4th of July ritual

A proposal to remember how America started.

China's ghost cities

In this report by Leslie Stahl, you'll see:  homes bulldozed to make way for empty condos; a city built for a million people in Mongolia but no one's there; large shopping malls with no shops and no shoppers.  It's eerie.

One of the biggest contractors in the world built many of these projects, and he says that the situation is very dangerous and the housing bubble very big.

You'll also hear about "multiple classes of investors" who may well be "wiped out."

China's newest city

(cont'd from previous post)

The current goal of moving 250 million people off their rural land and into cities is just the next chapter in a long story of Chinese urbanization.  From 1978 to 2011 about 510 million Chinese made that move.

Part of this effort includes building new cities.  One is Lanzhou New Area: 

"Until a few months ago, this dusty plateau tucked away in a remote corner of China was home to a cluster of water-starved villages whose residents lived in rural obscurity around 750 miles from Beijing. Now, it is a giant construction site and a front line in China's breakneck race towards urbanisation."[sic]

Go to the link (U.K. Telegraph) so you can see what it looks like - trucks are tearing down arid mountains for the new city.  There's not a green plant in sight.  About twenty such new cities go up every year.  Eventually, it will be home to 500,000.

Some of the relocated are happy for the change, many are angry.  Either way, it's quite a life transition.  Is it accurate to say that the Chinese people are used to doing what they're told by their government?  Looks that way.

China's urbanizing challenges

(cont'd from previous post)

The Chinese government is 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.

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 such as schools and healthcare.   It seems the details have not been nailed down yet but the new prime minister is determined to press on with the goal.   

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 considerable social stress.  “Across China, bulldozers are leveling villages that date to long-ago dynasties."

See the photo here of a man scavenging in his former village.

China aggressively urbanizing

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.

Bible makes better men

Previously unpublished letters and speeches of the famous Daniel Webster were published in 1903.

In one letter (#657) he praises the value of the New York Sabbath School Association, run by "a few humble Christians," because it "leads our youth in the path of truth and morality, and makes them good men and useful citizens."

He notes that Thomas Jefferson agreed with him that "religious education" was good for the country.  Jefferson told him:

"I have always said, and always will say, that the studious perusal of the sacred volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands."

Study of the Bible does build good character, a claim straight out of American history.

Your defining 20's

For all of you twenty-somethings, and for all of us who care about you, here is a TED Talk by Meg Jay about using your twenties to launch the rest of your life.  

There's a perception among some (certainly not all) that the twenties are extended adolescence, and you can afford to squander these years.  She says, Not so - use your twenties to establish patterns that will direct  your life toward blessing (my word choice).

One of her carry-away lines is, "the best time to work on your marriage is before you have one."

"Take back feminism"

Author Christina Hoff Sommers (quoted in "Liberated Preference") suggests that "radical feminism" is not the only kind there is.

Faithless pastor, faithless people

(cont'd from previous post)

Isn't that (the above title)  the end result - that church members become more or less what that atheist pastor has been feeding them?  

About one in five Americans answer the question about their religion of choice with the answer, "None."  I wonder how many of these "nones" came very understandably from churches where a secular worldview was taught from the pulpit.  Of course they're nones.

Seekers sincerely seeking spiritual answers go to a church where they naturally expect to hear the best case for God that can be made, or at least the sincere faith of the pastor - and what do they actually find in these cases?   Jaded, materialist, cynical, secular attempts to think up some sort of meaningful answers without God.

It's like being tricked.

Why do they do it?   "Amazingly, Darryl [see yesterday's post] is candid about the fact that he remains in the ministry largely for financial reasons. It is how he provides for his family."

Most people, believers or not, have a conscience.  If I were able to speak to these atheist pastors, I would beg them to get some guts and find a different way to make a living.  

Pastors with no faith

You may ask, Is that even possible?  Could the pastor of a Christian church actually be a non-believer?   Yes, sad to say, there are such pastors.

Atheists Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola conducted a study through Tufts University (published in 2010) to find some of these people and figure out what makes them tick.

One of them, Wes, works at teaching his children that Bible stories are fiction like any other stories, and thinks that there may be some sort of use for the word "God" (perhaps in poetry) even though he believes there's no such being.  His mission is to build "liberal values" into his church members.  He used to feel like a poser for being a Christian minister who does not believe in Christianity, but it doesn't bother him much anymore.

