they are overpopulated as-is. so why the quest or stress on "growth".
came across a stat a long time ago that they import close to 50% of their calories. suggesting non-viability of their environment for that many people.
This is a blog about both climate change and geopolitics, which includes the geopolitical blockages to climate change action. It may be logical to think that some type of degrowth in the richer nations is required to combat climate change, but as this article points out there are geopolitical implications of uncoordinated degrowth. The scale of economic activity tends to equal geopolitical power to a significant extent, so unilateral degrowth risks being subjugated by those which may then simply exploit you for their own growth.
The cost of degrowth to Western elites would be very great, including the collapse of their fictitious financial wealth (I will cover this in a later article) as the future growth it assumes will not happen. For countries such as China, they must continue to grow to escape subjugation and a new neo-colonialism.
The fight for freedom of the Other 7 billion from Western elite subjugation, and the desperate resistance of the Western elites to that fight, is interacting directly with how climate change is dealt with - technocratic "solutions" such as CCS and Solar Radiation Management that will support the status quo and continued growth rather than the rapid phase out of fossil fuels and the ending of dysfunctional consumption (military, rich massive overconsumption, consumerism etc.)
The decline of Japan and South Korea and the weakness of he Philippines may keep us safe from a war in the South China Sea which may rapidly escalate to threaten mankind, but it does nothing to stop the aggressive Western elite actions designed to keep China, and the rest of the Other 7 Billion, down. It is those actions which are the greatest blockage to coordinated actions on climate change.
when outlets like bloomberg talk about chinese housing 'collapse' when houese prices fall 20-30%, what they need to understand is that for people that bought their house before the 20s (which is the majority) , its still a net gain after the drop in prices. in fact, I believe that for tier 1 to tier 2 cities, there are government plans to take over failed development en bulk to resolve traingular debt issues when the price is low enough. Such housing would serve as cheaper alternative to commerical housing. Perhaps the Singaporean HDB system could be replicated
Yes, I have read that there are some plans to buy vacant properties up and turn them into government rentals - thus helping to reduce rents. Social housing, as with Singapore, helps keep rents affordable. The utter lack of new social housing in Western countries is a big reason for the rental crisis in some of those nations (e.g. my own Canada). In the UK in the 1980s, Thatcher sold off social housing at big discounts in an obvious ploy to gain more Conservative voting homeowners.
This is what I've come to expect under Neoliberalism. I don't understand why others don't see this.
they are overpopulated as-is. so why the quest or stress on "growth".
came across a stat a long time ago that they import close to 50% of their calories. suggesting non-viability of their environment for that many people.
same could probably be said for UK.
This is a blog about both climate change and geopolitics, which includes the geopolitical blockages to climate change action. It may be logical to think that some type of degrowth in the richer nations is required to combat climate change, but as this article points out there are geopolitical implications of uncoordinated degrowth. The scale of economic activity tends to equal geopolitical power to a significant extent, so unilateral degrowth risks being subjugated by those which may then simply exploit you for their own growth.
The cost of degrowth to Western elites would be very great, including the collapse of their fictitious financial wealth (I will cover this in a later article) as the future growth it assumes will not happen. For countries such as China, they must continue to grow to escape subjugation and a new neo-colonialism.
The fight for freedom of the Other 7 billion from Western elite subjugation, and the desperate resistance of the Western elites to that fight, is interacting directly with how climate change is dealt with - technocratic "solutions" such as CCS and Solar Radiation Management that will support the status quo and continued growth rather than the rapid phase out of fossil fuels and the ending of dysfunctional consumption (military, rich massive overconsumption, consumerism etc.)
The decline of Japan and South Korea and the weakness of he Philippines may keep us safe from a war in the South China Sea which may rapidly escalate to threaten mankind, but it does nothing to stop the aggressive Western elite actions designed to keep China, and the rest of the Other 7 Billion, down. It is those actions which are the greatest blockage to coordinated actions on climate change.
Great stuff, as usual. A question: "Chinese inflation of approximately 6% since 2020"? Your source?
Macrotrends: Chinese CPI 2021: 0.98%; 2022: 2.42%; 2023: 2.9% = 6.2%. Inflation for the first six months of 2024 has been close to zero.
China would benefit from moderate inflation to reduce the value of housing relative to nominal GDP without a big absolute fall in prices.
when outlets like bloomberg talk about chinese housing 'collapse' when houese prices fall 20-30%, what they need to understand is that for people that bought their house before the 20s (which is the majority) , its still a net gain after the drop in prices. in fact, I believe that for tier 1 to tier 2 cities, there are government plans to take over failed development en bulk to resolve traingular debt issues when the price is low enough. Such housing would serve as cheaper alternative to commerical housing. Perhaps the Singaporean HDB system could be replicated
Yes, I have read that there are some plans to buy vacant properties up and turn them into government rentals - thus helping to reduce rents. Social housing, as with Singapore, helps keep rents affordable. The utter lack of new social housing in Western countries is a big reason for the rental crisis in some of those nations (e.g. my own Canada). In the UK in the 1980s, Thatcher sold off social housing at big discounts in an obvious ploy to gain more Conservative voting homeowners.
So average inflation for H1 was 2.1%.
If I look at the Chinese CPI data, month to moth inflation in China in 2024 has been:
Jan 0.3%; Feb 1%; Mar -1%; Apr 0.1%; May -0.1%; June -0.2%, so pretty flat.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/271667/monthly-inflation-rate-in-china/#:~:text=Monthly%20inflation%20rate%20in%20China%20June%202024&text=In%20June%202024%2C%20the%20monthly,at%200.2%20percent%20in%202023.