The World and Everything in It: March 6, 2023

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!  President Biden’s plan to cancel out billions of dollars of student debt has Supreme Court justices grappling with the meaning of a word.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket. As it is on the Monday Moneybeat, we’ll talk about how student loan policy makes education more expensive. And economist David Bahnsen will talk about woke capitalism.

Plus the WORLD History Book: 45 years ago, the premiere of an offbeat science fiction radio drama.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, March 6th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Ukraine war update »

SOUND (shelling NATS): [BLAST]

Ukrainian troops firing artillery rounds at invading Russian forces in the eastern city of Bakmut.

ZELENSKYY: [UKRAINIAN]

President Volodymyr Zelensky calls it a "painful and difficult" battle in the Donbas region as the Kremlin continues to feed waves of Russian troops into the war machine.

Russian bombs destroyed two key bridges in and out of Bakmut, cutting off critical supply lines for Ukrainian forces.

While the military war is a long way from over, it appears Russia is clearly losing the global propaganda war. A video clip went viral over the weekend of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaking to a crowd in New Delhi, India. When he tried to frame Russia as the victim in this war, the crowd wasn’t quite buying it.

LAVROV: The war, which we are trying to stop, which was launched against us using the Ukra … — [laughter] —Ukrainian people....

China economic growth »And officials in Washington remain concerned that China may choose to sell weapons to Moscow. But they’re hopeful the possible repercussions for China’s economy will deter Beijing from doing that.

The Chinese Communist Party over the weekend says it’s aiming to grow its economy by only five percent in 2023.

LI: Chinese-GDP...

China’s top economic official Premier Li Keqiang heard there.

Last year the Chinese economy grew by roughly three percent, one of its worst years since the 1970s.

LI: Chinese Military

Despite a slower economy, Chinese officials also say they’ll increase military spending by slightly more than seven percent.

Another train, derailment, rail safety push » In Ohio, authorities say there is no risk to residents or the environment between Columbus and Dayton after another Norfolk Southern train jumped its tracks over the weekend.

But Democratic Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown said Sunday …

BROWN: I’m not entirely satisfied because there are some sort of remnants of something that might have been in those cars. Those cars were mostly empty, but I want to know if there are any contaminants left in those mostly. empty cars.

Meantime, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing a new rail safety bill.

Brown is one of the co-sponsors of that bill. And a fellow Ohio lawmaker, Congressman Mike Turner, a Republican, told NBC’s Meet the Press it’s time to act.

TURNER: This truly is outrageous. What we’ve seen recently with the risk to communities is unacceptable.

The bill would tighten safety requirements for trains carrying hazardous materials and increase the fines for violations.

Marianne Williamson » If President Biden does indeed seek reelection, he’ll have at least one challenger. Self-help author Marianne Williamson says she is running for President again.

WILLIAMSON: This system will not change itself. The status quo, ladies and gentlemen and everyone else, will not disrupt itself. That’s our job.

With her weekend announcement, she is the first Democrat to officially enter the race.

Williamson made it onto the presidential debate stage ahead of the 2020 election before dropping out of that race and throwing her support behind socialist Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.

WILLIAMSON - It is our job to create a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will override the forces of hatred and injustice and fear.

President Biden is expected to announce a reelection bid in the near future.

Meanwhile the former Republican governor Maryland, Larry Hogan says he will not run for President.

Two days earlier, conservative political activist and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy announced his candidacy for the GOP nod.

CPAC » And in Washington over the weekend, two other Republican candidates and several possible contenders … took to the stage at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

TRUMP: I will put the people back in charge of this country again. The people will be back in charge of our country.

Former President Trump headlined the event. On social media, he mocked his former Ambassador to the UN—turned Republian rival, Nikki Haley, for a modest turnout at her CPAC speech. But on stage, he largely steered away from drawing attention to Haley or other potential opponents.

For her part, Haley took a delicate jab at Trump.

HALEY: We have lost the popular vote in the last seven out of eight presidential elections. If you’re tired of losing, put your trust in a new generation.

