Month: July 2022

Musk Wrong on Population

By Joe Guzzardi

For number crunchers, July’s second week offered eyepopping data. To begin with, the consumer price index shot up to 9.1 percent year-over-year, the highest spike in four decades. Truth be told, consumers may be taking a bigger than 9.1 percent hit. The CPI is a controversial index which many economists insist is manipulated to reflect fewer alarming price increases and, conversely, a stronger GDP. Taken together, those two variables, massaged favorably, help to keep a lid on investor panic, and to underpay on cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients.

Since time immemorial, CPI was calculated based on a fixed market basket of goods. But in the 1990s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics introduced what it identified as geometric weighing – substituting lower-priced, lower-quality goods in the basket, while excluding more expensive, but still everyday items.

Most blue-collar, working Americans consider the CPI a government gimmick that purposely excludes their day-to-day necessities: energy, up 41.6 percent; gas, + 60 percent, eggs +33 percent; and public transportation, +23.7. A truer indicator of consumer pain showed up in the producer wholesale price index which hit 11.3 percent.

Inflation, which makes Americans poorer with each passing day, has an immediate and tangible effect on consumers’ psyches. But another report issued in early July is, taken over the long-term, more disturbing.

Inflation has its peaks and valleys, but the prediction by the United Nations that the global population will reach 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050 represents an ongoing, and perhaps insurmountable, challenge. By the end of the century, the U.N. estimates that there will be 10.4 billion people on the planet. Today, the world’s population is just a tick under 8 billion, and has grown at an unsustainable rate.

Not until around 1800 did the world’s population first reach 1 billion. But, only 130 years later in 1930, the second billion was reached, and the third billion in 1960, another 30 years later. Then, global population exploded. The fourth billion arrived 15 years later in 1974, and the fifth billion only 13 years after that. During the 20th century alone, the world’s population grew from 1.65 billion to 6 billion. For comparison, in 1970, there were roughly half as many people in the world as there are now. Every year, about 83 million people are added to the global population.

Eight nations will account for most of the growth between now and 2050: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United Republic of Tanzania. India is expected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country as soon as next year.

Those countries are thousands of miles away, and their difficulties unfathomable to most Americans, but U.S. population also is climbing at an unsustainable rate. The nation’s population is about 332 million now, but will reach 424 million in 2100, about 25 percent more people than live in the U.S. today. The consequences of too many people are grave, both in terms of more difficult human interaction in overcrowded surroundings, and lasting ecological damage to dwindling natural resources.

Ironically, the U.N. released its frightening population projections at about the same time that Elon Musk, claiming the U.S. faces an “underpopulation crisis,” pleaded for an increase in births. “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far,” said Musk, who cited himself as a would-be role model. One of his love interests, Shivon Zilis, gave birth to twins this summer, bringing Musk’s total offspring to nine. To Musk, replacement level fertility, normally considered 2.1 children per woman, is an outdated notion.

Unfortunately, Musk’s message to promote a have-more-children agenda, via his huge social media following, reaches more people than the communications of stabilization advocates. Don’t listen to Musk! Census Bureau data reflects a net gain of one person – births and international migrant arrivals minus deaths – in the U.S. every 26 seconds, far too many to protect the nation’s already crumbling, overcrowded infrastructure and its imperiled ecosystems.

Joe Guzzardi writes about immigration issues and impacts. Find more at joeguzzardi.substack.com.

Musk Wrong on Population Musk Wrong on Population

China Closer To World Domination With U.S. Help

By Joe Guzzardi

The announcement that a Chinese company purchased about 300 acres of prime North Dakota property is the latest in an ongoing landgrab by one of America’s biggest threats. Historically, Chinese nationals are one of the largest purchasers of U.S. residential property, with an average of between 20,000 and 40,000 transactions annually.

On Capitol Hill, legislators worry that the Shandong, China-based real estate acquisition could create espionage opportunities with the Defense Department as its target. The property is close to the Grand Forks Air Force Base that houses sensitive drone technology. The base is also the home of a new space networking center that is the backbone of all U.S. military global communications. The Fufeng Group, which paid $2.6 million to three North Dakotans, produces flavor enhancers and sugar substitutes.

Despite the economic opportunities that the project represents – 200 jobs for locals and ancillary benefits to the community – the Republican and Democratic Senators are strongly opposed. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said he’s suspicious of the Chinese government’s intent. Cramer noted that the U.S. “grossly” underestimates how effective the People’s Republic of China is at collecting information and using it in nefarious ways. “And so,” Cramer continued, “I’d just as soon not have the Chinese Communist Party doing business in my backyard.”

In a rare demonstration of true bipartisanship, both the Senate Intelligence Committee chair and the Republican ranking member told the media that they oppose the CCP putting down roots in rural North Dakota.

Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) said that his committee has been “loudly sounding the alarm” about China’s counterintelligence threat and its investments at sites close to military bases.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) agreed, calling it “foolish, dangerous and shortsighted” to allow the CCP to acquire land near military bases. Rubio reminded reporters that he’s cosponsoring legislation, the “Protecting Military Installation and Ranges Act of 2021,” that would give the Biden administration the power to block such CCP purchases.

If Warner, Rubio and others who sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee have heightened awareness of the danger the CCP poses to the U.S. interior, they’re unfashionably late to the dance. The reality is that Chinese national spies are everywhere, including U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell’s (D-Calif.) bed, and, for 20 years, driving U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, then Senate Intelligence Committee Chair, around San Francisco. Journalists wrote that the Bay Area is a hotbed for Russian and Chinese espionage. As proof of Congress’ indifference to China’s infiltration, Swalwell kept his seat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Feinstein remains on the Senate Intelligence Committee. No one knows what secrets Fang Fang learned during her pillow talk with Swalwell or what Feinstein’s unidentified driver, never charged with a crime, may have overheard.

The Swalwell and Feinstein cases are high profile. But a closer look confirms that thousands of Chinese nationals, possibly well-intentioned, but perhaps with dubious intentions, are in the U.S. at the federal government’s invitation. Chinese student enrollment, according to an overview of international enrollment at U.S. universities, “far exceeds” that of other foreign nations. Although the COVID-19 pandemic created a 72 percent decline in international enrollment, 382,561 Chinese students attended the most prestigious U.S. universities during 2020-2021. Aggregate international enrollment hit a pre-pandemic high of 1.1 million in 2017-2018.

International students arrive on F-1 visas for general coursework, M-1 visas for vocational programs, or J-1 visas for cultural exchange students. A large number of Chinese nationals return home after completing their academic course work. No one, however, knows what proprietary information the students may be taking back with them. Some who stay take advantage of the fraud-ridden Optional Practical Training Program that displaces qualified U.S. graduates. International high-skill employment has increased sharply in recent years.

The White House and Congress are strangely indifferent to the obvious risks like property theft that a significant Chinese presence in U.S. universities and employment in high-tech fields create. China makes no secret of its goal to become the world’s dominant superpower. As long as the federal government extends such a helpful hand in so many critical ways – education and white-collar employment – China will easily reach its objective.

China Closer To World Domination