Archived entries for Fuzzy World

Countries doubling their income

It took China only 12 years to double its GDP per person (in PPP) from $1300 to $2600. And China will need only 7 years to double it from the present level or $8400. And India is following, too, though not as quick as China, but much quicker than the developed countries.

… GDP per person in both China and India could double from 2011 levels by the end of this decade. People in the developed economies will have to wait another quarter century to see their incomes double.


Source: GDP per person: Double your income! | The Economist.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

Tracking Diasporas

MORE Chinese people live outside mainland China than French people live in France, with some to be found in almost every country. Some 22m ethnic Indians are scattered across every continent.

The diaspora is the word which was initially used for ‘dispersed’ Jews from the their homeland in further history. Now it is commonly used for dispersed people of any community either due to geopolitical or personal reasons. No Doubt, Chinese and Indians account for majority of them in present world. This graphic shows how they are distributed all over the world.

To listen to an interview with Rober Guest, an author of “Borderless Economics”, follow the link!

Source: Diasporas: Mapping migration | The Economist.

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Popularity: 9% [?]

Incarceration rates

Incarceration rates around the world

The United States has only 5% of the global population but houses a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

This itself is strikingly sad fact. Moreover,

Black non-Hispanic males are incarcerated at a rate more than 6 times higher than white non-Hispanic males and 2.6 times higher than Hispanic males.

As usual, scandinavian countries fare the best.

Read more at: Incarceration rates around the world.

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Popularity: 62% [?]

Suppressed blogger of our world

Part of a project of GlobalVoices Advocacy, this cartographic survey gives simple statistics on suppressed online voices around the world. It’s no surprise that China tops the number, but no surprise either, that recent middle-east uprising is increase in number of such bloggers. But bigger surprise to find any such suppressed bloggers in western open societies. The website disclosing these data has interactive feature to look for them separately.

Threatened online voices around the world



Source: Threatened Voices | Tracking suppression of online free speech.

Popularity: 56% [?]

US Trade reality from last two decades

US Trade with its partners over two decades

USA is still the largest trading partner of many countries and the largest market for any kind of goods. This infographic shows how the trade has changed over last two decades with its trade partners.

It’s interesting to see how big jumps China made in terms of ranking as well as volumes. The imports from China to USA made big changes in shear numbers as soon as China entered WTO. Whatever were the talks about China, before it entering the organization, honestly, China has benefited a lot from it.

Other very visible characteristic is how this trade trend for Taiwan is exactly opposite to what China has experienced. In my opinion, Taiwan has lost a big ground in trade with USA. If it continues like this, Taiwan may lose an importance even as a political ally in sensitive South China Sea. It should also be noted that China is having similar dilema when it comes to North and South Korea conflict, where South Korea is much bigger trade partner to China than the North one.

India is not a grand partner in trade with USA compared to others. This nation is nowhere to see in US exports, whereas it seems to have gained ground in IT exports due to Y2K problem. But it is still well minuscule. Based on internal political system, multi-ethnic democracy, common interests, this may change soon and all the mistakes from the past done by foreign policy of either countries can be undone in decades ahead. Recent exclusive nuclear deal and large military orders shall increase the share of US exports to India. Removed restrictions and tarifs for indian products, which were imposed amid indian nuclear test decades ago, can well help indian exports to USA.

Whatever other argues, but USA definitely thinks of India as a reasonable and eligible counterweight to China. If this century is going to be an Asian century, then we have very interesting times ahead.

Source of infographic: Where and What Is U.S. Trading

Popularity: 30% [?]

Commodity prices and global growth: Back with a vengeance | The Economist

The worry is that rampant commodity prices may cause another wobble in the world economy. Higher commodity prices act like a consumption tax, transferring income from households and companies which use the resources to companies and countries that produce them. As the producers tend to save more of their income than the consumers, more expensive commodities bear down on global demand.

…

Outside America, food has a bigger share than energy in consumers’ shopping baskets—and thus in inflation too (see chart). In developing countries, rising food prices can be a human as well as an economic disaster. In Asia in early 2008 a spike in the price of rice led to widespread unrest and desperate attempts by governments to secure more supplies. In December in India, for example, food prices rose at an annual rate of 14%, and there has been a run on onions, a dietary staple.

Read more: Commodity prices and global growth: Back with a vengeance | The Economist.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Typomaps: The world in words

While browsing the web I came across this wonderful typographical map of the world. I’ve seen many different kind of maps giving various information, but this one is really something different. Most of the countries are named using Helvetica Neue font. Just reading those names you know where these countries are located and how geographically big these countries are. You can buy this map as poster for EUR 49,00 on the following website: Typomaps


Poster in dark


Poster in dark via Typomaps


Poster in white

Poster in white via Typomaps


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Popularity: 46% [?]

Arm sales

Arm sales is one such kind of business, where, irrespective what american-styled free market believes, strong government support and intervention is needed. Perhaps it is the most corrupt form of trade which keeps domestic government as well as international agencies blind. Very few arm sales are transparent enough. Maybe it is due to various reasons: open arm sales sometimes create aggresive anti-sales sentiment in the seller country (like Germany) or the seller country has geopolitical wasted interest in the region of buyers or defence state executives have their own wasted interest in promoting their associated arm developing MNCs. It is not a surprise that arm sales is very profitable business, even in recession. The following infographic gives you how it has changed since 2001.

Modern Clix

Global arm sales via good.is

Prosperity also increases the defence spending, but not necessarily (see Syria, Venezuela, Pakistan, etc.). For fast-growing countries it makes sense to modernize its weaponary or get involved into intense global affairs as a formidable military power. For example, India is the second largest buyer of arms in last 8 years. India used to depend mostly on arm sales from Russia, but it has diversified the arm buying portfolio last couple of years, mostly after nuclear deal with USA. And one sees even in this bad economic times, the country, in particular like USA, has managed to increase its arm sales to new profits. Although China is the fourth largest buyer of the arms, it is also one of the top arm sellers. At the moment, China’s share is pretty small, but definitely it is going to increase in next couple of decades. But for the moment, USA is the sole largest seller of the arms with share more than 60%. It seems really scary looking at realpolitik disasters of its foreign policy. As long as these arm sales doesn’t include nuclear weapons, one should not worry about the end of the world.

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Popularity: 100% [?]

Improving life in Iraq

Empirical data is still the best method to analyze any sort of situation. Present vital data explaining life in Iraq shows the situation is changing in positive direction. The whole Iraq war was big mistake and political blunder. But all the mistakes should be undone and present data shows that life is moving towards better ends. This infographics shows it all.

Improving state of Iraq

Click on the image or source below to get the full version of the graphic.

source: How life in Iraq has changed

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Popularity: 72% [?]

World Recession Map

At Moody’s website, popularly called Economy.com, the global recession is stated in a detailed interactive map. More than a year has passed from the economic shock of 2008, and most part of the world seems to be recovering. As usual, Asia-Pacific block should not fear about the recovery and it is expanding, perhaps the expansion is not as quick as during those glory days. But clearly it can be seen how the international map of economy has changed ever since.

Global recession status

Honestly I’m not very much impressed by the quality of the plot. It gives you information just qualitatively, not with acutal data. I guess the main aim of this map was to give overall picture of the health of world economy. And at the moment, it doesn’t seem that bad.

source: Global Recession Map

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Popularity: 98% [?]

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