The last president of the Soviet Union: obituary, page 78 Disunited states of America Far from being laboratories of democracy, American states are now Petri dishes of polarisation: lead
Trang 4To find out why Andy Murray is a fan or to become a Fan of M.O visit mandarinoriental.com ASIA-PACIFIC BANGKOK • BEIJING • GUANGZHOU • HONG KONG • JAKARTA • KUALA LUMPUR • MACAU • SANYA • SHANGHAI SHENZHEN • SINGAPORE • TAIPEI • TOKYO • THE AMERICAS BOSTON • CANOUAN • MIAMI • NEW YORK • SANTIAGO EUROPE BARCELONA • BODRUM • GENEVA • ISTANBUL • LAKE COMO • LONDON • LUCERNE • MADRID MILAN • MUNICH • PARIS • PRAGUE MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA ABU DHABI • DOHA • DUBAI • MARRAKECH • RIYADH
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Trang 5Contents continues overleaf
On the cover
The world this week
7 A summary of politicaland business news
Leaders
9 Britain’s building problem
management, cigarettes,cutting weeds, voters
Briefing
17 A house divided
The splintering ofAmerica
Europe
26 Ukraine’s southerncounteroffensive
→The digital element of your
subscription means that you
can search our archive, read
all of our daily journalism and
listen to audio versions of our
stories Visit economist.com
Banyan A tycoon’s bid for
a big Indian news channelbodes ill for media
freedom, page 47
Britain’s growth problem
won’t be fixed until its absurd
planning rules are reformed:
leader, page 9 Why the
country struggles to create
enough homes, roads,
reservoirs and power stations,
page 21
The man who ended an empire
Mikhail Gorbachev liberated
millions, even if he didn’t set out
to do so: leader, page 10 The last
president of the Soviet Union:
obituary, page 78
Disunited states of America
Far from being laboratories of
democracy, American states are
now Petri dishes of polarisation:
leader, page 14 Why that
matters: briefing, page 17
Europe’s energy crisis How to
stop the fuel-price shock
spiralling into a catastrophe:
leader, page 10, and analysis,
page 60 Europe is heading for
recession How bad will it be?
Page 59
Dealing with floods What
Pakistan needs to learn from
Bangladesh: leader, page 12
A country reeling from economic
and political crises is hit by the
worst floods in recent history,
page 44 Climate change may
lead to migration on a scarcely
imaginable scale How will the
world cope? Page 70
Trang 6The Economist September 3rd 2022Contents
6
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46 South-East Asian energy
46 Japan’s ageing inmates
47 Banyan Media freedom in
India
China
48 America and the perils of
“peak China”
49 Taiwan Strait drama
50 The un and Xinjiang
50 An art hub in decline
57 Bartleby Exit interviews
58 Schumpeter The chip
69 The genes of immortality
69 Synthetic mouse embryos
Culture
70 Climate change andmigration
71 Crossing America’ssouthern border
72 Indonesia’s cuisine
72 How data changed football
73 Back Story Why go on
holiday?
74 The rise of A24
Economic & financial indicators
Trang 7in response to a visit there byNancy Pelosi, the speaker ofAmerica’s House of Repre
sentatives, in early August.
announced that its fiveyearlycongress would start on Octo
ber 16th. Xi Jinping is poised tosecure a third term as partyleader, in violation of recentretirement norms
Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s
autocratic ruler, received
to the country. It marks thereestablishment of diplomat
ic ties between the two coun
tries, which had been severedsince 2019. Gustavo Petro,Colombia’s leftwing presi
dent, who recently assumedoffice, has also announced thatthe border will be reopened,and that military relations may
be restored, too
A truth commission set up by
the Mexican government said
that six of the 43 students whowent missing in 2014 werekept alive in a warehouse forseveral days. An official at thecommission claimed that alocal army commanderordered their killings. A weekearlier, the attorneygeneralwho oversaw the originalinvestigation into thedisappearances was arrested
by federal agents
Supporters of Muqtada alSadr,
a rabblerousing Iraqi cleric,breached the fortified seat of
march on the home of a formerprime minister, Nuri alMaliki,sparking gun battles that killed
at least 30 people. The protestscome after months of deadlock
in which Mr Sadr, whose partywon the most seats in
elections last year, has beenunable to form a government
At least 32 people were killedand more than 100 injured inclashes between rival militias
in Tripoli, the capital of Libya.
The government said that theviolence broke out when onegroup of armed men began
44%, rejected the result andhas filed official complaints
Police in Madagascar killed 19
people when they fired on acrowd of vigilantes who tried
to storm a police station toseize four people arrested onsuspicion of abducting a child
Earning his Nobel peace prize
Moscow at the age of 91. Thelast leader of the Soviet Unionhelped bring about an end tothe cold war, and sharplydiminished the threat of a veryreal nuclear one. Although hislandmark summit with RonaldReagan in Iceland in 1986ended with no agreement, itled to a breakthrough in arms
control negotiations. At home
he brought in glasnost (open
ness) and perestroika (reform),hoping to revive a dying econ
omy. Lauded in the West, hisfellow Russians were aghast atthe breakup of their empire
Mr Gorbachev once said thatmarkets were a mark ofcivilisation, not capitalism.
to Russian troops in March.
A team of un inspectors made
their way to the Zaporizhia
nuclear plant, which hasendured weeks of shellingnearby. Russian forces havecontrolled the facility sinceMarch, supervising the technicians who have kept itrunning. The un inspectorshope to assess any damage.
America’s Justice Departmentrevealed in a court filing that
classified material at hishome in Florida. During thefbi’s search of the premisessome classified papers werefound unsecured in his desks.Scores of classified docu
ments were discovered atMaraLago. It is not yetknown which papers MrTrump had squirrelled away.
A federal emergency was
declared in Mississippi, after
a watertreatment plant nearJackson, the state capital, wasshut down because of pro
blems with the pumps. Thosewho do get water from a taphave been told not to drink it.
Mary Peltola won a specialelection for the Democrats to
fill the lone seat for Alaska in
the House of Representatives,beating Sarah Palin. Ms Pelto
la ran on a strong proabortion platform in a state theRepublicans had held since
1973. However, the candidateswill contest the seat again inNovember’s midterms.
on September 3rd with asecond attempt to launch itsMoon rocket, after the firstlaunch was aborted because
of an engine glitch. The agen
cy is sending an unmannedcapsule on an orbit aroundthe Moon, 50 years after thelast Apollo mission. TheArtemis programme aimseventually to send men, andwomen, to the Moon.
Trang 8The Economist September 3rd 20228
The world this week Business
Heating or eating?
In Britain the energy regulator
lifted the price cap on bills by80%. From October the averagehousehold’s annual bill for gasand electricity will rise to
£3,549 ($4,117). Companies arenot covered by the cap; somesaid they would go bankrupt
Turkey’s economy grew by
7.6% in the second quarter,year on year. The weak lira, aresult of the government’sunorthodox economic poli
cies, has boosted exports. Buthousehold consumption, up
by 22.5% in the quarter, alsoadded to gdp With inflation at80%, households have broughtforward their purchases to beatfurther price increases over thecoming months. Meanwhile,Turkish authorities raised
energy prices for households
by an average of 20%, andindustry by 50%
Snap decided to shed a fifth of
its workforce amid a slow
down in digital advertising
The socialmedia companyalso warned of slowingrevenues in this quarter.
Moderna filed lawsuits in
America and Germany seeking
damages from Pfizer and BioNTech, for allegedly
infringing patents on themrna technology used incovid19 vaccines.
America reached a break
through agreement with Chinathat will allow American reg
ulators to inspect the accounts
of Chinese firms that are
listed in the United States. Arow over accounting standardshad threatened to boot Chi
nese companies off Americanexchanges. That threat hasreceded, although Gary Gen
sler, head of the Securities andExchange Commission, saidthat the new framework was
“merely a step in the process”.
byd, a Chinese maker of elec
tric cars with global ambitions,reported a big jump in salesand profit for the first sixmonths of the year. The com
pany sold more “new energy
cars” in the first seven months
of the year than in 2020 and
2021 combined. Nonetheless,byd’s share price swoonedafter it emerged that WarrenBuffett, its most prominentbacker, had slightly reducedhis stake to 19.9%.
Honda announced a partnership with lg Energy Solution, a South Korean batterymaker, to invest $4.4bn in
building a factory for electric car batteries in America. lg
Energy Solution is expected tobenefit from the tax creditsprovided in the InflationReduction Act for companiesthat lessen the reliance onChina for battery components.
A 90-hour week
People embarking on a career
should be prepared to work 18 hours a day, according to the
boss of Bombay Shaving Company in India. ShantanuDeshpande said that employees in their 20s should “worship” their job, and that theworklife balance at that age is
“blah”. Those who disagreeshould speak to his staff, hesaid. Mr Deshpande’s comments come amid a trend of
“quiet quitting”, or doing theminimum that your jobrequires. “Acting your wage”, assome quietquitters put it.
Turkey GDP
% change on a year earlier
Source: Haver Analytics
20 15 10 5 0 -5 -10 -15 22 21 20
2019
Trang 9Small things can create big problems when anyone tries to
Notes from a nimby nation
More modest changes could make a difference, however. Encouraging neighbouring local authorities to work together onlongterm plans has been a Conservative policy success since
2010. Mayors in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands havethrived through such cooperation. The government should gofurther and hand regional authorities more fiscal powers, including full control over all property taxes.
Currently, who pays what is settled almost entirely in Whitehall rather than town halls. British local authorities take a farsmaller slice of revenues raised in their area than is usual inother European countries. So they have little incentive to allowdevelopment: they endure all the political pain for a piffling fiscal gain. Giving local authorities a larger slice of the pie wouldencourage them to bake a bigger one.
If an incentive to grow is not enough, the government should
compel them at least to try. All public authorities should be given a mandate to boost growth.Granted, that is a nebulous goal. Yet similarrules exist in other areas. Since the Equality Actwas passed in 2010, public authorities havebeen expected to do their bit for “equality”, anilldefined concept. Local authorities have had
to think deeply about how to make a whole host
of things more equal or end up in court.
A growth mandate would provide yimbys with legal ammunition to face down their nimby nemeses. Opponents of development have an arsenal of legal weapons. A growth mandatewould help redress the balance. Expecting Rutland CountyCouncil to do its bit for gdp is no more absurd than expecting it
to contribute to reaching net zero by 2050. Boosting growth andstopping climate change require systemic solutions, well beyond a local politician’s usual remit of potholes, bins and dogpoo. But every little helps.
Finally, projects crucial for Britain to hit its target of beingemissionsneutral by 2050 should be exempt from bogstandardplanning rules. At the moment, legislation designed to protectthe environment stands in the way of projects that will helpreach the climate goal. Renewableenergy schemes can beblocked for environmental or aesthetic reasons. Earlier this year
a council in Kent recommended refusing its own planning application for solar panels on the roof of its building because theywould look “out of place”.
Britons mistake conservationism for environmentalism,confusing the protection of ancient woodland and great crestednewts with the efforts needed to keep climate change at bay. IfBritain’s bonkers rules on building cannot be changed, theyshould at least be bypassed. n
Britain’s growth problem won’t be fixed until its absurd planning rules are reformed
Free the bulldozers
Trang 1010 Leaders The Economist September 3rd 2022
As disruptions toRussian gas, French nuclear power and
Norwegian hydroelectricity wreak havoc in Europe’s energymarkets, prices are verging on the surreal. Benchmark nat
Rather than tinkering, governments should focus on two bigger tasks. The first is to allow the market mechanism to curb demand, while supporting the most vulnerable people. Largehandouts will be needed, but targeted assistance can limit thebill: according to the imf, policies that offer rebates and cashtransfers to the poorest 40% of people would be cheaper thanthe policy mix today, which largely includes tax cuts on fuel, orretailprice caps.
