Africa Moves Ahead on Nuclear Power, The West Falls Further Behind

 

I consider myself an eco-modernist.  I understand the science behind climate change.  But I don’t think either panic or deindustrialization is necessary to address it.  Rather, I believe that technology can allow us to reduce carbon emissions and at the same time increase our material standard of living. 

The most promising alternative to fossil fuels is nuclear power.  Unfortunately, government regulation and environmentalist scaremongering has prevented the development of new commercial nuclear facilities in the United States and Europe for the last fifty years.

Fortunately, the rest of the world is not so backward looking.  Commercial nuclear development is taking off in Africa. 

African economies are growing rapidly and so is their demand for reliable electricity that can power industry and commercial activities.  Wind and solar can’t do that. 

Here’s a roundup of commercial nuclear development in North and East Africa. 

Egypt is building a mammoth 4,800 MW plant on the Mediterranean coast.  The El Dabaa plant is being financed with assistance from Russia. 

Four East African countries have announced plans to develop commercial scale nuclear power plants to support economic growth.

Uganda is leading the way.  Uganda is planning a 2000 MW nuclear power plant with the first 1000 MW of capacity to be brought online in 2031.

Rwanda signed an agreement with a German-Canadian company to develop a nuclear power test facility. 

Kenya plans to start construction on a 1000 MW commercial nuclear plan in 2027. 

Burinka Faso is working with Russian on the development of commercial nuclear. 

And Tanzania is looking into developing commercial nuclear facilities in conjunction with Russia. 

Meanwhile, Germany shut down its last three nuclear plants this year.  In their place, Germany has ramped up generation from carbon-emitting coal. 

Nuclear energy is yet another industry where the United States is far behind Russia and China.  None of the African projects are being developed by U.S. firms.  Commercial nuclear has become another industry of the future where the United States is not competitive.

Update: China brings the world's first Generation IV nuclear reactor online.

Young Voters Rally to Conservative Parties in the USA, Argentina and Canada

 

Young Americans are turning thumbs down to the statist policies of the Democrats.  Polls show Trump leading Biden among 18-35 year olds.  But it’s not just the USA.  Young people are rejecting socialism and the parties of the left throughout the world.

The most recent NBC poll shows Donald Trump beating Joe Biden by four points among 18 to 35 year olds.  Trump also has a four point margin over Biden among all voters.

This is a seismic shift in the views of young voters.  In the 2020 election, Biden had a 26 point lead among voters between the ages of 18 and 35 reports the Daily Mail 

But its not just the United States. 

Young people are rallying to candidates with a conservative and free market message throughout the world.

Young voters were the key to libertarian Javier Milei’s victory in the Argentine presidential election. 

Milei promised to stop inflation through a sound money policy; cut public spending by 15 percent; and stop rampant corruption.

Milei got 56 percent of the vote in the November 19 election.

In his victory speech, Milei said that his victory marks the beginning of the reconstruction of Argentina. 

“Today we retake the path that made this country great.  Today we embrace the ideas of libertarianism.  The model of decadence has come to an end.”

Argentina was once one of the richest countries in the world.  Today, more than half of all Argentines are poor or destitute.  Inflation is 143 percent a year.  The

And it doesn’t stop there.

North of the border, in Canada, Pierre Poilievre’s free market message is winning over young voters. 

Poilievre’s stock speeches address issues like inflation and loose monetary policy; Canada’s housing shortage, free speech and cutting Canada’s bloated and oppressive government bureaucracy.  He’s an eco-modernist backing technological solutions, not taxes, to the climate change question. 

And importantly, Poilievre’s upbeat and making it fun to be a conservative again. 

Young people throughout the world are rejecting socialism and the bureaucratic, high tax parties of the left.  This includes Joe Biden and the Democrats. 

Instead, young voters are putting their hopes in pro-freedom, pro-opportunity parties in much of the world.  This is good news for parties on the right.  Now these parties need to deliver.

 

Share of Young Adults Living with Parents Highest in 80 Years

 

The percentage of young adults that live with their parents is higher now than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Almost one in two now live with parents.

The inability of young people to form their own households is a long-term negative for American society.

Moving out of one’s parent’s home is an important marker on the road to independent adulthood.

But today, young people are finding it difficult to strike out on their own. 

