More protests and a guess at what it is giving it legs

So this was City Hall in Chicago yesterday.

So it seems there are a lot of seriously pissed off people in town, and across America, at the moment. Some pundits reckon its an incoherent cry of rage aimed at Wall Street. Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute reckons it is all down to a financial crisis driven by reckless mortgage lending, which in turn was driven by government policy. (So why did the financial crisis repeat itself in countries like Ireland, Spain and the UK where there was no such policy?).

The website of the 99%, the banner under which many of the protests have come, raises a lot of of different complaints, and it would be easy to dismiss them as incoherent or even as "jealous anti-capitalists" as one presidential candidate, Hermain Cain, is reported to have done. What is probably closer to the truth is that they would think of themselves as angry with capitalism--a subtle but important difference.

Toby Chow, a protester with SOUL (Southsiders Organised for Unity and Liberation) in Chicago, told me at a downtown protest on Tuesday that "class warfare" had been waged by the rich against the vast majority of Americans. This war, he said, involved the recent pushing of unsuitable mortgages, and can also be seen in the long-term stagnation of median wages, the enormous cost of education, and job insecurity through loss of manufacturing jobs abroad.

It may be the powerless cry of the unwashed masses, but they are no unruly rabble or "mob" as the protesters have been called. Mr Chow is currently studying for a PhD at the University of Chicago. The protests are not calling for capitalism to be torn down--they simply want for it to work for them and they feel short-changed.

For them, capitalism hasn't delivered what was promised. So its not simply about people losing their homes, or not getting jobs after paying tens of thousands of dollars for a degree, or the unaffordability of healthcare. Without wanting to sound too dramatic, it seems to be about the death of the American Dream.

While the protests may have been modelled on Tahir Square they have more in common with the riots in London and the protests in Greece. They are all about the same thing. Governments, all over the world, and for good reason, were forced to rescue financial institutions and parts of industry. To not do so would have been disastrous.

But the rescue made it clear who was ultimately bearing the risks being taken by these institutions: the ordinary person on the street. The people who clean the homes, empty the rubbish carts, and take on educational debts in the hope of bettering themselves.

Rich people have been variously tolerated or venerated, depending on whether you live in Europe or America. Not only do they generate great wealth but they are supposed to take risks that other people do not, and can in theory become poor again as a result. But the narrative now is that the wealthy will be saved, and the poor will be left to flounder. Thus it seems many Americans are falling out of love with the rich.

Whomever is really "behind" the protests, you can't organise a protest movement like this. Someone might have started the fire, but there is plenty of fuel to keep it going. It seems to me, a correspondent of less than a week in America, that many of the protesters feel the American Dream was a lie, that not only did they never have a real chance to be rich (because the system is stacked against them) but that ordinary Americans have carried the can for the unwise risks taken by the rich.

The dangerous thing about this idea is that much of the social contract in America revolves around the idea that anyone could get rich if they work hard enough. So what happens if the 99% (not the protest group but the actual 99%) start not to believe this?

Interesting times.

Welcome to classless America

Wall Street meets Main Street, today in Chicago at the annual meeting of the Mortgage Banker's Association.

They are shouting "lock us up, while the thieves are watching".

Our kind of town

Moving home and having a baby are supposed to be two of the most stressful things in life, so I'm not sure that doing both at once is the best idea I've ever had. Nonetheless, the lovely Leo Francis Hopkins was born on March 31st in London at 9lbs and 13 oz--a whopper by any measure--and we plan to move to Chicago in August this year.

Writing for the science department at The Economist has been an enormous privilege. I am sad that I've had to move on. But I did need to make a move, had I not I would have fossilised. Which is why it is so thrilling to be starting, in a few months, a new job as the next Midwest correspondent for The Economist.

The entire family is shipping out to one of the most glorious and exciting cities in the world. Home to a new mayor, a presidential re-election campaign, massive debts, crumbling infrastructure, and more than its share of failing schools. A town where petrol at a mere $4 a gallon shocks and disturbs the locals. A town where the water authority can say with a straight face that cleaning up the river (which is an open sewer) is a bad idea because it will increase the risk of accidental drowning. A town known around the world for its corrupt politicians and where a former governor is currently on trial. Its a rich and hearty stew to feed any journalist. And Chicago is a tiny part of a vast territory that I'll be covering in the next three years. Excited doesn't even begin to cover it.

