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China and Russia, the industrial production superpowers that could win a war

Winning wars is not about how much money you have, but how many and how ast you can manufacture bombs and tanks. China is the most powerful manufacturing power in the world and Russia is the most powerful in Europe, according to recent studies. / bne IntelliNews

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By Ben Aris in Berlin March 1, 2024

China is now "the world’s sole manufacturing superpower" and Russia’s productive power is greater than that of Germany’s, according to recent studies on the changes to the world’s manufacturing make up.

The nominal size of Russia and China’s economies are dwarfed by the G7 richest country’s in the world, but drilling into their manufacturing power then the picture that emerges is China is the most powerful manufacture in the world and Russia is the most powerful in Europe. Winning a war is not about how much money you have. It’s about how many bombs and planes and how fast you can make them.

A war at the heart of Europe and China aligning with Russia in a militarily charged showdown with the West has focused attention on industrial production abilities and capacities as the prospect of WWIII would be “inevitable”, which the Kremlin recently said would be “inevitable” if Nato sends troops to Ukraine, is no longer a zero-probability event.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has put Russia’s economy on a war footing and ramped up military production to supply his forces in Ukraine. As bne IntelliNews has been reporting, Russia’s production of the crucial 152mm artillery shells has become a major factor in the conflict and Russia is not only massively out manufacturing Ukraine in shell production but it is also out-manufacturing all of the EU too.

Despite two years of a hot conflict in Ukraine on the EU’s borders, the member states and the US have failed to invest into expanding its military production and can’t keep up with Russia which will expand its shell production this year from 2mn rounds to just under 3mn, according to the Kremlin. In general, Russia’s industrial capacity utilisation rate has risen to 81% -- a modern history all-time high.

The only arms firm in Europe that has significantly added to its production, even without concrete government contracts, is the German arms maker Rheinmetall that has been investing in increasing its capacity and has outstripped even the US.

"Some crucial segments of the European defence industry are now performing better than US defence industry....Rheinmetall in Germany is producing way more 155 artillery shells than the entire US defence industry combined,” Czech defence policy chief, Jan Jires, said at the end of February, highlighting the lack of investment that has gone into expanding military production despite two years of open warfare in Ukraine.

Rheinmetall is moving into Ukraine where it has a two-year plan for the supply of weapons to Ukraine and a joint venture agreement to build a factory there. Rheinmetall said this month that it is the only Western defence contractor capable of supplying the Ukrainian military with many new medium and large-calibre ammunition, including supplies for the Marder infantry fighting vehicle, Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 tanks as well as the badly needed shells

Europe's Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) found in a study that although it's widely perceived that "the US is the world’s sole military superpower" spending more on its military than the ten next highest spending countries combined, when it comes to industrial production capacity it is trailing far behind China.

The US even trails Russia in terms of shell production. Pre-war the US was manufacturing some 1,000 155mm shells a month, which has doubled to about 2,000 now. But Russia was making ten-times as many 155mm shells pre-war and is currently manufacturing over 150,000 shells a month, which is due to increase by a third over the course of this year.

"China’s industrialisation is unprecedented. The last time the ‘king of the manufacturing hill’ got knocked off the throne was when the US surpassed the UK just before WWI. It took the US the better part of a century to rise to the top; the China-US switch took about 15 or 20 years. China’s industrialisation, in short, defies comparison," CEPR said.

Part of the reason for this growing mismatch are consequences of globalisation, where rich Western countries exported much of their manufacturing capacity to the cheaper countries of SE Asia. In parallel is Western countries are increasingly driven by services, not production, leaving them without either factories or the staff to work in them.

Germany is the most productive country in Europe with manufacturing accounting for a quarter of its GDP – twice as much as the next closest large EU power. But as bne IntelliNews reported last August, Russia overtook Germany to become the fifth biggest economy in the world in PPP terms which better captures the benefits of production capacity.

GDP distribution by sector in selected countries

Indeed, in another bne IntelliNews deep dive on Putin’s big bet on the Global South Century that compared developed world economies with those of the Global South in PPP terms and most of the developing world is rapidly catching up with the big Western countries, or in the case of the biggest emerging markets, have already overtaken them. Economists say that the global south will overtake the developed world in nominal GDP terms as well by 2075. Most of this growth is based on the growth of manufacturing, not services, although that plays an important role too.

One of the constraints of expanding weapons production in the US over the last two years has been the shortage of qualified skilled labour to work the new factories, which requires arms makers to train new staff, and that takes at least a year.

The global pandemic in 2020 has reversed this trend and encouraged companies to unwind their globalised production and “nearshore” their industrial capacity, or even bring it back home, but that is proving to be a slow moving process.

Russian production capacity

In a war, having a large industrial base is a big advantage, as the rate a country can produce arms is a key factor in the fight. In these terms Russia is even bigger than Germany, itself no mean industrial country, according to research by Jacques Sapir, Director of studies at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris.

