Authoritarianism is at the same time China’s greatest strength and an innate weakness. If history is anything to go by, populism is here to stay. Nothing solves poverty better than solving poverty – a basic income can do this. But if an Ishigurian dystopia is to be avoided, this income must come with a job. Loss of smell is a more important health alert than previously thought.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The authoritarian and rigid nature of China’s governance system is simultaneously the biggest threat to the global order and China’s biggest fault line” – George Magnus
ARTICLE OF THE WEEK
George Magnus, Economics, National Security, and the Competition with China
(War on the Rocks, 3 March 2021)
The author of “Red Flags: Why Xi’s China is in Jeopardy” and former UBS’s chief economist explains why China’s economic outlook and prospects are much more nuanced than the formal narrative of an inevitable rise suggests. The reason is this: the authoritarian and rigid nature of the country’s governance system is simultaneously the biggest threat to the global order and China’s biggest fault line. Magnus’ bottom line: there are drags on China’s growth potential, which a more authoritarian and ideological leadership in China is not so well equipped to address (reads in about 10 min).
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Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick, Christoph Trebesch, The cost of populism: Evidence from history
(VOXeu, 16 February 2021)
This short piece (reads in 6-7 min) suggests that populism is here to stay. It uses a comprehensive cross-country database on populism dating back to 1900 to offer a historical, long-run perspective which shows that (1) populism has a long history and is serial in nature – if countries have been governed by a populist once, they are much more likely to see another populist coming to office in the future; (2) populist leadership is economically costly, with a notable long-run decline in consumption and output; and (3) populism is politically disruptive, fostering instability and institutional decay.
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Annie Lowrey, Stockton’s Basic-Income Experiment Pays Off
(The Atlantic, 3 March 2021)
Cash transfers with no strings attached are becoming an effective method of poverty alleviation used all over the world, hence a renewed interest among policy-makers about universal basic income. A new study conducted in the US shows yet again that a lack of resources creates its own miserable trap and that the best way to get people out of poverty is simply to get them out of poverty. Most importantly, it confirms that the guaranteed income did not dissuade participants from working (reads in 7-9 min).
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Kazuo Ishiguro, Kazuo Ishiguro Sees What the Future Is Doing to Us
(The New York Times, 26 February 2021)
Literature is the meta-discipline par excellence! In his new novel (Klara and the Sun), set in a near-future America where the social divisions have widened and liberal-humanist values are in terminal retreat, the widespread adoption of AI has created a permanently jobless class, which in turn has led to mass unrest and top-down repression. This article is mainly about what the novel reveals about our relationship with machines, but it elaborates on the reasons why the Nobel Prize-winner became “our most profound observer of human fragility in the technological era” (reads in about 15 min).
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Abdullah Iqbal, How your sense of smell predicts your overall health
(BBC Future, 4 March 2021)
The effect that disease can have on our sense of smell has been thrown under the spotlight by COVID-19, but what we can learn about our health from this long-overlooked sense deserves a little more appreciation. Anosmia, or smell loss, could be used as a predictive diagnosis tool because it is a common symptom of many neurodegenerative diseases and some mental conditions as well (reads in 5-6 min).
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