Dear Friends,
I have been slowly drafting an essay (with charts, fun!) about global migration, demographic shifts, and the future of work. It was inspired by a number of thought-provoking conversations in Ghana last week about growing instability in the Sahel and no easy answers as to “what are all these young people going to do for work?”
The essay is also inspired by some things I’ve read in recent weeks, starting with Howard French’s fun and informative road trip through West Africa. Surrounded by young people on the outskirts of Accra, he writes: “By 2050, about 40% of all the people under 18 in the world will be African, a proportion that will reach half by century’s end.”
At the same time, I’ve been keeping my eyes on two strangely related crises in the UK. The first is a migrant crisis that has prompted the government to spend £500,000 per night just on hotel rooms. Over the past six months, more than 12,000 new migrants have arrived by boat. The rising backlash among Brits has prompted the conservative government to plan to deport all new migrants to Rwanda, no matter what country they’re from. Pretty wild. The second crisis is the National Health Service whose nurses and doctors have not been able to keep up with the country’s aging population. And so even while the government says they will cut down on immigration, they actively recruit thousands of Ghana’s most experienced nurses.1 As William Hague writes in the Sunday Times: “even rightwingers know we need migrants.” (Attached below.)
Finally, for my day job, I’ve been reading a number of policy reports about what African governments are doing to create jobs for restless young people who have all of the same Insta-dreams as any kid growing up in California. I learned a ton from an excellent 2019 report, “Africa’s Youth: Jobs or Migration.” For instance:
More than 70% of sub-Saharan African migrants move within the continent
Italy, Germany, and France altogether host less than 4% of African refugees
Between 2019 and 2100, Africa’s youth is expected to grow by 181.4%, while Europe’s will shrink by 21.4% and Asia’s by 27.7%
I pored over the Ghanaian government’s 10-year national youth policy, which looks great on paper, and then met with youth groups to understand why it is not (yet) meeting its goals.
By the end of the draft essay, I take a stab at predicting the jobs of the future and then make a case for coordinated policy between rich, shrinking countries and poor, growing countries to train young people for the jobs of tomorrow through mentoring and vocational programs.
The thing is, I could really use an editor. As if my summary above isn’t long enough, the actual essay is far longer with lots of quotes, graphs, and speculation about the future. I could use another reader’s perspective on what should be cut, what needs to be fleshed out, and whether the argument is convincing. Is anyone willing to read a draft? If so, please reply directly to this email. (And thanks!)
The animals are not optimistic
I received a thoughtful message about last week’s newsletter on progressive optimism from a millennial friend:
I agree that the doom and gloom attitude of millennials is too much, too fatalist and ultimately not collaborative. My main issue with the ‘optimist defenders’ is that their claims that things are better only count if you exclude every other species, creature, and Mother Earth from your account. Things have never been better for the average human and never worse for every being and everything else.
So true. I thought of Matt Yglesias’ distinction between “a better world for people vs. a world with less human impact.” And I was reminded of Bill McKibben’s excellent New Yorker piece on the Degrowth movement, and whether we would be happier with less:2
The most seductive argument that degrowthists make, though, is also the soundest: most of us who live in rich countries could easily make do with less—especially less energy. A study cited by the degrowth advocate Steve Genco calculated that to stabilize the planet’s temperature, we need to decrease the share of passenger-car transport in our cities by 81%, “limit per-person air travel to one trip per year,” reduce living space per person by 25%, decrease meat consumption in rich nations by 60%, and so on. Those numbers may sound drastic, but in some respects, they’re not that far from how many of us lived a half-century ago. The median square footage of an American house built in the nineteen-sixties was 1500 square feet, compared with about 2200 today—and the earlier model was home to more people. Before 1972, more than half of Americans had never taken a plane trip, much less more than one a year. And, since 1960, we’ve increased our total meat and poultry consumption by 35%.
Watt a Tour de France!
Such an exciting Tour de France. It’s unbelievable how fast they are flying up these mountains. We have never seen cyclists with this much power. Are they doping? Or have sports scientists learned how to freakishly optimize every single calorie, workout, and recovery to get the most out of the modern athlete?
I’ve been thinking a lot about energy efficiency lately as I’ve been reading Vaclav Smil’s Energy and Civilization, a history of how humans went from using their muscles to horses to fire to coal, oil, nuclear, and solar to dominate the world.3
Now that we no longer need to use our muscles for work, I suppose we can use them to ride our bikes up mountains faster than ever thought.
🧰 A useful tool: Trader Joe’s sunscreen gel
I used to suffer through stinging eyes from sweaty sunscreen. Plus, so many pimples on my forehead where my helmet would push the greasy sunscreen into my pores. Then I discovered Trader Joe’s facial sunscreen gel. It’s a bargain at $9, smooth to put on, and not greasy. (I knew nothing about sunscreen, and certainly not how they calculate SPF, until I read Allie Volpe’s explainer on Vox.) This is definitely one of those products I wish I discovered 20 years ago.
👏 Kudos
Kudos to Northern Regional Youth Network, an alliance of youth movements (read: WhatsApp groups) in Northern Ghana that organize protests and press conferences to get (very old!) politicians to pay attention to youth issues. At a time when I’ve grown cynical about philanthropy and big NGOs, this group of high school and college student activists filled me with admiration and hope.
🎵 A Playlist
My buddy
is going through peak middle-age nostalgia for the 90s, and a fantastic playlist has come out of it. At least half of these tracks bring back memories for me.Well friends, I’m writing this in the Accra airport more than 24 hours after I was supposed to leave. Everything they say about summer travel this year seems to be true; yet another reason to travel less!
Have a great week,
David
While they are recruiting Ghana’s most experienced nurses, they are giving a £15m grant to strengthen Ghana’s healthcare workforce. I argue in the essay that while it may seem hypocritical, it’s exactly the type of strategic investment that the US and UK should make: invest in the workforce skills that are needed both in Africa and the US, and then give people a legal and controlled way to migrate if they’d like.
I don’t support degrowth myself, for reasons Noah Smith describes more convincingly than I could, but in my own life I’m definitely ready to slow down, do less, and travel less.
Also, my friend Michael convinced me to try a continuous glucose monitor, so I’m nerding out on how much glucose goes into my body and how it relates to how much power comes out of my legs on the bike.