“Simple GDP statistics have arguably lulled the West into a false sense of security. By GDP, Western economies appear dominant and their capacity to impose sanctions decisive. But the West’s reliance on service sectors – and the relative weakness of directly productive sectors like manufacturing, mining, and agriculture – introduces critical vulnerabilities in goods production and supply chains. In times of peace and unimpeded trade, such vulnerabilities may seem insignificant. In periods of deglobalisation, geopolitical competition and state-versus-state con­flict, however, these weaknesses can have profound impacts, while basic productive sectors take on greater importance,” Sapir said.

Russia was famously roasted by the late Senator John McCain as a “gas station masquerading as a country," as it has a GDP that is smaller than either Italy or California. But that fails to take account of its ability to make things; one of Russia’s Soviet legacies and its heavy emphasis on industry is that it has a lot of factories.

Looking at just nominal GDP, Russia's share of the global economy was 1.9% in 2019, against US’ 24.4% and China’s 16.4%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In PPP terms Russia does better with a 3.1% share of adjusted global GDP, with the US falling into second place with 15% against China’s 17.3% as the world leader.

GDP Russian productive sector comparison vs France Germany US China

But looking at productive capacity skews the picture even further towards Russia and China.

“During wartime, services lose their importance relative to agriculture, industry and construction. It then becomes necessary to calculate the share of the goods-producing sectors across different economies in order to have an accurate understanding of how they really compare,” says Sapir.

Russia is situated between China, where services represent only 49% of GDP, and countries like the United States, France and Italy, where services represent at least 75% of GDP. Germany is in an intermediate position, with 69% of its GDP coming from services.

Looking at the share of productive industry then Germany is only 90% of Russia’s in terms of productive industry, while France is a mere 44% of Russia’s industrial power.

China is even further ahead, with Germany equivalent to only 11% of China’s productive industry, and even the US is only 34% of China’s productive power, according to Sapir.

Of course, it's not only about the number of widgets you can make. The quality of the widgets is also very important and on this score Russia falls down, as it remains heavily dependent on Western technology, as bne IntelliNews reported in a deep dive into Russia’s precision tools sector, the Kremlin’s soft sanctions underbelly. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia missed out on two revolutions in machine tools that has left it impossibly far behind the developed world. China, on the other hand, has been investing heavily into R&D and is rapidly closing the gap with the West.

And Russia industrial power is no idle boast; the Kremlin has been putting all those factories to good use that has caused a military Keynesianism economic boom.

Russia’s industrial production has been running hot all of last year and after a dip in December, expanded by 4.6% in January Rosstat reported on February 29. (chart), Russia’s manufacturing PMI  has done even better, surging in February to post 54.7, up from 52.4 in January, putting in its biggest gains in 13 years, S&P Global reported on March 1, driven by massive state fixed investment into military production. PMI’s in the rest of Europe remain deeply in the red, with Germany doing worst of all, although analysts say the worst of the slowdown may be already over. Russia is on course to spend a whopping 8% of GDP on defense this year, far outstripping most of Europe which has yet to reach the 2% of GDP mandated by Nato membership.

China is the new manufacturing superpower

China is also putting its industrial might to work. It has been building two coal fuelled power plants a month in the last year and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army – Navy (PLA-N), is now the world’s largest. It has been growing feverishly, leaving India and the US far behind in terms of ship construction capability, adding the equivalent of the entire French navy to its fleet every four years. Between 2017 and 2019, China reportedly built more vessels than India, Japan, Australia, France, and the United Kingdom combined. 

China’s fleet is now bigger than America’s. The Pentagon’s annual report to the US Congress on Chinese military and security developments estimates that the Chinese Navy had 350 warships compared to 293 warships in the US Navy battle force. And now the PLA-N is ramping up its submarine production. China’s civil-industrial system supports what is now the world’s largest shipbuilding industry by funding facilities, training, employing, and rotating workers to create a huge machine that can pump out destroyers and corvettes on a monthly basis. Last year Chinese shipyards completed the first indigenously built aircraft carrier in a record three years from scratch

CEPR used the recently released 2023 update of the OECD Trade in Added Value database to paint an eight-chart portrait of China’s journey to superpower status and the asymmetric impact that its dominance has had on global supply chains, according to note from Richard Baldwin, Professor of International Economics at IMD Business School, Lausanne, et al.

The chart shows in the left panel world shares in terms of gross production; in the right panel, the same is shown in terms of value added. Six nations manufacture at least 3% of the world total, says Baldwin. China is followed by the US, Japan, Germany, India, and South Korea.

The world’s biggest manufacturing economies

From this list, only three of these countries are long-established industrial economies; the other three are newly industrialised economies and four of the G7 don’t make the cut, a point that Putin was rubbing in during his State of the Nation Speech this week.

"The BRICS countries will generate about 37% of global GDP already in 2028, taking into account the states that have become the association’s members recently whereas the G7 figure will drop below 28%. These figures are very convincing, considering that the situation was quite different some 10-15 years ago. I spoke about that publicly. But these are the trends, do you understand?" Putin said.

The chart separately identifies nations with shares of at least 2%, and on the left, this includes Italy, France, and Taiwan (two of the G7, the UK and Canada, don’t make the cut). In the right panel (value-added basis), the UK makes an appearance with a share just above 2%, according to Baldwin.

