Shopping in Internet over Christmas

Christmas are coming. Google trends confirms the growing interest in shopping using Internet close to Christmas. The trend is affected by crisis.

Not only Doing Business

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank has published, on October 20, 2011, Doing Business 2012 report. It compares 183 economies regulations for domestic firms.

Following this report top 20 countries are as follows:

1. Singapore
2. Hong Kong SAR, China
3. New Zealand

Global Competitiveness Index

World Economic Forum (located in Switzerland) has published The Global Competitiveness Report 2011–2012. This over 500 pages, 142 countries, report has focused on macroeconomic indicators. It was prepared in cooperation with local organisation and businessman questionnaires.

Following is a list of top first countries valued by Global Competitiveness Index.

1. Switzerland (1)
2. Singapore (3)
3. Sweden (2)

Riots in UK, changed UK

The riots that happened in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leicester and other towns show that  there is no safe place in the world. I was in London one month before riots and I did not know how easy the situation can change. After few days of watching TV with reports about riots I have found more about this country. There were few days with no control over some areas. People were scared and left alone. Police after firsts days of lack of control came back with the power after visible return of PM from vacation.

Country to live #2

The list of countries I provided in previous post is too short. I have presented countries with the highest number of  people 80 years old or older. There can be many reasons for so good result. I would like however to I found as initial list countries with  highest life expectancy. So following The Economist - "Pocket World in Figures" the countries bellow is my long initial list. By clicking the link you can see where it is. Not all countries location I knew.

1. Japan
   
2. Hong Kong
3. Andorra

Country to live #1

There are many factors to consider to choose country to live. I found following to be important to make a decision where I would like to live. I choose from following factors:

1. Place
1. Climate
2. Location
2. Freedom
1. Security
2. Tax system
3. Legal system
4. Tolerance
5. Economic Freedom
6. Political Freedom
7. Religious freedom
3. Economy
1. Inflation rate
2. Foreign debt
3. GDP per capita
4. Economic growth
5. Public debt
6. Unemployment
4. Infrastructure
1. Infrastructure (roads, aiplanes, railways, internet)
2. The presence of top universities
5. Social
1. Life expectancy
2. Natural growth
3. Retiring system

The most important fo me is life expectancy therefore based on The Ecomist "Pocket World in Figures" I will first focus only on first 16 countries that have the highest number of people after 80 years old.

1. Japan
2. Italy
3. France
4. Sweden
5. Germany
6. Belgium
7. Spain
8. Switzerland
9. Austria
10. United Kingdom
11. Finland
12. Portugal
13. Norway
14. Denmark
15. Estonia
16. Slovenia

Next, I am going to reduce this list by choosing the second most important factor.

Global public debt

The world has many global problems. The examples are global warming, global crisis and global public debt. Since we live on the same planet and in one economical system we share the same problems. The governments experience similar difficulties in taking over the control of the world problems. Not solving them will result in submitting the bill to next generations. I can not imagine that countries will not pay debts. The debt will increase until new real reforms will be in place.

Following yahoo news USA government debt (also called public debt or national debt) riched $14 trillion ($45,300 per capita). At this level US Congress has to provide regulations to limit within the current cup.

In Poland the public debt is over 50% of GDP. It is close to the second internal warning level is at 55%. There are also EU regulations to prevent the increase of the deficit. The government is planning the changes the pension system to be able to influence the way debt is calculated - it is called "the reform of pension system".

There are some counties having higher deficit in relation to GDP in Europe. Italy and Portugal has the dept ratio over 100%. For Germany probably the ratio over 70% will not be so difficult due to the size of the economy.

The debt is increasing fast and we can observe it with the help of many public debt clock available in the Internet. The actual official publicly accessible data is not easy to find as it is usually more than one year old. Anyway they show the problem.

I found following sources of information related to global debt:

1. The global public debt clock and he map to compare countries across the globe is on "The Economist" site.
2. The global rank is also available at CIA The World Fact Book. 
3. Graphical representation of some key economy factors in one of the articles in "The Economist".

There are more risky and less risky countries. Solving the problem will take time, so maybe it would be good to think which country to live in waiting to the solution. For the moment please find the graph (“Visualization from Gapmider World, powered by Trendalyzer from www.gapminder.org.“) that illustrates change of GDP per capita for some countries - you can also press play button to see animation. There are more factors to consider. I would like try to choose the country for a living based on economical and social factors in my next post.