Time asia 25 april 2016 vk com stopthepress

APRIL 25, 2016

NEPAL’S
DISASTER
A year after devastating
quakes, the Himalayan
nation struggles to rebuild
Photographs by
James Nachtwey

Reconstruction
work has been
slow in Barpak,
a village at the
epicenter of the
earthquakes
time.com


NATURE
SAVES LIVES

of cancer-fighting drugs
are derived from nature,
such as coral reefs.

We are working with community leaders in more than
75 countries to make sure coral reefs have a fighting
chance to survive and thrive into the future.
Learn how you can help us heal nature by visiting nature.org.

VOL. 187, NO. 15 | 2016

3 | Conversation
4 | For the Record

Cover Story

The Brief

A year after a pair of devastating earthquakes,
Nepal remains in ruins

5 | Are GOP insiders
giving up on winning
the White House?

Unnatural Disaster

By Nikhil Kumar /
Photographs by James Nachtwey 22

News from the U.S. and
around the world

6 | A bridge that would
have saved Moses a
lot of trouble
7 | Difficult days for
David Cameron

8 | Ian Bremmer on our
automated future

The View
Ideas, opinion,
innovations

17 | Is Obamacare
contributing to opioid
abuse?
18 | The roots of the
U.S.’s love of guns
19 | Betting on a water
bottle that fills itself
19 | A Rust Belt
success story
20 | Next-generation
carpooling

10 | The link between
money and life span

21 | Rana Foroohar:
Janet Yellen is putting
Main Street first

11 | Baltimore, a year
after Freddie Gray’s
death

40 | Joe Klein on what
Bill Clinton’s crime bill
got right

12 | Venezuela’s
economic crisis
gives rise to a vast
smuggling industry

Villagers in badly damaged Barpak, Nepal, aren’t getting much help

14 | The heat is on
Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff
16 | The world’s coral
reefs are in crisis

In Debt We Stand

Not much unites Americans these days—except the
$13.9 trillion national debt. Is that a problem?
An economist offers his view

N E PA L : J A M E S N A C H T W E Y F O R T I M E ; M C B R I D E : J AV I E R S I R V E N T F O R T I M E

By James Grant 30

Wait—No Woman on the $10 Bill?

In 2015 U.S. Treasury chief Jack Lew announced there’d
soon be a woman on the $10 bill. Then he went to see

Hamilton
By Maya Rhodan and David Von Drehle 36

Time Off

What to watch, read,
see and do

41 | The death of the
pop album?

43 | What’s new on
Broadway
43 | Memoirs of an Iraq
War interrogator
44 | Children’s book It
Ain’t So Awful, Falafel
45 | Movies: The Jungle
Book, Sing Street
47 | Kristin van Ogtrop
on being the boss at
work—and at home
48 | 10 Questions with
writer James McBride

On the cover:

Photograph by James Nachtwey for TIME
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1


HER FUTURE BEGINS
ON TWO WHEELS.

Photo by
Jake Lyell

Hirabai began walking to school when she was a little
girl. It was an exhausting, dangerous two-mile journey
from her home in rural India. At 14, she started attending
a high school even farther away, unsure of how she
would complete her education. But now, with the gift
of a Dream Bike from ChildFund, she’s riding — safely
and quickly — toward her dream of one day attending
university. In 11 countries, ChildFund is making it possible
for girls to continue their education by giving them muchneeded bicycles and safe passage to a better future.

Learn more about ChildFund International and our Dream Bike Program at ChildFund.org


Conversation

HOMELAND INSECURITY

Re “The TeRRoRisT
Threat From ISIS May Be
About to Get Worse. Much
Worse” [April 4]: I was
shocked by the way Karl
Vick wrote about the Belgian
government and the security
services: “... And somehow
made more vulnerable by the
incompetence of Belgium’s
authorities, who needed
four months to capture the
last of the plotters of the
Paris attacks.” How long
did it take to trace and kill
Osama bin Laden? The U.S.
has the best intelligence in
the world, and it could not
prevent 9/11. After those
attacks, the government had
to install a new Department
of Homeland Security. And
more recently, the U.S.
could not prevent the San
Bernardino, Calif., shootings.
The U.S. can trace and tap
the phones of the world
leaders but cannot prevent

terrorists killing 14 people
and injuring 22 others. So,
please, don’t say that Belgian
authorities are incompetent.
Christian De Coninck,
Zellik,
Belgium
EL DORADO

Re “no man’s land”
[April 4]: This article implies
that the E.U. is doing wrong
in the refugee crisis. Indeed,
the crisis is being mishandled by the European authorities. It is heartbreaking

TALK TO US

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to see those refugees living

under dreadful conditions,
desperate to reach Germany.
Migrants want to go to West
European countries because
they are the nearest free
countries. But if you asked
them if they would be willing
to live in the U.S., they would
say yes. So instead of criticizing Europe, I suggest the
U.S. send ships and planes
to transport a few million
migrants to their El Dorado
in America. What would be
the reaction of the American
people?
Adel Courdi,
Peillon,
fRance
THE REAL PROBLEM

Re “india’s JoBs deficiT”
[April 4]: “Make In India”
is a good initiative by the
government, but we have
yet to see the benefits. India’s jobs problem is largely
caused by the country’s inherent attitude of not allowing manufacturing industries
to flourish. It is our government’s double standard—
regardless of the political
party—that causes a
major setback for foreign

companies, which are subjected to stringent and at
times irrational checks,
whereas local companies
are allowed to produce anything, including food products, without meeting desirable quality standards. It’s
entrenched in the minds

of people here that foreign companies “loot” the
money from our country if
they invest here, ignoring
the job opportunities these
companies can create. The
so-called demographic dividend will be possible only if
the government changes the
policies as well as the business environment to create
massive job opportunities
for Indians.
Suresh K. Parappurath,
BangaloRe, india
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES

Re “how BRussels will
Affect Brexit” [April 4]:
In Ian Bremmer’s piece
regarding Brexit, he asserts
that economically it would
be “a leap into the unknown”
should the U.K. vote to
leave the E.U. He states that
other E.U. governments will
seek to make negotiations

as arduous as possible to
discourage other members
from leaving. I would point

out that this is very unlikely,
but should it happen as
described, then all I can
see is that it would be of
enormous benefit to our
trade deficit with the E.U. If
the Germans were to decide
it was in their best interests
to stop selling us their cars,
we would be forced to buy
U.K.-manufactured cars
instead. Anything we buy
from the E.U., we can either
make ourselves or we can
buy from other countries.
How is that a leap into the
unknown?
Anthony L. Bonnici,
welwyn,
england

SETTING THE RECORD
STRAIGHT ▶ In “Porn and the
Threat to Virility” (April 18), we misstated the address of Noah Church’s
counseling website. It is addictedtointernetporn.com. In the same
story, we inaccurately described Reboot Nation founder Gabriel Deem’s

sources of income. He does not get
paid for speaking.

