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China's agriculture based on small farms is undergoing a change as the government pushes automated farming and large farms in the face of limited imports from the U.S. China put tariffs on agricultural imports from the U.S. in retaliation for U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports. China's Agriculture Ministry says it will build 254 "strong agricultural industrial towns" as models for the country. President Xi stated on a visit to northeastern province Heilongjiang, that "unilateralism and trade protectionism are rising, forcing us to take the road of self reliance." The yield per hectare in the U.S. for soybeans is about twice that in China. Mechanized farming is limited in China because it would eliminate many jobs in rural areas. As the state has ownership of land and farmers merely use land, farmers are less likely to take risks with large long term investments. It can be risky for farmers to rent their land use rights to others, which would lead to consolidation.  Now a separate "Made in 2025" plan makes upgrading farm machinery and equipment one of the 10 goals. China may lift ban on genetically modified seeds now that ChemChina has acquired Swiss seed company Syngenta. China plans to partner with Asian Development Bank to provide $6 billion of loans, grants and investment to fund a list of development projects in rural areas, to modernize agriculture. WSJ cites a project of consolidation into an 8200 acre farm in Shandong province that  has increased yields 43% by investing in new farm equipment and planting machines, pesticide spraying drones. Scaling up has made this possible.    ...

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This WSJ Investigation shows Facebook is aware of the acute flaws in its product, that the product is riddled with flaws that only Facebook fully understands. Yet it says the company has not acted in a way that correct these flaws. Some of the flaws of how this app affects teenage girls was a subject of one part of this report. In other parts it looked at how the Facebook app in social media use could increase the level of division in society, and affect the achievement of public interest goals, as users make use of the app and apps like Facebook such as Twitter to increase discord. This is becoming an issue as public interest goals are now seen as critical for recovery. Vaccination for coronavirus in US and Europe, national infrastructure development in India and developing nations, effects of social media on women's health, are critical areas in which social media may have failed to deliver constructive results, and actually gone the other way to make things worse for all. This may also be why leaders of large nations including Mr. Biden, and leaders in India and Europe, have lost patience with social media. ...

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 Donald trumps economic plan would worsen the country's economy through extravagant borrowing and lower economic growth in the long run. Because it lowers taxes by 15 percent without any paired cuts Trump's plan would worsen the deficit, so that large debt would hurt the economy in the long run. Clinton's plan would increase taxes by 4  percent largely on high incomes so as not to hurt consumer spending, with paired spending to help lower income households. Because Trump's tax cuts benefits go disproportionately to higher incomes the benefits in terms of consumer spending are slight or insignificant. In the current state of weak income gains of the last ten years it would take some time for the middle and working class to recover. Clinton's plan carefully nudges that recovery forward without aggravating the debt, so that as incomes and net worth recovers across broad parts of the population, the U.S. is poised to go forward with strong growth as in the postwar years. Trump's plan frontloads tax benefits to higher incomes at the expense of worsening debt and enlarging future debt. In the process it worsens income disparities already aggravated by the 2008 financial crisis. Reducing the chances of a broad based recovery for all parts of the population, necessary for a strong recovery.                       ...

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State run programs that help businesses to retain employees and avoid layoffs are a great way to operate during the lockdowns and gradual reopening. In these workshare programs workers work reduced hours and collect prorated unemployment benefits to offset lost wages. This avoids full layoffs. As the coronavirus is a temporary setback companies need their employees in a healthy economy. How to retain employees. Shift some of the cost of retaining employees to the U.S. or state governments funded by the federal government which comes in the form of unemployment benefits. Workers can then do shorter hours and get through this period.

Such programs are now set up by states in more than half of American states covering about 70% of payrolls. The problem is getting companies and employees to use this program. As of March 28 only 1% of 8.2 million employees have used the program, but it is growing.

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Porter points out that the Reagan tax cuts did little for the bottom half or one of two Americans, leaving them just where they were before the tax cuts. He cites World Wealth and Income Database data showing they earned $16,371 a year on average in today's dollars in 1980, by 1988 when Reagan left office they made $16,268. The Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 had the same result, with income before tax cuts at $17,827 and when Bush left office at $17,473, accounting for inflation. After factoring in taxes and transfers this was up only 0.4% a year. Under Reagan the top 1% increased income by 6% a year.

