Future of healthcare – GZERO Media
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Big changes in healthcare—will they change your financial life? Experts answer key questions to help you and your employees prepare for rising costs and offer practical ideas for saving and planning for healthcare at any age.
A recent spate of violent crimes in New York City has made national headlines. Since Eric Adams was sworn in four weeks ago as mayor of America’s most populous city, violence on the streets — and the subways — has again become a major political focus. Things got even more heated this week, when two young cops were killed while responding to a domestic dispute in Harlem.
Crime is not only a dominant political issue in New York. It also resonates more broadly with American voters worried over increased lawlessness and unrest. Indeed, crime is already shaping up to be a wedge issue as Republicans vie to win control of the US Congress this November.
What’s causing the uptick in crime? America has experienced a crime wave since the pandemic started. Violent crimes – murder, robberies, assault, and rape – were up 3 percent in 2020, while the national murder rate spiked by 25 percent from the previous year. Still, this comes as the national crime rate has dropped significantly since the 1990s.
Pandemic-induced instability is responsible, in large part, for pushing crime rates up in big cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. For months, lockdowns and layoffs kept vulnerable youth and young adults out of productive work and school environments, while also putting huge economic pressures on already-stretched families.
What’s more, general insecurity created by the public health crisis — including a change in policing practices — caused not only a run on toilet paper, but also on guns. An estimated 20 million guns were sold in the US in 2020, likely contributing to a rise in urban gun violence. Domestic violence also soared after lockdown orders were enforced in March 2020, increasing 8.1 percent from pre-pandemic levels.
But politically, the perception of crime is often more consequential than crime statistics.
Polls show that most voters think that crime is a major issue. A whopping 58 percent of Americans surveyed by Ipsos think the situation is worse now than in the early 1990s, when nationwide violence prompted Congress to pass the biggest crime bill in US history.
Anxieties about crime, stability, and disorder could also be linked to broader concerns about the state of the US economy. Inflation is at a four-decade high, leading to a general sense of malaise among the electorate. Revealingly, just 21 percent of Americans now say that they are satisfied with the way things are headed in the country.
Crime has long been a wedge issue in US politics. Richard Nixon famously ran on a law-and-order platform in 1968, when fear of anarchy and racial unrest was pronounced. More recently, Donald Trump made tackling crime a cornerstone of his presidency, vowing to end “American carnage.”
In politics, timing is everything. The perception that Biden has not handled public safety well is a boon for Republicans ahead of the November midterms. Indeed, some Republicans are already drawing on people’s anxieties about lawlessness to try and win back middle-class voters in the suburbs — the new political battleground.
Historical precedent is also on the GOP’s side: for decades, voters have seen Republicans as more adept at handling crime. Meanwhile, recent attempts by the left flank of the Democratic Party to address systemic racism by slashing the police budget — using the slogan “defund the police” — has not resonated with the majority of Americans, including swing suburban voters who live in areas where public safety is perceived to be deteriorating.
Crime might be up somewhat in urban areas. But what matters more is that most Americans think things are dire – and they don’t trust current leadership to handle the disorder.
Angela Merkel is retired — but only from politics. Still, maybe she’s not as good at other jobs as she was as German chancellor.
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What does Stephen Breyer’s retirement mean for President Biden? Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group’s coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, discusses how Biden and the Democrats will likely handle the Supreme Court nomination process.
What does Stephen Breyer’s retirement mean for President Biden?
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announced retirement this week, giving Biden the opportunity to appoint a new justice and maintain the balance on the court, which is currently divided 6-3, favoring Republican appointees. Whoever Biden nominates is extremely unlikely to get even a single Republican vote, but the nominee is likely to come relatively quickly and be confirmed well before Republicans take the Senate in the November midterm elections.
Biden has already pledged to nominating a Black woman to the court, which significantly narrows the field of potential nominees given the limited number of Black women in the federal judiciary. And further complicating things is the fact he faces political constraints in a 50/50 Senate, meaning that he has to find somebody with relatively moderate views or a very thin record in order to appeal to a small number of Senate Democrats who have attempted to define their own political brands separate from the rest of the party.
The most important of these is Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the senators from West Virginia and Arizona, who have been major roadblocks this year for President Biden’s fiscal agenda and a voting reform bill. There are a handful of red lines on social issues that really matter that could be an issue for Manchin in particular, including on guns and abortion. Biden’s record on judicial nominees so far has been very strong with almost all of his judges getting confirmed, even on close party lines and this one’s likely to be no different, but the high stakes and high profile of this nomination could end up derailing other parts of the Biden agenda, in particular, Build Back Better fiscal policy if Biden has to spend political capital with Manchin in order to get his nominee confirmed.
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer is seen during a group portrait session for the new full court at the Supreme Court in Washington, U.S., November 30, 2018.
Biden gets a Supreme Court pick. US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announced on Wednesday that he’ll retire later this year, probably before the November midterms. If he does, President Joe Biden will nominate Breyer’s replacement. The nominee will presumably be the first Black woman on the court, as Biden promised during his election campaign. Biden could pick a candidate that can win enthusiastic praise from the progressive wing of his party. That might allow him more political space to rework the Build Back Better spending bill to satisfy the demands of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. But first he’ll have to persuade the two independent-minded senators to confirm Biden’s nominee. The Dems face lengthening odds of retaining their razor-thin majority in the Senate, which confirms US federal judges. Still, Breyer’s decision provides a rare piece of good news for Democrats, who can now ensure the court’s ideological balance will not tip further to the right. Later this year, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on major political cases, including challenges to the Roe v Wade ruling on abortion rights.