Young people were harder hit than older Americans from job and income losses from the COVID lockdowns.  Now they’re facing an unstable job market, the hangover from the high cost of college and student debt, and falling income in real terms.

However, the biggest barrier to independent living is probably sky-high rental and housing prices.

Marriage and family are for most people a source of personal happiness and a fulfilling life.

The inability of young people to form their own households will inhibit marriage and birth rates.  Married couples want their own space and to live their lives outside of parental authority.  Unaffordable rents and home prices are causing young people to delay getting married and having children.

Though marriage rates and average family size have declined over the past fifty years, Americans still want the joys of family life. 

In fact, the percentage of Americans that view three or more children as ideal in 2023 is higher than at any time since the start of the 1970s.  According to Gallup, almost 50 percent of Americans view three or more children as ideal.  Only 2 percent of Americans view zero children as ideal.

The early years of adulthood are a critical time in our lives.  Until now, it is the stage of life in which so many important life decisions are made.

High housing costs and a bad economy limit the flexibility of young Americans to explore life’s possibilities including those concerning marriage and family and to make those choices that produce the greatest happiness and fulfilment in the long-run.

 

Gen Z on the Move

 

New report from the consulting firm Oliver Wyman has lots of interesting data on what young people in the United States and the United Kingdom look for in a job.  

An astonishing 62 percent of Gen Z workers are at least passively looking for a job as are 60 percent of Millennials (graphic below).  

Some other key findings

- Young people today are twice as likely to struggle with mental health issues as older workers.

- 41 percent of men and 48 percent of women have a side hustle of some sort whether it be a second formal or informal job.  

A key takeaway form the study is that young people want flexibility.  As I point out in my own research, the rigid environment of unionized workplaces is unlikely to provide the flexibility that young people need.

The United States should be freeing up workers, not forcing them into rigid employment relationships.  This is a big problem for the Democratic party as it pits one of their most important voting blocks (younger people) against one of their main funders (labor unions). 

The Economic Plight of Chinese Youth Demonstrates Yet Again That Socialism Doesn’t Work

 

Surveys show that roughly half of the young people in America have a positive view of socialism.  Yet socialism has failed everywhere it’s been tried. 

Typically, it is young people that are harmed the most by socialist economic policies.  The economic plight of young people in China is just one recent example.

If there’s anyplace that socialism should work for young people, it’s China.  China economy has been centrally planned and managed since1949, longer than any other nation on earth. 

Yet young people in China are having a difficult go of it.  Jobs are scarce, youth unemployment high. 

It’s so bad in China cities that young people have begun sharing beds with strangers just to make ends meet.  Young Chinese call this “hot bedding”. 

Hot bedding with a stranger is not a good thing.  It’s the kind of thing you might have seen in a Three Stooges short, not a romantic rendezvous. 

Hot bedding has come common because job opportunities for young people in China are so poor and rents so high.   

Below is China’s youth unemployment series for the last five years as reported by the New York Times. 

By comparison, the youth unemployment rate in the United States is 8.7 percent.

Notice that the unemployment rate for older Chinese has actually ticked down a bit over the last five years.  Why is rising unemployment in China a more widespread phenomena?

Simple.  Patronage and work rules in China protect more senior workers with greater political connections.  The Chinese have a name for that: The Iron Rice Bowl. 

That works out great for older workers.  They have lifetime sinecures. 

But when the economy slows, as it has in China, someone has to bear the downside. 

Instead of sharing the risk of job loss throughout the workforce, patronage places all of the downside risk on younger people. 

Because of their relatively short tenure in the workforce, younger workers and new entrants have had fewer opportunities to acquire political connections within their own organization.  Note that I’m not using “political” in the ideological sense.  Rather “political” refers to relationships which may involve the local Communist Party apparatus, or it could just be relationships with influential managers and other employees.

Union seniority rules in the United States work the same way.  They protect the jobs of some but they also place the entire risk of job loss on younger workers with fewer years of experience.

To make matters worse, the Chinese government has decided to cover up the youth unemployment problem by discontinuing publication of youth unemployment statistics. 

In socialist economies, governments have more control over everything including the media. 

Control of the media allows the ruling party to squelch any news that makes the ruling powers look bad. 

