The clock is ticking on China, and my question is, what do we intend to do about it?

The demographic numbers are appalling for the Chinese.  That nation of some 1.2 billion people has roughly 500-600 million people of an age that suggests that their death rate is going to skyrocket.  It’s like that in Canada, too, with our own population top-heavy with people age 60+ making up the lion’s share of the demographic pie.  But we’re not going to lose half a billion people as a result of it.

Some would argue that China’s problem is China’s problem, and while certainly tempting, there’s a bit more to it than that.  Right now, China produces about half of the world’s finished products, at least from a total value perspective.  Halving your national population cut in half through natural aging will have an impact on that, for sure.  Yes, China will still be a colossus, but the Chinese economy is scaled to the much larger population of over a billion.  When you pull that 600 million people out of the equation, that means that you theoretically lose over half of your domestic market for your own finished manufactured goods, not to mention the impact that may have on your productive workforce.  And the impact that all of this will have on the global economy.

An impact that will be felt right here, an ocean away, in Canada.

I’ve decided I need an NFL team to cheer for.

It took me long enough.  I’ve been a fan of football forever, played it as a kid, was actually not bad at it, yet still, among my peer group I was the only guy who didn’t follow a team. At least in the NFL.

Back then all my friends would cheer for the Steelers and the Cowboys, probably because at the time those two franchises were the class of the league, alternating championships between them.  But I couldn’t very well cheer for either of those two, because that’s just not the way she goes for me, bandwagon-jumping not something I’ve ever been good at.  When pressed for social reasons or to just fit in, I would say that I cheered for the Oakland Raiders, mostly because of their uniforms and their bad-boy kind of mentality.  Names like Jack Tatum, Ted Hendricks, Pete Banaszack, and Jim Plunkett were my answer to Terry Bradshaw, Mean Joe Greene, Jack Ham, and Jack Lambert of Pittsburgh and Roger Staubach, Tony Hill, Tony Dorsett, and Drew Pearson of Dallas.  But still, I had to look the Oakland names up, except for Plunkett, to remind myself who I “cheered” for, whereas the Steelers and Cowboys players I could remember without assistance.

Getting ready for Tuesday’s Renfrew Town Council meeting, I went through the meeting agenda that was released the Friday before, three days before the meeting itself and with a weekend in the middle of it, so that if anyone had any questions, there’d be no way to pose them since staff was off for the weekend, not that they answer their emails anyways under any conditions that I can discern.

I had no such questions of my own, so that’s a bit of a moot point personally, but Councillor Dick raised the timeline since he’s an elected councillor, responsible to electors, and clearly under the same timeline as I am, a retired dude with the time to spend on such late-breaking documents.  In other words, I had a better opportunity to go over the agenda and prepare for the same meeting than an elected councillor had, a gentleman with many other things to do than I.

The egalitarian streak that sort of runs through me found that to be appealing to a degree, but the common sense part of me kind of screamed out that this was just not a good “business” practice, where the principals receive the information at the same time as the non-actors.  It’s also a state of affairs that gives significant advantage to a guy like me who, blessed with retirement, good health and nothing better to do, can arrive at the same time and in the same place more thoroughly briefed on the minutiae of the agenda items, and the often-redundant appendices that make going through the agenda document about as much fun as walking through muck.  You’d think they were actually attempting to dissuade people from reading this documentation, although, in my experience, it’s often in the murky water where you find the most concealed gems of information.  But that’s me, and I’m not a Renfrew councillor, one who has to appear in public, live-streamed or available afterward, who has every statement or non-statement right there on the public record of YouTube.  I could see how there would be a strong incentive to say nothing for a councillor, since your options are to wade through the miasma of “late-breaking” information, stay quiet and perhaps appear stupid, or say something and remove all doubt, or so the saying goes.  I could completely understand the incentive to remain quiet, not that I witnessed that.