Another atheist minister, Rick, just felt comfortable being around the Christian community, went to seminary to have good discussions, and sort of fell into the religious profession.

One by the name of Darryl says, "“I reject the virgin birth. I reject substitutionary atonement. I reject the divinity of Jesus. I reject heaven and hell in the traditional sense . .  I am a ‘Jesus Follower’ for sure."  One can only  ask, what makes him think he's a Jesus follower??

"My objective was to be changed"

Christian Hosoi went from being first, a famous and talented skateboarder, to going to prison with murderers, to starting over -  with God first and his ego second.

Felonies down by 75%

"Since the early 1990's, New York has experienced the longest and steepest crime drop in the modern history of policing."   What an achievement, what a relief to longtime residents who can probably remember what it was like twenty years ago.

This is New York City crime and it's way down.   Murders are down by nearly 80% since that time.   80%!

"The biggest beneficiaries of a dramatically safer New York have been law-abiding residents of formerly crime-plagued areas. Minorities make up nearly 80% of the drop in homicide victims since the early 1990s. New York policing has transformed inner-city neighborhoods and allowed their hardworking members a once-unthinkable freedom from fear."

The people in those neighborhoods are hugely safer.   But are they sending a flower bouquet to the chief of police?   No.   Some are suing the NYPD (see "How to Increase the Crime Rate Nationwide").

Free enterprise values

Economist Arthur Brooks says that free enterprise involves values that Americans have always wanted to pass on to their children.

Free enterprise as an economic system provides the setting in which people can earn their success and the satisfaction that goes with it.

Income mobility

The lowest "quintile" (20%) of incomes is where most of us started out with our first job.  It often is  also the starting point for new immigrants.  So this category is always expanding with new citizens and young people joining the work force.

But while many are entering this income category, many are also leaving it.   Of poor households in 1975, an amazing 98% of them were no longer in the poor category by 1991 according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas' report.

Something like 25% of those in the top income class in one year fall out of it the following year, so there's that kind of mobility between incomes too.

Scott Winship, economist with the Brookings Institution, says that about half of the children of poor parents reach middle class by the time they're 27 years old.  Probably many more do so as they get more experience in the work force.

What does this mean?  We have income mobility.  It is more than possible in America to move up if you're willing to trade off time and leisure to increase income.

Are we a bit short on inspirational stories lately?  Read about Eddie Diaz, Ron & Pam Jones, Liz Coker here, or about Juicy Couture here.

Economic gains

Our economy has not fully recovered from the recession of 2008, and we hear lots about the sad state of families who have struggled, folks who have lost jobs, homes that were devalued.  We came down quite a way from the super prosperity of the previous 25-30 years.

Those decades before the 2008 recession were tremendous growth years.

The whole economy became a much bigger "pie", and so each piece became bigger.  From 1996 to 2005, in dollars adjusted for inflation, the income of the poor rose by 109%, while that of the middle class rose 26%.

Going by gender and race, there are more signs of growth.  From 1980 to 2007, income grew for black females by 79.6%, for white females by 77.8%, for black males by 34.4%, and for white males by 10.1%, again in real dollars.

More tomorrow about the growth years.

Good coffee

If you like coffee, you'll be happy to know that you are getting your anti-oxidants in a big way.

 "A Norwegian study found that a typical serving of brewed coffee is richer in 
antioxidants than a serving of blueberries, raspberries, pineapples, or many fruit juices."

Coffee can help protect you from stroke, certain kinds of cancers, depression.

"What I tell patients is, if you like coffee, go ahead and drink as much as you want and can," says Dr. Peter Martin, director of the Institute for Coffee Studies at Vanderbilt University. 

Fish & veggies: "Burgeoning"

Aquaponics (see yesterday's post) businesses are "burgeoning"!  Google your locality with aquaponics and see what you come up with.  Looks like a growth industry.  Here's an interesting one:  an operation in Philadelphia started with a police raid on an indoor marijuana "farm" resulting in the equipment turned to growing food instead.

You can take a university course if you want to start this sort of business, and of course there's a lot to learn. It's not exactly like falling off a log.  There are even businesses that specialize in selling the systems to grow fish and veggies together.  The director of one of the first commercial aquaponics farms in Florida also heads up the Aquaponics Association to support its members.