“When it comes to gross production, China’s share is three times the US’ share, six times Japan’s, and nine times Germany’s. Taiwan, Mexico, Russia, and Brazil now have higher gross output than the UK. Canada is further down the ranking, in 15th place,” says Baldwin.

The OECD data only goes back to 1995, when China started the race a bit ahead of Canada, Britain, France, and Italy. China passed Germany in 1998, Japan in 2005, and the US in 2008. Since then, China has more than doubled its world share while the US’s share has fallen by another three percentage points. Today China’s share now exceeds that of all the next largest manufacturers combined.

The world’s share of gross manufacturing production

China’s dominance in the export of manufactured products is less strong, but still large. In 1995 China had just 3% of world manufacturing exports, By 2020, its share had risen to 20%. The corresponding fall in the G7 share was less dramatic than for its share of production. At the same time China’s export to production ratio, having peaked at 18% in 2004, is 13% in 2020 – almost back to its 1995 level of 11%.

The world’s share of manufactured exports

Where you export too is also an important vector and China is and always has been more reliant on sales to the US than the other way round. In the mid-2000s, China’s dependence on the US was ten times the reverse dependence, but the asymmetry has narrowed substantially in recent years. China’s economy has matured and it has been transitioning away from being “the world’s factory” to being a more modern service-reliant economy.

The growing interdependencies as the trade flows become more balanced suggest that decoupling from China would be difficult, slow, expensive, and disruptive – especially to G7 manufacturers. The same is true for the Russo-Europe relationship where its becoming increasingly transparent Europe was a lot more intertwined with the Russian economy than first appreciated. As bne IntelliNews has reported, the extreme sanctions on Russia have been bouncing back in a boomerang effect that is hurting Europe more than it is Russia.

China, US trade interdependencies

China is a net exporter of manufactured goods and a net importer of everything else – agriculture goods, mining goods and fuels, and services. Both the positive and negative net balances have been growing quickly. It ran surpluses in the late 2000s, which then decreased and turned negative in 2018 and 2019 (black line).

“Until the mid-2000s, China was a typical offshore destination: a net importer of intermediate inputs and a net exporter of final goods that embodied the imported inputs. From about 2002, China became a large net exporter of intermediate goods as well as final goods,” says Baldwin, highlighting the growth of China’s manufacturing power and its move up the added-value chain.

China balance of trade by sector

China trade in intermediate and final goods

The sectoral shares for 1995, first year in the OECD’s database, to 2020 shows how China’s manufacturing has moved up the value chain, from being relatively reliant on simple manufacturing sectors like textiles and clothing to more sophisticated sectors like electronics, basic and fabricated metal products, and chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

All of the emerging markets are on the same trajectory. In Uzbekistan, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev banned the export of raw cotton several years ago, long the country’s main foreign exchange earner, and as in effect forced the entire sector to invest into value-added production of textiles. Central Europe has long since completed this journey, travelling from investments into cheap production in light manufacturing to more sophisticated medium weight production of things like plasma TVs and building up extensive automotive sectors. And now the same revolution is underway in the Balkans. China has also more or less completed this switch: textiles accounted for the biggest share in 1995, but electronics did so in 2020.

China trade export composition manufactures by sector

China’s globalisation ratio shows the country’s gross globalisation ratio (GGR) in manufacturing is the share of manufactured production that is sold abroad, where simple production is measured as the total sales of all China-based manufacturers. It differs from manufacturing GDP since it includes all sales, not just final good sales.

“During China’s rise to manufacturing superpower status, China’s GGR rocketed up – almost doubling – in the first decade of the data,” says Baldwin. “Indeed, most of the action came between 1999 and 2004. That period was an extraordinary feat of globalisation, and it is probably why so many think of China as an economy that is incredibly dependent on exports.”

But as the chart shows, since 2004, China’s GGR has been falling steadily as China’s manufacturing sector matures and domestic demand becomes increasingly important and the middle class emerges. By 2020 the ratio had fallen back to about where it started in 1995.

“Chinese manufacturing, in short, is no longer as dependent on exports as many might believe. True, the first part of the rapid growth period involved exports growing faster than production (so the GGR rises). But then production grows faster than exports, implying that domestic sales were becoming relatively more important, compared to export sales – even though domestic and foreign sales were both booming throughout the high-growth episode," says Baldwin. “This dispels the myth that China’s success can be entirely attributed to exports. From around 2004, China increasingly became its own best customer.”

“The takeaway is simple: China’s openness, as measured by the GGR, has fallen rapidly. By 2020 it was only slightly more dependent on export sales than it was 1995,” concludes Baldwin.

China’s export and production growth ratio

The shift from a low-cost export-oriented growth model to one where rising incomes have created a substantial domestic market and goods production goes up the value-added chain is well underway in both China and Russia. It sanction-proofs their economies as their own internal markets are increasingly able to drive economic growth and reduces their dependence on imported inputs and technology.

