Artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT has become speedily popular, amassing 1mn users within five days of its launch according to the company itself. A UBS study found that two months after its launch, ChatGPT had reached 100mn active users.
2. FT points to a big concern with the transition from IC engine to EVs, job losses.
Though built in England, the petrol engine of a Mini is a map of Europe: engineered in Germany, containing an alternator from France, an ignition coil from Italy and a coolant pump from Austria. Each step in this process involves a person, if not several. Yet not one of them will be required in as little as seven years when the brand goes fully electric. The same is true of those who supply engines for Volvo Cars, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Ford or any of the brands that have set end dates for engine-car sales in Europe. That electric vehicles take fewer people to make and design is well documented... Ford this month announced plans to cut 40 per cent of its entire European engineering team... Today, Europe’s auto industry employs 3.5mn people directly in manufacturing. Ford chief executive Jim Farley estimates that EVs require 40 per cent fewer people to make — the equivalent of 1.4mn jobs if applied across the industry. These are high-skilled, high-productivity, well-paid positions that are often in geographic areas that would otherwise be economic backwaters. Just look at Nissan’s Sunderland plant or in Slovakia, which has four plants that turn out one car for every five people living in the country annually.
3. Singapore is benefiting from Hong Kong's inward turn
... though much catch remains to be done.
4. The rise and rise of Indian Americans,
In 2013, the House of Representatives had a single Indian American member. Fewer than 10 Indian Americans were serving in state legislatures. None had been elected to the Senate... Ten years later, the Congress sworn in last month includes five Indian Americans. Nearly 50 are in state legislatures. The vice president is Indian American. Nikki Haley’s campaign announcement this month makes 2024 the third consecutive cycle in which an Indian American has run for president, and Vivek Ramaswamy’s newly announced candidacy makes it the first cycle with two... By and large, Indian Americans have been elected on the Democratic side of the aisle. All five Indian Americans in Congress, and almost all state legislators, are Democrats... Indian American voters are overwhelmingly Democratic: 74 percent voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the 2020 presidential race, more than voters of other Asian backgrounds, according to a survey by AAPI Data, APIAVote and Asian Americans Advancing Justice.
5. The changing contributors to inflation in the US (HT: Adam Tooze)
As the supply shocks have eased, the demand side pressures have been rising.
This on the different contributors to inflation in the US and Europe,
The inflation problems facing the Fed and ECB are different, however. In the US, inflation has been driven chiefly by a stimulus-fuelled surge in demand after the end of lockdowns and the question for policymakers is whether higher wages can be justified by improved productivity. In the eurozone and UK, the dominant issue is the energy price shock caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Dramatically higher spending on energy has made societies poorer overall, and the question is how that cost is shared between companies, workers and taxpayers. In this context, even if wages lag behind inflation, they could still be too high for companies to bear without raising prices further.
Wage growth in the US has been declining.
6. Just 25 million of Nigeria's population of 220 million voted in the just concluded Presidential elections, a voter turnout of just 27%. The winner, Bola Tinbu of the ruling party won with 8.8 million votes.
7. China's health insurance explained,
China has two main kinds of health insurance: employee hospitalization insurance and so-called residents insurance. The employee hospitalization insurance is the better of the two and used by a quarter of the country’s population. It covers the urban employees and retirees of state-owned enterprises, as well as the current employees of some private-sector businesses. In contrast to the United States, employee insurance in China is not managed by companies. Instead, a municipal government typically forms an employee insurance pool to cover hospitalization and a few outpatient expenses. Companies typically contribute to the pools an amount equal to as much as 9.8 percent of a worker’s salary. Employees do not contribute to the insurance pools themselves.In addition, those who qualify for employee plans typically have what are called personal health accounts. The money in them can be spent on medicine and further outpatient treatments. The employee insurance pools currently forward about a third of the money they receive from employers to personal health accounts, and spend the remaining two-thirds on hospitalizations and other expenses. Employees also put about 2 percent of their paychecks into their health accounts until they retire.The less fortunate three-quarters of China’s 1.4 billion people have urban or rural residents insurance. Residents insurance is for farmers and migrant workers, as well as for children, who are seldom covered by their parents’ health insurance plans. It is also for the many workers whose private-sector employers are not making contributions for them... People with residents insurance generally do not get personal health accounts. Less than 4 percent of China’s population has no health insurance at all. This portion tends to be migrant gig workers who live at the fringes of society... Chinese health insurance plans have narrow restrictions on what is covered, high co-payments and very low coverage maximums... Chinese law says that when a municipality’s pooled employee insurance fund runs a deficit, the city government has to cover the shortfall...While the pooled employee funds in many cities are depleted, personal health accounts across China have accumulated more than $130 billion. So the central government wants municipalities to put less money into personal health accounts and redirect some of that money to hospitalization funds. At the same time, the employee pooled hospitalization plans are taking responsibility for more outpatient expenses for serious illnesses and covering more purchases of medicine.
