saddest days of my life. I knew this day would come, but it will be some time before the reality of life without Grannie will truly feel real,” he said. An Accession Council is usually called within 24 hours of the death of a British monarch and is customarily held at St. James’s Palace, which was the residence to British monarchs for 300 years up until Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837. After the Privy Council meeting, the state trumpeters of the household cavalry gathered on the balcony of the redbrick palace to herald the new monarch. Then the Garter King of Arms announced the new monarch to the waiting crowds “with one voice and consent of tongue.” “God save the king!” shouted the crowd in unison in response to the proclamation, before singing the national anthem. “Three cheers for his majesty the king!” said the Garter King of Arms, to which the King’s Guard soldiers took off their bearskin hats and replied, “Hip, hip, hurrah!” The announcement was followed by a flurry of proclamations across the country, including in the city of London, and gun salutes at the Tower of London and Hyde Park. Senior government ministers will gather in parliament to swear an oath of allegiance to the new king. At noon, Britons clogged into the streets around the historic Royal Exchange building in the center of London’s financial district, holding phones in the air to capture the pomp and pageantry. A procession of guards clutching weapons of centuries past—pikemen, musketeers, and the royal guards, wearing the classic red uniforms and tall bearskin caps—preceded a reading of the proclamation that declared Charles the new king. Debbie Harris and her daughter Lucy, 14, traveled in from Essex with a pair of friends. They planned to head over to Buckingham Palace, where they would lay a bouquet of flowers for the queen. “I thought it’d be nice for her to come down to experience it,” she said. Ms. Harris showed off a photo that hangs on her wall at home—her with her arm around a wax replica of the queen at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. “My father used to always buy the commemorative mugs and plates and everything as a family,” she said. Later in the afternoon, the king met with Prime Minister Liz Truss and her cabinet, as well as leaders of the opposition political parties. Televised footage of those meetings were to be made public too, in a further sign of the king’s desire to make this process of transition accessible. With the king now formally installed, the focus will turn to the burial of Queen Elizabeth. The queen’s coffin will in the coming days depart her Scottish residence in Balmoral where she died to the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh—the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland. The queen’s body will then go to St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, where the queen will lie at rest, allowing the public to view her coffin. From there it will be flown to London, where the coffin again will be put on display for the public to view before a state funeral at Westminster Abbey. She will be buried next to her late husband, Prince Philip, at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle...
Friday, September 9, 2022
In Conversations, Many Young Britons in London Called the Monarchy Increasingly Irrelevant
By now, if you're even remotely attached to the news cycle, you heard word of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.
I am a fan of the monarchy, and while no expert, I always teach the British case in my comparative politics courses each semester, and discussion of the history, role, and importance of the monarchy is a great part of that. So, though I'm a little late, expect a good number of posts on events happening in the U.K. over the next couple of weeks. This really is an end of an era.
The Queen's obituary is here, "Queen Elizabeth II Dies at 96; Was Britain’s Longest-Reigning Monarch," and "Queen Elizabeth II obituary.
In related news, Britain's young people are apparently over the monarchy, because racism.
At the New York Times, "In London, Mourning, Remembrance and Tributes. And Some Shrugs."Though mourning and grief were visible in Britain’s capital on Friday, some young Britons were more muted in their reaction to an institution that many called increasingly irrelevant. LONDON — Gertrude Dudley remembers sitting on her grandfather’s shoulders in 1953 at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, a monarch she came to know as “the fabric of Britain.” On Friday, Ms. Dudley, 78, a retired entrepreneur, was mourning the queen’s death along with a friend at a London cafe. “This country is in such terrible state, she was the one stability,” Ms Dudley said. “Now she, too, has gone.” Chrissy Mash, 29, who was shopping for groceries in London’s Islington borough, had a much different reaction, though. “I am surprised by how unaffected I am,” she said. “The monarchy does not serve any purpose and if it does it is superseded by the damage of colonialism,” she said. “I don’t buy into the fanfare anymore, it’s an excruciating display of a violent past.” Signs of mourning and grief were on display in Britain’s capital on Friday as residents woke up for the first time in 70 years in a country in which Queen Elizabeth was no longer the monarch. Billboards and cinemas in the city’s main thoroughfares displayed tributes, events were canceled, and small talk about the queen kicked off first dates and business meetings. But while the death of Elizabeth