The distribution nature of the 2017 tax cuts do not suggest a different outcome from the Reagan and Bush tax cuts as they are designed disproportionately favoring the highest incomes, not even the higher incomes, and leaving the lower incomes practically untouched.

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China's breakneck growth was enabled by housing construction, and coal in a way that created problems of climate change. Now China's largest housing developers Evergrande and Country Garden together have a staggering $500 billion in debt and in serious financial trouble in or near default. How will China's government respond? It let Evergrande who had defaulted on debt payments build 300,000 apartments last year, just to protect home buyers. Now it's founder Mr. Xu is taken in for questioning and "illegal crimes." Making sure that the apartments on which people made deposits are built would cost another $72 billion, says Nomura. Yet suppliers, painters, builders and brokers are owed another $390 billion, in one estimate. And foreign creditors are getting together for complicated restructurings. Evergrande had entered wealth management promising 8 or 9% returns and has stopped making payments. All this is affecting public confidence in the future and China's growth story. For decades China depended on housing construction for high growth rates. Now the process is unwinding with both in financial difficulties. This NYT report says that after Evergrande's default, Country Garden failed to make a payment on $200 billion in debt last week and has 400,000 apartments that it sold but has not finished building. ...

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Somini Sengupta and Brian Frank provide this award winning quality of coverage in text and pictures of life in California's San Joaquin Valley, hit by wildfires and scorching heat in the middle of the pandemic. Shown are workers in the fields of one of America's largest agricultural regions fighting heat and the pandemic, struggling to survive on a precarious hourly wage in these conditions. During earlier periods from 1970 this was an almost picturebook place particularly in the cool and foggy winters, which stretched for miles with apricot, grape, almond and other fruit and vegetable fields. A dry valley using irrigation of fields with water from the surrounding Sierra Nevada mountains. Most affected are millions of workers of Hispanic origin originally from Mexico, who provide most of the labor for harvesting of crops. California with a good educational system and without the drought that hit the region, without the effects of Silicon Valley splitting the people of the state in opposite directions most on minimum wage with a concentration of wealth around major cities and spiralling property values, was a very different place in the 1960's and 1970's from what it is today. Increasing wealth concentrated in pockets and not spread out as it was in the early post war period after Truman and Eisenhower has impoverished large areas and segments of the population, creating what Dickens called in his day- "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times," depending on who and where you were. ...

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Pearlstein points to the need for the structural changes in the U.S., Europe and China to address the serious imbalances that are at the root of the problem. This process will be painful and mean a short term drag on the economy even if the right actions are taken. The process of unwinding the imbalances will take time. Lower growth in China will be good for the bubble in real estate markets and the reduction in the trade surplus, even though this will reduce imports of European and U.S. machinery. Higher savings in the U.S. and reduction of consumer debt will slow retail sales but this is healthy for longer term growth. The same is true for savings in deficit reduction that will result in more layoffs at the local level. The government needs to have similiar action take place at the banks to end their "extend and pretend" practices and finally write off bad loans in residential and commercial real estate. There is no easy way out, no solutions that can be made without a sharing of the pain. Policy makers around the world have tried to look for painless solutions for years and this may be the end of the road. There is some action that the governments and central banks can take. Pearlstein suggests that the European Central Bank buy up some of the sovereign bonds being dumped on the market even if it means printing money. The Fed, the Bank of Japan and the central bank of China can also swap some of the Treasuries they own for European sovereign bonds. This would give time for the EU leaders to give the European Financial Stability Facility the resources and powers to replace the sovereign bonds with more reliable European bonds. The Fed can take this opportunity to sell some of its huge pile of Treasury bills into the market so that it has more room for action in future years. The U.S. government can move up the spending for infrastructure in years 8, 9, and 10 to the next 2-3 years to give some support to the economy as these changes take place. The spending decisions should be left to an independent Infrastructure Bank. See the related article by Krauthammer in the Washington Post, August 5, 2011, which provides a companion policy prescription for U.S. deficit reduction based on the work done by the Bowles-Simpson Commission and by preserving efficiency and fairness....

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Nigeria's reserves stood at $11.5 billion at the end of 2013 and even that has been emptied in advance of 2015 elections, says the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Lamido Sanusi. Sanusi pointed out to parliament that the state owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. has failed to remit $20 billion to the Nigerian Treasury. Economic development in Nigeria has suffered from decades of corruption and mismanagement, including neglect of basic infrastructure such as roads and electricity. Sanusi was suspended by the government of Jonathan Goodluck for unauthorized sending of $1 billion in central bank funds to Nigerian universities for improving campus buildings.