And former Sec. of State under Trump, Mike Pompeo, took what some saw as a no-so-delicate swipe.

POMPEO: We can’t become the left, following celebrity leaders with their own brand of identity politics, those with fragile egos who refuse to acknowledge reality. This is a tough world.

Pompeo has not announced his candidacy, but he is expected to do soon.

Weather » Forecasters say storms will continue batter Northern California this week. That after winter storms pounded the area and much of the rest of the country over the past week.

Brian Hurley with the National Weather Service:

HURLEY: A lot of snow especially above 2000 feet and with that two winds to go with it not quite the blizzard like conditions we saw with the last storm system, but still a lot of snow. And with all of that snow you know certainly the avalanche risk continues.

Severe weather has killed more than a dozen people in the South over the past week where storms spawned extreme winds and tornadoes.

I'm Kent Covington.

President Biden’s student debt cancellation plan has Supreme Court justices grappling with the meaning of a word.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday, March 6th. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time for Legal Docket.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments for and against President Biden’s plan to cancel student loans.

The high court also released two opinions. Let’s start with those.

One is a victory for a taxpayer given a fine of nearly three million dollars by the IRS for unintentionally failing to file certain forms.

Alexandru Bittner has dual citizenship with the U-S and his native Romania. He ran several businesses in Romania after communism fell, and upon return to the U-S, Bittner learned of IRS forms he was supposed to have filed but hadn’t.

He took immediate action to try to make things right. But the IRS was not, let’s say, not satisfied that he’d complied with the Bank Secrecy Act.

REICHARD: “Not satisfied” is rather an understatement. The IRS calculated his penalties on a per-account basis that tacked on an additional two million dollars-plus from Bittner’s calculation that was based on a per-form basis.

But the high court ended up agreeing with Bittner. He’s not off the hook: He’ll still owe 50,000 dollars, but that’s a five-figure penalty instead of seven figures. Thousands, not millions.

EICHER: The second opinion is a huge loss for the state of Delaware in a dispute over unclaimed Moneygram funds.

MoneyGram’s a service that allows you to send or receive money for a fee.

And maybe it’s hard to believe there are unclaimed funds, but there’s hundreds of millions in unclaimed funds … and the state government of Delaware has claimed them.

Delaware’s legal theory was that Moneygram is incorporated in that state. But dozens of other states sued for a piece of that cash pie, and those states won, unanimously.

Now that unclaimed money will go to the state in which the MoneyGram was purchased.

REICHARD: That’s a big deal and Delaware’s budget is about to take a dive. Unclaimed property--can you believe it?--is Delaware’s third biggest revenue source!

Now for the oral arguments in the two cases with billions of taxpayer dollars at stake.

Here’s the background: ahead of the midterm election last year, the Biden administration announced it would cancel up to $10,000 in debt for student borrowers who earn less than $125,000 a year. For those who received Pell Grants, there was more relief available.

The president claims authority under the federal HEROES Act, the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act. Congress passed it early on in the Iraq war to suspend payments on student loans held by servicemembers.

EICHER: The idea had been kicked around for a while. But in 2021 Nancy Pelosi who was then Speaker of the House said this about loan forgiveness:

PELOSI: People think that the president of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone, he can delay, but he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress…President can’t do it. So that’s not even a discussion.

Pelosi changed her position from can’t do it to can do it and from no discussion to huge discussion.

So at the Supreme Court, six states and two individuals challenged the plan on grounds that the Biden administration overstepped its authority. That it misused the purpose of the HEROES Act. And that it didn’t follow proper regulatory procedures, such as notice and comment.

REICHARD: U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar defended the plan at oral argument. She will mention the term “forbearance.” And what that means is the pause on student loan payments and interest accrual that then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos invoked under President Trump that President Biden extended.

PRELOGAR: COVID-19 is the most devastating pandemic in our nation’s history and … over the past three years, millions of Americans have struggled to pay rent, utilities, food, and many have been unable to pay their debts…:43 But if forbearance ends without further relief, it’s undisputed that defaults and delinquencies will surge above pre-pandemic levels.

