India is a lot worse that China is in terms of economic development and its growth trajectory. Those that say that both India and China are rising powers are wrong as India will be left behind far behind China.
Spoken like a Chinese nationalist or an India-hating Pakistani who wants to unnecessarily bring China into every discussion concerning India.
1. Both China and India are placed equal in Corruption Perceptions Index. [1] China needs to worry more because of lack of free-media to expose corruption.
2. How is 8-9% GDP growth of India lot worse than 10-11% GDP growth of China? Keep in mind that India started 13 years later than China in liberalising its economy and lost the first start advantage to China. But that doesn't mean China is inherently superior.
3. India will be left behind only if China continues to grow at double digits forever. Most economists around the world have increasingly become skeptical about China's future growth trajectory.
> Those that say that both India and China are rising powers are wrong as India will be left behind far behind China.
You statement seems very generic. Also, the two economies are very different (capitalism in India and communism in China) so I am not really sure if there is a good way to compare the two. There may be some truth in what you say but then democracy isn't really very good if speedy implementation of policies is what you are looking for.
I have seen things change (for the better) in India significantly over the last 20 years or so.
I also hear stories from my father (he is ~70 years old now) of his youth. During his younger days (~1970) if someone wanted to buy a car, you might have to wait for 7-8 years after booking for to actually get the car. This led to an interesting economic situation. For e.g. my father bought a scooter for INR 3000/- (~ $65 today) and sold it for INR 6000/- (~ $130 today) after 6 years. This worked because during those days people found it better to pay for an older scooter than wait so long for a new one. Today, one can just walk into a showroom and walk out with a car or scooter or motorcycle.
There was no concept of a bank loan in those days. If someone wanted to buy a home or such, you would typically borrow money from friends or relatives. Today banks chase you for giving you loans.
Even during my lifetime, things have become significantly more convenient and opportunities have grown considerably.
While there is corruption, the number of areas controlled by the government has come down significantly. Also, there are acts like the Right to Information (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Information_Act) which are helping in curbing corruption. There are private players in a lot of industries which were traditionally controlled by the government (oil, steel, telecom etc.). With the license raj gone starting 1990 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_raj) thing are definitely looking good.
I have seen significant improvements in the way SEBI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebi) handles the equity market. The room for frauds has gone down in this areas even in the last ten years or so since I have been following the SENSEX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensex). SENSEX has moved from ~1900 in 1991 to ~19000 today. 1990 is when the license raj ended.
While there are a lot of things that can be improved and there is still a long way to go, I think there are a quite a few things that are going right for India at the moment. I do expect the growth to plateau in 15-20 years or so but at the moment things seem to be going well.
I haven't really been following the Chinese economy apart from the high level growth number that I tend to hear in news from time to time so I can't really comment on that.
While I agree with everything you have said, I am not as optimistic as you are. The pace at which things are improving is so slow that It is unrealistic to be competitive in global market place and over take china.
For example, Today, 50% of India has access to electricity for 10 hours a day. This is a fantastic achievement and is in right direction, If you compare with No electricity to this 50% of india two decades ago. It is not that fantastic when you compare with rest of the world where people cannot imagine living without electricity for an hour.
As you mentioned The direction, Providing access to electricity is right, The pace at which is happening makes me less hopeful.
In order for things to improve, Citizens of India have to acknowledge and accept that there's a problem, That's just first step towards solving the problem.
Did Apple consciously move down from the highly specialized Pro market to the larger Consumer market because it has a larger total number of users?
If this is the case, then yes the highest end users will be disappointed but hundreds of thousands of new potential users would now find this software accessible?
iMovie is still the product aimed at the consumer market.
But the cut-down Express edition is no longer; it was probably too much engineering effort to create two editions and get such a complex product out the door.
They lowered the price to make the product appear to a broader market, and to cover the Express-Pro spectrum. I'd say it's an aggressive move that makes it more accessible. Surely people are not complaining that it's more affordable?
We got to the moon because of massively political support at the highest levels because it was viewed as a strategic necessity.
Climbing mountains doesn't seem that comparable to going to the moon.
Scientists need funding in order to act if it requires many man years.
Thus military uses of AI are likely to be well funded to the tune of hundreds of millions if not billions because they can be viewed as a strategic necessity if it seems like the Chinese could possibly develop an AI before us. But if the general feeling is that a real AI isn't feasible in both Chinese and US circles in the near or medium term future, or there are more valuable/useful near and medium term objectives, there will not be a well funded race to create one.
