economy

I have been meaning to start a thread like this for many years. I thought it might be too provocative, but I see how many Americans themselves are dissatisfied with their own country and the situation seems to be getting constantly worse. To many outside observers it has been clear for quite...

The UK is now one of the slowest growing economy in Europe and suffers from the highest inflation. Its labour productivity growth is now the lowest after Greece and Italy, after being one of the highest in the early 2000's. But that's not all, far from it. TLDR summarised it well in this video.

I have been working on a lot of new maps for the Economic & Wealth Maps page of this site. There are now over 50 maps, with more coming soon. The one that took me the longest to make is the GDP per capita at Purchasing Power Standard (PPS) by NUTS2 region. What is interesting here is how...

If you ever searched for a country's GDP per capita chances are that you saw a chart showing its evolution over the years. For example the United States had a GDP per capita (PPP) of $54,000 in 2017, but only $37,000 back in 1990 (measured in constant 2011 International Dollars), about the same...

That's not a joke. You read it well. That's what the Belgian economic magazine Trends explains in this article. It concerns mostly accidental Americans, that is foreigners who were born in the US while their parents were working there (usually for a few years as expats) and were automatically...

I have created 9 new maps based on the EU Commission's Eurobarometer poll results for Autumn 2019. I will compare them with other maps I made earlier. Democracy This map shows the percentage of the population that is satisfied with the way democracy works in their country at the moment (well...

2020 has been a very special year. The Coronavirus has reshaped the global economy. People are working more from home, but also relocating outside of expensive cities as there is no point in being close to one's office any more if teleworking becomes the new normal. As people move less, petrol...

Over the years I have created dozens of maps of Europe to help visualise the cultural, political, socio-economic, legal or lifestyle differences between countries. I thought it would be interesting to make similar maps for the United States, using the same scales and colours to facilitate...

I have finally finished calculating the country ranking for the four main vMemes (levels of consciousness). The purple vMeme does not really apply to developed countries, but rather to animistic tribal societies. The yellow and turquoise vMemes are too rare to included separately, but would...

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...

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...