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Utopia Talk / Politics / Bloomberg for President!
Daemon
Member
Mon Jan 20 10:49:26
I like him already

http://www...reak-as-most-innovative-nation

Germany Breaks Korea’s Six-Year Streak as Most Innovative Nation

Germany took first place in the 2020 Bloomberg Innovation Index, breaking South Korea’s six-year winning streak, while the U.S. fell one notch to No. 9.

Singapore’s leap into the third-place ranking returns it to its post from two years ago.

The annual Bloomberg Innovation Index, in its eighth year, analyzes dozens of criteria using seven metrics, including research and development spending, manufacturing capability and concentration of high-tech public companies.

The ranking shed light on the ability of economies to innovate, a key theme at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland taking place Jan. 21-24.

In the Bloomberg Index, Germany scored three top-five rankings in value-added manufacturing, high-tech density, and patent activity. South Korea lost its crown in part due to a relative slump in productivity, falling to No. 29 from last year’s No. 18 ranking in that category.

“The manufacturing sector is still highly competitive and a source for innovation,” Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at ING Germany, said in an email. “Germany’s performance in such indicators is still strong and much better than the recent economic weakness would suggest.”

Still, Brzeski cited several reasons why Germany shouldn’t be complacent about its innovation standing. Its services innovation is much less impressive, and about a third of research and development spending is in the auto industry, meaning “disruption and longer weakness of this sector could weigh on Germany’s innovative strength,” he said.

Germany’s status as a manufacturing giant has been built on the car-making industry, but pollution concerns, trade conflicts and slowing economies have weighed on demand.
Education Worries

Lack of innovation around tertiary education in Germany is an “increasing worry,” Brzeski added, especially as the global economy shifts more toward services and away from manufacturing. “The German government would be well advised to use the ongoing fiscal surplus to invest and safeguard Germany’s role as innovator.”

South Korea’s narrow loss is hardly a reason to anticipate a crumbling in its innovative prowess. R&D spending “determines life or death for South Korean companies,” with tech-oriented heavyweights like Samsung Electronics Co., LG Electronics Inc., and Hyundai Motor Co. leading the economy, said Chang Suk-Gwon, a business management professor at Seoul’s Hanyang University.

“We don’t have any other natural resources -- we only have our brains to turn to,” said Chang. “The expression that’s often bandied about in South Korea is the ‘super gap.’ It’s about widening whatever lead South Korea has -- or else China will catch up.”

Singapore’s rise to third place overall, from sixth last year, was aided by productivity and value-added manufacturing gains, while it retains a best-in-world ranking for tertiary-education efficiency.
Less Rosy

The news is less rosy for the top advanced economies. The U.S., which was No. 1 when the Bloomberg index debuted in 2013, fell one spot to No. 9 since last year’s ranking. Japan dropped to No. 12, down three spots for the same-sized decline in last year’s index.

The world’s second-biggest economy, China, edged higher by one spot to No. 15. It held onto a second-place ranking on patent activity, and broke into the top five for tertiary efficiency.

China’s strong performance probably shows that it was “busy building up and readying for a prolonged trade war and thus urgently needed to do a lot of in-sourcing, and getting up the value chain of manufacturing,” said Francis Tan, investment strategist at UOB Private Bank CIO Office in Singapore. China has President Donald Trump “to thank for accelerating their plans.”

The U.S. and China on Wednesday signed a first-phase trade deal that eased tensions by removing tariffs on some Chinese goods in exchange for Beijing agreeing to boost purchases of American exports. However, the pact fell short of addressing key concerns by the Trump administration over China’s intellectual property practices, digital trade restrictions and cybersecurity.

The U.S. can at least celebrate holding onto world-beating performances in two categories: high-tech density and patent activity. Among the 20 exchange-traded companies with the highest research and development expenditures in their most-recent fiscal years, half were from the U.S., led by Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Germany was second with four: Volkswagen AG, Daimler AG, Siemens AG and Bayer AG.