The second priority is to increase supply, something that isnot solely in Vladimir Putin’s gift. Other sources of natural gas
can be cultivated: this is one reason whyFrance’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has justvisited Algeria. Within Europe, countries canhelp ease bottlenecks, such as inadequatecrossborder gas interconnections. Today insufficient investment and differences in standards impede the flow from Spain and France toGermany and eastern Europe. The eu needs toensure that in the event of rationing, there is acontinentwide agreement about which users are cut off first:without this the danger is that countries will hoard supplies. All this will cost money. So far Greece, Italy and Spain, amongthe euro zone’s most indebted members, have spent 24% oftheir gdp on fiscal handouts to cushion the energy shock.Fortunately, the eu has the firepower to help. Its €807bn pandemic recovery fund is being doled out in the form of loans andgrants. Yet so far less than 15% of the pot has been disbursed.Payments for energy projects could be accelerated and the commission could offer cheap loans to help fund targeted fiscal support. The eu came together to tackle the economic consequences of the pandemic lockdowns. Be under no illusions:the energy crisis requires a similarly bold response.n
How to stop Europe’s energy crunch spiralling into an economic crisis
Natural-gas price
Dutch TTF front-month futures, €/MWh
300 200 100 0
He also, despite too many incidents in which force was used
on his watch, had a deep personal aversion to violence. And so,when the anticommunist uprisings of 1989 swept through eastern Europe, he made the right choice: to let Moscow’s satellitesspin out of its orbit, rather than send in the tanks that hadcrushed Hungarian democrats in 1956 and Czechoslovakians in
He liberated millions, even if he didn’t set out to
The man who ended an empire
Mikhail Gorbachev
Trang 11In the earlydays of covid19, the tech industry was consumed
as Disney+. Robinhood is laying off a quarter of its staff as daytraders cool on the markets.
The fading workfromhome boom has affected the demandfor hardware, too. Worldwide pc shipments are expected to decline by 10% this year; analysts reckon mobilephone sales will
The tech darlings of the pandemic have crashed and burned But there are winners, too
Alas, tyrants around the world have seen what Mr Gorbachevdid as a cautionary tale: if you give people a bit of freedom, theywill demand more. China opened up economically, but bloodilysuppressed its own democratic stirring on Tiananmen Square in
June 1989. When, later that year, eastern Europeshook off communistparty rule, the hardliners
in Beijing felt vindicated for not having allowedanything similar. When the Soviet Union itselfcollapsed and communists lost power in Moscow, too, China’s rulers quietly congratulatedthemselves for not having been so weak andfoolish. Given the choice, people tend not tolike being ruled over by unaccountable and unremovable apparatchiks; so China’s leaders resolved not to givethem that choice. Stability and economic progress in China havecome at a terrible cost in terms of personal freedoms, the rights
of minorities and ingrained corruption.
History has moved on since Mr Gorbachev left the Kremlin.Russia is no longer a superpower in any but the nuclear sense,but China has rapidly become one. The Big Lie, a driving force ofthe Soviet Union that only those without clear memories hankerfor, has been shown to work even in mature democracies. Theseare awkward truths for liberals to grapple with. As they mournthe man who let a tyrannical empire disintegrate, they mustkeep struggling against modern tyrants and empirebuilders. n
Trang 1212 Leaders The Economist September 3rd 2022
Sanity reigns
The bubble may have burst on the pandemic’s darlings, but thedrumbeat of digitisation continues. The less eyecatching technologies that provide the underlying infrastructure for the shiftare the true beneficiaries of covid. Whether these will fuel a productivity boost one day remains to be seen. But there was moregoing on during the pandemic than lockdown lunacy. n
An unusually heavymonsoon has caused havoc in South
to those who have lost their livelihoods
Now for some neighbourly advice
Yet it is clear that Pakistan has failed to take fully on board thelessons on offer from Bangladesh. One reason is a reluctance toheed sufficiently the threat posed by climate change, a failurethat afflicts rich countries, too (see United States section). Theweather patterns behind the latest disaster are consistent withwhat is expected in a warming world. As they become more com
mon and affect areas not used to such extremes,more people will have to be better prepared. But the bigger reason is politics. Pakistan’shave been a mess, distracting from the sort ofpatient planning needed to build resilienceagainst floods. The floods have hit a country already reeling from economic and political instability. Imran Khan, who was ousted as primeminister in April and is keen to do the same tohis successor, is exploiting the disaster to score political points,which may end up jeopardising the government’s relief efforts. Pakistan’s plight also provides a different sort of warning,about the broader impact of global warming. As climate conditions grow more extreme round the world, they are likely to produce more political instability. Shockingly large numbers ofpeople may be forced to leave their homes in the coming decades
as climate change renders their cities and villages uninhabitable(see Culture section). Calls to compensate poorer, worseaffect
ed countries for climate changes they did not cause are likely togrow louder. All the preparation in the world may not be enough
to contain the fallout. n
What Pakistan needs to learn from Bangladesh
Get ready for the rains
Responding to floods
Trang 1414 Leaders The Economist September 3rd 2022
This makes for a nastier, shriller national conversation. Italso makes it harder to do business in America. Whereas oncethe country was, roughly speaking, a giant single market, nowCalifornia and New York push companies to become greenerwhile Texas and West Virginia penalise them for favouring renewable energy over oil and gas. Recently Texas went so far as toblacklist ten financial firms for going too green
The biggest worry is that partisanship could undermineAmerican democracy itself. Many Republicans cannot win aprimary unless they endorse Donald Trump’s Big Lie that he beatJoe Biden in 2020. That year a coalition of Republican state attorneysgeneral sued other states to try to have their votes invalidated. Whatever happens in the November midterm elections,such sparring could proliferate. America is not going to have another civil war, as some feverish pundits speculate, but it has already endured political violence, and that could get worse.
American dysfunction poses a risk to theworld, which depends on America to upholdthe rulesbased order (or what’s left of it), to deter military aggressors and to offer an example
of democratic governance. It is doing especiallybadly on the last of these. What can be done?The federal government should stop neglecting its responsibilities. Policies on immigration and climate change, for example, areclearly better set nationally than locally. Reforms to break thegridlock in Washington, such as ditching the Senate filibuster,might help. But more than this America needs electoral reform.
States of play
It should end gerrymandering, which lets politicians choosetheir voters rather than vice versa. States should do redistrictingthrough independent commissions, as Michigan does, to depoliticise the process. This would make it harder for one party toentrench itself. It would also, by creating more competitive districts, force more politicians to appeal to the centre.
Allowing for multimember districts could also help. Instead
of carving up districts and allowing them to elect only one representative, this would increase the diversity of voices in state legislatures and Congress. Rankedchoice voting, in which voters’second and third choices count if no candidate wins an outrightmajority of first preferences, could promote moderation.(Rankedchoice voting in Alaska this week kept Sarah Palin out
of Congress.) Different states could try different policies
Voters, too, have a responsibility. It may be hard, in the era ofsocial media, to ignore the blizzard of confected fury and votefor leaders who want to get things done. But the alternative isever greater disunion, and that does not lead anywhere good.n
Far from being laboratories of democracy, American states are now Petri dishes of polarisation
The disunited states
Politics
Trang 15Do you want to contribute to the energy mix of the future? Can
you lead and inspire large teams of talented people working for
a multi-billion-euro awe inspiring big science project that has the
potential to help Europe become more sustainable and green?
Fusion for Energy (F4E), the European Union’s Joint
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In parallel, F4E is involved in three major fusion R&D projects,
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The Executive Director will lead and manage the Agency
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Closing date: 23 September 2022, 12.00 noon Brussels time
Trang 16The Economist September 3rd 202216
Letters
Battery cells could be mega
It is a febrile time to work in
the battery industry (“Cell-side
analysis”, August 20th)
How-ever, the answer to meeting the
demand from electric vehicles
is not just to run faster, but
smarter The market is
obsessed with gigafactories,
with many seeing this as the
only way to deliver cells at the
volumes needed Reaching
gigascale is essential, but there
are other routes to getting
there than trying to go from
zero to 60 straight away
You said that these facilities
take three years to build In
fact, the process can be longer,
up to seven years from land
acquisition, permitting,
infra-structure delivery and power
connectivity through to final
build and commissioning
There are squeezes, too, on
raw-material supply chains,
with a handful of big players
buying up resources These
need to be tackled to make
larger factories a reality
Added to all that, people
often forget that demand for
battery cells is much bigger
than sometimes stated Within
carmaking, they are needed for
powertrains in hydrogen
fuel-cell vehicles as well as in
electric cars They are also vital
for renewable energy storage
to maximise output from wind
and solar
How do we square the
circle? Megafactories, smaller
facilities, are part of the
solution They can be created
quicker than their giga
cousins, helping us to scale up
production They require less
upfront capital and are
suit-able for more locations,
mak-ing it easier to repeat the
mod-el This can mean green
indus-trial jobs in more places, too
The battery industry’s
ambitions are gigantic, but if
we’re going to reach them, and
deliver the industry’s net-zero
potential, then we need more
diverse models, including
making the transition
gradual-ly to giga rather than trying to
fast forward in one giant leap
dave pell
Commercial director
Oxford
Fire as forest management
I taught a culture and forestryclass for many years, and I’veseen “Bambi” about 20 times Iappreciated your article onwhat the Disney classic tells usabout eco-disasters (“Burningup”, August 13th), but there aresome important things tomention about the portrayal offire Open woodlands andpatchy forests tend to havemuch higher levels of bio-diversity and are more resis-tant to high severity wildfire,good reasons for making fireand other means of thinningforests part of our manage-ment practices Even in Europethe emphasis on managingdense forests is relatively new
The Black Forest, for example,used to be managed by a form
of Swidden, slashing andburning, in the 19th century
“Bambi” actually portraysthe outcome of a fire very well
After the tragic event, flowersand herbs abound and Bambi’smate has twins This is notunusual In the years following
a fire there is typically a sion of forage for deer and elk,and a habitat for an abundance
profu-of creatures that simply needmore sun This nutritionalburst leads to more young
Too often we characterise
an ecological phenomenon asbad or good, when in fact it ispart of how the ecosystemworks Sometimes a short term
“damage” is a long-term fit, especially if it leads togreater ecosystem resilienceand fewer over-fuelled firesthat burn everything in theirpath I hope that people willcome to terms with this, sothat the active management ofour forests can begin
bene-lynn huntsingerProfessor of rangeland ecologyand management
University of California,Berkeley
Condiment cordialeThe shortage of Dijon mustard
in France is intriguing (“Thegreat French mustard short-age”, August 13th) But I wouldhave welcomed an angle on thepotential economic opportuni-
ty for Britain to seize an
open-ing for English mustard It isinteresting that our Gallicfriends have turned to theblander American variant toreplenish stocks rather thanthe more nasally challengingEnglish variety, which should
be more familiar to them
Maybe this is because of Brexit trade or supply-chainissues Or does it say some-thing about the state of theAnglo-French relationship?
post-jonathan wardDallas
Tummy troublesBartleby (August 20th)suggested a new entrant tocorporate jargon: "probioticmanagement", or gut instinct
Perhaps the perfect opposite ofthis would be "antibioticmanagement", or analysisparalysis This would give usthe perfect framework to usethe right management tool foreach problem: antibiotic toavoid decisions, probiotic ifyou can stomach the conse-quences of making a decision
srikanth rajagopalanBangalore, India
State pushers of cigarettesYou described how climateactivists vilify multinationaloil companies and ignorestate-run oil giants (“National-
ly determined contributors”,July 30th) The same applies tomultinationals and statemonopolies in tobacco Most
of the former have committed
to ending smoking by movingsmokers to lower-risk nicotineproducts Many of their brandshave been authorised by theAmerican Food and DrugAdministration as beingappropriate for the protection
of public health Philip MorrisInternational now derives 30%
of its revenues from suchproducts and British AmericanTobacco 15%
Yet state monopolies,which together sell well over50% of all cigarettes, have noteven started the transition
The Chinese state monopoly is
by far the biggest seller
global-ly, accounting for about 45% ofall sales The World HealthOrganisation and most govern-
ments ignore this reality Theyturn a blind eye to state-runcigarette companies, at thesame time refusing to engagewith the multinationals thatpour billions into research andinnovation to help end the 8mdeaths a year from tobacco.derek yach
Former executive director atthe World Health OrganisationSouthport, Connecticut
Cutting out the state
As a British expatriate living inthe United States, I was
shocked— shocked!—to learnthat because of the local au-thority’s neglect, the pavementweeds on your correspondent’sstreet in Britain have grown to
“almost two metres high”(“The summer of discontent”,August 13th) In order to avertthe collapse of British civilisa-tion as we know it, may I sug-gest a giant grass scythette,available from Amazon foronly £24.67 Should this not be
up to the task by the time itarrives, I would be happy toloan your correspondent thechainsaw that every self-respecting American home isequipped with, as our civicresponsibilities include keep-ing the sidewalk (pavement)clear of such impediments.malcolm harker
Seattle
Political intelligenceThe Liberal Democrat whoencouraged the party’s pursuit
of cerebral voters (Bagehot,July 30th) should rememberAdlai Stevenson’s warningwhen he ran for Americanpresident in the 1950s A sup-porter yelled that he wouldhave the vote “of every think-ing American” Stevensonreplied, “Madam, that’s notenough I need a majority.” Helost twice by a landslide
jonathan coopersmithWashington, dc
Letters are welcome and should be addressed to the Editor at The Economist, The Adelphi Building, 1-11 John Adam Street, London wc2n 6ht Email: letters@economist.com
More letters are available at:
Economist.com/letters
Trang 17To understand thefuture of America,
don’t head to Washington, dc. Instead,talk to the governors of its most conserva
gress that I’ve enjoyed in my 50plus years,all being unravelled, in real time.”
