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New Global Growth Projections Predict the Decade of India

atlas.cid.harvard.edu

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Re: New Global Growth Projections Predict the Decade of India

#31

Post by abhishivsaxena »

roymurdock wrote: post #5

Helpful to keep in mind that India recently changed the way it calculates GDP by updating its base year and moving from a cost-of-input calculation to an expenditure calculation. This will give it a nominal boost as many currently non-market activities (cooking, cleaning, child rearing) enter the realm of the market as paid-for services, and are thus counted in the GDP calculation. More on that in this previous artic…

I don't have a study to back it up, but it seems the high pollution levels in Indian cities are mostly because of extremely high vehicular density - based on my unscientific observation that most polluted areas of Delhi are next to transportation depots/stations.

Anand Vihar - a suburb of Delhi - for example, is the most polluted place in the world, but that's also because it's the gateway to Delhi for people from the state of UP(200m population). There are like 100 buses coming into that place every few minutes!

But then, there can be solutions which don't negatively affect growth - public transportation, more and better planned cities to reduce vehicular density, and most important of all, elimination of subsidy on diesel - because the sources of pollution aren't fundamentally tied to growth.

I don't usually buy the argument that high growth will bring abnormal levels of emissions in the Indian context. I think that's because manufacturing can be never be the engine of growth in India, because of inherent, almost unfixable problems we have in India.

So, that's why I think that the Indian growth story is fundamentally different from Chinese growth story - or even any other growth story in the world, and it's important to keep that difference in mind.

Re: New Global Growth Projections Predict the Decade of India

#32

Post by 100timesthis »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #27
anon4this1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are just an exponentially increasing function which will generally grow to consume the resources available to them. Why do they deserve to be prioritised over the millions of other species on earth?

No we aren't. Birth rates slow to replacement levels or lower in first world countries. Look at Japan, or the US and Germany which are only growing due to immigration.

He is referring about consumption, not birth rates.

Re: New Global Growth Projections Predict the Decade of India

#34

Post by chongli »

chimeracoder wrote: post #11
silphe wrote: post #3

The ranking puts German growth prediction to be almost zero while Japan's to be 2.8? I call this rubbish. Both countries were in the last years demographically pretty similar. Both countries are however diverging pretty swiftly. While productivity in Japan was falling it was increasing in Germany. Moreover the recent development showed that Germany was making gains in demographics with higher birth rate and net migra…

> Moreover the recent development showed that Germany was making gains in demographics with higher birth rate and net migrations... Germany's demographics is actually changing very quickly (and rather favorably). First, higher birth rate and net migrations are usually a (short-term) drag on GDP, not a boost. Secondly, you can't look at Germany outside the context of being a member of the EU and Eurozone (and currentl…

you can't look at Germany outside the context of being a member of the EU and Eurozone (and currently a very important creditor in the Eurozone)

This is exactly right. If a few of Germany's key debtors end up defaulting and exiting the Eurozone, a prospect not so far out of the realm of possibility given the leftward political trend in those countries, then Germany could fall on hard times very quickly.

Re: New Global Growth Projections Predict the Decade of India

#35

Post by anon4this1 »

pc86 wrote: post #25
anon4this1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are just an exponentially increasing function which will generally grow to consume the resources available to them. Why do they deserve to be prioritised over the millions of other species on earth?

Given the choice between lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and offering huge economic opportunity to a stagnant global economy and some arbitrary (and disputed) danger to wildlife, development is the only choice. The snarky answer is probably something about how lions would not be setting up Human Preserves if the situations were reversed.

"lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty"

Objectively, humanity most closely resembles a cancer. The more you feed it, the more it grows. It tramples everything in its path. The belief that somehow exponential economic growth is going to fix everything and everyone will lead happy middle class lives in some kind of harmony with nature is delusional. We are in the midst of the largest mass extinction event of all time. In developed places, the natural forests and wildlife are 90-95% gone. The only places where nature still truly thrives are in undeveloped regions - the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, the amazon, the plains of africa. As "development" accelerates in these places, they too will destroy nature in the name of the eternal quest for positive economic growth, attainment of first world healthcare, buying a car.

Re: New Global Growth Projections Predict the Decade of India

#36

Post by littletimmy »

pc86 wrote: post #23
littletimmy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your point. But don't you think the wildlife are equally important? There are 7 BILLION people on earth... but there are just 5000 rhinos, for example. That's 1.5 MILLION people to a rhino. This is one of the most magnificent species to have ever walked earth - why shouldn't we prioritize preserving it over human comfort? Why do you value increase in living standards over a sentient species that all thin…

> But don't you think the wildlife are equally important? The implicit end of that sentence is "equally important to the hundreds of millions of Africans living there." And to that, emphatically no. People are more important. Full stop. I am no anti-environmental activist. I want to see renewable energy take over fossil fuels, I want to see conscientious business taking environmental factors into account at all steps…

Why is the life of a Zimbabwean citizen more important than the life of a Zimbabwean lion?

Re: New Global Growth Projections Predict the Decade of India

#37

Post by rodionos »

The economic complexity chart is interesting. It basically says that all oil producing nations experienced a decade of rapid simplification. That's not what I think happened with the Gulf/Middle East nations with their forays into real-estate, transportation, and tourism.

Re: New Global Growth Projections Predict the Decade of India

#38

Post by hodwik »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #13
vox_mollis wrote: post #9

Are long-term GDP growth predictions ever anything other than completely wrong guesses? Why do we take any of this seriously? Even the Federal Reserve and the BEA estimates going out a single year are usually little better than noise.

Making a prediction for one year may be more difficult than making a prediction over 10 years. Over 10 years, structural factors will dominate, but in any single year something like inventory fluctuations or commodity price jumps/slumps can make a prediction look very incorrect.

Right, this is the same principle as weather vs. climate predictions.

Re: New Global Growth Projections Predict the Decade of India

#39

Post by pc86 »

anon4this1 wrote: post #35
pc86 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the choice between lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and offering huge economic opportunity to a stagnant global economy and some arbitrary (and disputed) danger to wildlife, development is the only choice. The snarky answer is probably something about how lions would not be setting up Human Preserves if the situations were reversed.

"lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty" Objectively, humanity most closely resembles a cancer. The more you feed it, the more it grows. It tramples everything in its path. The belief that somehow exponential economic growth is going to fix everything and everyone will lead happy middle class lives in some kind of harmony with nature is delusional. We are in the midst of the largest mass extinction eve…

Then by all means, everyone who lives there can continue living in huts so that the trees aren't disturbed, right?

This entire argument is insane.

Re: New Global Growth Projections Predict the Decade of India

#40

Post by hodwik »

littletimmy wrote: post #36
pc86 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But don't you think the wildlife are equally important? The implicit end of that sentence is "equally important to the hundreds of millions of Africans living there." And to that, emphatically no. People are more important. Full stop. I am no anti-environmental activist. I want to see renewable energy take over fossil fuels, I want to see conscientious business taking environmental factors into account at all steps…

Why is the life of a Zimbabwean citizen more important than the life of a Zimbabwean lion?

Because one of them is sentient.
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