Category Archives: The Economy

Can’t buy me love–or happiness.

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Does money buy happiness? Yes—up to a point.[1] All sorts of other factors also play in, but nothing is as important as national income in determining response to “life satisfaction” surveys. A decade of surveys organized by a Dutch social scientist have found that “most people worldwide say they are fairly happy” and that people in more developed countries are happier than people in less developed countries (i.e. more development would increase happiness). However, once you get to the $20,000 per capita income level, advances in national income cease to produce much gain in life satisfaction or happiness. Thus, “happiness” or “life satisfaction” has not increased in the United States since the mid-Fifties, although there has been an 85 percent increase in the real value of family incomes (from $24K in 1953 to $51K in 2001). About 53 percent of Americans described themselves as “very happy” in 1957; about 47 percent did so in 2000. Curiously, the material ambitions of Americans seem to have sky-rocketed in recent years. In 1987 surveyed adults estimated that an income of $50K/year would be enough to “fulfill all your dreams”; by 1994 that figure had shot up to $102K, although prices had not doubled. (NB: All of a sudden Americans wanted things that were really expensive? Or college tuition sticker-shock had hit?)

What is “happiness”? One Yale political scientists (Robert Lane) argues that “happiness is derived largely from two sources—material comfort, and social and familial intimacy…” These needs tend to be out of whack. In “less developed countries…social ties are often strong and money is scarce…” People have social intimacy, but no material comfort. “Economic development increases material comfort, but it systematically weakens social and familial ties by encouraging mobility, commercializing relationships, and attenuating the bonds of both the extended and the nuclear family.” Initially, “the gains in material comfort more than outweigh the slight declines in social connectedness.” At some point the competing needs for comfort and intimacy balance, leaving people at their maximum point of “life satisfaction” or “happiness.” Western culture has a deeply entrenched need to produce and consume, to generate prosperity. It is what made the West the leader in economic development and it continues to hold sway long after the real need to produce has passed. Eventually, therefore, “the balance tips and the happiness-reducing effects of reduced social stability begin to outweigh the happiness-increasing effects of material gain.”

Still, there are places that are poor and unhappy, less poor and happy, and rich and happy, but there are no places that are rich and unhappy. The places that were poor and unhappy ten years ago were Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, and Latvia. Estonia and Lithuania are pretty close to falling into this category. In short, people were really miserable in the ruins of the old Soviet empire. Conversely, people who lived in the old American empire (the US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, Australia) tended to be pretty happy. (Hence the outcome of the Cold War.) The highest levels of “life satisfaction” seemed to be found in politically insignificant countries with per capita incomes between $17,000 and $25,000, and located in more northern climates (Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland, Canada). However, that doesn’t prove that moderate income and moderate social stability is the real key to happiness. Perhaps the cold climate just keeps people indoors all the time and they make love a lot. For lack of anything better to do.

[1] Don Peck and Ross Douthat, “The World in Numbers: Does Money Buy Happiness?” Atlantic, January-February 2003, pp. 42-43.

Annals of the Great Recession II.

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The Great Recession that began in 2007 ended in 2009.[1] Five years afterward, New York Times reporters asked how the recession had altered the American economy.[2] How was the economy different from before the recession began?

There were 1.5 million fewer construction jobs. Construction isn’t likely to fully revive. Even now, almost 20 percent of homeowners with mortgages owe more on their houses than the current market value of those homes. On average, these jobs had paid $55K a year.

There were 1.7 million fewer manufacturing jobs. Before the recession there were about 14 million Americans employed in manufacturing. That means that manufacturing employment fell by about 12 percent.

However, pre-recession manufacturing amounted to only about 10 percent of the labor force. Manufacturing jobs have been deserting America for decades. The loss of manufacturing jobs has been much more pronounced than the loss of manufacturing production. Manufacturers have used technology to increase production while cutting their work force. Overall, the loss of these high-wage jobs is probably permanent. On average, these jobs had paid $51K a year.

