by Daniel on October 1, 2003
This should be classified as “playing with numbers” rather than serious economic analysis, but I found it interesting at least. Basically, following on from Chris’s demographics post earlier in the week, I thought I’d follow up an idea I’ve had for a while and carry out some “financially adjusted demographics”. The idea is quite simple; there’s two ways in which you can add to a country’s effective labour power:
1. Increase the population
2. Acquire overseas assets, effectively giving you a claim on the population of other countries.
It’s always struck me that demographic analyses (particularly those carried out by people looking at pensions issues) tend to fixate on the first and ignore the second. Turns out that it doesn’t make a huge difference to the numbers, but it does make a difference.
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by Daniel on October 1, 2003
It seems like so much longer than four days since Henry wrote:
But I’m disturbed by the tone of triumphalism coming from a few left blogs and their commenters. It’s understandable that some see this as an opportunity to stick it to the warbloggers. It’s still a mistake. This story is too important to be turned into a cheap gotcha. There’s a growing groundswell of outrage on the right as well as the left. People should be building on this, rather than using the affair to score short-term ‘told you so’ points.
But it isn’t. Anyway, I think we can agree that by now, that this water-source has been well and truly pissed in, so I feel less guilty than I ought in taking what is, after all, a pretty decent opportunity to stick it to the warbloggers. One has to say, the opposition have performed pretty dreadfully on this one. Bereft of any unifying theme from the top, they’ve failed mightily to improvise material. Below I offer a few suggestions …
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by Brian on October 1, 2003
This seems a little late to matter now, but NBC has adopted the following policy regarding references to Amb. Wilson’s wife. (See end of this piece.)
NBC News has decided not to report the name of the woman whose identity was revealed in Novak’s column. MSNBC.com has removed her name from its coverage.
Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who Kevin Drum quotes goes out of his way to follow the same policy in the extracts Kevin has. It’s hard to believe that anyone who had an interest in her activities could have missed the story by now, or could pick it up from any of us, but it’s not obviously a bad policy.