China’s Economy Is Not Overtaking America’s

Michael Beckley writes in 2020:

China’s economic growth over the past three decades has been spectacular, even miraculous. Yet the veneer of double-digit growth rates has masked gaping liabilities that limit China’s ability to close the wealth gap with the United States. China has achieved
high growth at high costs, and now the costs are rising while growth is slowing. As I explain in a recent book, data that accounts for these costs reveal that the United States is several times wealthier than China, and the gap appears to be growing by trillions of dollars every year.1 This conclusion may surprise many people, given that China has a bigger GDP, a higher investment rate, larger trade flows, and a higher economic growth rate than the United States. How can China outproduce, outinvest, and outtrade the United States—and own nearly $1.2 trillion in U.S. debt—yet still have substantially less wealth?

The reason is that China’s economy is big but inefficient. It produces vast output but at enormous expense. Chinese businesses suffer from chronically high production costs, and China’s 1.4 billion people impose substantial welfare and security burdens. The United States, by contrast, is big and efficient. American businesses are among the most productive in the world; and with four times fewer people than China, the United States has much lower welfare and security costs.

GDP and other standard measures of economic heft ignore these costs and create the false impression that China is overtaking the United States economically. In reality, China’s economy is barely keeping pace as the burden of propping up loss-making companies and feeding, policing, protecting, and cleaning up after one-fifth of humanity erodes China’s stocks of wealth.

The persistent U.S.-China wealth gap means that the two countries are not destined for hegemonic rivalry, as many scholars argue. China will not be able to afford a full-scale challenge to American primacy, so the greatest risk of a U.S.- China war stems from the reckless escalation of a local crisis in East Asia, not a global power transition. Instead of gearing up for a new Cold War, the United States should take more pragmatic steps to bolster the East Asian balance of power and reinvigorate the U.S. economy.

The persistent U.S.-China wealth gap also undercuts the Trump administration’s argument that the United States has been losing economically to China and therefore needs to bypass the WTO, slap tariffs on Chinese goods, and decouple the U.S. and Chinese economies. Yes, China cheats on some of its trade commitments and engages in rampant espionage and intellectual property theft, and the WTO is ill-equipped to punish these actions consistently. But the biggest challenge to American workers and the companies that employ them may well be coming from the U.S. government’s failure to make large enough investments in job training (including hiring and wage subsidies), infrastructure, research and development, and support for working families. Boosting investment in these areas would allow the United States to protect American workers and preserve U.S. economic dominance without resorting to ruinous protectionism.

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The Jacob Blake Shooting

Comments at Steve Sailer:

* Seriously no police or military unit ever trains someone to shoot a person in the leg- it’s a tactical mistake which could cost you your life if you miss, and even if you hit the person it’s not a guarantee that it will stop them.

As far as shooting out tires, again the guy could still drive off on the rims, potentially lose control of the car (with kids inside the car), and also endanger the lives of others. Once a guy like this with a violent criminal record refuses to comply, all bets are off, and he’s assumed to be a threat to the greater community, which includes his children in the car, and any other people driving on the road.

Also, in the US, there are violent criminals with guns, lots of them. That’s why everyone in the entire country knows that when a cop is pointing a gun at you, the best way to not get killed is to comply. I know it sucks, and yes some cops are assholes on an ego trip- I’ve dealt with all sorts of cops, some decent, some jerks, but the one thing that never crossed my mind during any police stop was that it would be a good idea to resist or try to get away. Everyone knows this. I’ll say it again: EVERYONE in the US knows that if cops are pointing guns at you and telling you to stop, walking away and reaching into a car will likely get you shot. All the people in the neighborhood watching know this, and all the people setting Kenosha on fire know this. This guy knew what he was doing- he figured this is the post George Floyd era so he could just walk away and nothing would happen to him.

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Landmark Forum

From Phoenix New Times in 2000:

Everyone registering for the Landmark Forum is asked to sign a paper relinquishing right to a jury or court trial and agreeing to arbitration should any controversy or claim arise out of his or her participation.

