Economist, Jan 13, 2018

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There is no need to read the rest of any below.

(1) Briefing: India's economy | The Missing Middle Class. There is a hole where India's middle class should be. That should worry the government and companies.

(2) Legal weed | StatCannabis. Government accountants start to measure the cannabis economy.

paragraph 1: "IF AN agency of your government asked whether you had recently smoked a joint and how much you paid for itm would you tell it? Canada's statistics agency, informally known as StatCan [officially: Statistics Canada; 1971- ; based in Ottawa], is about to find out what that country's citizens will do. On Jan 23rd it will invite Canadians to disclose their cannabis habits anonymously through an app.Its nosiness is entirely professional. Canada's government, led by Justin Trudeau, plans to legalise the recreational use of cannabis by July 1st. StatCan needs reliable data in order to incorporate the newly respectable consumer-goods sector into national account.

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(3) Restore and Forget | Why the Meiji restoration of 1868 still divides Japan.
https://www.economist.com/news/a ... m-why-modern-japans

Quote:

"The [reformist]  leaders launched their coup [against shogunate] with the slogan 'Revere the emperor, expel the barbarians.' * * * As for the second part, far from expelling the barbarians, the new leaders embraced them,

"For Shinzo Abe, Japan's current prime minister, the restoration resonates. Mr Abe comes from Yamaguchi [山口県], known in feudal times as Chōshū [Domain 長州藩]. Leaders from Choshu were at the head of the revolution. Mr Abe once told this columnist he identified with them * * * Mr Abe sees lessons in all this, and since he came to office in 2012 he has appeared to be in a tearing hurry to implement them. At home Japan is imperilled by a weak economy, a risk-averse establishment and an ageing, shrinking population. Overseas, China threatens Japan not just in economic terms * * * The government has gone all-out to promote the 150th anniversary [of restoration]

after Meiji restoration: "women, points out Tomomi Yamaguchi [山口 智美] of Montana State University, were kept down. They could not vote, divorce or own property. Most Japanese women find little appeal in the nostalgic push by Mr Abe's Liberal Democratic Party to return to the Meiji era's 'family values.'

Note: Below are from the same en.wikipedia page for women's suffrage:
(a) "Although women were allowed to vote in some prefectures in 1880, women's suffrage was enacted at a national level in 1945."
(b) UK: 1918 for women over 30 with properties
(c) "Limited voting rights were gained by women in * * * western US states in the late 19th century. * * * The United States gave women equal voting rights in all states with the Nineteenth Amendment ratified in 1920."

(4) Agriculture | Dreaming Big. Chinese farming is changing profoundly, but gradually.
(Government will lower guaranteed sum for wheat, having scrapped minimum prices for maize and rapeseed in 2015)

four consecutive paragraphs:

"China grows enough staples to feed its 1.4bn people. The rice crop of 2017 was a record; output of grains has risen more than 40% since 2003. Cereal yields per hectare are higher than Canada's. This is a stunning success for a country where millions starved in Mao's Great Leap Forward, and has freed millions from the rural grind to join China's industrial revolution.  

"But these feats on the farm have come at a cost. China uses twice as much fertiliser and pesticide per hectare as the world average, contributing to catastrophic levels of soil pollution. In northern China, the country's bread basket, wheat farmers use far more water than this bone-dry region can afford or replace. And because food quantity has taken priority over quality * * *  

"The rural economy remains backward. A recent agricultural census showed there were 314m people employed in farming in 2016. That is 40% of China's workforce [not population]. Yet agriculture accounts for less than 9% of GDP, which means that rural labour is still extremely unproductive.

"The farming population fell by 100m in the decade to 2006 but only 28m in the following ten years. * * * In 2016 more than half of all farmers were over 55 and almost half had only a primary education.