There were 1.5 million more health services jobs than before the recession.

The recession didn’t even dent technology companies. Technology companies both generated wealth for owners and created well-paying jobs. For example, the number of smartphones shipped rose from 20.1 million in 2007 to 136.6 million in 2013.

“Fracking” has boosted employment and income in states where it has been developed. It also has lowered energy costs. Chemicals and plastics consume a lot of energy, so cheap natural gas has given these industries a leg up. It also has improved the trade balance by reducing energy imports.

Health-related fields, energy, and technology appear to be the central pillars of the American economic future.

What did unemployment show? Population growth since the recession meant that the economy needed to add at least seven million more jobs than it did to absorb the growth. In Summer 2014, four million people were still counted as long-term unemployed and six million weren’t counted because they had just given up looking for work after many rebuffs. The slack labor market held down real wages as a low level of inflation continued. Hence, unemployment could stay high even as the economy grew. That, in turn, kept wages from rising in the way that they would in a tight labor market.

To get work, many people took lower-paying jobs than they had held before the recession. Eighty percent of Americans earn less than they did before the recession. Indeed, the median income fell from $55,627 in 2007 to $51,017 in June 2014. Many people also supplemented their income with government benefits like food stamps. In 2007 26.3 million people received food stamps; in 2009 47.6 million people received food stamps.

Continuing high unemployment and stagnant wages meant that it felt to any normal person that the recession remained in force. It’s hard to see the dawn when it is still so dark.

[1] The National Bureau of Economic Research has technical definitions for “recession” and “depression.” These have nothing to do with the popular perception of economic conditions. Therefore they become the butt of out-of-office politicians, late-night comedy-show hosts, and other people of that ilk.

[2] Shaila Dewan, Nelson D. Schwartz, and Alicia Parlapiano, “How the Recession Reshaped the Economy,” NYT, 15 June 2014, pp. 6-7.

Annals of the Great Recession I.

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In a column in the New York Times, Neil Irwin takes up an important, under-analyzed topic.[1] He doesn’t take it very far, but it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

He begins by reporting on a new book on the “Great Recession” by the University of California-Berkeley economic historian Barry Eichengreen.[2] The book is 500 pages long and came out in early January 2015, so I don’t think that Irwin has fully digested what Professor Eichengreen has to say. (I sure haven’t.) All the same, he brings out several important points.

First, the Great Depression of the 1930s and—more importantly—the Second World War legitimized Keynesian counter-cyclical spending to moderate the economy. Thus, when the American economy began to plummet in early 2008, both Republican President George W. Bush and the Democrat-led Congress agreed on a $150 billion to cover the credit markets (the TARP). Within a year, however, Republicans had turned against big deficits. When the newly-elected President Barack Obama called for a $787 billion stimulus bill, scarcely any Republicans could be found to vote for it. For the next several years the Republicans kept up their assault on deficit spending. By 2011 Democrats also were running away from deficits.

Second, in the absence of spending action by Congress, responsibility for countering the recession fell to the Federal Reserve Bank (the Fed). Here again, Eichengreen finds too little effort made too late. The Fed’s stimulation mostly came a day late and a dollar short. “Quantitative Easing” through bond-buying pumped money into the economy. It just never pumped in enough money until the ambitious program that began in September 2012 (and which has now come to an end).

The result of these lamed policies came in an excessively-long recession that has just ground the spirit out of many Americans. Irwin is good on pointing out the events. He’s less good at explaining them. Why did Republicans turn against Keynesianism?[3] Why did Democrats, of all people, turn against the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt?

What is missing in Irwin’s explanation is any analysis of the rise of the “Tea Party.”[4] Not everyone responded well to the stimulus bill. A Seattle-area blogger named Keli Carender organized a protest against the bill in February 2009, then talked it up on-line. Soon, protests took place in other cities. Then Rick Santelli’s on-air rant against bail-outs went viral. Then Fox News pushed the cause. April 15, 2009 provided a forum for lots of protest rallies. ObamaCare added fuel to the fire.