Californian Democrats are reassertingthe liberal values he sees threatened. A law
Mr Newsom signed in June protects peoplewho get or facilitate abortions in Californiafrom lawsuits filed in states where abor
tion is banned. He recently began danglingtax credits in front of companies whichmight be considering moving out of statesthat impede reproductive, gay and transrights. California is also considering de
claring itself a “sanctuary state” for trans
identifying children, shielding them fromcourt actions by states that penalise sur
gery aimed at aligning their bodies withtheir professed identities.
Mr Newsom does not see this as differ
entiation. He sees it as active defence. “Iwant to punch the bullies back,” he says. “Idon’t like what they’re doing”. He has usedcampaign funds to throw those punches. “Iurge all of you living in Florida to join the
fight or join us in California where we stillbelieve in freedom,” he said in a tv adwhich aired on the opposite coast: “Freedom of speech, freedom to choose, freedom from hate and the freedom to love.” There is, however, one thing that unites
Mr Newsom and Mr Reeves. They both believe the federal government receives toomuch attention. Increasingly, policies thatmatter in people’s lives are originating inthe states.
Those policies reflect America’s growing ideological polarisation. “State policiesvary more than they ever have before,” saysChris Warshaw of George Washington University, coauthor of a forthcoming book,
“Dynamic Democracy”. As states go in different directions on social and economicpolicy, the consequences will be deeply felt
by all Americans, regardless of their place
on the political spectrum, with implications around the world.
To quantify the divergence amongstates, Mr Warshaw and Devin Caughey ofthe Massachusetts Institute of Technologyanalysed 190 policies from the 1930s to
2021. On the whole, states have becomemore liberal. They have unwound, for example, racial restrictions, bans on womenserving on juries and laws criminalisingsodomy. However, states have also shiftedfurther apart, with a much larger gap between those furthest to the right and to theleft (see chart 1 on next page). Data for 2022are likely to show “massively more divergence”, predicts Mr Warshaw
Take California and Mississippi. In
DA LL A S A N D S A CR A M E N TO
American policy is splintering state by state, with profound consequences
A house divided
Trang 1818 Briefing America’s disunited states The Economist September 3rd 2022
tures are pushing for fewer restrictions
Many have embraced “permitless carry”
laws, which remove all restrictions ongunowners being armed in public. In JuneOhio became the 23rd state to allow this
The same month, its Republican governor,Mike DeWine, signed a law lowering thenumber of hours’ training that teachers re
Through various laws, California has “defacto legalised” undocumented immi
grants, says Ken Miller, a professor atClaremont McKenna College. In June it be
came the first state to start offering Medic
aid, the government healthinsurancescheme for the poor, to all lowincomeadults regardless of immigration status.
Texas is pushing in the opposite direc
tion. Its governor, Greg Abbott, has de
clined to expand Medicaid to any morelowincome Texans, let alone nonciti
zens. He has ordered state police to startbringing unauthorised immigrants back tothe border. Mr Abbott has also said hewants to stop paying for undocumentedchildren to attend public schools. What thechildren who do go to school must betaught (such as ethnic studies in Califor
nia, or AfricanAmerican and Latino stud
ies in Connecticut) and must not be taught(such as critical race theory in a number ofstates) is a whole other story.
Another area where state policies arestarting to have national impact is that ofvoting and election administration as it re
lates to early voting access, voter id re
quirements, mailin voting and whetherfelons should be reenfranchised. In 2021,
29 states expanded access to voting bymail, while 13 states restricted it. Many Re
publicandominated states are taking aim
at election administration, for example byshifting oversight authority away fromnonpartisan bureaucrats to political ac
tors. This could complicate states’ certifi
cation of election results
America’s national identity as a collec
tion of states is written into the country’svery name. The 13 coloniesturnedstateswere wary of federal power subjugatingtheir own. They needed to be assured of au
tonomy if they were to ratify the constitu
tion. That need was most acutely felt when
it came to the degree of autonomy slavestates felt they needed for their own race
based subjugations, but the issue wasbroader than that. The founders thought afederal republic of distinct and diverse
states would be protected from the spread
of dangerous zealotry. As James Madisonwrote, “The influence of factious leadersmay kindle a flame within their particularstates, but will be unable to spread a gener
al conflagration through the other states.”
Then turn around and make up
The federal model that was enshrined inthe constitution is not unique. Australia,Canada and Germany have similar architectures of power. But the American modelhas particular features, perhaps most notably its tenth amendment, which explicitlyconfers to the states “the powers not delegated” to the federal government.
Countries like Canada and Australia aremore resolved in what dominion the feder
al government can enjoy, according to DonKettl, professor emeritus at the University
of Maryland School of Public Policy. InAmerica, by contrast, “There has neverbeen true stability in the relationship between states and the federal government.”One way to think about the statefederalrelationship is as a tugofwar. For most ofthe country’s history, states have had therope pulled over to their side of the field. In
1861, fearing that the pull on the rope fromthe federal government was getting too
The widening gyre
1 0 -1 -2 -3
2 3 4
Ideological lean of policies implemented
in 2020
The centre cannot hold
United States, ideology of state policies
Sources: “Dynamic Democracy”, by D Caughey
and C Warshaw, 2022; The Economist
3 2 1 0 -1 -2 21 2000
50
↑ More liberal policies
90th percentile
Median
10th percentile
↓ More conservative
1
For a version of chart 2 which allows you to track all of the states, scan this
Trang 19“there has never been a bigger differencebetween a blue state and a red state”.
The differences go well beyond just hot
button ideological issues and rules on vot
ing. Take economic policy. States have longdiffered in their tax strategies, their atti
tudes to unionisation and their imposition
of regulations on business. In a dissentingopinion on the sale of ice in Oklahoma Ci
ty, Louis Brandeis, a Supreme Court justice,wrote in 1932 that “A single courageousstate may, if its citizens choose, serve as alaboratory; and try novel social and eco
nomic experiments without risk to the rest
of the country.” The pleasing metaphortook hold. For much of the period that fol
lowed, the ability for states to experiment
in economic matters continued to be seen
as one of the federal system’s strengths.
Today the range of economic policiesbeing tested in the states’ laboratories hasexpanded to include minimum wages,paid sick leave, the categorisation of cer
tain types of formerly freelance workers asemployees in response to the growth of thegig economy, and more. Benefits and pro
tections vary significantly based on one’sstate of residence. Policies to encouragethe fight against climate change and re
duce its costs are particularly divisive. InAugust California announced it would banthe sale of petrolpowered cars from 2035
In July West Virginia said it would stop do
ing business with five major banks, whichhave been critical of coal usage.
For businesses that operate on a nation
al scale the growing variation in economicregulations creates headaches and blunts
the advantage of having a large, open domestic market. There is also the challenge
of tiptoeing through the minefield of social and cultural issues which politicians
in red “probusiness” states are choosing
to care about. In Florida this year Disney,unwilling to alienate a substantial number
of its employees, opposed a bill aimed atrestricting discussions of sex, sexualityand gender identity in public classrooms
As a result Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, revoked various privileges the compa
ny had enjoyed.
If all this diversity really could be taken
as experimentation aimed at finding thebest policies for all, the costs might beworth it. Unfortunately the ability for success to diffuse from one state to the rest isincreasingly impaired. Jacob Grumbach, aprofessor at the University of Washingtonand author of a book, “Laboratories againstDemocracy”, has studied policysharingamong states and found that “partisan diffusion” had become more common, withstates emulating policy only from otherstates controlled by the same party. Stateslearn from each other how to be more thoroughly blue or red, not how to better servetheir citizens. Laboratories of democracyare splitting into “separate partisan ‘scientific’ communities”, he argues.
Happy or sad
If policies do not diffuse, though, peoplemight. Recently domestic migration hasfavoured big red states like Texas and Flori
da at the expense of big blue ones like California and New York. Political pushes tothe right by redstate legislatures couldslow or reverse that trend; Mr Newsom certainly hopes so. If people increasinglychoose states on political grounds thecountry will become even more divided. That aside, there are two reasons tothink that states will continue to diverge.First, they are being handed more power toset their own agenda In his concurringopinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s HealthOrganisation, the decision which overturned Roe, Justice Clarence Thomas wrotethat the Supreme Court should revisit the
“demonstrably erroneous decisions” inwhich the dueprocess clause of the constitution had been applied to cases involving gay marriage, sodomy and marriedcouples’ access to contraception in a waywhich took authority from the states. TheSupreme Court has also given states moreauthority over elections, whittling at thefederal Voting Rights Act of 1965.
This attitude is not entirely consistent;
in the same session that it overturned Roethe court also struck down a New York gunlaw. There seem to be rights the court’s Republican majority wants the states to haveand others it is less keen on. But the formerlook likely to outnumber the latter.
A second reason to think states’ diver
Trang 2020 Briefing America’s disunited states The Economist September 3rd 2022
gree to which its effect has been a nationalone. National interest groups, such as theNational Rifle Association, have increasedtheir role in getting enthusiasts in onestate to press for legislation modelled onthat in another. Republican groups havebeen better at doing this than Democraticones, says Mr Newsom. “These guys un
derstand bottomup, we don’t. They’vebeen in the long game, we haven’t.”
The fact that the base responds to na
tionally promulgated ideology helps ex
plain why state politicians are moving topositions far beyond voters’ views and de
voting time to issues of little practical im
port within the state. Around half of Ohio
ans favour some level of legal abortion;
their representatives are proposing a totalban. When Mr DeSantis issued a press re
lease announcing a bill targeting criticalrace theory and corporate wokeness, none
of the ten examples he provided came fromthe Sunshine State.
David French, a conservative thinker,looked at the consequences of all this divi
sion in a book, “Divided We Fall”, pub
lished in 2020. He believes that “there areunhealthy and healthy forms of federal
ism”. Today’s seem firmly in the first cate
gory. As an example, he points to a pro
posed law in South Carolina that tries to re
strict free speech around abortion, barringany website from hosting or publishing in
formation about abortion access. “Bounty
hunter” laws, by which states give newpowers to private citizens rather than tothemselves, are another disturbing exam
ple. Texas pioneered this approach with alaw allowing any citizen to sue abortionproviders. California fired back by lettingpeople sue gunmakers.
Where does all this disunity lead? Asvoters wake up to the strong influencestates will exert over their lives there will
be more attention paid to their politics.The American Civil Liberties Union (aclu),for example, is diverting several hundredmillion dollars away from the federal level
to invest in state constitutional issues andstate Supreme Courtjustice races (although it will not endorse political candidates). “There’s great possibility there,”says Kary Moss of the aclu; some stateconstitutions provide greater protectionsfor rights than the federal constitution.
At the same time, states seem increasingly interested in not just divergence, butconflict. In 2016 California passed a “sanctions regime” banning state money frombeing used for nonessential travel tostates that discriminate against gay andtrans people. There are now 22 states onthe travelban list; Mr Newsom came under political fire in June for taking a holiday in Montana, which is one of them. Regimes which restrict communication andtravel between states, even if for the mostpart symbolically, can only make relationsmore acrimonious.