What Our Economists Say

“Innovation is a critical driver of growth and prosperity. China’s move up the rankings, and the U.S. drop, is a reminder that without investment in education and research, trade tariffs aren’t going to maintain America’s economic edge.”

--Tom Orlik, Bloomberg Economics chief economist

Big winners among 2020’s ranked economies were led by Slovenia, which gained 10 spots to No. 21 on the back of a 34-tier improvement in patent activity. Chile climbed seven spots to No. 51, not losing ground in any category and making particular strides in tertiary efficiency.

Alternatively, the biggest loser in this year’s index was New Zealand, falling five spots to No. 29 amid a slide in value-added manufacturing performance.

Four economies entered the Innovation Index for the first time: Algeria -- which made an especially strong debut at No. 49 -- as well as Egypt, Kazakhstan and Macao.

The 2020 ranking process began with more than 200 economies. Each was scored on a 0-100 scale based on seven equally weighted categories. Nations that didn’t report data for at least six categories were eliminated, trimming the total list to 105. Bloomberg publishes the top 60 economies.
Paramount
Member
Mon Jan 20 11:43:22
Sweden with a population of only 9 million of which 1 million are immigrants from Africa and Middle East is on 5th place, beating the US. Not bad.
Rugian
Member
Mon Jan 20 12:15:15
Don't sell yourself short Paramount. Thanks to your open borders policy, you're now up to 10 million.
Habebe
Member
Mon Jan 20 15:06:48
Bloomberg literally made it a crime to feed the homeless...literally.


Taking the war on poverty to whole nee Level.
Sam Adams
Member
Mon Jan 20 16:09:08
Bloomberg is wise on that one. Dont feed wild animals.
CrownRoyal
Member
Wed Jan 29 09:07:27

The Apple effect: Germany fears being left behind by Big Tech

As a technology boom threatens to pass the country by, the iPhone maker is worth more than Germany’s 30 leading companies

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple as chief executive in September 1997, the computer maker was valued at $3bn — less than one-tenth the value of German conglomerate Siemens, Europe’s largest industrial group both then and now.

Fast forward two and a half decades, and Apple’s market capitalisation exceeds not only Siemens — at $1.35tn the iPhone maker is worth more than the entire Dax index of Germany’s 30 leading companies.

Valuations of companies have often been used to make misleading comparisons: there is a cottage industry of pundits who have tried to compare the value of large multinationals to the GDP of entire countries. But sometimes, such contrasts can illuminate powerful trends about the state of nations.

The fact that Germany’s 30 largest companies have been overtaken by one single American giant is more than just a statistical quirk — it is a striking example of how Europe’s largest economy risks being left behind by the 21st century tech boom.



“Over the past two years I’ve heard so many German CEOs saying, ‘If we don’t change now, we might go out of business in the next five to 10 years’,” says Simon Thun, chief executive of Interbrand for central and eastern Europe. “So there is this awareness that we could be the next dinosaur.”

The long shadow of Big Tech has fallen on many countries. Apple is also roughly equivalent to the leading Australian stock market index of 200 companies, for example. But Germany is a special case. It is Europe’s engine and the world’s fourth-biggest economy because its brands mastered quality mass production and engineering, the key elements of 20th century industry before software began “eating the world”, as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen once put it.

The Dax 30, established in 1988, is home to a diverse set of world leading companies including carmaker Volkswagen, chemicals company BASF, insurer Allianz, business software provider SAP and logistics group DHL. The index rose 22 per cent in the past 12 months to hit a record high. But Apple’s value has more than doubled in the past 12 months, at one stage surpassing $1.4tn.

The Apple-Dax 30 comparison underscores two of the biggest fears in German boardrooms. First, although profits and exports remain strong, there is a sense of malaise among many German business leaders and politicians that a new industrial era based on software and data is passing them by.

“The big picture story is that we have missed the train on technology — the sector that is dominating the 21st century,” says Carsten Brzeski, chief economist for ING Germany. “The next 20 years will be dominated by ecommerce, the internet of things and artificial intelligence. In all of these things, Germany is running behind.”

