Economics and International Affairs Blog

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Shifting Global Supply Chains – Near/Re-Shoring

Supply Chain Woes Prompt a New Push to Revive U.S. Factories
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/business/economy/supply-chain-reshoring-us-manufacturing.html

Packed ports and empty shelves: Inside the issues behind the U.S. supply chain crisis
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supply-chain-crisis-60-minutes-2021-11-14/

Crunch at Ports May Mean Crisis for American Farms
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/14/business/economy/farm-exports-supply-chain-ports.html

Why Are Supply Chains Blocked?
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/prevent-future-supply-chain-disruptions-using-ai-models-by-michael-spence-2021-11

The Answer to America’s Supply-Chain Woes Lies in Automation
https://www.barrons.com/articles/supply-chain-crisis-autonomous-vehicles-solution-51635367731

‘Onshoring’ Is So Last Year. The New Lingo Is ‘Friend-Shoring’
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-24/-onshoring-is-so-last-year-the-new-lingo-is-friend-shoring

Great Resignation and Labor Shortages

A record 4.5 million workers quit or changed jobs in November
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/01/04/job-quits-november-2021/

Scarce Labor Is Likely to Squeeze U.S. Business Long After Covid
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-05/scarce-labor-is-likely-to-squeeze-u-s-business-long-after-covid

More quit jobs than ever, but most turnover is in low-wage work.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/business/economy/job-openings-coronavirus.html

Longer-Term Concerns:

The great population growth slowdown
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/1/5/22867184/us-census-population-growth-slowdown-migration-birth-death

Tuesday, January 4, 2022

A Humorist's Take on 2021

Dave Barry’s 2021 Year in Review
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/12/26/dave-barrys-year-review-2021/
Some highlights:
“Another improvement was that most stores got rid of those one-way anti-covid arrows on the floor. Remember those, from 2020? You’d be halfway down a supermarket aisle, and you’d realize that you’d gone past the Cheez-Its but you couldn’t turn around and go back because you’d be going AGAINST THE ARROWS, which meant YOU WOULD GET COVID.
Ha ha! Was that stupid, or what? Fortunately in 2021, we followed the Science, which decided that the coronavirus does not observe floor arrows. On the other hand, the Science could not make up its mind about masks, especially in restaurants. Should everybody in the restaurant wear them? Should only the staff wear them? Should people who are standing up wear them, but not people who are sitting down, which would seem to suggest that the virus can also enter our bodies via our butts? We still don’t know, and we can’t wait to find out what the Science will come up with for us next”.