Friends + Interlocutors,

Here’s a straw in the wind from the Financial Times. 

This letter to the Editor below (May 3rd) reminds me of LBJ’s insistence while selling his Vietnam War that America could have both “guns and butter” without problems and that “you never had it so good!” LBJ was wrong in the long run but right in the short run, and so is the letter. Three cheers for overpriced espresso! 

Still, things currently are going sideways. We are in the long run.—Patrick

Janan Ganesh’s column “Where the west still wins” (Opin­ion, April 26) made me won­der: if west­ern decline means fly­ing Air­buses, drink­ing Bor­deaux and hand­ing out Nobel Prizes like party favours, maybe decline isn’t such a bad deal. The rest of the world may be rising, but at the speed of a slow-mov­ing queue. Until someone else can build a jet I’d trust or a uni­versity I’d Google without check­ing the spelling, I’m happy to enjoy the perks of this so-called fad­ing empire — one over­priced espresso at a time.

Praveen Raina Singa­pore