EICHER: The plan is premised upon the COVID emergencies the Trump administration declared in 2020. President Biden extended those emergency declarations and federal agencies used that to expand their powers including the Secretary of Education in these cases.

Lawyer James Campbell represented states challenging the plan.

CAMPBELL: The Secretary is attempting to bypass Congress on one of today's most debated policy questions, student loan forgiveness. After many failed legislative efforts, the Secretary seeks to write off nearly a half-trillion dollars in loans for over 40 million borrowers. No statute authorizes this sweeping action.

The legal questions boil down to a few questions: To begin with, do these plaintiffs even have standing to sue? Meaning, do the states and individuals have a concrete and particularized harm that a court can remedy? And the second question is on the merits. That is, whether the plan is illegal.

REICHARD: The court has to answer the first question on standing before it can get to the second one on legality.

But the justices asked more questions about the merits.

For example, the Chief Justice homed in on one word in the HEROES Act, “modify.” Here’s the law in relevant part, and I’ll read from it directly: the Secretary of Education has the power to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs [when] necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency.” 

Listen to Chief Justice John Roberts:

ROBERTS: But, in an opinion we had a few years ago by Justice Scalia, he talked about what the word "modify" means, and he said modified in our view connotes moderate change. He said it might be good English to say that the French Revolution modified the status of the French nobility, but only because there's a figure of speech called understatement and a literary device known as sarcasm. We're talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans. How does that fit under the normal understanding of "modifying"?

REICHARD: Prelogar for the government cautioned against any universal meaning of the word “modify.” The liberal justices leaned sympathetically toward the government’s reading of the HEROES Act. Listen to Justice Elena Kagan:

KAGAN: I mean, Congress didn't say exactly the circumstances in which it wanted the Secretary to use this authority. Of course not. This is -- this is a -- a bill about, like, what happens when you have an emergency. So what Congress said is what happens when you have an emergency is the Secretary has the power to take care of emergencies, and it has that power by way of waiving or modifying any provision and adding others in lieu of them.

And Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson:

JACKSON: So I'm thinking about the fact that, as a result of COVID, we had massive infusions of money given to various companies, organizations, clearly authorized because Congress said do it. I'm wondering whether that would be unfair to people who didn't own a company or somebody who didn't have, you know, a nonprofit and wasn't getting that money. I just don't know how far we can go with this notion of, to the extent that the government is providing much-needed assistance to people in an emergency…

I found it interesting that nobody brought up the concept of moral hazard. That is, the risk of incentivizing irresponsible behavior by taking away the consequences. I expect we’ll hear from David Bahnsen on that in just a few minutes, but here’s the analysis of Chief Justice Roberts on one aspect of moral hazard.

ROBERTS: You know, you have two situations, both two kids come out of high school, they can't afford college, one takes a loan, and the other says, well, I'm going to, you know, try my hand at setting up a lawn care service, and he takes out a bank loan for that. At the end of four years, we know statistically that the person with the college degree is going to do significantly financially better over the course of life than the person without. And then along comes the government and tells that person: You don't have to pay your loan. Nobody's telling the person who is trying to set up the lawn service business that he doesn't have to pay his loan. He still does, even though his tax dollars are going to support the forgiveness of the loan for the -- the college graduate, who's now going to make a lot more than him over the course of his lifetime….(later)...We like to usually leave situations of that sort, when you're talking about spending the government's money, which is the taxpayers' money, to the people in charge of the money, which is Congress.

The Chief Justice then segued into the Major Questions Doctrine. That prevents presidents from ruling by edict and skirting Congress or procedural steps like notice and comment periods. Which other presidents have done … famously. You might remember:

OBAMA: I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign Executive Orders and take executive actions and administrative actions to move the ball forward.

…President Obama in 2014. The high court used Major Questions analysis to stop his Clean Power Plan, as well as the eviction moratorium from the CDC under both Trump and Biden and the OSHA vaccine mandate for employers.

