World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

In an earlier post, I mentioned the outbreak of a new strain of influenza in China.  There have not been any independent reports of the outbreak, but apparently there are some curious aspects of the outbreak that need to be explained.   As I suggested earlier, there is no reason to be especially worried about the outbreak, but the Chinese government needs to respond more effectively to these questions if it is to be trusted with serious public health matters.   In a fully globalized world, there is no such thing as a local problem with a contagious disease.

The Congressional Research Service argued last year that “U.S. income distribution appears to be among the most unequal of all major industrialized countries and the United States appears to be among the nations experiencing the greatest increases in measures of income.”  The inequality undermines any  real progress toward an economic recovery since demand is very slow to pick up–businesses are therefore reluctant to make capital investments to increase production.  Inequality also undermines the legitimacy of the political and economic system if people perceive the economic game to be rigged in favor of the wealthy.  Addressing income inequality is perhaps te most urgent issue facing the US today.