The three year of zero-covid have depleted the employee insurance pool and left the municipalities with growing liabilities.
Demographic changes in China have complicated the task. The number of births each year has dropped by nearly two-thirds since the late 1980s. Fewer young workers support more and more retirees who require ever more health care. Cities are now cutting how much money their hospitalization plans transfer to the personal health accounts of retirees. Wuhan’s reduction of transfer amounts by a little more than two-thirds is particularly steep. Local governments are also introducing or increasing deductibles. Wuhan has begun requiring retirees to pay the first $75 of expenses each year and current workers to pay the first $100.
8. Manufacturing's share of value add has been declining in India and that too from a low base, in contrast to the trends in other major peer competitors.
When China and Vietnam began their textiles and clothing export booms, respectively in the mid-1990s and the mid-2010s, foreign inputs made up more than 40 per cent of their exports. For India in 2015 the equivalent number was just 16 per cent.
An example of the challenge faced,
At a casings factory in Hosur run by Indian conglomerate Tata, one of Apple’s suppliers, just about one out of every two components coming off the production line is in good enough shape to eventually be sent to Foxconn, Apple’s assembly partner for building iPhones, according to a person familiar with the matter. This 50 per cent “yield” fares badly compared with Apple’s goal for zero defects. Two people that have worked in Apple’s offshore operations said the factory is on a plan towards improving proficiency but the road ahead is long.
9. Good graphic on the prices of Starbucks Tall Latte across different countries
10. This from an article about the recent high-profile jury conviction of Alex Murdaugh for the murder of his wife and son in Hampton County in South Carolina's Lowcountry, does not seem out of place for several parts of India or other developing countries.
They have enormous sway because, it turns out, the Murdaughs are like royalty in Hampton. For nearly a century, a Murdaugh has been the chief criminal prosecutor for the surrounding district. At the same time, the family has operated Hampton’s biggest civil law firm. In essence, the Murdaughs are the law in Hampton. They are also fantastically wealthy, with multiple homes, boats, their own 1,700-acre hunting estate, an arsenal of guns, and other baubles.
11. Finally, from an Indian Express investigation on the forest produce certification system in India about green-washing of such certifications
Forest certification is a sunrise industry, driven by a growing preference to avoid any product that can be linked to deforestation or illegal logging. In India, the forest certification industry is growing at 8 to 10 per cent every year, mainly catering to exporters wanting to tap the US and European markets that have strict regulations to ensure the legality of wood products coming in. Only processed wood is allowed to be exported from India, not raw wood... The investigation revealed that certifications in India were mainly a tool to bypass regulatory requirements in Europe and the US, where India’s forest-based products have an export market worth Rs 4,000 to Rs 5,000 crore every year. “It is easy to obtain forest certifications in India, if you are willing to pay the fees. There are several unscrupulous operators who are willing to make a quick buck. In fact, because of the intense competition amongst certification bodies, it is largely a buyers’ market. If you negotiate hard enough, you can drive down the costs of certification considerably,” said an executive of the India-based office of a foreign certification body...The main seekers of certifications have been exporters of wood products and other forest-based goods... Forty per cent of all certificates issued in India by two of the largest global certification systems – FSC or Forest Stewardship Council, and PEFC or Programme for Endorsement of Forest Certifications – have not been renewed... FSC and PEFC, and others like them, are developers and owners of certification standards, much like the International Organisation of Standardisation (ISO) or the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). The actual work of evaluation, recommendation of certifications, and monitoring of compliance is carried out by certification bodies and their subcontracted auditors.
This is a good reminder about the limitations of industry self-regulation.
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