Citizen Cartwright

Note to readers

I’m going to take Friday off and will be chatting with you next on Tuesday, Sept. 5. Have a great Labor Day weekend!

Good news on global biodiversity, free school meals in the U.S., trans rights in Germany

This week, let’s highlight three articles in Future Crunch that I now see ran in Reuters and The Associated Press, though I don't recall seeing them on those sites. Perhaps because good news doesn’t generate the clicks bad news does?

 

— Representatives of 185 countries have agreed to launch a biodiversity fund, reports the environmental news platform Mongabay. Canada and Britain have made initial contributions, and additional investment will come from governments, philanthropy, and the private sector. At least 36 percent of the fund’s resources will support small island nations and least developed countries most vulnerable to climate change.

 

— Minnesota, New Mexico, Colorado, Vermont, Michigan, and Massachusetts will make school breakfasts and lunches permanently free to all students beginning this academic year, regardless of family income, following California and Maine, says The Associated Press. Several other states are considering similar changes, and congressional supporters want to extend free meals to all children nationwide.

 

— Germany’s Cabinet has approved a plan to make it easier for transgender and nonbinary people to change their name and gender in official documents, legislation that the justice minister says aims to make "life a bit easier for a small group for which it has great significance.” reports PinkNews.

Also in the news

Chile announces much-anticipated plan to search for victims of Pinochet dictatorship

 

India government incentives and cost-conscious customers lead to boom in electric motorcycles, scooters, rickshaws

 

Biden administration plan would guarantee overtime pay for 3.6 million workers who earn less than $55,000 a year

 

Judge rules new Texas law that would erode cities’ power to enact local rules is unconstitutional

 

New research shows vast scope of Native American boarding school system of assimilation

 

Opioid overdose antidote Narcan to be widely available over the counter as soon as Sept. 5

Biden administration announces first 10 drugs for Medicare price negotiations

The negotiations are a major turning point in a long-fought battle to control ever-increasing drug prices for seniors and, eventually, for other Americans, says KFF.

 

Under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, Congress gave the federal government the power to negotiate prices for some high-cost drugs under Medicare. The list of drugs selected by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will expand over time.

 

The first drugs on the list treat diabetes, heart disease, blood cancers, blood clots and arthritis. They accounted for about $50 billion in spending from June 2022 to May 2023.

 

The pharmaceutical industry sees the process as a threat to its revenue growth, profits and drug innovation, and drugmakers have filed at least eight lawsuits in recent months seeking to declare the policy unconstitutional, says CNBC.

 

Until now, the drug industry has successfully fought off U.S. price negotiations, although in most of the rest of the world, governments set prices for medicines, KFF says. 

 

Polling by KFF found broad, bipartisan public support for allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, reports The New York Times. In a survey late last year, 89 percent of Democrats and 77 percent of Republicans said they favored the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act authorizing negotiations.

Also in the news

U.S. says it and 6 other nations have taken down notorious 'Qakbot' malware platform

 

After Supreme Court limits federal power, Biden administration weakens protections for wetlands

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez drops out of 2024 GOP presidential race after failing to qualify for first debate

 

3M agrees to pay $6 billion to settle claims it sold defective earplugs to U.S. military

 

For travelers who want to avoid babies and kids, Turkish airline Corendon says it will test an adults-only section

More on what’s going on in China

Let’s follow up yesterday’s item on the “crisis of confidence” of “everyday citizens” in China, with a look at an article titled "Xi’s age of stagnation: The great walling-off of China,” by Ian Johnson, a longtime reporter on China, in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. 

Earlier this year, some Chinese thinkers were expecting that President Xi would be forced to pause or even abandon significant parts of his decadelong march toward centralization, Johnson says.

 

Even though Xi recently had won an unprecedented third term as party general secretary and president and seemed set to rule for life, public mistrust was higher than at any previous point in his decade in power, Johnson says. China’s dominant twentieth-century leaders, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, had adjusted their approach when they encountered setbacks; surely Xi and his closest advisers would, too. 

