the Economist – Daily News and Views
- Study leave -
Plenty of university graduates are working in low-skilled jobs
Young people often worry whether the qualification for which they are studying will stand them in good stead in the workplace. According to the OECD, college and university leavers are better placed in the labour market than their less educated peers, but this advantage is not even in all countries. Young graduates living in Spain are particularly likely to end up taking low-skilled work, while those in Luxembourg rarely take anything other than a graduate job. American and British students appear to have the biggest incentive to study: British graduates aged 25-34 earn $57,000 on average. Their Swedish peers earn $37,400.
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- Striking facts -
Working days lost due to labour disputes
WORKERS on London's underground rail network begin a strike on Monday September 6th, while across the channel French workers are also on strike in protest at attempts by the government to change the retirement age. Both countries come fairly high on the list of countries that lose working days to labour disputes. South Africa, where Cosatu, a federation of unions with some 2m members, has been on strike since August 18th, also scores highly on this measure. But all of these places are left in they shade by the Canadians, who lost 2.2m working days to strikes last year. Greece, which is also fond of striking, does not appear on this chart as its numbers are not comparable.
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- Please delete -
The internet has become too important for governments to ignore
GOVERNMENTS are increasingly finding ways to enforce their laws in the digital realm. The most prominent is China’s “great firewall”. But China is by no means the only country erecting borders in cyberspace. The OpenNet Initiative, an advocacy group, lists more than a dozen countries that block internet content for political, social and security reasons. They do not need especially clever technology: governments go increasingly after dominant online firms because they are easy to get hold of. In April Google published the numbers of requests it had received from official agencies to remove content or provide information about users. For more on how governments and companies are erecting borders in cyberspace see article.
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- Higher education -
Galloping inflation in American college fees
FOR decades, college fees have risen faster than Americans’ ability to pay them. Median household income has grown by a factor of 6.5 in the past 40 years, but the cost of attending a state college has increased by a factor of 15 for in-state students and 24 for out-of-state students. The cost of attending a private college has increased by a factor of more than 13 (a year in the Ivy League will set you back $38,000, excluding bed and board). Academic inflation makes most other kinds look modest by comparison. Students may not be getting a good deal in return (see story). ...
- Naval gazing -
China now has more warships than America, according to the IISS
THE International Institute for Strategic Studies (better known as the IISS), reckons China now has more warships than America, which long possessed the biggest fleet. As it can be hard to distinguish a warship from other boats, the IISS uses its own definition of what counts and what does not. This striking trend is yet another manifestation of the rise of China. But it also reflect the cost of warships and other weapons built by America (see article). Philip Pugh, author of “The Cost of Seapower”, a 1986 study of shipbuilding costs since the end of the Napoleonic wars, argues that the industrial revolution made the problem more acute: the rapid pace of technological change set off a race to build bigger, more powerful, more heavily armed and better-protected battleships. At some point, as unit prices rise, one of two things must happen: countries must either scale back their ambition, or seek game-changing technology, as they did when the battleship gave way to the submarine and aircraft-carrier.
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- Rivals -
The best-selling political memoirs in Britain
TONY BLAIR, Britain's former prime minister, published his memoirs on Wednesday September 1st. The few people who have already read them cover to cover report that, in addition to the familiar stuff about how awful his relationship with Gordon Brown was, Mr Blair admits to being manipulative and to having a developed sense of his own destiny. The book is likely to sell well, though it seems that British book buyers are rather more interested in American politicians than in their own. Three of the four bestselling political memoirs in Britain (since barcodes made such things easier to count) are by Americans. The Brit who separates the Clintons near the top, comedian John O'Farrell, was never really a politician: he stood for election once (in Maidenhead) and then made some rather archaic puns about the experience.
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- Big mistake -
How America's opinion of the Iraq war has changed
OVER seven years after the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, America's direct military involvement is now coming to an end. President Barack Obama will set out his new policy in a speech from the Oval Office on Monday August 31st. American public opinion on the war has changed enormously during that time. When George Bush prematurely declared an end to major combat operations in May 2003 most Americans were behind the war, with only a quarter saying it was a mistake according to Gallup polling data. But the public's mood turned when allegations of torture by US soldiers came to light in early 2004. The bloody terror campaign by Sunni militia groups, which began in earnest in 2006 and killed Iraqis by the thousands and American troops by the hundreds, also had a profound effect on opinion.
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- The great crawl of China -
China's traffic jam was inevitable
CHINA tends to do everything a bit bigger than the rest of the world, including traffic jams. One snarl up this month along a highway leading into Beijing was at one point over 100km long and left traffic gridlocked for eleven days until it mysteriously vanished on Thursday August 26th. Roadworks and booming demand for coal and other goods sent thousands of lorries heading for China's capital. Beijing is set to spend 80 billion yuan ($11.8 billion) on transport infrastructure in 2010—but it may not be enough. In recent years rising vehicle ownership has outpaced the growth of China's express highway system by a distance. China's new motoring class may have to get used to spending many more hours behind the wheel than they might otherwise intend.
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- No visa required -
Who has most freedom to travel?
THE ability to visit a foreign country without the cost and hassle of obtaining a visa is a welcome bonus for any traveller. It is also a barometer of a country's international alliances and relations. A report released on August 25th by Henley & Partners, a consultancy, shows that Britons have the fewest visa restrictions of the 190-odd countries (and territories) for which data are available. British citizens can enjoy a three-day stay for business or pleasure to 166 destinations without needing a visa. Generally, citizens of rich countries and trade-based economies have more freedom to travel than those of countries suffering from war or repression. Compare, for instance, the restrictions on South Korea with North Korea and Hong Kong with those on China.
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- A mysterious disappearance -
Where has all the plastic gone?
THE amount of plastic thrown away by Americans increased fourfold between 1980 and 2008. It is a reasonable assumption that as more plastic is produced and discarded, this will affect oceanic pollution. But a study of the north Atlantic and the Caribbean, just published in Science, suggests things are not getting worse. Between 1986 and 2008 there was no increase in the concentration of plastic in the areas looked at despite a steady rise in the amount discarded. Kara Law and her colleagues at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts have no explanation for this lack of accumulation. A programme by the American plastics industry that resulted in a decrease in the number of pellets in the water is still insufficient to explain the data. Nor does the missing plastic seem to have sunk; trawls at depth show no sign of it. The Sargasso Sea of legend, and its modern equivalent, the Bermuda Triangle, are supposed to be places where things disappear without trace. Dr Law seems to have come up with a real example.
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