Send a letter: Letters to the Editor must include writer’s full name, address and home telephone,
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Please recycle
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For the Record

‘NOBODY IS ABOVE
THE LAW. HOW
MANY
TIMES DO I
HAVE TO
SAY IT?’
PRESIDENT OBAMA, vowing that political
considerations will not affect the federal
investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a

private email server while she was Secretary
of State

$394,000
Price paid at auction for
the chair J.K. Rowling
sat in while writing
Harry Potter

DAVID CAMERON, British Prime Minister,
releasing his tax returns under pressure
following revelations in the so-called Panama
Papers that he once held interests in his late
father’s offshore fund

JENNIFER LAWRENCE, actor, saying the word feminism shouldn’t

be controversial “because it just means equality”

Monogamy
A new study
found married
people are more
likely to survive
cancer

GOOD WEEK
BAD WEEK

Distance in miles

traveled by John Kerry
during his tenure as
U.S. Secretary of
State, surpassing
predecessor Hillary
Clinton’s mark

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN,

musician, canceling a
concert in North Carolina to
protest a state law requiring
transgender people to
use the bathrooms that
correspond with their sex
at birth

Polygamy
A federal
court reversed
a ruling that
decriminalized
the practice in
Utah

1,200
1.06
million

‘SOME

THINGS
ARE MORE
IMPORTANT
THAN A
ROCK
SHOW.’

Number of people who
attached themselves
to a line of mattresses
before all falling down in
Maryland, breaking the
Guinness World Record
for the longest human
mattress domino chain

‘It is my lack of virtue and I am
unbearably ashamed.’
TOSHIFUMI SUZUKI, chairman and CEO of the parent company of convenience-store giant 7-Eleven,

blaming his own shortcomings as he resigned after losing a boardroom battle

S O U R C E : L A W R E N C E : H A R P E R ’S B A Z A A R

O B A M A , L A W R E N C E , C A M E R O N , S P R I N G S T E E N , R I N G S : G E T T Y I M A G E S; I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y B R O W N B I R D D E S I G N F O R T I M E

‘Aspiration
and wealth
creation are
not dirty

words.’

‘I don’t know
why that word
is so scary to
people.’


‘IF THE WAVE IS HUGE AND BRINGS IN ALL OF THE SURFBOARDS, WE HAVE THE MARGINS.’ —NEXT PAGE

“Count me out,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, discussing the ongoing race for the GOP nomination

CAMPAIGN 2016

The GOP’s
plan to look
past the
presidency—
and keep
Congress

REUTERS

By Philip Elliott and
Jay Newton-Small

PHOTOGR APH BY YURI GRIPAS

Ask RepublicAns in congRess
these days whether they prefer Donald

Trump or Ted Cruz and there is a good
chance they will answer with a third
name: Haley Barbour.
What does the former Republican
National Committee chairman and
power lobbyist who took a turn as Mississippi governor have to do with the
2016 presidential election? Embattled
Senators and Congressmen are holding him up as Example A of how they’d
like to see the 2016 election go, though
that doesn’t mean they want him on
the ticket. As RNC chief in 1996, Barbour bucked Bob Dole—ostensibly the
head of the party as its White House
nominee—and pulled funding from
the presidential contest to funnel it
to down-ballot races. Dole lost to Bill
Clinton, but Republicans ended up

gaining two seats in the Senate and
maintaining a majority in the House.
More than a few senior Republicans who see both Trump and Cruz
as kryptonite in purple states with
tough elections this year would be delighted to settle for such an outcome
again. “It’s more than O.K.,” said Tony
Fratto, a top Treasury official and
White House aide to President George
W. Bush. “No one is happy that Hillary
Clinton is going to be President, but
there are worse things.”
The current Republican Party chair,
Reince Priebus, has told both Trump

and Cruz that he will maintain personal control of the $126 million that
donors have given him to spend as he
sees fit. Conservative patrons and the
outside groups they fund, meanwhile,
are signaling that they have thrown in
00


TheBrief

8

Time April 25, 2016

INFRASTRUCTURE

TRENDING

HEALTH
The Zika threat to
the U.S. is “scarier
than we initially
thought,” Dr. Anne
Schuchat, principal
deputy director of the
CDC, said April 11.
Officials said two days
later there was “no
longer any doubt” the
mosquito-borne virus

causes the birth defect
microcephaly.

DIPLOMACY
Germany may
prosecute a comedian
who read a satirical
poem about Turkey’s
President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan on
live television. Ankara
requested criminal
proceedings against
Jan Böhmermann
(above) under a German
law that forbids insults
to foreign leaders.

Bridging borders
King Salman of Saudi Arabia and Egypt’s
President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi agreed April 8
to build a long-planned bridge across the
Red Sea to connect the two countries. The
$1.7 billion project joins a list of ambitious
attempts to build cross-border bridges.

CHINA AND
RUSSIA
The two countries
plan to build a

bridge by starting
from either side
of the Amur River,
aiming to meet in the
middle and complete
construction within
three years.

RUSSIA AND
THE U.S.
A Russian oligarch
proposed a plan in
2015 for a highway
linking Siberia and
Alaska via a 55-mile
crossing over the
Bering Strait. The
cost was projected to
be in the trillions.

INDIA AND
SRI LANKA
In December, India’s
Transport Minister
announced a 14-mile
sea bridge and
tunnel had received
funding, though Sri
Lanka’s government
said it wasn’t aware

of the plans.

BAHRAIN AND
QATAR
Construction on
the Qatar-Bahrain
Friendship Bridge
was first proposed in
1999 but, ironically
enough, has been
long delayed by
squabbles between
the neighbors.

DIGITS

TERRORISM
One in five suicide
attacks launched by
Islamist extremist
group Boko Haram
in West Africa was
carried out by children
in 2015, according
to a new report by
UNICEF. About 75% of
the children used as
bombers were female,
some as young as 8.

$250

million

The value of a grant by Silicon Valley
entrepreneur Sean Parker to fund research
into immunotherapy for cancer; TIME explored
the treatments—and the growing interest in
them—in an April 4 cover story

H E A LT H , PA N D A , R H I N O : A P ; D I P L O M A C Y, T E R R O R I S M , C A M E R O N , T I G E R , C O N D O R , W H A L E : G E T T Y I M A G E S; I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y M A R T I N G E E F O R T I M E

the towel on the presidential race and are looking
at other races.
The network of groups backed by billionaires
Charles and David Koch, for example, plans to
spend about $889 million before Election Day,
roughly two-thirds of it on trying to drive how voters cast their ballots. But neither Trump nor Cruz
will see much of that cash. “We will not get involved
in a presidential election that descends into mudslinging and personal attacks while ignoring the
critical issues facing our nation,” says James Davis, a
spokesman for the Kochs’ umbrella group. Instead,
that cash is going to help Republicans like Senator Rob Portman of Ohio; Freedom Partners Action
Fund recently spent $2 million on a TV ad for him.
Portman is following national Republicans’ advice carefully, running a hyperlocal campaign without betting on the nominee’s coattails. “We’re running our race,” campaign manager Corry Bliss said.
“Hoping to be dragged across the finish line is not
a strategy.” Similarly, New Hampshire Republican
Senator Kelly Ayotte has been relentless in defending her state’s military bases and contractors; she
says she won’t endorse in this GOP primary cycle
and is likely to skip the convention in Cleveland

altogether. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson would
not even tell voters whom he supported before his
state’s primary. Some members of Congress have
even been scrambling to avoid getting named as
convention delegates, while North Carolina Senator Richard Burr plans to join Ayotte in skipping
Cleveland to tend to his race back home.
Even Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan,
who some hoped would emerge as a white knight
from a contested convention, has decided to focus
on keeping his own House in order. “Let me be
clear: I do not want, nor will I accept, the nomination for our party,” Ryan told reporters on April 12,
ahead of a trip to New York City to meet with some
of the party’s most generous donors.
That leaves the GOP down on its luck. Polls
show that Trump remains underwater with key
constituencies in the general election, with 73% of
female voters telling pollsters for CNN that they
have a negative view of him. The same goes for Latinos (85%), African Americans (80%) and young
voters (80%). These groups view Cruz as slightly
better, although he still loses to Hillary Clinton in
most head-to-head surveys.
Democrats are looking down ballot as well, with
seven Senate Republican seats rated as either tossups or leaning Democratic, and at least 14 House
GOP seats—about half the number Democrats
would need to take the majority—are up for grabs.
“If the wave is huge and brings in all of the surfboards, we have the margins,” says a House Democratic strategist. “But it’s hard to predict the size of
the November wave when we’re in April.”
□

