August break

This week my husband and I are taking some time off,  including a short break from writing.  I'll be back next week, so re-join me on Monday, September 1,  for America's "Labor Day" holiday.  Enjoy the rest of your summer :)

Buy nothing year

A couple of roommates, Geoffrey and Julie, decided to buy nothing for a whole year - just put money into savings.  They got a lot of attention for it, even became a "national news sensation."

What had to go?  Well, hair appointments.  Julie had been spending $1000/year on her hair, Geoffrey $150/month.  The other big thing was going out to restaurants and coffee shops.

Julie says, "I used to constantly want things — more, better, nicer and cheaper. I haven’t done that in a year, so my life is richer."

Geoff saved over $40k in his year, and he intends to keep on saving a lot of his paycheck.  "If I save enough, I can look at other career paths not focused on money because I have this huge buffer and I’ve learned how to live on a lot less, which is a skill that will serve me for the rest of my life."

Speak up

Michael Hyatt has built a life and business by speaking up about important things.  People value his messages - I say that with certainty because his blog has 421,000+ subscribers!

In "Why Wait for Permission?" he urges us to speak up at meetings:

"[N]ot speaking up, not acting, not leading cheats everyone in at least three ways:

1. It cheats your superiors. It’s a disappointment to the people who wanted you there to contribute. No one gets invited to suck up the room’s oxygen. 
2. It cheats the group. Important learning is on the line. If you speak up and your ideas are good, everyone benefits. If you speak up and you get corrected, there’s still a benefit for everyone. The truly humble are capable of serving the team regardless of the outcome.
3. It cheats you. Holding back might feel like a benefit to you, but it’s a cheap win: The only thing you buy is your comfort. No personal improvement. No esteem in the eyes of your colleagues. No contribution to the organization."

1st generation faith

(cont'd)

Author Rod Dreher (The Little Way of Ruthie Leming) as a teenager
rejected his parents' Christianity along with their small town point of view, but he chose genuine faith later - on his own, starting with an experience in the cathedral of Chartres, France.  

Chartres photo:  destination360.com

He sensed there that God was challenging his view of reality, the one overwhelming impression that stayed with him after that first trip to Europe.  It's not a common track to faith, but God doesn't shrink from using whatever you give Him to work with.   Rod eventually became Catholic.

So where does he stand today?  From his blog last week:  

"I pray that the choice is never put to me, but if I am ever forced to make that choice [between serving the state or God], I will always and everywhere choose God, without apology. I am a Christian first, and an American second."

It's been said that all Christians are first generation Christians (they didn't get faith in their genes).  Rod certainly is.

Small town, good life

(cont'd:  The Little Way of Ruthie Leming)

Author Rod Dreher contrasted his life with that of his sister Ruthie and saw, from the position of adulthood, things of value that he didn't notice as an awkward teenager.  Her friends, teaching colleagues, children she'd taught, all came to honor her life when she died.  News spread, and there was food, a cleaned house, her daughter's car fixed, all there when the family came home drained from the hospital.

He had to take note that Ruthie's family had a "deep bench" of meaningful connections.  In their big city life, his own family had friends but not deep roots.

That's where stories like this usually end.  Roots are better, the rebellious boy comes back home.  But it's not the end of this story.

Some of that discontentedness he felt as a boy was due to genuine failures among the hometown people, including Ruthie, and he doesn't flinch from telling that part of the story.

Hometown, USA

This week's re-posts tell the story of a teenager who fled from his hometown, his family, and his faith - only to gratefully come back as a professional adult.  Today's post was originally published August 27, 2013.

It sounded like a sentimental, mushy story line.  But Erik Metaxas strongly recommends the book.  That carries some weight for me, so I read The Little Way of Ruthie Leming and I'm glad I did.

Conflicted feelings abound because the author left his small Southern hometown young  - he rejected everything about it and couldn't wait to get away. He gladly left his family and the town, went to the Big City, and built a career.

His sister Ruthie loved the little hometown and its people, and they loved her.  She stayed and raised her own family close to them.   When cancer took her life at the age of 42, it drew her brother Rod (the author) back into the environment he abandoned and he saw goodness in the community that he'd never appreciated.  

He brought his family back to the small town.  He says:  "The familiar used to feel oppressive; now it feels comforting.

Market connecting

She wants to go home, that farmer from yesterday's post.  Why does she want to go back to her home village?  Because she invested time there building a life, making connections with other people in her village.