There will be legal conflict, too. Severalstates are not content just to limit abortionwithin their boundaries; they want to punish people outofstate who aid and abetabortions. This seems likely to bring theminto confrontation with states like California and Connecticut, which are passingnew laws to protect citizens from lawsuitsregarding abortion facilitated by otherstates. There are echoes here of the tusslesbetween southern and northern states before the civil war. With the Fugitive SlaveAct of 1850, it was decided that escapedslaves in free states had to be returned totheir owners, with the help of the federalgovernment. In interstate abortion battles,the federal government may well be forced
to get involved too, at least in court.
Let’s stay together
The most extreme outcome would be if today’s disunity led again to a real possibility
of secession. That remains highly unlikely.But in a recent survey of nearly 9,000Americans conducted by researchers at theUniversity of California, Davis, half the respondents said there would be a civil war
in America within the next few years.Searches for “secession” shot up in the aftermath of the 2020 election. If 2024 sees aconstitutional crisis in which states, ratherthan just individual politicians withinthem, use new powers to reject the resultthe voters intended, the country’s constitution, and its constituent parts, will face aserious test.
In his book Mr French lays out severalscenarios for secession. When asked whatthe odds are of one of them actually coming true, he asserts a continued belief thatthe United States will stay united. “But forthe first time in my life,” he adds, “I’m notcertain of that.” n
Passionate intensity
United States, number of state governments
under unified party control, by party
Source: National Conference of State Legislatures
4
40 50
30 20 10 0 20 10 2000 90 80 70 60 1950
Democrat
Republican
Turning and turning
United States, ideology of state policies, by support for presidential candidate
Sources: “Dynamic Democracy”, by D Caughey and C Warshaw, 2022; The Economist
2 1 0 -1 -2 20 10
2000 90
80 1972
States where vote margin is within
ten percentage points of national result
2000 90
80 1972
States where vote margin is at least ten percentage points greater than national result
Trang 21Green and fettered land
Britain can’t build
minis-ter in the 1950s and 1960s, has two sons to be remembered The first is that he
rea-was the “headless man” being fellated by
the Duchess of Argyll in a Polaroid photo,
which emerged in divorce proceedings so
vicious that they were turned into a bbc
One drama earlier this year
The second reason is less salacious In
1955 Sandys issued a circular that
funda-mentally changed Britain It implored local
councils to forbid building on the edge of
cities in order “a) to check the further
growth of a large built-up area; b) to
pre-vent neighbouring towns from merging
into one another; or c) to preserve the
spe-cial character of a town” The authorities
had tried to restrict urban growth since the
reign of Elizabeth I Now they could
Today all four nations of the United
Kingdom have green belts About 13% of
England is so designated, including thesurroundings of every major city The gir-dle that encloses London is three times thesize of the capital A stroll through it takes
in scrubland, pony paddocks and petrolstations In “The Blunders of our Govern-ments”, a book by Anthony King and IvorCrewe, the policy is held up as a rare exam-ple of legislation achieving exactly whatwas intended
The green belts do their jobs well, ing development into the rural areas be-tween them (see maps) Indeed, most parts
push-of the planning system work as intended
Councillors retain democratic control overthe planning system Environmentalwatchdogs enforce their mandates fiercely
Stringent rules protect bats, squirrels andrare fungi Courts ensure that proceduresare followed to the letter But the system as
a whole is a failure Britain cannot build
In total, about 10% of gdp is spent onbuilding, compared with a g7 average of12% England has 434 dwellings per 1,000people, whereas France has 590, according
to the oecd, a club of mostly rich tries There is little slack in the market In
coun-France, about 8% of dwellings are vacant atany one time In England, the rate is barely1% Britain also struggles to build reser-voirs and (despite boasts from successiveprime ministers) nuclear power stations.With almost 500,000 people, Leeds is thelargest city in Europe without a mass tran-sit system What has gone wrong?
The problem starts with the Town andCountry Planning Act, which nationalisedthe right to build on land Where onceowners could do almost as they pleased,after its passage in 1947, local councils con-trolled what was built where They havenever relinquished that power The plan-ning system has more in common with anold eastern European command economythan a functioning market, argues Antho-
ny Breach of Centre for Cities, a think-tank
“We do not have a planning system, wehave a rationing system,” he says
Even when councils approve ment, other outfits can stop it NaturalEngland was created in 2006 with the aim
develop-of protecting flora and fauna After a pean Court of Justice ruling in 2018, it wastasked with ensuring “nutrient neutrality”,meaning any development could not in-crease phosphate or nitrate pollution inrivers Natural England came up with ablunt solution: building could not goahead unless developers could prove itwould not lead to an increase in nutrientlevels, a stipulation that few could provide The result was a near total freeze onhouse-building Local politicians and de-velopers, who had spent years in painful
Euro-Why the country struggles to create enough homes, roads, reservoirs
and power stations
→ Also in this section
23 The many uses of glue
24 Schools feel the pinch
24 Too few men in nurseries
25 Arguing over the Rosetta Stone
britain’s
growth
crisis
— Bagehot is away
Trang 2222 Britain The Economist September 3rd 2022
For a development of 350 houses inStaffordshire, a developer had to provide astatement of community involvement, atopographical survey, an archaeological re
port, an ecology appraisal, a newt survey, abat survey, a barn owl survey, a geotechni
cal investigation to determine if theground was contaminated, a landscapeand visual impact assessment, a tree sur
vey, a development framework plan, atransport statement, a design and accessstatement, a noise assessment, an air qual
ity assessment, a flood risk assessment, ahealth impact assessment and an educa
tion impacts report. These are individuallyjustifiable, yet collectively intolerable.
See you in court
Make an error, however, and a legal chal
lenge will follow. Anyone affected by a de
cision and able to afford a judicial reviewcan challenge a planning decision. For agroup of motivated, welloff nimbys,whipping together £20,000 for a review iseasy enough. In Bethnal Green, in east Lon
don, a mulberry tree blocked the conver
sion of a Victorian hospital into 291 flats
Dame Judi Dench, an actor, was roped in tosupport the tree, which was so frail it re
quired support from a post haphazardlynailed onto one of its branches.
After a campaign, the mulberry was in
2018 designated a veteran tree, which gives
it special legal rights. (The number of sig
natories to save the tree matched the thenpopulation of Bethnal Green.) Althoughthe developer had proposed moving theplant, a judge ruled that the council hadnot properly considered the danger that itmight not survive: “A policy was misinter
preted; a material consideration was ig
nored.” The site sits derelict today.
Councils behave rationally when itcomes to development. They levy no in
come tax or sales tax, and cannot evenfund all their operations from propertytaxes, known as council tax. In all, local
government imposes taxes worth less than2% of gdp, according to the oecd. So moredevelopment does not equal much moremoney for better services. But it does equalmore complaints. Councillors often enjoymajorities of just a few dozen votes. A wellorganised campaign can replace an entirecouncil, as happened in Uttlesford, in Essex. The result is that local councils are “abottleneck on national economic growth”,argues a joint paper by the Centre for Citiesand the Resolution Foundation.
The government in Westminster canusually override local objections. “Whenthe state decides to act, it has unlimitedpower,” says Andrew Adonis, a Labourpeer, who oversaw the introduction of hs2.Projects such as hybrid bills allow the government to bypass the planning system,turning Parliament into a kind of planningcommittee. The process is so arduous thatsitting on the committee is often a form ofpunishment from the whips who enforceparty discipline. But the benefit is thatcourts do not challenge primary legislation. Judicial review claims bounced off
hs2 like stones off a tank.
Even when the government acts, it is often cautious. A plan to turn a quarry inKent into a settlement of 15,000 homes wasone of the most ambitious schemes, whenannounced by George Osborne, the thenchancellor, in 2014. Yet it is around a seventh of the size of Milton Keynes, a maligned but highly successful new town begun in the 1960s.
Larger schemes, such as a push for amillion homes stretching between Oxfordand Cambridge, with a new railway andmotorway linking them, have been ditcheddue to local opposition. “We were a bit out
of puff,” admits a cabinet minister. GregSmith, a Tory mp, had already put up with
it seemed unfair to subject him to morebuilding. In Britain, pork barrel politicsworks in reverse, with mps keen to keepthings out of their constituencies.
As a result, Britain’s most productive region is shackled. Burgeoning lifesciencesfirms fight for scarce lab and office spacewhile worldclass researchers live incramped, expensive homes. The averagehouse price in Oxford, £474,000, is about
12 times average incomes. Given the opposition of local councils and local mps tohousebuilding, though, it can hardly besaid to be against voters’ will.
Britain is rare in that the Treasury functions as both a finance ministry, keeping aclose eye on spending, and an economicministry, investing for the future. Thriftiness tends to trump investment. “[TheTreasury] can add up but they can't multiply” as Diane Coyle, an economist, puts it
It shackles big infrastructure projects,balking at upfront costs even if there arelarge returns later on.
Birmingham
Cambridge Oxford
London
Southern England, 2022
Green belt
Source: Ordnance Survey
Southern England, % increase in housing stock
2012-21, by local authority
10.0 32.5 7.5
5.0 1.3 Source: Government statistics
Trang 23pipe ban, the victory rings a little hollow.
Efforts are being made to convert theunbelievers. New planning legislation of
fers residents the chance to propose theirown development and, in effect, approve itthemselves via street votes. The govern
ment is trying to improve design stan
dards, hoping that beautiful buildings willattract less opposition. Those who put upwith infrastructure, whether wind tur
bines or a reservoir, may benefit from freeenergy or water bills under one schemefloated by ministers.
Officials are also toying with a netzero
trump card. Projects deemed crucial tomaking Britain emissions neutral by 2050would be able to ride roughshod over manyobstacles. At the moment policy aimed atprotecting the environment hinders projects that should help the climate. The government protects flora and fauna becausevoters want it; circumventing such rulescan only be done in the name of the environment, runs the logic.
Building is binary, however. If something is built, those who oppose it will beunhappy; if it is scrapped they will be delighted. There is little incentive to meethalfway, or to accept a payoff. “This is notsome sort of poker game where we demandhuge compensation,” said Derek Stork,who chairs the reservoirkilling gard.Britain cannot build. But that is just theway voters want it. n
Extinction Rebellion became well
known in April 2019, when thousands ofdemonstrators blocked bridges androads. The group hopes to repeat thatperformance with a threeday demon
stration in central London starting onSeptember 10th. But its techniques, andthose of other environmental activists,
are changing.
