Who's 21 out there?

I won't announce here what my age is (though you already know I grew up watching Mr. Roboto). You will have to look at the links for that. But in case you're interested in general demographic and political trends, a set of surveys finds that I am from the single most Republican age cohort in the United States today.

The argument - from the New York Times' semi-official conservative columnist, Ross Douthat - goes that having grown up in the Reagan years was likely to make for more stable commitments to free markets (while by contrast having grown up in the FDR years of successful government intervention was likely to make citizens into Democrats).

Anyway, what caught my eye is that while I am from the most Republican birthyear in modern American history, many of you may be from the most Democratic birthyear: that is, current 21 year olds.

As a flip side of that coin, 24 year olds are the least Republican (though not most Democratic) of all voters. Don't be confused by the scale here -- we're talking about a few percentage points -- but it is intriguing to see what happened in your lifetimes (in the Clinton and Bush years) as contrasted with mine.

The President Goes to China...

... and all we get are these lousy t-shirts?

The New York Times has multiple columns up today: an Op-Ed, plus Krugman on global imbalances (again).

Similarly, the WSJ rings in on not forgetting the rest of Asia, and on China blaming the U.S. (turning the Krugman and Ferguson articles on their heads). The latter is behind the subscription wall, but can be reached via Google News.

"The key financial distortion in the world economy today..."

Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick on Chimerica.