But in September 1997, the company was hit with a lawsuit from a customer who claimed she was sexually assaulted by a group leader at the Dallas Landmark Forum. In the suit, filed in Dallas County, Tracy Neff claimed that in 1995, David Grill, then executive director of Landmark’s Dallas branch, invited Neff to his home and assaulted her.

The suit claimed that Landmark had received numerous complaints about Grill from both students and Landmark officials relating to sexual and/or behavioral misconduct, yet still put him in charge of the Dallas facility. Landmark “should have been aware of Grill’s propensity to commit criminal sexual assaults with students from a time preceding his assignment as executive director of the Dallas Landmark facility,” the suit alleged.

As part of a settlement, both Neff and her attorney, Jay English, agreed to sign a comprehensive confidentiality agreement, so English can’t comment on any specifics of the case. But he does offer up his personal opinion about Landmark Education.

“My set of facts in my case was so obnoxiously egregious — I cannot say anything about it — but I am no fan of Landmark Education,” English says. “It was settled, they compensated my client for her injuries, and it was an amazing, amazing case.”

Rick Ross, a Phoenix-based cult interventionist, was called in as a consultant on behalf of Neff. Ross can’t discuss specifics of the case, either, but says the plaintiff was awarded a substantial sum of money, though the amount cannot be disclosed because of the confidentiality agreement. Art Schreiber, general counsel for Landmark, disagrees that the award was substantial.

The Neff case, Ross says, was one of the more shocking complaints he has heard about Landmark. “I see it as a controversial group that I would not recommend to anyone because of all the complaints I’ve received,” Ross says.

Ross says he gets numerous complaints from people who tell him they were traumatized by the organization. He gets complaints from people who say they were pressured and relentlessly pursued by the group. And he hears from family members concerned about radical personality changes they see in loved ones spending time and money on Landmark courses.

Ross says he has even received e-mails and phone calls from people who say they have been hospitalized for breakdowns as a result of their involvement in Landmark.

…Ross says he’s heard from people who say they were well before participating in the Landmark Forum, and not so afterward.

Like 60-year-old Nan Kolbinger of Minnesota, who found Ross’ Web site after her Forum experience. She had signed up for the Forum at the suggestion of another teacher who informed her she could receive 40 hours of in-service credit toward renewing her teaching license. She walked out after two 15-hour days, feeling demeaned, controlled and browbeaten. Kolbinger says the breaking point came when the Forum leader exploded and yelled at the participants. Kolbinger says she cried all the way home. She later met with a psychologist who she claims diagnosed her with posttraumatic stress disorder.

“I was depressed and hadn’t been able to sleep for more than a few hours at a time, even after I did escape,” Kolbinger says. “I said that I was okay, but then the tears would well up. I was denying how really traumatized I was. I was semi-paranoid.”

…Landmark vigorously disputes the cult accusation and freely threatens or pursues lawsuits against those who call it one.

When the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) made statements and distributed materials alleging or implying that Landmark is a cult, the company sued. In 1997, CAN resolved the suit by stating it has no evidence that Landmark is a cult.

Landmark also boasts numerous letters from experts stating that it does not meet cult criteria. One such letter comes from Dr. Margaret Singer, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, and an expert on cults. Landmark sued Singer after she mentioned the company in her book Cults in Our Midst. Singer says she never called it a cult in her book, but simply mentioned it as a controversial New Age training course. In resolution of the suit, Singer gave a sworn statement that the organization is not a cult or sect. She says this doesn’t mean she supports Landmark.

“I do not endorse them — never have,” she says.

Singer, who is in her 70s, says she can’t comment on whether Landmark uses coercive persuasion because “the SOBs have already sued me once.”

“I’m afraid to tell you what I really think about them because I’m not covered by any lawyers like I was when I wrote my book.”

Singer will say, however, that she would not recommend the group to anyone.

…Even professional cult buster Ross agrees that Landmark isn’t one. “I’m a relative conservative on the issue of defining a cult,” he says. “In my mind, I look for an absolute authoritarian leader . . . I just don’t see any parallel with that type of leader in Landmark.”