was a unifying force for many, conversations with Londoners also revealed signs of a generational divide in which many younger people expressed indifference, if not hostility, to the complicated institution the queen represented. According to a YouGov poll taken in May, 74 percent of respondents 65 and older believe the monarchy is good for Britain, compared with 24 percent of 18-to-24 year olds. Some younger people expressed fatigue at yet another royal disruption after two years of many crises — including the coronavirus or the war in Ukraine. Others shared amused jokes about how the queen’s last public action was to appoint the Conservative Party leader, Liz Truss, as prime minister this week. Signs of mourning and grief were on display in Britain’s capital on Friday as residents woke up for the first time in 70 years in a country in which Queen Elizabeth was no longer the monarch. Billboards and cinemas in the city’s main thoroughfares displayed tributes, events were canceled, and small talk about the queen kicked off first dates and business meetings. But while the death of Elizabeth was a unifying force for many, conversations with Londoners also revealed signs of a generational divide in which many younger people expressed indifference, if not hostility, to the complicated institution the queen represented. According to a YouGov poll taken in May, 74 percent of respondents 65 and older believe the monarchy is good for Britain, compared with 24 percent of 18-to-24 year olds. Some younger people expressed fatigue at yet another royal disruption after two years of many crises — including the coronavirus or the war in Ukraine. Others shared amused jokes about how the queen’s last public action was to appoint the Conservative Party leader, Liz Truss, as prime minister this week. Many people from older generations could be seen wearing black as a sign of mourning, or rushing to buy newspapers dominated by the monarch’s picture, and some recalled memories of a queen who has been for so long part of their lives. Sitting in front of a candlelit photo of Elizabeth in London’s St James’ Church, Angela Kennedy, 71, a retired fashion journalist, said she struggled to cope with the loss of the queen, whom she had met and long admired. “It’s very hard to take it in,” she said. “It’s truly the end of an era.” Ms. Kennedy recalled how the queen had visited the media organization she worked for in the late 1970s. She said that while Elizabeth appeared more interested in magazines like Horse and Hound than fashion publications, she still gave the staff her time, looking “immaculate” for the visit. “She represented a figurehead that was truly British,” she said, adding that she felt fortunate to live in a country with a monarchy like Britain’s. “I have just grown up with it, it’s just part of my life.” Sitting in front of a candlelit photo of Elizabeth in London’s St James’ Church, Angela Kennedy, 71, a retired fashion journalist, said she struggled to cope with the loss of the queen, whom she had met and long admired. “It’s very hard to take it in,” she said. “It’s truly the end of an era.” Ms. Kennedy recalled how the queen had visited the media organization she worked for in the late 1970s. She said that while Elizabeth appeared more interested in magazines like Horse and Hound than fashion publications, she still gave the staff her time, looking “immaculate” for the visit. “She represented a figurehead that was truly British,” she said, adding that she felt fortunate to live in a country with a monarchy like Britain’s. “I have just grown up with it, it’s just part of my life.” That sentiment will likely be expressed at memorials being held for Elizabeth over the next 10 days, culminating in a funeral expected to take place at Westminster Abbey. Outside St. Paul’s Cathedral on Friday, crowds gathered as a bell rang out at midday, once for each of Elizabeth’s 96 years, as they did at churches across the country. At the gates of Buckingham Palace, people laid flowers — among them the newly ascended King Charles III — and gun salutes honored the queen’s life. Fashion shows were canceled, as were labor union meetings, carnivals and protests. Elizabeth Hastings, 69, who was named after the queen, was holding a newspaper with a picture of the monarch plastered across the front page as she walked to a yoga class. “I was born in 1953, the year of the coronation,” she said, “I have been brought up with her reigning and I have read so much about her growing up,” she said. Ms. Hastings said she met the queen in the 1970s when she worked at the foreign office in London, and she remembered her beautiful skin. “Like a doll,” she said admiringly. “It’s a really sad day,” she added. Dave Stanley, 78, a retired butcher, was walking his German shepherd in London in between the rain showers that intermittently washed over the capital on Friday. “I am choked,” he said. “I was a kid when she was crowned; now she is dead. It’s an end of an era. I can’t explain it. I have known her all my life. And now she’s gone.” Felix Clarke, 31, a manager at a coworking space in central London, stood at his counter seemingly unaffected by the news of the queen’s death. e said that while every death was sad, he saw the royal family as an institution “founded on a colonial and racist past.” Earlier in the day, his mother and sister had shared their sadness with texts on their family’s WhatsApp group, but Mr. Clarke refrained from adding his own thoughts. “I didn’t want to jump in and be rude,” he said...
