The World

Deindustrial economies are not more efficient. They are merely importing other people’s efficiency and exporting their own purchasing power.

Angela Merkel, Germany’s former chancellor, used to say that Europe accounted for 7% of the world’s population, 25% of its GDP but 50% of its social spending.

Dr Murthy’s statistics suggest that women who drink occasionally have about a 16.5% lifetime risk of several common cancers, whereas those who have one drink a day—America’s recommended maximum—have about a 19% chance

In Sweden investment savings accounts (which are easy to use and lightly taxed) have produced a booming retail-investing scene. As a result, the country has become a hotspot for initial public offerings. In the past decade it enjoyed more listings than France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands combined.

Among the ten most valuable Nordic companies, the figure is just 2%, compared with 12% for big firms in the rest of Europe and 46% for those in America.

Back-of-the-envelope calculations by Citigroup, a bank, suggest tariffs that high could cut 2.4 percentage points off China’s growth rate, if the government did nothing to cushion the blow.

When your correspondent developed blisters, he bought her sticking plasters. “Every culture has their blister cure,” he said, “chacha liquor in Georgia, camel fat in Saudi Arabia.”

He is walking through “a golden age of migration”, he says. Almost everywhere, he has seen people on the move. He stumbled over the bones of migrants in the desert on the Ethiopia-Djibouti border; met Syrian refugees picking tomatoes in Jordan; noted the numbers of Punjabis who have left their villages. Today, he points out, one in seven people... See more