That’s exactly what’s happening in China.  As the Chinese economy slows, inconvenient economic data series disappear.

This week China announced that it was no longer going to publish the youth unemployment rate.

That doesn’t solve the problem.  That just covers it up.  

Despite so much evidence on the failures of socialism, large numbers of young Americans are sympathetic to socialist ideas.  Many even endorse communism.

A recent survey found that 49 percent of Gen Z had a favorable view of socialism and a third supported the gradual elimination of capitalism in the United States.   

18 percent of Gen Z and 13 percent of Millennials think communism is a fairer system than capitalism and deserves consideration in America.

As Marion Smith, the Executive Director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation put it, the findings of the survey demonstrates “a total failure of our education system, not just in schools but also a basic dishonesty in our media and popular culture. When one-in-four Americans want to eliminate capitalism and embrace socialism, we know that we have failed to educate about the historical and moral failings of these ideologies.”

 Indeed.

New Survey Shows Gen Z is Remarkably Career Focused

 

There's a new survey on the career goals and higher education needs of Gen Z high schoolers out from Question the Quo.  The results show that younger Americans are very much focused on their careers and the practical education requirements necessary to achieve those goals.  

Findings were published in June 2023.  Fieldwork was done in January 2023.

Some high level takeaways from their January 2023 survey.  

- 65 percent think that some education after high school is necessary however 52 percent are considering a four year college, down from 65 percent in their February 2020 survey.  The letter follows a general decline in perceived value of a four year college experience and degree among the general population.

- Interest in community college, on-the-job training and career and technical education are all up from February 2020.

- Students eel unprepared for the next step.  Only 13 percent feel prepared for their next step after high school.  

- 63 percent say that they need more guidance on managing their finances.  

I personally am a big advocate for financial education.  There was a bill put forth in the Wisconsin legislature that would require some form of financial education in high schools.  Unfortunately, that bill was not enacted.   

- 53 percent want more formalized learning throughout their lives, up from 46 percent in 2021.  

Opportunities for formalized learning throughout one's career are important.  

My own view is that the Baby Boom generation, of which I am a part, was not good (or motivated) to develop others.  The Baby Boom was a large generation.  When generations are large, there's more competition for opportunities.  

The jobs website Indeed points out the competitive nature of the Baby Boomers.         

Up and coming generations are smaller and more interested in getting along rather than getting ahead.  This has virtues as well as drawbacks.  Nevertheless, successful employers need to meet their workers where they are and adapt to their desires.  Opportunities for life-long learning are one such area where employers need to step up their game.  

#Bidenomicsfail: Just 1 in 3 Gen Zs Say They Can Handle a $400 Emergency Expense

 

Joe Biden wants us to think that the economy is doing great.  In fact, the Biden economy has large numbers of Americans living on the edge. 

Morning Consult survey found that only 32 percent of Gen Z report that they could pay for an unanticipated emergency expense with cash.  Just two quarters ago, 39 percent of Gen Z could handle a $400 emergency expense. 

The normal pattern of saving over one’s lifetime is that as one ages holdings of financial assets should grow as one saves for retirement. 

However, the Morning Consult survey shows that Millennials and Gen X are making very little progress in building wealth.  

The survey found that only 36 percent of Millennials and 41 percent of Gen X said that they could handle an unanticipated $400 expense.  These percentages are not materially different from Gen Z. 

Seen differently, Gen Xers are now more than twenty years into their adult lives and their finances are not much more stable than the finances of new college graduates. 

 

The survey also asked whether the $400 expense would require putting off payment of other bills.  38 percent of Gen Z and 39 percent of Millennials and Gen X would have to put off payment of other bills. 

It’s not just Americans.  A video posed by TikTok user Simone (@simonesdays) shows how after paying taxes and bills, the paycheck from her CAD75,000 corporate job leaves her with exactly in $80 spending money for the next two weeks. 

Her TikTok video has been viewed 2.7 million times and has 184,000 likes as of Friday the 4th. 

Here are some of the comments on her TikTok page from other young people struggling to get by. 

At the core of the financial struggles of young A

mericans is a lack of economic opportunity.  The inability of the Millennials and Gen X to improve their finances so that they are closer to the Baby Boomers than Gen Z is particularly concerning.