Wednesday, September 7, 2022
Michael Shellenbarger
Take Liz's advice:
Read every word of this thread to understand exactly how the leftist politicians like Newsom are lying to you about the CA heat wave & electric vehicles. https://t.co/ncw0xZizbk
— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) September 7, 2022
The Honest Guide to College
It's Lee Burdette Williams, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "College students' mental health is suffering. Downplaying challenges of living away from home for the first time won’t make it any better":
About three million first-time college students will soon be arriving on campus—most of them coming directly from high school. About one million of them won’t make it through their first year or return as sophomores. This attrition is financially and emotionally devastating for families, and destabilizing for colleges. What goes wrong for so many students? And how can we stop the bleeding? Financial challenges account for the largest chunk of these departures. But many others leave because the support services they and their parents feel they have been promised are often impossible for colleges and universities to provide. The number of students with mental health challenges has been rising for years—around 44 percent of all college students report symptoms of depression and anxiety. The rate of students taking psychiatric medication doubled between 2007 and 2019, and is now at 25 percent. But what concerns my colleagues and me is the growing expectation among parents and students that college administrators are there not to guide young people, whatever their challenges, in mastering the tasks of adulthood, but to spare young people from them. There are only about nine weeks between high school graduation and a student’s arrival on campus. That is very little time to prepare a teenager for the necessary shift from life under a parent’s management to (semi-) independent living. In as little as four weeks after classes begin, a first-year student who is unable to make that transition can end up unable to recover academically. I have spent my career working with college students from enrollment through commencement. As a dean of students—at the University of Connecticut, and later at Wheaton College—I talked with numerous parents who were startled to discover that their child had not been attending class, had not been turning in assignments, maybe hadn’t bathed in days. The parents had expected more supervision; we had expected more personal accountability. Caught in that gap was a student about to lose a semester of academic credit and thousands of dollars of wasted tuition and housing fees, often covered by loans that still had to be paid back. Here is my advice for students and their parents—as well as my colleagues in higher education—on ways to help make sure students are ready for college...
As California Heat Wave Continues, Santa Monica Community College Loses Air Conditioning (VIDEO)
I've been teaching this week and it's been perfectly comfortable in my classroom. But there but the grace of God I go, it turns out.
This heat wave is devilish. It's not just Santa Monica, of course.
At the Los Angeles Times, "PG&E warns over 500,000 customers of possible rotating outages as California heat wave drags on."
And at CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
Eliza Fletcher Murder: Memphis Kidnapping Suspect Cleotha Abston Held Without Bond (VIDEO)
This is a must-watched segment with Tucker Carson below.
An at Fox News, "Eliza Fletcher was jogging in the early morning when she was abducted. Memphis police announce they have located and positively identified Eliza Fletcher's body."
Monday, September 5, 2022
Bryan Caplan, The Case against Education
This is excellent.
At Amazon, Bryan Caplan, The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money.
How Many Books Actually Sell?
See Lincoln Michael, "No, Most Books Don't Sell Only a Dozen Copies: A little post on why publishing statistics are so confusing":
OMG In the Penguin Random House/S&S antitrust trial it was revealed that out of 58,000 trade titles published per year, half of those titles sell fewer than one dozen books. LESS THAN ONE DOZEN.
