French Press: American Racism: We’ve Got So Very Far to Go

Today let’s dive into one of the toughest questions of our religious, cultural, and political lives. While we write and print millions of words about race in America, why is it still so hard to have a truly respectful, decent, and humble dialogue about perhaps the most complicated and contentious issue in American life? It’s a huge topic, but let’s start with what I believe is a true principle of human nature, a maxim called Miles’s law: Where you stand depends on where you sit. [...]

Yet millions of Americans read the accusation that America is beset with “systemic racism” and hear a simpler and more direct meaning of the term—you’re saying our systems (and by implication the people in them) are racist. But that’s completely contrary to their experience. They think, “How can it be that ‘the system is racist’ when I just left a corporate diversity training seminar, I work at an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, my son’s college professors are constantly telling him to ‘check his privilege,’ and no one I know is a bigot? It seems to me that the most powerful actors in ‘the system’ are saying the same things—don’t be racist.” [...]

For example, if you’re a conservative, you’re likely quite aware that the Obama Department of Justice decisively debunked the “hands-up, don’t-shoot” narrative of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. You’re less likely to remember that there was a second Ferguson report, one that found Ferguson’s police department was focused on raising revenue more than increasing public safety, and it used its poor, disproportionately black citizens as virtual ATMs, raising money through traffic stops, citations, and even arrest warrants. It painted a shocking picture of abuse of power.

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Social Europe: Rekindled north-south stereotypes are harmful for the European project

Alarmingly, north-south stereotypes have been rekindled in terms of how the pandemic has been handled by various European countries, resonating with the noxious discourse of austerity during the eurozone crisis. The dominant political rhetoric in the European north and the EU institutions has been one of moral tales contrasting the ‘frugal north’ with the ‘imprudent, reckless south’. [...]

In southern-European member states, the media have meanwhile been aflame with indignation and Euroscepticism is rapidly increasing among their 130 million citizens, fuelling populist narratives, for instance in Italy. Such anger stems not so much from the EU’s (expected) slow response—the usual cacophony, the lack of agreement, the limits to sanitary aid and the refusal to mutualise the debt and approve eurobonds—but the disdainful declarations on the part of several member-state leaders. [...]

Creditors or debtors, we all need each other to keep the European economy afloat in an increasingly competitive global context. There is no future based on destructive derision and disrespect. Humiliating southern citizens threatens the viability of the union, on top of the nationalistic tensions already generated by ‘Brexit’.

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Social Europe: Seven ‘surprising’ facts about the Italian economy

A country lives beyond its means if it imports significantly more goods and services than it exports over the long term. A country that exports as much as it imports is not however living beyond its means, as production and consumption are in line. Indeed, Italy has been recording export surpluses since 2012. Italy’s export surpluses are by no means only due to tourism, as the country exports more industrial goods than it imports. The Italian economy therefore consumes less than it produces—it lives below its means.

If the Italian economy as a whole has not been living beyond its means, the problem of debt must be confined to the public sector. This is indeed the case: Italy’s private-sector debt relative to gross domestic product is relatively low by the standards of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This also illustrates that high debt-to-GDP ratios are not a problem across all sectors of the Italian economy. [...]

Italy overtook the United Kingdom in 1969 and France in 1979 in per capita purchasing power. In 2000, Italy’s average standard of living was virtually equal to that of Germany (98.6 per cent of its GDP per head). But after the introduction of the euro in 1999, the country fell behind the UK (in 2002) and France (in 2005) once more. By 2019, Italian per capita income was more than 20 per cent below that of Germany. [...]

‘Structural reforms’ from the market-liberal playbook not only reduced inflation in the 1990s. They may also have contributed to reducing unemployment, as the rate in Italy was lower than in Germany and France when the financial crisis hit in 2008. But cheap labour also diminished incentives for Italian companies to make labour-saving investments, key to the productivity improvements which are the basis for long-term growth and rising incomes. Both austerity and market-liberal reforms have inhibited Italy’s productivity growth and, on balance, may have brought more macroeconomic damage than benefits.

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euronews: Europeans 'radically' reassessing view on world order due to COVID-19, research finds

Drawing on data from nine EU member states — which together comprise two-thirds of the bloc's population — research from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) found that 63 per cent of Europeans are in favour of more EU cooperation to tackle the pandemic and other issues of global significance.

The authors found that although some commentators predicted that the pandemic would lead to a surge in Euroscepticism and nationalism as borders were shut, the opposite is true. Large majorities of people in all surveyed countries said that they are now more firmly convinced of the need for further EU cooperation than they were before the crisis. [...]

Across all nine countries surveyed — Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden — only 29 per cent of respondents have greater confidence in their government. In contrast, 33 per cent have lost confidence in the power of government. [...]

But the "Strategic Sovereigntists" made up the biggest group with 42 per cent of respondents. They believe that the EU's relevance will be dependent on its capacity to act as a cohesive bloc.

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FiveThirtyEight: New Polling Shows Trump’s Electoral College Advantage Is Slipping

The Times/Siena is one of the most highly-rated pollsters in FiveThirtyEight’s Pollster Ratings — one of six with an A+ mark — so these new surveys did adjust our averages a bit, most notably in Pennsylvania. There had been few high-quality polls conducted in the Keystone State, so our polling average did shift roughly 1.5 points in Biden’s favor because of the Times/Siena survey, which found Biden up by 10 points.

It wasn’t just the Times/Siena survey that found Biden up, either. We got two more polls of Pennsylvania today that showed Biden with double-digit leads. One from GOP pollster Hodas & Associates gave Biden a 12-point lead, and one from Redfield & Wilton Strategies put him up 10 points. [...]

But perhaps what’s even more significant about this batch of recent polls is that Trump’s possible Electoral College advantage is slipping. Biden doesn’t lead by as much in most of the battleground states as he does nationally, but his leads are big enough — anywhere from 5 points in Arizona to 9 points in Nevada — that it won’t matter that many battleground states lean to the right of the country.[...]

And the fact that Biden now has multiple paths to the White House is the biggest problem facing Trump. He needs a notable shift in voter sentiment that makes the national environment less favorable for Biden. With four months to go, that’s quite possible, but at the moment, our polling averages suggest that he’s in a lot of trouble.

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