By Global Public Square staff
There's a powerful new voice calling for smaller and more market-friendly government. If you think it's a second coming of the Tea Party, you would be wrong. In fact, this call doesn't come from America at all. It comes from half-way around the world, from...the Communist Party of China.
Last week, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang made an unusually bold speech – rare for a Chinese leader. He said his government would loosen control of the economy and allow free market forces to blossom. A few days later, he made another speech, this time in Berlin. There, Li backed an ambitious set of specific proposals that included giving foreign companies the chance to compete on equal terms in China. This, in a country where the state controls – and manipulates – almost every major industry: finance, transport, energy, and communication.
By Fareed Zakaria
In Britain as in much of Europe, the debate about austerity rages on. Last week, the IMF actually urged the British government to delay its plans to cut spending and raise taxes, and instead to borrow and spend money on infrastructure. I think the data now is increasingly convincing that the Keynesians have been right: cutting spending in the kind of recession we have gone through will only hurt growth not help it.
Since I have been long advocating large investments in areas like infrastructure, job-training, and science, I’m delighted.
And yet, it's too soon to celebrate. Because spending on its own is not enough either. In order to ensure sustained growth in the long run, countries also need to engage in what economists call structural reforms – lowering tariffs, opening up protected industries, making it easier for new businesses to start-up, streamlining regulations.
By Global Public Square staff
The latest numbers show slow growth in the United States. That's bad for jobs, income – it's even bad for those worried about the deficit because it means lower tax revenues. And it has prompted a revival of the partisan debate about what to do about it.
Well, there's one idea out there that could have support from both parties. A study out last week suggests there is one very simple way to increase tax revenue, expand GDP, and create jobs – all at the same time. What's more, Congress is already weighing it: it's called immigration reform.
How and why? Well, a new paper from the left-leaning Center for American Progress actually calculates the economic impact of immigration reform. Take a look.
For more What in the World, watch GPS, Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN
By Global Public Square staff
Watching countries from around the world grow and prosper, we tend to assume that global poverty is falling. And in fact, the World Bank says that in 1981 nearly half of the world's citizens were impoverished, that is, they lived on less than $1.25 a day. And today, less than a fifth of the world's population lives in poverty. In raw numbers, that translates to a 40 percent drop from about 2 billion to 1.2 billion people.
But when we dig deeper, it’s clear the picture is more murky. Put simply, most of the reduction in global poverty has to do with one country – China. Take it out of the equation and the numbers look very different.
Let's go back to 1981. Back then, China accounted for 43 percent of the world's poor. The other major contributors were South Asia, with 29 percent, and sub-Saharan Africa, with 11 percent. Fast forward just a decade, and you'll see that China's share of the world's poor began to drop. The trend continues through the 2000s. By 2010, China accounted for only 13 percent of the world's impoverished population. South Asia's share had jumped to 42 percent, while sub-Saharan Africa's share tripled, to 34 percent.
By Global Pubic Square staff
We've been watching one of the world's key economic indices collapse. It dropped 13 percent in two days. Over the last two years, it's down 20 percent. And here's the strangest part – this might be very good news for the global economy.
What is it that has been falling? Gold. For much of the last decade, the whole world has been on a gilded shopping spree. Hedge funds poured money into it; Indians and Chinese hoarded it; you could even find ATMs dispensing gold. To give you a sense of the hysteria, consider that if you had invested about $100 in gold in 2001, it would be worth $700 in 2011 – a seven-fold increase, a stunning return.
So: why the sell off last week – and what does it mean?
By Global Public Square staff
As the Supreme Court ponders the legality of gay marriage in the United States, everyone is talking about the political divide, where twice as many Democrats support gay marriage as Republicans. The more influential divide is actually not a simple left or right...it's age.
A chart from the Pew Research Center shows that of Americans born in the 1930's and '40s (known as the "Silent Generation") only 31 percent favor same-sex marriage. But amongst baby boomers, the number rises to 38 percent. It gets still higher for the middle-aged "Generation X", at about 49 percent. For the Millennials, those born in 1981 or later: 70 percent support gay marriage. Some other polls put that number even higher, rising to 80 percent.
Millennials are an important constituency, representing about a fifth of this country's voting-age population. Obviously, they are going to be around longer than anyone else, so you want to have them on your side.
