Like a bridge over troubled waters..
--Paul Simon
Our Mission We work to see what's coming over the horizon and to bridge social and cultural divides. We try to provoke conversations about government policies and individual actions that could make Planet Earth more liveable for our grandchildren and their children.
Urban Youth Unemployment: A Problem Getting BIGGER | December 2022
You may have seen a hint of the problem of urban youth unemployment before the Covid-19 pandemic in the growth of the “gig economy” in the USA and other high-income countries.
You may have seen a hint in the college choices your children and grandchildren are making as they understand that the security of long careers with a single employer that graduates enjoyed 50 years ago can no longer be readily available. Life-long jobs in government or manufacturing or services like banking seem to be increasingly scarce, especially jobs that include substantial benefits such as health insurance, pensions, and paid leave for vacations and illness and parenthood.
What you may have missed is how threatening the growth of urban youth unemployment is in other countries, especially in China and India and across Africa.
I started focusing on this problem in 2017. The context for this decision is described in a Note at the end of this piece.
Don’t take just my word about the problem. Here are recent reports about youth unemployment in China and India:
The Rieffel family name comes from my great grandmother, Marie Adelaide Rieffel, born in Rosheim, Alsace, France, around 1840. My grandfather was her only child and she could not give him his father’s name because my grandfather was a love child, born out of wedlock. My great grandfather, Alexis Dieudonné d’Origny, born in Lorraine, France, was working as a physician to the Sultan of Turkey when he fell in love with Marie Adelaide on a visit to Paris where she was working with her sister making hats for high society. There is just as much fascinating history on my mother’s side of the family.
Subscribers will get an email notification when new content is posted. My plan is to post new content once a week and to create a monthly Newsletter with the new content of the month and some more in-depth material, including material from other sources.
Myanmar Update | June 2025
Since my December 2024 Update, the world has become dramatically more chaotic due to the unprecedented assault on trusted US institutions by President Trump.
How Myanmar's Economic Reforms After 2010 Got Started | June 2025
I had an exceptional inside view of "Myanmar Egress", a Third Force mediating between the democracy movement and the military.
My Hookah in the Peace Corps Museum | May 2025
In 2020, I donated a hookah acquired during my service in India to the Peace Corps Museum. Here is the story that went with my gift.
The Rieffel family name comes from my great grandmother, Marie Adelaide Rieffel, born in Rosheim, Alsace, France, around 1840. My grandfather was her only child and she could not give him his father’s name because my grandfather was a love child, born out of wedlock. My great grandfather, Alexis Dieudonné d’Origny, born in Lorraine, France, was working as a physician to the Sultan of Turkey when he fell in love with Marie Adelaide on a visit to Paris where she was working with her sister making hats for high society. There is just as much fascinating history on my mother’s side of the family.
Subscribers will get an email notification when new content is posted. My plan is to post new content once a week and to create a monthly Newsletter with the new content of the month and some more in-depth material, including material from other sources.
I don’t know when I started trying to understand things coming over the horizon that would have an impact on my life and on the rest of the world. There is some evidence that I was doing this in the 1960s. Since then I seem to have developed a
pretty good nose for what’s coming, and had some success in writing about it.