Abundance of nutritious foods using otherwise unusable resources (abandoned buildings, as an example) with waste that turns out in this endeavor to be valuable (fish waste), plus much more efficient use of land (100x) and water - what's not to like!  Watch this video for an excellent explanation of the idea.

Fish & veggies

Hamm's Brewery of St. Paul was vacant a long time but is being given new life as an aquaponics fish farm.  In Chicago, one of these fish farms is located in an old meat plant which has a construction excellent for aquaponics.   

Garden Fresh Farms of Maple Grove MN is producing 1,000 heads of lettuce per day without soil.  Owner Dave Roeser says, 

"We pioneered growing produce in a dense and efficiency[sic] manner. Our growing systems use land 100 times more efficiently than traditional farming. This allows for indoor growing year round with less water, energy efficiencies, reduced waste and low transportation costs."

Aquaponics is not just growing plants in water (hydroponics), but growing them in water fertilized by living fish - a system that works like nature to use waste from one crop to feed the other crop.

 Unusable buildings now used, water used but not polluted or wasted, fish raised without picking up outside diseases:  what a great industry.  

That's creating wealth - taking whatever resources you have, applying your work and imagination, to make things people need and freely choose to purchase.

One billion have more

One billion people in the world living in extreme poverty have been raised up out of it in the past 13 years.  Most of them live in China, and you have to ask, What happened there?

According to The Economist, capitalism is responsible for the improved living conditions of these people:

"China’s real great leap forward occurred because it allowed private business to grow"

"Its economy has been growing so fast that, even though inequality is rising fast, extreme poverty is disappearing"

China allowed more freedom of markets, and the result has been changed lives.  (See "Create Wealth" in Labels to the right for stories about  . . the creation of wealth)

One billion less

Over the 20 years from 1990 to 2010, about one billion people were lifted out of extreme poverty worldwide.  

In America, the poverty line is considered to be $63 per day for a family of four.  The measurement for extreme poverty in the world is $1.25 per day and the life of a person at that level is quite different.  It was this, extreme poverty, that was targeted by Millennium Development Goals  which were set in 2000 and expire in 2015.  

It was a billion people in this type of poverty who have been lifted out of it.  Read about it in The Economist.

What's most important?

What's the most important thing you can have?  Is it love? happiness? money?  That's the question Dennis Prager asks, and he gives an excellent answer to the question right here.

Energy controversy

Given the economic benefit of the natural gas boom - huge economic benefit - it would be nice to have a clean win for American energy consumption, to be certain that the energy boom is proceeding safely.

But the fracking procedure to develop shale natural gas has raised questions.  Will there be a health cost to pay for this new technology?  Water, chemicals, and sand are pumped into the ground and then some of it becomes waste to dispose of.

T. Boone Pickens makes his case in favor of development of our natural gas reserves in a TED talk here.  To watch people voice their worries about hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"), search on youtube.com.

Energy abundance

The phenomenal new production of natural gas in America has so many benefits:

"Because U.S. natural gas prices are now the lowest in the world, industries that once exported manufacturing facilities abroad are suddenly bringing them back home as they pursue new investments. All of this has increased economic growth, created jobs with good wages and produced revenue for governments at all levels."

Lower prices on energy (natural gas has gone down by 75%!)  are good for everyone, but I always think first of families who are struggling and both parents working full time.  Our credit union loan officer a few years ago, for example, was a mother with three young kids, working all day in that office, and pregnant.   A savings of, say, $100 a month on heating/electricity costs could put all those kids in new shoes.

Other countries, like China, have natural gas deposits that they will develop eventually, but they'll have to ramp up their technology and infrastructure to do it.

"Private ownership of mineral rights in the U.S., along with an existing network of pipelines, enables oil and gas to find their way to market. And this . . has given America its big head start."   

Technical problems are driving up the price of natural gas in India.

Energy independence - let's hope

Yes, it's possible that America may produce all its own energy by 2035 according to the International Energy Agency, as reported in the NY Times, "When America Stops Importing Energy."  We could be the world's largest oil producer by 2020, and even export it.

After 30 years of decline, oil production in North America has surged and will produce a shock in the global market.  It comes from Canadian sands and from U.S. shale.  You may know people, as we do, who have relocated to North Dakota to take part in the oil bonanza there.

