Indian Equivalent of Bum Fights? Slum Tours
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Here is info on one company, including a price list, less than $7 for a 2.5 hour tour and about $15 for a 4.5 hour tour.
Here is a newspaper article about slum tours in New Delhi.
Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance
The Indian economy grew in 2006 by about 8.5% and is predicted to grow by more than 9% this year. At that rate, the Indian economy will double in size of the next 8 years, and will grow from its current size of about $1 trillion in GDP to $2 trillion.
"According to the information technology office of the Indian state of Karnataka (where the city of Bangalore is located, and where I am currently visiting), Indian units of Cisco, Intel, IBM, Texas Instruments and GE have already filed more than a thousand patent applications with the U.S. Patent Office. Texas Instruments alone had 225 patents awarded to its Indian operation."
Facts about charitable donations in 2006:
1. Lots of fur coats.
George Mason economist Don Bodreaux makes a good point that Americans are beneficiaries of an overvalued dollar vs. the yen or yuan, so why should we complain about bargain prices for Chinese and Japanese goods?
There's an even deeper reason why Americans should not tolerate Uncle Sam accusing foreign governments (like China and Japan) of undervaluing their currencies. Such undervaluing -- if, indeed, it occurs -- benefits Americans.
Keeping in mind that it is difficult to determine whether or not a government truly is keeping the value of its currency too low relative to the dollar, let's assume (for argument's sake) that the Chinese government really is doing so.
How does it achieve this outcome? Answer: The Chinese government must buy up dollars and keep them out of circulation. By reducing the supply of dollars on foreign-exchange markets, the value of the dollar rises relative to other currencies, including that of the Chinese yuan.
In other words, the value of the yuan falls against the dollar.
Now ask: How does the Chinese government buy these dollars? It can do so only by taxing its citizens, either directly (such as by raising their income taxes) or indirectly through inflation -- simply printing new yuan -- or deficit financing. Each of these policies transfers money from the pockets of Chinese citizens to the coffers of the Chinese government. This government then uses these yuan to buy up dollars.
The ultimate result is that the Chinese government forces Chinese citizens to subsidize the consumption of Americans and other peoples who import goods from China. The Chinese people either pay higher taxes or suffer inflation so that Chinese exporters can sell goods to foreigners at artificially low prices.
Why should Americans complain? The real victims of such currency manipulation are the Chinese people. Americans are beneficiaries.
Labor unions, like the government, can change prices — in this case, the price of labor — but without changing the underlying reality that prices convey. Neither unions nor minimum wage laws change the productivity of workers. All they can do is forbid the employer from paying less than what the government or the unions want the employer to pay.
Economists have long been saying that there is no free lunch but politicians get elected by promising free lunches. Controlling prices creates the illusion of free lunches. ¨
A basic problem with the often quoted personal saving rate is that it mixes together current workers with retirees who should be expected to spend much more than they earn. One academic economist has calculated that excluding retirees from the figures would add about 4 percentage points to the saving rate. Moreover, this error should grow over time as the US ages and healthcare costs (a major purchase for retirees) continue to grow.
It might be a convenient expression to say that the U.S. trades with Japan, but is it literally true? Is it the U.S. Congress and President George Bush who trade with the National Diet of Japan, the Japanese legislature and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe? Or, is it U.S. and Japanese private parties, as individuals and corporations, who trade with one another? When I purchased my Lexus, did I deal with the U.S. Congress, the Japanese Diet, George Bush and Shinzo Abe, or did I deal with Toyota and its intermediaries?
Nobel economist Amartya Sen made a JFK-esque speech asking the IT industry what it had done for India. His point was not that the IT industry isn’t doing anything for the economy at large, but that it should do ‘much more’. Indeed, Sen argues, given that it has benefited from the country’s contributions to its development, the industry should have a ’sense of obligation’ to do much more.
