China is one of the paradoxes of modern industry: Countless consumer goods multinationals have built global empires by contracting out manufacturing to partners in China, generally without cutting corners or letting quality standards slip. Yet for one reason or another, Chinese firms aren't replicating that success at home.
Like me, Jonathan Chait also liked parts of Jim Manzi’s epic right-leaning prescription for combining competitiveness with social equity. But Chait also identifies a major problem with a pillar of Manzi’s argument—that the U.S. has dramatically outperformed Western Europe economically since the dawn of the Reagan era: [S]ince 1980, the original 15 members of the [...]