DATA

NATURE’S
COMEBACKS
The global wild
tiger population
has increased to
3,890, according
to the latest
census by WWF
and the Global
Tiger Forum. Here
are other animals
making returns
from endangered
conditions:

California
condor
From 22 in 1982
to hundreds today
MAIDEN OVER Kate Middleton takes part in a charity cricket match with former Indian cricketer Dilip Vengsarkar in
Mumbai on April 10. Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge toured India and Bhutan in their first-ever official visit
to the region. Photograph by Kunal Patil—Hindustan Times/Sipa USA

BRITAIN

Hard times for
David Cameron
British Prime minister david cameron made

his tax returns public on April 11, under pressure
from revelations in the Panama Papers about his father’s offshore investment vehicle. Although he has
not been accused of any wrongdoing, the feud over
his finances adds to the controversies the embattled
PM is facing:
FRACTURED PARTY The referendum on

Britain’s membership in the E.U. planned
for June 23 has exposed a deep rift in Cameron’s ruling Conservative Party, with six
members of his Cabinet breaking
with the Prime Minister to lobby for
a “Brexit.” Former party leader Iain
Duncan Smith resigned from the
front bench in March in a move
widely seen as a challenge to
Cameron’s leadership.

TAX TROUBLES Cameron unveiled new rules to

tackle tax evasion after the Panama Papers, but
the revelation that his family benefited from an
offshore fund is embarrassing, as he has long
been a critic of similar tax dodges. The affair has
drawn comparisons to scandals that helped bring
down John Major’s Conservative government in
the 1990s.
EUROPEAN DISUNION The sterling took a hit

April 12 after a national poll found that more Brits
wanted to leave the E.U. than remain. While

the Brussels attacks have stoked nativist sentiment, Cameron’s tax issues have also hurt
his credibility as the nation’s cheerleader for
the “remain” camp. If Britain does vote to
leave the E.U. in June, Cameron’s time
in office is almost certainly up.
—dan stewart
◁ Cameron became the first
British Prime Minister to
publish his tax records

Humpback
whale
Numbers are
rising in Australia

Indian rhino
Conservation has
lifted population
to 3,000

Panda
Wild panda totals
rose 17% in China
over 12 years

9


TheBrief

THE RISK REPORT

presented by

Trump and Sanders have
tapped into a dangerous—and
wrong—anti-trade sentiment
By Ian Bremmer

DonalD Trump anD Bernie SanDerS have BuilT
their campaigns on opposition to trade. Trump says the
U.S. has lost manufacturing jobs because American trade
negotiators aren’t smart or tough enough to cut shrewd
deals with China, Mexico and Japan. President Trump, he
promises, will bring those jobs “home.”
Sanders, on the contrary, says that business elites, their
lobbyists and their willing accomplices within the political establishment know exactly what they’re doing. They
are the “one percent,” crafting trade terms to enrich themselves at the expense of working people. “Why do I want
to pay somebody in Michigan a living wage when I can pay
slave wages in Mexico or China?” reasons Corporate America, according to Sanders.
Both candidates caricature reality. Globalization—the
processes by which ideas, people, money, goods and services cross borders at unprecedented speed—has created
two sets of winners. First, Sanders is right that the world’s
richest have increased their share of global wealth. Today,
the world’s 85 richest people own the same amount of
wealth as the bottom 50% of the global population. There
has been major progress—hundreds of millions of people
in developing countries have been lifted out of poverty
into the global middle class as emerging markets ramp up
their industrial production. But between 2001 and 2013,

America’s trade deficit with China cost the U.S. 3.2 million jobs, three-quarters of which were in manufacturing.
Trump is right about that.

10

Time April 25, 2016

ing jobs over the past six
years. “Reshoring” has
increased the number of
U.S. manufacturing jobs
from about 11.5 million in
2010 to about 12.5 million
today. Trump and Sanders
haven’t noted that.
BuT ThaT’s noT the end
of the story. The U.S. remains far below the peak
of 19.5 million manufacturing jobs in 1979, and
the longer-term trend
is toward technological
change that increases efficiency by eliminating jobs
for good. Here’s where
the Trump and Sanders
messages are especially
dangerous.
Most of these jobs are
never coming back. Just
as the automobile killed
the horse and buggy, so
the automation of manufacturing will sideline the

factory worker in coming years—in the U.S., in
China and everywhere.
The winner from globalization’s next wave will
not be the Chinese or
American factory worker
but those who profit from
the fast-increasing efficiency of the developed
world’s machines.
Those who claim they

can restore lost jobs and
those who cheer reshoring are missing this, and
they will ignore the urgent need to retrain workers for the (very different)
jobs of the 21st century.
Future factory jobs will go
to those who can program,
run and maintain fastevolving high-tech equipment in the age of robotics, and those flexible and
resourceful enough to
succeed in many different roles. And there will
always be fewer of these
jobs than there were U.S.
assembly-line workers in
1977 or Chinese factory
workers in 2007.
The broader result will
be a middle-class backlash against trade in both
the developed and developing worlds, and greater
pressure on governments
to restore barriers. This
trend will be much harder

on developing countries
and their more brittle
political systems, but it
will fragment the entire
global marketplace, ignite nationalist passions
and provide a platform for
the next wave of Trump/
Sanders-style populism—
in rich and poor countries
alike.
□

E R I C T H AY E R — G E T T Y I M A G E S

The early losers are those in wealthier countries, like
the U.S., who have fallen from the middle class as factory
jobs have vanished. These are the men and women nodding along with Trump or Sanders. Their living standards
are much higher than those of workers in China or Mexico,
but their prospects aren’t as bright as they were taught to
expect. They have reason to be angry. The globalized marketplace has benefited workers in China, Brazil, Mexico,
South Korea, Turkey, Malaysia and Nigeria because they
will work for much more modest wages, and because multinational companies have found ways to lower labor costs
by outsourcing their operations.
You might be surprised to learn, however, that manufacturing jobs have been returning to the U.S. for the better part of a decade. The demand for higher wages in
China and other emerging markets, the easy availability
of low-cost energy for U.S. businesses and the advantages
of bringing production closer to wealthier consumers
have together created nearly a million new manufactur-

Sanders has been skeptical about the benefits of free trade

TheBrief

HEALTH

TRENDING

EXECUTIONS
The number of people
put to death worldwide
rose by 54% in 2015,
according to Amnesty
International. The
total of at least 1,634
executions, the highest
since 1989, was
driven by Iran, Pakistan
and Saudi Arabia. In
the U.S., however,
executions were at a
24-year low.

