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Wholesale inflation calculated weekly is at 7% in India. And the country's Finance Minister Chidambaram says he is more concerned about inflation than a growth that slows a bit. Experts forecast growth slowing down from 9% to 7% in the next 2 years as the global slowdown affects India. For the US India has been a good export market with sales growing at the rate of 75% a year according to the USA Commerce Department. But a look at the charts shows that China also had periods of a couple of years when growth slowed to 7% in recent years before it gradually went back up to over 10%. And China's growth will also be affected by the global slowdown and fall weel below 10%. And this may be a health y thing for China as it decides what kind of growth it wants to see that is better than the haphazard growth of the last few years with its huge environmental costs and lax regulation and the imbalances in growth between urban and rural as well as wages and benefits without labor law protections to create domestic consumption by a middle class. ...

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This report by Timiraos in WSJ describes the tussle between supply siders led by Mike Pence and David Malpass with the zero sum advisors who advised Trump on trade during the campaign. The zero sum advisors are focussed only on how to turn trade to improve the U.S. position and cut trade deficits. The supply siders are trying to show that trade can benefit the U.S. only that it needs to be adjusted so that it works better for the U.S.

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Ewen Macaskill of the Guardian travels on the bus with Jeremy Corbyn through the east Midlands region of the UK. He describes how Corbyn is handling the negative media coverage from the Daily Telegraph and the tabloids. Corbyn's response to the demonization by the tabloids underway for the last two years is that he does not let it get to him. He does not respond to personal attacks, including ones made by Theresa May, because he says it means he would have to descend to that level. "It actually devalues yourself and the process," says Corbyn. He is not stressed, says Corbyn because it would do him no good, and no good to the people around him who are putting in their best to support Labor in this election. Calm, composed, is how this reporter sees Corbyn on the trail. This means not following the latest polls but staying focussed on the goal and the day ahead. As a result the people who had only seen him through the negative image projected in the media are now becoming endeared to him. Little things count, whether the campaign workers are getting their tea and coffee, and looking for a knife to cut a chocolate brownie cake given at a prior event. Calm, composed, not letting comments or the pessimism affect him, as he is in his words "there for the long haul." This is true for the way he is careful not to allow intrusions into his family life, that would affect his wife Laura Alvarez and three sons. This is the way he has come across during his first day as Leader of the Opposition in parliament, and during the event where he launched the Labor manifesto. Preferring simplicity and ordinary life he prefers public transport, simple layout in the campaign bus, and if elected he says he would prefer to remain where he is instead of the house at 10 Downing Street. Corbyn is 68, but after the way he has tackled the challenge facing Labor, the graceful attitude and dignity needed especially today, he is likely to be around for much longer. ...

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It is only appropriate to bring up Aneurin Bevan in 2024 after the pandemic and as ordinary Britons seek to improve health and living standards, and their compatriots in the US also seek a better form of universal health coverage that works to provide better health  for less cost similar to Europe. In 1948 the National Health Services Act was passed into law with Aneurin Bevan having seen it through parliament as a member of the Labour party from Wales. The NHS was operational in July 1948. Clement Attlee summoned Bevan after winning in a landslide in 1948 and asked him to take the Housing and Health Ministry. Bevan was a coal miner's son who then used his skills in parliament to get passage of laws that created one of the most enduring  institutions of modern times. A docudrama by Prince about a visionary Welshman Aneurin Bevan as Health Minister who founded the NHS National Health Service of Britain. Michael Sheen plays Bevan.

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The riots in Athens as the Greek parliament voted to support the passage of an EU plan of austerity cuts, including a 22% cut in the minimum wage, pension cuts and large cuts in the number of government employees. The Popular Orthodox Rally party in the governing Greek coalition withdrew its support, 22 members of the Socialist party and 21 members of the New Democracy party in parliament opposed the measures. Elections are planned for April, 2012. Antonio Samaras, head of the New Democracy party, told parliament that he supported the measure only so that Greece could continue using the euro and have "the possibility tomorrow to negotiate and change the policy that is being imposed on us today."