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Andy Grove makes this passionate plea for the dignity of workers in America in 2010. It is worth reading in 2020 what this founder of Intel Corp and pioneering spirit of Silicon Valley has to say. Andy Grove of Intel says there is something seriously wrong when the unemployment rate in the Bay Area is higher than the 9.7% national average for the USA. American companies have added jobs like crazy in Asia, but things are sputtering back home. Hon Hai has 800,000 employees and makes most of the electronic and computer products for American companies. Grove says startups are not the answer, unless they scale up and create jobs the way Intel did starting back in 1968, with a $3 million capital infusion by investors. The move from the first production model to mass production is critical, as companies hire thousands of people. Innovation and scaling up have to go together. He makes his point clearly by pointing out that Apple has 25,000 employees. For every Apple employee there are 10 employees in China working on Apple iMacs, iPods, iPhones. And he adds that the same 10 to 1 relationship applies to other U.S. tech companies. And here Grove asks the tough question by first posing an answer. He says it sounds like- no big deal, we keep the high paying jobs, we keep most of the profits, but what kind of society are we going to have with highly paid professional workers and lots of people unemployed? And he doesn't mention that there are a lot more young people unemployed. He says the US has become very inefficient at creating tech jobs, and it would be a great mistake not to act decisively early on. And adds that the investments in such areas as solar power and electric car batteries have to be made early on to maintain leadership in these areas. Grove faults academics like Alan Blinder and others who say loss of manufacturing jobs and whole industries was no big deal. The U.S. has forgotten the value of manufacturing jobs. He wants to see America focus on jobs and rebuild its industrial base. And less of transferring engineering knowhow and new technologies overseas, technology that can help bring innovation and scaling up of factories at home. In his view individual companies doing their own thing, in a misguided fashion that jobs don't matter, is not the answer to the situation we face. The industrial economies of Asia, China at the present day, have focussed on jobs and technology, and scaled up. Grove reminds readers of the situation in America in 1932, when jobless veterans demonstrating outside the White House in large numbers were dispersed by soldiers with live ammunition and fixed bayonets. This makes him shudder at the very thought of it, and brings back memories of his early years in Hungary, as a young man in 1956. Are we listening? ...

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Prime minister Matteo Renzi focussed on some critical aspects of how other Europeans see the negotiations in the Greece bailout in June 2015. Considering that the EU had relaxed conditions for the surplus, a critical condition for reducing austerity programs in Greece and focussing on reforms, and considering the high unemployment not insisted on further cuts to the public sector employees, the conditions put forward focussing on reforms such as collection of taxes are seen as essental by other eurozone countries, including Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy. Renzi told II Sole 24 Ore- "The point is that Greece may get different conditions, but it has to abide by the rules. It's not the case that we have taken early retiremnt pensions away from the people of Italy just to allow the Greeks to have them! We have brought in labor reform, but it is not the case that, with our money, a number of Greek shipowners can continue not to pay taxes.. I could go on." If he went on he would cite the tax collection laws and methods in Italy which were changed under prime minister Monti to tackle tax evasion in Italy, with no effort to collect the $11 billion in estimated taxes that are not collected in Greece. Italy banned cash payment above 1000 euros and started a cross referencing initiative to tackle tax evasion under premier Monti. Greece took up tax evasion legislation in 2010 in parliament but opposition from many groups led to no action. In 2012 Labor minister Elsa Fornero broke down in tears as she described raising the retirement age for women to 66 in the private sector from 60, saying this was to prevent "collective impoverishment." Italy lacks childcare and older women help with childcare for grandchildren. Renzi was probably thinking of these changes in Italy. He went on to say- " If there is a mass get-out clause over the rules, what will happen in Spain in October? And in France in a year and half? It is one thing to ask for flexibility amid abidance by the rules. It is another thing to think that one is the craftiest of them all, in other words to be the that does not abide by the rules. We want them to save Greece. But the people of Greece also have to want that." On tax evasion and other issues for long term financial health Greece is seen as not following basic financial rules for sustaining the euro....