Money May not buy happi­
ness (or love), but it might just
buy more time to find it. In the
most comprehensive look so
far at longevity and income,
researchers report in JAMA that

people with higher incomes tend
to live longer—though there
were some interesting nuances
that the researchers teased out.
Contrary to what some experts
predicted, there was no leveling­
off point where making more
didn’t provide any added years.
Overall, people with the top 1% in
income lived 10 to 15 years longer
than those at the bottom 1%.
At the same time, having a
lower income didn’t necessarily
lead to the shortest lives—that
varied greatly based on where
SALT LAKE CITY
Highest-income
people live 88
years, on average

people lived. People making the
least but residing in cities like
New York and San Francisco, for
instance, lived longer than people
in cities like Detroit and Tulsa,
Okla. Experts suspect that’s be­
cause of public­health efforts,
such as smoking bans and the re­
moval of unhealthy ingredients
like trans fats. Research shows

that people with lower incomes
in cities with such policies tend
to be less obese, smoke less and
have better health behaviors than
people in cities that didn’t ad­
vocate such health­promoting
behaviors. The researchers say
this data supports the idea that
public­health policies can partly
offset the effects of inequality.
—alice park

OKLAHOMA CITY
Life expectancy for
lowest-income group
is 78 years

LAS VEGAS
Top earners live four
years less than those
in Salt Lake City

NEW YORK CITY
The lowest-income
group lives to an
average age of 82

GARY, IND.
Here the lowest
earners live to 77,

on average

Milestones

WON
The Masters
tournament, by Danny
Willett, who beat
defending champion
Jordan Spieth in one
of the biggest upsets
in the history of golf.
It was Willett’s first
major title and the
first Masters win for
an Englishman in 20
years.
DIED
Howard Marks, 70,
legendary Oxfordeducated drug smuggler jailed for running
an international hashish and marijuana
ring in the 1970s
and ’80s. After his
release he wrote the
best-selling autobiography Mr Nice.
▷ Will Smith, 34,
former star defensive
end for the New
Orleans Saints.
Police say Smith was

fatally shot in New
Orleans by a man
who rear-ended his
car in an apparent
case of road rage.
▷ Ed Snider, 83,
founder of the
Philadelphia Flyers,
the first expansion
team in hockey to win
the Stanley Cup. He
also formerly owned
the Philadelphia
76ers and a stake
in the Philadelphia
Eagles.

DESIGN

Rise of the ‘plyscrapers’
Wood is making a comeback as a building material with the development of engineered timber,
an eco-friendly alternative used in “plyscrapers” around the world. —Tara John
BUSINESS
Five major U.S. banks,
including Wells Fargo,
Bank of America and
JPMorgan Chase, are
still “too big to fail,”
federal regulators said
April 13. The banks

have until Oct. 1 to
readjust their “living
wills” to ensure they
could go bankrupt
without bringing down
the economy.

CANADA
The 96-ft.-high
Wood Innovation
and Design Centre
in British Columbia
(right), built in 2014,
has locally made
engineered wood,
like laminated
veneer lumber, in its
structure.

AUSTRALIA
Forte in Melbourne
is a 105-ft. timber
apartment building
that uses crosslaminated timber
(CLT), which is said
to have the same
structural strength
as concrete and
steel.

BRITAIN
The “Toothpick” is
what Londoners
are calling plans
for a 984-ft. tower
unveiled on April 8.
The skyscraper’s
architects say using
timber will reduce
the weight of the
building.

E X E C U T I O N S , B U S I N E S S : G E T T Y I M A G E S; S O C I E T Y: R E U T E R S; D E S I G N : E M A P E T E R — M I C H A E L G R E E N A R C H I T E C T U R E

SOCIETY
A remote aboriginal
Canadian community
declared a state of
emergency after 11
members attempted
suicide on a single day,
on April 11. Mentalhealth experts visited
the Attawapiskat
First Nation tribe, which
saw more than 100
suicide attempts over
the winter.

How income affects U.S. life spans

TheBrief

After a most violent year, an
ailing city looks for signs of hope

DEVIN ALLEN

By Josh Sanburn/Baltimore

▶ For photos of West Baltimore, visit time.com/sandtown

relationship dubbed the “Gray effect.”
In his office with views of the east
and west sides, Davis says the department has PTSD from the unrest and
subsequent indictments of cops, something he believes led to the arrest slowdown. “The city was traumatized by
what happened,” he says.
After Davis took command, arrests
increased by 20%. He’s emphasized a
targeted approach to crime, including
an effort with five federal agencies to
focus on 600 of the city’s most dangerous criminals. And Davis says he’s tried
to improve the department’s ties with
the communities it serves. “I think that
our relationships, particularly in West
Baltimore, are stronger than they were
last year,” he says. “But it’s not
what it needs to be.” A change,
however, isn’t apparent to
everyone. “The people who

didn’t trust the police before
feel the same way now,” says
Bamba Kane, 43, a West Baltimore resident.

As the pews filled At New shiloh
tor Catherine Pugh, who is campaigning
Baptist Church on Easter Sunday, the
on improving schools and creating
theme of the Rev. Harold Carter Jr.’s
jobs, at the front of the pack with Sheila
sermon—Is Jesus Here Now?—seemed
Dixon, a popular former mayor who refitting. Here in West Baltimore, where
signed in 2010 as part of a plea deal on
abandoned homes outnumber busiembezzlement charges. To Dixon’s supnesses and murders are often the only
porters, however, that taint counts for
thing that makes news, the past 12
less than the relatively low crime rate
months have felt more like the devil’s
during her tenure.
work than that of a higher power. “If He
Nationally, the most prominent
is not here,” said Carter from the pulname in the race is Black Lives Matpit, “it certainly would explain a lot of
ter activist and social-media star
things.”
New Shiloh sits at the spiritual nexus of a city awaiting
resurrection. It was less than
a mile away, on April 12, 2015,
that Freddie Gray was thrown
into a police van before dying
of a spinal injury under stillmurky circumstances. It was

here, in the sanctuary, that
Before The ciTy erupTeD,
Gray’s death was mourned
Baltimore seemed poised for a
as the latest evidence that
comeback. The city had halted
black lives don’t matter. And
a decades-long population deit was four blocks away, at the
cline. Murders were creeping
Mondawmin Mall, that a condownward. And downtown’s
frontation between teenagers
Inner Harbor was starting to
and police sparked more than
evolve from a tourist showa week of peaceful protests
piece into a real neighborhood.
and sometimes violent riots.
New projects like Port CovingThe year since has been eston, a multibillion dollar efpecially trying. Baltimore had
fort led by Under Armour CEO
344 murders in 2015, the most
Kevin Plank that would serve
West Baltimore remains plagued by abandoned homes
per capita in its history, and
as the company’s headquaris on pace for more than 200
ters while housing a distillery,
this year. The criminal trials of
manufacturing space and a
the six police officers charged in Gray’s
DeRay Mckesson, 30. In the city, howpublicly accessible waterfront area, aim
death have stalled. The police commisever, he’s polling under 1%. “Baltimore
to revive that faded momentum.

