#10 英語の旅 | The Economist
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今回はThe Economistの…1 | America's soaring house prices…2 | France's burgeoning deficit…3 | Abortion pills come to SCOTUS…4 | Revolutionary roads…5 | Israel's ultra-Orthodox conscription rowについて紹介していきたいと思います。
1 | America's soaring house prices
Few parts of America's economy have baffled economists as much as the property sector over the past few years. Housing prices should in theory be very sensitive to interest-rate increases - expensive mortgages reduce housing demand, causing prices to fall. Yet since the Federal Reserve began tightening monetary policy in 2022, house prices have risen. According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, a regulator, they increased by 6.6% year on year in December. The figures for January, due on Tuesday, will probably show another rise.
The reason is that American homebuyers typically obtain fixed-rate mortgages for 30 years, so few are willing to give them up when rates increase, leading to a drop in supply. Home sales last year fell to the lowest levels since 1995. A fall in mortgage rates has recently revived the market: sales rose by 9.5% year - on - year in February. But if demand continues to outstrip supply - as the National Association of Realtors, an industry body, says it does - house prices will probably remain relatively robust.
アメリカ。資本主義。
ビジネスの世界。
マイホーム。
それは誰しもが憧れる夢である。
2 | France's burgeoning deficit
The French government is bracing for bad news on Tuesday. Insee, the official statistics body, will publish figures expected to show that the country's budget deficit reached well over 5% of GDP in 2023. The government's official target was 4.9%. This makes France one of the countries with the largest deficit, relative to its income, in the euro zone. Pierre Moscovici, head of the Cour des Comptes, the French national auditor, calls the problem "very preoccupying".
Bruno Le Maire, the finance minister, has promised to bring the deficit down to below 3%, in line with euro zone rules, by 2027. He has pledged an extra €10bn of budget savings. But up until now there has been little attempt to curb public spending in France, and revenues have diminished amid sluggish growth. Mr Moscovici nonetheless argues that France has no problem raising money on the markets and that its level of public debt, while high, remains sustainable. The ratings agencies will certainly be watching closely.
フランス。
マクロン大統領。
先進国。
多くの世界遺産。
3 | Abortion pills come to SCOTUS
On Tuesday America's Supreme Court hears a case that could lead to a clampdown on access to miferpristone, a pill that induces nearly two-thirds of abortions in America. It is the court's first foray into reproductive law since it ended the constitutional right to abortion in 2022.
Last year anti-abortion campaigners presuaded a lower court to de-authorise the FDA's approval of mifepristone in 2000. An appeals court pared back that radical move but blocked changes made by the FDA in 2016 and 2021 that allowed women to use the drug later in pregnancy (up to ten weeks), to ask for a remote prescription and to receive the drug by mail.
The anti-mifepristone challengers want the Supreme Court to uphold the appeals court's ruling. They say that the FDA's decisions were based on "piecemeal analysis" of scant data. The FDA says they are justified by the drug's exceptional safety record. It also says that the plaintiffs who brought the case to the lower court had not suffered the "concrete injury" required for legal-standing - the right to bring a case in the first place.
中絶。
根深い問題。
何事においても。
リスクを考慮する必要がある。
4 | Revolutionary roads
"Revolution" means two things: a jolting move forward, and a circular retreat. These motions shape history, writes Fareed Zakaria, a journalist and broadcaster, in "Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present", published on Tuesday. Advances are followed by efforts to undo progress.
Mr Zakaria posits that "our times are revolutionary". Conventional wisdom seems increasingly unconventional; politics is becoming less predictable. We are in a phase of backlash. Mr Zakaria looks to revolutions (loosely defined) that delivered durable progress. They include the birth of modern liberalism in the Dutch golden age during the 16th and 17th centuries; England's Glorious Revolution of 1688, after which the country emerged as a stable modern state; and the Industrial Revolution. He argues these were "bottom up" - going with the social grain.
In this year of elections, readers might be keen to learn how to preserve progress and limit backlash. Mr Zakaria resists prescription, perhaps because his terms are too loosely defined to withstand much scrutiny.
革命。
この2文字に込められた想い。
リーダー的人物。
その存在は革命を加速させる。
5 | Israel's ultra-Orthodox conscription row
On Tuesday Israel's cabinet is set to table controversial legislation that would make religious students exempt from military service. Those attending yeshivas (seminaries) have long not had to sign up, but the arrangement was never codified. In 1998 it was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and the government has relied on repeatedly extending the original regulation ever since.
The number of exempt students has soared from 400 originally to 66,000. The Supreme Court recently ruled that they will become liable for conscription, or government funding for their seminaries will be cut. Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, has promised ultra-Orthodox parties - a key element of his coalition - that he will stop this happening and make the exemption law.
But other government members, including the defence minister, are adamantly opposed to the exemption, especially while Israel is at war and hundreds of thousands of reservists have been mobilised. Whichever way he twists, Mr Netanyahu could end up losing parts of his majority coalition and perhaps even his government.
イスラエルと宗教。
両者の関係性を切り離すことは出来ない。
物騒な国。それでも。
イスラエルに住み人々は必死に生きている。
6 | まとめ
・アメリカ
・フランス
・法律
・革命
・イスラエル
3つの要素。緩急を意識しつつ。
6,000文字。
★★★
次回もこんな感じで。
それでは！