The company does not meet many of the conventional definitions of a cult. Landmark does not require its members to turn over their personal assets, except the cost of tuition. Landmark does not cut people off from family and friends, there is no communal living situation, nothing to worship, and participation must be voluntary.

But does Landmark wash brains? That is an entirely different question. In an article titled “Coercive Persuasion and Attitude Change,” Richard J. Ofshe, professor of social psychology at UC-Berkeley and co-recipient of the 1979 Pulitzer Prize, defines coercive persuasion, or brainwashing, as “programs of social influence capable of producing substantial behavior and attitude change through the use of coercive tactics, persuasion, and/or interpersonal and group manipulations.” Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist and professor at the City University of New York, studied brainwashing in China, and in his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism identified eight criteria as a basis for answering the question: “Isn’t this brainwashing?”

They include: control of communication, emotional and behavioral manipulation, demands for absolute conformity, obsessive demands for confession, agreement that the ideology is faultless, manipulation of language in which clichés substitute for analytic thought, reinterpretation of human experience in terms of doctrine and classification of those not sharing the ideology as inferior.

Ofshe points out that brainwashing isn’t always as scary as it sounds and it doesn’t necessarily involve physical assault. He distinguishes four characteristics of coercive persuasion: the reliance on intense interpersonal and psychological attack, the use of an organized peer group, applying interpersonal pressure to promote conformity and the manipulation of the person’s social environment.

In his report on the Landmark Forum, Raymond Fowler of the American Psychological Association states, “The relatively brief encounters in a pleasant environment that characterizes the Landmark Forum program could never effect such extreme and unwanted changes in personality and behavior as those attributed to the various forms of ‘mind control.'”

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Wall Street & 2020 Election

Bud: I don’t think the country fully grasps how the labor and not capital are made to pay risk premiums. The fed has inverted the equation. The only people smart enough by and large to understand what the Fed has done have mostly benefited from it. So its not a mass cause. you get paid a risk premium without taking risk, if you own assets. The fed has muted all price discovery, its like bumper bowling. If you are wealthy or have chunk of assets you never through gutter balls, scores go through the roof, without anyone being able to ascertain who the weakest bowlers are to make way for new people to try. Wage earners are still playing without bumpers. plus the cost of bowling, and beer have gone up. It’s by far the biggest story, not Trump or Biden or Floyd or all the other distractions. It’s always about the money. I think Dems got more and more desperate w blm and antifa as they realized that Fed would bail out Trump’s markets and even cause them to rip, having removed any risk from the horizon. They wouldn’t be able to run on weak markets which is how most people see the economy, i.e. if you turn on news and markets make highs, and your statements are at highs, you re elect you don’t change.

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Pundits V Professors

A friend says: Political pundits are selected for on their ability to get and keep attention. Many though academia’s problems are, the selection process is not as pathological. And the same applies to business/finance analysts — and, to be honest, to papers like the New York Times that have serious branding power such that the individual writers are not “hustling” as much. People who strive individually for attention have to resist a riptide pulling them towards “we have to fight wicked evil childeating [outgroup].”

The internal rhetoric of the left is of being overcome with emotion, with rage and sadness that overspills uncontrollably yet the actions of the left are deliberate and cohesive over a timescale of decades. The internal rhetoric of the right is all about plans coming to fruition at some time in the usually distant future yet the actions of the right are spontaneous, reactive, short-term oriented.

It’s like we’re on a very big ship, and a crowd is fighting over the steering wheel. There’s little point in throwing yourself into the melee. The ship’s course is of ultimate importance, but out of control. Lifeboats spring to mind – but most of the time, ships don’t sink. The worst should have its place in one’s priorities, but not the first place.

The first priority should go to some business on the ship which is neglected, and which you can make headway in. It seems paradoxical, but the more obvious a problem is the less likely it is that you’ll be able to make headway as a fellow arriving on the scene.

One should seek some happy medium in the ideal problem: something drab and obscure enough to be underprioritized, but not so drab and obscure as to leave you a lone crusader.

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