For the last century, one enduring cliché has been that when America sneezes, the world catches a cold. But now the big power with the sniffles is China.

China’s rise has been the most profound development of the past half century, turning a moribund, rural country into a highly urbanized economic superpower. Hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty, and markets around the world reshaped. China alone accounted for a whopping 24.1% of global economic growth from 2003 to 2013. according to the IMF.  read more »

Race and ancestry, or countries/peoples of origin, are popular topics, with large amounts of data attempting to help us understand the ethnic nature of the country. In this paper I attempt a summary description of the intersections of race, ancestry, and genome, at the state level, but I hasten to emphasize that the “findings” are tentative, highly uncertain, and based on astoundingly unreliable data. I hope some readers may point the way to better data or safer interpretations.  read more »

Last year (2014), China overtook the United States in gross domestic product adjusted for purchasing power (GDP-PPP, see point 4 for explanation), according to both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (Note 1).  read more »

“They don’t know history, but they are making it. But what are they making?”

– Victor Serge, “The Conquered City,” 1932

In contrast to the physical sciences, and even other social sciences, the study of history is, by nature, subjective. There is no real mathematical formula to assess the past. It is more an art, or artifice, than a science.  read more »

As a San Franciscan I get a lot of raised eyebrows when I mention that I recently bought property in Cincinnati. “Huh?” Then I walk them through it. Here’s the mom and pop business district along Hamilton Avenue in the Northside neighborhood during a recent Summer Streets event. This is a classic 1890’s Norman Rockwell Main Street with a hardware store, a Carnegie library, barbers, cafes, bars, funky little shops, and seriously good architectural bones.  read more »

Going into the silly-season of US Presidential campaigning, I want to get a head start on updating the “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” discussion. In an April 2009 ng article, Rogue Treasury, I compared measures of our economic well-being before and after passage of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.  read more »

Governor Jerry Brown recently released a plan to find funds to fix California’s roads. Infrastructure funding is one of the essential roles of government, so it’s refreshing to hear that our otherwise dysfunctional state government is taking action on this front. But who will be paying for it? Those who use the roads most, that is, California’s drivers, who disproportionately tend to be members of the middle and working classes.  read more »

The massive, ongoing surge of migrants and refugees into Europe has brought up horrendous scenes of deprivation, along with heartwarming instances of generosity. It has also engendered cruel remembrances of the continent’s darkest hours. But viewed over the long term, this crisis may well be the prelude to changes that could dissipate, and even overturn, some of the world’s most-storied and productive cultures.  read more »

St. Petersburg, Peter the Great’s new European style capital for imperial Russia, is the most visited city for tourists in Russia. It has a ton of great buildings, energetic street life in its smallish central core, and world-renowned cultural institutions like the Hermitage Museum and the Mariinsky Theater.  read more »

Many analysts—usually planners—have been regularly offering a wealth of exhortations concerning how uneconomical it is to purchase, operate and maintain a private car. Is this a valid assertion of a household economic burden? And what is the likelihood that the advice will ultimately prove useful?  read more »