As we wind ourselves early every morning merrily through buckets of the world's leading English language media to think about and research Canada's Excellent Future a few key themes have now presented themselves.

They are the relative importance of immigration, the ability of countries to manage different world views within their own borders, and how countries tax themselves, define and measure instruments of social justice. Some interesting articles on Germany's immigration debate, waking up in the United Kingdom, Estonia's flat tax and economic success, and astonishingly strange and frightening articles about a country that seems to have lost itself, Japan.

In Cabaret Sally Bowles sings Maybe This Time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3rkLRJ0m0k as she falls into a relationship with Brian Roberts foreshadowing the inevitable sour end. This tune rang in my mind as the latest Israeli-Palestinian peace talks began.

Martin Wolf on how the timidity of the Obama Administration's response to the Great Recession has now come back to haunt it, and other accusatory pieces to round out the attack.

An amazing voice, Mao's interpreter interviewed over tea by the Economist,

Ever there is hope, and often disappointment, but what great things come from hope.

Quentin Peel reports that the book Deutschland schafft sich ab or 'Germany getting rid of itself'', an anti-immigration polemic written by a board member of the Bundesbank, has thrown Germany into a furious debate about immigration.

Immigration has long been a peculiarly sensitive subject to debate in Germany, tangled as it is with memories of the abuse of national identity and the per­secution of Jews, gypsies and other minorities during the Nazi times. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/78b11196-b5f1-11df-a048-00144feabdc0.html

Three interesting facts.

First, German citizenship is not available to anyone not born in Germany so immigrants cannot become citizens but their children can. Second, Germany has net migration of just over 2 people per 1,000 of its population. Third, Germany is the 39th country in world in terms of net migration (Canada is 16th) out of 72 countries that have net migration. 96 countries have net emigration.

Migration date -- This entry includes the figure for the difference between the number of persons entering and leaving a country during the year per 1,000 persons (based on midyear population).   https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2112rank.html?countryName=Germany&countryCode=gm&regionCode=eu&rank=39#gm

Having lived and travelled in some very different places, and suffered Canadians complaining about what a lousy life they have in Canada, the opening paragraph to this piece struck a very very deep chord.

I woke up as usual yesterday in the "geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death" – and very pleasant it was. I fed the cats, read the papers and carried an espresso into the back garden, congratulating myself on being a citizen of a country that doesn't stone women to death, hang gay men from cranes or murder people who change their religion. I mean, how great is that? I love living in the "selfish, hedonistic wasteland" that is London – both quotes come from one Edmund Adamus, who is apparently a senior British Catholic and an adviser to the Archbishop of Westminster – and I just wish more nations would follow our example.     http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/joan-smith/joan-smith-in-defence-of-modern-britain-2067886.html

Our opening image above is a 1875 American cartoon of Catholic priests as crocodiles coming to devour Protestant children. In those days Catholics, today Muslims. A little history casts a long shadow on the present.

As historians of American Catholicism, and Catholics, we are concerned to see the revival of a strain of nativism in the current controversy over the establishment of an Islamic center some blocks from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.  http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/aug/27/catholics-muslims-mosque-controversy/

Neil Reynolds on the prize from the economic freedom enjoyed by Estonia.

Jeffrey Sachs, the celebrated American economist who once imagined the eradication of poverty in our own times (The End of Poverty, 2005), made this putative deliverance from want contingent on greater alms from the rich, developed countries.   http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/economic-freedom-and-the-end-of-poverty/article1691877/

We have been arguing that making taxes smarter by making them simpler is a building block for an excellent future. Estonia's smarter tax system.

In the early 1990s, Rep. Dick Armey (RTX) proposed a flat tax. He would have junked the Internal Revenue Code and replaced it with a system designed to raise revenue in a much less destructive fashion. The core principles were to tax income at one low rate, to eliminate double taxation of saving and investment, and to wipe out the special preferences, credits, exemptions, deductions, and other loopholes that caused complexity, distortions, and corruption. http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v29n4/cpr29n4-1.html

 

Related.

Estonia's tax system in slides.  http://www.slideshare.net/rahamin/estonian-taxes-and-tax-structure-2010

Japan's many Prime Ministers.

Andy Warhol predicted that in the future everybody would be famous for 15 minutes. The Japanese are perfecting an even more egalitarian system under which everybody gets to spend 15 minutes as prime minister.  http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1347ab18-b5ff-11df-a048-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss

Going on vacation with virtual women.

This resort town, once popular with honeymooners, is turning to a new breed of romance seekers—virtual sweethearts. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703632304575451414209658940.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

 

Daddy's in the closet. The latest Japanese dead parent pension scam.

A 58-year-old woman is suspected of keeping her father's decomposed body inside a closet in their house in Izumi, Osaka Prefecture, for five years after his death and drawing off his pension, police said Wednesday.   http://search.japantimes.co.jp/rss/nn20100902a8.html

Thomas Friedman on what those that hope for peace are up against. 

President Obama is embarking on something I’ve never seen before — taking on two Missions Impossible at the same time.   http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/opinion/01friedman.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=globasasa211

Martin Wolf on the too little and the too late of recent American monetary and fiscal policy.

Suppose that the US presidential election of 1932 had, in fact, taken place in 1930, at an early stage in the Great Depression.    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5799a774-b534-11df-9af8-00144feabdc0.html

 

Michael Boskin on the failure of big government. 

The Obama administration's "summer of recovery" has morphed into a summer of economic discontent amid anxiety over the weakening economy.   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882304575465462926649950.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

But it really is structural isn't?

Faced with unemployment and underemployment running at 17 percent, the “Great Recession” is following a pattern that suggests the developed countries and especially the United States face a structural employment problem, rather than a cyclical one.  http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/hans-wagner/investing-in-the-face-of-structural-economic-changes

 

Sidney Rittenberg http://www.futureinreview.com/participants.php?galleryid=3433 on Mao and China.

Tea with the  Economist http://www.economist.com/blogs/multimedia/2010/08/how_china_has_changed&fsrc=nwl