Baby on board

Three weeks to go, and still not quite packed my hospital bag. Things may go quiet soon.

I'll be glad to see the back of this badge. It was kindly provided by Transport for London for me to wear in the hope that it would encourage people to give me a seat on the tube.

Do you know that it is far more embarrassing being ignored while wearing this badge than without it? Hard to believe that anyone would want to willfully ignore heavily pregnant women and bury noses in a book or newspaper, but its just a fact of life.

Fish Fight: Game Over

Hats off to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and his campaign to end the dumping of dead fish. In a few short months, the power of one celebrity has done more to shift the debate over fishing than a decade of argument, and a fine campaigning book and film by the journalist Charles Clover. Last night, on Channel 4 news, Fearnley-Whittingstall proved he is more than a pretty-boy chef presenter by turning up and having a debate with Bertie Armstrong, Chief Executive of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation. The chef came out well.

Essentially, by making the discussion about how Britain and Europe fishes so public he has reminded citizens that the fish belong to everyone, not just those who have historically scooped them out of the sea. And if we don't stand up for our rights to a rational fishing policy, we will never get a deal that means our children will have access to the same marine wealth that we do. Although the buzz-word is "sustainable use", it basically means not stealing from the next generation by taking too much today.

Mr Armstrong revealed a little secret when he complained about proposals to ban the dumping dead fish as unworkable in various ways. In The Times today he reveals the policy would only be compatible with a "fleet that's a fraction of the size it is now". In other words, Mr Armstrong is opposed to any policy that will reduce the number of fishing boats, and jobs for fishermen--which his organisation represents.

Mr Armstrong and the Scottish Fishermen are, of course, entitled to their opinions. But thanks to the campaign, and the opinions of the broader public, the day is rapidly approaching when the fishing industry is simply told it is 'Game Over'. An industry that is subsidised by you and I to cause havoc in our oceans.

Fishing boats are far more capable than they used to be, thanks to new technologies. So we need fewer boats and fewer fishermen than we used to. I can't imagine any other industry insisting on its right to remain stuck in the previous century and getting away with it. If a less damaging fishing industry means fewer jobs for fishermen, this is unfortunate but necessary.

An article about doctoral degrees hits a nerve

Sometimes it is easy to predict the articles will be popular, and sometimes an article unexpectedly hits a nerve. The essay composed for the Christmas edition of The Economist about doctoral degrees was always going to attract a little interest, but no idea how wildly popular it would be.

I think the reasons for this speak to an underlying problem: the commoditisation of academic research work. It looks at what happens to those who are hoovered up by academia to work on projects where a future career is unlikely.

In less than a month, this piece has had over 700,000 hits on the web page alone. It has featured in our list of the top ten most read articles for three weeks, and as of today still remains one of the ten most recommended items on the website. To put the phenomenal success of this article in context, well read articles can generally expect around 150K hits online in a week.

In the first week this article received about twice this number of hits, and has continued to maintain high levels of interest. In only a week this article became the highest hitting article of the entire year (maybe longer if we actually had looked back any further).

The disposable academic
Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time
Dec 16th 2010

Increase of tuberculosis linked with sin?

I find this moderately depressing. If I do a Google search on "antibiotic resistance in bacteria", the top hit is from a website called 'Answers', made to look a bit like Answers.com but with the easily missable subtitle 'building a biblical worldview'.

Most of the text is deceptively informative and harmless and you might read the entire thing oblivious until reaching the final line:

"Mutation and natural selection, thought to be the driving forces of evolution, only lead to a loss of functional systems. Therefore, antibiotic resistance of bacteria is not an example of evolution in action but rather variation within a bacterial kind. It is also a testimony to the wonderful design God gave bacteria, master adapters and survivors in a sin-cursed world."

If you've ever wondered why the world is struggling to contain antibiotic resistance, look no further than the accursed sinners afflicting our planet. Presumably Zsa Zsa Gabor's could have avoided a leg amputation if she had prayed more?