WSJ reviews “Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis” : “Mr. Kaplan, a scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the author of many books on global affairs, makes three broad points. First, he analogizes the current world, all of it, to Germany’s interwar Weimar Republic. He argues that, as Weimar was in permanent crisis, so the entire planet is now “an interconnected system of states in which no one really rules.” That has long been true, but the extraordinary density and rapidity of modern communications now create a “closeness” that people in earlier eras did not experience. And since “complexity leads to fragility,” as Mr. Kaplan says, instability and conflict are riskier and more pervasive than in bygone days when geography prevented local conflicts from becoming global. Second, Mr. Kaplan argues that America, China and Russia are all in decline, although at varying rates and for widely different reasons. The U.S. suffers from “decay in the culture of public life, especially the media,” Mr. Kaplan writes. “As the media has become less serious, so have our leaders.””
Arnold Kling: “Too often, economists treat college as if it provides only one good: skills and a credential that enable one to get a high-paying job. But in fact college provides a bundle of goods. It provides a social setting, recreation, sporting events, connections, and intangible benefits. One intangible benefit is helping you “find yourself,” or delay adulthood.”
HT: “While the economy certainly needs to grow its labour-intensive sectors to pursue the Holy Grail of generating jobs at scale, India cannot ignore the fact that skill- and capital-intensive areas such as pharma, chemicals, automotive, etc, currently dominate its industrial sector. Further advancement here will require it to compete head-to-head with developed countries as well as other emerging economies. R&D is needed for deep-tech startups to thrive and for large Indian companies to take on global competition – in short, for the economy to grow to Indian aspirations…For Make in India to work, marry it to Invent in India. To that end, India should step up its R&D spending by 1% of GDP over the next decade.”
NYTimes: “While India may appear consumed by Bollywood, cricket and phone screens, literature festivals are blooming, bringing readers and writers together in hilltop towns and rural communities, under the cover of beachside tents or inside storied palaces…The boom has been driven by young people who, in a country of dozens of languages, are increasingly reading literature in their native tongues alongside books written in English. For these readers, books open worlds that India’s higher education system, with its focus on time-consuming preparation for make-or-break examinations, often does not.”