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A book review of the book by Nicholas Carr, on the Internet, and how it leads people to shallow thinking and superficial reading. Carr writes that when one goes onto the Internet one comes into an environment that encourages superficial reading, thinking quickly and in aharried rushed manner. The thinking is distracted and the learning superficial. He calls the pattern of skimming pages an "F pattern" where one takes in only a few lines of text and misses the rest. And the ability to absorb knowledge, and transfer it to a long term memory, which helps us to reflect and think about what is said and develop our own thinking, suffers in this process. What we gain in breadth of kowledge is lost in the depth of understanding which is eroded.

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More than one in four houses in Australia have solar panels on the rooftops. In Queensland and New South Wales half of homes have solar panels. This includes Sydney. This is more than most places, including California, Germany, U.S. Britain, France. In California less than 10% of utilities customers have solar panels in their homes. Rooftop solar provides 5% of its electricity in Australia, compared to 1% in the U.S. 

Much of this is because of states offering incentives and it saves money for homeowners. Australian conservatives see this as a way to promote their rugged individualism.

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A number of issues came up at the Women20 Summit in Berlin. Annette Niederfranke, Director of the International Labor Organization, brought up the issue of family reconciliation as "one of the toughest challenges for working women worldwide," that in order to meet obligations women tended to work in "non standard forms of employment and in part time work linked to lower wages, lower social security, lower benefits, and fewer training possibilities." Childcare was also an issue that was prominent considering the lack of adequate childcare in many countries including in the European Union. With responsibilities for the elderly, babies, and small children women tend to be in the workforce for shorter periods leading to men taking up many of the higher positions. Angela Merkel pointed out that Gemany tended to take a narrow view of professions available to girls, saying- "So it is very very important that we take a broader view of things while girls are still at school." Merkel also supports a Africa compact that would help women set up small and middle size businesses in poor countries. The "Digital" aspects of this and other efforts for women were a major topic being discussed. One idea that came up was that more cooperation from men was needed to make things happen. This is the third Women20 Summit after ones in Turkey and China, and a sense of momentum was felt by women. ...

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Instead of killing the NAFTA trade agreement Trump and his advisors prefer renegotiating the treaty. Priorities for the Trump administration are reducing the U.S. deficit with Mexico of $61 billion. Trade with Mexico and Canada is worth $1.1 trillion and the complex supply chains works such that product components cross borders more than once to become finished products. Mexico promotes its auto and other industries as duty free access to the U.S. for foreign investment. Special tariffs would reduce the trade deficit with Mexico and firms that moved production to Mexico would pay additional taxes. A provision that allows Mexican and Canadian companies to challenge U.S. regulations would also be removed. Rep. Brad Sherman (Democrat) says he supports the renegotiation so that duties of 4% are imposed to reduce the deficit to $25 billion.

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Jeb Bush sees many who come to the U.S. looking for a better life as similiar to people who arrived here in earlier waves of immigrants all the way back to 1800. He described the actions of many who come to the U.S. illegally as an "act of love," and "act of committment to family," in a talk at College Station Texas, on the 25th anniversary celebration of the presidency of his father, George H.W. Bush. Its breaking the law, he says, but different, not a felony. Benjamin Franklin describes German immigrants to Pennsylvania in his writings at a time when immigrants were what made this country. They were different in some ways then but long since became part of the fabric of America, as have new immigrants in the different periods of the 19th and 20th century. Here is what Benjamin Franklin says about the German immigrants whom he praises for habitual "Industry and Frugality they bring with them," in a letter to Peter Collinson, May 19th 1753, addressing the fears as well as what they could bring to the new country, which throws light on todays immigration debates in a new light. "In short unless the stream of their importation could be turned from this to other colonies, as you very judiciously propose, they will soon so out number us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious." And then saying in the same letter-"Yet I am not for refusing entirely to admit them into our Colonies: all that seems to be necessary, is, to distribute them more equally, mix them with the English, establish English Schools where they are now too thick settled, and take some care to prevent the practice lately fallen into by some of the Ship Owners, of sweeping the German Goals to make up the number of their passengers. I say I am not against the Admission of Germans in general, for they have their Virtues, their industry and frugality is exemplary; They are excellent husbandmen and contribute greatly to the improvement of a Country." ...

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A Sept 2012 Census Bureau report shows the median income of a typical U.S. family declined or was flat in almost all states in 2011. Median household income declined in Nevada by 6%, in California by 3.8%. In Arizona and Florida incomes declined by 2.9%. For the U.S. median income declined by 1.3% to $50,502 in 2011. Poverty continues to increase, with California showing 335,760 people falling into annual income levels below $23,021 for a family of four in 2011, giving the state a 16.6% poverty rate.