sioner was fired and the once popular
is extremely parochial,” says Matthew
The question is whether any of the
mayor chose not to run for re-election
Crenson, a Johns Hopkins University
benefits will reach neighborhoods like
after the unrest, setting off a crowded
political science professor.
those near New Shiloh, which few paid
succession derby that will come to a
Which means the election will turn
any attention to until the city started
head in the Democratic primary on
on local concerns, not national deburning. Toward the end of the Easter
April 26—which, in this overwhelmbates. And few things here matter more
service, Carter offered an answer to his
ingly Democratic city, might as well be
than jobs and crime. Responsibility
opening remark: “You don’t always have
to see Jesus to know He’s here.” The same
the general election.
for the latter falls to Kevin Davis, who
could be said of any of the tensions hangwas named police commissioner in
ing over Baltimore these days, from the
ThirTeen DemocraTs are running
July. He took over at a time when viopending trials in Gray’s death to the fragto replace Mayor Stephanie Rawlingslent crime was soaring and arrests had
ile peace. They’re all here, even if you
Blake, all selling their own form of delivplummeted—a combination that Johns
don’t always see them.
□

erance for this city. Polls show state sena- Hopkins researchers who studied the
13


The Brief Dispatch

Venezuela’s economic
crash has led to a vast
smuggling industry
By Ezra Kaplan/Cúcuta, Colombia

00

Time April 25, 2016

△
A sign in a Cúcuta
market advertises
the exchange rate
for Venezuelan
bolivares

Early Each morning Gabriela and
Camila hitch a ride along a road that
runs north from Cúcuta and traces the
river that makes up the border between
Colombia and Venezuela. They head
past the small city of San Faustino and
across the river into Venezuela. Once
there, they meet a local who has purchased about 60 kg of beef at the Mercal, the state-subsidized supermarket,

for the equivalent of just $54. By the
end of the day, that same quantity of
meat will be on a market shelf in Cúcuta, where it will sell for over $200.
On one recent morning, the sisters
hitched a ride back to Cúcuta from
Venezuela. Along the way they had to
pass back through San Faustino, where
a police checkpoint was established
to crack down on just this kind of
smuggling. Their car was stopped,
and as police officers began to inspect
the plastic bags of meat in the trunk,
Camila slipped a 10,000-peso bill—
worth just over $3—to the police officer.
After initially expressing concern over
the goods, he decides everything is fine

A L E J A N D R A PA R R A — B L O O M B E R G /G E T T Y I M A G E S

Smuggling iS a way of life in The Colombian border
town of Cúcuta—and for decades, that’s meant drugs. But
in recent years it’s ordinary goods like gasoline or oranges
or diapers that make their way from Venezuela to Colombia.
The road into Cúcuta is dotted with illegal gasoline vendors,
while the shelves of the local stores are stocked with products
labeled ProduCed for The Venezuelan markeT. That’s
because the combination of the extremely low valuation of
the Venezuelan bolivar—it takes 800 bolivares to buy a U.S.
dollar, compared to 200 one year ago—and the strong price
controls that the Venezuelan government has applied to many

basic goods has made it extremely profitable to buy just about
anything cheaply in Venezuela and smuggle it into neighboring Colombia, where no such price controls exist and the local
currency, the peso, is significantly stronger.
Venezuela is hurting—for the second year in a row, Bloomberg ranked Venezuela as “the most miserable economy” in
the world, and the IMF predicts that the country’s inflation
rate will hit 720% this year, up from 141.5% near the end of
last year. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has repeatedly blamed his country’s economic woes on both smuggling
and the migration of people into Venezuela to take advantage
of highly subsidized health
‘The few times that
care and education.
local police make
But the truth is that
big busts, it is often Venezuela’s economic
problems have been building
a punishment for
since before the time of
a certain group of
smugglers failing to Maduro’s predecessor,
President Hugo Chávez.
pay off the proper
Ninety-seven percent of
authorities.’
Venezuela’s export revenue
“EL JEFE,”
comes from oil, which leaves
Cúcuta-based smuggler
the country high and dry
when oil prices crash—as
they have recently. With oil

prices around $30 per barrel for much of this year, Venezuela
is making only $30 billion per year off of exports to support
a country of over 30 million people. “It’s amazing they
have managed to stay afloat this long,” says Adam Isacson,
a Colombian security expert at the Washington Office on
Latin America.
Though Maduro announced a crackdown on smuggling
last year and closed the major border crossings, the financial
incentive to keep goods flowing is high. Jeremy McDermott,
co-director and co-founder of the NGO InSight Crime, estimates that the smuggling trade is back up to previous levels.
And Colombian smugglers like Gabriela and Camila—two
sisters in their 30s, each divorced, who work to support their
mother and multiple children—are part of the reasons why.


and allows the car to continue on.
The sisters explain that the bribe
is a daily cost of business. Since they
are small-time, their rate is low, but for
those engaged in larger operations, the
bribes can be as high as $25 per shipment. Though San Faustino is nowhere
near an official border crossing, fully
loaded semitrucks rumble through the
night along the patchy and sometimes
dirt road, headed for Cúcuta, a town of
650,000 that’s more than an hour away.
The neighborhood of Escobal in Cúcuta was once a busy and free-flowing
crossing point between Venezuela and
Colombia. Now, under orders from
Maduro, the bridge has been blockaded

to prevent any vehicles from passing,
while police and customs agents check
the papers of those who cross by foot.
Even here, a location actively monitored by law enforcement, the smuggling is obvious. Those crossing east
into the Venezuelan town of Ureña are
usually empty-handed or just carrying a
backpack. Those on the return path lug
huge bags, often working in pairs just

to carry the weight. Inside is everything
from baby diapers to cooking oil to
cigarettes—all illegal imports, all much
cheaper in Venezuela than in Colombia.
These commuters are mostly Colombian citizens who lived in Venezuela
for years before Maduro announced a
crackdown on both smuggling and migration following the murder of three
Venezuelan soldiers who were looking
for smugglers late last year. The government expelled over a thousand Colombians, while another 20,000 fled
back over the border out of fear for their
lives. Maduro accused many of the banished Colombians of being involved
in the long-running Colombian civil
conflict between the government and
various paramilitary forces. However,
many of these same Colombians had
originally fled into Venezuela to escape
that violence in Colombia and were now
being forced to return.
After months of negotiations, the
two governments agreed to allow some
Colombians to return to Venezuela for

schooling or health care. But the border remains officially closed at night. In
a land with rule of law that is vague at
best, however, simply closing bridges
at night isn’t anywhere near enough to
stop the flow of contraband across the
border, though it has pushed much of
the activity to more rural areas.
A few minutes’ walk downstream
from the official crossing point in Escobal, smugglers gather under the shade
of tropical trees on the riverbank waiting for work. They spend the day and
night ferrying people across the border
who don’t have the papers to cross the
nearby bridge, or they pick up contraband brought back over the river by hikers or people on bicycles and deliver it
to the market at the center of Cúcuta.
They might appear harmless and
disorganized—but they’re not. A ruthless paramilitary group controls this territory, like each of the areas along the
border. Within Cúcuta there are about
a dozen such groups, and they have a
reputation for violence. Paramilitaryrelated murders are common in this
part of Colombia. For many years Cúcuta was a stronghold of an armed criminal group called the Rastrojos, but they
have weakened recently, and since 2011

the Urabeños, one of the most powerful
criminal organizations in Colombia, has
taken control of the contraband hub, according to InSight Crime.
Less than 300 meters away from the
riverbank is a police station. The motorcycles travel right past with their freshly
smuggled contraband. Those police officers, like the majority of the police officers charged with cracking down on
smuggling in Cúcuta, are paid off, explained “El Jefe,” a smuggler who has
been in the business for decades. He got

