Latest news with #NoahSmith
ABC News
16-06-2025
- Health
- ABC News
Wayne and Noah Smith gun deaths inquest calls for licensing reform
A coronial inquest has heard of the need for reforms to NSW gun licensing after a mentally unwell man was handed back his guns less than six months before he used one to kill his son and then himself. Warning: This story contains details that readers may find distressing. Wayne Smith killed his 15-year-old son Noah as he lay sleeping in their Yamba home in the early hours of June 1, 2023, before turning the weapon on himself. State Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan has heard testimony from doctors, police and the NSW Firearms Registry about the circumstances that led to the 58-year-old being reissued with his gun licence despite having a history of mental illness. In her closing statement to the inquest, Counsel Assisting, Donna Ward SC, made several recommendations to improve gun licensing processes, including making it mandatory for GPs to report concerns about patients who own a gun. Ms Ward said there had been a breakdown in communication between the health professionals who had been treating Mr Smith. "We don't have any simple solutions to that problem," she said. The inquest also heard about a lack of community and hospital options in northern News South Wales for mental health treatment. Ms Ward said that at the time of Wayne and Noah Smith's deaths there were deficiencies in NSW Firearms Registry processes. Since then, the Firearms Legislation Amendment Bill 2022 has enacted new laws relating to gun ownership and licensing. Ms Ward made a series of proposed recommendations for the Minister for Police and the Police Commissioner to consider in the post implementation review of those reforms. These included a standard question during GP consultations about whether a patient held a gun licence, and a statutory obligation for GPs to report to police if they had safety concerns for a patient who held a gun licence. She also proposed two separate mental health risk assessments for anyone who had experienced suicidal ideation in the previous five years. Ms Ward proposed gun licence holders be required to give a good reason for acquiring any additional firearms, and the Firearms Registry be more rigorous in assessing hunting and vermin control as the genuine reason for the issue of a gun licence. Family of Wayne and Noah Smith made submissions to the inquest in closed court this afternoon. The Coroner will hand down formal recommendations arising from the inquest in coming months.
South China Morning Post
31-03-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Don't blame China for India's manufacturing decline
American economist Noah Smith recently wrote a blog about how 'China is trying to kneecap Indian manufacturing', adding to the narrative that China views India as a geopolitical rival and potential economic threat, leading to it blocking investments and technologies from reaching India. Advertisement This narrative coincides with the heated debate in India sparked by the Modi government's decision to let the US$23 billion Production Linked Incentive scheme lapse. Both Smith's argument and the policy debate hinge on a single phenomenon: India's manufacturing sector has been a major disappointment. While the goal was to raise the share of manufacturing in India's economy to 25 per cent by this year, it unexpectedly declined to 14.3 per cent last year. Blaming India's manufacturing failure on China is nonsensical. China was once India's closest partner, supplying capital, talent, intermediate goods, management expertise and the essential components for industrial growth. As recently as a decade ago, Chinese companies were steadily growing their presence across India. Companies such as Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi – essentially the major Chinese mobile phone manufacturers – still maintain significant operations in India. Few may remember that as late as in October 2019, the joint communique following the second informal summit in Chennai between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said both sides would explore a 'manufacturing partnership'. This unusual initiative was proposed by Xi, and showed significant political will and policy commitment. In September 2019, I helped to coordinate the sixth India-China Strategic Economic Dialogue in New Delhi as part of the Chinese side led by He Lifeng, then head of the National Development and Reform Commission, and accompanied by more than 10 senior officials from departments including hi-tech, industry, infrastructure, environment, agriculture, energy and policy research. Such high-level, implementation-oriented involvement reflected a genuine intent for practical cooperation, not lofty rhetoric. Advertisement No other country could contribute more significantly to India's industrialisation than China. It was China that had the industrial capacity to set up the cutting-edge factories needed and Chinese engineers who knew how to run them. Where India has achieved success, such as with consumer electronics, it was because Chinese workers came to India and showed locals what to do. This isn't an exaggerated claim from a Chinese perspective. Rather, it reflects the reality on the factory floor.
AllAfrica
27-01-2025
- Business
- AllAfrica
If reshoring's happening, where does the US get the capital goods?
Noah Smith asserts in a commentary republished January 27 by Asia Times that 'reshoring US industry is possible and happening.' His argument is based on egregious misrepresentation of the facts. Some of his misstatements depend on cherry-picking the date range – for example, a chart that shows battery production up 20% since 2018. But US battery production is down 20% from 2014, if one looks at a long-term chart (below). That's not a success story. Never mind that overall manufacturing production peaked at 106 on the Federal Reserve index in 2007 and now stands at just 99. When the Biden Administration announced its CHIPS Act subsidies – which Smith hails as a great leap forward for American manufacturing – the rush to build chip fabrication plants ran into shortages of labor and materials. The Producer Price Index for new plant construction rose by 37% in a single year, an utterly unprecedented event. At the same time, the number of unfilled construction jobs nearly doubled. Smith is elated that US solar panel manufacturing capacity reached 27,000 megawatts in 2024, allowing that the US is 'still way behind China.' How far behind? Smith doesn't say. I will: China can produce 890,000 megawatts of solar panels – 33 times the US figure. The elephantine omission in Smith's panegyric to US industry is America's overwhelming dependence on imported capital goods – goods that produce other goods. US imports of capital goods at $1.1 trillion a year are nearly three times domestic orders for capital goods at just $400 billion annualized. Both numbers are deflated to January 2000 using the government's price indices for cap goods imports and private capital equipment, respectively. Both series exclude autos. Whatever the US is producing, it produces it mostly with imported capital goods. Of course, the US imports a lot of electronics, whose prices have fallen by half since 2000, and it exports machinery, whose price has doubled (the US exports about half as much capital goods as it imports). It's hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison of domestic cap goods orders and cap goods imports. But the trends nonetheless are startling: US cap goods imports jumped after Covid, rising by 60% from 2020 through 2024. Yes, the United States shortly will produce more computer chips onshore, thanks to Taiwan's TSMC, which built a plant in Arizona – staffed mainly by workers and technicians imported from Taiwan, because TSMC couldn't find enough skilled labor in the United States. That's the kind of success that makes failure seem attractive by comparison. But the big picture is that America's foreign dependence is rising fast. Overall industrial output has been virtually unchanged during the past ten years, while imports of capital goods have nearly doubled. It will take more to re-shore American industry than hot air from an economics blog.
