I think there’s something Martin Feldstein is missing in his remarks on China’s 13th Five Year Plan. When he writes:
Finally, and perhaps most important, the population of working-age individuals is no longer growing, a result of the 35-year-long policy of restricting most families to no more than one child. Although the government recently replaced the one-child limit with a two-child limit, it will be nearly two decades before that change can increase the size of the working-age population. Until then, increasing the growth rate of the effective labor force requires shifting workers from low-productivity employment in agriculture to the urban labor force.
The Chinese government is therefore considering several policies to increase the pace of urbanization, including the creation of several new large cities to accommodate some of the 600 million individuals who still live in rural China. Similarly, the government will phase out the hukou system of residency permits that now prevents migrants to the cities from obtaining full health care and education benefits.
Here’s the problem. China’s agricultural productivity has been decreasing for the last decade. China has followed the same path that the Soviets did. As Dr. Feldstein put it “shifting workers from low-productivity employment in agriculture to the urban labor force”. China did a better job of it because for two decades (1985-2005) they were able to reduce the rural labor force and increase agricultural productivity at the same time. Since then they haven’t. Unless they can increase productivity, further reducing agricultural labor will result in China producing less food. They have polluted their soil, water, and air to the extent that IMO that’s unlikely to happen.
Which is why they’ve been leasing farmland, e.g. in Ukraine and in Africa. That’s their strategy for maintaining their food self-sufficiency policy in the face of declining agricultural productivity.
There’s something to be concerned about: that the Chinese will use the same poor practices that has injured their own land elsewhere.
Pollution really does matter. It does not get addressed unless done so by the government, typical of externalities. And some people want to get rid of the EPA. Mind you, I am not saying the the EPA cannot overreach and make some bad rules. We can always argue about that. What is different is that now you have GOP politicians arguing for its total elimination.
Steve
As I should have made clear by now my solution for poor government is better government, not no government. I also think that government that is closer and smaller is better than government that is far away and too huge to wrestle with.
There’s only one known method for organizing the work of a large number of people over time: bureaucracy. The cost of operating a bureacracy rises faster than linearly with the size of the bureaucracy (n log n). Consequently, the larger the bureaucracy, the less inherently efficient it becomes. Additionally, the longer a bureaucracy persists the greater its propensity to lose sight of its original mission in favor of organizational objectives.
Yes, we need an EPA. Just not the one that we have. We need a smaller EPA with a narrower mission with greater oversight.