John Tamny, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute explains why market competition is often a better and more effective regulator of businesses than government: "Dominant companies in the U.S. like Standard Oil and GM have regularly been knocked from their perches by seemingly insignificant competitors. Former anti-trust target IBM's failure to see the potential of the personal computer led to Microsoft's ascendance with Windows, and much like IBM, Microsoft (targeted by anti-trust forces in the late '90s) failed to see the transformative nature of the Internet in time to stop Yahoo and Google among others."
Newspaper circulation in the U.S. continues to decline, but in India daily newspapers are booming. Read about it here in The Economist's article "Indian newspapers: Let 1,000 titles bloom."
History shows us that freedom works. During 1,000 years of absolute monarchy, feudalism, and slavery, mankind’s average income increased by about 50%. In the 180 years since 1820, mankind’s average income has increased by almost 1,000%. During the last 100 years, we have created more wealth, reduced poverty more, and increased life expectancy more than in the previous 100,000 years. And that happened because of the entrepreneurs, thinkers, creators, innovator who had new ideas, who traveled geographical distances and, more important, mental distances to create new things and who saw to it that old traditions, which would have stopped new creations, would not stop them for long.
Here's the ranking of the largest 100 metro areas in the U.S. for "best cities for jobs," from Forbes Magazine in its annual survey, and here is the full article. Forbes uses 5 variables: Unemployment rate, job growth, income growth, median household income, and cost of living. It measured the largest 100 metropolitan areas, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, and obtained the data from Moody's economy.com.
The great allure of government programs in general for many people is that these programs allow decisions to be made without having to worry about the constraints of prices, which confront people at every turn in a free market.
Americans pay about double the world market price for sugar, a hidden tax that hurts everyone with a sweet tooth. Many beverage and food makers catering to that sweet tooth have long used corn syrup instead of sugar because it's cheaper, but the price of corn syrup is beginning to rise. So now would be a good time for the U.S. government to revisit its destructive farm policies.
Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs lambasted teacher unions today, claiming no amount of technology in the classroom would improve public schools until principals could fire bad teachers.
This is what usually happens the first time you visit Zillow.com: You type in your address to check out the Zestimate, an approximation of your home's market value. It appears in a little pop-up superimposed on a photographic map of your neighborhood. The number might make you smile; it could make you angry.
Between 1990 and 2002 more than 174 million people escaped poverty in China, about 1.2 million per month. With an estimated $23 billion in Chinese exports in 2005 (out of a total of $713 billion in manufacturing exports), Wal-Mart might well be single-handedly responsible for bringing about 38,000 people out of poverty in China each month, about 460,000 per year.
Unions help those they represent by trying to raise wages above what they would otherwise be. To the extent they succeed, they reduce the demand for labor in unionized shops. That means more workers have to find employment in non-unionized shops, pushing down wages there. That's especially tough on workers with limited skills and education. The sad irony of unions is that they can only improve the lot of their members at the expense of other workers.
"I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is...I could be just as proud for half the the money."
Under the rules of bowling, you get rewarded, not penalized, for success. If you get a spare, the scoring system rewards you by adding in the pins from the next ball into the current frame, and if you get a strike the scoring system rewards you by adding the pins from your next two balls into the current frame.
If there is inequality in America — and no one can accurately measure it — it is not the product of a dysfunctional inheritance system that preserves the oligarchy of one generation for the next. Rather, income and wealth inequality in America is almost entirely the result of an economic system that rewards skills and hard work, and rewards unusually savvy people extraordinarily well. This is not new to the 21st century; it has always been this way in America.
Among the highest paid corporate executives, only 2.5% are women. Among the most elite scientists (those who have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences), fully 9% are women. Depending on your biases, you can read that as evidence that women are better at science than business, that corporations discriminate against women, or (if you believe that profit-maximizing corporations get everything just right) that the National Academy discriminates against men.
