Graph of the Day

This isn't my area (in any way whatsoever) but this was the most interesting thing I've read all day. Main article: http://www.vox.com/2014/5/1/5671834/this-map-is-bad-news-for-chinas-economy-good-news-for-americas

China will stay a big center of global manufacturing — it's still reasonably cheap, it has the infrastructure, it has the roads and the ports, and it has the supply chain. But that is slowly changing, which is why you're going to see more companies shift their manufacturing to other places: ultra-cheap southeast Asia, Mexico (which has raised its productivity significantly), and fingers-crossed maybe even to the United States.

This is from vox.com, whose main claim to fame as far as I knew was luring Ezra Klein over from the Washington Post. With more stories like this maybe they can permanently establish themselves as a new, interesting news source.

The other major China story going around seems to be that China's economy has eclipsed that of the US if you look at PPP, which is true but inspires the most awful articles about how the US must surely be doomed this time. The real question, I think, is why China? What about India? 

Amartya Sen has an answer for that question, taken from last year's NYT (and bonus analysis c/o the World Bank). It's worth a read--his rough answer is that India is a democracy, and it's made a tradeoff for greater democracy instead of economic growth-- but I wasn't sure whether he really offered any solutions. Stating that India is a democracy is true, but I don't know whether it answers the Really Big Question: what can India do to jump-start its long-awaited economic growth?

(I found several references to India's economy as "the sleeping elephant." China of course is a dragon, a half-awake one or something. I await economic reporting on the giant beaver to our north, or the punchy 'roos of Australia. Surely it's only a matter of time.)

Step One fun, plus a tiny news roundup

It's nearly Step One time! Which is to say that in about two months' time, I will be tested on anything or everything that I've learned in the first 2 years of medical school. I will then almost certainly forget half of it within one week or so.

So, the part of my brain that isn't re-learning which special bacteria requires chocolate agar (Hemophilus influenza and Neissiria meningitidis, if you're keeping track) or what a PAS stain is checking for (glycogen, Whipple disease) has been reading through the news looking desperately for an interesting story. So far it looks pretty grim. Some guy in Nevada owes the federal government a lot of money. A dude I've never heard of who owns a basketball team made some dumb comments. A missing plane is still, uh, missing.

Instead of talking about those awesome topics, I instead am linking an article by Andrew Sullivan at the Dish, regarding John Kerry's remarks about Israel. If you missed it (and I forgive you if you have) John Kerry stated that Israel was in danger of becoming an "apartheid state" along the lines of South Africa. As far as I can tell, this is pretty basic stuff: unless Israel persuades a whole lot more Jewish people to immigrate, and fast, demographics are going to turn it into a Jewish-minority state.

Nothing about that is particularly controversial, in my opinion. Jeffrey Goldberg, who has written extensively about Israel's present and future, concurs.

By 2020, the Israeli demographer Sergio Della Pergola has predicted, Jews will make up less than forty-seven per cent of the population. If a self-sustaining Palestinian state -- one that is territorially contiguous within the West Bank -- does not emerge, the Jews of Israel will be faced with two choices: a binational state with an Arab majority, which would be the end of the idea of Zionism, or an apartheid state, in which the Arab majority would be ruled by a Jewish minority.

Which is all to say, I clearly don't understand the politics of the situation very well. Unless Israel's demographers have gone mad, the Arab population is going to become the majority group within Israel fairly soon. So if you are inclined to believe that the Jewish people deserve their own state, the only rational future seems to me for Israel to accept a second state. Waiting for demographics to force the issue seems like poor planning, and jumping on John Kerry for pointing this out seems quite frankly counterproductive.

Of course, I do assume people want a reality-based solution and not fantasy (Maybe Palestinians will be abducted by aliens! Maybe ten million Jewish people will immigrate overnight!) so I may be over-thinking things.

Finally, for a well-informed take that is more critical of Israel than I am, Juan Cole provides some good insights.