More from @mcpli

Michael Li 李之樸

@mcpli

17 Jan

In a new CBS poll, 71% of Americans say US democracy is threatened vs only 29% who describe it was secure. cbsnews.com/amp/news/joe-b…

Perhaps a starker figure, a majority of Americans in the poll (54%) say the biggest threat to the American way of life is other people in America.

The view that other Americans are the biggest threat to the American way of life is pretty consistent across party lines - with 53% of Democrats, 56% of Republicans, and 58% of independents agreeing.

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Michael Li 李之樸

@mcpli

15 Jan

This paper does a good job putting in perspective the rapid growth of the Chinese middle class in recent decades.

In 2006, ~90 million people in China were middle class by western standards (in a country of 1.3 billion). Today, it’s almost 800 million.

brookings.edu/wp-content/upl…

And as the paper notes, by 2027, the Chinese middle class (again, that’s people who are middle class by western standards) is expected to rise to 1.2 billion.

And to visualize the magnitude of that shift, Chinese middle-class consumer spending is already 1.5 times that of US middle-class spending ($7.3 trillion in 2020 vs. $4.7 trillion)

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Michael Li 李之樸

@mcpli

2 Jan

https://twitter.com/wilcoxnmp/status/1345187071481303042

I mean “parent’s sibling” does seem more efficient from a drafting standpoint than saying “parent’s brother, sister, step-brother, or step-sister.” Having drafted conflicts language in other contexts, it gets pretty clunky fast.

https://twitter.com/wilcoxnmp/status/1345187071481303042

Bonus P.S., The Chinese words to describe family relations are *way* more complicated than those in English, with differences based not only on whether the person is older or younger but which side of the family they come from. blog.tutorming.com/mandarin-chine…

The point being, the things that we sometimes think of being structurally inherent in the make up of the universe are just cultural practices. There are examples on both the left and right of examples of this.

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Michael Li 李之樸

@mcpli

1 Jan

If folks are thinking about resolutions for 2021, I have one to offer: Get to know Asia better - because we’re coming up on a point in history when Asia and its peoples will increasingly no longer be at the periphery but a central protagonist in what comes next. 1/

Yet Asia is a region that most Americans and westerners in general understand only shallowly, if at all. We don’t read about it, don’t travel there (the beaches of Thailand don’t count), think about or study its languages or culture, or follow its news. 2/

And when we do think about it, it is more often than not through simplistic & outdated frames and racist tropes.

When confronted with evidence of Asia’s growing prominence, our reaction so often is an unproductive fear, often verging on paranoia. 3/

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Michael Li 李之樸

@mcpli

1 Jan

When apportionment counts come in from the Census Bureau, it's likely that they will show that New York & Texas have virtually swapped places since 1970 - with NYS going from 39 to 25 congressional districts and Texas from 24 to 39 in that time. #txlege

Growth in the size of congressional delegations since 1970 (assuming this decade’s apportionment comes in as expected):

AZ +150%
FL +93%
TX +63%
OR +50%
WA +42%
GA +40%
NC +27%
CA +21%

#txlege

States with the biggest decreases in congressional delegation size since 1970 (assuming 2020 numbers come in as expected):

IL -50%
RI -50%
NY -36%
OH -35%
IA -33%
MI -32%
PA -32%

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