Government lawyer Prelogar saw no connection, though, to education loans:

PRELOGAR: So my reaction to that, Mr. Chief Justice, is that Congress did take those kinds of considerations into account in specifically providing this authority to the Secretary.

The Chief Justice kept up the pressure in the second case, too, about skirting procedural requirements.

ROBERTS: Now we take very seriously the idea of the separation of powers and that power should be divided to prevent its abuse, and there are many procedural niceties that have to be followed for the same purpose.

Round and round they went, dodging and ducking meaning and intent.

President Biden said the pandemic was over in September, and then extended the national emergency designation until May 11th.

Interestingly, the Biden administration itself found that more than half of borrowers thought they could repay their loans.

In these times of massive debt and rising prices, I’m reminded of a quote often attributed to Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen back in the 1960s, on how federal spending gets out of control: “A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” Of course, Dirksen if he said it may have been on to something.

He died in 1969, and the federal budget today is more than 35 times the size it was then.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It, it’s the Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It's time now to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David is head of the wealth management firm, the Bahnsen group. He joins us now. And David, good morning to you.

DAVID BAHNSEN, GUEST: Well, good morning, Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: All right, as mentioned, the big Supreme Court argument last week on student loans, we have heard the legal analysis, so let's talk economics. Now, isn't it true that student loan forgiveness as we have before us, isn't this policy, if the executive order were to stand? Wouldn't it result in raising the cost of higher education even further? And then could you explain economically, why that's true?

BAHNSEN: Yeah. Well, first of all, let's be clear, there's absolutely no chance this would pass legislatively. If it would pass legislatively, then of course, the administration wouldn't have to do this executive order that they themselves have known is constitutionally dubious, at best. It's actually open and shut, there's no possible way, constitutionally, that the executive branch has this authority. And the only question is whether or not the Supreme Court will rule that the plaintiffs have the standing to bring this case. And I'm mostly optimistic that the Supreme Court will throw this atrocity out.

Does the forgiveness of debt en masse generally push prices higher? To answer that, one has to then ask themselves in another hypothetical, if you ran up your credit card debt, and then the government came in and said, we're forgiving all this debt, and you then had a sort of baked-in assumption that you may have the chance of spending money on things you want to spend it on, and will have the debt forgiven in the future, does that incentivize you to spend more or spend less? And the answer is, I think, pretty obvious. But an even bigger question is why have prices come up so much to begin with, and it is the fact that the debt was being paid for, first of all, there was no underwriting to get the debt, anybody could get it. And the government was the backer with a blank check, so it gave administrators carte blanche to raise tuition, room and board to preposterous prices.

So having debt forgiveness come at a $10,000 or for married couple of $20,000 level for upper middle class professionals, younger doctors, business people, so forth, does this incentivize them to take on more debt, people to go to, don't really need a graduate degree, but may as well get one anyways if they're not gonna have to pay for it? Do those things put upward pressure on prices? Intuitively, we all know they do.

EICHER: David, I want to ask another DC policy question as it relates to investment markets, though this time. It's an interesting situation here, it has to do with so-called ESG-graded investments - standing for environmental, social and governance, kind of a fad, where you take into account factors other than straight return on investment. So in a rare show of bipartisanship in Congress, the Senate has passed a bill that would roll back a rule by the Department of Labor that allows fund managers, and we're talking financial professionals who have a fiduciary responsibility to bring a return on investment for federal retirement accounts, for them to consider ESG factors in managing those accounts. Now, the bill received two Democrat votes, Democrats in red states, John Tester, Montana, Joe Manchin, West Virginia, in a rebuke to what is known as woke capitalism. Now, David, I received a question from Tim Fader of Clermont, Florida. So I'll ask first, that you tell what ESG is, and then to the listener question, how does ESG affect the economy?

BAHNSEN: ESG is this movement that focuses around allegedly environmental, social and governance issues. It's a criteria of those three categories that has never been specifically defined. And it has more or less become a tool of the Left and primarily the environmentalists, to try to force different governance provisions on companies. It has become a, it was prior to the last year or so, a huge fad in the investment markets because it can be marketed to people as saying, “Hey, we are investing and getting great returns, and we have an ESG overlay,” meaning we're really focused on companies that are doing great things environmentally, socially, and in their governance.