This “Tea Party” movement was largely made up of previously apolitical ordinary citizens who had been energized by their economic concerns. Underneath this concern is a feeling that they have “lost” their country to “elites.” At the same time, many Tea Party people had “social conservative” views on gay marriage, the Second Amendment, hostility to the expansion of government authority by the courts). Illegal immigration formed another concern. Finally, some of the Tea Party supporters were just nuts: “birthers” and “Obama = Hitler” types. The specific targets of the “Tea Party” were the rapidly expanding federal deficit, the growth of “big government,” and taxes. The agenda of the movement appeared to be unrealistic and impossible to achieve: lower taxes combined with a balanced budget.

The “Tea Party” pressured Republicans. The Democratic abdication is harder to figure. Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman argued that the Obama Administration’s stimulus program was half the size it needed to be, was spread over two years instead of front-loaded into one year, and contained a lot of tax cuts that were a waste. However, Irwin (and apparently Eichengreen) still trot out the tired excuse that the administration under-estimated the scope of the problem. More importantly, perhaps, President Obama felt no commitment to stimulus. Bob Woodward has quoted him as saying “Look, I get the Keynesian argument, but the American people just aren’t there.” But why didn’t he use the “bully pulpit” to get them there? And why didn’t Democratic leaders tell him—as Al Gore once told Bill Clinton, to “get with the program”? There is a lot of blood on the floor from this unnecessary disaster and a lot of blame to go around.

[1] Neil Irwin, “The Depression’s Unheeded Lessons,” NYT, 11 January 2015.

[2] Barry Eichengreen, Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses and Mis-Uses of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

[3] Richard Nixon once remarked that “We are all Keynesians now.” Republicans may yet come to rue the day they tossed over the ideas of Nixon for those of Ronald Reagan. Nixon also had proposed national health care, only to have it sunk by the petty personal jealousy of Teddy Kennedy.

[4] “The Rise of the Tea Party,” The Week, 19 February 2010, p. 13.

 

A Marina on Baffin Island.

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Global warming is causing the polar ice-caps to melt. There is forty percent less summer ice now than in the 1970s. By 2030 the Arctic could be free of ice during summer. And I ask, “What is the good in this?” Well, it creates all sorts of opportunities. Some of these come from resources exploitation. Some of them come from adapting to climate change.

In the case of the North Poles, this is freeing up access—after a fashion and in relative terms—to the seas north of Canada, Russia, and the Scandinavian countries.[1] In 1982 the United Nations adopted a “Convention on the Law of the Sea.” This grants signatories ownership of undersea resources up to 200 miles off their shores. One area of interest is oil and natural gas drilling.[2] Because the ice cap and terrible weather prevented people from exploring for gas and oil beyond Alaska’s North Slope, geologists are not sure how much oil and gas might be found as the ice cap retreats. One estimate is that 20 percent of the world’s as-yet-undiscovered gas and oil lay under the Arctic ice. This might include a third of the world’s natural gas and 90 billion barrels of oil.[3] Oil companies have rushed in to explore where angels fear to tread: Exxon, BP, Statoil (Norway), and Eni (Italy) have all begun exploration of the fields north of Russia. Since the “Deepwater Horizon” disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, they have been giving a lot of thought to how to deal with the inevitable spills that will happen in such a harsh environment. So far, they don’t have any good answers.[4]

Similarly, the retreat of the polar ice caps is liable to open a mining boom in Arctic areas. Ice, snow, permafrost, and brutal winters have kept people from exploiting some of the Earth’s resources. Russia stands to profit from a warmer, greener Siberia. Separatists in Greenland are already speculating on seeking independence from Denmark.

