This morning's key headlines from
GenerationalDynamics.com
- China quadruples rice imports for no apparent reason
- Obamacare causes health insurance rates to surge
- 2013 versus 1913, the year before the start of the Great War
China quadruples rice imports for no apparent reason
Shoppers purchase discount rice at a supermarket in Chongqing (China Daily)
United Nations agricultural experts are reporting confusion, after
figures show that China imported 2.6 million tons of rice in 2012,
substantially more than a four-fold increase over the 575,000 tons
imported in 2011. The confusion stems from the fact that there is no
obvious reason for vastly increased imports, since there has been no
rice shortage in China. The speculation is that Chinese importers are
taking advantage of low international prices, but all that means is
that China's own vast supplies of domestically grown rice are being
stockpiled. Why would China suddenly be stockpiling millions of tons
of rice for no apparent reason? Perhaps it's related to China's
aggressive military buildup and war preparations in the Pacific and in
central Asia.
Heaven knows that I'm not a paranoid person, but it was just three
days ago that I reported that
Australians are running short of powdered milk formula because Chinese
tourists are visiting Australia, buying large quantities of the
formula in bulk, and taking it back to China. There's no apparent
reason for that, either. China Daily and Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal
Obamacare causes health insurance rates to surge
According to a study by the New York Times, as President Obama's first
term ends, health insurers in many states are demanding double-digit
rate increases, sometimes as high as 20-25%, because of higher medical
expenses resulting from Obamacare. President Obama promised in 2008
that Obamacare would “bring down premiums by $2,500 for the typical
family” by the end of his first term. According to Aetna, a supporter
of Obamacare, for people who are unlucky enough not to have subsidized
premiums, rates will rise 20-50% on the average, and some will see
100% increases. Young people will pay the most astronomical
increases, since they will be subsidizing the coverage of older
people. Young adults should expect to see premiums double under
Obamacare.
We are now seeing Obamacare's increasingly destructive effects on the
economy that I predicted when the law was first proposed. (See
"Obama's health plan, a proposal of economic insanity" from 2009)
Inflation rate following the imposition of wage-price controls on August 15, 1971 (econreview.com)
At that time, I wrote a detailed analysis comparing the Obamacare
proposal to what had previously been the most disastrous economy
policy in my lifetime -- President Nixon's wage-price controls. Nixon
imposed wage-price controls on August 15, 1971, in an effort to
control inflation which, at that time, was at 4% and falling. Instead
of controlling inflation, the wage-price controls caused enormous
economic distortions that cause inflation to spiral out of control.
The controls were a disaster, and were rescinded in 1974, as inflation
rates surged to an astronomical 12% level.
Now we see an even worse disaster in the making. Obamacare is
destroying the medical industry, pushing medical prices and insurance
prices through the roof. Lobbyists are flooding into Washington to
demand special favors, whether they're acupuncturists or chiropractors
or fertility specialists or medical device manufacturers, and the
groups that have contributed the most to the Obama's campaign will get
the most favorable treatment.
President Obama lives in Camelot, where you can pass a law that snow
may never slush upon the hillside or that insurance premiums won't
grow up. And let's not forget that it was only a few months ago that
President Obama was on the Tonight Show, bragging that he was unable to do eighth-grade math, which is
entirely believable.
Ohhhh, isn't it wonderful that all we have to do is pass a law, and we
can do anything we want. Let's pass a law to make alcohol illegal.
Oh wait, we tried that. Let's pass a law that makes women's salaries
the same as men. Oh wait, that is a law. Well, then let's pass a law
that says that men will get pregnant from now on, rather than women.
That makes as much sense as Obamacare.
Actually, there was one more economic policy in my lifetime
that's worth mentioning, and it was even worse than Obamacare.
It's Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward in China, starting
in 1958. Here's a summary:
- 500,000,000 million peasants were taken out of their
individual homes and put into communes, creating a massive human work
force. The workers were organized along military lines of companies,
battalions, and brigades. Each person's activities were rigidly
supervised.
- The family unit was dismantled. Communes were completely
segregated, with children, wives and husbands all living in separate
barracks and working in separate battalions. Communal living was
emphasized by eating, sleeping, and working in teams. Husbands and
wives were allowed to be alone only at certain times of the month and
only for brief periods. (This was also a birth control
technique.)
- All workers took part in ideological training sessions, to provide
for ideological training of the Chinese masses.
Like Obamacare and Nixon's wage-price controls, it was a disaster,
though worse than either of the others. The Chinese bureaucracy at
the regional levels lied about crop yields until it was too late, and
by the time the government figured out that there wasn't enough food,
many tens of thousands were forced to die of starvation.
New York Times and
Forbes
2013 versus 1913, the year before the start of the Great War
The world of 1913, a century ago, was an exciting place where life was
good. The world was dynamic, modern, interconnected, smart -- just
like ours. Radio telegraphy was being introduced, meaning that
information would speed around the world with no need for wires. And
with life so good in an interconnected world, it was thought that war
had become impossible.
On the other hand, a historically minded person might have seen things
differently. Particular themes recur throughout history -- human
greed, the manipulation of technology, the importance of geography in
determining military outcomes, the power of belief in shaping
politics, a solid conviction that this time is different. You thought
that the debt-fueled boom of the 2000s was different from all those
other booms throughout history? Wrong. The ancient Greeks, with their
understanding of greed, self-deception, hubris, and nemesis, would
have been quite able to interpret the 2008 financial crisis without
the need for an advanced degree in financial astrophysics from Harvard
Business School. In 1913, as in previous years, an international
exhibition was held to commemorate the advances of the world toward
greater integration -- held in Belgium this time, in a city that would
quake with the sound of artillery shells within a year. In 1913,
German Kaiser Wilhelm II was viewed by some as a peacemaker. World
War I, the Great War, changed everything. To take one example of how
things might change today, a miscalculation in the South China Sea
could easily set off a chain of events not entirely dissimilar to a
shot in Sarajevo in 1914, with alliance structures, questions of
prestige, escalation, credibility, and military capability turning
what should be marginal to global affairs into a central question of
war and peace. Charles Emmerson, Foreign Policy
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