For a few decades now, the US and Europe have been managing their plastic waste by shipping it to China and other countries in east Asia for recycling and reuse. But in the last few years, China has been tightening up what it was willing to import, wanting only plastic waste that is uncontaminated. In 2017, China announced that in the future it was banning the import of nonindustrial plastic waste -- that is the plastic waste generated by households.
The best time to fix your roof is when the weather is sunny and warm, not when it's rainy, cold--and actually leaking. In a similar spirit, the best time to fix unemployment insurance is when the unemployment rate is low. Conor McKay, Ethan Pollack, andAlastair Fitzpayne offer some ideas in "Modernizing Unemployment Insurance for the Changing Nature of Work" (Aspen Institute, January 2018). They write:
Watch my conversation with Jeff Deist at Mises Institute about the challenges of monetary policy, the risks of demand-side policies and how Austrian economics can help deliver solutions to current challenges.
As US interest rates continue to normalise and US tariffs begin to bite, a number of emerging markets (EM’s) have come under pressure. Of course, the largest market to exhibit signs of stress is China, the MSCI China Index is down 7% since mid-June, whilst the RMB has also weakened against the US$ by more than 6% since its April low. Will contagion spread to developed markets and, if so, which country might be the ‘carrier’?
If there is something we have learned from the development of the British economy since the Brexit referendum is that doomsayers were wrong. Since the Brexit vote, the UK has created 450 000 jobs.
There seems to be a widespread sense that many problems of the US economy are linked to a lack of dynamism and competition, and that a surge of antitrust enforcement might be a part of the answer. Here are three somewhat separable questions to ponder in addressing this topic.
I’m not worried about artificial intelligence, I’m terrified of human stupidity. The debate about technology and its role in society that we need to have is being used to deceive citizens and scare them about the future so they accept to submit to politicians who cannot nor will protect us from the challenges of robotization.