out of the drug business but still runs
a profitable commodity depot where
smugglers drop off and repackage goods
coming from Venezuela. “The few times
that local police make big busts, it is
often a punishment for a certain group
of smugglers failing to pay off the proper
authorities,” says El Jefe.
The majority of contraband moves
over the border at night and arrives at
the Cúcuta market in the early hours of
the morning. At 1 a.m. wood-paneled
trucks start pulling into large parking lots outside sprawling warehouses.
They are filled with rice, citrus, onions,
potatoes, plantains and any other kind
of produce or commodity subsidized by
the Venezuelan government. It’s the citrus that signals smuggling. Citrus isn’t
produced in Cúcuta or any of the surrounding areas, which means it must
have come from Venezuela.
But much of the cargo is set for distribution elsewhere. Some of the fully
loaded trucks back up to empty trucks
with Colombian license plates. With
both ends opened to each other, young
men transfer the cargo and in the process increase the cost by more than tenfold. In other areas, they mix the illegal
Venezuelan produce with legitimate Colombian produce so that the authorities
have a harder time figuring out where
the contraband is.
As the sun begins to rise, the trucks
head out for the rest of Colombia.
Meanwhile, Gabriela and Camila head

back to Venezuela to pick up a new
haul of meat. At the end of the day, the
two sisters will make a combined $20
for their day’s work, money that will
have to support their household of nine
people. “There is no other work,” says
Gabriela. “If we don’t do this, we don’t
have money.”
•
00


LightBox

Light the
night
Demonstrators light smoke
during a rally in support of
President Dilma Rousseff in
Rio de Janeiro on April 11,
after a congressional
panel voted to recommend
impeachment proceedings. A
vote by the full lower house to
decide whether she will face
trial is set for April 17.
Photograph by Mario Tama—
Getty Images
▶ For more of our best photography,

visit lightbox.time.com



The Brief Earth

TEMPERATURES

How El Niño
heats the globe

Warm water temperatures have bleached coral off the Australian coast

The Great Barrier Reef is under attack
from El Niño and climate change
By Justin Worland

14

Time April 25, 2016

more than 15% of the world’s coral.
It’s not just a matter of aquatic aes­
thetics. Reefs act as natural barriers
that protect coastal communities from
storms and flooding. Marine life depends
on coral reefs as habitats, while coastal
towns depend on them as tourist draws.
But a bigger worry may be what the
bleaching suggests about future cli­

mate change. The rapid death of coral
reefs demonstrates that climate change
is irreversibly affecting the world right
now, even as policymakers treat warm­
ing as something to be dealt with in the
future. “Climate change may be slow­
creeping sometimes, but other times it
takes great leaps forward,” says Steve
Palumbi, an ocean scientist at Stanford
University. “This is one of those leaps.”
Local solutions—like reducing fish­
ing and cleaning up pollution—can help
slow reef loss, but scientists say a global
problem requires a global solution.
Nearly 200 countries agreed last year to
work to keep global temperatures from
rising more than 3.6°F by 2100, but that
goal will be tough to reach. And if gov­
ernments fail, coral reefs will be only
the first victims.
□

1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
–0.2
–0.4

1880

Difference from
average, in
degrees Celsius

1900

1920

El Niño
exacerbated
global
warming last
year

1940

1960 1980

2000 2015

DROUGHT

1 million
That’s the number of children in Africa—
including in hard-hit Ethiopia—without
steady access to food, largely because
of El Niño. The weather phenomenon
has helped trigger drought in many parts

of the world, leaving millions hungry.
And Africa isn’t the only place affected
by El Niño–influenced drought. In Papua
New Guinea, drought has driven bushfires affecting millions. In Bolivia, nearly
a million animals like sheep and llamas
have died as pastureland dries out.

N O A A ; U. N .

C O U R T E S Y X L C AT L I N S E AV I E W S U R V E Y

The greaT Barrier reef is more
than worthy of its name. Coral of all
shapes, sizes and colors cover more than
130,000 sq. mi. off the coast of Austra­
lia, making it the world’s largest reef
system and supporting an astounding
variety of marine life.
But today the Great Barrier Reef is
dying. The temporary warming effect of
a major El Niño event—combined with
ongoing climate change—has heated
the waters around the reef to nearly un­
precedented levels. That warming has
in turn driven a mass bleaching that has
sucked the color—and the life—out of
the coral. And the Great Barrier Reef
isn’t alone. “This is the longest bleach­
ing event ever recorded,” says David
Kline, a Scripps Institution of Oceanog­

raphy scientist. “It’s truly global, and it’s
looking very severe.”
Bleaching occurs when ocean
disruptions—warm water, pollution,
algae overgrowth—drive away the sym­
biotic organisms that live on the coral
and give it color. Within weeks, the reef
could die, leaving behind a forest of life­
less, bone white coral. Scientists believe
the bleaching now under way may kill

2015 was on average The
warmest year globally since rec­
ord keeping began nearly 150
years ago—and the 2016 average
is shaping up to be even hotter. A
strong El Niño deserves the brunt
of the blame. The unusually warm
Pacific Ocean surface waters that
mark an El Niño event amplify
heat over land. Temperatures
spiked around the globe as El Niño
began last fall, leading to month
after month of record­breaking
heat. Global temperatures this
past February were 2.2°F above
the 20th century average, mak­
ing it the most anomalously hot
month on record. But man­made
global warming is still playing

a lasting role in the record heat.
“That’s how we will see the effects
HED_SM
of climate change: the
extremes
TYhis
is text_sans
for
will become more
extreme,”
says
position only
Michael Mann, a climate scientist
at Penn State University.


‘GUNMAKERS HAD TO UP THEIR MARKETING ANTE TO MAKE PEOPLE WANT GUNS.’ —NEXT PAGE

Some doctors say patient surveys have led them to prescribe potentially dangerous painkillers

CENTERS FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES

HEALTH

The
Obamacare
quirk that
is fueling
the opioid
epidemic

By Sean Gregory

PHOTO-ILLUSTR ATION BY TIME

Not loNg ago, Dr. Bill SullivaN,
an emergency-room physician in
rural Spring Valley, Ill., treated a type
of patient that has become all too
familiar in hospitals across the country.
Complaining of abdominal pain, the
man asked specifically for Dilaudid, a
potentially habit-forming painkiller.
Noticing that his record showed a
long history of opioid prescriptions,
Sullivan suggested a less potent option.
The patient’s response, according to
the doctor: “Morphine is sh-t.”
Sullivan refused to prescribe the
patient’s drug of choice. By doing so, he
may have put his hospital at financial
risk. That might seem strange, since
opioid addiction has become a national
epidemic. But the potential economic

hit is a direct, if unintended, result
of reforms put in place under the
Affordable Care Act.
As part of an Obamacare initiative
meant to reward quality care, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is allocating some $1.5 billion in Medicare payments to hospitals
on the basis of criteria that include

patient-satisfaction surveys. Among
the questions: “During this hospital
stay, how often did the hospital staff do
everything they could to help you with
your pain?” And: “How often was your
pain well controlled?”
To many physicians and lawmakers
struggling to contain the nation’s
opioid crisis, tying a patient’s feelings
about pain management to a hospital’s
00


The View

bottom line is deeply misguided––if not downright
dangerous. “The government is telling us we need
to make sure a patient’s pain is under control,”
says Dr. Nick Sawyer, a health-policy fellow at the
UC Davis department of emergency medicine.
“It’s hard to make them happy without a narcotic.
This policy is leading to ongoing opioid abuse.”
That abuse has led to a full-blown crisis. Since
1999, fatal prescription-opioid overdoses in the
U.S. have quadrupled. According to the CDC, more
than 47,000 Americans died of a drug overdose in
2014, a record high, and more than 60% of those
deaths involved an opioid. U.S. emergency rooms
now treat more than 1,000 people every day for
misusing prescription opioids.

