Economist Redux #2

In keeping with the spirit of the new blog, I wanted to circle back on some of the more interesting stories from last week.

• While the article about gay marriage was a bit heavy on self-congratulation, a lot of the statistics about gay marriage, and how quickly the public's opinions have changed on the matter, were pretty incredible. In three decades, the opinion polls have gone from ~75% of the country opposing gay marriage to ~75% supporting it. Obviously there are still many areas where members of the LGBT community still face discrimination, but reading about the turnaround in historical context was pretty incredible. 
• Buttonwood's piece about aging populations was pretty absurd. It's incredible to think that pensions used to be an expected part of working, and how the rise of the 401k is really such a modern development. There were some interesting facts, generally around how people generally get paid more as they age regardless of their productivity, but the core insight of the piece was that in a world where life expectancy is rising, it's possible that many retirees just have not saved enough money to survive. Finally, there was an interesting aside about nursing and taking care of very old people that was fairly interesting.
• Finally, the piece on China's stalling growth was interesting from a macroeconomic perspective; I just finished Peter Thiel's treatise on innovation, and the article resonated quite well in that context. Basically, China's game of catchup is starting to slow down as they get caught up. In particular, the Economist article cites some interesting studies about productivity growth. The crux of the thesis is that China has been growing primarily by expanding the funnel (adding labor and capital to the economy) rather than increasing the productivity of the workforce. In Thiel's ideology, this is not unexpected. China, as a "pessimistic and determinate" country, will likely struggle to improve productivity, as there is an element of innovative spark that isn't dramatically incentivized by their style of government. I don't agree wholeheartedly with Thiel, and I have no professional experience here, but it sounds like there's something here that supports his theory.

In general, it was a fine, although not particularly wonderful week in the world of the Economist!