Using lots of bodies to block roads hasbecome more difficult. The covid19pandemic curtailed large protests, andExtinction Rebellion’s following mayhave diminished, says Graeme Hayes ofAston University—though he adds thatthe upcoming demonstration couldreverse that. Smaller groups, such asInsulate Britain, have shown the dis
ruptive potential of “glueingon” andtunnelling under construction projects. The goal of all such tactics is to agitatethe public, which will then (in theory)nudge politicians to pursue ambitiouspolicies. Extinction Rebellion’s initialprotests may have drawn people’s attention to climate change. But more drasticactions might be too irritating. Morethan a third of Britons say policing ofpublic demonstrations is not strictenough. A new bill would criminaliselocking on or obstructing major trans
port works, or even carrying equipment
to do such things
Environmental protests certainlymake building and running infrastruc
ture harder. In July authorities closedpart of the m25 motorway for six hours toremove protesters from the gantries
John Groves, the chief security and resilience officer for the hs2 railway, toldlawmakers in June that protesters hadcost the project £126m ($147m) in delays,mostly by tunnelling under the route
Extinction Rebellion promises showytactics to cap off the London protest. Newjoiners should leave promptly, the groupsays, unless they fancy being arrested
Environmental protests
Glue sticksGreen groups have become expert at paralysing infrastructure
The height of fashion
Trang 2424 Britain The Economist September 3rd 2022
But that share is rising quickly along withgas prices. Schools are in wildly differentpositions, depending on whether theymanaged to lock in their energy contractsearlier in the year. Micon Meltcafe, whoruns a group of academies, reports unitprices doubling from October 1st. Whentrying to secure new supplies, she has beentold that recent renewals have been priced
at double even that. Although PassmoresAcademy secured its energy price in July, itexpects bills to be £122,000 higher
Add in other pressures, including fromsurging food prices (annual inflation was12.8% in July) and higher pension contri
butions, and the bigger budget of £575,000compares with £1.06m of extra costs. A re
cent report from the Institute for FiscalStudies, a thinktank, found that althoughfor the financial year starting in April 2022schools should still see realterms budgetincreases, during the one starting a yearlater they will suffer cuts
Notice periods mean that it is too latefor redundancies this term. Mr Goddardwill cut back on new staff appointments(other than ones that compromise pupilsafety), new textbooks and school trips,and dip into financial reserves. And “nextyear we’ll be screwed.” n
in east London. He has grown used to beingthe only man in his workplace, and to surprised looks from parents. He says peopleassume he is “either gay or strange”
Men make up only about 3% of the staff
in England’s preschools, nurseries andplaygroups. Few professions are so drastically skewed. The proportion has notbudged for decades, even as gender balances in most other jobs have shifted. Theshare of female firefighters has inched upfrom 1.7% in 2002 to 7.5%; female police officers now make up onethird of the ranks.That leaves England lagging well behindEuropean countries such as France, theNetherlands and Norway, where the share
of nursery workers who are male is twice tofour times as high
The absence of male workers in nurseries could be retarding social progress, if ithelps to reinforce the view that child careshould fall overwhelmingly to women.More practically, driving up applicationsfrom men would soften a sharp crisis in recruitment. Some 80% of nurseries surveyed last year by the Early Years Alliance,
an industry group, said they were struggling to hire staff of either sex. About halfreported they had limited the number ofplaces they offer as a result. In July the government proposed loosening rules thatlimit how many children a nursery workercan look after at one time
Nursery leaders are complacent, reckons Jeremy Davies of the Fatherhood Institute, a thinktank. Most say they would likemore male workers. But he says few makeuse even of basic devices permitted underequalities law, such as noting on job adverts that applications from men would be
“particularly welcome”. Many managershave grown convinced that salaries are toolow to attract them. But plenty of men dojobs that pay little and are boring and lowstatus to boot, such as stacking shelves.Research published in 2020 by Mr Davies’s institute and Lancaster Universityfound that men who work in nurseriestend to leave the industry sooner thanwomen. Responsibilities are sometimes
Efforts to entice more men to work in nurseries are going nowhere
Trang 25Restitution
Hard as stone
unreadable. Few pulses will quicken toits news that, in 196 bc, the king had “re
Restitution is in the air. In 2017 Presi
dent Emmanuel Macron called for the
“temporary or permanent returns of Afri
can heritage to Africa”. On August 7th theHorniman Museum in London said itwould return 12 looted Benin bronzes toNigeria. Such debates feel particularly in
evitable in the bm. Turn your back on theRosetta Stone, stride forward 50 paces andback 250 years, and you find yourself inRoom 18, in front of the Parthenon Mar
bles. Those statues were chiselled from thebuilding in Athens by Lord Elgin in 1801. As
if to remind the world that ancient Greeceperfected combative oratory as well as daz
zling statuary, they instantly became thesubject of bitter debate
“Dull is the eye”, wrote Lord Byron, “thatwill not weep” at what Elgin had done. Bycontrast, the poet John Keats saw the mar
bles in London and felt “Like a sick eaglelooking at the sky”, which appears to havebeen a compliment. But Byron’s senti
ments appear to have caught on. A poll lastNovember found that most Britonsthought the sculptures belonged in Greece
Even the bm seems to be bending: GeorgeOsborne, head of the bm trustees, has saidthere is “a deal to be done”.
The problem does not lie wholly withfootdragging museums. It is also that his
tory is complicated. In the sixth centuryGregory of Tours opened his history withthe unarguable observation that: “Manythings keep happening, some of themgood, some of them bad.” Things, good andbad, have kept happening. As a result, thethreads of time become tangled into knots
of Gordian intractability
Modern restitutions can be performedfairly easily, thanks to the 1970 unescoconvention on cultural property (and with
a dash of irony, given that unesco’s templelogo is modelled on the Parthenon). For
anything taken before it came into force,things can get tricky. When the Hornimanagreed to return looted Benin bronzes toNigeria, one American civilrights groupobjected. Since some people in what is nowNigeria had benefited from slavery, thegroup reasoned, the country would “be unjustly enriched” by getting them back.
Few objects show the complexity of thepast better than the Rosetta Stone. Thosewho argue that it is an Egyptian objectoversimplify. The stone was made to markthe coronation of a GreekMacedonianking, Ptolemy V, whose ancestor was aMacedonian Greek who conquered Egyptwith Alexander the Great
There is “no way of mapping the Ptolemies onto modern Egyptian identity unproblematically”, says Tim Whitmarsh,professor of Greek culture at CambridgeUniversity. Not quite Greek, not quiteEgyptian, the Ptolemies ruled Egypt forcenturies. They adopted some Egyptiancustoms (such as sibling marriage) andkept many Greek ones (such as issuing tedious edicts about tax on stones). Theymay have intermarried with locals, but until Cleopatra VII, none learnt Egyptian.
For Mr Hawass, this is unimportant
“They ruled Egypt for 300 years,” he says
“Anything they…made became Egyptian.”But a similar argument is used to justifythe opposite conclusion in the Elgin debate. The Ottomans who (according to the
had only been in Athens for three centuries, argue campaigners. They were notGreek, and therefore had no right to givethem away
The Rosetta Stone is even more complicated than that. As Neil MacGregor, the former director of the bm, has pointed out, itcontains not three scripts but four. Printed
on one side of the stone is the unedifyingphrase: “captured in egypt by the brit-
poleon, the Rosetta Stone was awarded in atreaty as spoils
In London, the stone became a sensation and the subject of scholarly attention.Its deciphering was begun by the Englishscholar Thomas Young and achieved by theFrench JeanFrançois Champollion. Egyptian hieroglyphic history could now beread. The Rosetta Stone was not brought tothe museum because it was so important:
it is so important because it was brought tothe museum. The temples made manysuch stones; three exact copies of the Rosetta Stone still exist.
To Mr Hawass, this is irrelevant: the object is Egyptian and must go back. Othersdemur: it is international, and must stay. It
is a mark of how complicated such debatesare that a third case could, just about, bemade: that the stone is Greek, and should
go back there. Perhaps the bm could throw
it in as a job lot with the Elgin Marbles. n
Egyptians want the Rosetta Stone back.
The debate is complicated
Trang 26A source in Ukrainian military intelli
gence described the breakthrough to TheEconomistin less excitable terms. It was, hesaid, merely the prelude to a larger opera
tion. It had been made possible by an un
derreported offensive in the east of thecountry on the border between Donetskand Luhansk provinces, which had takensix villages and successfully diverted Rus
sian aviation and airdefence resources
On the night of August 28th Ukraine turnedits attention back to the south, striking keybridges, ammunition dumps and Russian
command points. That meant that whenUkrainian artillery and aircraft then attacked the front lines, the Russian side wasunable to call on support or coordination
“When we stormed them,” said the intelligence official, “they ran.”
The source said that Ukrainian forceswould still need to penetrate a second line
of defence, manned by tougher mechanised units, in order to reach the banks ofthe Dnieper river northeast of Kherson ci
ty. The current Ukrainian ground attacksappear to be aimed at driving a wedgethrough the estimated 20,00025,000 Russian troops who are thought to be deployed
on the river’s west bank
If the northern grouping could betrapped in a pocket—a cluster of forces isolated from supplies and other units—then10,00012,000 Russians would have littleobvious chance to retreat. In an eveningaddress on August 29th Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, said the Russiansoldiers had a simple choice: “If they want
to survive, it is time…to flee.”
A former senior Ukrainian official saidthe immediate aim of the operation wasnot to attack Russian forces in Kherson citydirectly, but to weaken Russian positionsaround it in the hope of forcing them towithdraw without a destructive urban battle. “If we just take Kherson,” he said, “theywill shell us and the city from the otherside of the river.” The former official predicted that the offensive would continuewithout hurry or excessive risktaking.Western officials agreed that the attacks
Trang 27Severodonetsk
Kherson Mykolaiv
Ukrainian territory annexed
Institute for the Study
of War; AEI’s Critical Threats Project
aly’s chief antimafia prosecutor. Yet MrCafiero de Raho is not running in the gen
eral election on September 25th for either
of the hardright parties that look set forgovernment—the Brothers of Italy and theNorthern League, whose leaders stridently,and daily, inveigh against criminality, butrelentlessly link it to immigration.
He is standing for the idiosyncratic FiveStar Movement (m5s), heading its list ofcandidates for the Chamber of Deputies intwo regions: EmiliaRomagna and Cala
bria, homeland of the ’Ndrangheta, themost globally pervasive of Italy’s four mainorganisedcrime syndicates. (Italian lawlets candidates stand in more than oneconstituency.) Another prominent formerantimafia prosecutor, Roberto Scarpinato,
is on the m5s’ slate for the Senate in Cala
bria and Sicily, birthplace of Cosa Nostra
Disastrously amateurish at times,wracked by internal division and with lessthan a third of the support it enjoyed at thelast election, the m5s nevertheless has anadmirable record on organised crime. Its201819 governing coalition with theLeague, in which the Five Stars were seniorpartners, introduced two laws that bol
stered the fight against corruption andstiffened the penalties for political col
laboration with organised criminals. Morerecently, the m5s has been at the forefront
of efforts to prevent mafia trials, which areoften immensely complex, from becomingsubject to time limits
The issues of corruption and the mafiashave become entwined as never before asCosa Nostra and the ’Ndrangheta in partic
ular have become more sophisticated
“The mafiosi no longer rely on violence orintimidation to obtain political acquies
cence,” notes the candidate, who says theFive Stars are the only party tackling thematter. “They have made such prodigiousamounts of money from trafficking nar
cotics that they can buy it.” Vittoria Baldi
no, in second place behind Mr Cafiero deRaho on the Five Stars’ slate in Calabria,says the same is true of business. “The ma
fias have become more innovative. Theirinfiltration of the legitimate economy is amajor obstacle to the development of Cala
bria and the entire country.”
The scion of a noble family, Mr Cafiero
de Raho led for the prosecution in one ofthe biggest trials mounted against a cartel:the previously almost unknown Casalesiclan, an offshoot of the Neapolitan Camor
ra. It took 42 hearings just to read thecharge sheet, and by the time the last appeal was heard in 2010, 12 years had passed.
Mr Cafiero de Raho goes everywherewith a police escort these days. Will thatnot hamper his campaign? He says he willprobably not hold rallies, but was hoping
to meet voters in factories, social centres,voluntary associations and similar, small
er forums. The former antimafia chief isvirtually assured of a seat, even if the m5sgets no more than the 10% that recent pollshave given it. Once in parliament, he plans
to use his experience and authority, built
up over 43 years as a prosecutor, to pressfor further changes in the law. He alreadyhas plans for an amendment that wouldgive protection to politicians and businesspeople who come under pressurefrom organised criminals. “I shall not beholding back,” he warns. n
Aug Jul
Jun May
Democratic Party Northern League
Five Star Movement
Forza Italia Brothers of Italy
Not backing down
Trang 2828 Europe The Economist September 3rd 2022
Spain
Only yes is yes
the five men who raped an 18yearoldwoman in a doorway during the San Fer
ers. (Many now are, because of conscienceclauses for doctors who object to abortion.)But not everyone in a once heavily Catholicand conservative country has gone alonghappily with these rapid changes
tures or videos without consent, and ad
vertising of prostitution. It offers incomesupport to women out of work or on re
duced hours because of sexual violence,which can force them to move home orhide. And it will bolster consentbased sexeducation at all schooling levels.
