Daily Economics in Simple Language

My current job teaches me to tackle world of numbers. Numbers can be intriguing and can even be haunting. It’s very easy to fall for the trap and get into an endless loop of nothingness. Such a world, the more obsessed you will become, almost looks like Neo’s vision in Matrix, but really does not bring you anything but a dizzy head. My job simply tries to put a hand in this garbage and derive something meaningful. The more we befriend the numbers and simplify the content, the more they will help us to our advantage.

Chapter 1: Understanding Electricity

In the following series of blog posts, we will try to understand the world of electricity. We hear on numerous attempts from to curb CO2, cutting down electricity consumption, shifting towards electric cars, shifting towards renewable energies etc…I always had ignored these changes in a way not of being able to connect myself to the situation. Why should I be bothered about these stuff? What does it bring for me? It felt as if its something out of my grasp. This could be the main reason for my ignorance i.e. ignoring something altogether simply because I felt that its just too much effort to understand. I was also not convinced that the final learning will be of some use to me. It felt simply like a waste of time. Then, I had a training on electrical products in my company. It opened an all new world for me.  Coupling this new understanding of electricity with my world of simplifying numbers, this is my attempt to decode on what role I (we) have to play in the world of electricity.

1. How much does a meal cost at home?
2. Understanding my home: How to reduce my electricity bills?
3. CO2 Emissions: a floor report
4. CO2 Emissions: the Endgame
5. Electricity 5: My reluctance towards building electric cars for private use
6. Electricity 6: Electric cars for private use vs. Electrifying public transportation

Chapter 2: A Story of The world GDP from 1950s

The thought for this article struck when I was writing a blog post on “Consumer of the future”. There I had made an observation on how within just a few decades, the number of household products had a humongous increase. Extrapolating this thought on a global scale and trying to understand what this would mean to the global economy necessitated to look into the growth of world GDP over years. My assumption was that with increase in products at the consumer side, the whole supply chain upstream should have made a profit and thereby the numbers should reflect at not just at the country level, but globally too. One information leading to the other, it led the article to make more focus on what happened to the world after 1950. It looked as if this year was the tipping point to the global increase in consumerism. That this economic rise occurred right after the world wars was a very logical, as world wars facilitated rapid innovation and thereby access to sophisticated technologies. USA, being the forerunner among the allied forces, had the whole situation favorable to it. Combining this technological boost from the world wars to what when humans find a new resource, this article is just a look back on how fast such the resources was capitalized. More importantly it tries to make focus on understanding the side effects it caused and what the world governments have to watch out for human sustenance in the immediate and the far future!

1. A look into World’s GDP until now
2. Case study: supply chain of a Television
3. Rise of Consumerism
4. The chocolate river: on how the first world is having withdrawal symptoms!
5. The three biggest threats for a healthy future
   • Survival choke
   • Economical choke
   • Environmental choke
6. Conclusions

Chapter 3: Consumer of the future

Recently a colleague had invited my wife and I for a brunch. He has two kids. One is eight and the other is two. I asked him on what I could buy for his kid. He refused, but I insisted. Then he said that there is a brand called “Top Model” which his eight year old kid and her friends in the class are crazy about. He said, any item will work as long as it’s “Top Model”. My wife went to Galeria Kaufhof in Heidelberg in the kid’s section. She was shocked at the assortment of goodies this brand had for the kids. All were glitzy and overpriced! She bought a slam book which had picture of three girls in early teens on it. Until I was 15 years old, I had no clue what a slam book was and now the current generation seems to be knowing “urban dictionary” terminologies already from birth. On one side you have the parent’s wallet getting a dent and the other side I had a shock on what these three girls, the picture was conveying: body fit clothes, puffed up lips, rosy cheeks, elaborately made up hair, slim figure, big bust etc… I was discussing this with a friend. He had a totally valid third shock over the brand “Top Model” itself. He exclaimed “How the hell does a eight year old has a grasp of branding?” The 90’s kids group I was, I can’t point to a single point of time, when I understood or started demanding a product based on a brand, but certainly not this young! Brand insistence came much later in the market. This discussion was the baseline which got me into this topic: an analysis on the consumer of future.

I would like to capture the life times of my Grandmother and my mother in the first part, for the readers, especially if there is a new-gen accidentally reading my blog. This is to give them a reference point on how the market they are living in today in 2018 evolved.

1. Life couple of generations ago
2. The classic markets A to E: my generation
3. Kids of today: Markets F & G

 

If you like my posts, please acknowledge your motivation by Following/ Liking/ commenting on this blog. Thanks for reading.