The increasingly wide and deep industrial bases can help the countries gain a competitive edge in virtually all sectors, especially in China which remains technologically well ahead of Russia. The exceptions are the most advanced sectors, where the G7 countries still dominate, but as bne IntelliNews has reported, the technology sanctions have more or less failed thanks to partners in the global south that are happy to act as trade intermediators.

In Ukraine’s Donbas, complex questions of identity and loyalty
The imposing Sviatohirsk Lavra monastic complex near the town is remarkably intact, although regular shrapnel marks and bullet scars bear testament to the fact that it did not fully escape the fighting. 

/ Neil Hauer/bne IntelliNews

By Neil Hauer in Sviatohirsk February 29, 2024

It’s now been over a year since the Russian invaders were forced out of Sviatohirsk, but from the town’s appearance, you’d hardly know it.

Sviatohirsk nestles in a picturesque vale along the banks of the Siversky Donets river, which winds its way through Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk oblast. Long established as a resort town, Sviatohirsk boasts a collection of luxury hotels and summer camps, which more than doubled the town’s population in the summer months.

Restaurants and campgrounds, many still bearing signs advertising shashlyk barbecue and other traditional summer delights, further emphasise the town’s identity as a pleasant, peaceful place, a retreat for residents of the nearby cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

But that identity has been shattered. Now, the resorts and hotels lie in blasted ruins, a testament to the months of heavy fighting that saw first the occupation of Sviatohirsk by Russian forces in summer 2022, followed by a hard-won liberation by Ukrainian troops a few months later.

The twisted wreckage of the town’s main bridge makes a fitting physical separation between the town itself and the imposing Sviatohirsk Lavra monastic complex on the other side: an unrepentantly Russian Orthodox colony whose clergy now find themselves accused of wavering loyalties by Ukraine’s political leadership.

The town’s inhabitants remember the months of fighting vividly.

“The [Russian] assault began on June 1 [2022],” says Olya, a 48-year old bank worker in Sviatohirsk. “They started from Lyman and Yarova [two settlements to the east of Sviatohirsk, captured by Russian forces in May 2022]. Our part of Sviatohirsk is on the edge of town, so it was the first part to be attacked. Entire streets were on fire that day,” she says.

It didn’t take long for Russian troops to enter Sviatohirsk, overcoming the exhausted Ukrainian defenders in just days.

“Russians entered [the town] on June 4,” Olya says. “They were checking each basement, the number of men and women in each yard. We were hiding in the basement – the shelling was so heavy, it was like hell. When it calmed down a bit, I heard someone walking in our yard. They called out, asking if there were any people here, and we came out. That was the first time we saw the Russians,” she says.

Olya chose to stay in the town rather than fleeing to safer areas because of her 72-year old mother, who was in ill health and refused to leave. Her daughter and son-in-law completed their contingent. Soon, the shelling resumed, and they would not see the sun again for days.

“It was very difficult in those days,” Olya says. “We spent almost two straight weeks sitting in the basement, not going out once. We cooked on a fire down there, survived on canned food. This was the summer months and there was no rain – everything was burning due to the shelling and the dry grass. This period was just horror,” she says.

Unlikely saviour

Amidst the battles, an unlikely saviour of the local population emerged: the Russian Orthodox monastery across the river from the town.

The Sviatohirsk Lavra is an enormous complex. Established in the 16th century, its sprawling buildings play host to over 100 clergy, comprised of both monks and nuns. Its onion domes and blue-white spires are remarkably intact, although regular shrapnel marks and bullet scars bear testament to the fact that it did not fully escape the fighting.

“By the grace of God, we mostly survived these months [in 2022], although not all of us did,” says Father Conan, one of the resident priests. He gestures at some nearby damage, the result of a mortar strike. “Right here you can see where one of our priests was killed, near that crater. That was the only time one of the priests here died [from the war]. Thank God everyone else is safe,” he says.

During the fighting, an agreement was reached between the Sviatohirsk Lavra’s monks and the Ukrainian army: the Ukrainians would not take positions on the monastery grounds, despite the presence of Russian troops directly on the other side of the river, in the town of Sviatohirsk itself. This spared the monastery the worst of the carnage and is the main reason it is in a remarkably better state than the adjacent town today.

It also allowed the religious complex to host many of the town’s civilians: at least 300 of them, by Father Conan’s estimate, sheltering in its basements and deep caves.

“We provided for many people from [Sviatohirsk] during the fighting,” Father Conan says. “We have everything we need to live here: greenhouses growing vegetables, deep wells for water, animals, housing. We even make our own bread. We would not refuse to aid God’s faithful,” he says.

There is one other striking element of the monastery that Father Conan does not mention, for perhaps it is obvious enough: this is not a Ukrainian place. Although it is located on the territory of modern-day Ukraine, there is not a single sentence of written Ukrainian to be found anywhere on the temple’s grounds. The monks and nuns speak only Russian, in a clear, precise accent close to the Moscow standard, without the ‘soft g’ pronunciation that marks the Russian dialects common to Ukraine.