Some leading German executives also worry that Silicon Valley tech companies could swallow up significant parts of German industry because of their immense scale.

The risk is that the industries Germany excels at, such as machine building and chemicals, could see the same kind of disruption that ravaged sectors such as music and media, as digital technology overtakes the hardware-oriented, engineering-based model at the heart of what Germany calls its postwar “economic miracle”.


Herbert Diess, Volkswagen chief executive, sees an existential challenge to the traditional auto business from new challengers. “If we continue at our current speed, it is going to be very tough,” he recently told senior managers at VW.

It is a concern shared by Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor. In an interview with the FT this month, she said that software companies were inserting themselves into producer-customer relationships, becoming essential “intermediaries” between businesses and their clients.

German companies, she warned, had missed out on this development and were now at risk of falling behind. “It’s no longer enough to merely sell a product,” she said. “One also needs to develop new products from the data on these products.”

Her fear: that without this expertise, Germany could end up becoming nothing more than an “extended workbench”, a kind of glorified assembly line.
continued

http://www...3a-40f0-11ea-a047-eae9bd51ceba
Paramount
Member
Wed Jan 29 12:35:26
Make Germany great again!
Daemon
Member
Wed Jan 29 13:09:22
"Herbert Diess, Volkswagen chief executive, sees an existential challenge to the traditional auto business from new challengers."

If the auto business fails VW can still survive by selling currywurst:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_currywurst
Habebe
Member
Wed Jan 29 18:41:16
Apple was surpassed by Amazon iirc....so its not just apple. Big tech is a concern

Apple, Alphabet, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon

Combined these 5 corporations have insane amounts of value amd power....maybe too much.
jergul
large member
Thu Jan 30 01:57:38
Habebe
Can we also look at companies that happen to be controlled by republican CEOs?

Morgan and Chase?
Walmart?
Proctor and Gamble?

Or is the common denominator Democrat inclined?
Habebe
Member
Thu Jan 30 08:59:36
Wal-Mart definitely, morgan Chase too.

Idk if PG is that big.maybe.

Wal-Mart is definitley too big.

Disney while not that big in size, controls an insane amount t. Of media.

My concerns on these companies is they keep out fair competition.

The big telecoms too, but inget that it takea a lot build the infrastructure, I lean heavily towards seeing what France has done....we literally have big telecom companies fighting against rural government trying to build local internet infrastructure.

I'm a capitalist that believes government should keep the playing field fair.

That said I'm conflicted in some cases where im not sure smaller companies could deliver similar goods and services...im not against it in theory but I'm just not sure it would work out in practice.




chuck
Member
Thu Jan 30 16:08:30
> literally made it a crime to feed the homeless...literally.

I see approximately one article about this. It says NYC began enforcing a policy that homeless shelters could no longer take in outside food donations. Some guy tried to take bagels to a city homeless shelter and was told they couldn't accept it. I don't see anything saying that the shelters stopped feeding the homeless, or that it was illegal for people or businesses to feed the homeless. Did you see something different?
Habebe
Member
Thu Jan 30 16:37:47
Hr banned private donations to homeless shelters.

http://www...ns-food-donations-to-homeless/

http://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/when-the-government-bans-charity%3f_amp=true

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2012/03/20/michael-bloombergs-new-york-nannystate-bans-food-donations

http://www.cnn.com/videos/bestoftv/2012/03/20/exp-early-stier-food-bank-nyc.cnn
Forwyn
Member
Thu Jan 30 18:15:21
As much of a faggot as Bloomberg is, he isn't alone in this. 'member when Louisiana sent goons to pour bleach on almost a ton of venison donated to a shelter because "muh deer meat isn't an accepted food item for commercial consumption"?
Habebe
Member
Thu Jan 30 19:54:35
Well, Who the hell wants to go to Louisiana? But yes I seen that 6% of US cities have similar policies.... Doesnt make him any less of a scumbag.

Btw, has anyone seen his " big hay ice cream" thing? Fri be worthy

Idk why venison has been so shunned, you can get it in PA stores now but its limited.



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