The West Fights Back!

When the Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips and Science Act for clean energy and tech last year, Americas trade allies in Europe and Asia were surprised. Now they are scrambling for ways to catch up. 

Are western economies in a war of subsidies with each other and China over technology and green infrastructure?

China in Africa: should the West be worried?

In the past 20 years, China has built ever closer bonds with African nations. It has spent billions transforming infrastructure across the continent, and extending its influence into politics and society. It even placed its only overseas military base there. How worried should the West be?

How Starbucks Operates Like a Bank While Serving Coffee - WSJ

Starbucks, a $124.4 billion company, trails only McDonald’s as the largest restaurant chain by market capitalization. In this video, WSJ’s Heather Haddon explains how Starbucks used technology to garner its loyal customer base and why mobile orders are shifting the chain’s business priorities.

Connected Economy

Why it's harder to earn more than your parents - The Economist

In the 21st century it's got harder to earn more than your parents and to climb the social ladder. What's gone wrong, and what can be done to change this?

 

Malinvestments, When Your Eyes Are Bigger Than Your Stomach

Irrational exuberance can lead to malinvestments.

 

“Must Reads” for 22 February

Today’s “Must reads” in banking, fintech, payments, cybersecurity, AI, IoT and risk management include:

• Types of Malware - Best Malware Protection Practices for 2021
• Top Trends of Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace
• Cybersecurity Threats: The Daunting Challenge Of Securing The Internet Of Things
• Mobile banking: a catalyst for economic transformation
• Bridging the Trust Gap: How Fintechs Beat Incumbents at Their Own Game
• Crowd pleaser: The future of alternative financing is scale

The minimum wage: does it hurt workers? - The Economist

Joe Biden has pledged to raise America's national minimum wage to $15 an hour. Economists traditionally believed that minimum wages actually hurt workers, but recent research has led to a rethink.

The engine of human progress and prosperity has been, and is, the mating of ideas

The engine of human progress and prosperity has been, and remains "ideas having sex with each other"

At TEDGlobal 2010, author Matt Ridley shows how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. It is not important how clever individuals are, he says; what really matters is how smart the collective brain is.

British author Matt Ridley argues that, through history, the engine of human progress and prosperity has been, and is, "ideas having sex with each other."

Throughout history, the engine of human progress and prosperity has been, and is, the mating of ideas. The sophistication of the modern world, says Ridley, lies not in individual intelligence or imagination; it is a collective enterprise. In his book The Rational Optimist, Ridley (whose previous works include Genome and Nature via Nurture) sweeps the entire arc of human history to powerfully argue that "prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else."

It is our species habit of trade, idea-sharing, and specialization that has created the collective brain which set human living standards on a rising trend. This, he says, "holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead - because ideas are having sex with each other as never before."

This talk was presented at an official TED conference and was featured by the TED editors on the home page.

“Ridley systematically builds a case through copious data and countless studies that “the vast majority of people are much better fed, much better sheltered, much better entertained, much better protected against disease and much more likely to live to old age than their ancestors have ever been."” — Scientific American.

Can Bitcoin Replace Government-Issued Money? A Debate

"Bitcoin is poorly suited to the purpose of becoming any nation's main medium of exchange." That was the topic of a public debate hosted by the Soho Forum in New York City on August 12, 2019.

The debate featured George Selgin, director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute, and economist Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking (2018). Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein moderated.



The debate was an Oxford-style, in which the audience votes on the resolution at the beginning and end of the event, and the side that gains the most ground is victorious.

Ammous prevailed in the debate by convincing 23 percent of audience members to change their minds. Arguing for the affirmative was Selgin, whose books include Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy (2018) and Floored! How a Misguided Fed Experiment Deepened and Prolonged the Great Recession (2018). Ammous argued for the negative. An associate professor of economics at Lebanese American University, Ammous is also teaching an online course in bitcoin and Austrian economics.

The Soho Forum, which is partnered with the Reason Foundation, is a monthly debate series at the SubCulture Theater in Manhattan's East Village.

Top 10 Country GDP Ranking History (1960-2017)

This video shows the Top 10 countries with the highest GDP from 1960 to 2017.

This country GDP ranking includes countries such as, United States, China, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, etc. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in a period of time, often annually or quarterly. Nominal GDP estimates are commonly used to determine the economic performance of a whole country or region, and to make international comparisons.