I just put up a post on the economic situation of Finland. Now I am putting another. Why the sudden interest? What is there about the Finnish economy which could be of interest to more people than the five million or so who actually live there?
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Tag Archives: people
The Outermost Regions
In the comments to a recent post, the question arose of the “natural boundaries” of the EU. Apropos of that, let us briefly consider those parts of the EU that are outside of Europe. Sometimes very far outside.
The EU has a formal name for these territories: they are “the Outermost Regions of Europe”. Officially, there are six of them: Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Réunion, the Azores, the Canaries and Madeira. Four French overseas possessions, two Spanish and one Portuguese archipelago.
I say “officially”, because there are a number of territories that aren’t covered under this. The Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Africa aren’t, presumably because they’re considered part of metropolitan Spain. The Falkland Islands aren’t, because that would be very upsetting to Argentina. And French Polynesia isn’t, because French Polynesia is very confusing. (This is a territory where everyone has double citizenship — French and French Polynesian — and that’s the least complicated thing about it.)
Then there’s Greenland, which is part of Denmark, except not exactly; the Turks and Caicos Islands, whose citizens are British citizens, and so EU citizens, but who can’t vote in EU elections; the Netherlands Antilles… oh, the list goes on.
But let’s keep it simple, and just look at the bits that are absolutely, positively part of the EU: the seven official “outermost regions”, plus Ceuta and Melilla.
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Unwanted
There’s nothing better for livening up all this dull, wonkish chatter about the German elections than a bit of CDU-bashing. So, how shall I bash them today? Oh, I know! How about this: they’re a shower of xenophobe racists.
Yes, yes; not exactly news, is it? What is news, though, is that the Union appears to value xenophobia even more than it does winning elections.
More Bigtime Divergence
As people may have noted, last weekend Tobias and I were in Stockholm. One of the topics I wanted to post on but couldn’t was the latest Human Development report from the UN. There was plenty of press coverage: here, here, and here
There was even coverage in the blogs, but the tone seemed to be set by Slugger O’Toole who seemed mainly to take issue with Ireland’s rating in the HDI.
Personally I think the issues involved are much bigger than this.
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A modest proposal for CAP reform
I’ve been in Canada for the last month, getting in my last family visit before settling in to the serious business of either going back to school or collecting unemployment checks. My family is large – Great-Grandpa had 25 children, and Grandpa had 9 – so it takes a while if you go to see my family. Ours is a large, disorganised, occasionally frightening clan who, depending on pure whim, identifies itself as either German-Canadian, Dutch-Canadian, Russian-Canadian or Ukrainian-Canadian. Our tribal language is an obscure dialect of Low Saxon (Platt for the actual Germans out there) spoken primarily in Paraguay, Mexico, Central America and Saskatchewan, and whose most famous speaker is, arguably, Homer Simpson. It’s a long story, don’t ask. It not being much of a literary language, we all just say our ancestors spoke German – the liturgical language of my clan’s particular sect.
In contrast to Europe and the US, Canadians are a lot less disturbed about asking people about their ethnic identities or expressing some loyalty to them. I guess the main reason is that Canada has never really pretended to be a nation built atop an identity, but rather a place where an identity of sorts has slowly built up from the existence of a nation. There is no Canadian myth of the melting pot, and as our soon-to-be new Governor General has demonstrated, no serious demand for nativism in public office. Michaëlle Jean, who is slated to be the powerless and unelected Canadian head-of-state when the Queen is out of the country – e.g., practically always – when she is sworn in on the 27th, is no doubt the most attractive candidate we’ve ever had for the office. And, like her predecessor, she is a former CBC/SRC reporter and talking head.
Ms Jean and I share an endemically Canadian charateristic: We both can and do identify ourselves shamelessly as several different kinds of hyphenated Canadians. She is French Canadian, but that’s hardly strange. She is also Franco-Canadian – Ms Jean has dual citizenship with France, making her the first EU citizen to be Governor General of Canada and the first French citizen to be acting head of state of Canada since 1763. But more unprecedentedly, she is Haitian-Canadian and – as logically follows – African-Canadian.
Yes, Ms Jean is black, and furthermore in an interracial marriage. Well, that’s Canada for you. America puts black folk in squalid emergency shelters, we put ours in Rideau Hall.
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Vlad Says That’s Bad, Lads!
The Guardian today carries yet another article by Jonathan Steele on how badly the Ukrainians have hurt Vladimir Putin’s feelings, here. Putin, at a “two-and-a-half hour meeting with academics and journalists in the Kremlin” apparently had this to say:
” One of the parties cannot be cornered by means of unconstitutional activities. Otherwise other people in the region can say ‘Why don’t we act against the constitution?'”
Indeed. But can someone please remind the man that there is nothing at all constitutional in rigging the elections, poisoning the opposition and murdering annoying journalists? It also stretches credibility that he seems to think he’s responsible for upholding the constitutions of states in “the region” (which is presumably a rebranded variant of “the near abroad”), or rather, upholding their governments against their constitutions. If that wasn’t enough, though, what about his next line?