— April Henry (@aprilhenrybooks) September 4, 2022
One thing the PRH/SS merger trial revealed is that publishing has a lot of problems. This is very true! At the same time, many of the problems seem to have mutated into unbelievable chimeras as they made their way around the discourse. Today, for example, much of the literary internet was debating a claim that 50% of books published sell fewer than 12 books. This claim took off with the usual suspects—conservative pundits claiming publishing is too “woke” and self-publishing evangelicals saying every author would make a fortune if they ditched traditional publishing—but the publishing professionals I know said this claim is very fishy. (I’m pretty sure publishers would go out of business if 50% of their books sold less than 12 copies!) So this statistic isn’t true. Or at least it isn’t true in the way you might think. But publishing statistics are often not what you think. This extreme 12 copies claim joins a couple others that have gone around the internet recently: “98 percent of books sell fewer than 5,000 copies.” “90 percent sell fewer than 2,000 copies” “Most books sell fewer than 99 copies.” Etc. Are all of these true? None of them? Part of the problem with evaluating claims of “most published books sell [X] copies” is that it—[apologies for the Derrida voice]—it all depends on what you mean by “book,” “published,” and “sell.” No, I’m not playing postmodern games here. It really is confusing. What’s “a book”? The Platonic ideal of a book might be a collection of text printed on a few hundred paper pages. But the term encompasses much more than that, including books that have almost no text at all (for example the “adult coloring book” craze of the 2010s). Publishers publish novels and memoirs as well as cookbooks, puzzle books, Mad Libs, etc. But it’s even more confusing than this when it comes to those statistics. Last year, Orbit published my debut novel The Body Scout. I wrote one novel, so published one book. Right? Not exactly. From a sales tracking perspective, books are published in multiple formats, each with different ISBNs. I wrote one novel, but from a title count POV I actually published 4 books: hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook. Other books have even more formats (mass market version, movie tie-in editions, etc.) and because they all have different ISBNs, they all have different sales figures. When it comes to classics that are in the public domain, like Pride and Prejudice or Shakespeare, there can be literally hundreds of editions in existence (put out by various publishers) each of which could be counted separately. What’s “published”? A published book can refer to a newly written and released book—aka frontlist, or a novel published for the first time in 2022—or it can refer to anything a publisher puts out in a given year, including a reissue of an existing book. But sometimes “published” means any book that exists in any format available for purchase. A hundred-year-old novel that no longer can be found bookstore shelves yet sits in cardboard box in the back of a warehouse somewhere is “a published book.” Some books are never published in print at all and exist only as ebooks and/or audiobooks. And many books exist in “print on demand” form in which a physical copy doesn’t exist until someone purchases it. In the old days, books would go out of print when people stopped buying them. But in the modern digital age books can exist “in print” for forever. It’s also worth pointing out here that publishers range from tiny micropresses run as a hobby in someone’s garage to multi-billion dollar companies. If you’re counting books by ISBNs, this would also include many self-published books. What’s “a sale”? When people reference book sales, they’re typically talking using Nielsen’s BookScan numbers. Think of BookScan as the book industry version of Nielsen TV ratings. Briefly, BookScan is a “point of sale” tracking system that counts the number of print copies sold at participating retail locations. BookScan allegedly tracks about 75% of retail sales including lots of indie bookstores as well as Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Walmart. It’s a fine tool for what it is, but from a data perspective it’s only partial. I already mentioned the issue with multiple formats above. BookScan also only tracks print so doesn’t include audiobooks or ebooks. (There is a Nielsen ebook estimator, but it’s rarely included in these statistics. And ebook sales are tricky since prices fluctuate wildly.) Even restricting ourselves to print books, BookScan misses plenty. Sales to libraries, for example, can be a significant portion of a book’s sales. Many small press and self-published authors might sell directly via an author’s website or in-person events. And so on. Additionally, there are dramatic differences between 1) lifetime sales, 2) sales in the first 12 months after publication, and 3) sales in any random calendar year. Most books sell most of their copies in the first year or two after publication. Some books are perennial sellers and others might break out later—e.g., when there is a TV or film adaptation—but most sell the bulk of their copies early. Any statistic based on 3) is going to give you a completely inaccurate impression of what a book has sold. Imagine a 1998 novel that sold 6,000 its first year and 10,000 copies to date. It might sell only 12 copies in 2022, decades later, but that hardly means it was a failure. Okay, so what does all the above mean? Mostly it means these statistics are completely meaningless unless we know what’s being included. Are you counting lifetime sales or one year’s sales? One year’s sales for frontlist titles or backlist titles? Only Big 5 books or anything with an ISBN? Take the statistic that most published books only sell 99 copies. This seems shocking on its face. But if you dig into it, you’ll notice it was counting one year’s sales of all books that were in BookScan’s system. That’s quite different statistic than saying most books don’t sell 100 copies in total! A book could easily be a bestseller in, say, 1960 and sell only a trickle of copies today. In the same way, most old movies and albums aren’t frequently watched/listened to in 2022. It’s only a small percentage of past works that remain popular. Most backlist books selling fewer than 99 copies doesn’t tell you anything about how much newly released books sell. (If you’re wondering—as people did on Twitter—why publishers keep books in print that don’t sell, remember that a book being in print doesn’t mean a publisher is actively spending lots of money on the title. It doesn’t break the bank to keep one box in the corner of a warehouse. And as I noted above a book can be “in print” these days and exist only in a digital form or awaiting “print on demand.”) In terms of the dozen copies statistic, I can’t evaluate it because it is unclear what it’s referring to. Fifty-eight thousand books is more books than PRH publishes in a given year, but far less than their entire backlist. Is 58k all new books published with an ISBN, including self-published books? Is it something else? I really don’t know and none of the publishing professionals I follow seem to know either. (Editing to add: Jane Friedman, who posted this number originally on Instagram, noted there was no source given in testimony. Friedman gives her own guess in the comments.) In my experience, and with the data I’ve seen, most traditionally published novels that you see on bookstore shelves or reviewed in newspapers sell several hundred to a few thousand copies across formats. Many sell much more of course. I’ve seen some flops that sold only a couple hundred. And of course not all traditionally published novels appear in bookstores or reviewed in newspapers. Is it possible someone has published a Big 5 novel that sold only 12 copies over its lifetime? I suppose. But I don’t think it’s 5% much less 50%! ...
