January 14 2025

1. US Population Growth Forecast Slashed; Deaths to Exceed Births by 2033
2. Declining Birth Rates Driven by Rising Singlehood, Not Family Size
3. Trump's Cabinet Nominees Start Senate Confirmation Process Today
4. AI Model Scores 88% on Intelligence Test, Seeing Exponential Improvements
5. Nuclear Arms Race Returns as Global Treaties Unravel
January 14, 1973: Miami Dolphins win Super Bowl VII to cap NFL’s only perfect season

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1. US Population Growth Forecast Slashed; Deaths to Exceed Births by 2033

The Congressional Budget Office forecast sharply lower population growth in the U.S. over the next three decades than it projected one year ago, reflecting lower rates of immigration and fertility.  As a result of the changes, deaths are expected to exceed births in 2033, seven years earlier than the nonpartisan agency projected a year ago. Immigration is also projected to fall, and as a result the populace is likely to be older and smaller in 2054 than previously expected. That would have important implications for everything from economic growth to fiscal policy.  In an annual demographic outlook, released Monday, the CBO raised its population estimate for 2025 to 350 million from 346 million, but lowered its estimate for 2054 to 372 million, 11 million fewer than a year ago. That means the population is projected to grow 6.3% over the next three decades instead of 10.5%.

Article Source: WSJ

2. Declining Birth Rates Driven by Rising Singlehood, Not Family Size

There’s a reason birth rates are an increasingly prominent feature in discourse and policymaking today. Population ageing and decline is one of the most powerful forces in the world, shaping everything from economics to politics and the environment. But a weakness to the debate — perhaps even the term “birth rates” itself — is that it implies the goal is the same today as it was in the past: finding ways to encourage couples to have more children. A closer look at the data suggests a whole new challenge. Take the US as an example. Between 1960 and 1980, the average number of children born to a woman halved from almost four to two, even as the share of women in married couples edged only modestly lower. There were still plenty of couples in happy, stable relationships. They were just electing to have smaller families. But in recent years most of the fall is coming not from the decisions made by couples, but from a marked fall in the number of couples. Had US rates of marriage and cohabitation remained constant over the past decade, America’s total fertility rate would be higher today than it was then. The central demographic story of modern times is not just declining rates of childbearing but rising rates of singledom: a much more fundamental shift in the nature of modern societies.  

Article Source: FT

3. Trump's Cabinet Nominees Start Senate Confirmation Process Today

More than a dozen people nominated by President-elect Trump to serve in his administration will make their case to Senate committees this week.

Tuesday:

•       9 a.m.: Doug Collins for secretary of Veterans Affairs, before the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee

•       9:30 a.m.: Pete Hegseth for secretary of Defense, before the Senate Armed Services Committee

Wednesday

•       9 a.m.: Kristi Noem for Homeland Security secretary, before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee

•       9:30 a.m.: Pam Bondi for attorney general, before the Senate Judiciary Committee

•       10 a.m.: Marco Rubio for secretary of State, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

•       10 a.m.: John Ratcliffe for CIA director, before the Senate Intelligence Committee

•       10 a.m.: Sean Duffy for Transportation secretary, before the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee

•       10 a.m.: Chris Wright for Energy secretary, before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee

•       1 p.m.: Russell Vought for Office of Management and Budget director, before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee

Thursday

•       10 a.m. Lee Zeldin for Environmental Protection Agency director, before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

•       10 a.m.: Eric Turner for Housing and Urban Development secretary, before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee

•       10 a.m.: Doug Burgum for Interior secretary, before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee

•       10:15 a.m.: Pam Bondi for attorney general, before the Senate Judiciary Committee

•       10:30 a.m.: Scott Bessent for Treasury Secretary, before the Senate Finance Committee

All times Eastern.

Article Source: KSN

4. AI Model Scores 88% on Intelligence Test, Seeing Exponential Improvements

One way to measure an AI model’s ‘IQ’ is to administer the ARC-AGI benchmark test, an intelligence test designed to evaluate AI systems' ability to solve novel visual and logical puzzles. It presents AI with example puzzles and asks them to apply the discovered rules to new cases, making it a key benchmark for measuring progress toward more general artificial intelligence capabilities. The earliest models scored in the single digits, including ‘ChatGPT-3’, which was the first public breakthrough of AI into the general public consciousness in late 2022. Open AI’s new model, ‘o3’, has scored 88%, a B+, less than two years later. This remarkable pace of change will continue to accelerate and it’s almost impossible to imagine where we’ll be after 2 more years.  

5. Nuclear Arms Race Returns as Global Treaties Unravel

At the end of the Cold War, global powers reached the consensus that the world would be better off with fewer nuclear weapons. That era is now over. Treaties are collapsing, some nuclear powers are strengthening their arsenals, the risk is growing that nuclear weapons will spread more widely and the use of tactical nuclear weapons to gain battlefield advantage is no longer unimaginable. The path to resurgent fears of nuclear war began in 1945, with the first nuclear test blast at the Trinity test site in New Mexico. In 1963, during the throes of America’s Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union, President John F. Kennedy described his fear of a nuclear age without guardrails, in which dozens of nations possess weapons of mass destruction—what he called the “greatest possible danger and hazard.” For decades, arms-control agreements, technological challenges and fears of mutually assured destruction kept such a doomsday on the distant horizon.  As years passed, U.S. and Russian stockpiles of nuclear warheads grew, then shrank—while China, in recent years, began its ascent. The global stockpile reached a peak in the mid-1980s, and has since been significantly reduced. In the first Start treaty, signed in 1991, the U.S. and Soviet Union agreed to cap the number of their warheads. But one of the two critical nuclear-arms-control pacts between Russia and the U.S., the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, has collapsed. The New Start treaty, which placed even tighter limits on the number of deployed warheads on each side and the missiles and bombers that carry them, expires early next year. Senior officials in Washington now say the U.S. needs to be prepared to expand its nuclear force to deter growing threats from Russia and China—raising the potential of a new arms race. China’s growing stockpile of nuclear weapons is expected to triple by 2035, according to some estimates.

Article Source: WSJ

January 14, 1973: Miami Dolphins win Super Bowl VII to cap NFL’s only perfect season

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