“He said corruption was blooming there and people around the next president have started to enrich themselves. We said this before and no-one wanted to listen to us.”
Ye gods, Russia as the stalwart defender of probity in public office. I think that probably qualifies him for this week’s Orwell nomination back on my own blog. But can anyone make sense of this paragraph?
He spoke with repeated anger about what has been happening in the former Soviet republics. “We cannot go back to the Russian empire. Only an idiot can imagine we’re striving for that.”
Well, those two lines are entirely mutually incompatible, no? The point of all this is, of course, that first of all he doesn’t care at all about anybody’s constitution, and secondly he still sees himself as being in a position to lecture his ex-colonies, although he has learned to deny it. After all, what does all this stuff about other countries’ constitutions mean practically? What does he think would have happened if “we” had listened to him?
Either that “we” would have pressed the OFF switch and all the people on the Kiev Maidan would have gone away, or, I suppose, that we would have supported a Tiananmen solution. Fantastic, and more evidence that the EU’s Nachbarschaftspolitik needs very great care. (Don’t forget, either, that Steele has previous for being feted at the Kremlin.)
This Is Fascinating
While the debate rages about who are what has been ultimately responsible for the plight of all those poor, largely black, people who got left behind when New Orleans went ‘under water’, this reuters article raises some fascinating points.
“If refugees end up building new lives away from New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina may prompt the largest U.S. black resettlement since the 20th century’s Great Migration lured southern blacks to the North in a search for jobs and better lives.”
“Interviews with refugees in Houston, which is expecting many thousands of evacuees to remain, suggest that thousands of blacks who lost everything and had no insurance will end up living in Texas or other U.S. states.”
“Officials say it will take many months and maybe even years before the birthplace of jazz is rebuilt.”
Dynamic systems, steady state stable bad equilibria and shocks. Fascinating.
“New Orleans did not always follow the trend. Historically, far fewer residents have moved from New Orleans than from most American cities, despite its high poverty and crime rates.”
In other words many people had become simply ‘stuck’ there. Actually, maybe the writer should have said because of the “high poverty and crime rates”, in chaos theory terms that’s precisely how things like ‘strange attractors’ and ‘sinks’ operate.
The possibility of this outcome had in fact been going through my mind. Obviously I’m in Europe, so I don’t really know at first hand, but I have the impression that this would be the best thing that could happen.
Mind you, I agree with Nicholas Lemann, author of “The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America,” who is quoted as saying it is too early to tell. Quite. But here I think is one area where policy really could make a difference. Get these people into stable temporary housing, get them into jobs, get their children into schools. Then they won’t be going back.
A Million Refugees in a First World Country
Imagine the entire population of Munich, of Lyon or of Copenhagen evacuated because of a natural disaster. That’s the situation now in the New Orleans area.
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Menarché and Low Fertility
Earlier this morning I read this intriguing paper by US researchers Robert Drago & Amy Varner. The title of the paper is “Fertility and Work in the United States: A Policy Perspective” and it addresses the important issues of gender equality and the historical trend towards declining fertility in the United States. Now while I was thinking of how to write a post on this general topic I wandered over to Brad Delong’s blog and found he had this highly relevant post entitled Menarché vs Monarchy.
OK, what’s this all about.
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Little Bits of Asia
A while back I asked about EU policies toward China. There’s now a section on the Europa server devoted to just that question.
“There will soon be more people living in the city of Bombay than on the continent of Australia. … Bombay is the future of urban civilisation on the planet. God help us.” (p. 3)
“[W]orldwide, a billion more people a year buy tickets to Indian movies than to Hollywood ones. … When every other country’s cinema had fallen before Hollywood, India met Hollywood the Hindu way. It welcomed it, swallowed it whole and regurgitated it. What went in blended with everything that had existed before and came back out with ten new heads.” (p. 321)
“What is a South Asian? Someone who watches Hindi movies. Someone whose being fills up with pleasure when he or she hears, Mere Sapnon ki rani or Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. Here is our national language; here is our common song.” (p. 323)
“A wide assortment of cousins and uncles peoples the marriage. One works on an oil rig in Abu Dhabi; another is a property dealer in Bombay who spent six years in Nigeria getting rich off the currency scam in the 190s.” (pp. 430-31)
— From Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta
“[Ms. Zhang] has come to realize what all people who want to change China eventually learn: the current system is at a dead end, but its death is not in sight.” (p. 273)
— From Wild Grass by Ian Johnson
“Anita Jain reported in the Financial Times last week that India has ’10 discount airlines planning to enter the market over the next 18 months.'”
— From Slate
“On July 18th, Shanghai’s first budget airline made its maiden flight from Shanghai?s
— From the Economist’s August 2005 Shanghai update
And finally, back on July 9, the perceptive Mark Leonard had a terrific article in the dead-tree edition of the Financial Times on China’s role in global economics and politics. It’s online here.