Father Conan and the others speak of Kyiv and Ukraine’s authorities as if they are some faraway place of little concern to the Sviatohirsk clergy, living as they do on their little island of Russian Orthodoxy that just happens to fall within today’s Ukraine.

Increased suspicion

While they have largely avoided the pitfalls of the growing chasm between the Russian and Ukrainian worlds that has marked the post-Maidan period in Ukraine, Sviatohirsk’s priests may not be able to do so much longer. A number of major Orthodox churches in Ukraine, chief among them the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, have remained loyal to the Moscow patriarchate, even after the Ukrainian Orthodox Church officially split from its Russia-based forefathers in January 2019.

Since the February 2022 invasion, those Moscow-loyalist churches have been under increased suspicion, with monks of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra threatened with spying for Russia and harbouring treasonous sentiments. While those monks have thus far defied several government orders for them to evict, the impact of this drama has not been lost on Father Conan or the other members of the Sviatohirsk Lavra.

“We have seen what’s happening in the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra,” Father Conan confirms. It is clear the events there disturb him, but he is careful not to reveal his full opinion on the matter. “There is no sense in it, what is happening there. For now the situation is calm [regarding the Sviatohirsk Lavra], but we will see what happens,” he says.

The context of the two monasteries is also radically different. In Kyiv, the Pechersk Lavra has often been a source of consternation for locals, who accuse the clergy of corruption: its head priest, Pyotr Lebed, is nicknamed ‘Pasha Mercedes’ for his penchant for driving luxury cars his meagre official salary could never afford. In Sviatohirsk, it is nearly the opposite. The visibly austere lifestyle of its monks, and the lifesaving shelter and aid they provided to hundreds of the town’s residents during the fighting, has given them great legitimacy among the local inhabitants.

“It doesn’t matter to me what the [Sviatohirsk] monks think about Ukraine, or Russia, or whatever,” says Olya. “They accepted everyone [during the fighting] - they did not refuse anyone. These priests cooked food for 700 people, kept them all alive. We can see clearly how they value us. Maybe they have a different [political] opinion – everyone has their own,” she says.

The fate of Father Conan and his fellow clergymen remains unclear. While the Ukrainian government’s pressure on the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra and other Moscow-loyalist churches has eased somewhat in recent months, it seems like just a matter of time until the matter is brought back into the spotlight.

The Sviatohirsk monks, meanwhile, will live as they always have.

“This [religious] community has been here for over a thousand years,” Father Conan says. “The first monks here were Byzantine Greeks, before the Kyivan Rus even converted [to Christianity, in the 10th century]. We will live as we always have, whatever comes.”

Georgia’s Minimum Wage is Stuck in the 90s

THE COUNTRY NOT THE STATE

Published in:OC Media
Jeff Vize
Senior Advisor, Alliances and Partnerships Program

Currency of Georgia. © 2023 Sipa via AP Images

Georgia has come a long way since the 1990s, a decade marred by civil war, political instability, and a faltering economy. But there’s one area where the country has, quite literally, remained stuck in that distant past: its minimum wage.

Georgia’s private sector minimum wage was last updated in 1999, and currently stands at ₾20 ($7.50) per month. That makes it one of the lowest monthly minimum wages in the world — about enough to buy a few liters of milk.

Despite broad popular support for raising the minimum wage, successive governments have preferred instead to let the market decide. That is both a cruel abandonment of the state’s duties to its people and a flagrant violation of international human rights law. It is well past time for it to be addressed.

Georgia’s labor practices, including its minimum wage among other social-economic policies, will come under scrutiny in Geneva the week of 4 March. The UN Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights will begin the process of reviewing Georgia’s compliance with one of the UN’s most important treaties, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

The Covenant states that everyone has the right to enjoy ‘just and favorable conditions of work’, including ‘fair wages’ that provide ‘a decent living for themselves and their families’. The Committee has interpreted this provision as imposing a duty on states to establish a minimum wage. However, they have also consistently noted that simply having a minimum wage isn’t enough: it must also be indexed to the cost of living, recognized in legislation, and set at a level that provides workers with a ‘decent living’.

At the moment, Georgia satisfies none of these requirements. Its minimum wage was fixed by presidential decree, not legislation, and lacks any mechanism that indexes it to the cost of living. And it goes without saying that it would not provide for a ‘decent living’.

To be fair, it’s unlikely that anyone in Georgia actually earns ₾20 per month. Georgia’s median wage was ₾1,040 ($390) in 2022 and the ‘unofficial’ monthly minimum wage is said to be closer to ₾350 ($130). But unofficial minimum wages can be circumvented, and often are, which harms women workers the most. A 2022 study by the International School of Economics at Tbilisi State University, for example, found that 11.9% of male employees and 24.6% of female employees make less than ₾350 per month. Even more troublingly, 11.7% of women and 5.4% of men make less than ₾250 ($94).

That’s below what the government estimates Georgia’s subsistence minimum to be, the amount needed to purchase enough calories to survive. Eliminating such abusive pay practices is one reason why state regulation of wages is essential. ‘The market’ alone isn’t enough.

