‘Real (_____) jobless rate: 15%’:

Guess wich country they are talking about (in the blank)…

_______’s unemployment rate is 15 per cent, three times the figure being used by the government, according to new research from McKinsey Global Institute, the think tank.
The consultancy’s calculations indicate unemployment is set to rise further, with between 100,000 and 200,000 jobs outsourced to cheaper countries over the next 10 years if no corrective action is taken.
The numbers cast a pall over ______’s international reputation as a thriving welfare state with low unemployment and will help focus attention on jobs ahead of _______ national elections.
McKinsey reached its conclusions by including those who want to work and those who could do so, meaning people on government programmes as well as those on prolonged sick leave.
In its first assessment of the country’s economy since 1995, it said: ‘_______’s economy has reached a critical juncture. If nothing is done, the problems will become much more serious.’
It praised _______ for achieving average GDP growth of 2.7 per cent a year since 1995, which it attibuted to deregulation and improvements in private sector productivity. But it said the country could not rely on future improvements in private-sector productivity, as the catch-up effect that had driven these developments would decline over time.
The ageing population would put the public sector under ‘intolerable pressure’ unless productivity improved, it added.
‘If nothing else changes, the resulting increase in welfare costs would become too large to finance through the current tax system in only 10 to 20 years,’ McKinsey said.
(…) income tax rates would have to rise from about 30 per cent to about 50 per cent, arguing that these rises would not be accepted by the public as welfare and health services would decline.
Last, it said that the real unemployment rate of 15 per cent could increase as the production of goods and services moved to lower-cost countries – such as _________.
“______ needs to move quickly to introduce reforms that would create favourable conditions for sustained productivity growth in the private sector, better performance in the public sector and the creation of jobs in the private services sector“.
It expressed confidence the country would be able to respond to these challenges, praising its productive industries, macroeconomic stability and good relations between politicians, companies and unions.
But McKinsey said that _______ had a lot of lost ground to regain. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, _______ had dropped from fifth position in its welfare ranking to 12th in 2004.

They are talking about Sweden, a rich country with a supposedly thriving welfare state… Do you get the hint? Thriving welfare states do not produce sustained growth. Sustained growth, in Sweden as well as everywhere else, comes from productivity growth… and welfarist policies do not correlate well with productivity. Think about that the next time you see a candidate promising you a welfarist wonderland.

“Lisa Jardine and Annie Watkins, from the University of London’s Queen Mary College, interviewed 500 men – many of whom had a professional connection with literature – about the novels that had changed their lives. (…)
The novel that means most to men is about indifference, alienation and lack of emotional response. The novel that means most to women is about deeply held feelings and a struggle to overcome circumstances and passion.”

Here are the top 10 books for men and women:

MEN’S LIST
1 Albert Camus The Outsider
2 J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye
3 Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five
4 Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude
5 J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit
6 Joseph Heller Catch-22
7 George Orwell 1984
8 F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby
9 Milan Kundera The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
10 Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird

WOMEN’S LIST
1 Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre
2 Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights
3 Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale
4 George Eliot Middlemarch
5 Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice
6 Toni Morrison Beloved
7 Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook
8 Joseph Heller Catch-22
9 Marcel Proust Remembrance of Things Past
10 Jane Austen Persuasion

A related question:
Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, by Lisa Zunshine, who teaches English at the University of Kentucky. (…) We have an “evolved cognitive predisposition to attribute states of mind to ourselves and others” that is also known as “mind-reading.” “These cognitive mechanisms,” writes Zunshine, “evolved to process information about thoughts and feelings of human beings, seem to be constantly on the alert, checking out their environment for cues that fit their input conditions. On some level, works of fiction manage to cheat these mechanisms into believing that they are in the presence of material that they were ‘designed’ to process, i.e., that they are in the presence of agents endowed with a potential for a rich array of intentional stances.”

This is an open letter from Alex Tabarrok (GMU, Independent Institute). The link also provides valuable references on this issue.