A market can help that happen.  Part of the appeal of farmers' markets is connecting with people in your community, getting to know them and what they have to offer.  Here's a story about one family who participates in their farmers' market.

mfma.org

Independence is so American, in the opinion of French aristocrat Alexis de Toqueville (in 1835 he published Democracy in America to explain us to France).  But he also observed Americans voluntarily organizing all sorts of joint efforts.

“Local freedom . . leads a great number of citizens to value the affection of their neighbors and of their kindred, perpetually brings men together . . "

Yup, Americans are independent but we love doing things together.  

Whether they want it or not

(cont'd)

Beyond the trillions of dollars that forced urbanization is going to cost, there's a human cost to tearing people from their homes and placing them where the government wants them to go.

“I have anxiety attacks because we have no income, no job, nothing,” said Feng Aiju, 40, a former farmer who moved to Huaming in 2008 against her will.  . “We never had a chance to speak; we were never asked anything. I want to go home.”

“Chinese culture has traditionally been rural-based,” says Feng Jicai, a well-known author and scholar. “Once the villages are gone, the culture is gone.”

"Over the past five years, at least 39 farmers have resorted to this drastic form of protest [suicide]. The figures, pieced together from Chinese news reports and human rights organizations, are a stark reminder of how China’s new wave of urbanization is at times a violent struggle between a powerful state and stubborn farmers."

Urbanizing "pitfalls"

(cont'd)

Last summer the New York Times ran a series about China's urbanization project.  Highlighted is a Mr. Li who is in charge of relocating 2+ million people from rural mountains to low-lying cities.  He admits that there are "pitfalls."

True to communist ideology, he is very confident that The Party knows better than the people what is good for them.  "[M]odern-day Communist Party officials like Mr. Li speak knowingly of what is best for China’s 1.3 billion people, where they should live and how they should earn a living."

One of the pitfalls lies in the question of how these rural migrants are going to make a living in the cities.  No article I've seen yet has revealed a plan for long-term careers.  New apartments with more modern features abound, but they will have to be paid for.

The article's author visited and found people floundering with the transition:

"During a visit in February, townspeople sat in their front yards, huddled around open fires. Their homes were brand-new, with indoor heating and modern appliances, just as Mr. Li’s plan envisions, but it all runs on an unaffordable luxury: electricity. Hence the fires to keep warm."

Said one migrant, " . . we don’t heat or even use the washing machine.”

Urbanizing challenges

(cont'd)

China's rulers are banking on strong economic growth to come from their plan to transform rural villagers into city dwellers.  They expect these new urbanites to escalate their consumption, i.e. buy more goods, thus expanding their economy.

photo:  nytimes.com

Of course, this assumes they'll have money to spend:  first from government payments and then, when that runs out, from wages.  But will there be jobs for them?  Not much after about the age of 50, and then "most are still excluded from national pension plans, putting pressure on relatives to provide."

Jobs must be created.  Vast amounts of money must be spent on infrastructure and services like schools and healthcare.   

The size of this project is staggering:  remember that America's population is about 300 million - and the Chinese government intends to move 250 million people out of their countryside into mushrooming and combined cities.

Added to economic dangers, there will be social stress.  “Across China, bulldozers are leveling villages that date to long-ago dynasties."  In the photo above a man scavenges among the ruins of his old village.

China urbanizing

Continuing with a look back to a year ago, this week the subject is China's aggressive urbanization.  The following was posted originally June 24, 2013.

China's government is forcibly moving 250 million people from their farms and villages into cities.  Their thinking?  City people consume more, so more economic growth will ensue.

“In a lot of cases in China, urbanization is the process of local government driving farmers into buildings while grabbing their land,” said Li Dun, a professor of public policy at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

A frenzy of building is producing high rise apartment buildings for former farmers.  Some are glad to get a free apartment from the government, and some free initial money, but there may be social consequences when government uproots millions of people from their homes and way of life.

“For old people like us, there’s nothing to do anymore,” said He Shifang, 45, a farmer from the city of Ankang in Shaanxi Province who was relocated from her family’s farm in the mountains. “Up in the mountains we worked all the time. We had pigs and chickens. Here we just sit around and people play mah-jongg.”

"Relocated" . .  the government took her farm and forced her into a city apartment?  If it were me, I would really hate that.

Exploding Nigeria

Nigeria's population "is expected to [equal and then] surpass that of the US by 2050, according to new UN projections that predict the west African country could be the world's third most populous by the end of this century."

