Past Tense
Counteroffensive Collapse, Europeans are becoming poorer, Britain is now a poor nation, Child Labor in America Is Back—and It’s As Chilling as Ever
UPDATE: President Volodymyr Zelensky's angry tweets accuses Western powers of showing 'ingratitude' and the failing counteroffensive on lack of munitions and delayed training from the West.
The average EU country poorer per head than every U.S. state except Idaho and Mississippi, according to a report this month by the ‘European Centre for International Political Economy’.
Britain’s average living standards are lower than those in the least affluent US state. Why is the UK falling behind other advanced economies? That question is being almost wholly ignored as we quarrel about equality, obesity, trans rights and other ephemera.
The number of children at work in the United States increased by 37 percent between 2015 and 2022. Fourteen-year-olds can now even work night shifts and once they hit 15 can join assembly lines. All of this was, of course, prohibited not so long ago.
Counteroffensive Collapse
By Tyler Durden
Despite the row at this month's NATO summit in Vilnius caused by President Volodymyr Zelensky's angry tweet, for which he was accused by Western powers (especially the US and UK) of showing 'ingratitude', the Ukrainian leader is once again lashing out at his backers. This time, he's blaming the failing counteroffensive on lack of munitions and delayed training from the West.
"We did have plans to start it in spring. But we didn’t, because, frankly, we had not enough munitions and armaments and not enough brigades properly trained in these weapons," Zelensky told CNN's Fareed Zakaria via a translator in an interview which aired Sunday.
He also complained about training programs set up for Ukrainians to operate advanced systems, which are being sponsored and hosted in European countries under NATO guidance. Kiev has long pressed for a more expedited timeline on receiving US F-16 jets as well, but training has been "delayed" for this as well, set to begin next month.
"Still, more" - he continued of the problem - "that the training missions were held outside Ukraine. But, still, we started. And this is important." Zelensky said these factors have been key to the stalled counteroffensive, especially that Ukraine's forces are blowing through munitions at a very high pace to keep up with superior Russian fire.
"And because we started it a bit later on, it can be said, and it will be shared truth understood by all the experts that it provided Russia with time to mine all our lands and build several lines of defense. And, definitely, they had even more time than they needed," he explained.
"Because of that, they built more of those lines. And, really, they had a lot of mines in our fields. Because of that, a slower pace of our counteroffensive actions," Zelensky added. "We didn’t want to lose our people, our personnel. And our servicemen didn’t want to lose equipment because of that."
Very early in the counteroffensive in June, he had acknowledged a "slower than expected" advance. And in recent days and weeks, US mainstream media has increasingly featured pessimistic headlines for the first time in the conflict, suggesting the counter offensive is doomed, especially the longer it drags on without delivering a significant punch to Russian front lines.
Zelensky continued in his remarks to CNN, "Yes, I do understand that it’s always better to see victory come sooner. This is what we also want. But the question is the price … of this victory. So, let us not throw people under tanks literally. Let us plan our counteroffensive as our analysts, our intelligence suggests. And some of our residential areas have been liberated already. So, I do believe in our victory."
The consistent messaging from Kiev forces has been that Western aid is always insufficient - no matter the tens of billions poured in...
Analysts have long described this current phase of the conflict as a war of "attrition" - and that Russia has ample resources and manpower to execute a long-haul strategy. The question that remains is whether the US and NATO allies will jump in more directly against Russia in the event of an eventual clear and overwhelming defeat of Kiev forces. Another question is whether this will hasten willingness among Western allies to see Zelensky negotiate a peace deal, likely involving territorial concessions, namely the Donbas and recognition of Russian Crimea.
Read more here.
Europeans are becoming poorer
The average EU country poorer per head than every U.S. state except Idaho and Mississippi, according to a report this month by the ‘European Centre for International Political Economy’, a Brussels-based independent think tank.
If the current trend continues, by 2035 the gap between economic output per capita in the U.S. and EU will be as large as that between Japan and Ecuador today, the report said.
‘Yes, we’re all worse off,’ Europeans complain. An aging population that values its free time set the stage for economic stagnation. Then came Covid-19 and Russia’s war in Ukraine, ‘Wall Street Journal’ writes with some malice.
Europeans are facing a new economic reality, one they haven’t experienced in decades. They are becoming poorer.
Life on a continent long envied by outsiders for its art de vivre is rapidly losing its shine as Europeans see their purchasing power melt away.
The French are eating less foie gras and drinking less red wine.
Spaniards are stinting on olive oil. Finns are being urged to use saunas on windy days when energy is less expensive.
Across Germany, meat and milk consumption has fallen to the lowest level in three decades and the once-booming market for organic food has tanked.