Patient-satisfaction surveys are not the cause
of this crisis, of course. But there is research to
support some doctors’ contention that they’re
making the problem worse. A 2012 study in the
Archives of Internal Medicine found that the most
satisfied patients are more likely to spend more on
prescription drugs and have higher mortality rates.
In a 2014 survey published in Patient Preference
and Adherence, over 48% of doctors reported
prescribing inappropriate narcotic pain medication
because of patient-satisfaction questions. One
doctor wrote that drug seekers “are well aware of
the patient satisfaction scores and how they can use
these threats and complaints to obtain narcotics.”
CMS, which is part of the Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS), disputes any link
between its surveys, a hospital’s reimbursement
money and opioid abuse. In March, agency doctors
wrote in JAMA that the patient-satisfaction
survey accounted for 30% of a hospital’s total
performance score in fiscal year 2015, with pain
management one of eight equally weighted
dimensions, along with factors like cleanliness and
quietness and nurse communication. (CMS did not
respond to interview requests.)
Still, lawmakers are concerned. Republican
Senator Susan Collins, whose home state of Maine
saw a 27.3% rise in its drug-overdose death rate from
2013 to 2014, has called for HHS to investigate the
connection between the surveys and inappropriate

prescriptions. “Health providers are telling me that
these questions are written in a way that makes
them fear a lower reimbursement if patients did
not answer them in the affirmative,” says Collins.
“For a small rural hospital in Maine to lose a certain
percentage of their Medicare reimbursements
is a big deal.” In April, four Senators—two from
each party—sponsored a bill that would untie
reimbursements from pain-management questions.
An earlier measure attracted bipartisan support in
the House. Says West Virginia Representative Alex
Mooney, who introduced the bill: “It’s a simple fix
that can have significant results.”
•
20

Time April 25, 2016

BOOK IN BRIEF

VERBATIM

‘I don’t
have any
regrets
about how
I identify.
I’m still
me, and
nothing

about
that has
changed.’
RACHEL DOLEZAL,
announcing that
she’s writing a
book about racial
identity; the ex–
NAACP leader
has been heavily
criticized for calling
herself black
despite being born
to white parents

CHARTOON

How America got
hooked on guns
in america, guns are ofTen
discussed as a storied part of a national
identity that grew, over time, from
Revolutionary War militias, the Second
Amendment and rough life on the
frontier. But in her new book, The
Gunning of America, Pamela Haag argues
that this narrative is not as organic as
it appears; rather,
it was crafted by
gun manufacturers

eager to sell more
weapons. Most
early Americans,
she writes, viewed
guns as basic tools;
in the early 1800s
they were necessities
for hunting and
farming. But as fewer
Americans performed those tasks in the
early 20th century, gunmakers had to
up their marketing ante to make people
want guns—even if they didn’t really
need them. So began the campaign, she
writes, to make gun use about “honor
rather than intoxication, justice rather
than impulsivity, and homicide rather
than suicide.” Either way, the results are
remarkable: today, America is home to
an estimated 300 million firearms.
—sarah begley

Future headlines

J O H N AT K I N S O N , W R O N G H A N D S


▶ For more on these ideas, visit time.com/ideas

BIG IDEA

The self-filling
water bottle
It isn’t commercially available yet,
but the solar-powered Fontus is
making a splash on crowdfunding
site Indiegogo. Here’s how it
works. —Julie Shapiro

1

2

3

With the bikemounted version,
the rider’s speed
causes air to flow
through a filter, which
pulls out dust and
dirt. (A stationary
version relies on a
fan for airflow.)

The air then travels
through a cooling
chamber, and water
vapor condenses
on a special surface
designed to draw

out moisture.

Water trickles into
the bottle at a rate
of up to half a liter
per hour—though
it varies according
to air humidity, says
Kristof Retezár, the
project’s designer.

1

DATA

LOST IN
TRANSLATION
The look of emojis
varies widely across
platforms—and leads
to miscommunication,
per a new study from
the University of
Minnesota. Here, a few
of the most divergent
emojis by (clockwise
from top left) Apple,
Google, Microsoft
and LG.

2
◁

3

Fontus aims
to ship its first
$225+ bottles
to investors by
April 2017 after
conducting
more real-world
tests

GRINNING FACE WITH
SMILING EYES
On average, subjects
interpreted Apple’s icon
as significantly more
negative than Google’s.

V E R B AT I M : A N N I E K U S T E R ; B I G I D E A : F O N T U S; D ATA : A P P L E (3), G O O G L E (3), M I C R O S O F T (3), L G (3)

QUICK TAKE

Big Business should learn from the Rust Belt
By Antoine van Agtmael and Fred Bakker
Listen to some presidentiaL candidates’ stump speeches and it’s easy to believe
the U.S. isn’t as competitive as it used to be—
that onetime industrial powerhouses such

as Akron, Ohio, and Pittsburgh are unable to
keep up with low-cost alternatives in China.
That is a myth. After years of research, we
found that cities in the Rust Belt—the areas
of the Northeast and Midwest purportedly in
decline—are some of the smartest places on
earth, where universities, big businesses and
tiny startups are collaborating closely and
sharing brainpower. While it’s true, for example, that Akron may have lost jobs in the
tire business, it is now home to hundreds of
polymer companies, part of a massive statewide presence in the polymer and specialtychemical industry. And just outside Albany,

N.Y., whose economy has been written off as
stagnant, the SUNY Poly NanoTech Megaplex
is leading research on semiconductors with
top talent from Intel, IBM and Samsung.
These centers prove that “smart” is the
new “cheap,” especially for manufacturing.
And corporate America will do well to mine
such insights and leverage the potential of
the Rust Belt, just as it’s done with Silicon
Valley. After all, this new wave of American
robots, 3-D printers and more may well make
it cheaper—and easier—to put “made in the
USA” back in business.
Van Agtmael and Bakker are the authors
of The Smartest Places on Earth: Why
Rustbelts Are the Emerging Hotspots of
Global Innovation

PERSON RAISING
BOTH HANDS IN
CELEBRATION
Subjects said
Microsoft’s icon looked
more “exciting,” while
LG’s looked more like
“praise hands.”

SLEEPING FACE
Descriptions for
Google’s version
emphasized “sleepy,”
whereas Microsoft’s
looked “sad” or “down.”
—S.B.