Russians watching the Ukraine crisis on TV. We’ve written about what “the West” will/will not do in the Russia-Ukraine crisis. But what do Russians think about it? Russian state TV is following the Kremlin playbook by painting Kyiv as an aggressor backed by Western powers and by demanding that Russia respond firmly to a national security threat. This narrative differs from the one rolled out prior to the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, when the state-aligned media denied any Russian involvement in Ukraine. As for ordinary Russians, a December Levada poll found that half of them blame the US and NATO for the crisis, 16 percent fault Ukraine, and just 4 percent blame Russia. But 53 percent said an armed conflict was unlikely. What’s more, Ukraine is not top of mind for many Russians — especially those outside Moscow — who tell pollsters they worry more about rising inflation. In a January Levada survey, one-third of Russians said they expect their quality of life to decline this year. This could be traditional Russian fatalism, or a reflection of fears that an invasion of Ukraine might trigger crippling US sanctions.
Western powers claim that they present a united front against the Kremlin’s current threats in Ukraine. But clearly there are reasons for doubt. President Joe Biden provided more last week when he appeared to question whether NATO would in fact act with “total unity” if Vladimir Putin orders Russian troops across the Ukrainian border.
Do Western allies really agree on a common approach to keeping Russia out of Ukraine? What are the major points of contention among them?
On the economic front, the US is prepared to go big: the White House has been pushing for tougher economic sanctions if the Kremlin encroaches on Ukraine’s sovereignty, including by cracking down on both Russian financial institutions and international entities that lend Russia money. It also has more than 8,500 troops ready to move into Eastern Europe if Russia escalates.
But Europe’s reliance on Russian natural gas is undermining efforts to present a united Western front against Russian aggression.
Germany. While some Western governments have sent defensive arms to Ukraine, Berlin has so far refused. It argues that arming Kyiv would encourage both Ukraine and Russia to escalate the conflict. Germany is not only reluctant to send weapons to Ukraine, but it has also scuttled attempts by NATO states, like Estonia, to deliver German-made arms to Ukraine. (Berlin retains some authorization rights over exports of their weapons.) Germany has also refused to back a proposal to cut Moscow off from the global electronic-payment system known as SWIFT.
Facing criticism, Germany’s new government has said that the country’s reluctance to arm the Ukrainians is in part the result of its pacifist foreign policy – an approach required by Germany’s militarist past. But analysts say that German reliance on Russian natural gas – which accounts for half of all its gas imports – better explains Berlin’s hesitancy to draw the Kremlin’s ire.
France. French President Emmanuel Macron is capitalizing on the sense of urgency – and division – to assert himself as Angela Merkel’s replacement as the leader of Europe. Macron has been talking tough on Russia – saying preemptive sanctions are on the table to deter a Russian incursion – while also calling for more diplomacy. Moreover, Macron, who has long advocated for European strategic autonomy, has called for a united Europe to engage with Russia separately from the broader US-NATO dialogue. (On Wednesday, Paris is hosting a group of Ukrainian, Russian, French, and German officials to try to chart a path forward.)
The UK. London has traditionally positioned itself as a “bridge nation” between the European Union and the United States, particularly when US presidents and European leaders have clashed on big geopolitical issues. Though this dynamic has changed since Britain left the EU, the UK is still a powerful NATO player with a lot of strategic leverage. As Putin continues to build up Russia’s military presence on the Ukrainian border, London has aligned closely with Washington, sending more than 2,000 short-range anti-tank missiles to Ukraine in recent days and calling for an “unprecedented package of sanctions.” Indeed, the stakes are lower for London, which gets most of its natural gas imports from Qatar and the US.
The Qatari wildcard. The Biden administration is reportedly in talks with the Qataris, global liquified natural gas heavyweights, to increase supplies to Europe in the event that Russia invades Ukraine.
However, rerouting supply routes is no small feat, particularly because more than 80 percent of Qatari gas is currently tied up in contracts with Asian states. But Eurasia Group analyst Raad Alkadiri says the US plan could work, particularly if it means the Qataris get premium prices for their exports and get to play a more consequential role in geopolitics. Still, Europe is already facing tight gas markets, and it needs to ensure available and secure supplies. At the moment, a lot of it comes from Russia.
5: US manufacturers now have on average less than five days’ worth of semiconductor supplies, down from 40 days before the pandemic. There’s growing pressure for America to produce more chips as a global shortage drags on.
2.5 billion: The Biden administration has approved the sale of $2.5 billion worth of US-made arms to Egypt, despite opposition in Congress. A few Democratic senators wanted the Egyptians to meet certain conditions on human rights in order to get American weapons.
3.1: Parts of Greece and Turkey have been blanketed by a rare snowstorm, snarling traffic and forcing thousands to evacuate. Usually balmy Athens received 3.1 inches of snow on Monday, almost three times its annual average, while flights at Istanbul’s airport have been suspended for two days.
The US and China compete on many fronts, and one of them is artificial intelligence.
But China has a different set of values, which former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is not a big fan of — especially when those values shape the AI on apps his children use.
“You may not care where your kids are, and TikTok may know where your teenagers are, and that may not bother you,” he says. “But you certainly don’t want them to be affected by algorithms that are inspired by the Chinese and not by Western values.”
For Schmidt, the Chinese government is ensuring that the internet reflects the priorities of the ruling Communist Party.
Watch his interview with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World: Be more worried about artificial intelligence