Some of the adaptive responses have a comical note to them. Artificial snow-machine makers face rising demand from imperiled ski resorts. Others responses have potentially bigger pay-offs. Environmental disasters in the 1950s spawned ideas that have great relevance today. In 1952 the British forester and conservationist Richard Baker proposed creating a tree-belt along the southern edge of the Sahara to hold back desertification. In 1953 a gigantic storm in the North Sea led to massive flooding in Holland and eastern Britain. Holland responded with a thirty year campaign of dike and storm surge barrier construction; Britain built the Thames Barrier downstream from London.[5]

In 2002, the African Union adopted Baker’s idea of a tree barrier against the Sahara. Then it was taken up by the African Union. To make this plan work, somebody is going to pay to plant a belt of trees thirty miles deep and four thousand miles long. Foresters, nurseries, and irrigation engineers will be in demand. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy demonstrated New York City’s vulnerability to storm surges and rising sea levels. Builders experienced with massive sea-gate flood control projects are likely to be in demand in a host of places.

If people don’t adapt to climate change one way, they will adapt another way.

[1] It hasn’t become the Gulf of Mexico yet. In summer there is still a lot of drift ice floating around for the high winds to blow into off-shore rigs; in winter the temperature still drops to 50 degrees below zero and the whole place ices up.

[2] The US Senate has not ratified this convention. Which isn’t the same as saying that the US will not defend what it conceives to be its national interests.

[3] So, you burn the gas and oil; that heats up the planet even more; it gets progressively easier to access the gas and oil. Neat. Sort of.

[4] “The battle for the Arctic,” The Week,” 6 December 2013, p. 11.

[5] McKenzie Funk, Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming (New York: Penguin, 2014).

Climate of Fear XII.

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What is the “price” of one ton of carbon-dioxide pollution emitted into the atmosphere? According to Obama administration economists, it is $37.[1] If you add that cost into the price of carbon, then market forces will nudge people to burn less carbon and will create a market for alternative energy sources. A government can either tax carbon burning directly or it can dodge around the formal tax by establish a system in which companies have to buy what amount to licenses to pollute. (These are usually labeled “cap-and-trade: solutions.)

People who depend on carbon-burning for jobs, profits, and comfort see carbon-pricing as getting their ox gored for the sake of scientific predictions in which they cannot afford to believe. Australia is a good example. It produces 5.5% of the world’s coal, most of it for export. Prime Minister Julia Gillard, a climate change believer, pushed through a carbon tax. In 2013, she lost her office. Her successor immediately got the tax repealed.

In 1990 the Country-Formerly-Known-As-East-Germany merged with West Germany.[2] East German had been an environmentalist’s nightmare, owing to its reliance on burning coal for energy. Many of the polluting electricity-generating plants were soon shut down. Nevertheless, Germany relied on coal for much of its fuel. In 1997 Germany adhered to the Kyoto Protocol. Angela Merkel was then serving as environment minister. Since then she has committed herself to cutting greenhouse gases. In 2007, as chancellor, she committed Germany to making substantial cuts in emissions. Cutting across this effort, however, was a desire to move away from nuclear energy. Germany had 17 nuclear plants, but started to shut them down as they aged, without building additional production capacity. The disaster at Fukushima in 2011 gave this slow movement a strong shove. As a result, Germany’s reliance on coal has returned to the 2007 levels. In 2013 Germany got 45 percent of its energy from burning coal and 25 percent from renewable energy. Moreover, coal miners and electrical plant workers are a big and well-connected constituency. It remains to be seen whether Merkel can push through real cuts.

The United States offers another good example. It produces 11.7% of the world’s coal.[3] In 2010, President Obama tried to get a cap-and-trade bill through the Senate, but was defeated by Republican opposition. The new Republican Congress isn’t likely to change course now.

If a carbon tax isn’t saleable in Western democracies with diverse economies, how will it fair in developing countries that rely heavily upon coal and oil to fuel their advance? India produces 7.7% of the world’s coal. China produces 46.4% of the world’s coal, all for domestic consumption. China signed a declaration sponsored by the World Bank that called for a price on carbon that reflected its real cost. China has begun cap-and-trade policies in some of its provinces. Loud snorts of derision followed the gestures: China continues to expand its burning of carbons and the declaration it signed was non-binding. Is it more than just window-dressing?