The new law also criminalises street harassment. It is likely to hit few perpetrators(it is hard to identify a passing harasser),but is symbolic. A deputy for Vox, a rightwing party, said in May that she wouldmiss the tradition of comeons like “Tell
me your name so I can ask for you forChristmas,” thanks to legislators with
“hate for beauty, and for men”. In reply,many women shared stories of frighteningstreet encounters. Spaniards are likely tofind that the culture—and the judges—thatinitially let “the pack” off so lightly willchange more slowly than the hard rightfears, or than the radical left would like. n
ties, and many of its residents, grow evermore tired of turismo de borrachera (drun
ken tourism), the kind that leaves beach
es strewn with rubbish and pavementssplattered with vomit. Over the yearsthey have brewed endless plans to cleanthings up
The most recent new rules dictatethat allinclusive resorts in the noisiestswathes of the island may provide guestswith no more than six drinks a day—
three of them at lunchtime, and a maxi
mum of three at night. Revellers in the
affected zones, which include Magaluf,Majorca’s grimmest party town, have had
to say adiós to organised pub crawls andhappyhour drinks deals. Bacchants canstill snap up bevvies at supermarkets, butstores are no longer entitled to sell alcohol after 9:30pm. Businesses whichbreak the rules risk fines of up to
€600,000 ($613,000)
These draconian regulations in factcame into effect in 2020, but until nowhave largely flown under the radar because of quieterthannormal touristseasons resulting from the pandemic.How far they are reckoned to have irkedtourists this year is therefore an important test. Many locals, at least, seemrelieved. It is “about time”, says one
Yet attracting a mellower type oftourist will require much more than justprohibitions. Last year Magaluf, famousfor its cavernous nightclubs, launched
an annual literary festival. Irvine Welsh,author of “Trainspotting”, showed up.This season the city is promoting a weekend “hippy market” (akin to a carbootsale, but for bohemians). This looks a lotlike an effort to replicate similar bazaars
on the somewhat more fashionableisland of Ibiza, which attract thousands
of free spirits every year
Majorca has long thirsted for a betterclass of layabout. When it opened in 1903the Gran Hotel, a modernist mansion inthe heart of Palma, the capital, promisedrich loafers comforts unattainable anywhere else on the island. It closed decades ago. Perhaps the latest projects will
do a more lasting job of getting Majorca’sseediest spots smartened up.
Trang 29ry to the Cossack hetmanate, an associa
tion of fiercely independent warriorfarm
ers in what is now eastern Ukraine andsouthern Russia. Most celebrate BogdanKhmelnitsky, a Cossack leader who leduprisings against Russia and Poland in the17th century. Poles tend to consider Khmel
nitsky a brute, recalling his Cossacks’ massacres of Poles and Jews. The template wasestablished by “With Fire and Sword”, a19thcentury novel set during the uprisingthat pits a savage Cossack against a refinedPolish nobleman for a princess’s love
The countries’ 20thcentury history isjust as fraught. After the first world war Poland got back its independence along withmuch of what is now Ukraine, includingLviv. But Ukraine was brutally absorbedinto the Soviet Union. Some later Ukrainian nationalists, including the bestknown, Stepan Bandera, are generally seen
as fascists. In 1943, as the Red Army rolledback the Nazis, his Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists launched an ethniccleansing campaign to secure what is nowwestern Ukraine in any postwar settlement. Some 100,000 Poles were murdered.Ukraine has never properly acknowledged the massacres, and since its independence in 1991 many Ukrainians havegrown up revering Bandera. This has littleinfluence on Ukrainian politics, where farright groups are marginal. But it createsproblems for mixed classes of Polish andUkrainian students. “I try to teach the debate,” says Jacek Staniszewski, a teacher.Most refugees are less worried abouthistory than about jobs. Poland’s robust labour market helps: the unemploymentrate is just 2.5%. The shortage of workershas grown more acute as many Ukrainianmen who worked in Poland before the warhave gone home to fight. Yet by June, just185,000 Ukrainians had taken up formalemployment using a new streamlined permit system. Over 90% of the refugees arewomen and children, and childcare forworking mothers is in short supply. Onlyabout 5% say they speak good Polish, according to a report by Poland’s centralbank, consigning many to jobs for whichthey are overqualified. Ukrainian motherscan draw child benefits, but these provideonly 500 zlotys ($106) a month per child. InJuly Poland cut back its stipends for thosehosting refugees. Hosts are growingincreasingly weary, says Agnieszka Kosowicz of Forum Migracyjne, a Polish ngo
One risk, says Pawel Kaczmarczyk, head
of migration studies at Warsaw University,
is "compassion fatigue". He bemoans thegovernment’s failure to communicate a coherent integration strategy or to publiclypromote the positive economic effects ofUkrainian immigration. A deeper issue iswhether Poland can adapt to being a multiethnic society again, as it was for centuriesbefore the second world war. A report byWiseEuropa, a thinktank in Warsaw, callsfor a “governmental programme of multicultural management”. Poland’s currentgovernment is known for its vociferousnationalism. It has welcomed Ukrainianswholeheartedly, but embracing multiculturalism may be a stretch. n
BELARUS
HUNGARY SLOVAKIA
P O L A N D
Kyiv Krakow
Lviv Przemysl
Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb
From Poland to Ukraine From Ukraine to Poland
Trang 3030 Europe The Economist September 3rd 2022
Digital overreach?
tor. A pope who uses it to broadcast a message of peace inmany different languages simultaneously in the hope of prevent
Yet the gdpr has already shown how difficult it is to make suchdigital rules stick. Enforcement has been slow, at least when measured in fines. Since 2018 penalties have amounted to nearly
€1.7bn ($1.7bn) in about 1,200 cases, according to cms, a law firm.Although the cumulative fines meted out to the regulation’s maintargets, America’s tech titans—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Metaand Microsoft—reached a hefty €1.3bn, this is less than a thousandth of what they collectively made in sales last year
The main reason for this relative leniency is the way the eu hasset up enforcement. Cases that cross borders are handled by thedataprotection authority in the country in which a firm is based.This should make Ireland’s Data Protection Commission the eu’smost powerful privacy watchdog: all of big tech’s European headquarters bar Amazon’s are based in the Emerald Isle. Yet to the dismay of privacy advocates, the country has proved to be a bottleneck. It does not have enough resources and is unsure how aggressively it should go after firms which provide a lot of local jobs andtax revenues. To avoid the same regulatory logjam with the new
forcer. It has already started building what will amount to a newindustry watchdog. It will eventually boast some 220 civil servants, contract workers and national experts. It will have its ownfinancing, through a levy on the firms it regulates, and a bespokesoftware platform to keep track of cases
“We are ready,” Mr Breton recently claimed in a blog post. Observers are not so sure. Even if the setup functions as planned, itsregulators have their work cut out. They will probably have only adozen firms to oversee. But assuming that the big gatekeepershave to comply with all the dma’s 21 obligations, there will be just0.7 staff for each obligation and gatekeeper firm, calculate Christophe Carugati and Catarina Martins of Bruegel, a thinktankbased in Brussels. Such a ratio may be enough if the companiesplay ball. But in contrast to the gdpr, many of the dma’s obligations go to the core of their business models
Then again
If enforcement of the dma and dsa turns out to be too weak, Brussels could face growing competition from Britain and the Beltway
In the case of the gdpr, some countries have already started diverging from its path. Britain is working on a lighterweight version. America’s often dysfunctional Congress may soon manage
to pass a federal privacy law, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, which improves on the gdpr. In its current form, itwould hold bosses personally responsible for privacy violations.All of which suggests that the premise of both Mr Breton’s bookand the socalled Brussels Effect may be wrong. A central actor,however well placed, cannot unify the digital realm. Instead, a different assertion in Mr Breton’s novel may hold true: that digitaltechnology will lead to fragmentation of the world into what hecalls “logical continents”. For a detailed explanation of what might
be done about that, interested readers may have to wait until heleaves Europe’s capital, giving him time to write another novel. n
Charlemagne
The eu leads the world in making rules for big tech Enforcing them is another matter altogether
Trang 31ing medical problems. Respiratory illness
es tend to worsen, as heat causes the num
ber of harmful pollutants to increase in theair. For some, such conditions turn fatal
Yet heat is rarely given as the cause. The En
vironmental Protection Agency reportsthat as many as 1,300 deaths a year inAmerica fall into this category
es that are now common in several American cities. Las Vegas is also trying to pinpoint specific heat problems. A projectsponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is allowing thecity to identify “urban heat islands”, whichcan be up to 11°C hotter than nearby areas.Poorer districts tend to be the hottest.Their residents also suffer most in extremeheat. Many do not own airconditioners, orcannot afford to run them continuously.The homeless are even less able to find relief. But cities suffer broadly in toohotweather. Workers, especially those outdoors, are less productive. Tourism takes ahit: flights out of Las Vegas were cancelledlast summer owing to high temperatures.Water shortages, common in fastheating cities, exacerbate the problem. Somelocal governments still struggle just to provide clean water. Residents in Flint, Michigan had none for nearly three years: theirtap water contained dangerously high levels of lead. In August 1m people in the wid
er Detroit area were advised to boil theirwater to kill bacteria. On August 29th residents of Jackson, Mississippi’s largest city,lost safe running water “indefinitely” after
a storm took out the local watertreatmentfacility. The heat index that day was 39°C.The Las Vegas valley depends on LakeMead, America’s largest reservoir, for 90%
of its water. Its levels have reached record
LAS VEGAS
Many Americans are still not taking extreme heat seriously enough
→ Also in this section
32 A revealing Senate race in Colorado
32 Addiction in the age of telehealth
33 Congestion pricing in New York
34 Horseshoe crabs and vaccines
35 Lexington: New York’s waterways
Trang 3232 United States The Economist September 3rd 2022
Something new under the sun
United States, weather-related fatalities by cause
Source: NOAA *1992-2021 annual average not available
0
2021 1992-2021 2012-21
Annual average:
Colorado’s Senate race
Rocky Mountain high ground
son in America is the appearance ofcandidates at state fairs, where they canburnish their Everyman credentials andschmooze with voters. Joe O’Dea, the Re
publican Senate candidate in Colorado, re
cently strutted in a cowboy hat at a live
stock auction during Colorado’s fair inPueblo, as smells of barbecue and farm an
imals wafted through the building
Mr O’Dea is trying to unseat MichaelBennet, the twoterm Democratic incum
bent. (Mr Bennet’s brother is The mist’s Lexington columnist, and had no in
Econo-volvement in this story.) At first glance, thestate seems too blue for Mr O’Dea’s barn
storming to make much of a difference
Democrats hold the governor’s mansion,the statehouse and both Senate seats. ButDemocratic dominance is relatively new inColorado. Less than 20 years ago Republi
cans controlled each level of government.
Colorado’s Senate race matters for threereasons. First, every seat counts as the Re
publicans try to retake control of Congress
Though Mr Bennet will probably prevail,the race seems to be tightening. The CookPolitical Report, a nonpartisan newsletter,
is newly rating it as “Lean Democrat”, rath
er than “Likely Democrat”. National Repub
licans are taking notice. Mitch McConnell,the top Republican in the Senate, has saidthe party would go “all in” for Mr O’Dea
Second, both candidates want to chart adifferent path forward for their parties
While Republican primary voters in sever
al other states elevated farright candi
dates who pledged fealty to Donald Trump,Colorado bucked the trend. In June moder
ate candidates for governor, secretary ofstate and the Senate prevailed over theirelectiondenying challengers. Mr O’Deaunequivocally says that Joe Biden won theelection in 2020 (though he believes him to
be a “lousy” president). He also hopes that
Mr Trump will recede from politics. “I don'tthink President Trump should run again,”
he says. “It’ll pull the country apart.”
His candidacy may reveal whether Re
publicans are better off nominating hard
core Trump acolytes who fire up the party’sbase, or moderates who appeal to indepen
dent voters. About 45% of registered voters
in Colorado do not belong to a party, and
Mr O’Dea is betting they will turn out forhim. “I’ve been campaigning to those peo
ple,” he says. “They’re gonna make the de
cision on who our next senator is.”
Mr Bennet also thinks his party has animage problem. Colorado’s blue hue, hetold The Economist between campaignevents in several ski towns, helps dispelthe idea that Democrats “are either a coast
al party, or a party of elites. Or evenworse—a party of coastal elites.”
Third, Mr O’Dea hopes his moderationwill test how Democratic Colorado really
is. The answer is important for the West as
a whole. Eight of America’s ten fastestgrowing states in the decade to 2020 werewest of the Mississippi. Along with pandemic “zoom towns”, the boom has led tohandwringing from western Republicansover the political implications of rapidpopulation growth. Could Republicanstates such as Idaho, Montana or Utah become the next Colorado? “The Blueprint”, abook about Colorado’s political evolution,offers a more nuanced take. In the 2000sliberal megadonors, politicians and lobbyists built permanent campaign infrastructure in Colorado that hastened itstransformation, the authors argue
Rob Witwer, a former Republican statelawmaker and coauthor of “The Blueprint”, wonders whether the RepublicanParty in Colorado has been too damaged by
Mr Trump to make a comeback. Mr O’Deawill soon find out.n
eo of a clever machine in a foodprocessingfactory, then another of someone hawking
a getrichquick scheme. In between thereare adverts. And these, at least for manyyoung Americans, have been more predictable: focused, often, on mental health.