So I've been a critic of it since day one. I didn't join the party a year and a half ago. The reason why the party got big a year and a half ago is because all of a sudden Wall Street, the media, and of course, as you're referring to here, Washington DC started running with various ESG agenda as a way of trying to cram down rules and regulations and force out the fossil fuel industry. And then companies like Exxon and Chevron, were filtered out of ESG filters everywhere. Now, Congress and the Department of Labor and others with power have been trying to use ESG to force money out of pension funds that invest in fossil fuel, and so forth and so on.

But here's the thing, Nick, and I'm sorry for the long answer, but this is really important, because this is a spiritual thing: ESG primarily exists as a secular religion. It exists to allow people to sort of feel that they've done something sacramental, that they have done a good deed, and yet, it didn't cost them anything. There was no sacrifice, there was no obedience, just simply, “Hey, I can put the ESG label on, baptize myself with it. And now I feel like I did good for the world,” when in reality, we know that good requires sacrifice, virtue comes from people being willing to go in and do difficult things, not easy things.

And ESG is on its heels now, because people are fighting back. And more importantly, energy was the number one performing sector in 2021, and 2022. And technology and a lot of the ESG favorite sectors got killed in 2022. So lo and behold, all of a sudden, all these Pharisees that said ESG was such a great way to change the world had been selling out of their ESG investments. It was very coincident and convenient ride when the performance happened to be aligned with their ideology. But as markets ebb and flow, and it went the other way, so as people's principles, so the Senate did a good thing, including with a couple of Democrats, to fight back against this atrocious violation of fiduciary responsibility. And the President is threatening to veto it, and we'll see where it goes from there.

EICHER: Okay, last question For you, David. Kind of a specific one. It's from Bryan Waites of Atlanta, I had not heard of this one before, but I'm sure you have. What are your thoughts on Secure Act 2.0, and do you think it's an overall positive or negative for the economy?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, I will just give a quick answer, because this really actually is a pretty small bill, in terms of its scope, its limited in who it may affect. There were a lot of provisions in this new bill that passed at the end of the year that went into effect for 2023. But things like what the conditions are that people can withdraw from their 401(k)s, or the required minimum distribution went up to age 73, from people's retirement accounts, and it had been age 72, before that. And so there's just little technical things that they did, and each one of them has a trade-off. And so the, you know, they matter to people, but none of them are significant. None of it is needle-moving. And none of it is pro-growth. I think they're more bureaucratic, either good bureaucratic or bad bureaucratic, but not growth-oriented.

EICHER: Okay. Well, you may have a question for David Bahnsen, and if you do, I hope you'll send it on over to us, the email address is feedback@worldandeverything.com. Thank you, Bryan Waites. Thank you, Tim Fader, Thank you, David Bahnsen. David is founder, managing partner and chief investment officer of the Bahnsen group, and you can check his personal website at bahnsen.com, B-A-H-N-S-E-N, bahnsen.com. David, I hope you have a good one. We'll talk to you next week.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, March 6th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Today, the premiere of a surprisingly influential science fiction radio drama.

Plus, the removal of term limits for China’s leader.

REICHARD: But first,  a natural disaster hits southern California. Here’s Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: We begin today on March 10th, 1933 in Long Beach, California…and a 6.4 magnitude earthquake.

NEWSREEL: March 1933 brought havoc to southern California as violent earthquakes ripped the area from Long Beach to Los Angeles…

The earthquake’s epicenter—part of the Newport–Inglewood Fault—is just off-shore…

NEWSREEL: Once thriving streets were suddenly junk-yards.

…the city of Long Beach is the worst hit.

NEWSREEL: Ruined buildings stood precariously on cracked ground which clung to the trembling edges of unseen chasms below…

The earthquake began at 5:55pm—as many people were settling in for dinner or other family activities.

