economy

For those who aren't familiar with the concept of Spiral Dynamics, please read the introduction. After evaluating the strength of the green vMeme, blue vMeme and red vMeme values by country, here are now the orange vMeme values. The orange meme is associated with personal achivements...

I have created a new map for the series of socio-economic maps of Europe. Countries with the highest percentages of smartphone users are Germanic countries and richer states of the Arabian peninsula. Italy has a surprisingly low penetration rate, especially considering the image of Italian...

Two years ago we discussed the factors that make some countries happier than others. I wondered why countries with a high level of development like Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Italy, Spain, Portugal or Hungary scored relatively low on happiness. Even the United States ranked 18th worldwide...

I have mentioned and summarised the concept of Spiral Dynamics in this thread. I find the concept fascinating and extremely useful to study the evolution of societies in history, but also to understand the current socio-political situation in modern countries and forecast how societies are going...

Adam Przeworski, a Polish-American professor of political science at New York University, has written several papers and books regarding the relationship between economic prosperity and the stability of democratic regimes. He was able to calculate the life expectancy of a democracy based on...

Travelling in different countries I couldn't help but notice that the brands of cars on the road can vary quite a bit. Obviously people tend to buy more cars from their own country, either for patriotic reasons or because the marketing is better, the cars are designed in accordance with the...

This is big, but oddly enough it hasn't made the headlines of mainstream media yet. This is great news for consumers, but not for manufacturers. EU outlaws planned obsolescence "In a move which will have Apple clutching its bottom line in fear, the EU has decided to outlaw planned...

An interactive chart by The Economist shows the relation between life expectancy, GDP per capita, and the proportion of elderly people living in good health. The results are somewhat surprising. While the French, Swiss, Italians and Spaniards live the longest, the graph shows that relatively...

In 2013 Mastercard release a report called Cashless Journey, analysing the percentage of cashless transactions as a share of the total value of consumer payments in 33 countries. Here is the ranking. Belgium : 93% France : 92% Canada : 90% United Kingdom : 89% Sweden : 89% Australia : 86%...

I found an interesting list of countries ranked by median wealth by adult. It is based on a 2016 study by Credit Suisse. It's surprising to see that Americans, Germans and Swedes are poorer in average than Spaniards, Taiwanese or South Koreans. I didn't expect Belgians to rank so high. Median...

Destruction of cashflow in society, its consequence and solutions. Introduction: The main function of money is to serve as product substitute to ease commercial transactions, also as storage of wealth, and reward for work, as salary. We don’t want to be paid in what we produce, in wheat...

The Pew Research Center has published a very interesting analysis of the evolution of social classes in Western Europe and the US from 1991 to 2010. Here are a few infographics to summarise the findings. 1) The middle class expands in France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, but shrinks...

I have been making socio-economic maps for several years. Here is the latest addition. I have calculated the average unemployment rates for the 12-year period 2004-2015. Unemployment rates change all the time and it is only useful to compare the economic health of countries based on data...

I have added a new map of Economic Freedom in my Social & Economic Maps of Europe. This map is based on the Index of Economic Freedom (2016) created by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. It is shocking, though not entirely surprising to see how poorly Latin countries perform...

Is Berlins economy the same as it was in 2014, better, worse?? Are there still many availabilities of really cheap housing, and how low can these places (nothing special, just something to sleep and live in with basic commodities)?? Where are the most jobs available? Just looking for some info...

McGraw Hill Financial has just released the results of their Global Financial Literacy Survey, which aims at evaluating people's knowledge of basic financial concepts such as risk diversification, inflation, interests, and compound interests on loans and credit cards. Only about a third of the...

Five years ago I recommended that Greeks should go bankrupt and start afresh. They could have been out of recession by now, growing their economy outside of Eurozone. I'm surprise this farce is still going on. Let's see how Greeks vote today. I have a feeling they will vote for staying in...

An amazing array of new technologies are set to change human civilisation as we know it. The continuous progress in artificial intelligence will enable computers to do the jobs of telemarketers, clerks, accountants, corporate lawyers, analysts, airline pilots, and countless other jobs. In fact...

What if all Middle Eastern countries would unite together in an organization like European Union. Suppose a Union starting from Turkey in the West, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in North, Afghanistan, Pakistan in the East and Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman in South. Very large area including many...

In principia and roughly, idea of communism applies to equal sharing of production of goods among group members and equally owning resources. By these standards H-G hunter-gatherers were communist by nature of their socio-economic settings (system). They went hunting together on land or forest...