An ad for Cerebral, a venturecapitalfunded health startup, shows two womenspeaking on the phone. “I’ve been lookingfor mentalhealth options, but I don’t haveinsurance,” says one. “Well, have you triedCerebral?” goes the reply. Another, forDone, relates to attentiondeficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd). It promises “personalised adhd care” for $79 a month.The pandemic was deadliest for olderpeople. But it was perhaps most disruptive
to the mental health of young ones,trapped indoors and unable to socialise.New graduates had to start jobs over Zoom.The result, predictably, was a surge in demand for mentalhealth treatment.
CH I C A G O
A new boom in online mental-health treatment causes concerns
Trang 33Congestion pricing
Out of a jam
ers as “Gridlock Sam”, has been advocating congestion pricing for five decades.The hope is that charging will discouragepeople from driving into crammed midtown and downtown Manhattan, and helpfund improvements to public transport
A former cab driver turned traffic engineer, Mr Schwartz tried to introduce congestion pricing to the city in the 1970s and1980s. William Vickrey, a celebrated economist who drew up the first plans for this inthe 1960s, once told Mr Schwarz that it wasthe “one tried and true method” to reducecongestion. In Singapore, London andStockholm, which set up zones in 1975,
2003 and 2006 respectively, charging hascut traffic by about a quarter
After an attempt by Mayor Mike Bloomberg fizzled out in 2008, congestion pricing stalled for more than a decade. At last,
in 2019, state lawmakers agreed to implement it south of 60th Street, making NewYork the first big American city to do so.The law grants exceptions to emergencyvehicles, people with disabilities andhouseholds in the zone whose income is
$60,000 or less
Now a launch is on the horizon. In August the Metropolitan Transit Authority(mta), the state agency which runs the subway, released seven tolling scenarios, withfees between $9 and $23 during peak hoursfor noncommercial cars. Lorries may have
to pay as much as $82
New York badly needs a congestionzone. According to inrix, a transportdatafirm, it has the worst traffic in America. Average speeds decreased by 22% between
2010 and 2019 in the proposed zone. It can
be faster to walk. In 2018 the Partnershipfor New York City, a business group, calculated that congestion would shave $100bnoff the economy of the city and its suburbsover the subsequent five years. New Yorkers forgo on average 102 hours a year due totraffic, or $1,600 in lost productivity
Yet in recent virtual public hearings onthe plans, many voiced concerns. Some dialled in from their cars, including NicoleMalliotakis, a Republican congresswomanfrom Staten Island. She said congestionpricing was being “jammed down thethroat” of her constituents, many of whomrely on cars because the borough is poorlyserved by public transport
Cab drivers and delivery workers feargetting charged multiple times. But too
N E W YO R K
America’s most congested city may be
on the verge of ending gridlock
to get enough Adderall.
A clampdown may be coming. In AprilCerebral was sued by Matthew Treube, for
merly its head of product implementation,who alleges that he was sacked after object
ing that the firm “consistently and at timesegregiously put profits and growth beforepatient safety”. Employees were encour
aged to prescribe stimulants to 100% ofnew patients, he says. Cerebral said the al
legations are “without merit”. In May, In
sider, a website, reported that the firm wasunder investigation by the dea. Cerebral’sboss, Kyle Robertson, resigned, and thefirm stopped prescribing stimulants afterits pharmacy partner cut it off. Other firmssuch as Done continue, but it is unclear ifthey will be able to carry on. The pandemicrules about online prescribing are expect
ed to be revisited in November
Yet according to Craig Surman, an asso
ciate professor of psychiatry at HarvardMedical School who specialises in adhd, it
is a tricky balance to strike. Ideally, doctorswould have the time and resources to con
duct full evaluations, questioning not justpatients but also their parents or partners
to confirm the diagnosis. But that is not in
compatible with telehealth. And a lot ofpeople suffering from adhd are probablystill undiagnosed, he says. Between 1% and2% of the population “will benefit prettymeaningfully from being on stimulants”,
he reckons.
In Britain, medical advertising is illegaland rules for diagnosing adhd are stricter,yet there, too, prescriptions have climbed
in recent years. Even in America, the rise indiagnoses long predates the pandemic. Aclampdown may save some people fromaddiction, but it could hurt others. n
Trang 3434 United States The Economist September 3rd 2022
tween 5% and 30% of them die on release
Biologists at the University of New Hamp
shire have found that, once bled, femalesbecome lethargic and have trouble follow
ing the tides to egglaying areas. According
to the Wetlands Institute, a nonprofitgroup, the number of horseshoe crabs inDelaware Bay, where the Atlantic varietyspawns, has declined by 90% over the past
15 years.
In 2016 the International Union forConservation of Nature listed them as “vul
nerable” to extinction. It blamed overhar
vesting for use as food, bait and biomedicaltesting, as well as habitat loss. This alsohurts other species. The red knot, a birdthat migrates from South America to theArctic tundra, is endangered largely be
ing. Charles River, one of four manufactur
ers of lal in America, estimates that 55% ofinjectable pharmaceuticals and implanteddevices globally are tested using the extractproduced at their facility in Charleston
Yet a synthetic alternative to lal is al
ready available, which in Europe is rapidlyreplacing crab blood as the industry stan
dard for testing. In 2003 Lonza, a Swiss bio
tech company, cloned crab dna to createrecombinant Factor c (rfc). Troubled bythe red knot’s decline, Jay Bolden, an avidbirdwatcher and biologist, pioneered theuse of rfc in America at Eli Lilly, a pharma
ceutical company. In a study published in
2017 Mr Bolden found that rfc detected en
dotoxins as well as lal, or even better. Thetest turned up fewer false positives and,moreover, was cheaper to produce
That year Eli Lilly vowed to test all newproducts with rfc; 80% of the companynow uses it instead of lal. Sanofi, a Frenchpharmaceutical firm, is also making theswitch at their American plants. In 2018America’s Food and Drug Administration(fda) approved the first medicine testedwith rfc. Six more of Eli Lilly’s have sincebeen authorised
In Europe, China and Japan, pharmacopoeias list rfc among their approved endotoxintesting agents. But the us Pharmacopeia (usp), a nonprofit that helps set medical quality standards on which the fda relies, has been reluctant to add thesynthetic substance to its list. That meansAmerican firms that want to use rfc testsmust work harder to prove their safety tothe fda. To explain its hesitation, usp saysthat “one adverse incident might not onlyset back the adoption of rfc but could damage overall trust in vaccines or other injectables, already plagued by misinformation.”That holdup comes with its own costs.Barbara Brummer, who previously worked
at Johnson & Johnson and is now with theNature Conservancy, an ngo, sums it up:
“We are doing damage to an endangeredpopulation and not using an alternativethat is equally effective and could be massproduced” more cheaply.
Charles River argues that supply fearsare overblown, and that bleeding does little harm to crabs; it has been a vocal critic
of the synthetic option, on safety grounds.But if usp approved synthetic testing, MrBolden reckons America’s other drug companies would swiftly turn away from lal.The next several rounds of covid19 boosters produced in America will rely on thehorseshoe crab. But such vampirelike dependence on its blue blood cannot lastmuch longer. n
Crab blood, still widely used to test
American drugs, is growing scarcer
Elixir from the sea
Trang 35“What do you see? Posted like silent sentinels all around the town,stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in oceanreveries.” Some still stared with wonder a century later, in 1951,when Joseph Mitchell published a classic essay in the New Yorker,
“The Bottom of the Harbour”. But by then they were watching “gasfilled bubbles as big as basketballs continually surge to the surface” from the sludge below. The harbour had been just a dump, afactory and a highway for too long
Consider the oyster, less eyecatching than the whale yet glamorous in its own way. Some biologists estimate that New York harbour was once home to half of the world’s oysters. Early Europeanvisitors described finding some a foot long. Their beds linedBrooklyn and Queens and encircled Manhattan; Ellis Island wascalled Oyster Island. New York oysters were prized in London restaurants, and the families dominating the trade built mansions onStaten Island, where their fleets of schooners docked. Even afterthe oyster beds were stripped, by the late 18th century, enterprising businessmen kept the trade going for another 100 years byfarming oysters. But the pollution became too severe. After cases
of typhoid fever were traced to oysters in New York’s harbour in
1916, the city’s board of health banned the business
The time has come
Some wild oysters lingered. Mitchell could still find a few when hewas studying the harbour. For their resurgence now, credit publicspirit combined with private initiative. Since 2014 a nonprofitgroup, the Billion Oyster Project, has been working towards returning that many oysters to the harbour by 2035. It recently putdown its 100millionth oyster, and, with help from thousands ofvolunteers, is now seeding them at a pace of 50m a year. An adultoyster is said to filter water at a rate of 50 gallons a day.
The nonprofit relies in part on divers trained by the HarbourSchool, a public high school that gives students a marine education on top of a conventional one. The divers say the harbour bottom is still covered in sludge that obscures their vision—“blackmayo”, they call it—but around the oyster reefs they can see underwater as far as a dozen feet.
No one reading this would be wise to eat an oyster from NewYork’s harbour. There is much work still to be done. About 60% ofthe city’s sewer system mixes human sewage with stormwaterrunoff. When heavy rain overwhelms the watertreatment plants,New York empties its bowels into the waterways. The rule ofthumb is that it is not safe to enter the water for three days afterrain. Cleaning up New York’s water, and reconciling the needs ofits animals and humans, is the work of generations.
The good news is that such work has been going on for a generation, and, despite the menace of climate change, things in someways are getting better. Also weirder, often in a good way. A fewweeks ago Mr Rosenbaum was on a 37foot boat, watching a humpback whale near the Verrazzano Bridge, which connects Brooklyn
to Staten Island. He saw something blackandwhite and the size
of the boat rising towards the surface. It took him a moment to realise, and then to accept, that he was seeing a giant manta ray. n
Lexington
From whale to oyster to human, animals are returning to New York City’s waters
Trang 3636 The Americas The Economist September 3rd 2022
Mexico
Narco nastiness
criminality is on the wane. “Mexico is acountry of tranquillity, at peace, the vio
between 2020 and 2021, but that is not ter
ribly surprising, given the imposition ofvarious covidrelated restrictions acrossthe country. And other crimes that involvekillings are on the rise.
Between 2006 and 2012 an average ofeight people “disappeared” each day (many
of whom were probably murdered). Nowthe daily average is 25. Mexico’s murderrate is 28 per 100,000 people. That is fourtimes the murder rate in the United States
Polls show Mexicans are more concernedabout violence than any other matter. In
2021 the cost of violence in Mexico was es
timated by the Institute for Economics and
Peace, a thinktank, to be 4.9trn pesos($243bn), around a fifth of gdp
Part of the reason for such violence isthat the number of gangs, which are responsible for most murders, more thandoubled in the decade to 2020. Now thereare 205, according to the International Crisis Group, a thinktank. Their reach has expanded across municipalities. They aremore powerful and confident, too. cjnghas paraded highgrade military gear, including armoured vehicles and drones.Gangs are no longer just drugpeddlers.They traffic people, steal oil and control themarkets for avocados, tortillas and chicken
in some states
Mr López Obrador describes his approach as “abrazos no balazos” (hugs notbullets). His bet is that generous cashhandouts, such as a monthly payment of5,258 pesos to poor youngsters who enroll
in an apprenticeship programme, willbring down crime. That aside, his policiesare contradictory and often ineffective. For a start, he tends to place all theblame on previous presidents. And in onesense he is right to: the policy of taking outdrug kingpins, started by Felipe Calderónduring his term as president from 2006 to
2012, had the consequence of fragmentinggangs. But for all the faults of the past administrations, at least they had a strategy,says Evan Ellis, a security specialist. By theend of Mr Calderon’s sixyear term, themurder rate was falling, from 24 per100,000 people in 2011 to 22 in 2012. That
MEXICO CITY
Several violent episodes illustrate Mexico’s growing problem with gangs
→ Also in this section
37 Drought in Guatemala
38 Ecuador’s postal non-service
— Bello is away
Trang 37ment administration, has made it difficult
to operate because foreign governmentscannot be certain their Mexican counter
parts will not pass on information to thegangs themselves (as appears to have hap
pened in a few cases).