The View American Genius

42

Hours per year
that rush-hour
commuters lose to
traffic jams

TRANSPORTATION

Can ride apps

really solve
America’s traffic
woes?
By Katy Steinmetz/Berkeley

SuSan Shaheen knowS carpoolS.
For 20 years she’s been studying what
transport gurus call shared mobility,
dissecting factors that make it successful, like shorter wait times. Though
you might think choosing how to
get to work is simple, Shaheen
will tell you that especially in
Tons of emissions
a twice-weekly
urban areas, there are countless
carpooler can take
factors in play, from the time
out each year
of day you’re on the move to
whether you own a smartphone.
And more than any of the tech executives giving speeches lately about how
we all should rethink our relationship to
our cars, she knows just how revolutionary that could be.
SOURCES: INRIX , TE X AS A&M
Walking the halls of one of the naT R A N S P O R TAT I O N I N S T I T U T E , U. S .
BILLION
E N V I R O N M E N TA L P R O T E C T I O N A G E N C Y
tion’s oldest departments dedicated to
Annual cost of traffic
congestion from lost

transportation research, at the University
productivity, energy
of California, Berkeley, the engineering
including the effects of the
gaining? Her final figures will
use and wear
professor wonders how our lives would
cheaper pooling options
back
up or undercut concluon vehicles
have turned out if the Model T had been
(Lyft Line and UberPool)
sions that Uber and Lyft have
marketed as something to be shared, not
that the firms have been toutalready come to. “We can cut conowned home by home. Would our veing as solutions to America’s traffic
gestion, pollution and parking by gethicles still be idle an estimated 95% of
and idle-asset problems.
ting more people into fewer cars,” Uber
the time? Would we still waste collective
If how we commute is algebra, figCEO Travis Kalanick avowed in Februbillions of dollars and hours every year
uring that out is calculus. Shaheen will
ary. “A platform like Lyft can ultimately
while sitting in traffic, as 76% of workhave to determine, for instance, how
achieve significant impacts in congesers commute alone? Yet Shaheen’s most
many cars those companies have put
tion and emissions reduction,” says
tantalizing questions turn not on the past on the road as they’ve attracted drivers
Emily Castor, Lyft’s director of transbut on the present. “Are we at a juncture
to their platforms, compared with how
portation policy.

that’s similar to when the automobile
many they’ve inspired riders to leave at
Shaheen’s analysis remains to be
was being proposed?” she asks. And if
home or not buy in the first place. She’ll seen, and the net effect could change
the arrival of self-driving cars offers us a
survey drivers and passengers in several over time. But those firms are already
chance to rewrite the rules, how should
U.S. cities, weighing cars’ occupancy
helping to challenge America’s autowe do things this time around?
levels and tallying net vehicle-miles
dependency problem in at least one
Numbers will help determine the
traveled. Among the big questions: Are
way. “These apps are starting to slowly
answers, and so Shaheen and her team
we sharing more? And if so, what are we devolve the perception that getting into
have embarked on a landmark study exa car with somebody you don’t know is
amining the latest wave of carpooling
the wrong thing to do,” Shaheen says.
in the U.S., one organized not through
And that kind of trust is a prerequibulletin boards over a period of days but
site for widespread carpooling, the
kind we’ll all be doing if we’re going to
through smartphone apps in real time.
Shaheen is
Armed with the data that ride-app comshare—and not own—automated vea pioneer of
panies Uber and Lyft have agreed to
hicles that swoop by to pick us up at our
carpooling

provide, Shaheen aims to calculate the
drivewayless homes. Which may be the
research
two companies’ environmental impact,
commute of the future.
•

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$160

Time April 25, 2016

A E R I A L : D AV I D M A I S E L— I N S T I T U T E ; S U S A N S H A H E E N

22


Janet Yellen is rebooting the
Fed to focus on Main Street
over Wall Street
By Rana Foroohar

SUSAN WALSH — AP

You don’t often hear central bankers saY, “I don’t
know.” That’s because monetary wizards, like brain surgeons and rocket scientists, tend to cultivate an aura of omniscience. Their high-powered computers crank out supposedly
precise answers to complex questions about where the global
economy will be in the next five minutes or the next five
years. But Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen has never

been allergic to uncertainty.
In a recent interview with TIME, Yellen made it clear there
are plenty of things about the economy both at home and
abroad that the Fed—not to mention economists, investors,
politicians and the rest of us—doesn’t grasp right now. Unemployment has dropped to precrisis levels, but wages remain
stagnant. The traditional relationship between job creation
and inflation seems to have broken down. More and more
technology has not boosted productivity, as it has in the past.
Asset classes like stocks or bonds no longer move together in
the ways they used to. In short, the global economy is playing
by new rules, rules Yellen and the Fed are trying to puzzle out.
“Sometimes you have to make decisions without knowing all
that you would like to know,” she says. “That’s part of the job.”
This new realiTy is partly the result of the $29 trillion that
central bankers pumped into the global economy over the
past few years. (The Fed alone dumped $4.5 trillion in the
U.S.) Central bankers were forced to take such steps because
gridlocked governments didn’t act to put more fiscal stimulus
into their economies after the 2008 financial crisis. They became, as economist Mohamed El-Erian has written, “the only
game in town” for propping up growth. The downside of the
recovery: distortions in corporate debt and equity markets
and the risk of another crash.
The Fed has frequently been criticized, particularly by Republicans but also by some on the left, for continuing to keep
rates low in such an environment. By many metrics, the American recovery is improving, and easy monetary policies have
been known to encourage risky financial behaviors of the sort
made infamous in 2008. But Yellen sees herself less as a
wizard who backs into numbers via computer models and
more of a family doctor who’s taken an oath to above all do
no harm. “We necessarily operate in an environment in
which there’s a great deal of uncertainty,” she notes, talking about everything from Chinese financial markets to

the future of European integration. “In such an environment, it makes sense to use a risk-management approach
to identify and avoid the big mistakes. That’s one reason

STEADY AS
SHE GOES
JOBS
Unemployment
was 4.9% in
February, the
lowest level in
eight years
DEMAND
Global
demand
remains
sluggish,
one reason
the Fed has
kept interest
rates low

I favor a cautious approach.” Yellen, in
other words, is not keen to rely only on
old models. Rather, she is sending scouts
out to map the new landscape, measuring and analyzing data. The hope is to
be able to quickly change tacks as necessary, as the global economy continues to
twist and turn and confound.
For Yellen, risk management means
doing everything she can to keep the
U.S. recovery on track, employment especially. That’s one reason rates remain

low. If she had to choose between worrying about financial bubbles or jobs in the
Midwest, she’d choose the latter. It’s consistent with her kitchen-table approach
to economics—more focused on the empirical than the theoretical. That’s a big
shift from past regimes at the Fed, which
have trended toward the academic. “We
are focused on Main Street, on supporting economic conditions—plentiful jobs
and stable prices—that help all Americans,” she says.
ThaT’s noT To say that Yellen is ignoring the sort of market distortions that the
past few years of loose monetary policy
have engendered. In a 2014 speech, she
made it clear that higher rates aren’t the
only way to head off bubbles. Regulation
can also help. “Efforts to promote financial stability through adjustments in interest rates would increase the volatility
of inflation and employment,” she says.
“As a result, I believe a macro-prudential
approach to supervision and regulation
needs to play the primary role.”
Translation: the Fed is stepping up its
game as a financial regulator. It’s a mandate that has gotten a bit dusty over the
past several decades as Fed chairs have
focused more on the other two parts of
the mandate: keeping unemployment
and inflation low. But it’s one that Yellen would like to bring back. Already
the central bank has issued cautionary
notes about the frothy technology and
commercial real estate sectors. Look
for more such warnings, as Yellen
continues to transform the Fed and
leads the U.S. through its new economic wilderness.
•

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World

MAN-MADE DISASTER
A YEAR AFTER DEVASTATING QUAKES, POLITICS HAS KEPT NEPAL IN RUINS | TEXT BY NIKHIL KUMAR
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMES NACHTWEY FOR TIME


The Himalayan
mountain village
of Barpak was at
the epicenter of
the quakes

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