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Peter Coy of Bloomberg Business Week points out that the debt ceiling and proposed deficit reductions in the range of $4 trillion really obscure the real size of the problem which is much larger. The real problems hit when the U.S. faces a larger graying population by 2020 with sharply higher per capita health care spending; and at the same time workers from this generation retire and become beneficiaries of Social Security and Medicare with fewer younger workers to support the system with tax revenues. Another problem is that older Americans are likely as a voting bloc to vote themselves benefits that will cost the younger generation, benefits that the younger generation will not be able to enjoy. Even the Paul Ryan plan with its cuts to Medicare insulated todays seniors from the sharp cuts, as it becomes political necessity for both Republicans and Democrats to shy away from touching the current beneficiaries.

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The mortgage interest deduction mostly benefits wealthier people with larger mortgages who need it least, and who are likely to buy homes regardless of the deduction, say experts. Both the Brookings Institution and other experts such as Moody's chief economist, Mark Zandi, see the deduction as part of the negotiations for deficit reduction. The Brooking Institution's Ted Gayer, says the deduction subsidizes acitvity such as borrowing large amounts of money to buy larger homes which the U.S. should not want to subsidize in the current state of the country's finances. The Simpson-Bowles plan and the Feldstein-Romney plan sought to put unnecessary tax expenditures and deductions on the table for negotiation. The deduction was not part of the last tax reform in 1986 under president Reagan. Zandi says any changes should be phased in over a number of years so that housing sales ar not affected in the current recovery. David Stephens, CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association says any changes should be implemented gradually. ...

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Brazil held the Olympics and the World Soccer Cup, building new stadiums and living off the boom in oil and metals prices under previous governments. Today not only is there a lack of funding for infrastructure, healthcare, education and transportation.   This is now leading to lack of investment in healthcare services in a shocking way. The first full blown epidemic of yellow fever is hitting Brazil's cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Officials fear that it will spread in an area that has 23 million people if it hits the slums where A.aegyoti mosquitoes are to be found in swarms. Rio and Sao Paulo are trying to tackle it by vaccinating 23 million people. Yellow fever kills about 3-8% of people affected. The economic crisis with lack of funds, and the political crisis that has affected Brazil with corruption scandals has led to a delayed response, according to experts at UCLA infectious disease center.  The disease is traced to loggers and monkeys in the Amazon region which usually remains contained in that region. SInce 2016 the lack of a strong official response has led to the crisis where monkeys carry it a mile a day all the way south to the Rio and Sao Paulo region. A effective government response would have included the use of media to educate people on the need for vaccination for all except newborns and pregnant mothers. Instead social media Facebook and You Tube spread the idea that the vaccination was dangerous, anti vaccine persons who normally got no audience trashed the vaccine. So that today public health authorites have to deal with this problem. The vaccination is highly effective and invented in the 1930's, was not started till November 2016, even though the spread southward from the Amazon region started in 2016. In fact says Dr Marquez, an expert at the University of Pittsburgh, only one in 100,000 gets a reaction and one in a million dies. He says compared to this 6% of 30 million people in the region affected could lose their lives, or  2 million deaths. ...

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Senator Patrick Toomey (Pa.) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Tex.) are lobbying Republican party members in Congress behind the scenes to accept $300 billion in taxes as the only way to get an agreement on debt reduction in the Supercommittee. This would be part of a plan that addresses entitlements, and changes the tax code to lower rates and reduce tax expenditures by closing deductions and loopholes. This is leading to an intense debate in the Republican party about the wisdom of a purely ideological position on taxes that does not take into account current realities, and risks letting markets take control of the nation's future.

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The National Assessment of Education Progress, NAEP, which is a report card of educational levels in the U.S. secondary school system shows 36% of fourth graders in the U.S. are proficient in reading for 2017. For eighth graders this drops to 34% in 2017. This shows that a little over a third of fourth and eight graders are achieving proficiency in reading, a glaring sign of failure leaving about two thirds of young people behind. With declining level of reading proficiency and proliferation of social media, the bottom 25% are faring much worse than even this dismal result.

Between 2015 and 2017 there was no improvement in NAEP scores.

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Unemployment in Fort Wayne, Indiana, is 6.8%, and 14,600 workers are looking for a job. Peters and Wessel talk to employers in this midwestern U.S. city and find that employers are looking for people in manufacturing with just the right set of skills, in other cases the benefits and parttime local school system jobs paying $8-$12 per hour with no benefits go unfilled because of the lower wage.