Peter Zeihan

Problem solved, because white collar folks live in high rise apartments.

You can cut off their water.

You can bolt them into their house.

Now, there's lots of ways you can deal with white collar protesters.

Blue collar, a little different.

So they started advancing their STEM work.

They started secondary and tertiary education systems.

And, you know, this wasn't a stupid plan.

We can critique how successful the transition was and why they were a manufacturing economy and still are and really weren't ready for that kind of fast transition.

Different topic.

But the thing is, when you go to primary school and secondary school and tertiary school, the first time you pay taxes is typically when you're 21, 22, or 23.

So there's a delayed gratification here, which as Americans like to say, the Chinese have no problem with.

It's false, but whatever.

So the first big crop of these new white collar workers who were supposed to be working at high paid jobs and paying lots of taxes, that was supposed to manifest in calendar year 2019.

But then there was COVID.

And in China, COVID lasted a lot longer.

And they really didn't get recovery until 2023, maybe even early in 2024.

And so they didn't get any good data.

And then when they did get the data, they're like, whoa, tax receipts are down.

That's the opposite of what's supposed to be happening.