Still more.
Father Leaves Baby Kyler Parrott, 1-Year-Old, in Hot Car, Where Temperatures Inside the Vehicle Likely Hit 130 Degrees (VIDEO)
This makes me cry.
Baby Kyler's obituary is here.
At ABC News 5 Cleveland, "Father, 19, charged with murder after allegedly confessing to leaving 1-year-old son in hot car deliberately."
And at the New York Post, "Ohio dad, 19, admits he left his infant son to die in 130-degree car":An Ohio dad reportedly confessed to leaving his baby son to die in a blazing-hot car as outside temperatures soared, after initially claiming the 14-month-old was alone just briefly. Landon Parrott, 19 — who first said he’d left the infant alone during a short bathroom trip — allegedly copped to the heinous move after cops showed footage of him leaving the boy in the car at 8:30 a.m. and not returning until 1:50 p.m., more than five hours later. “The child passed away after being left in the car unattended for approximately 5 hours, with an outside temperature of 87 degrees,” New Philadelphia Police Chief Michael Goodwin said in a statement posted on Facebook. “It appears that this was not a matter of forgetting the child but was a deliberate act so as the child would not be a disturbance while in the house.” Temperatures reached into the upper 80s on Thursday when the incident occurred. Police official Ty Norris told Fox affiliate WJW the car was likely as hot as 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Norris said Parrott had admitted to cops he knew about the dangers of hot cars for kids. “We estimate that would’ve made the interior of the car about 130 degrees and this child was in there strapped into a car seat with no fluids, no air conditioning, nothing,” Norris told the station. “It’s heartbreaking to see this unfold before your eyes.” Parrott has been charged with murder, involuntary manslaughter and two counts of endangering children, police said. He is being held in custody on $250,000 bond...
China's Economy Won’t Overtake the U.S., Some Now Predict
I've long been bearish on the China challenge. China has grown, dramatically, and the hype has grown right up along with it. All we can do is "prepare for the worst but hope for the best."
HONG KONG—The sharp slowdown in China’s growth in the past year is prompting many experts to reconsider when China will surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest economy—or even if it ever will. Until recently, many economists assumed China’s gross domestic product measured in U.S. dollars would surpass that of the U.S. by the end of the decade, capping what many consider to be the most extraordinary economic ascent ever. But the outlook for China’s economy has darkened this year, as Beijing-led policies—including its zero tolerance for Covid-19 and efforts to rein in real-estate speculation—have sapped growth. As economists pare back their forecasts for 2022, they have become more worried about China’s longer term prospects, with unfavorable demographics and high debt levels potentially weighing on any rebound. In one of the most recent revisions, the Centre for Economics and Business Research, a U.K. think tank, thinks China will overtake the U.S. as the world’s biggest economy two years later than it previously expected when it last made a forecast in 2020. It now thinks it will happen in 2030. The Japan Center for Economic Research in Tokyo has said it thinks the passing of the baton won’t happen until 2033, four years later than its previous forecast. Other economists question whether China will ever claim the top spot. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said China’s aging population and Beijing’s increasing tendency to intervene in corporate affairs, along with other challenges, have led him to substantially lower his expectations for Chinese growth. He sees parallels between forecasts of China’s rise and earlier prognostications that Japan or Russia would overtake the U.S.