Length Comparison in an old Victorian map between the rivers in South America – the Amazon, River Plate (La Plata), and Orinoco (made famous in song by Enya) with the rivers Ganges and Indus.
India and Latin America: Water Scarcity vs. Abundance
December 30th, 2008 Posted in Agriculture, Argentina, Brazil, India, Latin America, Paraguay, Uruguay, Visualizations
All future visualizations of complex issues should emulate this example. With input by Jess Bachman of Death and Taxes fame. As an aside, a compelling graphic of the spike in US home values driven by easy credit and their projected deflation with the popping of the credit bubble.
via Mint Blog (20%)
Technorati Tags: credit bubble, financial crisis
The Cost of a Long Life
November 12th, 2008 Posted in Caribbean, Health and Pharma, India, Latin America, Public Policy, Visualizations
Compelling graphic that demonstrates that throwing more money at problems does not always ensure better outcomes.
Life Expectancy around the world
The chart highlights the sharp contrast between the US and Cuba. With a life expectancy of 76.9 years, Cuba ranks 28th in the world, just behind the US. However, its spending per person on health care is one of the lowest in the world, at $186, or about 1/25 the spending of the United States. There are other cases where high life expectancies are achieved with low spending on health care.
Another reason some countries achieve high life expectancy with low health spending is that clean drinking water and preventive health care can be provided with little spending. If there is near universal clean water and preventive care, life expectancy rates can be high. In the US, however, nearly 40 million Americans lack basic health insurance, and are therefore less likely to receive preventive care. In contrast, Cuba has universal health care and one of the highest doctor-to-patient ratios in the world (See Physicians). Although Cuba has limited resources and many economic problems, it has made health care a priority. It is not alone. Sri Lanka, China and the Indian State of Kerala are considered “low-income, high well-being” countries, which have adopted policies that not only reduce inequality but also increase overall health and well-being.
Money spent at hospitals and doctors counts towards ‘economic growth’, by getting included in GDP stats, but is terrible as an indicator for human well-being.
Related articles
Where you pay 96 million dollars for a beer and 956 million dollars for dinner
October 22nd, 2008 Posted in Visualizations
Courtesy of the money printers at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. The bizzarro world created by that state of affairs is cataloged here. Helicopter Ben Bernanke seems to derive inspiration from them.
Zimbabwe dinner tab
Technorati Tags: hyperinflation
Endlessly renewable energy. Well, at least for a few billion years. Some amazing pictures of the sun here. No wonder there have been sun temples all over the world – a few in India, in Mexico, in Peru
- Boston.com
An animation of the sun, seen by NASA’s Extreme
ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) over the course of 6 days, starting
June 27, 2005. (Courtesy of SOHO/EIT consortium)
Those who say water is a human right and so should be free are inhabiting an alternate reality. The world population is projected to reach 9 billion in 2050 from 6.5 billion today. There is NO way of piping free or subsidized water to these vastly increased numbers in Asia, especially India. The number of ‘water tanker’ ships plying the world’s oceans is only bound to increase dramatically. The countries of Latin America can be founding members of a possible OWEC! (Organization of Water Exporting Countries). (All images via WorldMapper)
World Water Resources: Of all the water available, the regions of South America and Asia Pacific have the most.
World Water Use: On average, people living in Central Africa each use only 2% of the water used by each person living in North America.
World Water Depletion: Map shows those territories that use much of their internal water resources, measured with a threshold of people using more than 10% of renewable water resources.
India’s place in History of the World Economy since 1500
Good visualization (courtesy: Visualizing Economics) that shows that India is a re-emerging market. According to economic historian Angus Maddison, (see Historical statistics at this link) India was the world’s biggest economy from 0 A.D. to the 15th century and second biggest through the start of the 19th century.
Encounters with colonialism (starting with the battle of plassey 1757) and then embrace of Fabian socialism/statism (starting in 1947 thru the early 1980s) sent the Indian economy into a downward spiral for nearly 250 years. Policies that put wealth transfer and wealth redistribution before wealth creation resulted in the impoverishment of millions.
History of World GDP - last 500 years
Something for the urban planners, if they find a voice in decision making, in megacities like Mumbai and Sao Paulo to keep in mind.
Core77 / design magazine
A poster in the city of Meunster’s Planning Office shows the amount of space taken up by cars, a bus, and bicycles used to transport the same number of people.
The accompanying numbers:
* Bicycle: 72 people are transported on 72 bikes, which requires 90 square meters.
* Car: Based on an average occupancy of 1.2 people per car, 60 cars are
needed to transport 72 people, which takes 1,000 square meters.
* Bus: 72 people can be transported on 1 bus, which only requires
30 square meters of space and no permanent parking space, since it can
be parked
elsewhere.