Today the Internet has become an efficient way to transmit libertarian ideas and show their practical application. With its decentralized, free-wheeling ethos, the Internet is itself libertarian without even trying to be. Jimmy Wales, the man who started the interactive online encyclopedia Wikipedia, believes that "facts can help set the world free." The largest retail market in the world is eBay, which allows anyone to buy and sell without a government license.
It’s no surprise that Ec 10 tops this spring’s enrollment figures, but a historical studies Core on capitalism has ballooned to more than four times its previous size. Ec 10, the popular name for Social Analysis 10, “Principles of Economics,” packs Sanders Theatre this semester with 736 undergraduates, despite a drop-off of more than 200 students from first semester. The course still has more than two times the number of undergraduates registered for the next largest course, Historical Study B-49, “History of American Capitalism.”
"Protectionism is seductive, but countries that succumb to its allure will soon have their economic hearts broken. Conversely, countries that commit to competitive borders will ensure a brighter economic future for their citizens. This lesson should not be lost on the U.S., the paragon of competitive growth, where politicians and policy makers are contemplating whether to construct more protective barriers. It is openness that gives people the opportunity to use their entrepreneurial talents to create social surplus, rather than using those talents to protect what they already have (or to protect rents, as economists like to say). Social surplus begets a rising standard of living, which begets growth, which begets social surplus, and so on. Rent protection stops growth cold and keeps people poor."
On average, setting up a business takes 5 days in the U.S., 19 days in Panama -- the fastest in Latin America -- 27 days in Mexico, 72 days in Peru and 152 days in Brazil, according to the World Bank.
"I don't believe in nothing no more, man. I'm going to law school."
Business writer Steven Pearlstein had an excellent article in yesterday's Wash Post about U.S. health care costs:
The new dollar coin makes it debut today, from the NY Times:
WSJ article on walk-in health clinics:
Last year, U.S. exports, industrial production, real hourly compensation, corporate profits, federal tax revenues, retail sales, GDP, productivity, the number of people with jobs, the number of students in college, airline passenger traffic and the Dow Jones Industrial Average all hit record levels. For the third consecutive year, global growth was strong, continuing to lift (and hold) millions of people out of poverty. From 30,000 feet, heck from 1,000 feet, it sure looks like the best of times.
Myth: Most consumers believe that major oil companies own and operate the majority of fueling stations in the United States.
From today's NYTimes, "Odds Are, They’ll Know 2008 Winner":
To take a set of diverse examples, the data will, I am confident, reveal that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking, which is an enormously high-paying profession in our society; that white men are very substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association; and that Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming and in agriculture. These are all phenomena in which one observes underrepresentation, and I think it’s important to try to think systematically and clinically about the reasons for underrepresentation.
The BEA released its report today for U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services through December 2006. Here are some key points:
Excerpts from Milton Friedman: Rightful Patron Saint of Blogging:
While many people think the Federal Reserve controls interest rates, and some even think the Fed controls the entire economy, in reality, the Fed only controls one policy tool - the amount of money circulating in the economy.
Thanks to Bob Houbeck for the tip.
The level of economic dynamism is a matter of how fertile a country is in coming up with innovative ideas having prospects of profitability, how adept it is at identifying and nourishing the ideas with the best prospects, and how prepared it is in evaluating and trying out the new products and methods that are launched onto the market.
1. U.S. exports grew by 13.1% in the 12-month period through November 2006, totaling $1.3 trillion. To put this number into perspective, Germany's entire GDP was $2.79 trillion and India's GDP was $772 billion.
You’ve probably never heard of Kannada, the native language of Karnataka. You’ve probably never heard of Karnataka either. But there’s a good chance you’ll chat with a Karnatakan if your iPod ever locks up or you have trouble installing the new Windows Vista operating system.
The only effective way to reduce traffic congestion is to use pricing. The potential benefits to Americans in time and fuel savings are enormous. State and local governments have an obligation to use this new tool to enable traffic to flow freely.