By Global Public Square staff
China's rivers have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. First they found thousands of dead pigs in one river. Then they found hundreds of dead ducks in another. And now, entire rivers are going missing. Thousands of them in fact. A new survey has found that China has 28,000 fewer rivers than previously thought. They've been built-upon, overused, and drying up. The study comes from no less an authority than China's Ministry of Water Resources and the National Bureau of Statistics.
Something else has also gone missing in China: clean air. A study out last week shows how air pollution in China led to 1.2 million premature deaths in 2010. A separate study by China's Academy of Environmental Planning found that in the same year, 2010, environmental degradation cost the country $230 billion dollars.
By Global Public Square staff
It's not every day you see Russia's Vladimir Putin receiving a bear hug from a Frenchman, but the actor, Gerard Depardieu is no ordinary Frenchman. In fact, he may not even remain French for very long in some sense.
You see, Depardieu has been threatening to give up his French passport, especially now that Putin has handed him a brand new Russian one. But why on Earth would he or anyone, for that matter, want to leave France? Think of the food, the wine, Paris, the countryside. Well, for Depardieu, it comes down to taxes.
Under President Francois Hollande, France has been weighing a proposal for a 70 percent marginal tax rate on millionaires. Russia, on the other hand, offers a flat, 13 percent tax.
This article was originally posted last month. It is being reposted today, World Water Day. For more What in the World, watch GPS on Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET.
By Global Public Square staff
Imagine a large body of water – about the size of the Dead Sea – simply disappearing. It sounds like a science fiction movie. But it’s not. It’s happening in real life – and we've only just found out.
A pioneering study from NASA and the University of California Irvine shows how the Middle East is losing its fresh water reserves. As you can see from the satellite imagery in the video, we’re going from blues and greens, to yellows and reds: that’s 144 cubic kilometers of lost water between 2003 and 2009. What do we mean by “lost water”? Most of it comes from below the Earth’s surface, from water trapped in rocks. In times of drought, we tend to drill for water by constructing wells and pumps. But the Earth has a finite supply. NASA’s scientists say pumping for water is the equivalent of using up your bank savings. And that bank account is dwindling.
This could have serious implications. Conflicts over water are as old as the story of Noah – in 3,000 BC. The Pacific Institute lists 225 such conflicts through history. What’s fascinating is that nearly half of those conflicts took place in the last two decades. Are we going to see a new era of wars fought over water?
For more What in the World, watch GPS on Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET
By Global Public Square staff
A curious phenomenon is unfolding in China. Hundreds of couples are rushing to marriage bureaus across the country. Perhaps the first signs of spring are bringing on a sudden impulse for romance?
No, it's the opposite. These couples are filing for divorce. In each case, a husband and wife mutually agrees to quick separation, no arguing, no quibbling over money or assets. How? Why? Well, actually, it was about money and assets. A vast majority of these couples are getting divorced so they can avoid a new Chinese tax.
Beijing recently decided to impose a 20 percent capital gains fee on sales of second homes. So the theory goes, if you have two homes and you get divorced, you can register each home under separate names. Then, if you see one of those homes, you escape the new tax and, then, perhaps you can get remarried. The bizarre exploitation of this loophole tells a larger story.
FULL POST
For more What in the World, watch GPS on Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET.
By Global Public Square staff
This year, Oscar-nominated movies had a strong tie to real geopolitical events – and they’ve got everyone watching and talking.
Zero Dark Thirty was all about the race to catch Osama bin Laden, and senators and CIA directors have all weighed in on the movie. Argo told the story of six American diplomats who managed to escape Iran at the height of the 1979 hostage crisis, and Michelle Obama presented it with the Best Picture prize.
But there is a major leader who says he has no interest in watching an Oscar-nominated movie about his own country. We will get to the world leader in a moment, but, first, the movie.
Why have parts of Greece been covered in smog?
The smog is said to be not from cars or coal plants, but from the smoke from wood stoves and fireplaces. And it's not because the Greeks are curling up with a good book. It seems that there has been a massive switch off heating oil as many can no longer afford it to heat their homes. Bloomberg says heating oil prices have risen here 50 percent from 2011 to 2012, mainly due to the heavy taxes levied on. So the Greeks are turning to burning everything from furniture to chopped down trees, some illegally cut from protected forests.
According to the EPA, a fireplace emits more than 2,000 times the amount of fine particles that an oil furnace does. Surely, the environmental and health care costs from toxic clouds of smoke exceed the benefits of collecting high heating oil taxes, especially if the citizens are no longer buying it.
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