| | | | Fareed: Democrats Have Plenty of Ideas. What They Need Are Facts | | As Democrats see a revival of big thinking, from the "Green New Deal" to Medicare for all, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column that while this is refreshing, facts and realism are being left behind.
"In their zeal to match the sweeping rhetoric of right-wing populism, Democrats are spinning out dramatic proposals in which facts are sometimes misrepresented, the numbers occasionally don't add up, and emotional appeal tends to trump actual policy analysis," Fareed writes.
Cases in point: Misrepresentations of New York's tax incentives for Amazon, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (D-NY) recent comment to Anderson Cooper about more people being concerned with precise facts than moral correctness.
"We already have one major party that now routinely twists facts, disregards evidence, ignores serious policy analysis and makes stuff up," Fareed writes—and we don't need another. | | China's Economy Needs Big Changes | | China's economic story is about more than fluctuating growth and a tariff war with the US: It's about broad-scale changes China must make to stabilize its long-term path, The Economist writes.
China will need to give companies more autonomy, protect the rights of foreign companies, ease up on government control of resources, and stop propping up state firms. Doing so will not only satisfy Washington's demands in the trade war; it will stabilize China's path, The Economist argues.
As President Xi Jinping seeks to maintain growth rates, China's economy is loaded up with stimulus and loans, The Economist notes. That strategy can last for some time, but reality might catch up; the debt bills can mount, and as others have pointed out, China could get trapped in middle-income status, failing to rise into the ranks of the rich. | | Russian President Vladimir Putin enjoys approval ratings most Western leaders would envy: 64%, according to polling by the independent Levada Center. Aside from reasons to doubt that number—Russia is notoriously difficult to poll—his popularity has taken a relative nosedive from its height of 89% in 2015.
So Putin has pledged new social spending, which could help him regain his footing, but there's one option he lacks as economic discontent figures to grow, the Financial Times editorializes: a military campaign abroad, as Russians don't appear to have the appetite for any foreign rallying cries beyond Crimea and eastern Ukraine. | | Is the Trump-Kim Friendship Helping or Hurting? | | The warm relationship between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un—"we fell in love," Trump said at a rally, of his exchange of letters with Kim—brings with it good and bad, Victor Cha and Katrin Fraser Katz write in Foreign Affairs. It's better than "fire and fury" threats, but it also makes things more complicated, forcing allies to abandon Trump's coalition to pressure North Korea and seek their own paths, and getting in the way of lower-level talks to forge a denuclearization roadmap, as Trump's direct relationship with Kim takes precedence.
Other questions loom. If Trump derives such pleasure from interpersonal diplomacy, could Kim trade on that mutual warmth, to get a better deal? And could he offer concessions that help only Washington, like limitations on ICBMs but not on shorter-range missiles that can reach South Korea and Japan, to please Trump while leaving US allies in the cold? | | It's the world's first privately funded moon mission: Atop a SpaceX rocket, Israeli company SpaceIL has launched a robotic lander, which could put Israel in elite company if it lands successfully. To date, only the US, Russia, and China have put spacecraft on the moon. It's a big moment for Israeli tech, which has struggled to attract enough workers of late, and the launch has won praise from NASA's administrator as a "historic step for all nations."
Israel may find itself in a race with India to join the club: MIT Technology Review points out that with its own launch set for April, and a more direct path charted, there's a chance an Indian mission could overtake Israel's mid-journey. Regardless, more private moon missions will likely follow, as "at least five" private companies have secured launch contracts over the next two years. | | | | | | |