—predictions that look ridiculous today, he said. “I think there is a real possibility that something similar would happen with respect to China,” said Mr. Summers, now a Harvard University professor. Researchers debate how meaningful GDP rankings are, and question whether much will change if China does overtake the U.S. The depth and openness of the U.S. economy mean the U.S. will still have outsize influence. The dollar is expected to remain the world’s reserve currency for years to come. Size alone doesn’t reflect the quality of growth, said Leland Miller, chief executive officer of China Beige Book, a research firm. Living standards in the U.S., measured by per capita gross domestic product, are five times greater than in China, and the gap is unlikely to close soon. Still, a change in the ranking would be a propaganda win for Beijing as it seeks to show the world—and its own population—that China’s state-led model is superior to Western liberal democracy, and that the U.S. is declining both politically and economically. Over time, it could lead to more-substantive changes as more countries reorient their economies to serve Chinese markets. “If China slows down substantially in its growth, it impacts China’s capacity to project power,” said Mr. Summers. How the two countries stack up economically matters to Chinese leaders: After the U.S. economy grew faster than China’s during the last quarter of 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping told officials to ensure the country’s growth outpaces the U.S.’s this year, the Journal previously reported. Economic fortunes can reverse quickly. In 2020, when China bounced back faster than the U.S. did from initial Covid-19 outbreaks, it looked like China’s economy might surpass the U.S. sooner than expected. Some economists appear less perturbed by near-term threats to China’s growth. Justin Yifu Lin, a former chief economist at the World Bank who has long been bullish on China’s potential, argues its larger population means the country’s economy will wind up twice as big as the U.S.’s eventually. At a forum in Beijing in May, he predicted that process would continue despite the country’s latest slowdown. Nevertheless, economic problems keep piling up in China, in part because of policy choices Beijing has made to contain Covid-19 and rein in debt. The country’s real-estate slowdown is showing no signs of letting up. An index tracking consumer confidence plunged to its lowest level in decades in spring this year. Urban youth unemployment is at a record high. The Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank, noted in a March report that it expects Chinese growth to average only about 2% to 3% a year between 2021 and 2050, compared with some researchers’ expectations that China could maintain 4% to 5% growth until midcentury. The institute cited unfavorable demographics, diminishing returns from infrastructure investments and other challenges. With growth of 2% to 3% a year, China could still become the world’s largest economy, the institute noted. “But it would never establish a meaningful lead over the United States and would remain far less prosperous and productive per person than America, even by mid-century,” it wrote. Its growth also wouldn’t be enough to give it any significant competitive advantage. In a response to questions, the Lowy Institute said China’s further economic slowdown since the report came out has “at minimum pushed back the likely moment when China might overtake the U.S., and made it more likely that China might in fact never be able to do so.” With China’s urban youth unemployment at a high, a job fair was held in Beijing last month. Measured by purchasing power, which takes into account differing costs of goods and services across countries, China already overtook the U.S.’s economy in 2016, according to World Bank figures. Measured in U.S. dollar terms, however, China’s GDP was 77% of the size of the U.S’s. in 2021, up from 13% in 2001, data from the World Bank shows. Capital Economics researchers wrote in a report early last year that their most likely scenario envisions China’s economy expanding to about 87% of the size of the U.S.’s in 2030, before dropping back to 81% in 2050. It blamed China’s shrinking working population and weak productivity growth, among other factors. “A lot of people for a long time have overestimated the competence of China’s leadership and have been shocked by the missteps with Covid and the property sector,” wrote Mark Williams, the firm’s chief Asia economist, in an email in which he reaffirmed his firm’s forecast. “The weakness these crises have revealed have been present and growing for a long time.” Some researchers say China’s ability to overtake the U.S. will depend on whether it pursues more economic policy changes...