Corruption is a worry because the mu
nicipal police are so underpaid. Many workfor the gangs. Estimates, using data col
lected by Mexico’s statistics agency, sug
gest 86% of reported crimes go unresolved
“That tells people they can do whateverthey want,” says María Elena Morera ofCommon Cause, another ngo
Highprofile arrests in the past sixmonths may herald a change in the presi
dent’s approach. El Huevo, a suspecteddrug lord, was arrested in northeasternMexico in March. In July Rafael Caro Quin
tero, who is considered responsible for themurder of a dea agent, and who was thegrisly inspiration for the Netflix series
“Narcos: Mexico”, was captured. Morekingpins are being extradited to the UnitedStates, too. “Mexican forces are now doingsurgical strikes rather than hitting aroundblindly,” says Eduardo Guerrero of LantiaIntelligence, a crimetracking outfit. A lawwhich came into effect in the United States
on August 24th seeks to crack down on un
regulated private sales of guns, which mayalso help reduce the number of Americanguns going south of the border
But even if he wants to get tougher oncrime, Mr López Obrador will find it tricky
In 2019 he undermined his authority tomake arrests when he buckled to pressureafter the armed forces captured a son of ElChapo, a former leader of the Sinaloa Car
tel. In retaliation gang members rioted inCuliacán in northwestern Mexico, andwithin hours Mr López Obrador orderedhis release. Mr Guerrero reckons the recentviolence was intended to send a similarmessage to the government to back off.
Rampant violence does not have to bethe norm. Between 2012 and 2021 thenorthern state of Nuevo León managed toreduce crime after its richer citizenshelped fund a security plan that includedfiring corrupt police officers and creating anew, wellpaid force to replace soldiers onthe streets. It also cooperated with twoneighbouring states on security.
Mexico City has crime under control,too. The local mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, aclose ally of the president, has raised wagesfor police officers and improved streetlighting. Murders fell in the capital by 34%
between 2018 and 2021. Ms Sheinbaum isoften touted as a potential successor to MrLópez Obrador once he steps down fromoffice in 2024. But by then, violence inMexico will probably be worse. n
A rising tide
Mexico, monthly murders
Source: INEGI *Andrés Manuel López Obrador
3,500 3,000 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 500 0 21 15
10 2005
President Calderón Peña Nieto AMLO*
Guatemala
Dusty weather
midday sun has burned through thethin layer of clouds. In the valley below, agrid of dusty streets and breezeblockhouses mark out Rabinal, a small town atthe heart of Central America’s droughtstricken dry corridor. But the tops of thehills are lushly verdant, crested by the lastremnants of an ancient forest. A group ofyoungsters want to keep it that way.
Every week, half a dozen teenagers and20somethings from the local indigenouscommunity, the MayaAchi, pile into atruck and climb up potholeridden roads
to reach small farms nestled into the hillsides. Some days they fill the truck withhundreds of infant trees. On others, theyhaul up bags of native seeds.
But their mission, and that of the small
remains the same: boosting “agroecology”.This is a type of farming which mixes indigenous practices with techniques tobuffer crops against the effects of climatechange. For 14 years the ngo has been encouraging crop diversification, reforestation and the use of natural fertilisers. Indoing so, the MayaAchi youngsters hope
to provide opportunities for Guatemalans,other than migrating north.
Most residents of Rabinal can still remember a time before extensive droughtsgave meaning to the term “dry corridor”.Until two decades ago cool winds wouldroll in off Guatemala’s Pacific coast eachyear, depositing rain. But as global tem
R A B I N A L
Traditional farming practices are being embraced by some in the dry corridor
Trang 3838 The Americas The Economist September 3rd 2022
The experience of Ms Meneses, who runs
a sandwich shop in Quito, is a typical one
in Ecuador. For years, Correos del Ecua
dor, the national postal service, was slowand unreliable. During the pandemic, itclosed. Ecuador became one of only a fewcountries not to have a postal service.
Ecuadorians used to get post, and afair bit of it. A whiskeybarrelturned
postbox on the Galapagos islands dates
to the 1700s, as a way for sailors to ex
change post (these days tourists use it,see picture). What is now the office of theEcuadorian vicepresident was once thepost office’s headquarters. Ms Menesesrecalls the joys of receiving a letter.
But the postal service never reachedall of Ecuador, with its impenetrablejungle and breathstealing mountains
Many homes do not have addresses, andnot everyone could afford a po Box
Those who could saw a service in de
cline. Because of steady budget cuts,fraud and exorbitant taxes on parcels, by
2019 Correos captured only 8% of theEcuadorian postal market (the rest went
to private companies). Its lacklustreperformance gave Lenin Moreno, thenthe president, an excuse to shut it down
in May 2020
A service still exists on paper. MrMoreno forgot that Ecuador is a member
of the Universal Postal Union, a un body,
and is bound by its convention to facilitate the sending of international post. So
in February 2021, just before leavingoffice, he signed a decree creating a newcompany. It currently has 84 employeesand 24 vehicles, says its manager, Verónica Alcívar (Correos had 422 vehicles). Itcould be expanded to 250 workers, butthat seems unlikely. Instead it has contracted a Colombian firm to deliver abacklog of over 1m letters and parcels. Ecuadorians have other workarounds.Unable to receive deliveries from Amazon, an ecommerce giant, they turn tohuman “mules” to courier goods onplanes from the United States. “Christmas is our busiest time of year,” says onecivil servant who also runs a successfulmule business. He wishes to remainanonymous for tax reasons.
Documents are trickier. Studentswishing to enroll at foreign universitiesmust spend a fortune sending theirregistration papers abroad. And there can
be consequences to not having a postalservice. It acts as a “backstop if othersystems fail”, delivering medicines,welfare benefits or ballot papers, saysRichard John, a historian
In the centre of Quito, echoes of another way of life remain. Blanca Guaraca,
a street vendor, flips through postcardsthat she sells to tourists. She recommends a post office where your correspondent can post one. It is now a bookshop. When a service is rarely used, it ishard to know when it’s gone
Ecuador
Mule got mail
Q U I TO
What to do in a country with a backlog of 1m letters and parcels?
Signed, sealed and undelivered
Trang 39South African politics
Coalitions of the unwilling
that there was a home for him in a new
public-housing scheme on the outskirts of
Bethlehem, a town in the middle of South
Africa Eventually he sold enough scrap
metal to pay to move his family from their
slum “I was very excited,” he recalls, “but
honestly speaking life has not improved.”
He points to a tap with no water, toilets
that do not flush and an unfinished roof
Like many projects ostensibly aimed at
helping the poor, the housing scheme was
a vehicle for corruption In this case it
al-legedly involved Ace Magashule, the
for-mer secretary-general of the ruling African
National Congress (anc), who has denied
any involvement in the project In 2019, a
year after Mr Magashule’s patron, Jacob
Zu-ma, was replaced as president by Cyril
Ra-maphosa, “the anc came and told us
things would improve,” says Mr
Tshabala-la “But nothing has changed.” He has voted
for the anc since 1994, when black South
Africans were enfranchised (pictured)
And next time? “No There is no value in
voting for the anc any more.”
It is an increasingly common view
Many signs are pointing towards the rulingparty losing its majority at the general elec-tion in 2024 Under the country’s system ofproportional representation, that wouldmean a coalition government—and a newpolitical era for sub-Saharan Africa’s mostindustrialised country
Opponents of the anc often struggle tounderstand the ruling party’s longevity Is
it nostalgic loyalty to its role in the apartheid movement? Or perhaps patron-age? Both matter But the most importantreason is that, for at least the first half ofthe anc’s 28-year reign, life got better formost South Africans The poor got hous-ing, running water and electricity Themurder rate—the best proxy for violentcrime—fell from 1993 to 2011 Real incomes
anti-rose for pretty much everyone
Today unemployment is near a recordhigh, at 34% Over the past decade real in-comes have grown only for the richest 5%.Public services are collapsing There havebeen a record number of blackouts thisyear The murder rate is approaching for-mer highs Corruption exploded under MrZuma There is a pervasive sense that noone is in charge in South Africa
Voters are rightly blaming the rulingparty At local elections last year the anc’sshare of the vote fell below 50% for the firsttime in a nationwide ballot
In the past, turnout for the anc has ways been higher in general elections than
al-in local ones But analysts reckon the end
is nigh “There is a psychological tance within the country that it’s the end ofthe anc as a single governing party,” saysWilliam Gumede, a commentator “The
2024,” predicts Sam Mkokeli, a veteran litical journalist “There’s a 20% gap in themarket,” he adds, mostly among the blackvoters who have deserted the anc
po-Who will fill it? The second-largest
par-ty, the Democratic Alliance (da), appearsstuck at about a fifth of the vote It doeswell among South Africa’s minorities butpoorly among the black majority that, per-haps unfairly, does not trust what manysee as a “white party”
At the other end of the spectrum is theEconomic Freedom Fighters (eff) Found-
ed by Julius Malema, a former anc youthleader, the party is a mix of hard-leftism,
BETHLE HE M AND JOHANNESBURG
The anc is predicted to lose its parliamentary majority in 2024, ending three
decades of dominance Parties will have to team up to form a government
→ Also in this section
40 West Africa’s flood-prone cities
41 Girding for a long war in Mozambique
42 Solar power in Egypt
43 Militias amok in Iraq
Trang 4040 Middle East & Africa The Economist September 3rd 2022
in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. “I had twograndkids on my bed, I had to evacuatethem out of the window,” she adds. Not faraway, underpasses on Dakar’s scenic cor
niche became carswallowing lakes. Justweeks earlier another downpour hadturned quiet streets in Dakar into ragingrivers and collapsed a section of motorway.
Similar events regularly occur acrossthe region. Recent flooding and landslidesalso killed eight people in Freetown, thecapital of Sierra Leone. In June floodingkilled 12 people in Abidjan, the commercialcapital of Ivory Coast. Floods in Lagos, Ni
geria’s commercial capital, claimed anoth
er seven lives. Even when they are notdeadly, city floods ruin lives and liveli
hoods. Storm water recently inundated thebiggest textile market in Kano, a city innorthern Nigeria, destroying hundreds ofthousands of dollars’ worth of fabrics.
Unusually heavy rains have become sig
nificantly more common over the past 30years, leaving huge numbers of people atrisk (see map). In places this is partly be
cause of deforestation. A recent study by
Christopher Taylor of the uk Centre forEcology and Hydrology, a research institute, and his coauthors found that afternoon rainstorms in deforested parts ofcoastal west Africa happen twice as oftencompared with 30 years ago. Their frequency went up by only about a third inplaces that kept their forests.
Some of the most denuded—and thusdrenched—places are coastal cities such asFreetown and Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. Yet areas deep inland are also at risk.Some 340,000 people have been hit by recent flooding in Chad. Worryingly, theIntergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange (ipcc) predicts there will be heavi
er downfalls more often across most of Africa as the planet warms up
Yet regular flooding of cities in west Africa is not only caused by heavier rain.Breakneck, unplanned urbanisation is also
to blame. As cities have grown, buildershave thrown up concrete walls haphazard
ly with little thought about providingdrainage, making it harder for water to find
a clear path to the sea. As ever larger areashave been paved over, there has been lessexposed soil into which water can gentlysink away. And as cities get more packedwith new arrivals, their few functioningdrains get overwhelmed or clogged.
Unplanned urbanisation can also putmore people in harm’s way. Fully 40% ofthe people who settled in the outskirts ofDakar between 1988 and 2008 made theirhomes in areas that are at significant risk
of flooding or coastal erosion
Untrammelled development is damaging urban forests and wetlands, too. Ordinarily they should help soak up water andreduce floods. In Freetown, some residents
DA K A R
Every year west African urbanites face
a watery nightmare
Above-average rainfall forecast for Jul-Oct 2022
NIGERIA MAURITANIA
CONGO
CAMEROON
GABON GHANA
GUINEA
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
IVORY COAST
SENEGAL
BURKINA FASO BENIN
LIBERIA
CONGO-BRAZZAVILLE
A T L A N T I C O C E A N
TOGO SIERRA LEONE
GUINEA-BISSAU
THE GAMBIA
EQUATORIAL GUINEA SÃO TOMÉ AND PRÍNCIPE