Another reason is to ensure that people are paid enough to live in dignity, not merely survive. This is why international law explicitly requires that minimum wages allow for a ‘decent living’.

Human rights law does not prescribe any magic number for what constitutes a ‘decent living’, since both national economic circumstances and perceptions of comfort can vary significantly. Instead, one of the key aspects it focuses on is whether the minimum wage allows people to enjoy rights considered essential under international law: food, health care, water, sanitation, housing, clothing, commuting costs and so on.

This means that Georgia’s subsistence minimum of roughly ₾250 is not an adequate basis for setting the minimum wage. It is based solely on a basket of food items — a deeply flawed one at that — and focuses squarely on physiological survival. A human rights-compliant minimum wage must take into account more than just food.

A better approach — as recently endorsed by the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights — is for the government to set the minimum wage based on published ‘living wage’ estimates or to calculate its own living wage. While there are various methods for calculating living wages, most closely track the requirements for a ‘decent living’ that are defined in international human rights law.

Recent living wage estimates for Georgia include: ₾1,272 ($480) per month (2021 estimate by the Solidarity Network, a Georgian labor union); ₾1,706 ($640) per month (2022 estimate by the Wage Indicator Foundation) and ₾2,371 ($890) per month (2021 estimate by the Clean Clothes Campaign, an alliance of nongovernmental groups and garment industry labor unions).

Whatever Georgia ultimately decides, this much is clear: the 1990s are over, and so is the era of a ₾20 minimum wage. The UN Committee should remind Georgia of its obligations and provide a road map on how, in consultation with independent worker’s unions, to set a minimum wage that addresses Georgians’ fundamental human rights and guarantees a decent standard of living.

 

Most Americans now live in a legal marijuana state – and most have at least one dispensary in their county

BY ATHENA CHAPEKIS AND SONO SHAH

A cannabis dispensary lines the street of a small town in Bristow, Oklahoma. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

Marijuana is illegal under federal law, but most Americans now live in a state that has legalized the drug. And most also have at least one cannabis dispensary in their county, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.

How we did this

The analysis finds:

• 54% of Americans live in a state where the recreational use of marijuana is legal – just a dozen years after Colorado and Washington became the first states to allow the drug for recreational purposes.
• 74% of Americans live in a state where marijuana is legal for either recreational or medical use. California was the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996.
• 79% of Americans live in a county with at least one cannabis dispensary.
• There are nearly 15,000 cannabis dispensaries in the United States. Dispensaries (businesses that sell cannabis products) are common on the West Coast and Northeast, but also in interior states like Michigan, Oklahoma and Colorado.
• California has far more dispensaries than any state: 3,659 at the time of this analysis, more than double the amount in the second-highest ranking state. A quarter of all marijuana dispensaries in the U.S. are in California, and nearly all Californians (99.5%) have a dispensary in their county. Los Angeles County alone has more dispensaries (1,481) than any state other than California itself.
• Oklahoma has the most marijuana dispensaries per capita of any state: 36 dispensaries for every 100,000 residents.

These findings are based on our analysis of state marijuana laws from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws; U.S. population statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau; and marijuana dispensary locations from SafeGraph, which curates information about millions of places of interest around the globe. Our analysis of dispensaries includes those that sell cannabis (including low-THC cannabis products) for medical or recreational use.

Below, we’ll explore these findings in more detail.

Which states have legalized marijuana for recreational or medical use?

Since Colorado and Washington became the first states to pass legislation in 2012, there are now 24 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have legalized the recreational use of marijuana as of February 2024. Another 14 states allow the drug for medical use only.

The remaining 12 states have legalized limited access to cannabis products that contain little to no THC – the main psychoactive substance in marijuana – such as CBD oil.

And 27 states across all levels of legalization have decriminalized recreational marijuana use.

These changes in state law come as a broad majority of Americans say marijuana should be legal in some way. In an October 2022 Pew Research Center survey, 88% of U.S. adults said the drug should be legal, either for recreational and medical use (59%) or for medical use only (30%).

Our analysis finds that around three-quarters of all dispensaries in the country (76%) are in states that have legalized the recreational use of marijuana. Another 23% are in medical marijuana-only states. In fact, two of the top five states with the largest number of dispensaries – Oklahoma and Florida – allow the drug for medical use only.

The remaining 1% of dispensaries are in states that have made legal allowances for low-percentage THC or CBD-only products. Half of all residents of these states live in a county with at least one dispensary.

Where are cannabis dispensaries located within states?

The patchwork of state laws governing the sale and use of marijuana means that many states have more permissive laws than their immediate neighbors do. Our analysis finds concentrations of dispensaries near these borders between more and less permissive states.

Overall, one in every five dispensaries in the U.S. is located within 20 miles of a state border. And 29% of these border dispensaries adjoin a neighboring state with less permissive cannabis laws.

For example, Indiana, Kansas and Texas all have restrictive marijuana laws but are bordered by multiple states that have legalized the drug for recreational or medical purposes. In fact, a person residing in one of these three states can find more than 100 dispensaries within 20 miles of the state’s borders.