A German mining union official spoke for more than just German miners when he asked, “Is it worth it if we as a country succeed in reaching our targets in reducing carbon emissions, but sacrifice good jobs and our industrial base?”

 

[1] Coral Davenport, “President’s Drive For Carbon Pricing Fails to Win at Home,” NYT, 28 September 2014.

[2] Melissa Eddy, “Missing Its Own Goals, Germany Renews Effort to Cut Carbon Emissions,” NYT, 4 December 2014.

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coal_production

Climate of Fear XI.

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The International Energy Agency (IEA) issues reports on critical energy issues. It’s “Energy Technology Perspectives” reports offer an insight into climate change issues. So, is the glass half-full or is it empty?

The power industry produces almost 40 percent of America’s carbon dioxide emissions. There have been big technological gains in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. These improvements are what allowed President Obama to order a 30 percent reduction in emissions from a 2005 baseline by coal-burning power plants by 2030. (His recent agreement with the Chinese apparently merely ratified changes already underway.)

People have stopped believing in some of the alternative energy sources touted by environmentalists. All these technologies hold promise, but they are not yet anywhere near price competitive with carbon energy generation. Funding for things like bio-energy, offshore wind,[1] and geo-thermal dropped more than twenty percent between 2011 and 2013. It can be dangerous to extrapolate from brief periods of change. The price of photovoltaic solar cells dropped sharply from 2008 to 2012 because a land-rush of producers into the market led to savage price competition. The subsequent shake-out has led to a stabilization of prices. The “levelized” costs of solar energy generation have fallen by 40 percent from their 2010 estimate. Thus, as part of the stimulus, the Obama administration heavily subsidized alternative energy generation sources. As a result, in 2010, the US added 5 gigawatts of energy generation from wind-power; in 2011 it added 7 gigawatts; and in 2012 it added a whopping 13 gigawatts. The end of the stimulus left wind-power generation becalmed: in 2013, the US added only 1 gigawatt from wind-power, and 2014 isn’t shaping up to be much of an improvement. Lesson: in the current state of technology, alternative fuels are only competitive with carbon-fueled energy generation when the government “levels the playing field” by tilting it in one direction.

What are the real possibilities?

By 2019, onshore wind generation could cost $71/megawatt, “even without subsidies.” By 2040, in exceptionally windy places (Washington, DC?) the cost might be as low as $63.40/megawatt. By 2040 nuclear-generated power might cost $80.00/megawatt. By 2040 solar might generate power at $86.50/megawatt. None of this is going to amount to much.

The IEA predicts that by 2040 only 16.5 percent of energy will be produced from renewable resources. More than 65 percent will come from the burning of coal and gas. This means that “carbon capture” technology must develop rapidly. However, “carbon capture” technologies are failing to develop at an adequate pace. Costs are high relative to the return, so no one is interested in investing. Similarly, we need a 24 percent increase in nuclear power generation by 2025 to fend off drastic climate change.[2] Instead, nuclear generating capacity is falling.

The best solution to this problem is a severe carbon tax. Today the US emits about 5.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide. If carbon emissions were taxed at $25/ton beginning in 2015, with a 5 percent/year increase (i.e. rising to about $60/ton by 2040), lots of alternative energy sources would start to look more attractive—if not attractive.

Eduardo Porter, “A Carbon Tax Could Bolster Green Energy,” NYT, 19 November 2014.

[1] Migrating birds and drunken pleasure-boaters alike are happy about this.

[2] Build a lot of nukes in Maine. No one lives there and the winds aloft will carry the fall-out from the inevitable accident across the Atlantic to Portugal and Spain. Bad for the cork oaks and cod donuts I’ll grant you.