NEWSREEL: Rescue workers work through the night, feeling their way through the debris…

Tens of thousands of homes and businesses are damaged or destroyed. More than 200 school buildings are declared unsafe. Students attend classes in tents for months. Clean-up is slow.

NEWSREEL: Much of the work had to be done carefully by hand. The night of terror was over. Even casualties pitched in on the mammoth cleanup out of the rubble…

Nearly 120 people died in the quake with an estimated $40 million dollars worth of property damage.

Within 30 days of the quake, Governor James Rolph, Jr. signs the Field Act—governing the planning, design and construction of public school buildings. The act is the first of many bills over the following decades that mandate high building standards for buildings in earthquake prone areas of California.

MUSIC FROM HG2

Next, a fictitious calamity: the destruction of the earth. Radio listeners learn of the event on March 8th, 1978, during the first-ever broadcast of a quirky science fiction radio drama by Douglas Adams on BBC Radio 4.

DRAMA: This is the story of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, perhaps the most remarkable, certainly the most successful book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor…

The 6 episode series introduces listeners to the adventures of the unhappy and unfortunate Arthur Dent, who, as the story opens is trying to prevent his home from being torn down.

DRAMA: Look, there’s no point in lying down in the path of progress. I’ve gone off the idea of progress. It’s over-rated. But you must realize you can’t lie in front of bulldozers indefinitely…

The scene foreshadows the destruction of the earth as a race of aliens make way for an intergalactic bypass. Dent’s friend, an alien posing as a human, tries to explain.

DRAMA: Time is an illusion. Lunchtime, doubly so. Drink up. The world is about to end…(sigh) It must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays…

Dent and a female character, are the only humans to escape. They’re joined by a cast of odd-ball alien and robot characters. Over the rest of the story, they learn that the Earth was actually a giant supercomputer—built by its creators to try to figure out the “Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.” The answer was already known: 42…but they were unsure of the question.

DRAMA: Could a mere computer solve the problem of life, the universe, and everything?

What began as a fairly successful short radio series, turned into a cult following. Two years after its debut, it was re-released as a 12-episode radio series…today’s audio clips come from that production. It was turned into a novel, then a series of novels, stage plays, television series, movies…

MOVIE CLIP: I have an idea…

The evolutionary themes, adult subject matters, foul language, and its anti-religious undertones require discernment and may make it unsuitable for many families. But fans of the story see it as a great work of philosophical fiction wrapped up in a science fiction comedy including Space X’s Elon Musk:

MUSK: And it sort of highlighted the important point, which is that a lot of times the question is harder than the answer. And then whatever the question is that most approximates what's the meaning of life? You know, that, that's, that's the question we could ultimately get closer to understanding.

When Elon Musk launched his Tesla Roadster into an elliptical heliocentric orbit in 2018, he placed a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the glovebox.

And finally, five years ago…

SOUND: PEOPLE’S CONGRESS

On March 11th, 2018, China’s National People’s Congress meet in the Great Hall of the People. They cancel term limits for their leader—allowing Xi Jinping to serve as president for life…if he desires. He addresses the congress.

CHINESE PRESIDENT XI JINPING: [CHINESE]

President Xi Jinping says he will defend the authority of—and be loyal to—the Chinese constitution and the motherland. He pledges to purge the party of corruption. And he’ll strive to make China a “prosperous, democratic, civilized, harmonious and beautiful” modern country.

According to data from the Chinese government—in the five years since the vote—both China’s national GDP and its military have grown, while the poverty rate is on a downward trend.

And for all its publicized advancements, China faces a huge demographic problem as its population ages. Plus, the nation’s international reputation continues to decline due to its abuse of the Uyghurs, the spread of COVID, the reduction of internet freedom for its own people—and its digital espionage on others. Not to mention China’s renewed pressure and persecution campaign against the Christian church.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Paul Butler.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Lab-grown meat may soon be showing up in restaurants but will Americans have an appetite for the Frankenburger? We’ll have a report.

And, WORLD’s Classic Book of the Month for March. This time a book about the mind and faith of Abraham Lincoln.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer; from the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy. (Psalm 61: 1-3)

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