Economic & Business News

[Lexicus]

Gates Buys Control of Four Seasons
BY CRAIG KARMIN

Imagine being lauded in the press as a philanthropist-humanitarian God and yet doing a joint venture with the House of Saud

 

[Birdjaguar]

Having lots of extra money forces one to find ways of "doing things" with it and the default path is "grow it".

 

[Samson]

Bill Gates just gave Trump a massive bag of cash.

 

[Lexicus]

Bill Gates just gave Trump a massive bag of cash.

And Tony Blair too lol

 

[Birdjaguar]

Depopulation Hits Latvia Economy Hard

Industrialized nations struggle as birthrates decline, workers leave; Riga seeks a reversal
BY IAN LOVETT

DAGDA, Latvia—For nearly three decades, Inara Frolova, a local civil servant, has recorded just how fast this remote district on Latvia’s eastern border has dwindled. When her three brothers, her first husband and her son left for Ireland, she wrote it down. When births hit their lowest-ever level last year, she entered the data.

This year, with its population at roughly half of what it was in 1990, Dagda County was deemed too small to support a local government and merged with a nearby county.

“The only people still around here are retired,” said Ms. Frolova, 59 years old. Latvia is on the front line of what could become one of the defining challenges for the industrialized world: It is running out of people.

From Portugal to Singapore and across most of the Americas, birthrates are falling, and population growth in the industrialized world has stalled or reversed. That prospect brings with it the specter of a shrinking labor force, an aging population and stagnant economic growth. In Latvia, that future is here.

As in much of former Soviet Eastern Europe, Latvia’s low birthrates have been exacerbated by a decades long exodus of young people for higher-paying jobs in the West and a reluctance to accept immigrants from outside Europe. The result is a nation whose population is falling even faster than those of other countries, like Japan and Italy, where birthrates are lower.

Since joining the European Union, with its open borders and freedom to work anywhere in the bloc, in 2004, Latvia has lost 17% of its population; only neighboring Lithuania has lost more. The working- age population has fallen 23% over the period. Last year, Latvia recorded its lowest number of births in a century and the sharpest population drop in the EU, at 0.8%. This first half of 2021 was worse, with twice as many deaths as births. Now, this nation of less than two million people is trying to do something that has historically proven all but impossible: Turn around a demographic slide. This year, the government has adopted new policies aimed at boosting the birthrate and enticing expatriates back, but has so far declined to encourage immigration from outside the EU.

“It’s a very, very serious problem,” Imants Paradnieks, an adviser to the prime minister on demographic issues, said of the falling population. “Latvia is the country of the Latvian people. We want it to remain the country of the Latvian people 100 years from now.” In January, the government adopted a new plan for working with the diaspora, which now numbers roughly 300,000, according to the foreign ministry. The plan provides funds for encouraging expatriates to invest in Latvian businesses and more than €1 million a year, equivalent to $1.2 million, for Latvian language programs abroad, part of an effort to make them feel more connected and, perhaps, draw them back. Money is also allocated for the government to make personalized offers—including help finding work or housing—to families considering returning.

The exodus has slowed, but getting expatriates to return— and to stay—has been difficult. Even last year during the pandemic, more Latvians left the country than came home. The exodus is far worse in rural areas, like Dagda, a few miles from Latvia’s border with Belarus.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the local economy, which had relied on factories, collective farms and goods going to and from Belarus. Today, Latgale, the region where Dagda is located, has Latvia’s lowest average salaries and the highest unemployment rate. Its population has fallen 30% since 2004, with the steepest losses coming after the 2008 financial crisis, when Latvia adopted strict austerity measures. In Dagda, roofs on empty houses sag. There are no sit- down restaurants left. On the brick facade of one apartment building, a Soviet-era mural proclaims, “Glory to labor.”

When Juris Vilums, a former member of the Latvian parliament, finished high school here in 2000, there were 11 people in his graduating class. Now, he is the only one left in the area—most of his classmates are abroad and his sister is in Ireland. The high school is closing because there aren’t enough students.

The departure of young people is taking a toll.

 

[Hrothbern]

Depopulation Hits Latvia Economy Hard

Industrialized nations struggle as birthrates decline, workers leave; Riga seeks a reversal
BY IAN LOVETT

To consider hereby is the scale size

Latvia is a small area (formally a country with ofc statistics per country) in a big accessable area with jobs fitting higher education in companies with more implemented productivity tools.

You get the normal process of urbanisation we have had in Europe since centuries, since food could be transported very effectively over bigger distances and guilds, later factories had enough to do, preferring the benefits of the cluster advantages of clustering together (the gravity effect).

Urbanisation beyond borders is just gravity.

Reversal seems to me a risky answer when it does not recognise the basic causes.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I agree, education and women's independence both drive urbanization which strips the countryside of people.

 

[Lexicus]

I agree, education and women's independence both drive urbanization which strips the countryside of people.

Empirically, it seems more likely that this is the other way around. Urbanization strips the countryside of people, and that may later lead to higher education and greater independence for women.

 

[Samson]

Empirically, it seems more likely that this is the other way around. Urbanization strips the countryside of people, and that may later lead to higher education and greater independence for women.

This is certainly true generally (I had to look it up, graph below), but it does seem that in Latvia's case the cause and effect could be reversed, as the history has sort of forced it to happen that way.

