Last mailbag of the year

The China Shock, divided government, and grumps vs Glass Onion

Not a lot of news of any kind in the final week of the year, but some upbeat things I learned this week:

Solar output in 2021 exceeded the IPCC’s most optimistic forecast for 2030. DC is set to close the year with murders and carjackings both down about ten percent. After declining during the worst of the pandemic, the American population is growing again. There are large positive health effects of closing coal-fired power plants, even if the replacement is natural gas.

On to the questions and Happy New Year!

Lost Future: Why does it seem like immigrants assimilate much more smoothly in the US than in Europe?

The obvious reason is that the United States, like Canada and Australia and a few other settler societies, has a longstanding self-conception as a “nation of immigrants,” which means that even people who are very skeptical of immigration on a policy level tend to have a clear story about why “the good ones” are fine. We’re a country whose anti-immigrant populist leader was married …