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Category: economics – Page 207

World’s eight richest people have same wealth as poorest 50%

Last year, Oxfam said the world’s 62 richest billionaires were as wealthy as half the world’s population. However, the number has dropped to eight in 2017 because new information shows that poverty in China and India is worse than previously thought, making the bottom 50% even worse off and widening the gap between rich and poor.

The world’s eight richest billionaires control the same wealth between them as the poorest half of the globe’s population, according to a charity warning of an ever-increasing and dangerous concentration of wealth.

In a report published to coincide with the start of the week-long World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam said it was “beyond grotesque” that a handful of rich men headed by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates are worth $426bn (£350bn), equivalent to the wealth of 3.6 billion people.

The development charity called for a new economic model to reverse an inequality trend that it said helped to explain Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.

Chinese humanoid robot turns on the charm in Shanghai

“Jia Jia” can hold a simple conversation and make specific facial expressions when asked, and her creator believes the eerily life-like robot heralds a future of cyborg labour in China.

Billed as China’s first human-like robot, Jia Jia was first trotted out last year by a team of engineers at the University of Science and Technology of China.

Team leader Chen Xiaoping sounded like a proud father as he and his prototype appeared Monday at an economic conference organised by banking giant UBS in Shanghai’s futuristic financial centre.

An Aging Population Is Stalling Productivity

Once again the figures show that young to old disparity in the population is the problem not overpopulation. We really need to develop rejvenation biotechnology with all haste.

Once again overpopulation isnt the problem it is the disparity between young and old in the workforce. This makes rejuvenation biotechnology a suitable solution to avoid economic collapse.

“The world is experiencing unparalleled population aging. This poses problems for productivity and growth, unless we do something about it”

Don’t Thank Big Government for Medical Breakthroughs

Grassroots funding of fundamental science and private enterprize will lead the way in rejuvenation biotechnology not the traditional funding sources from Government which are shrinking every year.

It is important to understand that innovation and progress is unlikely to come from the Government and the traditional grant system which is shrinking every year. Rejuvenation biotechnology will likely be funded with a mix of fundraising for fundamental breakthrough technologies followed by private enterprize taking discoveries to market. This is why supporting science is critcial as relying on the Government to innovate and drive progress is unlikely to yield results anytime soon.

“Today, researchers compete for government grants at increasingly shorter intervals and with diminishing chances of success: Less than 1 in 5 grant applications succeeds. This inhibits risk taking.

By contrast, private investment in medicine has kept pace with the aging population and is the principal engine for advancement. More than 80% of new drug approvals originate from work solely performed in private companies. Note that such drug approvals come on average 16 years after the beginning of clinical trials, which typically cost $2.5 billion from start to finish. Even if grant-subsidized academics wanted to create a new drug, economic reality prevents it.”

#aging #crowdfundthecure

‘New York 2140’ Is a Sci-Fi Vision of the World Reshaped

If a trip to Venice is your ideal holiday, then you’re going to love the future.

new-york-2140-2

Most of us, however, will be quite sobered by Kim Stanley Robinson’s upcoming novel, New York 2140, a near-future projection of a world reshaped by climate change. Sea level has risen by 50 feet, flooding the Big Apple and countless coastal cities around the planet. Thousands of species have gone extinct.

The same economic and political forces driving the world ever closer to that reality are still in charge, setting life on a perpetual spin cycle of boom and bust, with the rich always getting richer.

Indian government to endorse universal basic income ‘as way forward’, says leading UBI advocate

India is going to endorse a Universal Basic Income (UBI), according to a leading advocate of the system.

The world’s largest democracy will release a report in January stating that UBI is “basically the way forward,” according to Professor Guy Standing, who has worked on universal income pilot projects in India.

If implemented, India would join Finland in providing free money to citizens.

Can Bitcoin Flourish with a Capped Supply?

The answer may be counter-intuitive: Not only can Bitcoin be widely adopted under a supply cap, its trust and integrity are a direct result of a provably limited supply. As a result, it will flourish because it is capped.

Everyone Can Own and Trade a Limited Commodity, IF…

…if it is both measurable and divisible. Bitcoin has a capped supply just as gold has a capped supply. Although both assets will be mined for some time into the future, there is only so much that will ever be uncovered. Thereafter, the total pie cannot grow.

But the transaction units will continue to grow as needed, because the pie is divisible into very, very tiny units:

There will eventually be 21 million BTC and each coin is divisible into 108 units. This yields (21 million * 100 million), or 21 trillion exchangeable units. And, it can be divided further by consensus.

As Bitcoin is adopted—whether as a simple payment instrument, an investment asset or even as national currencies around the world—each unit of the limited supply simply rises in value. If thought of as a currency, with a value established by supply & demand, it leads to a deflationary economy.

But, Isn’t Deflation Bad for the Economy?

It’s common to associate deflation with economic ills. One need only glance back at the the last century to conclude that deflation coincides with wars, joblessness, recession and a crippling concentration of wealth. Perhaps, just as bad, the tools used to pull a nation out of deflation often force governments to cherry pick beneficiaries of stimulus spending.

But it is important to note that deflation plays no role in causing these things. On the contrary, it is an effect rather than a cause… In fact, when a supply cap is introduced as a designed control input for monetary policy, all sorts of good things follow. I address these in various answers at Quora. Dig in:

Philip Raymond co-chairs Cryptocurrency Standards Association. He was host and producer of The Bitcoin Event in New York. In his spare time, he edits A Wild Duck

Is the Danube Civilization script the oldest writing in the world?

Older than Sumerian script? The Danube Valley civilization is one of the oldest civilizations known in Europe. It existed from between 5,500 and 3,500 BC in the Balkans and covered a vast area, in what is now Northern Greece to Slovakia (South to North), and Croatia to Romania (West to East).

During the height of the Danube Valley civilization, it played an important role in south-eastern Europe through the development of copper tools, a writing system, advanced architecture, including two storey houses, and the construction of furniture, such as chairs and tables, all of which occurred while most of Europe was in the middle of the Stone Age. They developed skills such as spinning, weaving, leather processing, clothes manufacturing, and manipulated wood, clay and stone and they invented the wheel. They had an economic, religious and social structure.

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