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Janet Yellen Fed chairwoman, says many obstacles still exist for women in the workforce. Bringing more women into the workforce will increase the productive capacity of the American economy. The increasing participation of women in the workforce was factor in the growth and prosperity of America by the middle of the 20th century. In a speech sharing her personal narrative at Brown University, her alma mater, she described how other nations had passed the U.S. in women's participation in the workforce, and how it remains stalled at 75% for women either working or looking for work. Her speech was at a conference "125 Years of Women at Brown." The U.S. is now 17th among 22 developed nations in participation of women in workforce, mostly because of government and business policies that relate to paid maternity leave, affordable child care, and flexible work schedules.

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Kessler in the WP corrects Obama's claim that he created 800,000 jobs. He says this is clever arithmetic as it takes a low point in Feb. 2010 following the financial crisis. Kessler points out that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. manufacturing jobs were 12.56 million in Jan. 2009 when Obama became president. In Nov. 2016, early estimates show there were 12.26 million manufacturing jobs, a loss of 300,000. This loss does not reflect the problems in the U.S. auto industry and older industries in the midwestern states as a result of trade and globalization that speeded up with the rapid industrialization of China. And led as Greg Ip pointed out in a recent WSJ report to a rapid acceleration of job losses in a decade that did not happen in the same scale during Japan's industrialization and urbanization in the sixties. This aggravated the situation in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, and was met with a feeble response from Democrats. Even a economist like Krugman favoring the Obama administration's efforts came to the conclusion that TPP did not add much to gains from trade as most of the gains had already been realized. More of the gains went to tech and IT in California, at the expense of the auto industry based in the midwest. A report in WP show a president too close to IT in California and failing to grasp the situation in the midwest. Voters punish whoever is in power, regardless of being Conservative or Liberal, in Canada the hollowing out of manufacturing under Harper in Ontario and Quebec led to the win by Trudeau's Liberals.  ...

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No less than a report by Harry Truman's Commission on Migratory Labor in 1951 says-  Migratory labor caused low wages in the Southwest and traced social ills to illegal immigration: “The magnitude … has reached entirely new levels in the past 7 years.… In its newly achieved proportions, it is virtually an invasion,” the report says. What one sees from this archive of the US Congress is that there ebbs and flows back and forth on migration across the southern border. The trade unions and even Harry Truman's Commission come out for restricting migration depending on this ebb and flow. Remember that Asian immigration is flatly opposed from 1910 to 1950. twenties - open to meet farm labor needs, 40% of US vegetables grown in the southwest. thirties - with the Great Depression a Hoover deportation effort forties- welcoming immigrants to meet war needs under Franklin Roosevelt fifties- under both Truman and EIsenhower the welcome ends and apart from the bracero program for agriculture, the Eisenhower administration conducts Operation Wetback. The House of Representatives Archives show the history of Hispanics in the southwest and immigration from Mexico in the period of the 1930's to the 1950's. One sees the effects of the Depression and Labor's AFL CIO and trade unions favoring limits on immigration from Mexico because of the difficulties American citizens were having finding jobs during the 1929-1934 period. Herbert Hoover moved illegal immigrants back to Mexico in the first program at a time when there were strict limits to Asians emigrating to the US. For much of the twenties the border was left open to meet the needs of the southwest farms for Mexican labor. Then came the war when Mexican Americans joined the war effort in great numbers. After the war the difficulty of finding jobs for troops returning to the US created new pressures to limit immigration. Ike setup Operation wetback to deport about 1 million migrants.   ...

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The U.S. falls to 19th rank in the Social Progress Index. This Index is another measure of how well a country is doing in meeting the needs of its average citizen for education, health care, opportunities in life. Experts say GDP and GDP growth alone are a poor indicator of how well a country is doing. High levels of student debt, the aftermath of the mortgage crisis job losses and low interest rates that have slashed the average person's savings, lower access to education and health care with high costs, lower wages and job loss in manufacturing, are pushing the U.S. down the ladder in this ranking. It is also showing up in the domestic political unrest from poorer working class and lower middle class people. Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Netherlands, do the best and are in the top ten in the rankings.