Big Pharma

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What we think of as medicine is a fairly new development. Doctors used to be able to set broken bones, sew up cuts, lop off limbs, and give you an emetic. This changed in the later 19th Century, thanks to the addition of chemistry to medicine. Anesthesia and disinfectants made invasive surgery possible. No screaming, no gangrene. Then insulin (1921) and penicillin (1928) were discovered. Direct chemical treatment of disorders became possible. After the Second World War scientific research was applied in a systematic way to expanding knowledge of biology and techniques for producing drugs improved. The results of this combination appeared in a flood of new drugs and the growth of huge pharmaceutical companies. The new products included oral contraceptives, blood-pressure medicines, and psychiatric drugs. Cancer drugs began to come on-line in the 1970s. More recently, there have been drugs to treat cholesterol, acid-reflux, and asthma, as well as Viagra–and anti-depressants for when that doesn’t work. Then there is the terrible plague of male pattern baldness.

There have been several important developments in my life-time.

First, rules for medical trials became more elaborate and restrictive. Between 1957 and 1961 doctors prescribed a new tranquilizer to pregnant women to counter morning-sickness. Unfortunately, thalidomide caused terrible birth defects. In 1962 Congress amended the law governing the Food and Drug Administration to require that new pharmaceuticals prove not only safety, but also “efficacy”: the ability to produce a specific desired effect (and not some other effect or no effect) before a drug could be released. In 1964 the World Medical Association established rules requiring testing before the release of any new drug.   Again, pharmaceutical companies were required to prove “efficacy.” These reforms greatly extended the time and cost invested before drugs were released. In recent years, medical crises—like heart-disease and AIDS—has created a countervailing pressure for accelerated testing and approval.

Second, the pharmaceutical business became highly concentrated and vertically integrated. These are business terms, but it is a business. You should learn what they mean—although I didn’t when I was your age.) As pharmaceutical research sought treatments for complicated illnesses, research and development became more expensive. As research and development became more expensive, companies faced a greater risk that they would not be able to cover their costs before any patent ran out. Therefore, during the 1970s many countries passed laws strengthening and extending the time limit that the patents issued to pharmaceutical companies. These were intended to prevent generic producers from just figuring out the chemical basis of a drug, then producing it without having to bear the high costs of research. During the 1980s a wave of “buy-outs” of small bio-tech firms by big pharmaceutical companies took place. Today most pharmaceutical research, production, and sales are concentrated in fewer than twenty large companies. These companies are based in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland, although they operate internationally. This is called “concentration.” Each of these companies researches, develops, manufactures, and markets the product. This is called “vertical integration.” Critics refer to this complex as “Big Pharma.”

Most prescription drug use took place in a few rich countries (US, EU, Japan). Don’t get sick somewhere else. (My son’s room-mate got bit by a rabid dog while in Bolivia one summer. He had to fly home to get the injections to save his life. What if he had been Bolivian?) However, China, Russia, and South Korea expanded sales by 81 percent in 2006. Pharmaceuticals are already the most profitable business in America. Now a big money harvest looms in the developing world.

“Heading South” (2005, dir. Laurent Cantet)

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International Tourism.

Romans used to go to Greece to acquire some “polish.”   English noblemen used to send their sons on the “Grand Tour” for the same purpose.   Between the wars Americans used to visit European war cemeteries to see where their “gallant Willy fell.” Today, tourism is big business: in 2010 there were 940 million international tourist “arrivals” someplace and the industry earned $919 billion. The USA earned over $100 billion from foreign tourists that year. Airlines, hotels, taxis, restaurants, tour-guides, museums, and sellers of hand-woven guitars all profited. (Unless you’re willing to rough-it: learn to recognize foreign traffic signs, pick up some phrases from a guide book, and eat what you ordered by mistake even though it turned out to be a psychotropic carcinogen, the way the missus and I do. See: Mark Twain, An Innocent Abroad.)

 

International sex tourism.