“Dear President George W. Bush and All Members of Congress:
People from around the world are drawn to America for its promise of freedom and opportunity. That promise has been fulfilled for the tens of millions of immigrants who came here in the twentieth century.
Throughout our history as an immigrant nation, those who are already here worry about the impact of newcomers. Yet, over time, immigrants have become part of a richer America, richer both economically and culturally. The current debate over immigration is a healthy part of a democratic society, but as economists and other social scientists we are concerned that some of the fundamental economics of immigration are too often obscured by misguided commentary.
Overall, immigration has been a net gain for existing American citizens, though a modest one in proportion to the size of our 12 trillion-dollar economy.
Immigrants do not take American jobs. The American economy can create as many jobs as there are workers willing to work so long as labor markets remain free, flexible and open to all workers on an equal basis.
Immigration in recent decades of low-skilled workers may have lowered the wages of domestic low-skilled workers, but the effect is likely to be small, with estimates of wage reductions for high-school dropouts ranging from eight percent to as little as zero percent.
While a small percentage of native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration, vastly more Americans benefit from the contributions that immigrants make to our economy, including lower consumer prices. As with trade in goods and services, the gains from immigration outweigh the losses. The effect of all immigration on low-skilled workers is very likely positive as many immigrants bring skills, capital and entrepreneurship to the American economy.
Legitimate concerns about the impact of immigration on the poorest Americans should not be addressed by penalizing even poorer immigrants. Instead, we should promote policies, such as improving our education system that enables Americans to be more productive with high-wage skills.
We must not forget that the gains to immigrants from coming to the United States are immense. Immigration is the greatest anti-poverty program ever devised. The American dream is a reality for many immigrants who not only increase their own living standards but who also send billions of dollars of their money back to their families in their home countries—a form of truly effective foreign aid…
America is a generous and open country and these qualities make America a beacon to the world. We should not let exaggerated fears dim that beacon.”

Mercatus Center – Hey, don’t bad-mouth unskilled immigrants: You don’t have to be a computer genius to be good for the U.S.:

Yes, immigration brings some real costs. But most of these problems are concentrated in a few border and urban areas; federal policy can help correct the imbalances.
Americans have heard from politicians for more than 200 years that immigration will cause the sky to fall. Yet each time it has only made us stronger.

This is from the may 12, 2006, New York Times:

There are 32,000 students (…) but no student center, no bookstore, no student-run newspaper, no freshman orientation, no corporate recruiting system. The 480,000-volume central library is open only 10 hours a day, closed on Sundays and holidays. Only 30 of the library’s 100 computers have Internet access.  The campus cafeterias close after lunch. Professors often do not have office hours; many have no office. Some classrooms are so overcrowded that at exam time many students have to find seats elsewhere. By late afternoon every day the campus is largely empty.

—–
Well, many public universities in the US are pretty good–perhaps due to the competition with private ones?  To be sure, one would have to look at a large sample of university systems (public, private, mixed) to determine whether public universities work or not, and why.  But it seems like France would be an underperformer in such a comparison.

You cannot miss this nice exercise in photojournalism… with lots of ideas for when you decide to join the anti-whatever revolution!

“On March 18, 2006, activist groups around the world held protests to mark the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. San Francisco was no exception: the communist anti-war group ANSWER planned to stage a large rally and march through the city, in opposition to the war and other American policies.

The problem is, other groups also planned additional anti-war and anti-authoritarian events in San Francisco (and nearby) on March 18. And all the events were conflicting with each other. Something obviously had gone terribly awry in the progressive community. In the weeks leading up to the big day, the different factions began bickering with each other.

The most glaring scheduling snafu involved the Anarchist Bookfair, which was being held on the other side of San Francisco from the ANSWER march, but on the same day at the exact same time. Seeing as the anarchist event and the anti-war event both drew on the same pool of potential attendees, accusations began to fly that each event was going to hurt attendance at the rival event. “

San Francisco is an interesting place indeed–Take a look at the pictures on these links:
The “Global Day of Action” rally and Anarchist Bookfair — San Francisco, March 18, 2006
And do not miss part 2:
The Anarchist Bookfair 2006

Tyler Cowen on the normalcy of being weird:

“Whenever you see or hear of me doing something weird, think twice. I am actually behaving normally, and no offense is intended. Quite the contrary, I am flattering you by behaving normally in your presence. You just haven’t yet solved the signal extraction problem which would allow you to differentiate between my actual weirdness and my different standards for what weirdness should be.”

A Hispanic Civil Rights Movement: “A Hispanic Civil Rights Movement
By Juan Williams
Monday, April 10, 2006
“The massive demonstrations by Hispanics across the country have the look of civil rights history. The crowds protesting punitive immigration legislation have been huge, rivaling or exceeding the gathering for the 1963 March on Washington. Is this in fact a major new civil rights movement?
Until now Hispanics have not been a political force or a major factor in national discussions of civil rights, though they have become the nation’s largest minority. The politics of race are still dominated by conversations about black-white relations, and blacks remain the gatekeepers of racial representation on school boards and in city halls. In Congress, African Americans have a caucus more than twice the size of the Hispanic delegation (43 to 21), even though they are a smaller percentage of the population.
One big reason Hispanic power has been slow in maturing is that most Hispanics do not identify themselves as such. Their group reference has tended to be to homelands — Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic. And of course there are racial differences, especially between black and white Hispanics.
But that changed recently, with marches that drew hundreds of thousands and created coalitions across the lines of Hispanic national identity. People from disparate Hispanic nations coalesced around the debate on illegal immigration. It took a radical step by the House — giving serious thought to dragnet arrests of all illegal immigrants and charging them with a felony — to achieve this. To some, the level of hatred and racism against immigrants seemed to match that once directed against blacks in this country…”

READ the rest at the link