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Some Non-Covid Links

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Doug Bandow writes wisely about China [2]. A slice:

China’s population has likely crested, and will begin falling. India will take over as the world’s most populous country. The PRC is at risk of growing old before it grows rich, with a fertility rate that barely budged after abandonment of the coercive “one child” policy. This system resulted in a rapidly aging population that has turned a worker surplus into a dearth, and leading to a socially destructive shortage of women. Beijing has found no solution to counteract decades of counterproductive social engineering.

China’s economy remains heavily politicized, with rising party interference in business decision-making, a disproportionate role for inefficient state enterprises, significant examples of bad debts being concentrated in state banks, overbuilt and overpriced real estate and stock markets, and a host of other institutional weaknesses. The Xi government’s determination to harness private economic gains for regime advantage threatens the country’s economic foundation.

Robert Anthony Peters bemoans the loss of freedom in Hong Kong [3].

From David Simon’s latest essay [4]:

To fuel the faster economic growth needed to lift more out of poverty and increase prosperity, the number of employment-based immigrants admitted each year should be substantially increased (without diminishing the number of immigrants in other categories) to one million each year.

About vaping, the FDA – so reports Jacob Sullum – ignores important data [5].

Steven Greenhut decries Joe Biden’s criticism of tax havens [6].

Jim Dorn critically analyzes the case for using central banks as tools to ‘address’ climate change [7].

John Cochrane shares, and comments on, the (largely encouraging) results of a recent survey by the Archbridge Institute [8].

The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board rightly criticizes the Biden administration’s antitrust action against American Airlines and Jet Blue [9]. A slice:

The DOJ lawsuit is likely to fail under the prevailing consumer benefit standard. But other businesses are now on notice that antitrust will be wielded as a regulatory weapon no matter the evidence.

My Mercatus Center colleague Christopher Russo exposes the lawless flim-flammery of the proposed ‘trillion-dollar-coin’ scheme [10].

J.D. Tuccille is correct: Universities today are boiling cauldrons of noxious intolerance [11]. A slice:

“American faith, it turns out, is as fervent as ever; it’s just that what was once religious belief has now been channeled into political belief,” Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution argued [12] earlier this year in The Atlantic. “Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have taken on the character of theological disputations. This is what religion without religion looks like.”

But universities are supposed to be centers for exploring ideas and expanding knowledge, not for establishing the one, true faith. When their denizens become convinced they’ve found “the real moral truth,” as Brocic and Miles put it, that leaves little room for their original missions, or for dissenters.

“66% of students report some level of acceptance for speaker shout-downs (up 4 percentage points from FIRE’s 2020 report) and 23% consider it acceptable for people to use violence to stop certain speech (up 5 percentage points),” The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reported last week [13] of poll results from its 2021 College Free Speech rankings.

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