Il y a etait un fois, guys went to “the big city” for these purposes (see: Patricia Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett) or Mexico (see: JFK). Now, air travel allows people to zoom all over the earth for the same purpose. Try getting through the streets around the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to see the porcelain violins when a ferry-load of Brits show up on a cheap-beer-and-expensive-sex outing, and start ogling the girls in lingerie sitting in the shop windows—many of whom are petting a cat in a bit of symbolic advertising.

Of course, most people aren’t beer-sodden British soccer hooligans, so there is a market in other parts of the world. Most of them are naturally hot and sweaty places: Tunisia—where the “recent unpleasantness” has left a whole class of service workers on the beach in Speedos, Gambia, Kenya, Bali in Indonesia, Thailand, Brazil, and the Caribbean.

 

Female sex tourism.

Women started traveling for “romance” in the mid-19th century. (See: the novels of Henry James and E. M. Forster). In the first half of the 20th Century there are some pretty interesting stories of women charting their own course, although this often involves highly repressed Northern women falling for highly unrepressed (to put it mildly) Southern men. There’s probably some kind of message about life there. You never see books or movies about some Greek having an epiphany and deciding to pay his bills or go to work on time.

So, skip ahead to the aftermath of the Feminist and Sexual Revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s. Women got careers outside that of “homemaker”; women had a difficult time finding men who would accept them in their new roles (or do the dishes); marriages broke down at high rates or never got formed; and women had money. This meant that some women had one sort of success, but no significant other in their life. Result: female sex tourism blossomed (although hardly to the scale of male sex tourism). Anyway, that’s the belief. It is hard to find women who will own up to this. This makes me think that there may be a certain prurient motive behind the “exposes.” Like that “I can’t believe it’s not butter” guy on the cover of romance novels.

There are a few scholarly studies in The Annals of Tourism Research and a UC-Santa Barbara Ph.D. dissertation by April Gorry. Popular culture books and movies dealing with this supposed phenomenon include: the movie “Shirley Valentine” (1989); the novel by Terry MacMillan and the movie made from it, “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” (1998); creepy Michel Houlebecq’s novel Platform (2002); and the movie “Heading South” (2005).

In voodoo, Legba is the “master of the crossroads” who controls access to the spirits.

Give my knees to the needy.

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Organ transplantation.

In the 7th Century BC,[1] a Chinese physician named Bian Que tried transplanting the heart of a strong-willed commoner into the body of a weak-willed emperor.

During the late 19th Century surgeons finally developed the technical ability to conduct operations (knowledge of how the body functioned, anesthesia, antiseptics) and this made transplants possible. However, it took much longer to develop the ability to prevent rejection of the implanted organ by the body’s immune system. Thus, the transplanted “Hands of Dr. Orloc” (1924) weren’t. Lung (1963), liver (1967), and heart (1967-1968) transplants were “successful” in the sense that the patients lived for weeks to months after the operation. In 1970 the development of the immuno-suppressive drug cyclosporine finally permitted successful transplantation to begin. Since 1970 transplants have become common: hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers, pancreases, hands, facial tissue, and bones have all been transplanted. No brains, yet.

The mismatch between donors and recipients.

Generally, there are more sick people in need of an organ than there are dead people with healthy organs for “harvesting.” While the growth of organ transplantation has extended many lives, people often die waiting for an available organ. National medical systems have developed ways of determining who gets priority.

However, there are two issues to bear in mind. First, national boundaries create barriers between donors and recipients. Second, as we have seen in so many other areas, great differences of wealth and income between different parts of the world lets buyers in rich countries get what they want in poor countries. People with money who want to jump the line can seek organ transplants abroad. One outcome of globalization has been to create a market in organs for transplant.

The global trade in organs.

Some Asian countries used to have a legal market in organs: India (until 1994), the Philippines (until 2008), and China (to this day) all allowed the legal sale of organs. Sometimes governments participate in this trade. An estimated 90 percent of the organs from China are taken from criminals executed in prisons. (They used to shoot them in train stations.)