The early years of marijuana legalization were marked by concerns that dispensaries would be clustered in low-income neighborhoods. Our analysis finds that, nationwide, median incomes tend to be a bit lower in areas with a greater concentration of dispensaries.

But this can vary quite a bit in individual states.

In four states that have legalized marijuana for both recreational and medical purposes – Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland and Virginia – median annual household incomes are at least $20,000 lower in areas with high concentrations of dispensaries than areas in the state with low concentrations of dispensaries. In New Hampshire and New York, by contrast, median household incomes are around $20,000 or more higher in areas with many dispensaries than in areas with few dispensaries.

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 Drug Policy

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Athena Chapekis  is a data science analyst at Pew Research Center.

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Sono Shah  is a senior computational social scientist focusing on data science at Pew Research Center.

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Is nuclear power the key to space exploration?

Long a controversial energy source, nuclear has been facing a renaissance in space.

So far, nuclear reactions have been mainly used to provide electricity for spacecraft, but researchers want to use these reactions to propel them forward 

[File: Martin Meissner/AP Photo]

By Tom Cassauwers
Published On 29 Feb 2024

Nuclear power is experiencing a renaissance on Earth, and in space. Whether we’re talking about lunar bases or space exploration, nuclear might be the key to pushing beyond our current boundaries.

On the 25th of August 2012, the lonely Voyager 1 space probe crossed the threshold into interstellar space. At the time it was 18 billion km (11 million miles) away from the sun, far beyond all the planets of our solar system.

The Voyager 1 was launched in 1977. Almost 50 years later, it’s still going and sending back information, penetrating ever deeper into space. It can do that because it’s powered by nuclear energy.

Long a controversial energy source, nuclear has been experiencing renewed interest on Earth to power our fight against climate change. But behind the scenes, nuclear has also been facing a renaissance in space.

In July, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) jointly announced that they plan to launch a nuclear-propelled spacecraft by 2025 or 2026. The European Space Agency (ESA) in turn is funding a range of studies on the use of nuclear engines for space exploration. And last year, NASA awarded a contract to Westinghouse to develop a concept for a nuclear reactor to power a future moon base.

“There’s a lot of interest in nuclear for space applications at the moment,” said Dr Ramy Mesalam, programme director of spacecraft engineering at the University of Leicester. “The deeper we explore our solar system and beyond, the more attractive nuclear will become.”

Lunar night

One participant in this new boom is Zeno Power, a United States startup founded in 2018. A team led by them recently received a $15m award to develop so-called radioisotope nuclear power systems for use on the moon’s surface by NASA. These small, lightweight nuclear power systems have a long history of use in space, and can potentially use nuclear waste to power themselves.

NASA and international partners such as the European Space Agency (ESA) want to have a lunar base up and running before the end of the decade. This base will most likely partly use nuclear reactors for power and heat.

Illustration of the DRACO spacecraft that is being developed by Lockheed Martin for DARPA and that will demonstrate thermal nuclear engine technology

 [Lockheed Martin/Business Wire/AP Photo]

Nuclear power is particularly attractive for use on the moon because of the harsh conditions on the lunar surface. Darkness is a particular concern for longer-duration missions. “The lunar night lasts 14 Earth days”, said Tyler Bernstein, co-founder and CEO of Zeno Power. “There are also permanently shadowed regions, like craters. Generating solar power is impossible in the dark, and temperatures in some places can reach beyond -200 degrees Celsius.”

Bernstein hopes to have the first reactors ready by 2025.

Nuclear explosion

Space travel, however, is an inherently risky pursuit, particularly with nuclear materials on board. Rockets destined for space regularly explode, potentially spreading nuclear debris across space or even Earth. That’s a sobering reality that professor Dale Thomas of the University of Alabama in Huntsville is facing.

He works on nuclear-powered propulsion. Instead of powering a rocket through a chemical reaction, we would power it through a nuclear one.

So far we have mainly used nuclear reactions to provide electricity for spacecraft, but researchers like Thomas want to use these reactions to propel them forward.

That holds great potential to push us further into space, but also forces us to review the way we test rocket engines. Usually, these engines are tested on the ground, where they sometimes explode or suffer failures. This gives engineers key information to improve their designs. That model of testing and fixing, however, needs to be adapted to nuclear propulsion.

“Failing a nuclear engine on the test stand is not a good idea”, Thomas told Al Jazeera. “Its failure modes are much more catastrophic than those of chemical propulsion.”

Building a nuclear engine, in other words, requires researchers to be more cautious, and make sure no failure takes place. This in turn slows down development.

A similar situation is present in sending nuclear reactors up to space to power spacecraft and moon bases. Before we do so, they need to meet high safety standards, and even be ready to withstand explosions. Luckily, we have figured out how to do this. The first nuclear reactor was launched into space as early as 1965.

“The safety aspect is a challenge”, Mesalam said. “That’s always at the heart of a nuclear power system design. But the good news is that we have almost 60 years of experience in doing this safely.”

Interplanetary species

In the future, spacecraft might be powered by nuclear engines. We would probably propel them into an orbit around the Earth using chemical engines, and then turn on their nuclear propulsion to push them on missions far beyond our own planet.