 

But it didn’t happen.

 

For more than a year, economists have said that China is entering a period of slowing economic growth. They've cited demographic changes, government debt, and lower gains in productivity, as well as a lack of market-oriented reforms. Some have talked of “peak China,” saying the country’s economic trajectory already has or will soon reach its apex and may never significantly overtake the United States. The implication often is that if only Beijing would tweak its economic management, it could mitigate the worst outcomes and avoid a more dangerous decline, Johnson says.

 

But what this analysis overlooks is the extent to which these economic problems are part of a broader process of political ossification and ideological hardening — a “walling-off” based on an apparent belief that to withstand the pressures of an uncertain world, China must turn inward and succeed on its own, Johnson says.

 

China practiced "adaptive authoritarianism” in the past, which "can be attributed in part to a generation of leaders who saw the People’s Republic as a work in progress that could be continually improved rather than as a fixed political system that had to be preserved at all costs,” Johnson says.

Also in the news

Guatemala progressive’s presidential victory is certified, but his party is suspended by another part of the government

 

Treasury, IRS roll out long-delayed cryptocurrency tax reporting rules

 

Project 2025, the initiative led by the Heritage Foundation to dismantle the federal bureaucracy under a GOP president

 

Trump trial set for March 4, 2024, in federal case charging him with plotting to overturn 2020 election

 

Researchers: New multicancer detection tests may not be worth their hype, cost

China’s ‘crisis of confidence’

Both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal headlined on Friday about "everyday citizens’ deeply shaken confidence that their lives will keep improving,” as the WSJ puts it.

 

Why are they concerned?

 

"For much of the past four decades, China’s economy seemed like an unstoppable force, the engine behind the country’s rise to a global superpower,” says the Times. "But the economy is now plagued by a series of crises. A real estate crisis born from years of overbuilding and excessive borrowing is running alongside a larger debt crisis, while young people are struggling with record joblessness.”

 

So, "amid the drip feed of bad economic news, a new crisis is emerging: a crisis of confidence," says the Times.

 

Consumers are holding back on spending, businesses are reluctant to invest and create jobs, and would-be entrepreneurs aren't starting new businesses, the Times says.

 

The erosion of confidence is fueling a downward spiral that's feeding on itself, says Larry Hu, chief China economist for Macquarie Group, an Australian financial services firm. Chinese consumers aren’t spending because they're worried about job prospects, while companies are cutting costs and holding back on hiring because consumers aren’t spending.

 

Unlike past crises that were international in nature, a convergence of long-simmering domestic problems is confronting China — some a result of policy changes by President Xi’s government, says the Times.

 

For example, the real estate market is reeling from the government’s measures from three years ago to curb heavy borrowing by developers, while crackdowns on the fast-growing technology industry prompted many tech firms to scale back their ambitions and the size of their work forces, the Times says.

 

Confronted with the dwindling confidence, the government has fallen back on a familiar pattern and stopped announcing troubling economic data, says the Times.

 

This month, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said it would stop releasing youth unemployment figures, a closely watched indicator of the country’s economic difficulties.

 

In April, the bureau stopped releasing surveys of consumer confidence, discontinuing a survey series it started 33 years ago.

Also in the news

Russia says it confirmed that Wagner leader Prigozhin died in plane crash

 

Biden, Harris to meet with MLK's family on Monday’s 60th anniversary of March on Washington

 

West Virginia can restrict abortion pill sales, judge rules, despite FDA approval of it as safe

 

Judge allows Missouri’s new restrictions on gender-affirming care for transgender youth to take effect

 

Fed Chair Powell says at Jackson Hole conference that strong economy could require more interest rate increases

 

AP: 'Trump’s drumbeat of lies about the 2020 election keeps getting louder. Here are the facts'

 

Railroads resist joining safety hotline because they want to be able to discipline workers who report concerns

 

NASA releases initial images from first space-based instrument to continuously measure North America air quality

 

KFF: Research on 'smart' tattoo ink making it visible for a party and invisible at Grandma’s, able to monitor health

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