Italy’s economic development minister, Adolfo Urso, convened a crisis meeting in May over prices for pasta, the country’s favorite staple, after they jumped by more than double the national inflation rate.
With consumption spending in free fall, Europe tipped into recession at the start of the year, reinforcing a sense of relative economic, political and military decline that kicked in at the start of the century.
Europe’s current predicament has been long in the making. An aging population with a preference for free time and job security over earnings ushered in years of lackluster economic and productivity growth. Then came the one-two punch of the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s protracted war in Ukraine. By upending global supply chains and sending the prices of energy and food rocketing, the crises aggravated ailments that had been festering for decades.
Governments’ responses only compounded the problem. To preserve jobs, they steered their subsidies primarily to employers, leaving consumers without a cash cushion when the price shock came.
In the past, the continent’s formidable export industry might have come to the rescue. But a sluggish recovery in China, a critical market for Europe, is undermining that growth pillar. High energy costs and rampant inflation at a level not seen since the 1970s are dulling manufacturers’ price advantage in international markets and smashing the continent’s once-harmonious labor relations. As global trade cools, Europe’s heavy reliance on exports — which account for about 50% of eurozone GDP versus 10% for the U.S. — is becoming a weakness.
Private consumption has declined by about 1% in the 20-nation eurozone since the end of 2019 after adjusting for inflation, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based club of mainly wealthy countries. In the U.S., where households enjoy a strong labor market and rising incomes, it has increased by nearly 9%.
The European Union now accounts for about 18% of all global consumption spending, compared with 28% for America. Fifteen years ago, the EU and the U.S. each represented about a quarter of that total.
Adjusted for inflation and purchasing power, wages have declined by about 3% since 2019 in Germany, by 3.5% in Italy and Spain and by 6% in Greece.
The pain reaches far into the middle classes. In Brussels, one of Europe’s richest cities, teachers and nurses stood in line on a recent evening to collect half-price groceries from the back of a truck.
With European governments needing to increase defense spending and given rising borrowing costs, economists expect taxes to increase, adding pressure on consumers. Taxes in Europe are already high relative to those in other wealthy countries, equivalent to around 40-45% of GDP compared with 27% in the U.S.
The pauperisation of Europe has bolstered the ranks of labor unions, which are picking up tens of thousands of members across the continent, reversing a decades-long decline, stresses WSJ.
Read more here.
Download the report here.
Britain is now a poor nation
By Daniel Hannan
Our average living standards are lower than those in the least affluent US state. Slovenes are overtaking us and Poles are not far behind. British politics ought to revolve around just one question. Why are we falling behind other advanced economies? That question should have dominated the recent by-elections. It should be the focus of every party manifesto. It should occupy our front pages and lead our news bulletins. Yet it is being almost wholly ignored as we quarrel about equality, obesity, trans rights and other ephemera.
Britain has some of the lowest productivity in the developed world, meaning that we generate less stuff per hour. Slovenes are overtaking us now, and Poles are on course to do so in the mid-2030s. South Koreans, who had a third of our income per head as recently as 1985, have already surpassed us. Yet we refuse to acknowledge, let alone address, the causes of our decline.
Consider the oceans of ink spilt over the question of Nigel Farage’s bank account. That row dominated our news cycle for a week, following the usual trajectory of a culture-war skirmish. Commentators started from whether or not they liked Farage, and then proclaimed their supposed general principles on that basis. When the facts emerged, Farage’s critics looked foolish. The other side piled in with gusto.
All harmless enough, you might say. Indignation can be invigorating. But it can also be a massive distraction. Have you seen any discussion of how much harder it has become to open and operate a bank account in general? Any debate about whether these difficulties are deterring investment, encouraging businesses to move to places where banking is easy, such as Singapore or the Gulf?
You can hardly have failed to notice that dealing with your own bank is more of a nuisance than it used to be, what with all this “know your customer” malarkey. The bureaucracy has ballooned since Brexit – in other words, at precisely the moment when we could be opting out of the needlessly intrusive bits of the EU’s Money Laundering Directive. But never mind all that. Much more fun to have a go at Jon Sopel, eh?
The problem is not just that we refuse to see our decline as a challenge. It is that we refuse to see it at all. We keep telling ourselves that we are a rich country. Right-wingers do it out of patriotic boosterism, Left-wingers as a pitch for more spending (“Why are benefits so stingy when we’re the fifth biggest economy in the world?”)
It is true that, in global terms, we are still wealthy. It is true, too, that the EU, which has made similar mistakes to ours, is also on the slide, so that we do well enough when we measure ourselves against France, Germany or Spain. But look at the other Anglosphere countries, and a very different picture emerges.
