The chinese rare earth embargo?

I've been commenting on this likely episode for several months on liberal and "green" blogs but most Progressives are either dismissive or simply look for any excuse to avoid the harsh reality of this issue: the environmental movement is essentially trading one precious commodity (petroleum) for another precious one (Rare earth elements) that our economic competitors have a near monopoly on. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

What's a demagogue to do?

How does a country that relies so much on energy exports suffer rolling blackouts due to an energy shortage? This paradox is playing right now in Venezuela where socialist big mouth, Hugo Chavez, has gone a long way to crush the private economy for the sake of a larger role for his left leaning regime. Now Mr. Chavez, whose popularity has hit new lows because his many promises have failed to materialize, has new friends in China who will throw $20 billion into the sparse Venezuelan coffers, so that Chavez can go on a public relations spree fixing up highways and various other languishing public works projects. Hmmm...this whole thing sounds kinda familiar.

Links for today

1) My weekly guest post over at The Bobo Files is now posted. Subject: Obama and his Big Labor friends are getting snuggly by the day.

2) The Independent Bloghorn has excellent economic analysis from STRATFOR, an international affairs organization, on China that is worth your time.

3) Just Politics has very interesting comments on unemployment benefits.

Super Mall!!

The largest mall in the world is in China. It looks more like a theme park to me. Can you imagine how much carbon is emitted from this place?

China vs USA: A Visual Comparison

Data from the CIA World Factbook.

The new Chinese 10 Yuan is missing something…

Take a look at the new note. What do you think is missing? See here for the answer

HT: Marginal Revolution

The last Maoist collective in China goes capitalist.

It seems that the last bastion of the Maoist collective in China has called it quits and has moved to adopt capitalism. The idyllic village of Nanjie was a model of clean egalitarianism. It was noted for, “it’s well-kept apartments and spacious schools.” I'm sure that Progressives everywhere had their hearts swell with great satisfaction when learning of the fairness of Nanjie: The village provided “free housing, schooling and health care, supporting a standard of living so much better than surrounding towns.” But like most attempts at a collective society where everything is “free,” this workers utopia in central China was a bankrupt illusion.

There are plenty of manufacturing jobs.

From ABC NEWS

While millions of jobs making everything from textiles to steel have moved to new power houses like China in recent years, precision manufacturing remains a crucial niche in the United States, one that is overworked and chronically understaffed.

And in a bad sign for the United States and its declining economic might, that shortage of skilled workers is likely to get worse as Baby Boomers retire, with no younger generation of manufacturing workers to take the baton.

Comment: With all the talk this election season about manufacturing jobs going abroad, the reality is that there is a shortage of highly skilled “blue collar” workers in many industries. And the shortage will be exacerbated as older “blue collar” workers start to retire. Our national obsession to send every kid to college has thinned the ranks of skilled manual labor to the detriment of American manufacturing. Bottom line: There are plenty of jobs in the manufacturing industry for skilled workers and the pay is very good.

Population Control in China continues.

From The Wall Street Journal

China will keep its controversial family-planning policies for at least another decade, the country's top family-planning official said, damping any expectations of a change.

The policies limit most urban couples to having one child and to-date has prevented an estimated 400 million births.

Critics of the policies have pushed for change, saying a lower birthrate may actually lead to social difficulties because there will be fewer young working adults to pay taxes and look after the elderly. Coerced abortions and sterilizations have also been connected to the rules, and critics blame them for the current imbalanced sex ratio in China.

Comment: Those that continually espouse the dangers of population, environmentalists and Malthusians alike, may take some solace in China’s continued role as a nation that constrains its population growth: It does so by force which is an act of a totalitarian state. In truth, proponents of population control do not believe in freedom and that the free-market actually works efficiently to balance the supply and demand of population. Even though there is ample evidence to suggest that the free-market does just that.

Notice that most of the nations with the highest standards of living and with the largest economy’s also have some of the lowest birthrates (in some cases, below replacement level): For example, Italy and Japan. Poor nations tend to have the highest birthrates.

The best way to slow population or to encourage families to have fewer children is to let country’s become richer through the free-market. The higher the standard of living experienced by parents, the less they are inclined to have many children to act as social security in their dotage or as farm hands tilling the soil. Additionally, the more subsidization there is in an economy, the more likelihood it will be that couples will have more children than they could afford without subsidization (think welfare).

Lastly, capitalism has proven that “carrying capacity” does not exist for human beings as it does, for example, the Kaibab mule deer population that naturalist Aldo Leopold observed in the 1920’s. Leopold is famous for devising the concept of "carrying capacity" for his observations and study of the population explosion and subsequent crash of the Kaibab mule deer. Because human beings have the greatest resource at their disposal-their capacity to create and invent technologies coupled with the efficient incentives that capitalism helps provide-it has allowed farmers to feed more people with fewer farmhands and less land then population doomsayers and their socialist enablers could ever understand.