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Michael Li 李之樸 Profile picture
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19 Jan, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Worth noting that Manchin is talking here about $4 trillion over *ten* years. By contrast, we’ve spent over $6.4 trillion on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
To compare, China *did* spend on infrastructure, in particular as part of its response to the Great Recession. Below (left) the Beijing subway in 2003 and (right) what it looks like today (with 2021 extension).
China also has spent massively on high-speed rail since 2008 - and is still doing so (the size of China's high-speed rail network will double again in the this decade).
So Manchin’s $4 trillion over ten years may sound big. But compared to the endless wars we’ve spent massively on, at least we would end up with some return if done right.

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Michael Li 李之樸 Profile picture
20 Jan
It goes without saying that the 1776 Commission doesn’t deal honestly or in depth about the causes of the American Revolution (see below).

But my view is most liberals don’t either. The genesis of the Revolution is mostly glossed over by both left and right. Image
Maybe at most you get something about taxes or the lack of representation in Parliament, but then you swiftly move on to ‘we’re now independent and drafting a constitution.’ But the Revolution’s roots bear looking at - because they can be pretty dark.
And for that darkness, you need look no further than the litany of complaints in the Declaration of Independence itself. To wit:
Read 5 tweets
Michael Li 李之樸 Profile picture
18 Jan
In our modern celebrations of Dr. King, it can become easy to conflate Dr. King with the civil rights movement writ large. But it’s important to remember how messy & sometimes fraught movement politics were - w/ often sharp disagreements based on policy, tactics & personalities.
And it wasn’t just MLK vs. Malcolm X or later the Black Panthers. Even things like the the sit-ins and the Selma march were very controversial in some quarters at the time.
And some people who did key work didn’t get credit at the time (women in particular). Some still haven’t been fully recognized.
Read 4 tweets
Michael Li 李之樸 Profile picture
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.
Read 4 tweets
Michael Li 李之樸 Profile picture
16 Jan
The fact that so many of these people are being arrested based on their own social media posts is 💯
Another example:
And then there is this Dallas realtor, whose social media posts not only show her taking part in the attack on the Capitol but taking time to pause & promote her real estate business
Read 4 tweets
Michael Li 李之樸 Profile picture
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) Image
Read 4 tweets
Michael Li 李之樸 Profile picture
2 Jan
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.
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.
Read 4 tweets

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