Since 2008, U.S. oil production has increased by 40%, and imports have diminished considerably.  It can only be good for us when we stop sending hundreds of billions of dollars overseas.  Wealth and jobs stay here.

Oldest Vet is 107

"I'm no young man no more," he says, so he'll spend Memorial Day quietly at his home in Texas.  Richard Overton was born in 1906 and served in World War II.  

This spring he was flown to Washington D. C. by Honor Flight Network to visit the WWII memorial, and he loved it:

“I was really honored when I got there,” Overton said of his visit to the World War II Memorial. “There were so many people, it was up in the thousands. And we danced and we jumped … them people tickled me to death. It made me happy as can be.”

College too expensive?

About one third of millenials think they would have been better off working right away rather than going to college because of the debt they incurred.  Student loan debt is now bigger in the U.S. than credit card debt, with 42% calling it "overwhelming."

Maybe demand for higher education is falling, because "288 colleges have so far reported that they “have space” for incoming freshman despite the fact that the “official” deadline for most schools has passed."  This author at Forbes thinks they all are willing to be generous with grants or scholarships, so new students and their parents should definitely shop around.

Yale prof's final message

"Imagine Robert DeNiro as an eminent conservative scholar of ancient Athens."   That's how professor Dr. Donald Kagan is described.  He is retiring from Yale University and gave his farewell lecture this week.  He's not pleased with what he has seen at Yale.

"On campus," he said, "I find a kind of cultural void, an ignorance of the past, a sense of rootlessness and aimlessness." Rare are "faculty with atypical views," he charged. "Still rarer is an informed understanding of the traditions and institutions of our Western civilization and of our country and an appreciation of their special qualities and values."

He was given a standing ovation by the students and the faculty.

Global Christianity's appeal

Alister McGrath is Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford and author of Christianity's Dangerous Idea.

In McGrath's view, Pentecostalism is a "legitimate outcome" of the idea behind all of Protestant faith:  that all people have the right and responsibility to interpret scripture as faithfully as they can.   The expression of Pentecostal type faith in cultures around the world is is not dictated by any American denomination.  They have their own models of worship that work within their culture.

Some Latin American Catholic clergy adopted Marxist theories into their theology several decades ago, calling it "liberation theology."  But McGrath says, "Pentecostalism is replacing Marxism as the solace and inspiration of the urban poor."

That's because, as he puts it, "Far from being oppressive or fraudulent (as Marxism argued), belief in God has been liberating and transforming."

Those global Christians

What current world-wide movement went from zero to 500 million followers in about a hundred years?  It might be hard to think of one.  The growth is called "staggering", "incredible."  It's a kind of Christianity that didn't exist before 1900 but which finds a home in diverse denominations like Baptist or Catholic:    pentecostal/charismatic.

"The typical late twentieth-century Christian was no longer a European man but a Latin American or African woman," and there's a good chance she is pentecostal.

The Lausanne World Pulse offers these points (among others) to explain how the movement has managed to grow so fast:

• "contagious relationships" - "Studies reveal it is not the big events or the big names that are decisive in Pentecostalism’s dramatic growth; the movement grows because people whose lives are dramatically changed tell their friends and family."
• "adaptive methods" -"Almost instantly Pentecostalism became Russian in Russia, Chilean in Chile, African in Africa. Pentecostalism’s freedom in the Spirit created grassroots movements that are at home in almost any context." 

Global Christianity

In 1900, 80% of all the world's Christians lived in either North America or Europe.  One hundred years later, this is no longer the case.  Mainline denomination churches in America have been in decline for many years.  European churches carry little influence and may be nearly empty on Sunday mornings.

Today, about 60% of all Christians in the world live in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.  In Great Britain there are at least 15,000 Christian missionaries evangelizing the locals, and most of them are from Africa and Asia.

Yoido Full Gospel church in Seoul, Korea, had 6 times as many worshipers attending this week as the ten largest churches in Canada combined.

The largest Christian European church congregation is in Kiev, Russia, and its pastor is from Nigeria.

More Catholics worshiped yesterday in the Philippines than in any European country.

This is from The New Shape of World Christianity, by Dr. Mark Noll, Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, formerly of Wheaton College.

Closer to home:  when my son's (American) college roommate decided to get seminary training, he chose a seminary in Africa.