Japan is America’s most important ally in the Asia-Pacific, a bulwark against Chinese aggression. But Mr. Trump wants to block Nippon Steel’s deal to buy U.S. Steel and invest billions in domestic steel production. This is a slap in the face of an ally, as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo notes nearby.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to his inauguration on Jan. 20. Mr. Xi is reportedly going to decline the invitation, and we’re glad to hear it. There’s something unseemly about a dictator with anti-U.S. designs attending America’s quadrennial ritual of a transfer of democratic power.
Mr. Trump likes to say he gets along famously with Mr. Xi and wants to send that friendly signal. But personal relations don’t matter much to the hard man who runs the Chinese Communist Party. Mr. Xi can’t be charmed by Mr. Trump, and he won’t call off his cyber-spies and thieves unless he knows China will pay some price for his aggression.
Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba would be a better guest to invite. Oh, and approve the Nippon Steel deal.
Later, we boarded another ferry on the wrong side of 40, the 1981-built Hornblower Freedom, for a quick stop at Ellis Island and then a return to Lower Manhattan. Along the way, I spotted the Staten Island Ferry, which appeared to be one of three Molinari class vessels delivered between 2003–2004. Purchased for $140 million, the Molinari class ferries drew attention in 2014 for their frequent mechanical problems.
There is a widespread belief that the US labor market has been undergoing a period of unprecedented change in the last decade or two. On one hand, David Deming, Christopher Ong, and Lawrence H. Summers cast doubt on this historical claim in their essay, “Technological Disruption in the US Labor Market”–that is, they argue that historical shifts in US occupations have been much larger during various periods of the late 19th and 20th century than the more recent shifts. However, they also point to some signs that although the big shift in US labor markets may not have happened yet, it could be on its way.
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In short, part of a dynamic US economy has always involved dramatic shifts in jobs. US jobs have been undergoing dramatic evolution for decades. At present, the share of office and administrative jobs has been falling since 1980, and jobs in retail sales are now showing a decline. But the shifts in US job categories in the last couple of decades certainly don’t stand out as extraordinary in the historical record.
Single-payer systems have their own frustrations, starting with the taxes to pay for them: Denmark’s top marginal rate of 55.9 percent kicks in for incomes roughly the U.S. equivalent of $82,000 a year. Nor do those systems give you all the care you need, at little or no cost to you, as many leftists seem to believe. An Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development report in 2019 found that Americans actually pay an unusually low share of their health-care costs out of pocket, and data from the Commonwealth Fund shows that we are less likely than people in Britain or Canada to wait more than two months for surgery or specialty care. We might be less likely than Europeans to die of cancer in part because we get faster access to cutting-edge treatments. While some of our extra spending pays for administrative bloat, our higher bills often also pay for higher quality.
Oh, sure, Americans tell Gallup pollsters that the system is terrible — only 31 percent have a positive view of our health-care industry. But 92 percent of people in this country have insurance (and of the remaining uninsured, about one-third are noncitizens). Insured Americans are quite satisfied with their own coverage, with 81 percent telling KFF that it is “excellent” or “good.”
Ian Birrell reports, in the Washington Post, on Javier Milei’s first year as the head of the government of Argentina. Two slices:
The self-styled “anarcho-capitalist,” who campaigned with a chainsaw as a symbol of his desire to slash the bloated state and free the economy, has embarked upon a messianic mission to salvage his stagnant nation. Carried unexpectedly to power on a wave of public contempt for failed politicians and a corrupt elite, Milei is trying to unleash, in a statist society, a libertarian revolution that one aide described to me as “turbocharged Thatcherism.”
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Milei’s path to victory was fueled by scandals involving the Peronists who had long ruled Argentina. They left the country owing an astonishing $263 billion to foreign creditors — yet the state’s size had doubled over two decades as left-wing populists sought to buy support with costly subsidies and corrosive interventions such as price and rent controls
Enter Milei, who sees taxes as a form of state coercion, is such a devout free marketeer that he has supported the concept of trade in human organs, and has argued that the only true role for government should be defense and law enforcement. While often called far-right, or compared with Trump and his combative populism, Milei is, in reality, an intellectual character — a libertarian, not an insular protectionist.
