[RD] Daily Graphs and Charts

[Arwon]

So was I. Clearly they can anticipate demand with enough warning! It may also be that the coal plants generated power but were unable to sell it in these periods, but I somehow doubt they'd be doing that given the sophistication of electricity markets. Either way it's an achievement.

Interestingly, Spain recently instituted subsidies to generators to use domestic coal, as an energy security thing until 2014, but capped at 9% of total generation. Partly it was also Zapatero looking out for his native Leon which is home to most of the dying coal industry in Spain.

It will be exceedingly interesting to see what happens as the share of wind power generation rises. Given the priority dispatch of the special regime, I'd assume nuclear would be taken offline before the cogen, so you may end up seeing wind eating into nuclear generation on particular days as well.

 

[Monsterzuma]

http://hs-geography.ism-online.org/2010/09/07/the-demographic-transition-model/

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Shows once more that Germany is the most advanced and developed country on thie planet.
Seriously though, it looks like German birthrates are no the rise again, but it'sstill too early to tell if that's just temporary.

The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) has calculated that 510,000 babies were born between January and September, according to a report in daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. For the same period last year, the figure was 492,000 babies – a rise of 3.6 percent this year.

[...]

At no time in the past 10 years has the birth rate jumped so quickly. The rise is all the more remarkable, Destatis said, because the number of potential mothers has been steadily sinking. Each year there are about 300,000 fewer women in the age range of 15 to 45 who can typically have children. Yet this smaller group of mothers seems to be having more children.

I also would have liked to see China on the graph.

 

[Mise]

I don't think it would make sense to put China on the graph. But other South East Asian countries, such as South Korea and Taiwan, would certainly make the model look kind of ridiculous. Their birth-rates are catastrophically low - they're further along the purported curve than even Germany or Russia, having skipped gingerly over the "low stationary" part.

 

[Monsterzuma]

Simplified Taylor-rule recommendations for the federal funds rate over time:

according to the parameters set by Paul Krugman:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/are-we-almost-out-of-the-liquidity-trap-wonkish/

according to parameters set by Greg Mankiw:
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2012/01/liquidity-trap-may-soon-be-over.html

Argued as a reason why the "liquidity trap" will soon be over. My thoughts: how can the need to monetarily tighten possibly been seen as positive news? Is a high inflation rate positive news now too? /permabear grumble

 

[Murky]

 

[Murky]

 

[Monsterzuma]

http://www.creditwritedowns.com/201...(Credit+Writedowns)&utm_content=Google+Reader

Vaccination against the widespread disease of thinking Greece's fiscal problems are all rooted in a culture of laziness.

Oh and about that thing you heard about Mexicans:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/mexicans-work-the-longest-hours/

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Vaccination against the widespread disease of thinking Greece's fiscal problems are all rooted in a culture of laziness.

Oh and about that thing you heard about Mexicans:

I'll say the same thing I say when I hear how Americans are hard workers because they make more hours than Germans:
If you need more than 8 hours to get a day's work done, you're inefficient. You're either disorganized, or you're slacking off at work. In any case you're doing it wrong. .

This only applies to developed countries, so if anyone feels like bringing sweatshops into this, don't bother.

 

[Cutlass]

I'll say the same thing I say when I hear how Americans are hard workers because they make more hours than Germans:
If you need more than 8 hours to get a day's work done, you're inefficient. You're either disorganized, or you're slacking off at work. In any case you're doing it wrong. .

This only applies to developed countries, so if anyone feels like bringing sweatshops into this, don't bother.

That doesn't hold at all. It is not that Americans are working 10 hours to accomplish what Germans accomplish in 8, it's that we work 10 hours and produce 25% more. (numbers are example, not actual). Though it is true that labor is so cheap in the US that many workers are working at lower productivity than they are capable of because their employers see low productivity as more profitable than capital investment.

 

[kronic]

That doesn't hold at all. It is not that Americans are working 10 hours to accomplish what Germans accomplish in 8, it's that we work 10 hours and produce 25% more. (numbers are example, not actual). Though it is true that labor is so cheap in the US that many workers are working at lower productivity than they are capable of because their employers see low productivity as more profitable than capital investment.

Your claim is probably true. If you compare GDP per capita and GDP per hour worked of the US with the corresponding figures of most countries in Western Europe you'll find that most (but not all) of the higher US GDP per capita can be explained by the fact that Americans work longer.

Btw, there was a French study everywhere in the German online media today, claiming that the Germans work 225 hours more per year than the French. Kind of contradicts Monsterzuma's chart and also OECD figures. Said study seems to include only full time workers though.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Labor costs definitely play a role.
I remember reading a story about the German pavilion for the Expo in Shanghai. The work was done by Chinese and they were, to put it mildly, sloppy. They kept making mistakes, drilled holes in wrong places and patched it up again, ruined wallpaper when moving ladders furniture, and so on. The German overseer was completely shocked, but it worked out in the end. Labor in China is so cheap that people don't mind hiring unskilled workers and re-doing things. In Germany it's usually too expensive to screw up and do it again. I think inefficiency is a big part of Greece's problems.

Edit: Including a graph: Productivity levels of OECD countries.

Doesn't actually say much about real efficiency, does it ? People in Norway and Luxembourg could spend hours looking at lolcats on their office computers, and they'd still come out on top thanks to tax haven shenanigans and oil.

 

[Cutlass]

If labor is cheap enough, it's profitable to not bother to raise the skill level, as well as not bothering to raise the capital inputs. If it is expensive enough, both skill and capital increase in order to keep the per unit production cheap.

I think Greece's problems go too deep for labor quality to even be determined.

 

[Ayatollah So]

Btw, there was a French study everywhere in the German online media today, claiming that the Germans work 225 hours more per year than the French. Kind of contradicts Monsterzuma's chart and also OECD figures. Said study seems to include only full time workers though.

Monsterzuma's chart includes unemployed, children, elderly - everyone. It also includes both paid and unpaid work.

 

[Integral]

Simplified Taylor-rule recommendations for the federal funds rate over time:

according to the parameters set by Paul Krugman:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/are-we-almost-out-of-the-liquidity-trap-wonkish/

according to parameters set by Greg Mankiw:
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2012/01/liquidity-trap-may-soon-be-over.html

Argued as a reason why the "liquidity trap" will soon be over. My thoughts: how can the need to monetarily tighten possibly been seen as positive news? Is a high inflation rate positive news now too? /permabear grumble

High inflation would be good news if it were demand-driven.

Interesting charts; I saw Mankiw's earlier today. Or was it yesterday? Whatever. I'm surprised how well it tracked the actual FFR during the 2000s, given that it was estimated for 1990-1999. (And for fun, I downloaded the data and verified the graph; it is right.)

 

[Winner]

It's weird that the full plate armour arrived so late, basically when the Middle Ages were all but over:

 

[Cutlass]

Chain mail must have been an immense amount of work back then.

 

[Leoreth]

On Ziggy's xkcd strip: has anyone of you ever watched Primer? I can only recommend it, it's the perfect mindscrew. By the way, there is a graph explaining a possible interpretation of the events shown in the movie:

Warning: it's large.

Spoiler :

 

[Murky]

Chain mail must have been an immense amount of work back then.

Buying a suit of Chain mail and a War Horse would have been equivalent to buying an expensive sports car today.

 

[Monsterzuma]

US Gasoline consumption tanks in 2011:

http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2012/01/us-gasoline-consuption.html