Showing posts with label Economic growth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economic growth. Show all posts

Thursday, March 05, 2015

Energy Is The Missing Link

English: Citizens for Clean Energy Logo
English: Citizens for Clean Energy Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Clean Energy is the missing link to the world getting rid of poverty. China has showed the way. And now India is on a war path to double digit growth rates. That is bigger news than China getting there because, well, India is the largest democracy, and democracy is supposed to be the superior political system. Think of it, the problem in India has been not enough democracy. Corruption and democracy don't go hand in hand.

The political roadmap is clear. The economic roadmap is clear. The policy roadmap is clear. But you can't have India and Africa eat up the blue sky like China did. And neither are going to wait. They will pollute their way out of poverty if they have to. So the scientists of the world really have their work cut out for them. I don't care where they are. America, China, India. Does not matter. Clean energy has to happen.

The thing about clean energy is, not only will it give economic growth without pollution, it will give economic growth itself. In their rush to clean energy that makes economic sense, all countries from America to India to China will add a percentage point or two to their growth rates. So bring it on, scientists.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

The iPhone And The GDP



This is rather curious. Just one little thing, the i is a small letter even at the beginning of a sentence.

Wall Street Journal: IPhone 5 Sales Could Offer Big Boost to GDP
analysts expect Apple to sell about 8 million iPhone 5 units in the final three months of the year. If the phone sells for around $600, with about $200 of it counted as imported components, then $400 per phone would figure into the government’s measure of gross domestic product...... The new iPhone sales could boost GDP by $3.2 billion in the fourth quarter, or $12.8 billion at an annual rate. That is an increase of 0.33 percentage point in the annualized rate of GDP growth. It could be even higher, he says. Even a third of a percentage point would limit the downside risk to J.P. Morgan’s fourth-quarter growth projection of 2%. ..... forecasts for third-quarter GDP growth to 1.5% and the fourth quarter to 1.4%, both down seven-tenths of a percentage point, largely due to the effect of the drought on farm output. ..... The economy grew at a 2% pace in the first quarter of this year, then slowed to 1.7% in the second quarter. In the final three months of last year, the U.S. economy expanded at a 4.1% pace after a sharp slowdown earlier in the year.


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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Brazil: Economic Turnaround


I grew up in Nepal being told Nepal was second only to Brazil when it came to hydropower potential. But what made news year after year was not yet another hydel power plant that was put up, but monsoon floods and landslides. Potential is one thing. Deed is another. Brazil has had the potential. And this past decade it seems to have put its house in basic order. But there is so much that remains to be done. A 6% growth rate is not 10%. Lifting tens of millions out of abject poverty still leaves tens of millions more to be lifted. Brazil could be but still is not a world power.