By Robert Field
The first thing the New York Times should do is limit columnists to the publication of one article a month. No one can produce a worthwhile column each and every week.
For example, Paul Krugman has been writing variations of the same three or four articles, if that many, for a decade. (Perhaps I have too, but I only work for NewsLanc.)
An example of this and a travesty of journalism is Nicholas D. Krstof article in The New York Review titled “’China’s Worst Policy Mistake’?”
Unlike myself who was privileged in 1959 to do primary research as an undergraduate at Cal Berkeley for visiting professor Carlos Cipola who became a world authority on the subject, Kristof appears ignorant of demographic trends.
He makes the silly statement that the reduction of population by 200 million has negatively effected China’s economic growth. His error is confusing Gross Domestic Product, which is partly derivative of the size of population, with per capita income, which is how well off is each person. The per capita income of China has soared over the past 35 years. It would not have increased so rapidly had there been a 20% further increase in total population.
Kristoff claims that the number of children per family would have been reduced over time in any case. True enough that as public health improves so children are likely to live and the economy and society provide a retirement income, families will no longer feel the need for several children. (In most advanced Western countries, the population reproduction rate has fallen beneath the number necessary to retain current levels.) But the transition from the drop in the death rate and the slowing down of the birth rate takes decades and is known as the “Demographic Gap” .
From the point of view of economic conditions and long term benefits for the general population, the one child policy enabled the China to avoid a counter productive population spike.
In contrast, India will soon surpass China in population and, unlike China, is a basket case when it comes to improving the condition of the vast majority of its population. There is little spreading of prosperity to the general population or signs of economic and social reform in the largely squalid country that can’t even clean sewer from its streets, is slow to remove dead bodies from the sidewalks and whose children play in human and animal excrement.
Kristof confuses abuses that took place under the one child policy, a characteristic of the administration of almost all policies, with whether the policy itself was wise and useful.
Kristof does recognize that the sacrifice of girls for boys that produced a shortage of women has resulted in the betterment of conditions and empowerment of females.
I have great respect for Kristof and many of his writings. I just wish that he and other columnists (other than ‘yours truly’) were restricted to one a month and a book every two years so they had an opportunity to do some real research and greater reflection.
Well……LNP, for one, keeps printing their favorite columnists, of which they have several,(particularly on the liberal side) regardless of how redundant they are…..probably because LNP has precious few original thoughts of their own; and they have to fill space with something other than more and more ads.
I have begun to skip a lot of those columnists because they do in fact say basically the same thing over and over again. Two more pages of the paper not worth looking at. Once they leave out obituaries, there will no very little reason to buy this birdcage liner.