So, that's like putting all the current citizens of the U.S. (around 300 million) into a country roughly the size of Texas.  What if one-third to one-half of this huge number are unable to support themselves?  Officially Nigeria's unemployment rate is 24%, but the rate among people age 24 and younger is at least 38% and maybe as much as 80% (if the World Bank is correct).

People want jobs, as a Washington Post article five months ago reports:

"At least 16 people were killed in desperate stampedes for government jobs in Nigeria when hundreds of thousands were invited to apply for fewer than 5,000 positions . . ."

Sounds like there's an urgent need for wealth creators and the jobs that come along with that.  But wealth creation requires orderly stability, among other things, and "Right now, many African countries aren't particularly adept at either governance or resource management. If they don't improve, exploding population growth could only worsen resource competition . ."

Expanding Nigeria

While most of the world's countries are shrinking their population, only a very few are poised for population expansion.  Nigeria is one of these.

photo: www.eco-friendly-africa-travel.com

According to these United Nations charts, by the year 2100 the populations of most of the world will have plateaued or shrunk.  But Nigeria's is expected to expand to near one billion - close to China's forecasted number in 2100.

"Given that Nigeria is about the area of Texas, that's a truly astounding possibility."

Shrinking Japan

(cont'd) 

In Japan, the government has for many years been paying its citizens to have more children without successfully moving the birth rate up to replacement level (2.1 babies per woman).  Many programs, but the total fertility rate is still only 1.39 babies per woman:  way, way below replacement.

"At the current fertility rate, by 2100 Japan's population will be less than half what it is now."  Picture what that would look like - less than half as many people and most of them over the age of 65.  

Sociologist Masahiro Yamada coined a new term:  Parasaito shinguru, or "parasite single."  Harsh words for a working woman who lives with her parents and spends her entire paycheck on trendy clothes, travel, restaurants - instead of building a family.

"Immigration is being approached as a last resort. .  The United Nations estimates that without raising its fertility rate, Japan would need to attract about 650,000 immigrants a year. There is no precedent for that level of immigration in this country, which is still a largely homogenous society.

(some content from What to Expect When No One's Expecting)

Shrinking Germany

(cont'd)

For decades in America, urban planning has meant (very roughly) organizing the building up of cities for more people.  This is not the mission in Germany.  They're working on shrinking cities.

Hoyerswerda near the Polish border has lost half its population in the last 30 years.  "The main job of Hoyerswerda's government these days is demolishing abandoned buildings," and a third of housing has already been torn down.  By 2050, it's expected that one of every three people (including little kids) in Germany will be over 65.  Picture what that will look like.

"[D]espite spending $265 billion a year on family subsidies, experts say the government is not doing enough claiming Germany needs an overhaul of values, customs and attitudes."

"[A] recent study by Europe's Population Policy Acceptance Study found that 23 per cent of German men thought 'zero' was the ideal family size."

(some content from What to Expect When No One's Expecting)

Less people

Originally posted May 6, 2013.  This series on shrinking and aging populations is the subject of the  week.

Only 3% of the world's people live in a country with rising population.  Those countries are in Africa and in the Middle East.

Everywhere else in the world, the birth rate is going down.

A birth rate of 2.1 births per woman is required to maintain a stable population.  In Germany, the total fertility rate is 1.42 births per woman.  The rest of Europe is also well below 2.1, and Japan and China are even lower according to What to Expect When No One's Expecting.

Central and South America have seen their birth rates tumble from previously high numbers down to 2.1 - 2.8 and they're expected to descend further before very long.

Serious consequences are probably unavoidable because this is a cultural thing that exists in the minds of people, a choice.  It's not because of a temporary thing like war or disease:  it's the choice of reproducing-age adults all over the world.   (Surprisingly, certain parts of America don't participate in disappearing birth rate syndrome.)

Not entrepreneurial

There's usually somebody on the internet who can dispute anything said with authority by someone else.  For instance, "millennials are entrepreneurial."  That's widely thought to be true - except by this author at Entrepreneur magazine:

"Millennials . . are less interested in becoming successful entrepreneurs than baby boomers were when they were the same age.  The share of college freshmen that said “becoming successful in a business of my own” was “essential” or “very important” to them dropped from 47.9 percent in 1977 to 41.2 percent in 2012."

So . . yesterday's point is refuted today?  

Another interesting stat given in the article:  "The average profits of a sole proprietorship – which account for three-quarter of all small businesses – dropped 28 percent in inflation-adjusted terms between 1980 and 2011 . . "  

I should look into the "why" for that.