The average American is 39 per cent wealthier and 38 per cent more productive than the average Brit. Housing is also much cheaper in the US, as was energy even before the Ukraine war.
If Britain were a US state, it would languish at the bottom of the league.
Read more here.
Child Labor in America Is Back—and It’s As Chilling as Ever
By Steve Fraser (edited)
It should be a reminder of how deeply retrogressive capitalism has once again become both here at home and elsewhere across the planet. An aged Native American chieftain was visiting New York City for the first time in 1906. He was curious about the city and the city was curious about him. A magazine reporter asked the chief what most surprised him in his travels around town. “Little children working,” the visitor replied.
Child labor might have shocked that outsider, but it was all too commonplace then across urban, industrial America (and on farms where it had been customary for centuries). In more recent times, however, it’s become a far rarer sight. Law and custom, most of us assume, drove it to near extinction. And our reaction to seeing it reappear might resemble that chief’s—shock, disbelief.
But we better get used to it, since child labor is making a comeback with a vengeance. A striking number of lawmakers are undertaking concerted efforts to weaken or repeal statutes that have long prevented (or at least seriously inhibited) the possibility of exploiting children.
Take a breath and consider this: The number of kids at work in the United States increased by 37 percent between 2015 and 2022. During the last two years, 14 states have either introduced or enacted legislation rolling back regulations that governed the number of hours children can be employed, lowered the restrictions on dangerous work, and legalized subminimum wages for youths.
Iowa now allows those as young as 14 to work in industrial laundries. At age 16, they can take jobs in roofing, construction, excavation, and demolition and can operate power-driven machinery. Fourteen-year-olds can now even work night shifts and once they hit 15 can join assembly lines. All of this was, of course, prohibited not so long ago.
Legislators offer fatuous justifications for such incursions into long-settled practice. Working, they tell us, will get kids off their computers or video games or away from the TV. Or it will strip the government of the power to dictate what children can and can’t do, leaving parents in control—a claim already transformed into fantasy by efforts to strip away protective legislation and permit 14-year-old kids to work without formal parental permission.
In 2014, the Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank, published “A Case Against Child Labor Prohibitions,” arguing that such laws stifled opportunity for poor—and especially Black—children. The Foundation for Government Accountability, a think tank funded by a range of wealthy conservative donors including the DeVos family, has spearheaded efforts to weaken child-labor laws, and Americans for Prosperity, the billionaire Koch brothers’ foundation, has joined in.
Nor are these assaults confined to red states like Iowa or the South. California, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire, as well as Georgia and Ohio, have been targeted, too. Even New Jersey passed a law in the pandemic years temporarily raising the permissible work hours for 16-to-18-year-olds.
The blunt truth of the matter is that child labor pays and is fast becoming remarkably ubiquitous. It’s an open secret that fast-food chains have employed underage kids for years and simply treat the occasional fines for doing so as part of the cost of doing business. Children as young as 10 have been toiling away in such pit stops in Kentucky and older ones working beyond the hourly limits prescribed by law. Roofers in Florida and Tennessee can now be as young as 12.
Recently, the Labor Department found more than 100 children between the ages of 13 and 17 working in meatpacking plants and slaughterhouses in Minnesota and Nebraska. And those were anything but fly-by-night operations. Companies like Tyson Foods and Packer Sanitation Services (owned by BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm) were also on the list.
At this point, virtually the entire economy is remarkably open to child labor. Garment factories and auto parts manufacturers (supplying Ford and General Motors) employ immigrant kids, some for 12-hour days. Many are compelled to drop out of school just to keep up. In a similar fashion, Hyundai and Kia supply chains depend on children working in Alabama.
As The New York Times reported last February, helping break the story of the new child labor market, underage kids, especially migrants, are working in cereal-packing plants and food-processing factories. In Vermont, “illegals” (because they’re too young to work) operate milking machines. Some children help make J. Crew shirts in Los Angeles, bake rolls for Walmart, or work producing Fruit of the Loom socks. Danger lurks. America is a notoriously unsafe place to work, and the accident rate for child laborers is especially high, including a chilling inventory of shattered spines, amputations, poisonings, and disfiguring burns.
Journalist Hannah Dreier has called it “a new economy of exploitation,” especially when it comes to migrant children. A Grand Rapids, Mich., schoolteacher, observing the same predicament, remarked, “You’re taking children from another country and putting them almost in industrial servitude.”
Read more here.
So the US has succeeded in one of its UKR proxy war aims - the crushing of Europe as an economic force. The very wealthy in the UK and Europe are coining it - their reward for being accessories. Powerful article.