“Chemical propulsion can get us off the Earth, and even to the moon”, said Thomas. “But when you’re going to Mars and beyond, it runs into its limits. Atomic propulsion will be key to going beyond that barrier.”

On top of that, nuclear propulsion would open up different ways of exploring space. Today, flights to places like Mars and the planets beyond are limited by time windows. Space organisations like NASA calculate complex trajectories that slingshot spacecraft off planets’ gravity fields, to save fuel. If higher-capacity and more powerful nuclear engines were available, this wouldn’t be such a high priority, giving us more flexibility when to launch these craft.

“A Ferrari will go faster than a Volkswagen because it has a more powerful engine”, said Thomas. “That’s what nuclear propulsion is to chemical propulsion.”

Before we get nuclear propulsion, however, we might need some time. Thomas argues that these craft will probably only really take off around 2030.

Once we have them, though, they might be a game changer. “Nuclear power and propulsion will be a huge foundational technology for bringing humans to Mars and beyond”, said Bernstein. “It will be key to making humanity an interplanetary species.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Utah study reveals the ‘best’ place for UFO sightings

 SURPRISE, IT'S UTAH

BY TREVOR MYERS - 

02/29/24


SALT LAKE CITY (KTVX/KUCW) – According to a recent study led by University of Utah geographers, the “best” place to spot UFOs is the American West.

Using data from the National UFO Research Center, U of U geographers examined the influence of environmental factors and whether they increase or decrease the number of reported sightings of UFOs — now referred to as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs.

“Most sightings occur in the American West where proximity to public lands, dark skies, and military installations afford more opportunities to see strange objects in the air,” the university said in a press release.

The university referred to the movement of UAPs from the realm of conspiracy theories to reality when a whistleblower spoke to the House Oversight Committee in July 2023 about his experience seeing UFOs.

“The U.S. Department of Defense has increasingly taken UAP, formerly known as Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), as a serious threat to national security,” the university said.

Details of the study

Data used in the National UFO Research Center (NUFORC) study amounted to 98,000 total sighting reports between the years 2001 and 2020.

With those reports, researchers examined the “sky view potential” — how much light pollution is in the area — for each county in the contiguous states. They also looked at cloud cover and tree canopy cover, plus the proximity to airports and military installations, according to the press release.

According to the findings, the majority of UFO sightings happened in the western United States because of the physical geography of the area, with darker skies and “wide-open spaces.”

Additionally, hotspots for sightings had “credible relationships with air traffic and military activity,” which the university said could mean people are seeing real objects without fully recognizing what they are.

Are people really seeing UFOs?

“The authors note that the National UFO Research Center’s data is a public, self-reporting system with no real way to verify hoaxes,” the university said. “However, the authors assert that if the data were entirely invalid due to some psychological and sociological cause, then there would be no spatial pattern. But there is.”

Richard Medina, associate professor of geography at the University of Utah and lead author of the study, said it is more likely for individuals to see unexplained items in the sky if there is more chance that known items are in the sky (such as from airports or the military).

“There’s more technology in the sky than ever before so the question is: What are people actually seeing?” Medina asked. “It’s a tough question to answer, and it is an important one because any uncertainty can be a potential threat to national security,”

In this image from video provided by the Department of Defense labeled Gimbal, from 2015, an unexplained object is seen at center as it is tracked as it soars high along the clouds, traveling against the wind. “There’s a whole fleet of them,” one naval aviator tells another, though only one indistinct object is shown. “It’s rotating.” (Department of Defense via AP)

Based on the findings, the West and isolated areas in the very Northeast of the U.S. saw “far more sightings,” classifying them as hot spots, while the “cold spots” were reportedly the central plains and the Southeast.

“The West has a historical relationship to UAP — Area 51 in Nevada, Roswell in New Mexico, and here in Utah, we have Skinwalker Ranch in the Uinta Basin and military activity in the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground,” Medina said.

Medina also cited the “robust outdoor community” of Utah, which he said means people are generally looking at the sky more. Simon Brewer, co-author of the study and associate professor of geography at the University of Utah, said several factors can contribute to the reporting of these anomalous objects.

“By examining the spatial distribution of reports and how they relate to the local environment, we hope to provide some geographical context that may help resolve or understand reports by both the public and in military settings,” Brewer said.

How is the government involved with UFOs?

According to the university, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) was established in July 2022. The AARO is said to be the “single authoritative UAP office to lead and synchronize a whole government approach to the issue,” as stated in the release.

There have been both historical and recent sightings of flying saucers, but the University of Utah says many sightings have a natural explanation — such as seeing the planet Venus, large satellites, or personal drones.

Sean Kirkpatrick is another co-author of the study.

“The U.S. government — the military, intelligence, and civil agencies — needs to understand what is in the operating domains to ensure the safety and security of the nation and its people,” said Kirkpatrick, who is also the first director of the AARO and an adjunct assistant professor of physics at the University of Georgia.

Kirkpatrick added that the scientific community is responsible for investigating the unknown and educating about the unknown.