Sea Power Makes Great Powers
At Foreign Policy, "History reveals a country’s rise and decline are directly related to the heft of its navy. So why is the United States intent on downsizing?":
THE NUMBER OF SHIPS A COUNTRY POSSESSES has never been the sole measure of its power at sea. Other factors, of course, play a role: The types of ships it has--submarines, aircraft carriers, destroyers--the manner in which they are deployed, the sophistication of their sensors, and the range and lethality of their weapons all make a difference. Still, on the high seas, quantity has a quality all its own. And over the past several decades, U.S. ship numbers have seen a dramatic overall decline. The 1980s and 1990s marked the beginning of this downward trend. The U.S. government at the time cut subsidies for the nation's commercial shipbuilding industry, eventually hobbling the shipyards it would need to build a bigger fleet. With the end of the Cold War, policymakers went a step further, slashing funding to the U.S. Navy to create a shortsighted peace dividend. Now, with defense budgets flat or declining, leading Defense Department officials are pushing a "divest to invest" strategy--whereby the Navy must decommission a large number of older ships to free up funds to buy fewer, more sophisticated, and presumably more lethal platforms. China, meanwhile, is aggressively expanding its naval footprint and is estimated to have the largest fleet in the world. Leading voices simultaneously recognize the rising China threat while also arguing that the United States must shrink its present fleet in order to modernize. Adm. Philip Davidson, who led U.S. Indo-Pacific Command until he retired this spring, observed in March that China could invade Taiwan in the next six years--presumably setting the stage for a major military showdown with the United States--while Adm. Michael Gilday, the chief of naval operations, has argued that the Navy needs to accelerate the decommissioning of its older cruisers and littoral combat ships to free up money for vessels and weapons that will be critical in the future. Taken together, these views add up to strategic confusion and an obliviousness to history. CENTURIES OF GLOBAL RIVALRY SHOW how a country's power--and its decline--is directly related to the size and capability of its naval and maritime forces. The ability to ship goods in bulk from places where they are produced to places where they are scarce has long represented an expression of national power. Athens had a robust navy as well as a large merchant fleet. Carthage in the third century B.C., Venice in the 13th and 14th centuries, and the Dutch republic in the 16th and 17th centuries also fielded merchant and naval fleets to pursue and protect their interests. In this way, they were able to transform their small- and medium-sized nations into great powers. Following the Napoleonic wars in the early 19th century, a large Royal Navy effectively knitted together the British Empire upon which "the sun never set." By the latter half of that century, the British maintained a "two-power standard," whereby the size of the Royal Navy had to meet or exceed the next two navies combined. That ultimately proved unsustainable. It was the doubling of the U.S. Navy battle force under President Theodore Roosevelt that catapulted the United States to global power and prominence. Most historians view the 14-month world cruise of new U.S. battleships--Roosevelt's Great White Fleet--as the birth of what would come to be known as the American Century. The dramatic expansion of the U.S. fleet through two world wars--finishing the later conflict with more than 6,000 vessels, by far the largest navy ever afloat--set the country on its superpower path. Finally, Ronald Reagan's 600-ship Navy, as much a public relations campaign as it was a shipbuilding plan, helped convince the Soviet Union that it would not win the Cold War. Throughout history, large naval and merchant fleets represented not just a power multiplier but an exponential growth factor in terms of national influence. All historical sea powers recognized this--until they didn't. IN OCTOBER 1904, ADM. JOHN "JACKIE" FISHER Was appointed first sea lord of the Royal Navy. He arrived in office certain who the enemy was--Germany--but also with clear direction from civilian leadership to tighten his belt and accept declining naval budgets. Fisher's solution to this strategic dilemma was to dramatically shrink the fleet in order to pay for modernization while also concentrating the remaining ships closer to Great Britain. His investments in modernization were breathtaking--most notably the introduction of a steam-turbine, all-big-gun battleship, the HMS Dreadnought, which would lend its name to all subsequent battleships that followed, transforming global naval competition. But Fisher paid for his modernized vessels by massively culling the 600-ship Royal Navy he inherited from his predecessor. "With one courageous stroke of the pen," then Prime Minister Arthur Balfour approvingly stated, Fisher slashed 154 ships from the Royal Navy's active list. Fisher classified some of these ships as "sheep," which were sent to the slaughter in the breakers' yards; others as "llamas," downgraded but retained in the reserves; and still others as "goats," which retained their guns with the stipulation that no further maintenance funds would be allocated to them. The cull, however, wasn't cost-free. Most of the cuts were taken from gunboats and cruisers assigned to nine distant stations where Britain had national interests, such as in Asia or Africa. The cuts generated great criticism not only from within the Royal Navy, which was manned by officers with long experience and strong views regarding the importance of a naval presence overseas, but also from the British Colonial and Foreign Offices, which instantly recognized that they would no longer be able to call on readily available Royal Navy ships to support the nation's diplomatic interests. Ultimately, Fisher did modernize his fleet in the short term. Both the Dreadnought class battleships as well as their consorts, the smaller Invincible-class battle cruisers, rendered all previous designs instantly obsolete. What Fisher did not anticipate was that his contraction and modernization of the Royal Navy would create two