Calculi's Politics Blog

Countries doubling their income

calculi — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 18:48:31 +0000

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.

OECD Countries With The Widest Gap Between Rich And Poor (huffingtonpost.com)
India: a BRIC between China and US (bbc.co.uk)
China Raises Poverty Line, Boosting Official Poor (abcnews.go.com)
Economic Indicators : Debt/GDP Ratio (niravisms.wordpress.com)

Tracking Diasporas

calculi — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 11:25:54 +0000

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.

Where are the world’s biggest Chinese and Indian immigrant communities? (capitalisthistory.wordpress.com)
Robert Guest: How Migration Makes the World Brainier (huffingtonpost.co.uk)

Incarceration rates

calculi — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 19:30:53 +0000

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.

Inequality and Incarceration (mortonandgeorge.wordpress.com)
Are You Safe? (tmohouston.com)

Suppressed blogger of our world

calculi — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:19:23 +0000

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.

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

US Trade reality from last two decades

calculi — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 02:16:34 +0000

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

Indian PM says India is not a scam-driven country

calculi — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:12:24 +0000

India‘s academic and soft-spoken leader decided that lofty abandon was no longer a sustainable tactic. Singh, a rare and reluctant speaker, sat for an hour-long grilling by India’sleading television editors, an interrogation carried live nationwide.

Singh’s message was twofold: that the government was “dead serious” about rooting out corruption and that the media, which has relentlessly exposed corruption in his coalition government over the past six months, should stop putting the country down.

Response from the main opposition party:

“Nobody for a moment has suggested that he is guilty of any personal misdemeanor,” said the BJP’s Arun Jaitley. “But his culpability is lack of political leadership, lack of assertion and lack of courage to stop corruption when it was taking place.”

I liked the response. Indian democracy has always been dynamic, but it’s matured, too.

Source: Singh says hes no lame duck, and India is not a scam-driven country.

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

calculi — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:47:52 +0000

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.

Indian economy to run past US by 2050

calculi — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 00:03:36 +0000

Extract from IBT article :Indian economy to run past US by 2050; China will do so in 2018 – International Business Times.

“In many ways the renewed dominance by 2050 of China and India, with their much larger populations, is a return to the historical norm prior to the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries that caused a shift in global economic power from Asia to Western Europe and the US – this temporary shift in power is now going into reverse,” said John Hawksworth, chief economist at PwC, said.

Now the World Economic Forum 2011 is going on in Davos, this news look more relevant. In terms of PPP (Purchasing Power Parity), these economies are going to overtake many western economies way too early. This can happen, only if the economic growth in these developing countries stay as it is and I’m very optimistic about it.

Typomaps: The world in words

calculi — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 11:53:56 +0000

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 via Typomaps

Poster in white via Typomaps

Related articles

dirk schächter: typomaps (designboom.com)

Typomaps – A New Way to Display Geography (oddmods.com)

A Very Cool Map Of The Non-Monogamous World [Big Love] (jezebel.com)

Typographic Topography – The Typomaps Collection is a Travelling Designer’s Dream (GALLERY) (trendhunter.com)

Letter from my old blog:Clash of civilization (or ignorance of othercivilization?)!

calculi — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 20:00:10 +0000

Depending where or in which family someone is born, he is definitely proud of its culture, and of course, civilization related to that culture. Of course, why shouldn’t anyone be? And anything happens which promotes goodness of this culture makes him walk a inch higher over the ground. If looked closely, it is true in such places where nationalism or patriotism hailed high. Where it could be found? In those places where people are struggling to appear in international arena, where that country or community is trying to be more powerful, or where people have longer history than other presently high profile countries. This explains some way present development of nationalism in USA, China and India, among more influential.

It is interesting to see decline and opposition of nationalism in european countries, although some efforts by french government made for France, no such proudness of own culture can be found. It seems that USA has become representative of western civilization, not Europe which is real representative. With faster developing economies, huge population and really oldest preserved history in account, India and China are representing asian culture, which overshadows the yet economically powerful Japan. Although having shared cultures, ideas and developments for centuries, unfortunately dues to late colonization of european kingdoms in Asia, it has changed geopolitical makeup in Asia, where each nation sees others as threat to sovereignty. And it is here, where nationalism is propelling misunderstanding in communication.

Well, it can be thought that more prosperous and less hostile a nation, less nationalist its people would be, but USA isn’t exception as such, it is a example that it wouldn’t be possible that way. A country where media has become a profit-making business than educators of the society, it won’t be a surprise to see nationalism as big business too.

But this nationalism is some way also a cause for ignorance of other civilization. It can be understood that in India people are less educated about other civilizations, due to low literacy rate and still the same mindset preserved from British India times and in China, the same thing due to complete control of government over communication (meant not bad, if considered with USA, but limited access to knowledge of outside world). But this ignorance causes accepting any good from other civilization. For example, in India one can see reluctance to accept the fact that other civilization was developed parallel to us with prosperity, hindering our own development using their idea. There is no point in sitting back praising age-old civilization and dreaming still for comfortable life. It can be seen that people in rural areas are mostly less educated and conservative. It is some way political matter. Any development of nation is possible through the development of rural areas, i.e. educating them exactly the same way as in urban area. After all everyone strives for material pleasure, which is easily accessible in Cities. Unfortunately it is seen that prosperity of nation lies in Cities and Cities defines the civilization. But in ancient India, each village was self-sufficient and it had more autonomy, but now problems of rural areas are solved by the people living in big cities, how can they make rural areas vibrant? Civilization should be represented by whole nation not just by handful of cities. Otherwise most of the population which live in the rural areas will be left with their pride for their own civilization and ignorance of other civilization.

As shown months ago in German media that most of the people don’t know more than where nearby railway station is located, how can they understand the problems and benefit of harmony of other civilization? Nationalism is pure tool to unite whole nation for one cause. Fortunately, in developing countries it is used for development, but unfortunately, also to prove the darwinism, the survival of the strongest. Who knows, but coming years will see real clash of civilization, after whole earth is globalized enough.

I’d say, it doesn’t matter if you are nationalist or patriot, but just don’t ignore other civilization!