Who said it needed to be well-funded? Creating a sentient AI is likely to become an easier undertaking as general computing technology and AI research advances. Creating such an AI in 20 or 30 years might require a large deal of funding, but what about in 50, 60 or even 100 years?
I don't think anyone can predict more than 20-30 years into the future with any real degree of accuracy.
So yeah, I agree that X might very well be possible (or in widespread usage) in 50 or 100 years, where X is basically anything that seems magical today.
So did that political support come from some Divine Providence or some conspiratory group? Didn't it arise from the curiosity of humans who elected the politicians?
Also, what about Art? What a useless waste of brainpower, yet we keep doing it for thousands of years.
The fact that humans have been expending valuable brain-power on art for millenia might suggest that it does have some use, or more broadly, that utility is not always obvious.
I'd expect that the layoffs would be centered around the old OS. Anyone involved in the new OS is likely to be safe. Or at least that sounds like a logical approach.
I'd expect the layoffs to be around 5% maybe at most 10%, but really things can still turn around for RIM if they can get their new OS out in mass, so I think we are still not quite in a complete panic.
I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from. At $30 billion over the next 10 years, per year, US aid to Israel is $412 per Israeli [1]. And of course, that will go down with population increases.
And another thing to note is that that money is in the form of military contracts with American companies. It is not used to pay for Israeli infrastructure or social services AFAIK beyond a separate chunk of money ~$40 million to help pay for Israel's immigration problem [2].
"And another thing to note is that that money is in the form of military contracts with American companies"
This.
People are usually oblivious that it's another way of transferring money from the government to the military industrial complex, not just supporting the single democracy in the middle east.
Most people don't know but the most controversial weapons that Israel has used in recent years, such as the cluster bombs dropped in Southern Lebanon [1] and the white phosphorous used in the Gaza Strip [2][3] were both made by the US and given to Israel through the US Military Aid program.
> and the white phosphorous used in the Gaza Strip [2] were both made by the US and given to Israel through the US Military Aid program.
Also very true. And it should be noted that WP usage is legal under international law provided that it is used as a smokescreen and not a weapon [1]. And the reason it is provided by America is because it is used by NATO.
Yes forgive me if don't trust Amnesty international on Israel (or any Western country for that matter) [1]. Also, WP is legal when used in a civilian area if that's where the battlefield is (Israel did not choose to fight in an urban area, Hamas did). See my same link above.
It's slightly more complicated than that. No doubt it's a stimulus to defense contractors, but this money also comes with stipulations. For example, Israel is not allowed to sell certain military technologies (of its own invention) to countries like China. It also secures further defense trading with Israel which has about $18 billion allocated per year for defense spending (with $3 billion of that coming from the US). So Israel is encouraged to spend more money beyond that $3 billion on American defense tech and weapons.
Also we give about $1.5 billion to Egypt to spend on American weapons so it's definitely not exclusive to the only democracy in the mid east.
Traceability in the real world banking institutions has its advantages. As a business owner I've once had a mistaken transactions that resulted in erroneous withdrawal of +10,000 from business bank account. A phone call to the bank and a bit of investigation fixed things and I don't think the bank was out any money either, it was just a wrong account number issue.
With bitcoin, things are not at all reversible.
Also I expect bitcoin to be shutdown because it could be a great way to fund terrorist activities. (There are major federal investments in anti-money laundering systems that monitor bank transactions, bitcoin transactions operate outside of this system and thus will be suspect.)
I think a better word is "traceable". Presumably with CHAPS one can find out who the money went to, and other mechanisms can come into play to get it back.
Bitcoin, though, is supposed to herald the awesome future of totally anonymous, totally untraceable transactions in which once your money's gone, you're fucked.
There were people talking about the housing bubble in 2005. Hell, there were people calling it out in 2003. I remember people calling it a bubble in front of congress in 2006, and being rebutted by the president of some association of Realtors a few minutes later, also in testimony to congress.
The facts of the housing bubble were widely argued during the bubble itself, and yet after the crash, somehow, 'no one saw it coming'.
India is a lot worse that China is in terms of economic development and its growth trajectory. Those that say that both India and China are rising powers are wrong as India will be left behind far behind China.