There is also a thriving black-market in organs. The average price paid to a donor for a kidney is $5,000, while the average cost to the recipient is $150,000. When the Indian Ocean tsunami wrecked many fishing villages, about 100 villagers—almost all of them women—sold kidneys. According to one report, 40-50 percent of the people in some Pakistani villages have only one kidney. “It’s a poverty thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

Both the desire to circumvent the laws at home and the need to be close-by when an organ becomes “available” have stimulated “medical tourism.”

Finally, there is the alleged problem of “organ theft.” Given a shortage of voluntary donors, it has been suggested that some middle-men may turn to theft or murder. This is a common theme in horror movies and urban legend. It doesn’t have much truth behind it. Which isn’t the same as saying it doesn’t happen at all. “Hey buddy, can you give me a hand?”

[1] I can just see the Three Wise Men—one of them played by Buscemi—impatiently flipping through the calendar in 1 BC, marking off the days until Jesus would be born, trying to get a cheap flight, then getting told that Bethlehem’s inns are all booked solid: “Zoro-H-Aster! What are we supposed to do, stay in a manger?”

Climate of Fear X November 2014.

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For twenty years China has been driving hard for industrialization. About 70 percent of all Chinese energy comes from coal. Chinese industry burns coal for fuel and Chinese apartment buildings are heated by coal-burning generators. China burns about as much coal as every other country in the world combined. The newly-affluent Chine middle-class buys cars. There are already 120 million cars and as many other motor vehicles spewing out exhaust.

Of the twenty most-polluted cities in the world, sixteen are in China. All sorts of ludicrous examples of the “How bad is…?” variety can be cited. During one recent bout of smog in Beijing, for example, a factory caught on fire and burned for three hours before anyone noticed the flames. This is at least as bad as that time the river that runs through Cleveland caught fire.

The health effects are awful. Over the last thirty years, Chinese lung cancer rates have risen by 465 percent. Thousands of people stream into hospitals complaining of breathing problems whenever air pollution becomes particularly bad.

The Chinese government turned a blind eye to this problem for a long time. Recently, they have found it much harder to pretend that killer smogs are just “heavy fog.” For one thing, foreigners don’t want to visit China if it just means that they’re going to feel like they’ve been working through two packs of Camels a day for twenty years. Tourism has fallen off and foreign businessmen don’t want to base themselves in China. For another thing, ordinary Chinese people are starting to complain. Since Tiananmen Square back in 1989 most Chinese have been cautious about demonstrating for democratic government. However, the environmental problems are pushing people into the streets for reasons other than a stroll in the park. One count estimates that there are 30,000 to 50,000 protests a year over clean air, clean water, and clean food.

The pollution problems have become so severe, and have generated a measure of public unrest, that the government began preparing for a shift to nuclear power and renewable energy sources. Looking down-range fifteen to twenty years, they seem to have concluded that they would have to continue expanding the generation of electricity through carbon-burning while preparing for a transition to other forms of energy. Hence Chinas commitment in November 2014 to reach peak carbon burning and to draw 20 percent of their energy from non-carbon sources by 2030, formalized its existing policy.

Still, this commitment leaves a bunch of stuff—aside from ash particles—up in the air.     How much energy will China require in 2030? Are they close to meeting their projected needs already? If so, then reaching peak could be a simple matter. What if they’re only at their half-way mark? Is there any quantitative value assigned as the Chinese peak? Or do the Chinese just get to expand carbon burning as fast as they can until 2030, while also expanding non-carbon energy sources to 20 percent of whatever is the total peak? Will China be building nuclear power plants and solar collectors at a rapid pace for decades to come? If the Chinese government is responding now to public unhappiness with pollution, how will it respond in the future to public unhappiness with either slowing economic growth or trying to transition away from a major industry?

 

“The face-mask nation,” The Week, 15 November 2013, p. 9.

Henry Fountain and John Schwartz, “Climate Pact by U.S. and China Relies on Policies Now Largely in Place,” NYT, 13 November 2014.