simultaneous effects: It destabilized the international environment, and it triggered a global naval arms race. Britain had already been under pressure in the Far East and had asked Japan for assistance protecting its interests there, but now it found itself without a fleet of sufficient size to defend its interests in other geostrategic locations like the Caribbean and Africa. It had to trust a new partner, the United States, to take on that job. The only alternative would have been for Britain to simply forgo its colonial interests in order to focus on what it viewed as the preponderant German threat in the Baltic, North Sea, and northern Atlantic Ocean. There were other knock-on effects. Flaving surrendered its dominant lead in overall ship numbers, Britain found itself in a new naval arms race in which its previous, sunkcost investments in older ships offered no benefit. To its dismay, Britain began this new arms race from nearly the same position as its geostrategic rivals. Soon every European power, as well as the United States and Japan, was building modern dreadnoughts, and Fisher and his navy were unable to maintain or reestablish their previous two-power standard. Today, Fisher's strategy would be recognized as a divest-to-invest modernization plan. And the lesson is clear: Britain found that it was unable to preserve even the facade of being a global power; it was quickly reduced to being a regional maritime power on the periphery of Europe. The ensuing conditions of international instability, shifting alliance structures, and the global arms race contributed to the outbreak of World War I and the end of empires, including Britain's. THE UNITED STATES CURRENTLY FACES many of the same strategic challenges that Britain confronted just over a century ago. Much as the Balfour ministry faced strategic strain from the distant Boer War--as well as expanding domestic social instability and the rise of Germany--the United States is dealing with the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, domestic civil unrest, and a rising China. Additionally, the White House Office of Management and Budget has attempted to impose on the Defense Department similar fiscal strictures to those that Balfour levied on Fisher's Admiralty: flat to declining budgets and demands to be more efficient. As a result, the Pentagon has made the decision to cut back on its shipbuilding plans, starting construction of only eight new ships in the next year, half of them auxiliaries, while accelerating the decommissioning of seven cruisers, dropping the fleet to an estimated 294 ships. Congress has indicated that it will seek to expand these numbers, but the future is increasingly murky. Given that even the most capable ship can only be in one place at a time and that the world's oceans are vast, the fleet as planned will not meet the demand for a naval presence detailed by the various four-star regional combatant commanders around the world. On average, their requests equate to approximately 130 ships at sea on any given day, nearly half of the present fleet. Today the Navy deploys, on average, fewer than 90 ships per day, creating gaps in key regions where America's interests are not being upheld. The Navy previously sought efficiencies that would allow it to "do more with less," by curbing training or the time ships spent in maintenance. The result, however, was an uptick in serious accidents at sea and a decline in the material readiness of the battle fleet. Still, the overarching U.S. naval strategy, stated repeatedly by defense leaders during this spring's round of congressional hearings, is to "divest" of older platforms in order to "invest" in newer platforms that, although fewer in number, would possess a qualitative edge over those fielded by competitors. As history reveals, this strategy will produce a fleet too small to protect the United States' global interests or win its wars. Ultimately, the U.S. shipbuilding base and repair yards will atrophy to a point where they will not be able to meet the demand for new ships nor provide repairs when war almost inevitably comes. TO AVOID THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST, Congress Should follow its constitutional charge in Article 1 and allocate funds sufficient to both provide for a newer, more modern fleet in the long run and to maintain the Navy that it has today as a hedge against the real and proximate threat from China. Such an allocation requires a 3 to 5 percent annual increase in the Navy's budget for the foreseeable future, as was recommended by the bipartisan 2018 National Defense Strategy Commission. Both steps are crucial. Weapons like hypersonic missiles and directed energy mounts like the much-hyped railgun are changing the face of warfare, although not its nature, and the United States must invest to keep up with its competitors in China and Russia, which are already fielding some of these systems in large numbers. However, the Navy, as the day-to-day patroller facing these two rival great powers, cannot shrink the size of its battle force. As both Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt and later Ronald Reagan all understood: Great powers possess large, robust, and resilient navies. Conversely, shrinking fleets historically suggest nations that are overstretched, overtasked, and in retreat. Such revelations invite expansion and challenge from would-be rivals. To meet the demands of the current strategic environment, the U.S. Navy must grow--and quickly. Not even a fleet of355 ships, the number advanced by the Obama administration in its closing days, will be sufficient to reestablish conventional deterrence on the high seas. Instead, the United States should seek a fleet of456 ships, comprising a balance between high-end, high-tech ships such as nuclear attack submarines and low-end, cheaper small surface combatants that can be added to numbers quickly. It should also seek to extend the lives of the ships it has now in its inventory to cover the short-term threat. The United States can do this by scheduling these ships for service life extensions of their hulls and power plants and for modernization of their combat systems and associated sensors within the constellation of the nation's civilian ship repair yards...
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