RED EYE ON THE NEWS . . . December 14, 2022

Weapons production ramps up for a long, cruel war
Foreign Policy, 11/16–As the war in Ukraine shows little sign of abating, Kyiv’s Western partners are grappling with how to maintain a supply of arms and ammunition to Ukraine…without letting their stockpiles dwindle to the point that it could jeopardize their own readiness levels.

NATO is now discussing how to support members if their stockpiles fall below the levels needed to meet their defense obligations…But back in Washington, some former officials are wishing that the Biden administration and NATO allies had gotten the message sooner, and they want defense spending, which has boomed since Russia’s full-scale invasion, to continue to spike for the foreseeable future.

Behind the scenes, the United States and other NATO powers have urged Western defense companies to bump up production…“What they say is essentially show me the money,” said Mark Cancian, who served as chief of the Pentagon’s force structure and investment division until 2015.

“Their fear is that the war will end and the orders will end and they will end up with these expanded factories that don’t have any orders to fill them.”

As billionaires prosper, most U.S. workers live paycheck to paycheck
Lending Club, June/July 2022–More than half of the U.S. population — an estimated 150 million adults — currently live paycheck to paycheck, making it the most common financial lifestyle in the United States…in May 2022, 58 percent  of consumers live paycheck to paycheck…Viewed over the last year… this share has been on an upward trend: The share of consumers living paycheck to paycheck has increased four percentage points from 54 percent in May 2021. Seventy-seven percent of those earning less than $50,000 and 62 percent of those earning $50,000 to $100,000 annually were living paycheck to paycheck in May 2022, up from 72 percent and 53 percent, respectively, in May 2021 . Meanwhile, 36 percent of consumers earning more than $100,000 per year reported living paycheck to paycheck in May 2022.

Anti-Haitian racism now extends to all Black workers
Bloomberg, 11/21–As the Dominican Republic increases the deportation of Haitian nationals, Black US citizens risk being caught up in the sweep, the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo said. “Travelers to the Dominican Republic have reported being delayed, detained, or subject to heightened questioning at ports of entry and in other encounters with immigration officials based on their skin color,” the embassy said in an alert published over the weekend. The warning comes as the Dominican Republic has been stepping up the deportation of undocumented migrants from neighboring Haiti, as that nation is mired in gang violence and political instability.

China outdoes U.S. as capitalist paradise
NBC News, 4/9–Three years ago, American entrepreneur Raj Oswal traveled to the Chinese city of Shenzhen on behalf of a client. He was so impressed that he stayed and started his own tech company…The former fishing village, now a tech hub known as China’s Silicon Valley, has joined Beijing and Shanghai as the world’s top three cities for billionaires, edging out New York for the first time this year. According to the Hurun Global Rich List, an annual ranking compiled by a private Shanghai-based company, Beijing is home to the world’s greatest number of billionaires at 144, followed by Shanghai with 121. There are 113 billionaires in Shenzhen, compared with 110 in New York, while London came in fifth with 101.

Shenzhen’s rise began in 1980, when it was named China’s first special economic zone as part of the country’s “reform and opening up” under then-leader Deng Xiaoping. That allowed the city to experiment with market capitalism in an effort to attract foreign investment.