Spoiler Urbanisation over time :

 

[Birdjaguar]

Empirically, it seems more likely that this is the other way around. Urbanization strips the countryside of people, and that may later lead to higher education and greater independence for women.

Perhaps. There is more than one force at work and cause and effect can easily be muddled by local circumstances: improved agriculture productivity reduced the need for farmers; regional weather/climate; rural education programs and increased literacy; reduced childbirth rates; demand for workers in more urbanized areas; husbands moving and wives following; women moving to avoid being a farmers wife. Overall, urbanization is a huge force for change, but I think that what drives it is complex.

I wonder where the UK, France and Germany would be on that chart.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Something to do with Aqueducts and Sewers.

 

[Samson]

I wonder where the UK, France and Germany would be on that chart.

Since you asked:

 

[Narz]

Living and raising kids in a large polluted city is pretty depressing so it's not a surprise that urbanization reduces birthrates

The idea that any place is "running out of people" seems pretty ethnocentric. Plenty of places got people happy to migrate.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Living and raising kids in a large polluted city is pretty depressing so it's not a surprise that urbanization reduces birthrates

The idea that any place is "running out of people" seems pretty ethnocentric. Plenty of places got people happy to migrate.

But it may not be as depressing as living a life of poverty in a rural hinterland.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Coming soon to your town!

Body composting a ‘green’ alternative to burial

Colorado among first to permit ‘natural,’ organic service

BY THOMAS PEIPERT
ASSOCIATED PRESS

LAFAYETTE, Colo. — In a suburban Denver warehouse tucked between an auto repair shop and a computer recycling business, Seth Viddal is dealing with life and death.

He and one of his employees have built a “vessel” they hope will usher in a more environmentally friendly era of mortuary science that includes the natural organic reduction of human remains, also known as body composting.

“It’s a natural process where the body is returned to an elemental level over a short period of time,” said Viddal, who likened the practice to backyard composting of food scraps and yard waste. “This is the same process, but done with a human body inside a vessel and, in our case, in a controlled environment.”

On Sept. 7, Colorado became the second state after Washington to allow human body composting. Oregon will allow the practice beginning next July. Viddal, who co-owns The Natural Funeral in Lafayette, lobbied the Colorado Legislature for the option and started building a prototype vessel in an industrial area soon after the bipartisan bill was signed into law.

The insulated wooden box is about 7 feet long, 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep, lined with waterproof roofing material, and packed with wood chips and straw. Two large spool wheels on either end allow it to be rolled across the floor, providing the oxygenation, agitation and absorption required for a body to compost.

“Composting itself is a very living function and it’s performed by living organisms. … There are billions of microbial, living things in our digestive tracts and just contained in our body. And when our one life ceases, the life of those microbes does not cease,” Viddal said.

Af ter about three months, the vessel is opened and the “soil” is filtered for such medical devices as prosthetics, pacemakers or joint replacements. The remaining large bones are then pulverized and returned to the vessel for another three months of composting. Teeth are removed to prevent contamination from mercury in fillings.



Seth Viddal, who co-owns The Natural Funeral, stands behind a nearly completed human body composting vessel in Arvada, Colo., on Aug. 11. THOMAS PEIPERT/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The vessel must reach 131 degrees Fahrenheit for 72 continuous hours to kill any bacteria and pathogens. The high temperature occurs naturally during the breakdown of the body in an enclosed box.

In six months, the body, wood chips and straw will transform into enough soil to fill the bed of a pickup truck. Family members can keep the soil to spread in their yards, but Colorado law forbids selling it and using it commercially to grow food for human consumption, and allows only licensed funeral homes and crematories to compost human bodies.

I'll stick with cremation.

 

[Farm Boy]

But it may not be as depressing as living a life of poverty in a rural hinterland.

Poverty is often relative and enforced, outside of actual shortages of things like heat, water, food, and clothing.

It is nice to watch the kids play outside. And it is nice that practically none of the parks are private. The well-heeled munchkins and the studio-dweller spawn all splashpad together. At least until they're taught not to by the wider world. Back to relative and enforced.

 

[Lexicus]

Since you asked:

Am I trippin or why is there only like 60 years of data from the UK?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Poverty is often relative and enforced, outside of actual shortages of things like heat, water, food, and clothing.

It is nice to watch the kids play outside. And it is nice that practically none of the parks are private. The well-heeled munchkins and the studio-dweller spawn all splashpad together. At least until they're taught not to by the wider world. Back to relative and enforced.

Yes, poverty in rural US vs poverty in rural India vs poverty in rural Africa etc.

 

[Farm Boy]

There's a reason the food production areas are food deserts, outside of some of the ritzy states annihilating the ground water reserves of posterity, and the problem isn't in the rural structure of things. It's enforced.

 

[El_Machinae]

Living and raising kids in a large polluted city is pretty depressing so it's not a surprise that urbanization reduces birthrates

I also suspect that in our modern economy, it also makes it much more expensive to have kids. I don't mind the lowered birthrate or the lower footprint-per-capita that cities generate, but I am also loathe to polish a turd. If there's a 'freedom and independence' effect for women, I'd watch out that we're not just rationalizing away a specific loss of financial freedoms. We moved from needing one urban income to needing two urban incomes just to tread water. I don't think that's progress.