Hong Kong Protest Graphics Public

Here is the Dropbox link.

H/T Languagelog commenter.

Mark Blyth - “A Brief History of How We Got Here and Why”

Partly cross-posted from Naked Capitalism.

Mark Blyth, the Brown political scientist of “The Hamptons are not a defensible position” fame, has a must-watch video of a presentation, A Brief History of How We Got Here and Why, which we’ve embedded below. We’re featuring it despite the lack of a transcript. Even though Blyth presents a fair bit of detail that is familiar to readers, he manages the difficult task of synthesizing it in a way that generates novel observations. It doesn’t hurt that Blyth is also colorful and a high bit rate transmitter. This video is a fantastic way to get people you know who’ve started to develop doubts about orthodox stories about how the economy works to see thing in a different light.

At 17:50 he briefly touches inflation after WW I and that Germany's narrative is to "explain" the Weimar Inflation as the reason Hitler came to power which he debunks as nonsense, about 12 years off. Precisely.

27:40 Why angry politics are produced.

31:15 he addresses the effects of globalization.

41:00 Populism is a feature, not a bug. Left response blame capital/globalization. Right response blames immigrants and globalization. 

1:04:20 he addresses MMT in the context of Britain, China (yes, China) and the US.

1:22:30 He really lays into India. "They are doing bribery" with their plan to build 200 coal energy plants.

The question time is a little hard to follow as most like to hear themselves talk and , in addition, the sound is low.

China's Changing Relationship with the World Economy

This graph caught our eye.

The figure shows the total GDP of China, Japan, and Germany as a share of the US level, which is set at 100%. On this figure, Germany's GDP as a share of the US level peaked in 1979, and Japan's peaked in 1991.

What's interesting about China's situation is not just that the level has risen so sharply. In addition, the peaks for Germany and Japan happened when their levels of per capita GDP were similar or higher to the US level (given the prevailing exchange rates at the time). China's per capita GDP is much lower, suggesting much more room to grow. Similarly, the urbanization rates for Germany in 1979 and Japan in 1991 were in the 70s, while China's urbanization rate is only 58%--again suggesting considerably more room for China to grow.

Full post of Tim Taylor here. 

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