This week: America’s debt accumulates, selling the Beetle, American industry isn’t ready for war, intelligence is not destiny, assessing character, the Doomsday Clock, Saudi soccer, the samurai in 17th-century Mexico, and more. Let’s go —
1) “America’s debt is now six times what it was at the start of the 21st century. It is the largest it has been, compared with the size of the U.S. economy, since World War II, and it’s projected to grow an average of about $1.3 trillion a year for the next decade.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/business/economy/federal-debt-history.html
2) “Christians in America, wake up. There’s a harassment storm coming.”
3) “The COVID-19 pandemic caused many disruptions in American family life, many of them negative. But among all these disruptions, one positive trend has continued, and may even have been amplified by COVID: more kids are living with their own two married parents.”
https://ifstudies.org/blog/post-pandemic-the-rise-in-intact-families-continues
4) “Singapore is one of the rare advanced economies that successfully reversed manufacturing decline. According to the Wall Street Journal, after falling by 9 percentage points from 2005 to 2013, manufacturing’s share of Singaporean GDP rose from 18 percent to 22 percent in 2021. This was accomplished through a vast deployment of robots and other advanced technology, and was accompanied by a decline in low-skill jobs. Most notably, 74 percent of the workers in Singapore’s manufacturing sector are now categorized as high skill. The Journal notes that, ‘Manufacturing is becoming a white-collar profession in Singapore.’”
https://www.governing.com/work/manufacturing-work-isnt-disappearing-its-evolving
5) “The war in Ukraine has exposed widespread problems in the American armaments industry that may hobble the U.S. military’s ability to fight a protracted war against China, according to a new study.”
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